Day: July 14, 2026

BBC correspondent David Willey, longtime Vatican and papal chronicler, dies at 93 - #Catholic - David Willey, a BBC correspondent whose career in Rome spanned more than 50 years and five papacies, died July 11 in Italy at the age of 93.From being a student taking in the pomp of Pope Pius XII carried in a ceremonial throne to traveling the world with St. John Paul II to writing about the changes brought by Pope Francis, Willey saw “a complete revolution so that people saw the pope much more as a personality rather than in a hierarchical sense,” the journalist told EWTN News at his home in February.Catholic backgroundDavid Douglas Willey was born in High Wycombe, in the county of Buckinghamshire, northwest of London, in December 1932. He grew up Catholic in nearby Marlow.Willey’s first experience of Rome was a visit as a student, when he witnessed Pope Pius XII being carried through crowds in a gestatorial chair. “For me, the Vatican, St. Peter’s in Rome, was a spectacle, it was almost operatic,” he noted.After studying law and modern languages at Cambridge, he moved to Rome as a trainee for Reuters.He then left for stints in Algeria as a freelancer and subsequently East Africa as a correspondent for BBC. He also reported from Asia, including Saigon and Beijing, and then spent some time in London as the BBC’s assistant diplomatic correspondent.He returned to Italy as BBC’s Rome correspondent in 1972 — and he never left. David Willey, who died July 11, 2026, served as a BBC correspondent in Rome starting in 1972. He is seen here standing on a street in 1980. | Credit: Photo courtesy of BBC “I never imagined I would be covering the Vatican [as a] correspondent when I was an altar boy at St. Peter’s Church in Marlow,” he said.Willey explained that he no longer practiced the Catholic faith of his childhood but that he had “the greatest respect for the Catholic religion.”His reporting on the Vatican was through this lens. “I always treated reporting for the Vatican as a secular matter rather than a religious one,” he said, adding that he still found “inspiration and pleasure in covering Vatican affairs” because he thought the pope and the Church had an important message in a world “torn by war and discord.”Lengthy Rome careerDuring his more than five decades covering Rome and the Vatican, Willey witnessed dramatic technological changes both to journalism and to the Vatican’s own operations and communication.Two episodes from his early days in Rome illustrate this, including a call to the Vatican switchboard asking to be connected to a cardinal.He was immediately put through to Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who would later become the pope’s No. 2 as the Vatican secretary of state.“An important cardinal in the Vatican because he dealt with what was called the Ostpolitik, the Vaticanʼs policy towards Eastern Europe, communist Eastern Europe, during the years of the Cold War,” Willey said, noting that he asked to speak and the cardinal invited him that very afternoon to his “palatial” apartment for what would become a three-and-a-half-hour conversation.Willey recalled how, while a Reuters apprentice in the 1950s, international news agencies would pay a Vatican official for information. Once, on Easter Sunday, he was sent to wait at a bar close to the Vatican to pick up a text of the pope’s “urbi et orbi” blessing.“That was how the system worked. The changes wrought by Vatican II were extraordinary in the sense that a whole department was set up in the Vatican dealing with relations with the media,” he noted.During the pontificate of St. John Paul II, Willey joined the Polish pope on at least 40 of his international trips, nearly half of the jet-setting pope’s total apostolic journeys.“We went all over the world,” Willey noted. “It added to my knowledge of the world immeasurably, but it also enabled me to see the Catholic Church as an international, worldwide body of believers, which you donʼt always understand when you live here in Europe or in Rome in particular.”Veering from the prevailing idea that the faithful should come to see the pope in Rome, John Paul II went out “to meet his flock in person. And he did this with great panache,” the British journalist said.“And by allowing journalists like me to join him on the papal plane; one day, for example, I found him sitting next to me at breakfast on the plane,” Willey recalled. “He used to get bored during his very long journeys across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans and he mingled with the journalists and sat down and actually talked to them.”“I remember talking to him once about the usefulness of the United Nations, for example. He had some quite interesting things to say.”Willey said he also had a memorable encounter with another living saint — Mother Teresa of Calcutta.One day he rang up the Sisters of Charity in Rome to ask if he could interview Mother Teresa and was told they could arrange a meeting at the airport, in between her landing in Rome from India and before she would immediately depart again for Canada.