NATION
WASHINGTON (CNS) – Decrying President Joe Biden’s new executive order on abortion, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee said Aug. 5 that “continued promotion of abortion takes lives and irreparably harms vulnerable pregnant mothers, their families and society. Even preceding the Dobbs decision, my brother bishops and I have implored the nation to stand with moms in need, and work together to protect and support women and children,” Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said in a statement. “It is the wrong direction to take at a moment when we should be working to support women and to build up a culture of life,” added the prelate, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-life Activities. On Aug. 3, Biden signed an executive order instructing the Department of Health and Human Services “to advance access to reproductive health care services, including, to the extent permitted by federal law, through Medicaid for patients traveling across state lines for medical care.” In his statement, Archbishop Lori said: “I continue to call on the president and all our elected officials to increase support and care to mothers and babies, rather than facilitate the destruction of defenseless, voiceless human beings,” he said.

LAFAYETTE, La. (CNS) – The annual Fête-Dieu du Têche in the Diocese of Lafayette took place on the feast of the Assumption, Aug. 15, and this year’s 40-mile eucharistic procession by boat down the Bayou Têche coincides with the U.S. Catholic Church’s three-year National Eucharistic Revival now underway. “In an effort to cultivate a deeper devotion to Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist, boaters will be able to choose a patron from a list of 50 eucharistic witnesses – saints and blesseds “who exemplified a life totally dedicated to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist,” according to a news release about this year’s event. Saints known for their love of the Eucharist were highlighted, including St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Jean Vianney, St. Katharine Drexel, St. Teresa of Kolkata, as well as Blessed Carlo Acutis. “The intention for the all-day spiritual and cultural celebration will be for a ‘Renaissance Eucharistique’ in Acadiana and beyond,” the release said. Acadiana refers to the French Louisiana region – composed of 22 parishes – that is home to the Cajun people. Cajuns are descendants of the Acadians, a people exiled from present-day Nova Scotia by the British during the French and Indian War. They settled along the bayous and prairies of southwest Louisiana.

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis plans to make his long-awaited visit to Ukraine before his trip to Kazakhstan in September, said Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See. In a series of tweets posted Aug. 6 after meeting with the pope, Yurash said the people of Ukraine “have been waiting for the pope” since the start of the war and will “be happy to greet him before his trip to Kazakhstan.” “I am very close to Ukraine and want to express this closeness (through) my visit to Ukraine,” the pope said, according to the Ukrainian ambassador. “Moments of communication with (the) Holy Father are always inspirational,” he said in a follow-up tweet. “Especially when there is a chance to discuss and promote subjects that are ‘on the table’ for a long time, like the pope’s visit to Ukraine.” The pope expressed on several occasions his desire to not only visit Ukraine, but also Russia to plead for an end to the conflict. In an interview with Catholic News Service July 18, Yurash said that while Ukraine was ready for a papal visit, he doubted the pope would be able to visit Moscow.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis recognized the martyrdom of Hungarian Father Péter Oros, who was killed at the height of the Cold War by Soviets in Ukraine. During a meeting Aug. 5 with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the pope also signed decrees advancing the sainthood causes of four other men and one woman. According to the dicastery’s website, Father Oros was born in Biri, present-day Hungary, in 1917 and was ordained a priest for the Ruthenian Eparchy of Mukachevo in 1942. Some records indicate a Byzantine bishop born in the same year with a similar name. Although the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints states Father Oros was an Eastern-rite Catholic priest, it was not unusual at the time for an auxiliary bishop to be named clandestinely. After the annexation of the Transcarpathian territory in present-day Ukraine, the suppression of Eastern Catholic churches forced Father Oros into hiding. After a warrant for his arrest was issued in 1953, he was shot and killed by a police officer at a train station in Siltse, Ukraine, while attempting to flee.

WORLD
LAGOS, Nigeria (CNS) – Nigerian officials identified six suspects arrested in connection with the June 5 attack that killed 40 people at St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo. Maj. Gen. Jimmy Akpor, defense department spokesman, said all were linked to the Islamic State West Africa Province group. He said the arrests were made through a joint effort of military and defense officials. Akpor said a preliminary investigation showed that “Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza was the mastermind of the terror attack on the Catholic Church in Owo as well as the attack on a police station” in Kogi state June 23. In the second attack, a police officer was killed and weapons were stolen. Omeiza is sometimes known as Bin Malik. Police also arrested Momoh Otohu Abubakar, Aliyu Yusuf Itopa and Auwal Ishaq Onimisi for the Owo attack, in which attackers sneaked into a Pentecost Mass with explosives. Akpor confirmed Aug. 10 that the four were arrested Aug. 1. On Aug. 11, Akpor said officials had arrested two more suspects: Al-Qasim Idris and Abdulhaleem Idris. Officials did not release a motive for the attack.

