Catholic News

• The family is formed by a man and a woman, Pope says in message to symposium (CWN)
  In a video message released today and addressed to a symposium on the family in Brazil, Pope Leo XIV described the family as a “unique community of persons formed by a man and a woman.”
• Lauding charismatic renewal, Pope compares baptism in the Spirit to St. Augustine's experience (CWN)
  Repeating previous popes’ words of praise for the Catholic charismatic renewal, Pope Leo XIV compared the experience of baptism in the Spirit to St. Augustine’s own experience.
• Pope links young people's mental health challenges to loss of interior life, sense of meaning (CWN)
  Addressing education ministers from Ibero-American nations, Pope Leo XIV linked the mental health challenges experienced by young people to the loss of a sense of meaning, an inner life, and “interior constellations” to which they can look.
• Pope says polarization, war recall St. Augustine's City of Man (CWN)
  Pope Leo XIV linked contemporary wars, polarization, and division to St. Augustine’s description of the City of Man.
• Pope to lead international Rosary for peace this evening (Dicastery for Evangelization)
  The Dicastery for Evangelization announced that Pope Leo XIV will pray a Rosary for peace this evening, May 30, at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in the Vatican Gardens, as the Marian month of May comes to a close. The Pope’s Rosary will be simulcast in participating Marian shrines around the world. Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, extended the invitation to the faithful around the world and announced the intentions of each of the five mysteries being prayed.
• Canada's Prime Minister Carney, Pope Leo discuss AI, peace (CWN)
  Pope Leo XIV and Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada spoke by phone this afternoon about artificial intelligence, four days after the publication of the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (CWN article, analysis).
• New Chaldean Patriarch enthroned; vows to preserve Church's liturgical traditions (Syriac Press)
  Paul III Nona, who was elected Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church last month, was enthroned in Baghdad on May 29. Syriac Press reported that the new Patriarch outlined six priorities, including unity in the Church, the spiritual life, and “authentic identity”: “preserving liturgical traditions, the Syriac-Aramaic language, customs, and Eastern Christian spiritual philosophy.”
• Welcoming the persecuted as refugees makes America great, USCCB committee chairman says (USCCB)
  The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration said that “offering refuge to the world’s vulnerable and persecuted is a founding principle of our country and it is uniquely what makes this country great.” “For decades, the United States was known for offering this opportunity, not favoring one particular group, but granting relief in accordance with our laws, our shared values, and the national interest,” Bishop Brendan Cahill of Victoria, Texas, said after the Trump administration announced the admission of 10,000 Afrikaners from South Africa. “Today, however, that is sadly not the case.” “We appreciate the Administration’s acknowledgement that our country can continue to resettle refugees, and we renew our call for resettlement to be extended further to others in need, including those persecuted on the basis of their faith, the likes of whom have no access to refuge in our country at this time,” Bishop Cahill added.
• Bishop reports unprecedented number of converts in Estonia (National Catholic Register)
  The sole bishop in Estonia, where only 0.8% of people are Catholic, discussed a small but unprecedented rise in conversions this year. Bishop Philippe Jourdan received 48 adults into the Church at Easter; 33 of them were unbaptized. “We had never had so many,” Bishop Jourdan told the National Catholic Register. “Previously, catechumens were often in the 30-to-40 age bracket. Now, they are much more often in their 20s.”
• Ontario won't force Catholic schools to fly pride flag (Newmarket Today)
  Officials in the Canadian province of Ontario will not force the Catholic schools under the purview of the York Catholic District School to fly the gay pride flag. “This matter falls within the jurisdiction of the dioceses, trustees and school board,” said Emma Testani, press secretary for the province’s education ministry. “We have made it clear that we will not engage in disputes over jurisdictional matters at this time.”
• Flourishing traditional Marian Franciscan community in UK to be dissolved (National Catholic Register)
  The Marian Franciscans, formally known as the Family of Mary Immaculate and St. Francis, voted to dissolve their community as of May 31. “Despite growth in numbers and apostolic activity, it was not possible to secure the practical and canonical support needed for formation, sponsorship, and future priestly ordinations,” the friars said in a statement. The community, whose priests offered the extraordinary form of the Latin Mass, had grown to 20 friars. Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, England, issued a decree confirming the dissolution. The National Catholic Register reported that “following Pope Francis’ 2021 apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes, the community said diocesan authorization for celebrations of the traditional liturgy ‘became more restricted.’”
• German church desecrated (OIDAC Europe)
  The Catholic church in Knittelsheim, a town of 1,000 in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, was recently desecrated. During a burglary, the tabernacle was opened, and the Eucharist was scattered on the floor. Local observers described the church as a “picture of devastation.”
