Altar servers Archives

Pope urges altar servers to be signs of faith to their parishes

May 3, 2021

Being an altar server should be a “profession of faith” to the entire parish community, Pope Francis told young men and women participating in Portugal’s annual altar server pilgrimage to Fatima.

By Catholic News Service

Vatican formalizes ability for women to be lectors, altar servers

Jan 11, 2021

Pope Francis has issued a new law formalizing the ability for women and girls to be lectors and altar servers at Mass, something which has long been the common practice in western countries such as the United States but had yet to be written into law.

By Elise Ann Allen

The path to holiness isn’t for the lazy, pope tells altar servers

Jul 31, 2018

Christ’s commandment to love God and neighbor is a path trodden by those who have the desire to become saints, Pope Francis told thousands of altar servers from around the world.

By Junno Arocho Esteves

U.S. altar servers bring tradition, heritage to Rome

Jul 31, 2018

Among the thousands of young altar servers braving the sweltering Rome heat, a group from the United States sat patiently in the shade of the colonnade in St. Peter’s Square waiting to take their seats.

By Junno Arocho Esteves

Catholic officials threaten ex-seminarians over sex claims

Nov 24, 2017

Catholic officials in Italy have threatened former altar boys of the pope with criminal defamation charges for having publicly accused an older seminarian of sexual misconduct when they lived together at the youth seminary inside the Vatican gardens. Church lawyers in the diocese of Como have also warned an Italian investigative news program against broadcasting the boys’ claims and have purportedly pressed a church official to recant his suggestion of a cover-up.

By Nicole Winfield

Ex-priest arrested for sexual misconduct, held without bail

Feb 10, 2017

A former Roman Catholic priest who was indicted in Maine on 29 counts of sexual misconduct dating to the 1980s has been arrested in Boston. Police and U.S. Marshals took 74-year-old Ronald Paquin into custody on Wednesday near a hospital in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

By Associated Press

Former lay supervisor of altar boys denies abuse charges

Sep 30, 2016

A 79-year-old man who once supervised altar boys as a layman at a Catholic church in Boston has pleaded not guilty to charges that he sexually abused a young boy decades ago, after being arraigned on two counts of child rape and three counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under age 14.

By Associated Press

The altar girls debate: Do they kill vocations, or feel valued?

Feb 4, 2015

Blame it on those San Francisco values. That’s what the Rev. Joseph Illo believes is driving the uproar around his decision not to train girls to be altar servers at Star of the Sea Catholic Church. “I think the Church’s insistence on the distinctiveness of gender, that being male and

By Michael O'Loughlin