The Narthex
Promising Signs on Italian Suicide Law
Events in Slovenia and France, plus words of Pope Leo & PM Meloni, help bishops find their spines?
By Sabino Paciolla | January 29th 2026 2:39 PMProfessor Benedetto Rocchi, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Business Science at the University of Florence and president of the permanent observatory on abortion, expressed his astonishment about the fight against assisted suicide in Italy in an article published in La Verità on September 7, 2025. He asked,…
READ FULL BLOG POSTCompulsory Hepatitis B Vaccination at Birth
Recent expert advice to CDC would bring the U.S. closer to the Italian model
By Sabino Paciolla | December 10th 2025 12:09 PMThe Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent U.S. scientific body within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that provides official recommendations on vaccine use, decided by an 8-3 vote to end the general recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B within the first hours…
READ FULL BLOG POSTPope Leo Calls 'Lesser Evil' Catholics to Order
"They must have courage: the courage to say at times 'no, I can't!' when the truth is at stake"
By Sabino Paciolla | September 2nd 2025 1:39 PMThe timing couldn't have been more perfect. Pope Leo XIV took advantage of his August 28 audience with a delegation of politicians from the Diocese of Créteil, France, to reaffirm the principles of the Church's sound doctrine, unchanged over time. Pope Leo XIV's speech, extraordinarily beautiful, is disarmingly clear. He…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe End-of-Life Debate in Italy
After 'adult Catholics' and 'pro-choice Catholics' we now have 'Catholics of the lesser evil'
By Sabino Paciolla | August 4th 2025 8:46 PMItaly once had so-called “adult Catholics,” a term coined to describe a more liberal approach by some Catholics to ethical and social issues like abortion, aimed at distinguishing themselves from the "rigid" line of the Catholic Church. The expression "adult Catholics" was used by then-Prime Minister Romano Prodi in 2006,…
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