“We sat down together, and she was, I must say, great fun,” Willey recalled. “We had a very lively conversation in which she confided all sorts of little secrets to me, such as I said, ‘What do you do when you normally arrive in a new country?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I go to the local phone box and call up the head of state and ask him to send a car to meet me. I ring up the pope and he sends me a car.’”“She was this combination of extreme saintliness and piety — and of course her work among the poor in India was completely a subject of which she was prepared to talk endlessly — but what I found was her sense of fun and her sense that the world was completely open to her,” the journalist said.In 2003, Willey was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to broadcast journalism.He wrote several books, including “God’s Politician,” a 1992 biography of John Paul II’s global impact. He also wrote about the start of Pope Francis’ pontificate in “The Promise of Francis: The Man, the Pope, and the Challenge of Change” in 2015.Willey continued to be active into his 90s — including writing a final reflection on the Vatican following Pope Francis’ death in April 2025. Willey spent his final years in the quiet lakeside town of Trevignano Romano, about 30 miles north of Rome. He died on July 11 from heart failure, the BBC reported.
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BBC correspondent David Willey, longtime Vatican and papal chronicler, dies at 93 – #Catholic – David Willey, a BBC correspondent whose career in Rome spanned more than 50 years and five papacies, died July 11 in Italy at the age of 93.From being a student taking in the pomp of Pope Pius XII carried in a ceremonial throne to traveling the world with St. John Paul II to writing about the changes brought by Pope Francis, Willey saw “a complete revolution so that people saw the pope much more as a personality rather than in a hierarchical sense,” the journalist told EWTN News at his home in February.Catholic backgroundDavid Douglas Willey was born in High Wycombe, in the county of Buckinghamshire, northwest of London, in December 1932. He grew up Catholic in nearby Marlow.Willey’s first experience of Rome was a visit as a student, when he witnessed Pope Pius XII being carried through crowds in a gestatorial chair. “For me, the Vatican, St. Peter’s in Rome, was a spectacle, it was almost operatic,” he noted.After studying law and modern languages at Cambridge, he moved to Rome as a trainee for Reuters.He then left for stints in Algeria as a freelancer and subsequently East Africa as a correspondent for BBC. He also reported from Asia, including Saigon and Beijing, and then spent some time in London as the BBC’s assistant diplomatic correspondent.He returned to Italy as BBC’s Rome correspondent in 1972 — and he never left. David Willey, who died July 11, 2026, served as a BBC correspondent in Rome starting in 1972. He is seen here standing on a street in 1980. | Credit: Photo courtesy of BBC “I never imagined I would be covering the Vatican [as a] correspondent when I was an altar boy at St. Peter’s Church in Marlow,” he said.Willey explained that he no longer practiced the Catholic faith of his childhood but that he had “the greatest respect for the Catholic religion.”His reporting on the Vatican was through this lens. “I always treated reporting for the Vatican as a secular matter rather than a religious one,” he said, adding that he still found “inspiration and pleasure in covering Vatican affairs” because he thought the pope and the Church had an important message in a world “torn by war and discord.”Lengthy Rome careerDuring his more than five decades covering Rome and the Vatican, Willey witnessed dramatic technological changes both to journalism and to the Vatican’s own operations and communication.Two episodes from his early days in Rome illustrate this, including a call to the Vatican switchboard asking to be connected to a cardinal.He was immediately put through to Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who would later become the pope’s No. 2 as the Vatican secretary of state.“An important cardinal in the Vatican because he dealt with what was called the Ostpolitik, the Vaticanʼs policy towards Eastern Europe, communist Eastern Europe, during the years of the Cold War,” Willey said, noting that he asked to speak and the cardinal invited him that very afternoon to his “palatial” apartment for what would become a three-and-a-half-hour conversation.Willey recalled how, while a Reuters apprentice in the 1950s, international news agencies would pay a Vatican official for information. Once, on Easter Sunday, he was sent to wait at a bar close to the Vatican to pick up a text of the pope’s “urbi et orbi” blessing.“That was how the system worked. The changes wrought by Vatican II were extraordinary in the sense that a whole department was set up in the Vatican dealing with relations with the media,” he noted.During the pontificate of St. John Paul II, Willey joined the Polish pope on at least 40 of his international trips, nearly half of the jet-setting pope’s total apostolic journeys.