TORONTO - There can be no question that Muslim-Catholic dialogue matters. More than one billion Catholics and over two billion Muslims combine to cover the globe, penetrate every culture and express their ideas about the world, human life and God in hundreds of languages.
Ignoring spiritual dimension education’s ‘biggest crisis’
VATICAN CITY - To be truly formative, Catholic higher education has to continue to entrench students with human values, particularly the value of transcendence, said Pope Francis.
PARIS - Catholics and Lutherans have made another step toward joint commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 by issuing common liturgical guidelines for ecumenical services to mark the occasion.
Synagogue visit is chapter in Rome's unique Catholic-Jewish history
ROME - History and geography have combined to make Catholic-Jewish relations in Rome unique, both negatively and positively -- a fact highlighted by modern papal visits to the city's main synagogue just two miles from the Vatican.
United as God’s chosen
For the past 50 years, beginning with the 1965 Vatican II decree Nostra aetate, Catholic-Jewish dialogue has steadily improved to the point that today the relationship between Catholics and Jews has never been stronger.
Building Catholic education through the domestic Church
The strength of Catholic education is founded on an alliance between families, parishes and schools which work together towards a shared objective. Together they comprise the domestic church.
Mideast Catholic patriarchs encourage hope, joy amid suffering
BEIRUT - Catholic patriarchs from the Middle East encouraged their trouble people to find inner peace at Christmas and urged the world to remember them.
New guide helps French Catholic-Muslim couples preparing to marry
PARIS - A day after Islamic extremists massacred 130 people in Paris last month, a Muslim-Catholic couple married in Lyon. It had to be a civil ceremony because the Muslim family refused to enter a church. Shocked by the attacks, some relatives even asked whether they should go ahead with the ceremony at all.
New chapter launched in Catholic-Jewish relations
Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl reckons it was the first kosher meal ever served in the 190-year history of Ottawa’s Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, though it’s hard to say for sure. But the first meeting of the national Canadian Catholic-Jewish Dialogue certainly marked a new chapter in Christian-Jewish relations in Canada.
Catholics shouldn’t try to convert Jews, says new Vatican document
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has said that Catholics should witness to their faith but not undertake organized efforts to convert Jews, a significant step forward in the once tense relations between the two faiths.
New Vatican document reflects on relations between Catholics, Jews
VATICAN CITY - Catholics are called to witness to their faith in Jesus before all people, including Jews, but the Catholic Church "neither conducts nor supports" any institutional missionary initiative directed toward Jews, says a new document from a Vatican commission.
Nostra Aetate opened Catholics to the world
In or out? Us or them? Where do we draw the line? Should we draw the line? Once a line is drawn, how do we look beyond our borders?
Renewing bonds between Muslim and Catholic youth
TORONTO - After a year on hiatus, the Muslim- Catholic Student Dialogue has relaunched with high hopes for more successful bridge-building between the Muslim and Catholic communities in the Archdiocese of Toronto.
WASHINGTON - Pope Francis touched down in Washington on Sept. 22 after a historic visit to Cuba, the first Latin American Pope in history on his first trip to the United States. He comes “as a migrant,” as a top papal aide put it, on a six-day visit filled with great expectations for the popular pontiff but also numerous challenges.
Holguin Catholics experience the unimaginable: papal Mass in public
HOLGUIN, Cuba - The scene would have been unimaginable a few years ago: A Catholic Mass in Holguin's Revolution Plaza, where May Day parades and other patriotic events exalting the Cuban Revolution take place.