WelCom is the monthly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Wellington. Print copies of the eight-page newsletter are free and available in parishes, and sent to parishes and schools in PDF form. The archive contains WelCom stories published from 2007 to 2026 (May).
WelCom August 2022 The Catholic Church in Australia has agreed a series of landmark reforms on the role of women, a new translation of the Roman Missal and the wider use of the ‘third rite’ of confession. These were voted through on a final day of voting at the week-long plenary assembly held in Sydney […]
WelCom August 2022 Pope Francis has apologised to Canada’s native people on their land for the Church’s role in schools where indigenous children were abused, branding forced cultural assimilation a ‘deplorable evil’ and ‘disastrous error’. The Pope made the penitential pilgrimage to Canada in July, to fulfil a promise he made to indigenous delegations that […]
WelCom August 2022 The Catholic Bishops of the United States have welcomed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling ‘which legalised and normalised the taking of innocent human life’ through abortion. In June, the United States Supreme Court released its decision in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, […]
WelCom August 2022 The Catholic University of America cannot auction a dress from the Wizard of Oz until a court resolves a legal challenge about its ownership, a federal judge has said. The university had scheduled an auction of the dress worn by Judy Garland for the classic movie in hopes of raising more than […]
WelCom August 2022 Pope Francis has said he has no plans to resign soon and that his knee injury is healing. Reports of Pope Francis resigning began to spread recently in light of three events that were to happen in late August. These included the creation of new cardinals and a day trip to the […]
WelCom August 2022 Pope Francis has appointed three women to the Dicastery of Bishops, which assists the Pope in choosing bishops. They are the first women to ever be named members of the dicastery. Two of them are religious sisters. Sr Raffaella Petrini, a Franciscan, has been secretary general of the Vatican’s governorate, the second-ranking […]
WelCom August 2022 Cardinal Kurt Koch, a Swiss prelate of the Catholic Church and president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, says Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s defence of the war in Ukraine amounts to ‘heresy’, and has fractured the unity of the Orthodox community. ‘It is heresy that the patriarch dares to legitimise […]
WelCom August 2022 Nicaragua’s Sandinista-controlled congress has expelled nearly 200 non-governmental organisations from the Central American country, including 18 Missionaries of Charity. According to the newspaper El Confidencial, the nuns were taken by the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration and the police from the cities of Managua and Granada, where they had been serving […]
WelCom August 2022 Shireen Abu Akleh, a Catholic, was a Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for the Arabic-language channel Al Jazeera for 25 years. She was one of the most prominent names across the Middle East for her decades of reporting in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. As a leading journalist in the Arab […]
WelCom August 2022 The following article by Bishop Peter Cullinane coincides with Pope Francis’ desire for our parish liturgies to be as they should be, and for the Catholic people to receive on-going liturgy formation. Pope Francis’ most recent Apostolic letter, Desiderio Desideravi – ‘I have desired with a great desire’ [Lk 22:15]), published on […]