“We went all over the world,” Willey noted. “It added to my knowledge of the world immeasurably, but it also enabled me to see the Catholic Church as an international, worldwide body of believers, which you donʼt always understand when you live here in Europe or in Rome in particular.”Veering from the prevailing idea that the faithful should come to see the pope in Rome, John Paul II went out “to meet his flock in person. And he did this with great panache,” the British journalist said.“And by allowing journalists like me to join him on the papal plane; one day, for example, I found him sitting next to me at breakfast on the plane,” Willey recalled. “He used to get bored during his very long journeys across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans and he mingled with the journalists and sat down and actually talked to them.”“I remember talking to him once about the usefulness of the United Nations, for example. He had some quite interesting things to say.”Willey said he also had a memorable encounter with another living saint — Mother Teresa of Calcutta.One day he rang up the Sisters of Charity in Rome to ask if he could interview Mother Teresa and was told they could arrange a meeting at the airport, in between her landing in Rome from India and before she would immediately depart again for Canada.“We sat down together, and she was, I must say, great fun,” Willey recalled. “We had a very lively conversation in which she confided all sorts of little secrets to me, such as I said, ‘What do you do when you normally arrive in a new country?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I go to the local phone box and call up the head of state and ask him to send a car to meet me. I ring up the pope and he sends me a car.’”“She was this combination of extreme saintliness and piety — and of course her work among the poor in India was completely a subject of which she was prepared to talk endlessly — but what I found was her sense of fun and her sense that the world was completely open to her,” the journalist said.In 2003, Willey was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to broadcast journalism.He wrote several books, including “God’s Politician,” a 1992 biography of John Paul II’s global impact. He also wrote about the start of Pope Francis’ pontificate in “The Promise of Francis: The Man, the Pope, and the Challenge of Change” in 2015.Willey continued to be active into his 90s — including writing a final reflection on the Vatican following Pope Francis’ death in April 2025. Willey spent his final years in the quiet lakeside town of Trevignano Romano, about 30 miles north of Rome. He died on July 11 from heart failure, the BBC reported.

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EWTN News spoke to the journalist in February about his more than 50 years covering the Vatican.

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French bishop: Catholic lawmakers who back euthanasia bill cannot receive Communion – #Catholic – Catholic members of France’s National Assembly who vote for the country’s euthanasia and assisted-suicide bill will no longer be able to receive holy Communion, Bishop Marc Aillet of Bayonne, Lescar, and Oloron in southern France has warned ahead of the bill’s decisive final vote on July 15.“A Catholic engaged in public life cannot ignore” the Church’s constant teaching against euthanasia, Aillet told France Catholique in a July 7 interview. He highlighted that the Christian faith engages a person’s whole existence and that every lawmaker must examine in conscience whether the acts they take align with the faith they profess.A public vote for a law gravely contrary to the Church’s moral teaching, he said, creates “a real problem of ecclesial coherence,” and Catholic lawmakers who support the bill need to weigh the consequences of that choice. If they are aware of the inconsistency, he said, “they will no longer be able to receive Communion,” adding that the Church has the authority to remind them of this, just as some bishops have already done in the United States. Aillet said he wanted to invite lawmakers to a sincere examination of conscience and raised the question of whether society has the right to make the deliberate ending of a human life its answer to suffering.The National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, is scheduled to hold the decisive vote on the bill Wednesday, July 15. Barring a last-minute reversal, the measure is expected to pass by a wide margin, as it has in each of its three previous readings in the lower chamber, most recently by 295 votes to 232 on June 30. The bill has been rejected three times by the Senate, most recently on July 7 by a narrow vote of 169 to 164, with 11 abstentions.Under Article 45 of the French Constitution, the government can give the Assembly the final word once the two chambers remain deadlocked after repeated readings, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is expected to invoke that procedure Wednesday.The bill, titled a “right to aid in dying,” legalizes both euthanasia, administered by a doctor or nurse, and assisted suicide, in which the patient self-administers a lethal substance. Access is restricted to adults who are stable residents of France, suffer from a serious and incurable condition in an