Portal:Catholic Church
Introduction The Catholic Church (Latin: Ecclesia Catholica), commonly known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian denomination, with an estimated 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized members worldwide as of 2025. One of the world's oldest continuously functioning institutions, it has played a formative role in the development of Western civilization. The Church consists of 24 sui iuris (autonomous) churches—the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches—which together encompass nearly 3,500 dioceses and eparchies governed by bishops. The pope, as bishop of Rome, serves as the Church's chief pastor. Catholic doctrine is rooted in the Nicene Creed. The Church teaches that it is the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" founded by Jesus Christ in the Great Commission; that its bishops are the successors of the apostles; and that the pope is the successor of Saint Peter, to whom Christ entrusted a unique pastoral role. It holds that the apostolic faith is transmitted through Scripture and sacred tradition, interpreted authentically by the magisterium, the Church's teaching authority. Catholic liturgical life includes the Roman Rite and other rites of the Latin Church, along with the diverse liturgical traditions of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Religious orders, monastic communities, third orders, and lay movements contribute to a wide range of theological and spiritual expressions within Catholicism. Among the Church's seven sacraments, the Eucharist is regarded as the central act of worship and is celebrated in the Mass. Catholics believe that through consecration by a priest, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated as the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, and is honored through doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception, perpetual virginity, and Assumption, as well as through numerous devotional practices. Catholic social teaching emphasizes care for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Church operates tens of thousands of educational and medical institutions worldwide and is the largest non-governmental provider of education and health care. It also supports a wide array of charitable and humanitarian organizations. (Full article...) Selected article
 The First Council of Nicaea, held in Nicaea in Bithynia (present-day İznik in Turkey), convoked by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 325, was the first Ecumenical council of the Christian Church, and most significantly resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Nicene Creed. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent 'general (ecumenical) councils of Bishops' (Synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy— the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.The purpose of the council was to resolve disagreements in the Church of Alexandria over the nature of Jesus in relationship to the Father; in particular, whether Jesus was of the same substance as God the Father or merely of similar substance. St. Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius took the first position; the popular presbyter Arius, from whom the term Arian controversy comes, took the second.
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 Credit: Blieusong The façade of Notre-Dame de Paris, showing the Portal of the Virgin, Portal of the Last Judgment and Portal of St-Anne. Selected biography
 Blaise Pascal (French pronunciation: [blɛz paskal]), (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method. Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he abandoned his scientific work and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées. Pascal suffered from ill health throughout his life and died two months after his 39th birthday.
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He was the co-founder and first Prior General of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI), the first religious congregation for men in the Syro-Malabar Church. The Congregation of the Mother of Carmel (CMC), originally known as the Third Order of Discalced Carmelites (TOCD), was founded by St Kuriakose Elias Chavara in 1866 in Kerala. (Full article...)
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