‘Extreme urgent need’: Starvation haunts Ethiopia’s Tigray
- Jan 17, 2021
Retired Bishop Thomas O’Brien stands accused of molesting a boy 35 years ago. Six other charges against him have been dropped, but the charge of sexual abuse remains. O’Brien had been the bishop of Phoenix for 21 years, but resigned after the diocese became embroiled in the sex abuse scandal and after he was arrested for a hit-and-run death of a pedestrian.
A stolen copy of a letter Christopher Columbus wrote about the New World is headed home to the Vatican, after spending more than a decade in a private collection in Atlanta. The letter was apparently stolen from the Vatican Library and made its way to the United States. In it, Columbus describes his experiences in the New World, and the content was once turned into a popular pamphlet.
A Catholic priest who moonlighted as a professional poker player has been sentenced in Pennsylvania for disseminating child pornography. Gugliotta had previously been suspended from ministry in 2003 for allegedly molesting a teenage boy in the 1980s. But because the incident occurred when he was still a layman and before he entered the priesthood, the Archdiocese of Newark ruled he could not be punished and quietly reinstated him in 2004.
The couple who was terrorized 40 years ago by a member of the Ku Klux Klan who later became a Catholic priest is calling for him to give the authorities any information he might have on other white supremacists who participated in his crimes. Father William Aitcheson said his actions at the time were “despicable.”
Most people in small towns in the United States never expect to meet an official from the Vatican. Due to its prime position for viewing the eclipse, a small town in Kentucky is receiving a visit from the man who runs the Vatican Observatory.
Archbishop Socrates Villegas asks his countrymen, “Why are we no longer horrified by the sound of the gun and blood flowing on the sidewalks?” He said church bells will be rung to rouse the citizens against the evils of Duterte’s extrajudicial killings of people suspected of being involved in the drug trade.