AACHEN, Germany (CNS) – Missio, one of Germany’s Pontifical Mission Societies, marked the third World Day Against Witch Hunts Aug. 10 by warning that the phenomenon is on the increase worldwide. The German Catholic news agency KNA said that in at least 43 countries, women, but also men and children, are in mortal danger because they are being persecuted as alleged witches, according to the 2022 World Map of Witch Hunts published by missio Aachen. Missio said it had added Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe to the map since last year. Most of the countries affected are in Africa, but the phenomenon also exists in Southeast Asia as well as Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala and Haiti. The current missio world map is based on conservative estimates. Other lists put the number of affected countries near 60, KNA reported. Experts said more people had been killed as alleged witches and sorcerers worldwide in the past 60 years than in the 350 years of European witch hunts. The accusation of witchcraft often is triggered by sudden and inexplicable deaths or illnesses, but also by weather phenomena, Swiss Franciscan Sister Lorena Jenal said in a recent interview with KNA.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Cuban bishops and Pope Francis asked for prayers as a major fire has caused at least one death, more than 100 injuries and left 17 firefighters missing in Cuba. The fire initially began with a lightning strike that hit a tank at an oil facility Aug. 5 and has since spread along the port city of Matanzas. Thousands were evacuated from the region as the fire spread from one tank to three. Some feared wind was spreading the contamination to other parts of the island, including to the capital, Havana, about 60 miles away. Pope Francis, in a telegram sent to the Cuban bishops via Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said he was following news about the “unfortunate accident. May the Lord grant you strength in this moment of pain and sustain the work of extinction (of flames) and (of) search and rescue,” the telegram said.

NATION
WASHINGTON (CNS) – Sister Simone Campbell, a longtime advocate for economic justice and health care policy, and late labor leader Richard Trumka received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in a White House ceremony. President Joe Biden presented the award to 15 others as well July 7. “For so many people and for the nation, Sister Simone Campbell is a gift from God. For the past 50 years she has embodied the belief in our church that faith without works is dead,” Biden said of the woman religious whose career has focused on advocating for poor and voiceless people. Sister Campbell, a California native and a member of the Sisters of Social Service, stepped down as executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobbying organization, in March 2021 after serving for 17 years. Biden particularly noted her role in passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, a complex law which expanded access to health care for millions of people. He also cited a series of annual “Nuns on the Bus” nationwide tours that Sister Campbell led touting health care as a right and that federal budgets were moral documents that must reflect the priorities of serving poor and marginalized people.
“Compassionate and brave, humble and strong, today Sister Simone remains a beacon of light. She’s the embodiment of a covenant of trust, hope and progress of a nation,” Biden said. Trumka was president of the AFL-CIO from 2009 until his death in August 2021. The faith of Trumka, a Catholic born to a Polish father and an Italian mother, helped shape a lifelong career in the labor movement.

CHICAGO (CNS) – Saying he watched “in horror” news reports in the aftermath of a mass shooting during a suburban Fourth of July parade, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago offered prayers for the victims. Authorities said seven people died – five on the parade route and two later in the hospital – and 30 others were injured when a gunman opened fired on people lining the parade route. “What should have been a peaceful celebration of our nation’s founding ended in unspeakable tragedy,” Cardinal Cupich said in a

statement released hours after the tragedy by the archdiocese of Chicago. Pointing to the victims, who authorities said ranged in age from 8 to 85, Cardinal Cupich said, “Weapons designed to rapidly destroy human bodies have no place in civil society.” Law enforcement authorities charged Robert E. Crimo III, 21, of suburban Chicago with seven counts of murder after the shooting in Highland Park in Chicago’s affluent North Shore. Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said the suspect would receive a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole if convicted of the charges. He also said other charges were pending. The man was apprehended without incident on a busy highway in a nearby suburb after briefly fleeing officers. Highland Park police said witnesses reported seeing a man with a long gun indiscriminately firing dozens of rounds from a rooftop at parade spectators, sending marchers and viewers scurrying for cover.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – In a 6-3 vote June 27, the Supreme Court ruled that a former high school football coach had the right to pray on the football field after games because his prayers were private speech and did not represent the public school’s endorsement of religion. “The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” said the court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. The court’s majority opinion also emphasized that “respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic – whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field.” It said the case focused on a government entity seeking to “punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment” and that the “Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.” Joseph Kennedy, former assistant coach at Bremerton High School, outside of Seattle, said his postgame prayers on the field cost him his job. The coach had been told by school district officials to stop these prayers on the 50-yard line, and he refused. When his contract was not renewed, he sued the school for violating his First Amendment rights.

