News

Local Navy pilot will fly with American flag from the Prep

Lt. Greg Taylor, a 2007 graduate of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, will continue a custom of flying with a flag. His was blessed by the Prep's president Oct. 26 and given to Taylor's parents.

St. Francis School families enjoy Spirit Night at pumpkin patch

Games with pumpkins, apples, mums and other signs of autumn were enjoyed by patrons of a Delaware County garden store, whose owners planned the fourth annual event. Their daughter is a student at the Aston Catholic school.

Synod members disagree on report’s opening to Communion for remarried

Australian Cardinal George Pell said the final report of the Synod of Bishops on the family did not create an opening for the divorced and civilly remarried to receive Communion. Other synod members took a different view and acknowledged that the paragraph in question was being read differently.

Synod report urges ‘accompaniment’ tailored to family situations

The 94-paragraph report approved Oct. 24 highlighted the role of pastors in helping couples understand church teaching, grow in faith and take responsibility for sharing the Gospel. It also emphasized how "pastoral accompaniment" involves discerning, on a case-by-case basis, the moral culpability of people not fully living up to the Catholic ideal.

Synod report has new emphasis, not changed doctrine, U.S. bishops say

Bishop George V. Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, and Bishop Kurt Burnette of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic, New Jersey, met with journalists Oct. 24 at the Pontifical North American College.

Pope Francis preaches at Mass for close of Synod of Bishops

Read the pope's homily to conclude the synod in Rome, in which he warns of a “spirituality of illusion” in which people "can walk through the deserts of humanity without seeing what is really there," and in so doing "create other deserts."

Jesus’ disciples are called to lead without lecturing, pope says

Reflecting on the day's Gospel reading, which recalled Jesus' healing of Bartimaeus, a blind beggar from Jericho, Pope Francis said Christ is not content with giving the poor man alms, but preferred to "personally encounter him."

Author to speak on forgiveness by the Amish

St. Maria Goretti Parish will host author Marie Monville, the widow of the man who in 2006 shot 10 girls in an Amish one-room schoolhouse. On Nov. 2 she will explain the Amish community’s response of love after the tragedy.

Catholic Boy Scouts hike ‘God’s Country’ on 2-week retreat

Two young men from Feasterville and North Wales backpacked, climbed, camped and prayed daily in the New Mexico wilderness last summer during a unique scouting retreat.

Synod had difficult moments as it tried to proclaim truth, pope says

At the end of the synod's final working session Oct. 24, Pope Francis was honest about the differences of opinion present among synod participants and about the tone of their discussions sometimes exceeding the bounds of charity. But he framed all those differences as an opportunity for learning.