advanced or terminal phase, experience suffering that cannot be relieved by treatment, and remain able to express their will freely and with full understanding throughout the process.Aillet also grounded his warning in the Vatican’s 2020 letter Samaritanus Bonus, which he said had reaffirmed that euthanasia is intrinsically evil regardless of circumstance. He distinguished true compassion from what St. John Paul II called a “false mercy,” arguing that a genuinely fraternal society answers suffering with palliative care and accompaniment rather than the elimination of the person who suffers. The bishop also called for a fully guaranteed conscience clause for health workers and defended the right of Catholic-run care institutions to refuse to participate, warning that without it, some might be forced to close or relocate abroad.The French bishops’ conference has opposed the bill since its earliest stages, issuing formal statements opposing the bill after the Assembly’s first vote in May 2025, again after the second reading in February, and a third time on Ascension Day in May, when it warned of “moral imprudence” and “democratic disrespect” given the absence of political and social consensus. On the eve of the June 30 vote, the Church released a video appeal to lawmakers, with Archbishop Vincent Jordy of Tours saying the testimony of caregivers, jurists, and associations involved in end-of-life care had been “painfully ignored” during the debates.The Christian social network Hozana has separately called on believers to join a prayer chain addressed to French lawmakers ahead of Wednesdayʼs vote, an appeal that has drawn more than 58,000 participants.The bill’s critics are not confined to religious circles. The Société française d’accompagnement et de soins palliatifs and other caregiver federations have opposed the text, arguing that palliative care should be made a real, accessible alternative before any shift toward assisted death and that the bill’s clinical framework and oversight remain unclear.Asked about the pending visit of Pope Leo XIV to France, whose chosen motto for the trip is “So that the world may have life,” Aillet said he hoped the pope would reaffirm the inalienable dignity of every human life regardless of how the vote turns out.
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French bishop: Catholic lawmakers who back euthanasia bill cannot receive Communion – #Catholic – Catholic members of France’s National Assembly who vote for the country’s euthanasia and assisted-suicide bill will no longer be able to receive holy Communion, Bishop Marc Aillet of Bayonne, Lescar, and Oloron in southern France has warned ahead of the bill’s decisive final vote on July 15.“A Catholic engaged in public life cannot ignore” the Church’s constant teaching against euthanasia, Aillet told France Catholique in a July 7 interview. He highlighted that the Christian faith engages a person’s whole existence and that every lawmaker must examine in conscience whether the acts they take align with the faith they profess.A public vote for a law gravely contrary to the Church’s moral teaching, he said, creates “a real problem of ecclesial coherence,” and Catholic lawmakers who support the bill need to weigh the consequences of that choice. If they are aware of the inconsistency, he said, “they will no longer be able to receive Communion,” adding that the Church has the authority to remind them of this, just as some bishops have already done in the United States. Aillet said he wanted to invite lawmakers to a sincere examination of conscience and raised the question of whether society has the right to make the deliberate ending of a human life its answer to suffering.The National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, is scheduled to hold the decisive vote on the bill Wednesday, July 15. Barring a last-minute reversal, the measure is expected to pass by a wide margin, as it has in each of its three previous readings in the lower chamber, most recently by 295 votes to 232 on June 30. The bill has been rejected three times by the Senate, most recently on July 7 by a narrow vote of 169 to 164, with 11 abstentions.Under Article 45 of the French Constitution, the government can give the Assembly the final word once the two chambers remain deadlocked after repeated readings, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is expected to invoke that procedure Wednesday.The bill, titled a “right to aid in dying,” legalizes both euthanasia, administered by a doctor or nurse, and assisted suicide, in which the patient self-administers a lethal substance. Access is restricted to adults who are stable residents of France, suffer from a serious and incurable condition in an advanced or terminal phase, experience suffering that cannot be relieved by treatment, and remain able to express their will freely and with full understanding throughout the process.Aillet also grounded his warning in the Vatican’s 2020 letter Samaritanus Bonus, which he said had reaffirmed that euthanasia is intrinsically evil regardless of circumstance. He distinguished true compassion from what St. John Paul II called a “false mercy,” arguing that a