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis said the goals he has achieved in more than nine years as pope were simply the fruit of the ideas discussed by the College of Cardinals prior to his election. In an interview with Argentine news agency Telam published July 1, the pope said that objectives, such as the reform of the Roman Curia, were “neither my invention nor a dream I had after a night of indigestion. I gathered everything that we, the cardinals, had said at the pre-conclave meetings, the things we believed the new pope should do. Then, we spoke of the things that needed to be changed, the issues that needed to be tackled,” he said. “I carried out the things that were asked back then. I do not think there was anything original of mine. I set in motion what we all had requested,” he added. The apostolic constitution reforming the Roman Curia, titled “Praedicate Evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”) went into effect June 5. In the document, the pope said the purpose of the constitution was to “better harmonize the present exercise of the Curia’s service with the path of evangelization that the church, especially in this season, is living.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Before celebrating the Holy Year 2025, Pope Francis is asking Catholics around the world to dedicate time in 2023 to studying the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Presenting the official logo for the Holy Year June 28, Archbishop Rino Fisichella also announced the pope’s plan for helping Catholics prepare for the celebration: focusing on the four constitutions issued by Vatican II in 2023; and focusing on prayer in 2024. The four Vatican II constitutions are: Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (“Sacrosanctum Concilium”); Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (“Lumen Gentium”); Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (“Dei Verbum”); and Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (“Gaudium et Spes”). Archbishop Fisichella, whom the pope appointed to coordinate planning the Holy Year, said, “A series of user-friendly resources, written in appealing language, are being produced to arouse curiosity in those who have no memory” of the council, which was held 1962-65. Details about the 2024 year of prayer and spiritual preparation for the jubilee are still being worked out, the archbishop said. The Vatican already had announced that Pope Francis chose “Pilgrims of Hope” as the theme for the Holy Year.

WORLD
HONG KONG (CNS) – The Chinese Communist Party is seeking to expand its apparatus to monitor and curb religious activities in cyberspace through training and deploying hundreds of “auditors” across the country, triggering concerns from rights groups. Under the guidance of the Communist Party, the Ethnic and Religious Commission of Guangdong Province in southern China held a test for the first group of auditors for the state-run Internet Religious Information Services in early June, the China Christian Daily reported. The Internet Religious Information Services agency was formed in March after China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs announced the “Administrative Measures for Internet Religious Information Services” late last year. The measures have been formulated by several state agencies in line with existing legislation in China such as the “Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China,” “Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services,” and the revised “Regulations on Religious Affairs.”

NATION
SAN DIEGO (CNS) – Cardinal-designate Robert W. McElroy told reporters May 31 that when he learned he is among the 21 new cardinals Pope Francis will create Aug. 27, “I said a big prayer. I said several prayers because I was stunned and so shocked by this,” said the 68-year-old prelate who heads the San Diego Diocese. He is the only American in the group the pope announced May 29. “It was prayer in gratitude for my family and the many people who have helped form me over the years and thanksgiving to God for all their roles in my life,” he said during a 25-minute news conference held outside the diocesan pastoral center. After the consistory, he will be among 132 cardinals under the age of 80, who will be eligible to vote in a conclave. The number of those over 80 will be 97, bringing the total number of cardinals to 229. A native of San Francisco, Bishop McElroy is the sixth bishop of San Diego. He was installed April 15, 2015. Ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco April 12, 1980, he was an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese from September 2010 until he was named to head the Diocese of San Diego in 2015. “By naming Bishop Robert McElroy as a cardinal, Pope Francis has shown his pastoral care for the church in the United States,” said Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “I have known and have had the privilege of working with Cardinal-designate McElroy for many years.”

