The spiers of the cathedral, the city's symbol for centuries, have been deleted from the logo of the city of Cologne. The pretext is a modernization for social networks, the reality is the removal of any symbol deemed politically incorrect.

Also this year, during the Easter Vigil, thousands of adults will be baptized all over the world determined to belong to the Catholic Church. An important moment for their life following the conversion and the joy of the Christian encounter.

Our interview with Jacques Rouillard, professor of History at the University of Montreal and expert in Canadian residential schools. He denies the cultural and physical genocide of Canadian indigenous people: there are no excavations, no mass graves or, much less, found remains. Behind it all there is an attempt for a millionaire compensation.

Did the evangelists copy each other? Are the gospels independent sources or do we have only one source (the gospel of Mark) on the life of Jesus? The answer cannot fail to consider the sources of Gospels, from which each evangelist drew independently. Here's what the scholars say.

The pressure in favor of post-partum abortion continues with the same arguments in favor of pre-birth abortion. Philosopher Walter Veit sees no difference between fetus and newborn, so if abortion is morally accepted, there is no reason to oppose infanticide. Like him many others, even in Italy.

A collection of quotes from the leading international specialists of the Inquisition, united against the myth that prevents the results of modern historiography from reaching the general public. What is said of the Catholic inquisitorial courts is largely false: few sentences, no oppressive system, little use of torture.

A new interview with Fabiola Gianotti, director of CERN in Geneva. The eminent scientist reaffirmed her faith in God, explaining that it finds correspondence in the order and elegance of physical laws.

An Italian won again the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel for Mathematics. It was assigned to Alessio Figalli, 34 years old and full professor at the ETH of Zurich. The famous prize turns tricolour after 44 years, when it was assigned to Enrico Bombieri.

Bombieri, Professor at Princeton University (USA), has always been seen with some annoyance by Professor Piergiorgio Odifreddi, who, in his book Perché Dio non esiste (Aliberti 2010), complained: «It seems to me that Carlo Rubbia is Catholic. Enrico Bombieri, Fields Medal, is Catholic and goes to Mass» (p. 122).

We had already recalled the beautiful interview that Bombieri released to writer Francesco Agnoli, in which the mathematician had the chance to reflect a lot on the relationship between science and metaphysics, by explaining: «For me, mathematics is a model of truth, even though a model pretty much limited by precise clear rules of consistency, that tells us that an absolute Truth (with capital T) must exist, although we cannot understand it. Mathematics, which is the science of logica truth, certainly helps us understand things, and it is natural for a mathematician believing in God, whatever his denomination is, to reconcile the concept...

However they try to pass off that action as an act of freedom, in the interest of the woman and even of her health, abortion remains what everyone knows: the killing of a human life. History shows us that this lie has always been necessary to make the public opinion swallow its liberalisation.

And it went so all over the world, and thus also in the USA, at the beginning of the 70s. The Supreme Court legalised the interruption of pregnancy with the famous and strongly contested ruling Roe vs Jane Roe”; Norma Leath Mc Corvey gets married to a violent man at the age of only sixteen, has two children, and during the third pregnancy asks the State of Texas to be authorised to have an abortion: the authorisation was conceded to her. She starts her pro-abortion commitment (years after the approval of the law bearing her name she converted to the Catholic Faith and became a pro-life activist). The law was approved of in 1973 at the Federal level and bears, indeed, her name.

As has been well well reconstructed, during the discussion of the law the data were falsified: every year – reported the media – between 5.000 and 10.000 women died because of clandestine abortions. The truth emerged only successively and revealed another situation. Examining the data of the decades and of the years prior to 1973, for example in 1930, the Guttmacher Institute (which...

A news gave great annoyance to the friends of the “anti-Papist resistance”. In France, one of the Western countries with the greatest crisis of priestly ordinations, 20% of ordained priests would be a “traditionalist”.

One of the exultant comments was the following: «an important sign, in consideration of the open disfavour that the reigning Pontiff showed on several occasions towards the young priests who prefer the tradition of the Church». There is a malignant and purposeful confusion between the adhesion to Tradition and with the celebration of Mass in Latin, so as to induce to think that only priests using the Vetus Ordo would be in line with the Catholic doctrine. Unjustly involving Francis, additionally, is the confirmation that in certain environments any news is used to attack the Pope: the most fecund ordination groups would be those unfavoured by Bergoglio. This is the bad message that someone wants to transmit.

