Director: Guilt and forgiveness at heart of 'The Two Popes'
- Dec 13, 2019
Following Tuesday’s “definitive” acquittal of Asia Bibi, an illiterate Catholic mother of four who spent almost a decade on death row on blasphemy charges, one Asia expert says the next frontier for minorities in Pakistan is the press for full equality as citizens under the law.
Catholic legislators must defend religious freedom around the globe, but they must take care to ensure they do not fall into the trap of showing disrespect toward or intolerance of other religions while doing so, Pope Francis said.
South Africa’s bishops condemned an attack on a mosque near Durban in which a man was killed and another two injured.
British Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury has warned against a “destructive extremism” which seeks to deconstruct marriage, family, and human identity, and which “calls for medical experimentation with no reference to ethical boundaries; that decrees the unborn may live only to terms fixed by man, demands legal protections be removed from the sick and the aged.”
Pope Francis struck a sombre tone in his annual address to ambassadors, as if detecting in this moment the signs of the coming of war. While putting down red markers over Israel-Palestine and migration, the heart of his message was the need to make peace in a time of turbulence.
Father Jeffrey Kirby, who writes a regular Sunday spirituality column for Crux, has been awarded the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, by Governor Nikki Haley. In accepting, Kirby said his work among other things is crafted to show a different face for faith beyond religious extremism.