Catholic News

• Ecumenical Patriarch hails Pope Leo's Augustinian commitment to Christian unity (CWN)
  In a message to Pope Leo XIV, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople hailed the progress made to the restoration of full communion between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches.
• Leading African, Asian, Latin American prelates issue joint call for climate justice (CWN)
  The presidents of CELAM (the Latin American Episcopal Conference), the FABC (Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences), and SECAM (the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar) have issued “A Call for Climate Justice and the Common Home: Ecological Conversion, Transformation and Resistance to False Solutions.”
• Vatican cardinal warns of 'danger of extinction' of Christianity in the Middle East (Vatican News (Italian))
  Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, said in an interview that “people are helplessly watching the devastation that is spreading like wildfire” in “the Christian East, a land of martyrs: there is a danger of extinction.” “People are losing what they had built up over the centuries in terms of thought: freedom, individual rights, international rights and humanitarian rights,” Cardinal Gugerotti continued. “It seems that everything is vanishing, and the Pope clearly states this” in a recent address. The prelate added: People witness helplessly the devastation that is spreading like wildfire. And when the powerful of the day are reproached for violating international and humanitarian law, they do not respond—as if to say, it does not interest me. So how can we think of dialogue? ... It is a land of martyrs that continues to be prey to martyrdom. This system of violence forces Christians to flee, effectively eliminating them from their land: and they are one of the cultural, social and political foundations of those same lands ... In a land where schools and churches are destroyed, what future could there possibly be?... The risk is that of losing a treasure made up of the Fathers of the Church, of hymns, of prayers, of traditions. And they cannot be replaced: in the body of Christ there will be a void.
• USCCB, in action alerts, urges opposition to environmental, SNAP, Medicaid budget cuts (CWN)
  Following the passage of the Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in a 51-50 vote, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued two action alerts on July 1.
• Syriac Catholic hierarchy meets with Pope (L'Osservatore Romano (Italian))
  Pope Leo XIV held a face-to-face discussion with the members of the Ordinary Synod of Bishops of the Syriac Catholic Church on July 1. The Vatican did not release a summary of the topics that were discussed. Headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, and led by Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan, the Eastern Catholic church has 208,000 members (CNEWA profile). It has eparchies (dioceses) in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and the United States.
• Argentine Cardinal Dri dies at 98 (Vatican News)
  Cardinal Luis Pascual Dri, OFM Cap, died on June 30 at the age of 98. Born in Argentina, Dri entered the Capuchin Franciscan seminary in 1938, three months before his 11th birthday. He professed perpetual vows in 1949 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1952. He became known for his ministry in the confessional. Pope Francis, who spoke about Father Dri on several occasions, created him a cardinal in 2023.
• Bishop decries renewed violence in South Sudan, calls for peace (Vatican News)
  The Italian missionary bishop of Bentiu, South Sudan, denounced renewed violence there, including airstrikes on civilians, five years after the conclusion of a civil war. Bishop Christian Carlassare, MCCI, said that “we must speak openly against the proliferation of weapons, the reckless recruitment of youth [into armies], and all forms of violence and injustice.” At a “very delicate moment” in national life, “we must welcome not the peace the world proposes, brandished by the powerful through military force, but the peace offered as a gift in the Gospel.” The East African nation of 12.7 million (map) is 61% Christian (39% Catholic), 32% ethnic religionist, and 6% Muslim. It gained independence from largely Muslim Sudan in 2011; Pope Francis made an apostolic journey there in February 2023.