• 'Queer voices were strong' at Katholikentag, group says (New Ways Ministry)
  New Ways Ministry, which dissents from Catholic teaching on homosexuality, said that “queer voices emerged loud and proud in both their worship and their calls for reform” during Katholikentag (Catholic Day), the biennial German Catholic gathering first held in 1848. During the gathering, which took place in Würzburg from May 13 to 17, “more than 200 people attended a queer worship service,” according to New Ways Ministry. Held inside the Order of Saint Augustine’s church, the service was “prepared by the initiative #OutInChurch, the Augustinian Monastery in Würzburg, the Federation of German Catholic Youth (BDKJ), the Network of Catholic Lesbians, the Ecumenical Working Group on Homosexuality and the Church (HuK), and ‘Queer and Christian in the Diocese of Würzburg.’” New Ways Ministry was the subject of a notification by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1999) and a statement by the US bishops (2011). Pope Francis, however, praised Sister Jeannine Gramick, co-founder of New Ways Ministry, in a handwritten letter, and subsequently met with Sister Gramick and other leaders of the group.
• Outgoing US religious freedom commissioner highlights worsening global crisis (EWTN News)
  The departing chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom told EWTN News that the “situation for religious freedom in the world today is worse than it was when I came on the commission [in 2022], and certainly worse than it was a decade ago.” Stephen Schneck lamented the worsening situation in India and China, the world’s two most populous nations. Schneck said that India “is among the worst countries in the global community in regards to religious freedom from the analysis that has been done by the commission over the last decade or so.” The plight of religious believers in China “gets worse and worse,” he added, and “itʼs not just limited to individuals. Weʼre talking about whole populations here—the Uyghur Muslims, the Tibetan Buddhists, Christians.”
• Washington Nationals official fired after video that implied discrimination against Catholic pitcher (EWTN News)
  The Washington Nationals fired its community relations director, Sean Hudson, after the release of a video in which he stated that the baseball team does not use pitcher Trevor Williams on social media because he is a “super Christian-Catholic” who spoke out against “drag queens who sometimes dressed up as nuns.” “We were horrified by the comments that were made on the video,” said team business president Jason Sinnarajah. “The comments don’t reflect us as an organization, our values and who we are. We took action right away, and that individual is no longer employed by the team.”
• Nigerian priest found guilty of abusing adult women in Texas (OSV News)
  A priest of the Diocese of Uyo, Nigeria, who ministered in the United States was convicted in a Texas courtroom of three counts of sexual assault of adult women. Father Anthony Odiong, who was arrested in Florida in 2024 for child pornography, also “fathered at least one child with another woman in Louisiana who had been under his spiritual direction,” according to the prosecution’s DNA evidence. The case “highlights the Catholic Church’s ongoing challenges in addressing clergy sexual predation of adults in situations where they are vulnerable, particularly in relationships of pastoral care or spiritual guidance, while states such as Texas and Georgia have passed laws to criminalize such acts,” noted Gina Christian of OSV News.
• Documents on Cambodian martyrs presented to Vatican (CWN)
  The vicar apostolic of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, delivered to the Vatican almost 2,500 pages of documentation on the sainthood cause of his predecessor, Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas, and 11 other Catholics martyred in the 1970s.
• Focus on spreading the Gospel, Pope tells Italian bishops (CWN)
  Pope Leo XIV encouraged the bishops of Italy to sow the Gospel tirelessly and look upon the harvest with the gaze of Christ, rather than “lament the hardened ground.”
• Italian bishop issues pastoral letter on evangelization of Muslims (Diocesi Ventimiglia – Sanremo)
  The bishop of Ventimiglia-Sanremo, Italy, issued “Non c’è amore più grande” (There is no greater love than this), a pastoral letter on the evangelization of local Muslims. Noting that 2026 is the Year of Saint Francis, Bishop Antonio Suetta recalled St. Francis of Assisi’s desire to evangelize the sultan of Egypt in 1219, as well as St. Francis’s instructions on the evangelization of Muslims in his 1221 rule. “Hospitality and collaboration are, in themselves, two ways of bearing practical witness to true faith in Jesus,” Bishop Suetta wrote. “Muslims arriving in Western countries are often bewildered by the secularization of society, as they tend—mistakenly, to be sure, yet understandably—to equate public immorality with the Christian faith. Only when they come into contact with Christians who live consistently with their faith do they realize that secularization is a corruption of Christianity; thus, they begin to discover the true face of Jesus and to perceive—often without even consciously thinking about it—the depth of God’s love.” Such acts “must always be accompanied by our spiritual identity, speaking of Jesus Christ not through imposition, but with love,” the prelate continued, adding: To neglect the proclamation of Jesus Christ would be to disregard His saving Cross and His universal mediation. Ultimately, it would be to betray our mission as the baptized. If we see someone struggling to climb out of a river, yet being swept away by the current—and we happen to have a rope to assist them—it would be an act of grave negligence not to throw that rope, simply thinking that perhaps they might manage to get out on their own, and thus feel “freer”: for the rope is their liberation! How many Muslims living among Christians will turn to them on the Day of Judgment and ask: “Why did you not throw me the rope? Why did you not make the truth known to me?” Thus, one understands the urgency of the mission that led Saint Paul to exclaim: “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).
• Pope emphasizes centrality of evangelization, warns against watering down the faith (CWN)
  Pope Leo XIV said that evangelization “must remain the fundamental motivation behind every action of the universal Church and of local communities” and warned against “watering down the content” of the faith “or softening the demands.”
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