NATION SACRAMENTO, Calif. (OSV News) – St. Mary Parish School in Sacramento averted a possible mass shooting during an Ash Wednesday school liturgy, thanks to the quick intervention of an off-duty law enforcement officer and school parent who detained an armed former student attempting to enter the church. The suspect, 20-year-old Brian Richard Girardot Jr., now faces a federal charge of possessing a firearm within a school zone. School principal Amy Hale credits parent volunteers serving as safety monitors for preventing what could have been a tragedy. The Feb. 18 incident comes some six months after the deadly shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis during a school liturgy. A police search of Girardot’s car and home turned up several more weapons and a profanity-laced suicide note that named three relatives as the reason for his potential attack. “Thanks to the vigilance and professionalism of our parent volunteers, our children remained safely inside the church for the duration of Mass and a potential crisis was averted,” Hale said in a Feb. 18 statement posted to the school’s Facebook page. “No students came into contact with the man, and were unaware of the situation happening outside. After Mass the children were escorted back to class.”
WASHINGTON (OSV News) – A number of violent extremist groups, led by minors and young adults, are increasingly targeting kids online – in some cases, with deadly results. And as federal officials, counterterrorism experts and child advocates sound the alarm, parents need to take action amid the “growing problem,” a scholar at a Catholic university told OSV News. “There is a naive view of the dangers that are currently online,” said Mary Graw Leary, professor of law at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America. Leary, a former federal prosecutor and an expert on technology and victimization, said that despite ongoing efforts to protect children and youth in the digital space, “we see law enforcement issuing more and more warnings” – especially about 764, a loosely affiliated network of online communities that prey on vulnerable youth. The group coerces them to produce sexually explicit material, and then blackmailing them to harm themselves as well as others, even beloved family pets. Deemed a terrorist organization by Canada, 764 is gaining increased scrutiny by U.S. federal and state authorities. Leary said that while children and vulnerable persons have throughout history been at risk of abuse and exploitation, groups such as 764 show that “the internet provides access to large groups of victims” for predators. Leary said the internet and such deviant subgroups “provide affinity and normalization” for the worst of human behavior. “We’ve got people supporting each other’s perverse, violent proclivities in a way that we didn’t see before,” she said. “These channels are fueling this in a way that didn’t exist.”
VATICAN ROME (CNS) – Pope Leo XIV will travel to six countries over the next four months, including a 10-day tour of Africa and trips to Monaco and Spain, the Vatican announced Feb. 25. His first stop will be Monaco on March 28 – the first papal visit there in the modern era. Then, from April 13 to 23, he’ll travel to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, marking his first visit to Africa as pope. The Vatican said peace and care for the poor will be key themes of the trip. In Algeria, he hopes to visit sites linked to St. Augustine and to “continue the conversation of dialogue, of building bridges between the Christian world and the Muslim world.” And, in Cameroon, he’ll enter a region scarred by separatist violence. In June, Pope Leo heads to Spain, where he is expected to inaugurate the tallest tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família and visit the Canary Islands. With expected stops in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, the Canary Islands visit could draw attention to the migration issue. The Atlantic archipelago, situated off the northwest coast of Africa, is one of Europe’s main entry points for migrants crossing from Africa.
ROME (OSV News) – A Synod on Synodality study group has recommended the creation of a new “Pontifical Commission for Digital Culture and New Technologies” in the first of 15 synod study group reports expected in the coming weeks. The Vatican published the first two final reports from its Synod on Synodality study groups on March 3. The first report contains recommendations on navigating the Church’s presence in digital spaces. The second report focuses on guidelines for the formation of future priests and includes a call for more women to play a role in aiding the formation of seminarians for the priesthood. The report also lists 26 real world examples of “best practices” from seminaries around the world. Among those highlighted: a program in eight U.S. dioceses focused on healing wounds caused by the excessive use of technology and family breakdown, centered on an eight-day silent retreat and a small-group chastity program; and a Nigerian seminary that requires seminarians to perform all maintenance work and cleaning of their seminary building to “experience the dignity of human labor.” The General Secretariat of the Synod will publish 13 more study group final reports, according to its website.
This is a poster from “No Priests Left,” a short-film documentary series produced by “A Faith Under Siege” that documents the persecution of Catholics in Russian-occupied Ukraine. (OSV News photo/courtesy A Faith Under Siege)
WORLD WASHINGTON (OSV News) – As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine reaches the four-year mark, the recently released documentary “No Priests Left,” available on YouTube, shows the ravages of the aggression on Ukraine’s Catholic communities. In the occupied regions, Russian officials have driven out all Catholic clergy. Torture, imprisonment, and killing of clergy by Russian forces has been documented, with some 700 houses of worship damaged or destroyed. Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest Father Oleksandr Bohomaz, who appears in the film, described the repression of the Church in eastern Ukraine after Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. “Priests and pastors were arrested. They were interrogated. They were beaten. They were held in … torture chambers,” said Father Bohomaz, who was forcibly deported from Russian-occupied Melitopol in December 2022. Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia, who appears in the film, told OSV News that “global, particularly American, awareness, prayer and action are crucial” to prevent further atrocities. He encouraged “all bishops and priests” to show “No Priests Left” to the faithful. Everyone who does see the film “cannot but be mobilized to prayer and action,” he said. Archbishop Gudziak stressed that it was crucial “as human beings and as Christians” for people of goodwill “to see what has happened, to realize the biblical nature of this war, and to do everything we can spiritually, socially, or politically to help the innocent victims.”
In this continuing series on the origins of Catholicism in the 50 states, the story of New England begins in a region that was, from the start, among the least welcoming places in early America for Catholics.
The English settlements of Plymouth (1620) and Massachusetts Bay (1630) were founded by deeply committed Protestants, shaped by a Calvinist worldview that defined itself in sharp opposition to Catholicism. Their religious imagination was nourished not only by the Bible but also by John Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs,” a widely read and fiercely anti-Catholic account of Protestant suffering under Queen Mary I.
That memory of persecution was reinforced by the dramatic tale of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, in which a small group of Catholics attempted to blow up Parliament and assassinate the Protestant king, James I. With such stories shaping the culture, it is no surprise that New England became the most inhospitable region of the 13 colonies for Catholics.
A file photo shows worshippers inside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. The cathedral was built between 1866 and 1875. (OSV News photo/Gregory L. Tracy, Pilot)
In such an atmosphere, Catholics in colonial New England kept a low profile, and for long stretches there was effectively no public Catholic life at all. Laws passed in 1647 and again in 1700 barred Catholics from settling in Massachusetts, and any priest who entered the colony could, in theory, face death as “an enemy of the true Christian religion.”
The Revolutionary era brought some measure of relief, and small numbers of Catholics began settling more openly in the New England colonies, which had by then become states. Legal barriers gradually softened, and public worship, once unthinkable, slowly emerged. In Boston, the first public Mass was celebrated in 1788 (nearly a century after the first Mass had been offered in New York City) marking a tentative but historic step toward an established Catholic presence in the region.
Progress, however, remained limited. The Massachusetts state constitution of 1780 imposed a religious test that effectively barred Catholics from holding public office and required citizens to pay taxes supporting Protestant ministers, though both provisions were eventually repealed.
