LifeSiteNews.com Life, Family and Culture News

ROME, April 15, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This year’s National March for Life (Marcia per la Vita) in Rome is coinciding with an international effort to have the European Union ban funding for embryo research and declare that all human beings have…

ROME, April 10, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Vatican has said that a conference it is sponsoring this week on ethical stem cell research will help to correct the public misperceptions of the burgeoning scientific field. The conference, spokesmen…

ROME, April 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Experts say, despite an apparently softer tone on homosexuals from two leading American cardinals, the Roman Catholic Church will not and cannot shift its moral teaching on same-sex "marriage" or the grave…

A proposal by fertility researchers to “harvest” female gametes, “ova,” from the dead bodies of aborted children to create in vitro embryos in the lab has created a small buzz among the pro-life websites, blogs and Facebook in the last couple of…

ROME, March 28, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Efforts “to defend the poor, to defend those on death row, to defend human life at its earliest stages” are all part of the same “social justice” work for the Catholic Church, a top-level Vatican official…

This morning, I took an early train into the City and met up with some friends to walk around the Piazza, look up at the chimney and chat with the many hundreds of people in the Piazza. The Second Ballot of the conclave was scheduled for 9:30 or…

Tonight was my first time. Nearly everyone I know in Rome has been in the Piazza for at least one papal election, so even though we knew there would be no white smoke tonight, it was an exciting moment.

As my friend and I were heading down…

The media and pundits, as well as churchmen, use a lot of jargon that many ordinary readers, unaccustomed to romanità, the carefully encoded diplomatic language used by the Vatican and its cadre of experts, will not be familiar with. A lot of the…

ROME, March 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The secular media, with its obession with sex and politics, scandals and hidden agendas, often misses stories that would be of real interest to their audience. This week, as we all wait for the announcement…

ROME, March 7, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – As each day passes without a date set by the cardinals for the start of the conclave, the more than 5,000 journalists accredited to the Holy See in the last few weeks are growing more gloomy, bored, and…

ROME, March 2, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On the evening of October 16, 1978, thousands of people filled the Piazza San Pietro waiting to hear the name of their new pope. But when it came, there was reportedly a muted response from puzzled…

ROME, March 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The former head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, after resigning amid a flurry of controversy last week, has admitted to sexual misconduct in his past and apologised. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the former…

CASTELGANDOLFO, February 28, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two hours before the end of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate, the live feed from Vatican Radio’s webcam of the piazza shows that the lights are already off in the papal apartments. In the last…

ROME, February 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The abrupt resignation of the cardinal archbishop of Edinburgh, and his announcement that he will not be attending the conclave, has come as a surprise to most veteran Vatican observers. Cardinal Keith…