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Latest issue: 31 January 2009
Last updated: 10 February 2012

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Benedict’s high risk strategy

Robert Mickens

The Pope has described it as an act of paternal mercy. But while the lifting of the excommunication of rebel Lefebvrist bishops has been praised by arch-traditionalists, it has shocked many Catholics and members of other faiths, especially Jews. Our Rome writer tracks the reasons for the turnaround and its consequences Free 

 From the editor’s desk


Not yet back in the fold Free 

The announcement of the lifting of the excommunication of the four bishops illicitly ordained by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre has been received badly for two main reasons. The first is the impression given that Pope Benedict XVI is so determined ...

Delinquent Lords

 Texts in full

The Church's moral obligation to victims of clerical sexual abuse
Speeches from this week's conference in Rome

This week in Rome bishops and religious superiors met at the first Vatican-backed symposium devoted to forging a global response to the crisis of clerical sexual abuse that has disgraced ...

Archbishop voices 'shame and sorrow' after priest's abuse trial
Longley to visit parishes 'damaged' by Walsh

Today, Tuesday 7 February, Bede Walsh, who served as a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, has been convicted by a jury, following a 10-day trial at Stoke-on-Trent ...

 Features

 Columnists

Clifford LongleyClifford Longley

‘Good journalism is always ready to risk giving offence when there is a good reason’

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Robert Mickens

Letter from Rome

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 Books and arts

Civilised man in a Brutal regime Free 
The Weight of a Mustard Seed
Wendell Steavenson

In August 2003, during the early days of the post-Saddam era, Wendell Steavenson, a half-American, half-British journalist, was in Iraq interviewing former members of the Baath Party. ...

       
Is the Church too slow in recognising that academies are the future for Catholic schools?
Christopher Lamb

According to the chairman of governors at the Cardinal Vaughan School, west London, one ...

Goodwin the scapegoat
Elena Curti

There was an old Sixties TV series, Branded, about a disgraced soldier that always began ...

The pain of being a coeliac Catholic
Sr M, guest contributor

"Whoever comes to me, I shall not turn (him) her away" (John 6:37). Many readers will recognise ...


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2011 lecture