From Alexander III, the pope who faced the schism caused by Frederick I Barbarossa, to Sergius I, elected in defiance of the hundred pounds of gold offered by Archdeacon Pasquale, via the unpredictable conclave of 1914 which took even the tailors—who had been left without their cassocks—by surprise

A Hong Kong court has upheld the conviction of Cardinal Joseph Zen and four other pro-democracy activists, fining them four thousand dollars each for failing to correctly register their fund (the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which no longer exists) as an association under the city’s Societies Ordinance.

His success as a guru among the educated and inquisitive—a group that includes a great many attractive and capable people—is surprising in that it coincides with secularism; he follows a worldview rooted in existentialism and a spirit of liberty, utilitarianism and joie de vivre, seeking to ground all this in an encounter between East and West that today sounds strange and even sinister.

The first session of the Synodal Conference, which had already been scheduled for November, will not take place. It has been postponed until a date to be confirmed, amid grumbling from the local laity. The reason? The expected go-ahead has not yet arrived from the Vatican.

After four years of investigations and trials, a Canadian judge has ordered the woman who accused Cardinal Marc Ouellet to pay the cardinal $100,000 in damages for “defamation and slander”

He went down in history as one of the three Popes to whom the title ‘the Great’ is bestowed. His greatest legacy was the radical rethinking of the very concept of the head of the Church: he conceived the papal office, first and foremost, as that of the ‘servant of the servants of God’

One hundred and fifty events, thirteen exhibitions and thirteen performances. More than three thousand volunteers took part. The next edition will take place from 20 to 25 August. The title, announced yesterday, is “Pionieri coraggiosi per custodire l’umano”