Even as legal conditions slowly improved, Catholics remained a tiny minority. When the Diocese of Boston was created in 1808 (encompassing all of New England), the Catholic population of the state was still small; by 1820 still fewer than 4,000 Catholics lived among a general population of more than half a million.
This began to change dramatically with the arrival of large numbers of Irish immigrants in the decades before the Civil War, followed later by French Canadians and then by Catholics from Southern and Eastern Europe. Today, roughly one-third (about 2.5 million) of the state’s population is Catholic, served by four dioceses, a remarkable transformation from the tiny, legally restricted community of the early republic.
Maine
Before English control took hold in northern New England, Catholic missionary life had already emerged in what is now Maine through French Jesuits working among the Abenaki. François de Laval (who was eventually named the first bishop of Quebec in 1674 and later beatified in 1980) reported some 200 baptisms near present-day Augusta between 1660 and 1663. This mission endured amid growing conflict between France and England until 1724, when English forces destroyed the village of Norridgewock, killing many residents along with their longtime missionary, Jesuit Father Sebastian Rale.
Catholic life reemerged after the Revolution when Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore, whose diocese then encompassed all of the fledgling republic, sent the French émigré priest Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus to minister at Indian Island and establish what would become St. Patrick Parish in Newcastle.
When Maine entered the Union in 1820, Catholicism remained sparse and missionary. Hostility flared again in the mid-19th century, most notably in 1854 with the tarring and feathering of the Swiss Jesuit John Bapst. Resistance ran so deep that the priest appointed as Portland’s first bishop in 1853 declined the position.
When Father David Bacon from Brooklyn arrived two years later (quietly and without clerical dress) to take up this role, the diocese (which then included both Maine and New Hampshire) counted only six priests and eight churches. Today the Diocese of Portland serves just the state of Maine, ministering to roughly 275,000 Catholics in 48 parishes.
New Hampshire
Since the Diocese of Portland initially encompassed both Maine and New Hampshire, the Catholic story of the Granite State began in close connection with Maine’s. Its roots, however, stretch back to the mid-1600s, when small numbers of Sokwaki and Pennacook converts instructed by French missionaries became the first Catholics in what is now New Hampshire. Their presence remained minimal if not miniscule for decades.
By 1741, the Anglican rector of Queen’s Chapel in Portsmouth could claim that no “papist” was known among the population. After the Revolutionary War, Catholics were still exceedingly rare. Of the roughly 25,000 Catholics in the United States at the time (about 1% of the population), New Hampshire — then home to some 100,000 people — officially counted none, though a few likely lived quietly among French traders or Irish immigrants.
A more visible Catholic presence began to emerge only in the early 19th century. The first Catholic church in the state, St. Mary’s in Claremont, was built in 1823 by a father and son (both Episcopal priests) who converted to Catholicism. The first parish followed in 1830 with the establishment of St. Aloysius in Dover. Even then the numbers remained modest. In 1835, New Hampshire counted just under 400 Catholics, served by two churches and two priests.
Catholic growth in New Hampshire accelerated dramatically in the second half of the 19th century. The first of several French-Canadian parishes was founded in 1873 to serve the rapidly expanding population of immigrants from Quebec.
When Pope Leo XIII erected the Diocese of Manchester in 1884, separating New Hampshire from the Diocese of Portland and appointing Father Denis Bradley as its first bishop, the Church had already assumed a substantial presence. The new diocese counted 31 parishes, six parish schools, 10 chapels, one orphanage, 37 priests required to minister in both French and English, and five convents with 89 religious sisters from three congregations.
Among Bishop Bradley’s most important early decisions was inviting Benedictine monks from Newark to establish a college and preparatory school. The monks who came to Manchester and founded St. Anselm Abbey were largely of German descent, a deliberate choice in a city where tensions between Irish and French Canadians could easily flare.
By the turn of the 20th century, Manchester’s Catholic population was roughly 40% French Canadian and 60% Irish, reflecting the immigrant streams that had reshaped the Granite State’s religious life.
Today, nearly 190,000 Catholics worship in 88 parishes across New Hampshire, served by about 175 priests — a striking growth from the handful of believers who once struggled to establish even a single church in the Granite State.
Vermont
Turning westward, the Catholic story in Vermont unfolded along a different frontier. The Diocese of Burlington today encompasses the entire state, but its Catholic roots reach back to July 1609, when the Catholic explorer Samuel de Champlain first entered the region and gave it the name that would become Vermont, drawn from its green mountains. Champlain was not merely an explorer but a man of evident religious conviction, often remarking that the salvation of one soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire.
Jesuit missionaries were active throughout much of the 17th century. The first Catholic structure within the present boundaries of Vermont was built at Fort St. Anne in 1666, where Mass was celebrated for the first time in the region. Two years later, in 1668, Bishop Laval of Quebec administered confirmation there, likely the first celebration of that sacrament in New England.
When the Swedish naturalist Peter Kalm traveled along Lake Champlain in 1749, he noted Jesuit missionaries present in nearly every Indian village, serving both converted and unconverted communities. Although the territory later came under English control and, after independence, formally fell within the Diocese of Baltimore, the Bishop of Quebec continued to oversee the spiritual care of early Catholic settlers and Native Americans until Vermont was incorporated into the newly erected Diocese of Boston in 1808.
A permanent Catholic presence took firmer shape in 1830, when Bishop Benedict Fenwick of Boston sent the energetic Jeremiah O’Callaghan as Vermont’s first resident priest. Under his leadership, the Church grew steadily, so that by 1853, when the Holy See established the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont counted five priests, 10 churches, and approximately 20,000 Catholics. Today, though Vermont remains the second smallest state by population, the Diocese of Burlington serves about 110,000 Catholics through 36 active priests, 44 permanent deacons, and 15 religious ministering in 68 parishes.
Rhode Island
Turning now to southern New England, the Catholic story in Rhode Island unfolded within a colony known for its commitment to liberty of conscience. In Rhode Island, anti-Catholic sentiment tended to express itself more in politics and legislation than in the mob violence seen elsewhere in New England.
Founded in 1643 by the Baptist minister Roger Williams, the colony was built on a broad principle of religious toleration (even allowing Jews to establish their own congregation in 1658), a sharp contrast to the more restrictive policies of neighboring colonies. Yet this toleration had limits. By 1719, the Rhode Island General Assembly had enacted a law disenfranchising Catholics in an effort to discourage their settlement.
The first Catholic Mass in Rhode Island is generally believed to have been celebrated in July 1780, when the French forces arrived in Newport during the Revolutionary War. A more permanent Catholic presence emerged only in the 19th century.
As Irish immigrants began arriving in Newport in significant numbers, tensions deepened. Many came to work on the construction of Fort Adams, to labor in the growing number of grand mansions, or to escape the devastation of the Irish potato famine. Anti-immigrant sentiment was often rooted in anti-Catholic prejudice. St. Mary’s Parish, the first Catholic parish in Newport, was founded in 1828.
In 1843, Pope Gregory XVI established the Diocese of Hartford, encompassing both Connecticut and Rhode Island, and appointed Msgr. William Tyler of Boston as its first bishop.
