Pope Benedict XVI Archives

Vatican tailors, cobblers try to adapt to Francis’s ‘papal athleisure’

Vatican
June 12, 2017

Pope Francis’s emphasis on simplicity and frugality is a hit all around the world, but it’s produced just a bit of backlash among fashion-conscious Italians, including an exclusive club of tailors and shoemakers who outfit pontiffs — some of whom are a little nostalgic for the days when being pope also meant dressing to the nines.

An Argentine asks Americans, why the obsession with the culture wars?

Commentary
May 30, 2017

As an Argentinian, the American concept of the ‘culture wars’ often seems opaque and odd. If one were to take Pope Francis’s concept of the Church as a river seriously, it would seem that there should be room for islands on both the left and the right.

Those 29 times presidents and popes have intersected

Church in the US, Pope/Trump
May 19, 2017

Ahead of Pope Francis’s May 24 meeting with United States President Donald Trump, it’s worth looking back at previous times popes and presidents have met in person, and what was said about those encounters at the time.

Religious freedom and Islamic terrorism

Church in the US, Commentary
May 17, 2017

Blasphemy laws are used to persecute critics of Islam in many Muslim countries, whether moderate Muslims, Christians or Jews, and to attack so-called “non-believers,” thus forming an impenetrable barrier to any form of acceptance of other religious beliefs and contributing to the growth of Islamic extremism. Ending these laws could set the stage for free expression of religious opinions in the Muslim world and help modernize Islamic societies.

Letters show Francis’s outreach to traditionalists has a long history

Vatican
April 6, 2017

Letters written in 2011 by then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, today Pope Francis, which have been unearthed and aired by Swedish television, confirm what people close to the pontiff already knew — that over the course of his career, he’s tried several times to bring the breakaway traditionalist Society of St. Pius X back into the fold.

Renato Buzzonetti, doctor to four Popes, dies at 92

Catholic News Agency, Vatican
January 27, 2017

Renato Buzzonetti, the doctor who looked after four popes, died at the age of 92. Buzzonetti made the first examination after John Paul II was shot in St. Peter’s Square in 1981 and assisted him though Parkinson’s disease. He retired under Pope Benedict XVI.