News and Media Releases

International Movement We are Church:

Press Release Munich / Rome, April 8, 2016

"Responsibility now lies with the bishops, theologians and local Churches"

[Portuguese]

The International Movement We are Church sees the letter "Amoris laetitia" of Pope Francis published today as a hopeful new course for the urgent development of Catholic sexual ethics, pastoral and family theology. This letter introduces a new epoch in sexual ethics, very much in line with Vatican II. Now the local churches, including their theological sciences and all the faithful, have a duty to develop the basic ideas and initiatives and spaces set out by Francis.

The letter is in structure, style and content a pleasing departure from the previous legalistic and rigoristic thinking on Catholic sexual teaching towards a perspective of charity that can properly invoke the exemplary action of Jesus. Pope Francis consciously - which some will regret – does not yet make any changes in doctrine. But the discrepancy between the Gospel’s message of Mercy together with the pastoral approach of Pope Francis makes it ever more clear how necessary it is to make corrections and developments in doctrine and in canon law.

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis’s highly-anticipated post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love) on love in the family will be released on Friday 8th April. The Vatican said the Exhortation will be presented to journalists at the Holy See’s Press Office on Friday 8th April at 11.30. 

The text of the Apostolic Exhortation in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish and  Portuguese (in paper and/or digital format) will be available to accredited journalists from 8.00 a.m. (Rome time) on Friday 8th April. However, the document will remain under embargo until 12 noon that day. 

The panel of speakers at the press conference will include: Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops; Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, O.P., archbishop of Vienna, and an Italian married couple: Professor Francesco Miano, lecturer in moral philosophy at Rome’s University of Tor Vergata, and his wife, Professor Giuseppina De Simone in Miano, lecturer in philosophy at the Theological Faculty of Southern Italy in Naples.

A simultaneous translation service will be available in Italian, English and Spanish. The Press Conference can be seen via live streaming (audio-video) on the site: http://player.rv.va (Vatican Player, Vatican Radio) where it will subsequently remain available on demand. 

Pope Francis begins Sunday his fourth year as leader of the global Roman Catholic church. NCR wanted to mark the occasion by dipping into the some 2,500 stories we published mentioning the Argentine pontiff in 2015 and early 2016. Below are links to many of our reports accompanying the pope around the globe in the past year, followed by some of the most striking statements of his travels.

Read the article on the NCR website

See also

Drei Jahre Papst Franziskus

Pope Francis - 3 Years

Tre anni di papa Francesco. 

GENEVA/VATICAN CITY, 25 January 2016 - The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Catholic Church will hold a joint ecumenical commemoration of the Reformation on 31 October 2016 in Lund, Sweden.

Pope Francis, LWF President Bishop Dr Munib A. Younan and General Secretary Rev. Dr Martin Junge will lead the Ecumenical Commemoration in cooperation with the Church of Sweden and the Catholic Diocese of Stockholm.

The joint ecumenical event will take place in the city of Lund in anticipation of the 500th Reformation anniversary in 2017. It will highlight the solid ecumenical developments between Catholics and Lutherans and the joint gifts received through dialogue. The event will include a common worship based on the recently published Catholic-Lutheran “Common Prayer” liturgical guide.

“The LWF is approaching the Reformation anniversary in a spirit of ecumenical accountability,” says LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Martin Junge. “I’m carried by the profound conviction that by working towards reconciliation between Lutherans and Catholics, we are working towards justice, peace and reconciliation in a world torn apart by conflict and violence.”

Base movements from all continents support Pope Francis’ call for substantial reforms in the Roman-Catholic Church and in Society.

Press release   Rome, November 20, 2015

 Convention ‘Council 50’: Towards a Church – Inspired by the Gospel – for the world’ with more than 100 delegates of worldwide catholic reform movements in Rome, November 20-22, 2015.

 This Coming weekend reform movements from diverse continents, countries, cultures and theological tendencies are gathering in Rome and will present a variety of fruits and projects grown from the Second Vatican Council for an inclusive Church for the 21^st century. They are bringing their practice, experience and reflexions to Rome and hope to show their potentialities for a revival of the Church, as St Francis of Assisi did in his time.

 ‘Council 50’ aims to reaffirm the values and the spirit of the Council and to give space and opportunity of networking between the different experiences that sprang from it. ‘Council 50’ intends to revivify the disappointed hopes, to relight the flame of the Council, and to renew the impetus towards the future. So it is making visible the prophetic part of the ‘people of God’ in the Church too often hidden and unknown.

 ‘Council 50’ strongly supports Pope Francis’ efforts against all resistance: for the renewal of the Roman-Catholic Church, for interreligious dialogue and for a more just and peaceful world. ‘Council 50’ wants to help change the dogmatic and legalistic attitude of the Church into a pastoral and evangelic attitude inspired by the Gospel and in line with the Second Vatican Council. Hence the leitmotiv ‘Council 50: towards a Church – inspired by the Gospel – for the world’.

 ‘Council 50’ is a networking process that contributes to strengthen the ‘sensum fidei fidelium’ that is one of the key theological teachings of the theological thoughts of the Second Vatican Council as expressed in the dogmatic constitution ‘Lumen Gentium’. This Council brought so much hope 50 years ago but because of unsatisfactory decrees and Pope Francis’ predecessors the prophetic part of the Church at the peripheries of the world were too often ignored, hidden, and even condemned. The teaching of this Council is still waiting to be implemented.