At the time, Providence counted about 2,000 Catholics, compared to only 600 in Hartford, prompting Tyler to petition Rome to relocate the diocesan see. A generation later, on February 16, 1872, Pope Pius IX created the Diocese of Providence, separating Rhode Island from Hartford and adding nearby territories from Massachusetts, including Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod and the Fall River area. Thomas Hendricken was named the first bishop of Providence.
The new diocese began with 125,000 Catholics, 43 churches, nine parish schools and one orphanage. Today the diocese serves almost 600,000 Catholics across 119 parishes.
Connecticut
In contrast to repressive laws and outright violence found at times elsewhere in much of New England, Catholic life in Connecticut unfolded within a stable but firmly Protestant culture that proved cautious rather than openly hostile.
Although the Dutch erected a fort in 1633 near what is now Hartford, Connecticut developed primarily from two independent English settlements founded by Puritans with Congregationalism (which was the way the descendants of the Puritans began to refer to their church) remaining as the established church until 1818.
The earliest Catholics were likely Irish immigrants and French-speaking Acadians who were driven from Nova Scotia and settled in small numbers in the region during the mid-18th century.
By the 1820s, the Catholic population in Connecticut had grown large enough to warrant a resident priest. In 1829, Benedict Joseph Fenwick, the second bishop of Boston, sent Father Bernard O’Cavanagh as the state’s first resident priest. The following year, Bishop Fenwick returned to dedicate Connecticut’s first Catholic church, a converted Episcopal frame building.
Connecticut’s Catholic population expanded rapidly in the decades after the Civil War, driven by immigration and industrial growth in cities such as Hartford, New Haven and Waterbury. That expansion found strong leadership under Lawrence McMahon, a distinguished Civil War chaplain, who was appointed Hartford’s fifth bishop in 1879.
During his 14-year episcopate, the diocese experienced remarkable growth, with 48 new parishes and 16 parish schools established. It was also during this period, in 1882, that a young diocesan priest from Waterbury, Michael J. McGivney, organized a small group of Catholic men in the basement of St. Mary’s Church in New Haven.
What began as a small gathering soon grew into the Knights of Columbus, a lasting expression of Catholic charity, fraternity and faith, one of the most influential Catholic organizations in American history. McGivney was beatified at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hartford in 2020.
Catholic life in Connecticut continued to expand through the 20th century, especially during the prosperity of the postwar era. As population shifted outward from the cities, new parishes were established across the growing suburbs, reflecting both demographic growth and rising Catholic confidence in public life.
That expansion was formally recognized in 1953, when Pope Pius XII created the dioceses of Bridgeport and Norwich and elevated Hartford to the rank of an archdiocese, marking Connecticut’s full maturation into a major center of Catholic life in New England.
Taken together, the Catholic story of New England is one of endurance and gradual transformation. From the early missionary encounters with Native peoples along rivers and lakes, through centuries of exclusion, suspicion and legal restriction, Catholic life survived largely at the margins. What began as a scattered and often hidden faith was reshaped in the 19th and early 20th centuries by immigration and industrialization as parishes, schools and charitable works took root across the region.
Today, Catholicism is woven deeply into New England’s religious and cultural fabric — a long way from the days when Mass was forbidden, bishops arrived in their new diocese in disguise and Catholics struggled simply to be counted.
(Father Anthony D. Andreassi, a priest of the Brooklyn Oratory of St. Philip Neri, holds a doctorate in history from Georgetown University. His research and writing have focused on the American Catholic community. After spending many years in Catholic secondary education, he is on the staff of the Oratory parishes of Assumption and St. Boniface in Brooklyn, New York.)
(OSV News) — Nine young adults have been selected as “perpetual pilgrims” to travel with the Eucharist along the East Coast this summer in the third National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. The pilgrims — five men and four women — will participate in the pilgrimage’s full route, which begins May 24 in Florida and reaches Maine before ending in Philadelphia July 5 for U.S. semiquincentennial celebrations.
A graphic depicts the 2026 route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which begins in St. Augustine, Fla., and ends in Philadelphia. (OSV News graphic/National Eucharistic Congress)
The pilgrims include Zachary Dotson, a parish employee in Indiana; Marcel Ferrer, a sophomore at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio; John Paul Flynn, sophomore at The Catholic University of America in Washington; Eduardo Gutierrez, an accountant in Phoenix; Cheyenne Johnson, a missionary in New Jersey; Angelina Marconi, a college athletic trainer in Kentucky; Raymond Martinez II, a seminarian for the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas; Sharon Phillips, a high school youth minister in the Archdiocese of Seattle; and Mary Carmen Zakrajsek, a youth faith formation director in Indiana.
With four routes that met in Indianapolis, the 2024 pilgrimage included 30 pilgrims. Last year’s pilgrimage included eight. Johnson was among the 2025 perpetual pilgrims, and she is returning this year as the team lead. Last year’s pilgrimage also included a returning pilgrim who had traveled one of the 2024 routes to serve as team lead.
With the theme “One Nation Under God,” the 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage route celebrates key Catholic landmarks and events in American Catholic history as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary. The pilgrimage’s route includes public events in 18 dioceses and archdioceses in 13 states and the District of Columbia.
Registration for public events such as Masses, Eucharistic processions, adoration and Holy Hours opens March 18 at eucharisticpilgrimage.org.
The pilgrimage will launch Memorial Day weekend with Mass at Our Lady of La Leche Shrine at Mission Nombre De Dios in St. Augustine, Florida, the site of the first Mass celebrated on American soil in 1565. It will also include commemorations of the Georgia Martyrs, five Franciscan missionaries who were killed for their faith in 1597, whose beatification is expected Oct. 31; the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi in the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia; and stops in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the nation’s first Catholic diocese.
The route is dedicated to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian-American religious sister who cared for the immigrants and poor in New York during the turn of the 20th century.
The National Eucharistic Congress nonprofit organizes the pilgrimage, which first took place in 2024 ahead of the 10th National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis as part of the National Eucharistic Revival, and which returned last summer with a route from Indianapolis to Los Angeles.
This year’s pilgrimage will take place in solidarity with the U.S. bishops’ call to consecrate the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It also aims to broadly involve the Church in the U.S. through a campaign to offer 250,000 Holy Hours “for the renewal and blessing of America,” according to its website.
Dioceses and archdioceses with stops along the route are St. Augustine; Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; Arlington, Virginia; Washington; Baltimore; Wilmington, Delaware; Camden, New Jersey; Paterson, New Jersey; Springfield, Massachusetts; Manchester, New Hampshire; Portland, Maine; Boston; Fall River, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; and Philadelphia.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (OSV News) — The Olympic gold medal hanging from Haley Winn’s neck was a crowning touch on her rapid rise to ice hockey’s mountaintop.
Winn — a graduate of Bishop Kearney High School in the Rochester suburb of Irondequoit — and her United States women’s team struck gold Feb. 19, thanks to a 2-1 overtime win over Canada in the Olympic final in Milan, Italy. Winn played stellar defense throughout the 2026 Winter Games, helping her team score 33 goals in seven games while allowing just two goals.
