Pope Francis’s view on nuclear weapons can be summed up in a few simple words.
Just say no.
The use and possession of weapons should be made “immoral” under official Catholic teaching, Francis told reporters aboard the papal plane November 26, taking a new step in the Vatican’s approach to this issue.
He also expressed reservations concerning the use of nuclear energy.
Donna Mote regularly accompanies military personnel escorting the caskets of fallen service members through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, where she serves as a chaplain.
Mote is the first person to greet the escorts once they step off the plane. She stands shoulder to shoulder with them while an honor guard marches with flags of the five military branches. She stays with them through their layover at the airport. She’s there for support. In many cases, the escorts are grieving because they knew the deceased.
Christian conservatives have unfairly co-opted religious liberty as their political issue, says a new report from the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School.
“Far from abandoning this fundamental right, people of faith outside the conservative movement have taken up the fight for religious freedom in a wide variety of contexts,” the authors wrote in Whose Faith Matters? The Fight for Religious Liberty Beyond the Christian Right.
On December 10, the World Council of Churches’ Interfaith Liaison Committee presented the UN’s climate change summit with a declaration of its commitment to climate justice.
The group wrote that, as people driven by faith and hope, they were compelled to contribute to a solution to the climate crisis.
“For decades, science has provided increasing evidence of how the earth is affected by human-induced climate change,” they wrote. “The response from those in power has been inadequate and slow. Action has been delayed even as the voice of warning has become stronger.”
George Clements, a civil rights activist whose life was turned into a made-for-TV movie after he became the first Catholic priest to adopt a child, died November 25 at age 87.
Clements reportedly had suffered a stroke and heart attack within the last month.
In a statement on Facebook, Michael Pfleger, senior pastor at St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago, called Clements “a pioneer for justice who spent his life helping people.”
“He pushed the Catholic Church to be inclusive and made black Catholics proud to be Catholic,” Pfleger said.
Louie Crew Clay, a longtime advocate for the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the Episcopal Church, died on November 27 at age 82 with his husband by his side, according to Elizabeth Kaeton, a close friend.
Having earned a doctorate in English, he taught at preparatory schools and universities in the United States, England, Hong Kong, and China. Most recently he taught at Rutgers University until his retirement in 2002. In 1974, he married Ernest Clay, though the marriage was not legally recognized until 2013.
Deon Johnson, an openly gay man, has been elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. He will replace George Wayne Smith, who retires this spring after 18 years as bishop.
According to local press reports, Johnson won the three-way election in a landslide—earning 113 of 164 delegate votes.
After the election, the husband and father of two spoke to the delegates by video, thanking them for the opportunity. “We are so looking forward to continuing this adventure that God has called us to with you and the amazing people who make up the diocese.”
Theologian Sallie McFague died November 15 at the age of 86. McFague influenced a generation of feminist theologians with her work in ecofeminist theology. For 30 years she taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
Faith congregations across California are responding to the state’s housing crisis by sharing their parking lots with people living in their cars, providing mobile showers for the homeless, and joining their neighbors in calling for rent control in their communities.
But another form of housing advocacy has been taking place among spaces of faith.
A number of churches are exploring ways to build affordable housing on their own land. It’s what pastors and other leaders are referring to as YIGBY, or “Yes in God’s backyard.”
The day after the deadly mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue last October, more than a thousand people gathered on the Boston Common to mourn and pray.
As Amy McCreath, dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, which overlooks America’s oldest park, watched people of various faiths unite to mourn another national tragedy, she was hit with an emotional realization.