• Where 'human blood is shed too easily,' the Precious Blood offers hope, Holy Land custos preaches (Custodia Sanctae Terrae)
  The custos (Franciscan superior) in the Holy Land celebrated Mass in the Basilica of the Agony in Gethsemane on July 1, the traditional date of the Feast of the Most Precious Blood. In an Italian-language homily entitled “From Nazareth to Gethsemane, from Gethsemane to Calvary, from Calvary to the altar and to each one of us,” Father Francesco Patton concluded: For us who live in a context in which human blood is shed too easily and unscrupulously, in a context in which words such as forgiveness and reconciliation sound distant and almost unrealizable, in a context in which the only alliances we experience are alliances of power and prevarication; for us who live in this context, Jesus’ words acquire an even stronger meaning, the meaning of a possible hope for reconciliation and peace, the meaning of a possible respect for every human life, the meaning of a new covenant because of its radically different quality from that of the covenants we see around us and on a global scale ... Let us ask [the Father] that by celebrating the holy mystery of the Most Precious Blood of His Son Jesus Christ we can truly obtain that fruit of reconciliation and peace, of new and eternal life, of universal redemption which in this mystery is contained, signified and given to us. In the liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council, the Feast of the Most Precious Blood was combined with Corpus Christi on the General Roman Calendar to become the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. The feast is kept on the traditional date in the Holy Land.
• Amid Cameroon conflict, situation improves for civilians—but torture continues, prelate says (Vatican News (French))
  Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamenda, the president of Cameroon’s episcopal conference, said that the situation for civilians amid the Anglophone Crisis “has improved significantly, at least in terms of daily life”—but “we still have many cases of kidnappings and ransom demands, torture continues, and the population still lives in fear.” Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, reported that the conflict has displaced 800,000 over the past eight years, “making the area the scene of one of the most serious and ignored crises in the world.” The Central African nation of 31 million (map) is 58% Christian (28% Catholic), 22% Muslim, and 19% ethnic religionist. Pope Benedict made an apostolic journey there in 2009.
• Vatican newspaper highlights overcrowding, suicides in Italian prisons (CWN)
  In the most prominent article in its July 1 edition, L’Osservatore Romano drew attention to Italian President Sergio Mattarella’s denunciation of conditions in the nation’s prisons.
• Fidelity to the Gospel is 'the best way forward,' Pope tells women religious (Dicastery for Communication)
  Pope Leo XIV told participants in the general chapters of four women’s religious institutes that “fidelity to the ancient wisdom of the Gospel is the best way forward for those who, led by the Holy Spirit, undertake new paths of self-giving, dedicated to loving God and neighbor and listening attentively to the signs of the times.” “Rootedness in Christ is what led those who went before us—men and women like us, with gifts and limitations like ours—to do things they perhaps never thought they could achieve,” the Pope added. “This rootedness enabled them to sow seeds of goodness that, enduring throughout the centuries and across continents, have now reached practically the entire world, as your presence here demonstrates.” The four institutes that took part in the June 30 audience were the Daughters of Divine Charity, the Sisters of the Order of Saint Basil the Great, the Augustinian Sisters of Amparo, and the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
• Pope accepts resignation of accused Swiss abbot; 29-year-old prior assumes governance (CWN)
  Pope Leo has accepted the resignation of Abbot Jean César Scarcella, 73, from the office of ordinary abbot of the Territorial Abbey of Saint-Maurice, Switzerland. The abbot is a member of the Congregation of St. Maurice of Agaune, part of the Confederation of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine.
• Pope Leo decries 'iniquitous use of hunger as a weapon of war' (Dicastery for Communication)
  In a message to a conference of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Pope Leo lamented the “continuing tragedy of widespread hunger and malnutrition,” even though “the earth is capable of producing enough food for all human beings.” “We are currently witnessing with despair the iniquitous use of hunger as a weapon of war,” the Pope wrote in his June 30 message. “Starving people to death is a very cheap way of waging war.” “That is why today, when most conflicts are not fought by regular armies but by groups of armed civilians with few resources, burning land and stealing livestock, blocking aid are tactics increasingly used by those who seek to control entire unarmed populations,” he continued.
• Vatican cardinal, in Sea Sunday message, encourages seafarers to be prophets of peace (Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development)
  Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, has issued a message for Sea Sunday, commemorated on the second Sunday in July. “I thank Christian seafarers and all their colleagues of other religious and cultural affiliations: you are pilgrims of hope every time you work with care and love; every time you keep alive the bonds with your families and your communities; every time that in the face of social and environmental injustice you organize yourselves to react and respond courageously and constructively,” Cardinal Czerny wrote. “We ask you to be bridges even between enemy countries, prophets of peace,” he added.