Haley Winn of the U.S. women’s hockey team, holding the U.S. flag, celebrates her team’s Olympic gold medal win during a victory ceremony Feb. 19, 2026, after they won in overtime by defeating Canada 2-1 during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, Italy. (OSV News photo/David W Cerny, Reuters)
“It’s crazy to think about. It’s so hard to put into words,” Winn, 22, told the Catholic Courier, newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester, in a Feb. 22 telephone interview from Milan. “Just to be a part of something so much bigger than myself, it’s so special. There’s been so many emotions — a lot of tears of joy, disbelief.”
The gold-medal win came in Winn’s first Olympics and followed three world titles with other U.S. national teams on which she played. She asserted that her hockey success was only made possible through two mainstays in her life — her family and her Catholic faith.
“I wouldn’t be (an Olympic champion) without them,” Winn said of her parents, Janet and Mike, and older brothers Casey, Ryan and Tommy — all five of whom were on hand in Milan to cheer her on. “It’s their medal as much as mine.”
Winn said she also drew inspiration from praying together with several U.S. teammates before each Olympic game.
“Christ is my identity, my foundation,” she said. “I think it’s the thing that keeps me grounded.”
Staying grounded was no easy task in the gold-medal contest, as Winn’s U.S. team faced a 1-0 deficit until Hilary Knight’s goal tied the score with just over two minutes left in regulation. Megan Keller followed with the game-winner 4:07 into sudden-death overtime, setting off a wild U.S. celebration.
“I just had a sense of belief and confidence that as soon as we got that tying goal, it was over,” Winn said, lauding the ability and cohesiveness of her U.S. teammates: “It’s the best team I could have played on, a great group of girls. Everyone just has so much trust in each other and gives you the confidence to play your own game.”
Winn, a 5-foot-5-inch defenseman wearing uniform No. 8, logged substantial ice time in every Olympic game. Offensively, she netted her first Olympic goal — in a 5-0 win over Switzerland Feb. 9 — and three assists during the Games.
En route to her Olympic success, Winn spent her high school career with the BK Selects Hockey Academy for boys and girls, playing in elite youth events across the U.S. and Canada.
Winn, as well as BK Selects players from other states and countries, resided in dormitories on Bishop Kearney’s top floor while attending the school, where Winn’s mother is on the board of directors. She was one of eight BK Selects alumnae to play in the Olympics — five for the U.S. squad — yet was the only Rochester-area resident among those eight.
Upon graduating from Bishop Kearney in 2021, Winn played Division I hockey at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. In her senior season, she served as co-captain and was named ECAC Player of the Year as well as first team All-American. She graduated in 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Winn also has won International Ice Hockey Federation women’s world championships in 2023 and 2025 and was on the U.S. under-18 national team that earned the world title in 2020. In June 2025, she was selected second overall by the Boston Fleet in the Professional Women’s Hockey League draft. Through late February, she had helped the Fleet to a first-place showing in the eight-team PWHL.
Despite the time demands of playing top-level hockey, Winn makes ample time for her Catholic faith and is adamant about sharing it with others. While attending Clarkson, she joined a team Bible study group as a sophomore, and by her senior year, she was overseeing it.
Winn noted that her faith kicked into another gear while still at Bishop Kearney. Through attending Masses at Rochester’s St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Parish with other team members, Winn developed a friendship with Father Robert Werth, a Diocese of Rochester priest who assists in the parish. Winn’s parents eventually became good friends with Father Werth as well.
“Father Bob and Haley have really helped Mike and I become strong in our faith through the years,” Janet Winn said, noting that they often attend Sunday Masses that Father Werth celebrates when they’re not traveling for their daughter’s hockey games.
“He is amazing. I don’t have enough good things to say about him,” Winn remarked about Father Werth. The priest, in turn, lauded the star hockey athlete: “She is the best — the most humble person, maybe even a little shy.”
The same cannot easily be said about Winn’s brothers. Casey, Ryan and Tommy became viral sensations during the Olympics with their zany outfits and videos; their supportive antics even led the four siblings to being featured on NBC’s “Today” show.
Meanwhile, Winn was part of a U.S. squad that, according to published reports, attracted a television viewing average of 5.3 million people — peaking at 7.7 million during overtime — in the final against Canada, making it the most-watched women’s ice hockey game on record.
As she continues to gain popularity around the world, Winn said she will utilize that attention not for personal gain, but to continue voicing her religious beliefs.
“I am so blessed that God is using me to glorify him on this platform,” she stated.
(Mike Latona is senior staff writer at the Catholic Courier, newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester. This story was originally published by the Catholic Courier and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.)
WASHINGTON (OSV News) — As the U.S. prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has encouraged Catholics to participate in initiatives including a collective 250 Hours of Adoration and 250 Works of Mercy.
A file photo shows young people praying as a priest holds the monstrance during adoration in Nashville, Tennessee. As the United States prepares to commemorate its 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops encourages Catholics to participate in initiatives that include 250 Hours of Adoration and 250 collective Works of Mercy as part of the anniversary preparations. (Photo OSV News/courtesy of FOCUS)
To celebrate the occasion, “America 250,” the initiatives encourage prayer for the unity and healing of the U.S., according to a resource guide the USCCB has published. The conference previously said the U.S. bishops will consecrate the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in June.
In his encyclical “Dilexit Nos,” Pope Francis “instructs us to ‘nourish our lives with the strength of the Eucharist’ in Holy Communion and Adoration, so that we might understand Christ’s love for all more deeply and live out this love ourselves,” the guide stated. “Our contemplation of the Sacred Heart leads us deeper into the mystery of our salvation and deeper into our love for Christ found in the faces of our sisters and brothers — especially those most in need.”
The guide said parishes can participate in 250 Hours of Adoration by offering a Holy Hour on a weekly or monthly basis leading up to the nation’s July 4 anniversary. It noted that this could include continuing current practices or inviting new people to join. It suggested similar efforts to carry out 250 Works of Mercy.
It includes resources for Holy Hours for life, peace, marriage, religious liberty, vocations, an end to racism, as well as a Sacred Heart Holy Hour.
“Consider hosting a holy hour or series of holy hours at your parish using the templates provided. … You may have other ways to invite members of your community to spend some time in prayer for our country with Jesus truly present in the Blessed Sacrament,” the guide said. “To prepare for the Consecration of the United States to the Sacred Heart, parishes can also incorporate the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus into their Holy Hour.”
As examples of works of mercy, the guide encouraged parishes to find ways to assist women who are facing a crisis pregnancy; donate to food pantries and clothing closets, and community beautification programs; raise money for an overseas development project; sponsor a refugee family; tutor children; or volunteer at homeless shelters.
“The seven Corporal Works of Mercy come to us directly from the Scriptures in the Gospel of Matthew,” the guide said. “Rooted in our lives of faith, the actions that Jesus calls us to in feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned, burying the dead, and giving alms are central elements of our Catholic identity.”
It quotes from Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic exhortation “Dilexi Te,” which itself draws on Pope Francis’ “Dilexit Nos”: “As we contemplate Christ’s love, ‘we too are inspired to be more attentive to the sufferings and needs of others, and confirmed in our efforts to share in his work of liberation as instruments for the spread of his love.'”
(OSV News) — Katie Holler, a Catholic mother of two, had for months been following news of the Trump administration’s increasingly hardline immigration policies, but she still remembers when she felt compelled to do something more.
