Offstream
news

A number of Catholic bishops around the world, including in Africa and Poland, say they will not implement the new Vatican policy allowing blessings for same-sex couples announced by Pope Francis.
2023-12-22

French religious sister Nathalie Becquart is named by Pope Francis one of the Undersecretaries of the Synod of Bishops, becoming the first woman to reach that office and having a right to vote in the Synod.
2021-02-6

Pope Francis comforts a crying boy in San Paolo della Croce, Rome, by telling him his recently-deceased father, an atheist, will have ascended to heaven on the basis his father had "a good heart".
2018-04-15

The Venerable Rev. Father Stanley Rother, a priest of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City (born in Okarche, Oklahoma), is beatified at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City by Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the sainthood Congregation in the Roman Curia and Pope Francis's delegate. Rother, who became a missionary, was assassinated in July 1981 in the poor rural village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, and is the first Catholic martyr born a citizen of the United States.
2017-09-23

Pope Francis, responding to FARC rebel leader Rodrigo Londoño's open letter asking for forgiveness for the suffering the group had inflicted on the country during his talk in Villavicencio, urges Colombians skeptical of the peace deal to be open to reconciliation.
2017-09-8

Pope Francis becomes the first Pope ever to address a Joint Session of the United States Congress. Afterwards, he greets onlookers at the National Mall. He addresses many issues: abortion and the sanctity of life, the importance of the family and of marriage, climate change, immigration and the refugee crises caused by global unrest, proper business conduct, and worldwide abolition of capital punishment.
2015-09-24

At the Vatican, Pope Francis's officials in the Roman Curia formally release the text of his most recent encyclical, "Laudato si"'. The text, which had been quite anticipated by many sides on the climate change debate and been criticized by some for his involvement in the politicized and charged issue, had been previously leaked.
2015-06-18

Pope Francis appeals for peace in the Holy Land following his Angelus address at St. Peter’s Square. He exhorts all interested parties and all those with political responsibility not to spare efforts to achieve the cessation of all hostilities and the desired peace for the good of all.
2014-07-13

Pope Francis acknowledges that civil unions for LGBT people is a governmental move for economic and health management.
2014-03-6

Pope Francis venerates the purported remains of his first ever predecessor, as the Vatican gives a public display for what some claim are St Peter's remains.
2013-11-24