Happy Friday! As always, your weekly roundup:
A high-ranking Jesuit says he wouldn’t be surprised if Pope Francis ushers in an era of married priests in the church and says the move would be healthy for it. “I used to say, ‘Well, it will change but probably not in my lifetime.’ And then Pope Francis came along, and what I see him doing is opening the avenues for discussion,” Father Michael Garanzini, chancellor of Loyola University Chicago and the secretary for higher education for the worldwide Jesuits, told Crain’s Chicago Business on Monday.
The Philadelphia Archdiocese has ordered a local parish hosting events for gay and transgender Catholics during Pope Francis’ U.S. tour next month to cancel the program, organizers said on Tuesday. Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput has said he would allow the presence of openly gay and transgender Catholics at the World Meeting of Families but did not want the groups to lobby for their issues during the event.
A new survey has found fewer than half of U.S. Catholics said they knew of Pope Francis' bombshell encyclical on curbing climate change—and only a fraction of those heard about it from the pulpit—in the month after he released the document with an unprecedented call for the church to take up his message.
As close to 2 million Catholic school students prepare to return to class, leaders of some cash-strapped systems are hoping lawmakers will adopt or expand tax credit scholarship programs that they say will stem the tide of school closings.
Immigrant day laborers are building the chair Pope Francis will use at Mass during his New York visit.
California lawmakers on Tuesday reintroduced a bill to legalize physician-assisted dying that had stalled amid opposition from the church and disability rights activists, as leaders among majority Democrats vowed to make its passage a priority.
A priest sought by authorities in New Jersey has acknowledged engaging in a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old boy, but he deflected blame for the incident by saying the teen “wanted” it and had “evil in his mind.”
Rebuffing a campaign among Jewish organizations to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, 340 rabbis sent a letter to Congress Monday supporting the agreement and rejecting the notion that most American Jews oppose it.
A church in Rome held a Hollywood-style funeral of a purported local crime boss—replete with a gilded horse-drawn carriage, flower petals tossed from a helicopter, and the theme music from The Godfather playing outside.
And now for the papal rapid fire roundup
This week, Pope Francis:
- Said unemployment damages our spirit.
- Held this sign.
- Inspired another beer.
