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☆ A fungus pandemic is unlikely, but not impossible. There's real science behind the mushroom zombies in HBO's new series 'The Last of Us.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-29 | by ( Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

The new HBO Max series "The Last of Us" depicts a zombie apocalypse caused by a fungus pandemic. Here's the science fact and fiction behind the show, and the possibility of a fungal pandemic. The new scenario, first realized in the video game that the show is based on, is making viewers wonder whether a fungus pandemic can happen in real life. "A fungal pandemic is definitely possible," Norman Van Rhijn, a mycologist researching fungal infections at the University of Manchester, told Insider in an email. Still, fungal infections are on the rise worldwide, and researchers are concerned that more and more people are at risk.

☆ Pope Francis Says Criminalizing Homosexuality Is Wrong
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis discussed homosexuality during an interview with the Associated Press at the Vatican. ROME— Pope Francis said that laws punishing homosexuality are unfair and that the Catholic Church should work for their repeal. The statement, in an interview with the Associated Press published on Wednesday, is the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures by Pope Francis toward gay people.

☆ Church of England Declines to Back Same-Sex Marriage
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Archbishop Justin Welby said some would see the decision to allow blessings of same-sex couples as going too far, while others would see it as not going far enough. The Church of England won’t allow same-sex weddings to take place in church, but will allow priests to bless couples who have married in a civil ceremony, the latest chapter in a continuing debate over LGBT rights across various Christian churches. After a six-year debate on the issue, the church said Wednesday that bishops had decided not to change the Church’s fundamental teaching “that holy matrimony is between one man and one woman for life.” It said the blessing by a priest was the furthest it could go without changing church doctrine.

☆ Pope Francis Mourns Cardinal Pell, Who Called His Reign a ‘Catastrophe’
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-15 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis on Saturday said prayers at the funeral of Cardinal George Pell in St. Peter’s Basilica. VATICAN CITY— Pope Francis said the final prayers at Cardinal George Pell’s funeral on Saturday, but didn’t lay to rest the grievances of many conservatives for whom the late cardinal was a leading spokesman. Cardinal Pell, a pugnacious Australian who died on Tuesday, served Francis as Vatican finance minister but differed sharply with the pope’s progressive approach, including his leniency on divorce and homosexuality. The late cardinal bluntly criticized his boss in a memo, published last year under a pseudonym, which described the current pontificate as “a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe.”

☆ Vatican Reopens Case of Missing Girl Emanuela Orlandi
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ROME—The Vatican has decided to reopen its investigation of a four-decade old mystery, after a popular Netflix documentary drew renewed attention to the case late last year. Vatican prosecutors will re-examine the case of Emanuela Orlandi , who disappeared from a Rome street at the age of 15 in 1983. The decision comes after persistent lobbying by Ms. Orlandi’s family.

☆ Pope Condemns Iran’s Death Penalty for Protesters
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ROME— Pope Francis on Monday condemned Iran’s executions of protesters in response to the demonstrations in recent months against the clerical regime. “The right to life is also threatened in those places where the death penalty continues to be imposed, as is happening in Iran in these days,” the pope said. He spoke of the protests as “demanding greater respect for the dignity of women,” though he didn’t mention the protest movement’s broader challenge to the Islamic Republic.

☆ Pope Benedict XVI Funeral: Pope Francis Presides Over Vatican Ceremony
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

VATICAN CITY— Pope Francis presided over the funeral of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday, in a solemn and grand ceremony, but one that didn’t focus on the deceased’s life or accomplishments. Francis’ homily was mostly a meditation on the last words of Jesus, from the Gospel reading earlier in the Mass. The pope mentioned Benedict only in a few remarks, recalling “the wisdom, tenderness and devotion that he bestowed upon us over the years.”

☆ Pope Francis Presides Over Funeral for Pope Benedict XVI
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

VATICAN CITY— Pope Francis presided over the funeral of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday, in a solemn and grand ceremony, but one that did not focus on the deceased’s life or accomplishments. Francis’s homily was mostly a meditation on the last words of Jesus, from the Gospel reading earlier in the Mass. The pope mentioned Benedict only in a few remarks, recalling “the wisdom, tenderness and devotion that he bestowed upon us over the years.”

☆ Pope Francis May Have a Freer Hand After Death of Benedict
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ROME— Pope Francis has been the leader of the Catholic Church for almost 10 years, but he has been the only pope in the Vatican just since Saturday. The death of Pope Benedict XVI after a decade in retirement has ended an extraordinary arrangement that helped define the current pontificate. While Pope Francis has already taken a markedly different tack than his predecessor, he may feel even freer to do so now.

☆ Pope Benedict Receives a Quiet Farewell From Mourners
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

VATICAN CITY—The body of Pope Benedict XVI lay before the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday, his head resting on a pair of velvet cushions, his face waxy and ashen, with rosary beads entwined through his folded hands. The twisting baroque columns of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s altar canopy towered behind. The late pope, who retired in 2013, wore a bishop’s miter but, unlike his predecessor, St. John Paul II , when he lay in state, not the woolen cloak around his neck signifying papal office.

☆ Mourners Bid a Quiet Farewell to Pope Benedict
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Pope Benedict’s Passing Means Conservative Catholics Lose Their Leading Light
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ROME—The death of Pope Benedict XVI has left conservative Catholics without their figurehead, amid deep divisions over how much the church should adapt to the times or reaffirm its traditional teachings against the challenge of secularism. The retired pope was for more than three decades a leader in the culture wars that have shaken the Catholic Church and wider society since the late 1960s. He was a living symbol, depending on one’s point of view, of an intolerant and punitive religiosity or of stalwart fidelity amid disorienting change.