genuinely fraternal society answers suffering with palliative care and accompaniment rather than the elimination of the person who suffers. The bishop also called for a fully guaranteed conscience clause for health workers and defended the right of Catholic-run care institutions to refuse to participate, warning that without it, some might be forced to close or relocate abroad.The French bishops’ conference has opposed the bill since its earliest stages, issuing formal statements opposing the bill after the Assembly’s first vote in May 2025, again after the second reading in February, and a third time on Ascension Day in May, when it warned of “moral imprudence” and “democratic disrespect” given the absence of political and social consensus. On the eve of the June 30 vote, the Church released a video appeal to lawmakers, with Archbishop Vincent Jordy of Tours saying the testimony of caregivers, jurists, and associations involved in end-of-life care had been “painfully ignored” during the debates.The Christian social network Hozana has separately called on believers to join a prayer chain addressed to French lawmakers ahead of Wednesdayʼs vote, an appeal that has drawn more than 58,000 participants.The bill’s critics are not confined to religious circles. The Société française d’accompagnement et de soins palliatifs and other caregiver federations have opposed the text, arguing that palliative care should be made a real, accessible alternative before any shift toward assisted death and that the bill’s clinical framework and oversight remain unclear.Asked about the pending visit of Pope Leo XIV to France, whose chosen motto for the trip is “So that the world may have life,” Aillet said he hoped the pope would reaffirm the inalienable dignity of every human life regardless of how the vote turns out.

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Bishop Marc Aillet has warned ahead of France’s decisive final vote on July 15 that Catholic lawmakers who support the bill “will no longer be able to receive Communion.”

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Iraq’s prime minister calls on Iraqi Christians abroad to return home – #Catholic – Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al Zaidi has called on Iraqi Christians living abroad to return to their homeland.During a meeting with Chaldean Patriarch Paul III Nona, the prime minister said the return of Christians who were forced to leave Iraq has become a national priority for his government.He said the government is ready to provide the support needed to encourage Christian families to return, including making them eligible for the countryʼs 1 million residential land plot initiative.Al Zaidi said Iraqʼs strength lies in its ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity and in the unity of its people. He described Christians as “an active and essential component of Iraqi society and a key partner in building the state and shaping Iraqʼs history and future.”An invitation to investThe prime minister also encouraged Iraqi Christian business leaders and investors living abroad to return and take part in rebuilding the country by investing in the opportunities available across several sectors, particularly healthcare and education.He said the government remains committed to strengthening stability and providing the support needed to help their projects succeed, contribute to economic development, and create new jobs.Nona expressed appreciation for the prime ministerʼs initiatives and his commitment to supporting Iraqʼs Christian community.He said the governmentʼs position sends an important message encouraging Iraqi Christians in the diaspora to return home, strengthens their confidence in the countryʼs future, and supports the willingness of Christian business leaders and investors to contribute to Iraqʼs reconstruction and development.The Churchʼs responseCommenting on the initiative, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Nicodemus Matti Sharaf of the Archdiocese of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan welcomed the prime ministerʼs call for Christians to return.He described it as “an official recognition of the Christian communityʼs rightful place in the land of its fathers and ancestors.”At the same time, he stressed that addressing the reasons Christians left Iraq in the first place is even more important. Without doing so, he said, the invitation is unlikely to achieve its intended results. Archbishop Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan. | Credit: Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan Speaking to an Arabic television channel, Sharaf pointed to several challenges that have contributed to Christian emigration and continue to discourage many from returning.Among them, he said, are ongoing marginalization and the lack of genuine political representation, noting that Christians still do not have a dedicated electoral register that would allow them to elect their own representatives to Parliament.He also cited widespread corruption, inadequate infrastructure, limited access to quality healthcare and education, and a shortage of employment opportunities.These conditions, he