It was May 2025, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Pete Flores had just signed a memo immediately rescinding four Biden-era policies, including those designed to protect vulnerable CBP detainees such as pregnant women, infants and nursing mothers.
“At the time, I was newly postpartum with my second baby,” Holler told OSV News. “It was just like a breaking point for me, where I said, ‘I don’t want my church to be involved in this in any way. I don’t want us to be supportive of this. This is cruel; not honoring people’s dignity. This is not pro-life.'”
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Thea Bowman, a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration from Canton, Miss., are pictured in a combination photo. The Dorothea Project draws its name from the women, whose causes are open for sainthood. (OSV News photo/courtesy Milwaukee Journal/Michael Hoyt, Catholic Standard)
So Holler, a social worker from Steubenville, Ohio, launched the Dorothea Project, a women’s action and advocacy group dedicated to educating the public about Catholic social teaching, with the mission of empowering communities “to speak truth and act in defense of vulnerable people whenever human rights and human dignity are violated.”
Its moniker joins the names of the group’s two spiritually feisty patrons, both of whom have causes for canonization underway: Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Sister Thea Bowman, a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration who fought against racial injustice. Mary the Mother of Sorrows completes the troika of benefactresses.
The bipartisan movement has grown to over 1,000 members who feel they are “called to live our faith out loud,” according to the Dorothea Project website, which also highlights conscience formation, ongoing formation and spiritual solidarity.
In less than a year, they have written more than 200 letters to Church leaders in more than 75 dioceses, and 16,000-plus Hail Marys have been prayed for the vulnerable and imprisoned.
Holler said while the backgrounds of Dorothea Project members vary, she has become accustomed to “hearing stories from women who were previously supportive of this administration and reached a point where they felt, ‘This is not what I was sold, and I didn’t want to be supportive of it — the detention of infants, the detention of children, the separation of mothers and fathers from their children.'”
The Dorothea Project has petitioned 75 of the nation’s bishops to “help lead our local Church in defending the vulnerable and promoting policies that reflect the Gospel as well as Catholic Social Teaching.”
“In light of the Church’s teachings on human dignity, the preferential option for the poor, and the call to welcome the stranger … now is the time for bold and courageous leadership in defense of the marginalized,” they wrote.
“You need both the lay faithful and the clergy to be strong, and to be effective in defending people,” Holler told OSV News.
Asked if simply raising awareness of Catholic social teaching is enough, Holler pauses.
“I don’t know if it is,” she admitted. “Because we’re living in a day and age where people can easily disregard things as, ‘Oh, that’s fake news,’ or ‘Oh, that’s AI’ — it’s easy to find justification if you hold on to certain values more than our faith.”
The group’s new campaign seeks to launch parish and community Dorothea Project chapters, and to produce a voter’s guide based on Catholic social teaching themes.
“We want to build relationships with people, our communities, to bring Catholic social teaching without an agenda; without a political angle — just, ‘This is what the Church teaches. This is what our faith says,'” Holler said. “And if we believe this to be true, then we need to do something.”
Lauren Garcia, the group’s project leader who lives in Central Florida, told OSV News she watched headlines with a rising sense of anxiety, while feeling “helpless.” When she discovered the Dorothea Project, she appreciated its collective power.
“As one person — and a busy mom — me just doing one thing or calling one senator doesn’t feel like much,” Garcia said. “But when you bring it together with a group of other women who are very action-oriented — not just talking about, ‘Did you see that this happened?’ and then it kind of stops there, but actually doing stuff — it feels like even if I can only give that one phone call or that one letter, it’s part of a bigger effort.”
Lindsay Mayernik, a Dorothea Project member in St. Paul, Minnesota, organized other women to pray the rosary outside Minneapolis’ Whipple Federal Building in August. The epicenter of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Minnesota operations, federal agents have been accused of barring faith leaders from entering to offer prayer and pastoral guidance to detainees.
“They said, ‘Why are you here?'” recalled Mayernik. “I said, ‘We’re going to pray the rosary.’ And they let us — we just stood near the door and said a rosary, and it was fine. But now that’s not what Whipple looks like anymore,” she noted, referring to recent protests that have resulted in chaos and arrests.
Holler is clear that the Dorothea Project respects the fact that countries naturally have a right to regulate their borders, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church articulates.
But, she stresses, that the “Dorothea Project urges Catholic women to speak against immigration-related injustice to be informed by mercy and justice.”
“When we hear stories of infants being detained and getting sick to the point where they have to go to the hospital, that doesn’t seem like mercy or justice,” she said. “When we hear stories of these detention centers not having clean water — especially water clean enough for infant formula — that’s not mercy or justice. When there’s bug- or mold-ridden food, that’s not mercy or justice.”
Holler hopes Dorothea Project efforts will equip unsure Catholics to discern what that looks like.
“So,” she said, “even if from a broad spectrum, Catholics can say, ‘Yes, we need immigration enforcement and that needs to happen in some way,’ I hope and I pray we can also say, ‘But this isn’t it. This is missing the mark.'”
(Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia.)
(OSV News) — Is the Eucharist alive in your life? If not, would you like it to be?
The celebrations of the sacred Paschal Triduum are a great place to start.
Holy Thursday
The Paschal Triduum begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday launches the Paschal Triduum. “Paschal” derives from the Hebrew word pascha, to “pass over” or “pass through.” “Triduum” means “three days,” or at least 72 hours — from the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper to vespers on Easter Sunday. Together, the Paschal Triduum’s liturgies present the three days of Jesus’ salvific work of reconnecting — or bridging — heaven and earth so that we, the baptized, might pass over to heaven with him.
The work of bridge-building is pontifical. A “pontifex” is one who builds a bridge. A priest in ancient, pre-Christian Rome was called a pontifex since he stood in the breach that separated gods from men and attempted to effect a reconciliation between them. But these priests (like many other pre-Christian priests) were only shadows and anticipations of the Pontifex Maximus — Christ — that greatest of all bridge builders to come. Holy Thursday commences Jesus’ great bridge-building project.
Normally, the chrism Mass is celebrated in dioceses around the world on this day. In addition to blessing the holy oils and consecrating the sacred chrism, this Mass gathers priests — both ordained and baptized — around the high priest par excellence, the diocesan bishop. Following his homily, the bishop asks all of the faithful to pray for their priests, but not before these men renew their own priestly promises. His invitation to do so describes Holy Thursday as “the anniversary of that day when Christ our Lord conferred his priesthood on his apostles and on us.”
Holy Thursday, as his words indicate, is an anniversary of the priesthood, for on this day in the Upper Room, the priesthood of the New Covenant — that of Jesus and of his apostles — was actualized.
But, if the priesthood is born on Holy Thursday, so is its “twin” — the Eucharist. Also called the “natalis calicis” or “birthday of the chalice,” Holy Thursday supplies the material that priests need in order to build bridges: the offering, oblation or sacrifice. Priests need sacrifices — and sacrifices need priests: You can’t have one without the other.