• Weighing in on federal budget, bishops' pro-life chairman welcomes defunding of abortion, laments IVF (USCCB)
  In a recent letter to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, the chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities weighed in on budgetary priorities. “We are profoundly grateful to the House of Representatives for working together to defund the abortion industry in the reconciliation bill,” said Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, Ohio. “Though the USCCB has serious concerns about other parts of that legislation, the provision addressing taxpayer funding for abortion providers is a tremendous stride forward.” The prelate strongly encouraged Congress “to complement and enhance the Administration’s ongoing efforts to rectify the overreaches of the prior Administration that aggressively promoted elective abortion.” After calling for “improvements and investments” in federal programs for families, and acknowledging the pain of infertile couples, Bishop Thomas spoke out against IVF, which “represents an underregulated industry that creates hundreds of thousands or even millions of preborn children who will be lost in attempts to implant them within a mother, interminably frozen, or discarded and killed (often in a selective, eugenic manner).”
• New US archbishops reflect on the importance of fostering unity (CNS)
  On June 29, Pope Leo blessed and imposed pallia on 54 metropolitan archbishops appointed during the last year; eight of them are from the United States. Catholic News Service spoke with seven of them, and fostering unity was a common theme of their comments. “I’m everybody’s bishop,” said Archbishop Michael McGovern of Omaha. “I’m not just the bishop for some people.” “One Sunday I’m going to go to the traditional Latin Mass community, and I’ll wear my choir robes and I’ll sit on the side,” he continued. “I don’t say the Latin Mass, but I just, I’m there to be present to the people because they’re part of the Church.”
• Vatican newspaper analyzes American efforts at regime change (L'Osservatore Romano (Italian))
  The Vatican newspaper has published a lengthy article by one of its journalists, Roberto Paglialonga, analyzing US efforts at regime change over the past quarter century. Written in Italian, Paglialonga’s article has three sections: “Afghanistan: after the Taliban, still the Taliban”; “Iraq: from the false evidence of the USA to the self-styled Islamic State”; and “After Gaddafi, Libya in chaos from tribal fighting and civil war.” (The false evidence is a reference to President George W. Bush’s claim in 2003 that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction.) Amid discussion of a similar effort at regime change in Iran, “we should also ask ourselves whether there are means other than the use of force to obtain a change of system and power, and whether (and to what extent) these are actually capable of leading to significant results,” said Paglialonga.
• Vietnam's VP meets with Pope (Rome Reports)
  The vice president of Vietnam, Võ Thị Ánh Xuân, met with Pope Leo XIV on June 30. Following the audience, Xuân met with Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations. “Warm appreciation was expressed for the positive developments in the relations between the Holy See and Vietnam ... while underscoring the contribution of the Catholic Church to Vietnamese society,” according to a statement from the Holy See Press Office. The Communist Southeast Asian nation of 105.8 million (map) is 48% Buddhist and 10% Christian, with 12% adhering to ethnic religions.
• São Tomé and Príncipe's president meets with Pontiff (Vatican Press Office)
  The president of São Tomé and Príncipe, Carlos Vila Nova, met with Pope Leo XIV on June 30. Following the audience, Vila Nova met with Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations. The parties discussed Church-state relations, “several aspects of the country’s political and socio-economic situation,” and “matters of a regional and international nature,” according to the Holy See Press Office. The Central African nation of 224,000 (map) is 96% Christian (74% Catholic) and 2% Baháʼí.
• Vatican prefect thanks Ukranian Greek Catholic Church for remaining source of hope (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church)
  Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Catholic Churches, thanked the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church for “remaining a source of hope for its people.” “The main message is gratitude, for what you do, for who you are, for the courage you instill in people, in priests, their families, and in all the faithful,” the prelate said on June 30. “Thank you for always being with the people and for remaining their only source of hope.” “We are ready to make every effort to assist you in all your needs, with the limited means at our disposal,” he added.
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