Today’s Catholic must-reads: 19/10/11

God is the “star of hope” in our darkest hours, Benedict XVI said at his general audience this morning (video).

The Pope has confirmed that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò will be the next Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.

A young Pakistani imam is to play a leading role at the inter-religious summit hosted by the Pope in Assisi later this month.

Police in the southern Philippines have concluded that the Italian missionary Fr Fausto Tentorio was shot dead by contract killers.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun has begun a 72-hour fast expressing outrage at a Hong Kong court ruling on religious freedom in schools.

Cardinal Velasio De Paolis has announced significant changes to Regnum Christi, the lay movement linked to the Legionaries of Christ (video).

Rorate Caeli publishes photographs of an Extraordinary Form Mass in Afghanistan.

George Weigel declares that “the old ecumenism – the bilateral dialogues between Catholicism and mainline Protestantism – is over”.

And the famous bells of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris are about to get even louder.