The first reading from the Mass of the Lord’s Supper recounts God’s instructions to Moses and the Israelites about that first Passover offering: Unleavened bread is eaten along with a year-old, unblemished lamb whose blood, marking the houses, ransoms their firstborn sons. Each ancient detail finds fulfillment in Christ: the true bread from heaven, the Lamb of God, the Father’s only begotten Son. When the Church celebrates Mass today — when it obeys Christ’s command to “do this in memory of me” — that same Son, the Lamb, lives under the appearances of bread and wine.
The Church offers us another Eucharistic insight about the sacrifice during its preparation of the gifts and altar at this evening Mass. First, in one of the only occasions when the Missal names (and prints) a particular song for the offertory procession, the Church puts on our singing lips the “Ubi Caritas”: “Where charity and love prevail.” The verses of this eighth-century hymn sing of the unity in love that should characterize Christian believers: “let us strive to keep our minds free of division; may there be an end to malice, strife and quarrels, and let Christ our God be dwelling here among us.” Our offering, then, is not merely to supply material for the Eucharistic Body of Christ, but it is meant to unify “in charity and love” the mystical body of Christ.
To emphasize the connection between Eucharist and Church, the offertory procession on this night allows “gifts for the poor (to) be presented with the bread and wine.” What’s more, on this “birthday of the chalice,” the Church suggests that “during Communion, the priest entrusts the Eucharist from the table of the altar to deacons or acolytes or other extraordinary ministers, so that afterwards it may be brought to the sick who are to receive holy Communion at home.” In short, the body of Christ that is the sacrament gives life to the body of Christ, which is also the Church.
What, then, does Holy Thursday teach us — and form within us — about the Blessed Sacrament? That the Eucharistic mystery gives life and purpose not only to the priesthood but to the entire Church and its members.
Father Gerard Quirke, a priest of the Archdiocese of Tuam, raises the chalice during Easter Mass at Rock overlooking Keem Bay on Ireland’s Achill Island April 4, 2021. (OSV News photo/Seán Molloy, courtesy Irish Catholic)
Friday of the Passion of the Lord
Good Friday also teaches Eucharistic lessons, albeit in a different way than Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper — or any other Mass. In fact, there is no Mass at all to be found on Good Friday but, rather, a liturgy commemorating Christ’s passion and cross.
When we consider Christ’s cross as a tree, as the tradition does, then Eucharistic truths will bear fruit in our souls. In some fashion, the entire history of salvation tells a story of trees. In the beginning, at the center of Eden’s garden, stood a “tree of life” from which our first parents were welcome to eat from at their pleasure and, by it, come into closer union with God’s own divine life. At the end of time, in heaven, the Lord promises that he will give “the victor” the “right to eat from the tree of life that is in the garden of God” (Rv 2:7). Standing between these two “trees of life” rises the adorable cross of Christ, arms extended back to the beginning and forward to the end, embracing all things beneath its boughs.
Part of the beauty of Good Friday’s Tree of Life is found in its fruit. Jesus himself says as much: Every tree is known by its fruit (cf. Lk 6:44). The saints found much food for thought in such an image.
The eighth-century monk St. Theodore the Studite observes, “The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return. … A tree once caused our death, but now a tree brings life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree. What an astonishing transformation!” The cross of Christ, the true Tree of Life, reverses the world’s downward spiral to death and redirects it to the heights of heaven.
St. Albert the Great would say much the same in the 13th century: Christ “could not have commanded anything more beneficial, for (the Eucharist) is the fruit of the tree of life. Anyone who receives this sacrament with the devotion of sincere faith will never taste death.”
Ever since he first tasted the forbidden fruit, man has had a kind of supernatural eating disorder. Part of his healing will be a spiritual diet of supernatural substance: the body and blood of Christ, served up for us on the cross. Good Friday makes this dimension of the Eucharistic mystery palatable for us.
The Easter Vigil
Surely, there is no more remarkable celebration throughout the entire Church year than the Easter Vigil. The blackness of night, the magnificent illumination of the Easter fire, the grand procession into the church are just a prelude to the poetry of the Exsultet and the long recounting of salvation history in the many readings. But these words, too, lead to the evening’s main event: the initiation of souls into the full communion of the Church.
For some, baptism will be the doorway through which they pass into the Church. For others, a profession of faith and being confirmed by sacred chrism will mark their entry. For both, the first reception of the Eucharist will make their initiation complete.
We saw how Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper included gifts for the poor along with the bread and wine for the Mass. While the instructions for the offertory procession at the Easter Vigil don’t speak of unique gifts, they do enlist the service of the Church’s newly baptized priests. (Recall that through baptism, all the faithful share in Christ’s priesthood.)
“It is desirable,” the rubric says, “that the bread and wine be brought forward by the newly baptized or, if they are children, by their parents or godparents.” Part of the insight behind this ritual action was seen above: Priests — even among the baptized — offer sacrifices, and sacrifices are given to God through the consecrated hands of priests. But a potentially obscure figure mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer — “Abel the Just” — gives us even greater awareness of what’s happening at this moment.
Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, both offered gifts to God — Cain, the yield of his harvest, and Abel, a firstling from the flock (cf. Gn 4:4) — but only Abel’s was found acceptable. Why was this the case? We’ve seen before how God’s design favored the firstborn son as well as fruits of the springtime harvest — both of which Cain could claim. Yet there was something more meaningful in Abel’s offering — namely, his best.
Abel is called “the just.” Justice is a virtue that renders another his due. When it comes to what we owe God, there is nothing we can offer to commensurate his greatness and for the good things he has given us — which is everything! “How can I repay the Lord for all the great good done for me?” the psalmist asks (116:12). Answer: We can’t. But we can give our best, because our best is what God deserves as a matter of justice.
St. Cyprian explains: “When Cain and Abel first offered their sacrifices, God considered not so much the gifts as the spirit of the giver: God was pleased with Abel’s offering because he was pleased with his spirit. Thus, Abel the just man, the peacemaker, in his blameless sacrifice taught men that when they offer their gift at the altar they should approach as he did, in the fear of God, simplicity of heart, ruled by justice and peaceful harmony. Since this was the character of Abel’s offering, it was only right that he himself should afterward become a sacrifice.”
Abel thus stands as a model for the neophyte’s first Mass as a Catholic receiving first Communion. Abel also lives on as a reminder to each of us who has been to Mass many times and already received our first Communion. At every Mass, we are called to give to God our best, in simplicity of heart, joining our entire selves to Christ in the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Jesus’ Paschal sacrifice is made really, truly present before our praying eyes on the altar at every Mass. And even after Mass, his body, blood, soul and divinity remain in our midst in the tabernacle. The Triduum attunes us to this reality each year.
(Christopher Carstens is director of the Office for Sacred Worship in the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the author of “A Devotional Journey into the Easter Mystery.”)
(OSV News) — It is a time of despair, perplexity and contradiction. The very people who applaud Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem that morning, shouting out “Hosanna” and words of adoration will, within a week, be crying, “Crucify him.” They will go from acclaiming him as the new King of Israel to urging his life be traded in favor of a convicted criminal; they will first praise him and then mock him. Even friends entering Jerusalem at his side will desert Jesus.
All this discord will take place during one week beginning on what we call Palm Sunday.
