By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer The presumption of innocence and the legal standard of “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” are based on a bedrock commitment to safeguard an innocent man’s liberty – and, sometimes, his life. This foundational principle of Anglo-Saxon criminal law had been, it seems, all…
By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer Australia’s Cardinal Pell has been sentenced to six years for child sex abuse, but the evidence against Pell is far from convincing. Something needs to be done. The Innocence Project is a program that has exonerated over 300 people wrongly convicted of serious crimes…
By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer Saly and Rahma are like so many young American university students. In their second year at Catholic University, these two young women are serious students, thoughtful and articulate. They talk excitedly about their chosen majors and their plans for the future. Both…
By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer This Tuesday a three-judge panel of Pakistan’s Supreme Court will decide whether to reconsider its acquittal of a Pakistani Christian mother-of-five on charges of blasphemy. Yes, you read that right. One of our allies in the fight against terror may be having…
By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer The Vatican dismissed the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the clerical state for his sexually abusive behavior. Has the Catholic Church put the great scandals of 2018 behind it? Hardly. The McCarrick case is about more than McCarrick’s grave failings as a…
By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer President Trump will soon have a chance to make up for some lost time in supporting Iraqi religious minorities that ISIS threatened with extinction. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and his colleagues in Congress want to make sure our concern for the victims of genocide has…
By Grazie Pozo Christie As a Catholic mother of five young people, I have been watching the Youth Synod with great interest and praying for its success. My husband and I have experienced just how difficult it is to transmit a joyful and living faith…
By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer Forget Pablo Escobar. Colombia now has a native son it can take pride in. No, not the country’s newly elected President Ivan Duque. He’s impressive enough — a 42-year-old family-man who is unafraid to pray in public and a whole lot better than opponent…
By Ashley McGuire I first read “Humanae Vitae”—which Pope Paul VI published 50 years ago July 29—when I was 21. As a senior at Tufts University, hardly a bastion of Christian belief, sheer curiosity brought me to the controversial papal encyclical. I knew only that…
April 26, 2018 “It’s confusing and disappointing to see the Catholic leadership in the U.K., both the bishops and lay leaders like Austen Ivereigh of Catholic Voices U.K., abandon Catholic social teaching and split from the Pope by defending the government instead of Alfie and his…