☆ Pope Francis to Preside Over Predecessor’s Funeral, in a Vatican First
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-01 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

VATICAN CITY— Pope Francis will preside over the funeral of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday, bringing a historically unique situation—that of two popes residing practically side by side in the Vatican—to a similarly unusual close. The event will be in a much lower key than the last papal funeral, that of St. John Paul II in 2005, when heads of state and government flocked to Rome along with millions of mourners, some of whom waited a dozen hours or more to file past the Polish pope’s body lying in state in the basilica.

☆ Pope Benedict XVI Was a Bestselling Author
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Benedict XVI mostly maintained a low profile over the past decade, though some of his occasional recent writings have stirred controversy. ROME—In his seven-decade career as a scholar and church leader, the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote more than 60 books and numerous papal documents, including three encyclicals. An official adviser at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the pivotal event in the Roman Catholic Church during his lifetime, Joseph Ratzinger was a major figure in the theological debates that followed Vatican II. He also had a large nonacademic following, largely of conservative Catholics who increasingly looked to him for guidance and reassurance in the turbulent post-conciliar period. Even after his election as pope, he continued his scholarship, writing a three-volume study, “Jesus of Nazareth,” which became a bestseller.

☆ Pope Benedict XVI Dies at Age 95
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ROME—Retired Pope Benedict XVI, who led the Catholic Church from 2005 to 2013 before becoming the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign, died early on Saturday, the Vatican said. Pope Francis said on Dec. 28 that his predecessor was very sick, and Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters that Benedict’s health had deteriorated “due to advancing age.”

☆ Is the Catholic Church Rethinking Contraception?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Some two dozen Catholic theologians, philosophers and other scholars gathered in Rome this month for a three-day conference dedicated to defending and explaining the implications of the Catholic Church’s prohibition of contraception, as set out in St. Paul VI ’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae.”The conference, whose speakers included the legal philosophers John Finnis of Notre Dame Law School and Robert George of Princeton University, was organized in response to what just a few years ago would have been an unlikely source of questioning on the topic: the Vatican.

☆ Pope Francis Says Retired Pope Benedict XVI Is ‘Very Sick’
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis, standing with a cane, with Pope Benedict XVI, seated, in the Vatican in August. ROME— Pope Francis on Wednesday said that his 95-year-old predecessor, retired Pope Benedict XVI, was very ill and asked the faithful to pray for him. “Remember him—he is very sick—asking the Lord to console him and support him in this testimony of love for the church until the end,” Pope Francis said.

☆ Pope Benedict XVI Is Very Sick, Says Pope Francis
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ROME— Pope Francis on Wednesday said that his 95-year-old predecessor, retired Pope Benedict XVI, was very ill and asked the faithful to pray for him. “Remember him—he is very sick—asking the Lord to console him and support him in this testimony of love for the church until the end,” Pope Francis said.

☆ Vatican Dismisses U.S. Antiabortion Activist From Priesthood
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ Pope Francis Says He Has Written Resignation Letter in Case of Incapacity
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis maintains a heavy daily schedule but has said he would step down if unable to fulfill his duties. ROME— Pope Francis said he signed a letter of resignation in the first year of his reign to provide for the possibility that he would become incapable of fulfilling his duties. “I signed it and said, ‘If I should become impaired for medical reasons or whatever, here is my resignation,’” the pope told the Spanish daily newspaper ABC in an interview published Sunday.

☆ U.S. Catholic Priests Are Increasingly Conservative as Faithful Grow More Liberal
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

While young priests hold on to tradition, Catholic laity have been moving in a more liberal direction. American Catholic priests are becoming more conservative, even as their flocks are becoming more liberal. U.S. Catholic bishops elected conservative leaders last month, continuing to resist a push from Pope Francis to put social issues such as climate change and poverty on par with the bishops’ declared priority of opposing abortion.

☆ Pope Francis Compares War in Ukraine to the Holocaust
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis arrived for his weekly general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday. ROME—Pope Francis on Wednesday compared the war in Ukraine to the Nazi genocide of the Jews, in his latest escalation of rhetoric on the war. The comments risked aggravating tensions between the Vatican and Moscow following the pope’s earlier comparison of the war to Soviet-instigated genocide and his characterization of ethnic-minority Russian troops as especially cruel.

☆ Pope Francis Defends His Stance on Ukraine War
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis has frequently deplored the suffering of ordinary Ukrainians during the war, but has tended to avoid explicitly blaming Russia. ROME—Pope Francis defended his practice of not naming Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine, saying that his condemnation of Moscow has been clear even though not explicit. The pope, speaking to a U.S. Catholic magazine, emphasized the value of diplomacy in the Vatican’s approach to the Ukraine war, as well as in regard to China.

☆ Vatican Says China Broke Agreement on Bishops
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-26 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis spoke during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican this week. ROME—The Vatican accused China of violating a power-sharing agreement on the appointment of bishops, expressing growing frustration over its relationship with Beijing as the latter seeks to tighten control of religion. Chinese officials installed a Catholic bishop as leader of a diocese unrecognized by Rome, the Vatican said in a statement Saturday, adding that the move broke a 2018 agreement and the spirit of dialogue between the two parties.

☆ Vatican Tells Catholics How to Make ‘Faith-Consistent’ Investments
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Francis X. Rocca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pope Francis has made protection of the environment and economic justice signature causes of his pontificate. ROME—The Vatican called on Catholic institutions and believers around the world to avoid investing their money in companies that produce fossil fuels, violent videogames and drugs that induce abortion, among other products. The Vatican’s first-ever guidelines on “faith-consistent investing,” released on Friday, are the highest-level effort so far to direct investments in accordance with Catholic teaching. They call for “proactive positive investing” in industries such as renewable energy and microfinance.

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