Christians carry palm branches in 2017 while walking the traditional path that Jesus took on his last entry into Jerusalem during the Palm Sunday procession on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. (OSV News photo/Debbie Hill)
As we read in the Gospels, Jesus went to Jerusalem to join with throngs of other Jews to celebrate the Passover feast as had been prescribed in the Old Testament books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. According to the Gospel of St. John, Jesus and many of his followers journeyed the less than two miles from Bethany on that Sunday, arriving outside Jerusalem. As was the custom, pilgrims that had already arrived in the city went out to greet newly arriving groups; some had never seen Jesus but had heard about the miracles attributed to him and were caught up in the excitement.
Those arriving with and greeting Jesus were large in number as explained by John’s Gospel: “When the great crowd … heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took palm branches and went out to meet him, and cried out: ‘Hosanna! / Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, (even) the king of Israel'” (12:12-13).
This adulation was not lost on the Pharisees who were present. They said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He said in reply, “I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out” (see Lk 19:39-40). The Pharisees reported the events back to the Jewish high council, the Sanhedrin, which regarded Jesus’ ever growing popularity as a threat to their cozy relationship with the Romans. They were, in fact, planning to murder him.
Previously, Our Lord had deliberately avoided popular acclaim, even fled, but this, upon entering Jerusalem, he accepts. Yet his actions are different than the people expected. He doesn’t present himself as a rival to Caesar; he is not the political messiah or the warrior king the multitude had clamored for. Instead of entering Jerusalem on a war horse or chariot, he enters on a donkey, a sign of peace; and not just any donkey, but one on which no one had ever sat, the prerogative of a king. Seeing him on the donkey, the Jews surging around him recalled the words of the Prophet Zechariah 500 years earlier:
“Exult greatly, O daughter Zion! / Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! / Behold: your king is coming to you; /a just savior is he, / Humble, and riding on a donkey, / on a colt, the foal of a donkey. / He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim / and the horse from Jerusalem” (Zec 9:9-10).
Pope Benedict XVI explained these Old Testament words as they related to Jesus: “He is a king who destroys the weapons of war, a king of peace and a king of simplicity, a king of the poor. … Jesus is not building on violence; he is not instigating a military revolt against Rome.”
Riding on the borrowed donkey, Jesus made his humble entrance into the city while the crowds were scattering their garments before him and waving their palm branches. This joyful scene belies the traitorous acts, sorrow and agony that will soon follow, belies that this triumphant hero will be crucified like a criminal.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) offered a homily about Christ’s entry into Jerusalem: “How different the cries, ‘Away with him, away with him, crucify him,’ and then, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, hosanna, in the highest!’ How different the cries are that now are calling him ‘King of Israel’ and then in a few days’ time will be saying, ‘We have no king but Caesar!’ What a contrast between the green branches and the cross, between the flowers and the thorns! Before they were offering their own clothes for him to walk upon, and so soon afterwards they are stripping him of his, and casting lots upon them.”
Palms were symbols of life among the nomadic tribes, who, when crossing the desert, rejoiced at seeing the palm tree as it indicated an oasis with life-giving water was near. Palms have long been a sign of victory, success and glory. Victorious armies or leaders returning from the battlefield or a long military campaign were welcomed by the populace jubilantly waving palm branches. Despite Jesus’ peaceful manner, when the Jews waved the palms at him and spread their clothing over which he rode, they were affording him the honors of a conquering hero and simultaneously defying the Roman occupiers.
On Palm Sunday, we still go out to meet him, carry the blessed palms, joyfully sing out our hosanna and join in his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. But soon our joy turns to somberness as, clutching our palm, we hear the narrative of Christ’s passion. We realize, once again, that his triumph, his true victory, will come through the cross. We know, as Jesus did, how Holy Week will end. We know that joy will turn to sorrow and back to joy. We know that through the horror of his suffering, followed by the glory of his resurrection, good will trump evil and life will trump death.
The palms we take home and put in a special place serve to remind us that Palm Sunday is not lost to the ages but that by Christ’s victory we, too, can achieve everlasting life.
Soon after the Resurrection, Christians wanted to visit the sites of Christ’s passion and even reenact the incidents that had taken place, such as his entry into Jerusalem. But such activity would not be possible until the fourth century when Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire and ended all religious persecution. Later in that century, a Spanish pilgrim named Eigera visited Jerusalem. In her diary, she recorded how Christians re-created the events of Holy Week. She wrote that they gathered outside the city on the Sunday before Easter and listened to one of the Gospels telling of Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. Then they marched together through the city gates while carrying olive or palm branches. Our Palm Sunday processions are akin to what Eigera witnessed 17 centuries ago.
By the ninth century, the procession with blessed palms had expanded beyond Jerusalem, and during the Middle Ages they became widespread throughout Europe. In the 17th century, Christians were not only processing into church with palms but, during Mass, holding the palms while the Passion was being read.
Through the centuries, Palm Sunday and the procession of people holding palms would be celebrated in a variety of ways. In some locations the Blessed Sacrament was part of the procession, in other places the congregation started in the parish cemetery and then went into the church. Palms were sometimes blessed in one church and the people, carrying the palms, marched to another church for Mass. Most typical was the blessing of the people and the palms at a place outside the church and then processing in. For some time, even through the middle of the 20th century, the priest wore red vestments during the palm blessing and procession and then changed to a violet garment for Mass.
In 1955, the Church standardized and simplified the different entrances used on Palm Sunday: either an organized procession that begins somewhere outside the church, a solemn procession starting inside the church, or no procession at all. An entrance procession beginning at a location outside the church is used only once during the weekend Masses; it is not repeated at every Mass. The church calls this day Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord.
JACKSON, Miss. (OSV News) — Servant of God Thea Bowman was a beacon for the Church to embrace more authentically the essence of what it means to be Catholic, Bishop Joseph R. Kopacz told Massgoers at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in Jackson.
“To love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself portrays her lifelong commitment,” he said in his homily at a Feb. 9 Mass of thanksgiving marking the conclusion of the diocesan phase of Sister Thea’s canonization cause. “Her loving heart, her prophetic spirit, her brilliant mind and boundless stamina, even in illness, inspired many.”
The Mass was attended by friends and acquaintances of Sister Thea, representatives from her religious order, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, members of the historical commission who were part of the diocesan investigation and students from Sister Thea Bowman School in Jackson.
An official closing session of the diocesan phase of the canonization process followed the Mass, where the cause’s leaders ceremoniously sealed several boxes containing the diocesan phase’s documents and findings. In all, 10 boxes containing two sets of documents including more than 15,000 pages each, will be sent to the apostolic nunciature in Washington and then transferred to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, which will further investigate the cause.
Jackson’s Bishop Kopacz, the main celebrant at the Mass, was among several bishops who witnessed the closing session. Concelebrants included Archbishop Mark S. Rivituso and retired Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, Alabama, and Bishop Steven J. Raica and retired Bishop Robert J. Baker of Birmingham, Alabama.
Bishop Joseph R. Kopacz places a seal on the boxes for the cause for Sister Thea Bowman, with the assistance of postulator, Emanuele Spedicato on Feb. 9 at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle. (Photo by Tereza Ma/Mississippi Catholic)
Bishop Kopacz in 2018 opened the cause for Sister Thea, a native of Mississippi who was born in Yazoo City and raised in Canton. She was the only African American member of the Wisconsin-based Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Before she died of cancer in 1990 at age 52, she was a widely known speaker, evangelizer and singer.