False is also the affirmation that Francis would unfavourably look on the ancient rite; it is an erroneous belief born at the time when the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate were put under the administration of an external commissioner, and the Holy See induced them to celebrate the liturgy according to the ordinary rite. But – as...

If you do not know Raimundo Panikkar, then this story will be new for you. If, instead, you know who he is, it will be a novelty anyway, because no-one – but really no-one – reports how the earthly path of this icon of the post-1968 progressivism ended.

Son of an Indian man and of a Spanish woman, philosopher and syncretistic theologian, susprended priest, ex member of Opus Dei, member of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIS) and professor at Harvard and at the University of California. All this was, in sum, Panikkar.

Ordained Catholic priest in 1964, he was one of the first presbyters of Opus Dei. His journey to India in 1955 and his contact with spiritualistic religions led him to radically syncretistic convictions, which very soon led him to a personal crisis of identity («he got lost in the details of the Indian religion: paraphrasing the title of one of his books, between the silence of God and the answers of Buddha», wrote Armando Torno). «I left Europe as a Christian, I discovered myself Hindu, and I came back as a Buddhist, without having ever ceased to be Christian», says a famous quote of his’. In 1961, he wrote one of his most famous books, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, where he affirms: «It is obvious that the “Logos”, which was in the beginning and then incarnated in time, cannot be identified with Jesus of Nazareth...

Even Google celebrated the anniversary of the birth of Msgr. Georges Lemaître (17th of July), father of the Big Bang and the one who opened the contemporary era of cosmology.

Priest and physicist of Belgian descent, he does not only represent one of the greatest scientific revolutionaries in history, he is not only a universal example of the compatibility between science and faith, but he was also the one who, with utmost humility, corrected his friend and colleague Albert Einstein. Three were the main public contacts between Lemaître and Einstein, in which the Belgian Jesuit converted the father of relativity to the theory of the birth and of the continuous expansion of the Universe.

Born in 1984 in Charleroi, young Lemaître’s precocity for science was parallel to his religious vocation, so much so that at 9 years ago he decided to become priest. He followed, however, his parents’ advice and was educated at the Jesuits’ schools. In 1922 he published a little thesis on Einstein’s physics that brought him to Cambridge University as researcher in astronomy. Almost parallelly, he was ordained priest, on September 1923, at the age of 29. He started to collaborate with famous astrophysicist Arthur Eddington and, in 1927, Lemaître anticipated (on the Annales de la société scientifique de Bruxelles) what is today known as Hubble’s Law, which concerns the speed at which galaxies separate from each other (recession of nebulae).

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«Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals». This was the tweet from the most famous fundamentalist atheist in the world, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. He fought for years to annihilate the “virus of religion”, but today, somewhat older, he sits on a bench while admiring the Winchester Cathedral. Who would have said it?

Dawkins, after ascertaining to «have failed» – as he had already admitted in 2008 – is maturing a reconsideration of his position. The topics concerning the inexistence of the Creator have left room for the more political ones (anti-Trump, anti-Brexit etc.), and always more frequently he is showing worried about the advance of Islam across Europe, so as to rediscover himself by reaction «culturally Christian», as he defined himself in 2013.

In the recent tweet we are commenting, indeed, he added: «[Bells are] so much nicer than the aggressive-sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing?». After having been covered with criticisms and insults (those he never received when he acted as a...

Stimulating is the new lay confession on the part of writer Teju Cole, guest at the Festival la Milenesiana. It is the witness of a Protestant Christian who let himself fall into sceptical agnosticism. He fell into doubt like many. But how not to lose faith? How can it mature so as to become certainty?

Let us look at the experience of the writer: all began when he wondered whether «the Bible really was the only truth of existence». He realised he could answer only by assuming as true what the Bible itself said. Already here there is the symptom of a weakness, of a mistake: a lonely man, with his Bible. But in Christianity, the Truth is not the Bible, but a Person: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”. And the truth cannot be possessed, but only be met. Chritianity (in particular, Catholicism) is not a religion of the Book, and, without the personal experience of meeting Christ, faith cannot hold only on the basis of written pages, albeit divinely inspired. It is he, Teju Cole, who should have been able to give reason for what the Truth of existence is, without putting the blame on the Holy Scriptures.

Where did Jesus Christ has been remaining present in history?

Thus, the “confession” goes on: «a morning, at 27 years old, I woke up and discovered to have lost faith». Inevitable destiny when there...