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Any Catholic who participates in the celebration July 24 of the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly can receive a plenary indulgence, the Vatican announced. “Grandparents, the elderly and all the faithful who, motivated by a true spirit of penance and charity,” attend Mass or other prayer services for the occasion can receive the indulgence, which “can also be applied as a suffrage for the souls in purgatory,” said the announcement published May 30. Pope Francis celebrated the first World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly in 2021 and decreed that it be observed each year on the Sunday closest to the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, Jesus’ grandparents. In his message for this year’s celebration, Pope Francis asked older people like himself to be “artisans of the revolution of tenderness. We grandparents and elderly people have a great responsibility: to teach the women and men of our time to regard others with the same understanding and loving gaze with which we regard our own grandchildren,” he had written.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Holy Trinity shows how to be open to others and to be good, generous and gentle, Pope Francis said. “The Trinity teaches us that one can never be without the other. We are not islands, we are in the world to live in God’s image: open, in need of others and in need of helping others,” the pope said June 12 before reciting the Angelus prayer with visitors gathered in St. Peter’s Square. He also led prayers for the people of Ukraine, who remain “afflicted by war” and whose situation “remains vivid in my heart.” He urged that the world “not grow accustomed” to the tragedy in Ukraine. “Let us always keep it in our hearts. Let us pray and strive for peace,” he said after reciting the Angelus prayer. In his main address, the pope reflected on the day’s feast of the Most Holy Trinity, which celebrates God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit speaks, not of himself, but “he announces Jesus and reveals the Father. And we also notice that the Father, who possesses everything because he is the origin of all things, gives to the Son everything he possesses,” the pope said. The Holy Trinity “is open generosity, one open to the other.”

WORLD
JERUSALEM (CNS) – After 10 years of systematic work, the Old City of Jerusalem is more accessible to the disabled and the elderly. The pandemic-related shutdown allowed for completion of work of the last, most sensitive mile of the historic stone alleyways of the Via Dolorosa – the Way of the Cross. It took years for the first 2.5 miles of the $6.5 million Accessible Jerusalem-Old City project to be complete because of the complexity of working within a historic area that is less than a half square mile in size. Both the Old City and its walls are designated as an UNESCO World Heritage site, requiring planners to carefully consider changes as they accommodated the needs of residents living their daily lives and millions of visitors a year, said Gura Berger, spokeswoman for the East Jerusalem Development Co., which implemented the program. “We worked day and night and we made (1 mile) accessible in two years,” Berger said. “These are the most sentimental (miles) because for the first time in history the Via Dolorosa is accessible. We did something important because people really come here in awe, with respect and hopes to the holy city.”

SEOUL, South Korea (CNS) – Bishops in South Korea have moved ahead to pursue the canonization of 81 Catholics, including priests, religious and laypeople who were martyred by communist forces during the Korean War. The Special Episcopal Commission to Promote Beatification and Canonization held its closing session June 7 for preliminary examination of 81 Servants of God, the title accorded to individuals as the first step toward canonization, according to a notice from the bishops’ conference of Korea. The bishops agreed that the candidates were “witnesses of modern and contemporary faith” of the Korean Church, ucanews.com reported. Sainthood candidates include Bishop Francis Hong Yong-ho of Pyongyang, 49 priests, seven religious and 23 laymen who were tortured and killed by the communists before and after the Korean War, which was fought from 1950 to 1953. The martyrs include foreign missionaries. One was Msgr. Patrick James Byrne, an American Maryknoll missionary who was the apostolic delegate to Korea. The bishops’ conference said a preliminary examination of data and research materials began Feb. 22, 2017, and 25 sessions were held until May 13 this year. The committee will submit the data and documents it has gathered to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

NATION
WASHINGTON (CNS) – How to make sense of Americans’ attitudes toward abortion? It isn’t easy. In polls, many respondents will give answers that contradict each other. A Gallup poll in 2019 – Gallup has polled regularly on abortion since 1975 – found that 92% of Americans believed that using birth control was “morally acceptable,” but their support for abortion, by contrast, was more mixed. (The Catholic Church teaches that both are morally wrong.) But the year before, Gallup found that 65% of Americans believed abortion should generally be illegal during the second trimester of pregnancy – but in the same survey, 69% said the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe v. Wade. FiveThirtyEight, which itself analyzed abortion polls, “found that a large majority of Americans support abortion in the first trimester, but that support tends to drop in the second trimester.” In an ABC News-Washington Post poll conducted in late April, 54% of Americans want the court to uphold Roe, nearly twice as many as the 28% who want to see it struck down. Also, an ABC poll offering only a yes-or-no choice found that 57% of Americans opposed a ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, while 58% opposed a ban after six weeks.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – The chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace praised a May 16 statement announcing the lifting of restrictions against Cuba by the Biden administration, particularly those measures that will help family reunification. The Biden administration said it will increase consular services on the island to help with visa processing “making it possible for more Cubans to join their families in the United States via regular migration channels.” The State Department also announced plans to allow more people from the U.S. to engage with Cubans via group travel, allowing U.S. flights beyond Havana, and reinstating a remittance program for families in the U.S. to send up to $1,000 per quarter to family members on the island. The move reverses restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, which had taken a more punitive stance on Cuba. “We commend the administration’s renewed interest in restarting U.S. engagement with Cuba. Recognizing that points of contention remain between our two countries, Cuba’s punitive isolation has not produced the economic and social change that the United States has sought to effect,” said Bishop David J. Malloy of Rockford, Illinois, who chairs the USCCB’S international policy committee.

