Full text of the Vatican instruction entitled, “Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.” The document’s aim is to bar gay men from the priesthood.

Pope Benedict’s first encyclical. An encyclical is considered one of the most authoritative documents from the pen of the pope, and a new pontiff’s first encyclical is considered something of a “mission statement” for the rest of the pontificate. Benedict’s first, Deus Caritas Est, or God is Love, was considered surprising by some in that […]

Catholic World News article about Pope Benedict’s decision to consolidate the leadership of four Vatican councils under two presidents, one of his first reforms of the Curia.

Current and historical information about the bishops and dioceses of the Catholic Church.

Exhaustive catalog of information on cardinals past and present with biographies, geographic distribution and a wealth of other information. Compiled by Salvador Miranda, a retired professor of library sciences at Florida International University.

Article by the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus about American dissent to official Vatican positions on sexuality as well as criticism of some of Pope Benedict’s early appointments of bishops including promoting the archbishop of San Francisco, William Levada, to succeed himself at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as the church’s doctrinal gatekeeper and the […]

Read a Nov. 25, 2005,  opinion piece in the LA Times written by a former priest.

Sister Jeannine Gramick was ordered to stop ministering to homosexuals by then-Cardinal Ratzinger in 1999. She has defied Vatican orders to cease her ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics. Contact her through the organization she co-founded, New Ways Ministry, in Mount Rainier, Md.

The Rev. Joseph Fessio is a close friend and former theology student of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Fessio is widely considered one of the most influential conservative voices in the American church, and he is an outspoken opponent of allowing gay men into the priesthood. Fessio is the editor-in-chief of Ignatius Press in San Francisco, […]