Hawaii Catholic Herald

Newspaper of the Diocese of Honolulu

Pope prays that Easter joy breaks through gloom of sin

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          By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — On a bright spring morning, Pope Francis prayed that Christians would experience the joy of Easter and allow Christ’s resurrection to be “the light that illumines the darkness and the gloom in which, all too often, our world finds itself enveloped.” […]

Responding to Indigenous, Vatican disavows ‘doctrine of discovery’

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  By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — The Catholic Church formally “repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery,’” a Vatican statement said. Issued March 30 by the dicasteries for Culture and Education […]

Leaving the hospital, pope comforts couple whose daughter died

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By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service ROME — “I’m still alive,” Pope Francis joked to reporters who asked how he was doing as he left Rome’s Gemelli hospital April 1. The 86-year-old pope, who had been hospitalized since March 29 for treatment of bronchitis, stopped his car and got out to greet well-wishers and reporters […]

To be an apostle is to serve, not move up church’s hierarchy

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POPE FRANCIS | GENERAL AUDIENCE By Justin McLellan Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — Being an apostle does not mean climbing up the church’s hierarchy to look down on others but humbling oneself in a spirit of service, Pope Francis said. During his general audience in St. Peter’s Square March 15, the pope explained that […]

New asteroids named for ‘calendar’ pope, three Jesuit astronomers

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By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — Three Jesuit astronomers and the 16th-century pope who commissioned the Gregorian calendar have recently been honored with having asteroids named after them. The new additions include: “562971 Johannhagen,” honoring Austrian Jesuit Father Johann Hagen, who was serving as director of the Georgetown University Observatory when Pope […]

Vatican hands Parthenon pieces to Greek representatives

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By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — The Vatican officially signed the papers transferring to the Orthodox Church of Greece three marble fragments from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece; the fragments had been in the Vatican Museums’ collection for about 200 years. As he prepared to sign the papers, Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, […]

Pontiff says cardinals, top church officials, must pay rent for Vatican-owned housing

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By Justin McLellan Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — Cardinals and other senior Vatican officials who have been living rent-free in Vatican-owned apartments in Rome will now have to pay “ordinary” unsubsidized rates, Pope Francis said. A rescript written by Maximino Caballero Ledo, the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, and signed by the […]

Vatican reports global decline in clergy, religious women

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By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — The number of Catholics and permanent deacons in the world rose in 2021, while the number of seminarians, priests, and men and women in religious orders declined, according to Vatican statistics. At the end of 2021, the number of Catholics in the world reached 1.378 billion, […]