All are welcome: Brooklyn’s Bishop DiMarzio says parishes are called to unite immigrants in faith

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

From The Bench’s Brooklyn Desk comes this news about my own bishop, via CNS: Catholic parishes are called to build communion with immigrants and newcomers so people unite in faith rather than solely because of their cultural backgrounds, said the bishop of Brooklyn, N.Y., who has worked for 38 years to improve immigrant relations. Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, former executive director of Migration and Refugee Services for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told a Feb. 24 conference on the integration... Read more

Stunning image: priest hearing confession on the front lines in Kiev

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Check this out: And read the analysis from Terry Mattingly. This is courage. This is grace. Pray for the people of Ukraine—and remember, in a special way, these extraordinary clergymen. Read more

If this doesn’t make you want to get to Confession, nothing will

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

This has been making the rounds for a while. But I think it’s worth revisiting now, just several days before the start of Lent. It’s a video compilation of people who almost met their Maker—but survived to live another day. It reminds us how close any of us might be to the end of our earthly lives. None of us knows the day or the hour (or what lunatic might be driving a semi around the next bend.) Have you... Read more

Hey, it’s the pope!

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

John Allen in today’s Boston Globe offers some examples of what can only be called the Franciscan style: Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is a member of a Vatican council that oversees the Synod of Bishops, a summit of Catholic prelates from around the world. The council meets every so often in a building a few blocks from St. Peter’s Basilica, and the practice has been that it passes conclusions to a papal aide without getting face time with the... Read more

Pope Francis appoints Cardinal Pell to head new Vatican financial office, “Secretariat for the Economy”

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Details from National Catholic Reporter: Pope Francis has approved a set of sweeping moves to reorganize the financial and administrative structures of the Catholic church’s central bureaucracy, creating a new central office with wide control particularly of economic issues, the Vatican announced Monday. Sydney Cardinal George Pell will head the new office, known as the Secretariat for the Economy. Announcing the news in a statement, the Vatican said Pell would have “authority of all the economic and administrative activity within... Read more

Pope Francis: “A community does not belong to the preacher, but to Christ”

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Hot on the heels of that headline-making video presented to evangelicals last week, Pope Francis offered some stirring remarks on Christian unity during the Angelus yesterday: In his address to them he urged them to work for Christian unity avoiding all divisions, because he said: “a community does not belong to the preacher, but to Christ”. Commenting on the second Reading of the Day, the Pope said that since the times described by St. Paul, Christians were divided according to... Read more

Will God be boffo box office?

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

A former producer, now a movie reporter for The New York Times, offers his insight: Once, studios routinely made movies with overtly religious themes for the mainstream audience. Classics like “The Ten Commandments,” “Quo Vadis” and “A Man for All Seasons” — each of which was nominated for a best picture Oscar — were box-office winners with a wide range of viewers. But after years of neglect or occasional hostility, the question now is whether Hollywood can still find common... Read more

Back from retreat

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Sorry for the long silence: I was away Friday night through Sunday morning at the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, NY, on retreat with deacons from the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre, and the Archdiocese of New York. It’s a beautiful place—still blanketed in snow, despite the warming weather—and a good time was had by all. The retreat was given by Msgr. Richard Henning, the facility’s rector, who spoke compellingly of how “Scripture Speaks to the Heart.” Some snapshots... Read more

Pope Francis warns cardinals against becoming “a royal court,” calls them to conversion

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

From RNS: In a forceful message to more than 100 scarlet-clad cardinals arrayed before him, Pope Francis on Sunday (Feb. 23) warned them that they are “not a royal court” and told them to avoid “habits and ways of acting typical of a court: intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and preferences.” Francis has repeatedly called on clerics to live simply and humbly, and at a service a day earlier in which he added 19 new members to the College of Cardinals... Read more

Worth a thousand words: a little pope

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

H/T to John Thavis. Read more