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Catholics of all ages are called to form strong faith communities, listen to and dialogue with others, reach out to share the Gospel and work to protect the environment, Pope Francis said in a series of speeches May 21. Still using a wheelchair because of ongoing pain in his knee, Pope Francis had a busy day, meeting four separate groups in addition to holding three private meetings. The pope’s public appointments began with an apology to several hundred adolescents preparing for confirmation in the Archdiocese of Genoa; they had gathered in the small square between the pope’s residence and St. Peter’s Basilica. “I’ve made you wait 35 minutes. I am sorry,” the pope told them. “I heard the noise but had not finished the things I had to do first.” Pope Francis pleaded with the youngsters not to make their confirmation a “farewell sacrament” from active parish life, but to treasure the grace they receive, strengthen it with prayer and share it “because in the church we are not ‘me alone,’ or just me and God; no, we are all of us, in community.”

ROME (CNS) – Celebrating the launch of the Scholas International Educational Movement and its environmental project, Pope Francis encouraged young people, especially women, to lead the charge in fighting climate change. “Defending nature means defending the poetry of creation, it means defending harmony. It is a fight for harmony. And women know more about harmony than us men,” the pope said May 19 during an event at Rome’s Pontifical Urban University. U2 frontman Bono, who joined the pope for the launch, said he had been a supporter of Scholas for the past four years and was “drawn to this idea of a ‘culture of encounter.’” Scholas began in Pope Francis’ Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, supporting education in poor neighborhoods by pairing their schools with private schools and institutions in wealthier neighborhoods. The organization has spread to other countries and supports a variety of exchange programs aimed at promoting education, encouraging creativity and teaching young people about respect, tolerance and peace.

WORLD
MEXICO CITY (CNS) – A Nicaraguan bishop and priest accused police of harassing them – the latest attempt by the government to impede the work of the Catholic Church. Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, started a hunger strike May 19. He said he would have only water and electrolytes until police stop the harassment – including harassment of his parents and family. In a video posted to the Facebook account of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Bishop Álvarez said police followed him all day and, when he asked to speak with the chief of police, officers entered the house where he was with his family. “I have been persecuted throughout the day by the Sandinista police, from morning until late at night, at all times, during all my movements of the day,” Bishop Álvarez said. “They came to my private, family, paternal, maternal home, putting the safety of my family at risk.” The Nicaraguan bishops’ conference issued a statement supporting Bishop Álvarez May 21. “We are experiencing difficult moments as a nation and our duty as a church is to announce the truth of the Gospel,” the statement said.

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan (CNS) – Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation and Archbishop Donald Bolen of Regina, Saskatchewan, have been walking together for some time now – including through the work of ground-penetrating radar and finding 751 hits near a former Catholic-run residential school last summer. “It took the validation of unmarked graves (to) put us in this moment,” Delorme said at a recent “Walking With Your Neighbor” event in Saskatoon. He described how the discoveries of unmarked graves has led to millions of Canadians putting down their “shields” and admitting they did not know the truth about Indigenous peoples and Canada. “We are truly at a moment where all of us – Indigenous and not – must all reset our compass just a little bit – because our children and children yet unborn depend upon this moment. We could look the other way and stay with the status quo … but the status quo doesn’t work,” said Delorme. “Walking Together” is the theme of Pope Francis’ July 24-29 visit to Canada’s Indigenous peoples. In the presentation at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, Archbishop Bolen stressed the importance of finding a new way of walking together and coming to a new understanding of the truth of Canadian history. “The conversation starts to open up between the church and Indigenous peoples when we acknowledge the profound suffering, the waves of suffering that so many Indigenous peoples have experienced in the context of residential schools, and more broadly in the context of the Indian Act and colonization,” said Archbishop Bolen. “We need to acknowledge our responsibility as church for our involvement in these schools, that took away language and culture and spirituality and suppressed so many good things.”