In a letter to all Catholics, Pope Francis condemned what he called the “crime” of sexual abuse and cover-ups of those crimes.

“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives,” Francis wrote.

“We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”

The pope’s letter comes a week after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a 900-page report about sexual abuse by clergy. The report reviewed Catholic church records of some 1,000 victims who claimed to have been abused by about 300 priest over the span of 80 years in Pennsylvania.   

The report said that victims were both boys and girls, from prepubescent children to teenagers, “”But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all.”

The letter also comes after news broke that a cardinal, retired archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick, allegedly sexually abused and harassed minors and adult seminarians.

Francis said in his letter that “no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.”

“While it is…

Over 9,000 people made professions of faith at evangelist Greg Laurie’s Southern California Harvest this past weekend even after billboards advertising the event were taken down over complaints about the Bible.

In its 29th year, SoCal Harvest went off without a hitch at Angel Stadium in Anaheim as over 100,000 people attended the three-night evangelism crusade and were treated to performances from top Christian music stars, stunts by motocross riders and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

However, the staple event of Laurie’s Harvest Ministries faced some resistance in the weeks leading up after billboards promoting the event were removed because they featured Laurie holding up a Bible.

In response, Laurie called on attendees to bring their Bibles in order to devote time each night for everyone to hold up the holy book and proclaim their belief in the Word of God.

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Chelsea Clinton created a controversy last week by arguing that abortion has been good for women’s economic progress. She made the comments at a “Rise Up for Row” event in New York. The “Rise Up for Row” movement began after President Trump announced his appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to fill Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court.

Her comments came as she speculated about arguments that appeals to the economic benefits abortion could get pro-life Americans to reevaluate their opposition to Roe v. Wade. She told the audience: “Whether you fundamentally care about reproductive rights and access rights, because these are not the same thing, if you care about social justice or economic justice, – you have to care about this. It is not a disconnected fact – to address this t-shirt of 1973 – that American women entering the labor force from 1973 to 2009 added three and a half trillion dollars to our economy. Right? The net, new entrance of women – that is not disconnected from the fact that Roe became the law of the land in January of 1973… So, I think, whatever it is that people say they care about, I think that you can connect to this issue.”

Pro-life advocates pounced on Clinton’s comments as an example of the pro-choice lobby’s indifference to human life. In a series of tweets, Evangelist Franklin Graham responded to Clinton, arguing that…

In the wake of numerous scandals among pastors in recent years, former megachurch pastor Tullian Tchividjian is making an appeal to churches: extend grace and forgiveness to disgraced leaders.

“The cross of Jesus shows us that God is serious about sin and we should therefore take sin seriously. But (and this is the part that often seems missing when scandal in church leadership happens) the cross also shows us that God is serious about redemption, restoration, and forgiving sins and we should take that seriously too,” Tchividjian, who resigned as pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in 2015 after admitting to an extramarital affair, said in a blog post written with Chad Bird.

Tchividjian and Bird, also a former pastor who committed adultery, clarified that the church should neither go soft on sin nor sweep it under the rug. But they emphasized that “real sin is also met with real forgiveness” and that pastors are sinners just like churchgoers are.

“The grace of God is not reserved for the ‘well-behaved.’ Yet that is the message we send every time the word ‘fall’ is used in reference to someone who is by nature already fallen. These people are sinners, just like everybody they ever led,” they wrote.

“That doesn’t justify…

It’s been 68 years since the Korean War broke out separating thousands of families at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. On Monday, however, after decades of longing to reconnect with each other, several families were finally able to reunite. 

In April of this year, during the inter-Korean Summit at the Inter-Korean Peace House and Unification Pavilion, North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, signed the Panmunjom Declaration which called for the end of war on the Korean Peninsula. 

As a part of this declaration, the two leaders agreed to have inter-Korean Red Cross reunions for families that were separated by the border. According to CNN, the reunion on Monday was the first one to happen since 2015, and it allowed 89 families out of the 57,000 who applied to briefly reunite for the first time since they were separated. 

Mother’s got to hold their children for the first time since they were infants, and brothers and sisters who were too young to remember each other got to meet for what felt like the first time. 

The South Korean families who were selected for the Red Cross reunions were chosen at random through a lottery process, and according to BBC News, the oldest family member in attendance was 101 years old. For many of people in attendance this was likely the last and only time that they will be…

Two pastors resigned in protest from Crossroads Christian Church in Indiana Saturday after elders painted fired lead pastor Patrick Garcia, as a power-hungry, inexperienced leader who wanted “complete control.”

“We would like to thank our Elders at Crossroads Christian Church for allowing us to speak to this unfortunate situation. After extensive conversation with the elders reviewing the facts regarding this matter, we find that we respectfully disagree with their decision to terminate Pastor Patrick Garcia and in good faith are unable support it. We are saddened to announce that effective today at 5:00pm, we have both resigned our jobs as Pastors at Crossroads Christian Church,” pastors Darryl Marin and David Bowersox announced in a joint statement shortly after elders addressed the congregation in a contentious meeting Saturday.

“We love Crossroads and are thankful for the years of service we have had with our church family and community. We are praying that God will continue to bless and minister to the people as you pursue Christ together in unity,” the pastors added.

The resignations came after Crossroads…

A church youth pastor says a blunder by American Airlines at the airport prevented his group of about 40 teenagers from boarding a plane for a mission trip and cost the group nearly $2,000. William Davis, youth pastor at Clays Mill Road Baptist Church in Lexington, KY., wrote on Facebook how his group had saved money for two years for a mission trip to Mexico. They arrived at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport two hours prior to the flight when chaos ensued at the ticket counter, he said. The employee – apparently taking advice from a co-worker – tried processing all 40 tickets prior to processing all 40 bags. 

“40 Bags were stacked in front of the counter as we got all of our folks checked in,” Davis wrote in the post, which was addressed to American Airlines. 

When check-in was complete, an American Airlines employee “attempted to run all 40 bags under” Davis’ name – a strategy that didn’t work. An employee then had to “go back and do it the regular way … and we had to have many of the tickets back as she proceeded to put names of the teens on bags,” Davis wrote.

When baggage check-in finally finished at 7:24 a.m. – and with a scheduled flight of 7:54 a.m. – the group made it through security in a timely fashion. They then ran and got to the gate at 7:47 a.m. The gate employee told them the door had closed and…