Nearly eight years after the cause was opened, Bishop Kopacz described the moment of closing the diocesan phase of the investigation as a blessing, especially for those who have been inspired by Sister Thea’s life.
“There’s considerable joy in the African American community,” he said. “It radiates throughout the whole diocese. Our Hispanic population is very proud of Sister Thea Bowman, too. They look to her as someone who had done a lot in her life and inspires them, in spite of obstacles, to continue forward. She had a great passion and love for God, and she saw the Church as the body of Christ as being for all. She taught people to be proud of their culture, and yet see the universality of the Church.”
Among the documents and findings related to Sister Thea are interviews with more than 40 witnesses as well as her writings, articles and other items pertaining to her life, said Emanuele Spedicato, the postulator for the cause who has been charged with sending the documents to Rome.
There are main components of a canonization investigation, which include a proven reputation for holiness, a rigorous examination of the candidate’s writings and life, the testimony of witnesses regarding heroic virtue and the investigation of at least one miracle attributed to their intercession.
Notary for the cause, Fabvienen Taylor witnesses Emanuele Spedicato place the final documents in the boxes for the cause for Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman.
Once the Vatican accepts the acts of the diocesan investigation, the sealed boxes will be opened and then begins the work of summarizing the information, said Spedicato, who will be tasked with writing the “positio,” which lays out the case for sainthood. From there, it is sent to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints and then ultimately to the pope.
“The most exciting part is being here today and showing the people the formalities (of the investigation) that are not only formalities but it’s for a purpose,” Spedicato said.
Sister Thea is among seven Black Catholics with active sainthood causes — dubbed the “Saintly Seven.”
Of the seven, four have been declared “Venerable”: Mother Mary Lange, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first Catholic order of African American women religious, in Baltimore; Father Augustus Tolton from Chicago, the first Catholic priest in the United States known to be Black; Pierre Toussaint from New York City, known for his works of charity; and Mother Henriette Delille, foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans.
Two others, like Sister Thea, have the title “Servant of God”: Julia Greeley, who was born into slavery and after her emancipation later moved to Denver, where she was known for her works of charity; and Father Martin de Porres Maria Ward, a Conventual Franciscan and Boston native who served the poor and the sick on mission in Brazil well into the late 1990s.
Myrtle Otto
Among those who attended the Mass at the Jackson cathedral was Myrtle Otto, one of Sister Thea’s pupils at Holy Child Jesus School in Canton.
After joining the Francsican Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, Sister Thea returned to the school where she once was a student to teach music and English literature. She often stressed the importance of receiving a good education but also knew how to have fun, too, Otto said.
“We respected her in the utmost,” she said, adding that Sister Thea’s legacy should live on in how we treat others.
“Always learn to be kind,” Otto said. “Always learn to give people what’s due to them. She was a strong woman, and she taught us how to be strong. Regardless of what goes on, you pray and you go on and you’ll be successful. She’s now gone to glory with God.”
Several members of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration leadership were in attendance, including Sister Georgia Christensen, who knew Sister Thea from the time they were junior professed sisters.
Years ago during one of her assignments at a predominantly Black school in California, Sister Thea had come to help out for a brief period and was encouraging with the students, Sister Georgia recalled.
“She always had a spirit of joy about her,” she told the St. Louis Review, news outlet of the St. Louis Archdiocese, which Sister Thea visited on numerous occasions in the 1980s.
“She was able to break into song at any time, just praising God and making others happy. It touches the soul, and what it says is her life was a life worth living,” Sister Georgia recalled.
As part of their community’s perpetual adoration, the Franciscan sisters include a prayer at the end of every hour with the line: “All praise and all thanksgiving, be every moment thine.”
“I couldn’t help but think of that here today,” Sister Georgia said. “This is a moment of glory to God and Thea was the cause of it.”
Jennifer Brinker is a reporter at the St. Louis Review and Catholic St. Louis, the news outlets of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. This story was originally published by the St. Louis Review and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.
People pray during a Mass at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis Feb. 1, 2026, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the church being named a minor basilica by Pope Pius XI. Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis was the main celebrant. (OSV News photo/Dave Hrbacek, The Catholic Spirit)
NATION MINNEAPOLIS (OSV News) – A century ago, Pope Pius XI granted a grand Minneapolis church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception the title of “basilica.” It was the first church in the United States to receive the designation. To mark the anniversary, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda celebrated a Feb. 1 Mass that included a reading of the 1926 proclamation, a centennial letter from Pope Leo XIV, and the introduction of a processional hymn commissioned for the event. In 1926, the Holy Father conferred on the Pro-Cathedral of St. Mary the title minor basilica “by reason of the piety of its worshippers as well as by the splendor of its ritual and the richness of its adornment,” according to the basilica’s website. Currently there are 94 minor basilicas in the United States and more than 1,700 worldwide, in addition to four major basilicas in Rome and the Vatican. Among the privileges of the basilica designation is an attachment to the papal household and the right to use the papal coat of arms. In 1966, St. Paul VI changed the name of the Archdiocese of St. Paul to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and elevated the Basilica of St. Mary to the archdiocese’s co-cathedral.
VATICAN VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Leo XIV has added the feast day of St. John Henry Newman, who is “a radiant light for the Church on pilgrimage through history,” to the General Roman Calendar so that “his Optional Memorial be celebrated by all on 9 October.” Cardinal Arthur Roche and Archbishop Vittorio Francesco Viola, respectively prefect and secretary of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, announced the pope’s decision in a decree published by the Vatican Feb. 3. Cardinal Roche said the inclusion of St. Newman in the General Roman Calendar “is intended to present his figure as an outstanding example of the constant search for the truth that enlightens and saves” and to help the faithful contemplate him “as a man led by the ‘kindly light’ of God’s grace to find peace within the Catholic Church.” Bishops’ conferences around the world will need to translate from Latin the prayers issued by the dicastery for Mass on his feast day as well as those used in the Liturgy of the Hours and in the Roman Martyrology, and have the translations confirmed by the dicastery.
WORLD MANAGUA, Nicaragua (OSV News) – Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime has blocked a Catholic diocese from carrying out door-to-door evangelization, ordering all pastoral activity to remain inside parish grounds. The restriction affected the Diocese of León, where parishioners planned missions on Jan. 24, according to exiled lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, who documents religious persecution in the country. The move is the latest in a sweeping crackdown on the Catholic Church that intensified after the bishops mediated – and later withdrew from – talks following anti-government protests in 2018. Since then, at least 305 clergy and religious, including four bishops, have been forced into exile, and more than 5,000 Catholic charities, schools, and religious groups have lost legal status. While some religious orders have quietly left the country, the government continues to detain clergy and restrict ministry. Church leaders and human rights monitors say recent prisoner releases are strategic gestures, not signs of real religious freedom. Exiled Auxiliary Bishop Silvio José Baez of Managua spoke of freedom and democracy “coming increasingly closer” in Latin America. He said in his Jan. 25 homily at St. Agatha’s parish in Miami that it’s “time to speak to illuminate the darkness of the moment, feed the hope of the people and denounce the oppressive structures that have prevailed until now, but that are about to disappear.”
