Catholic Church

Spain’s youngest bishop has been stripped of his church powers, the country’s episcopal conference said on Saturday, after he married a psychologist-turned-author of satanic erotica.

“As is publicly known, Bishop Xavier Novell Goma, bishop emeritus of Solsona, has contracted a civil marriage with Ms Silvia Caballol, on 22 November, 2021 in the town of Suria, in the province of Barcelona,” the conference wrote in the statement.

Any cleric attempting to get married, even if only civilly, is subject to suspension, the statement added

I got nothin.

Toronto, ON November 23, 2021 – The CCRL has launched a Church Attacks Database, accessible from www.ccrl.ca  which catalogues attacks against Catholic churches in Canada ranging from the breaking of stained-glass windows, to acts of desecration and church burnings, as witnessed this summer and reported in releases on June 22, July 1, and July 30.

Currently, there are 153 individual entries covering attacks from 2010 through 2021. In any given year, acts of vandalism and desecration increased during Christmas and Easter, but by far, 2021 has featured the highest number of total attacks, far more than in any other year. The period from May through August of 2021 alone has had more attacks than in any other period.

The French Catholic church has expressed “shame” and pleaded for forgiveness, after a devastating report found that at least 330,000 children were victims of sexual abuse by clergy and lay members of church institutions over the past 70 years.

The publication of the landmark report on Thursday, France’s first major reckoning with what the Catholic church accepted was “appalling” abuse, has shaken the country with its horrific findings of a “massive phenomenon” of sexual abusers of children operating for decades within the church and its associated institutions.

The two-and-a-half-year independent inquiry found that staggering numbers of children were subjected to sexual violence by priests and clergy while the crimes were covered up in a “systemic way” by a deliberate “veil of silence” in the church.

The head of an independent commission investigating child sexual abuse in the French Catholic church has said about 3,000 paedophiles have operated inside the institution since 1950.

Days before publication of its report, Jean-Marc Sauvé said the commission’s investigations had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other church members, adding that this was “a minimum estimate”.

Sauvé told Agence-France Presse that the 2,500-page report, based on church, court and police archives as well as interviews with witnesses and due to be published on Tuesday, had tried to quantify both the number of offenders and of victims.

BERLIN — Archbishop Heiner Koch said he would appoint a pastoral minister as a contact person for gays, the Berlin Archdiocese announced.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reported Koch made the pledge when he met with representatives of the Lesbian and Gay Association of Berlin-Brandenburg, with the archbishop saying this was important so that the marginalization and discrimination of the LBGTQ community could be addressed in the church without fear. Koch said he regarded the double marginalization of Catholic gays — within the Catholic community as well as in the LGBTQ community — as “problematic and painful.”