said, force many Iraqi Christians abroad to compare what they have found overseas with what remains unavailable at home.Sharaf expressed hope that the governmentʼs campaign against corruption would continue with genuine determination and produce tangible results that restore citizens' confidence.He described Iraq as “a country floating on a lake of corruption,” adding that this alone is “enough to drive any citizen, Christian or otherwise, to leave.”This story was first published by ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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Iraq’s prime minister calls on Iraqi Christians abroad to return home – #Catholic – Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al Zaidi has called on Iraqi Christians living abroad to return to their homeland.During a meeting with Chaldean Patriarch Paul III Nona, the prime minister said the return of Christians who were forced to leave Iraq has become a national priority for his government.He said the government is ready to provide the support needed to encourage Christian families to return, including making them eligible for the countryʼs 1 million residential land plot initiative.Al Zaidi said Iraqʼs strength lies in its ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity and in the unity of its people. He described Christians as “an active and essential component of Iraqi society and a key partner in building the state and shaping Iraqʼs history and future.”An invitation to investThe prime minister also encouraged Iraqi Christian business leaders and investors living abroad to return and take part in rebuilding the country by investing in the opportunities available across several sectors, particularly healthcare and education.He said the government remains committed to strengthening stability and providing the support needed to help their projects succeed, contribute to economic development, and create new jobs.Nona expressed appreciation for the prime ministerʼs initiatives and his commitment to supporting Iraqʼs Christian community.He said the governmentʼs position sends an important message encouraging Iraqi Christians in the diaspora to return home, strengthens their confidence in the countryʼs future, and supports the willingness of Christian business leaders and investors to contribute to Iraqʼs reconstruction and development.The Churchʼs responseCommenting on the initiative, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Nicodemus Matti Sharaf of the Archdiocese of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan welcomed the prime ministerʼs call for Christians to return.He described it as “an official recognition of the Christian communityʼs rightful place in the land of its fathers and ancestors.”At the same time, he stressed that addressing the reasons Christians left Iraq in the first place is even more important. Without doing so, he said, the invitation is unlikely to achieve its intended results. Archbishop Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan. | Credit: Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan Speaking to an Arabic television channel, Sharaf pointed to several challenges that have contributed to Christian emigration and continue to discourage many from returning.Among them, he said, are ongoing marginalization and the lack of genuine political representation, noting that Christians still do not have a dedicated electoral register that would allow them to elect their own representatives to Parliament.He also cited widespread corruption, inadequate infrastructure, limited access to quality healthcare and education, and a shortage of employment opportunities.These conditions, he said, force many Iraqi Christians abroad to compare what they have found overseas with what remains unavailable at home.Sharaf expressed hope that the governmentʼs campaign against corruption would continue with genuine determination and produce tangible results that restore citizens' confidence.He described Iraq as “a country floating on a lake of corruption,” adding that this alone is “enough to drive any citizen, Christian or otherwise, to leave.”This story was first published by ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

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Church leaders applauded Iraq Prime Minister Ali Falih al Zaidi’s call for Christians and business leaders to return to their homeland but stressed the need for reform.

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2026 Full Moon calendar: When to see the Full Moon and phases

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The phenomenon of a Full Moon arises when our planet, Earth, is precisely sandwiched between the Sun and the Moon. This alignment ensures the entire side of the Moon that faces us gleams under sunlight. Thanks to the Moon’s orbit around Earth, the angle of sunlight hitting the lunar surface and being reflected back toContinue reading “2026 Full Moon calendar: When to see the Full Moon and phases”

The post 2026 Full Moon calendar: When to see the Full Moon and phases appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.

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