The regular bedlam of long ticket lines and spinning luggage machines at the Miami International Airport got an extra charge of emotion on the eve of Pope Francis's visit to Cuba, as hundreds of Cuban Americans prepared to make the hop across the Florida Straits on Friday.
In a reminder that Costa Rica’s Catholic Church is still woefully stuck in the past, one of its highest leaders on Sunday used the annual pilgrimage to Cartago, which draws an estimated 2 million people each year, to speak out against legalizing gay civil unions and in vitro fertilization.
The restless boy from Flores is today a restless pope. In the two years since he was named pontiff, Francis, 78, has brought a distinctive rebellious streak to the seat of Saint Peter. Papal observers predicted that he would shake up the Vatican hierarchy. Few expected him to dive into global politics with this much evangelical fervor.
This weekend pilgrims from across Costa Rica will begin walking – if they haven't already – to the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles for an annual pilgrimage of faith known as the romería, where they will pay their respects to and ask for favors from the country’s patron saint, the Virgin of Los Ángeles.
A landmark Church statement on the environment, due to be officially released on Thursday, places the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics firmly in the camp of those who say climate change is mainly man-made.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – Cheers rang from a crowd of hundreds of thousands Saturday as former Archbishop Óscar Romero, whose defense of the poor and repressed divided both his nation and the Church, was beatified.
In a move long resisted by conservative Catholics and the Salvadoran right, Archbishop Oscar Romero will be declared "blessed" in a ceremony Saturday led by the pope's envoy, Cardinal Angelo Amato, in San Salvador's central plaza.
