News

Witness to Christ with love, pope tells Catholics on Arabian Peninsula

Meeting with tens of thousands of Catholics living in the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis urged them to be meek, peaceful and express their Christian identity by loving others.

Opioids claiming lives and affecting many others, say panelists

Many of those attending a Feb. 3 workshop on the opioid crisis at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington told personal stories of pain and loss as opioids collided with their lives.

Fed director discusses wealth gap between black, white households

La Salle University will present a Feb. 6 lecture featuring Ray Boshara of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, who will join several other panelists in exploring the connections between race and wealth inequity.

‘Jesus was like this’ depicts Christ in modern Philadelphia

St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Philadelphia will host a Feb. 17 performance of the new musical by Barbara Purnell Boyle, which seeks to entertain, inspire and evangelize.

Longtime teacher in Montessori method dies at age 85

Sister Yolanda Amoroso of the Religious Teachers Filippini entered the order in 1948 and served as a primary-school teacher in seven dioceses and archdioceses, including Philadelphia.

U.S. priest laicized for child abuse in East Timor; police investigate

After accusations of sex abuse, the Vatican has laicized American Richard Daschbach, a former Divine Word missionary who ran orphanages in East Timor for 27 years.

Deacon Richard Coyne of Holy Cross Parish dies at 88

The permanent deacon was ordained by Cardinal Krol in 1986 and served at his parish in the city's Mount Airy section as his only assignment before retiring in 2010.

Immigrants seen as making their mark in their new homes

An immigrant-dominated panel Feb. 3 at the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington showed immigrants seizing educational and professional opportunities that they would have had little hope of finding in their home countries.

Community land trusts a possible answer for escalating housing costs

Based on a concept developed by Mahatma Gandhi in India, these kinds of land trusts were originally designed to allow black farmers to pool their resources to own the land they farmed rather than work as sharecroppers.

Prominent Catholic doctor: U.K. group conducting sham poll on euthanasia

Dr. Dermot Kearney, CMA president, said the Royal College of Physicians was guilty of "gerrymandering" and of organizing a "sham" survey so it could ditch its traditional opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide.