Catholic News
- Pope appoints apostolic administrator amid investigation of Cardinal López Romero (OMI World )
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate announced that Pope Leo has appointed Msgr. Mario León Dorado, O.M.I,, the prefect of Western Sahara since 2013, as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Rabat, Morocco. The announcement comes amid an investigation into allegations that Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, S.D.B., of Rabat molested at least five women. - Cardinal Parolin travels to Guatemala to mark 90 years of diplomatic relations (@TerzaLoggia)
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, traveled to Guatemala on August 1 to mark 90 years of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Central American nation. Cardinal Parolin met with the nation’s president and vice president and celebrated Mass at the cathedral of Guatemala City. Guatemala, a nation of 18.5 million (map), is 97% Christian (65% Catholic). - New York agrees: Nuns may continue ministry without being forced to assist suicides (The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty)
The State of New York temporarily agreed not to enforce its assisted-suicide mandates against the Catholic plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state’s Medical Aid in Dying Act. “This agreement is an important first step towards protecting religious freedom,” said Bishop John Barres of Rockville Centre. “New York cannot force the Church to answer suffering with suicide or abandon the sick and dying when they need care most.” “Until our legal fight is resolved, this temporary agreement keeps our ministries free to serve every patient according to the Gospel,” Bishop Barres added. “We continue to proclaim that every human life is sacred and worthy of love until its natural end.” The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, and Little Sisters of the Poor joined in the lawsuit, as did the Catholic Health System of Long Island. - Man charged with federal firearms offense after shots fired at New Mexico church (U.S. Department of Justice)
A 40-year-old man with a prior felony conviction faces up to 15 years in prison after he was charged in connection with the firing of shots at a parish in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico announced on August 3: On May 4, 2026, Las Cruces Police Department officers responded to a reported shooting at St. Genevieve’s Catholic Church ... Officers found five bullet holes in the church’s front glass entrance and recovered five .380 caliber shell casings. Surveillance footage showed a black sedan arriving at the church, after which a man exited the driver’s side and fired multiple rounds at the entrance before leaving the scene. - Report: Beijing pressured US Catholic organization to withdraw invitation to scholar (Bitter Winter)
Chinese government officials successfully pressured the US-China Catholic Association to disinvite its scheduled conference keynote speaker, according to Bitter Winter, an online magazine of religious liberty and human rights. Bitter Winter reported that the disinvited keynote speaker was Fenggang Yang, the founding Director of the Center on Religion and the Global East at Purdue University. The US-China Catholic Association, according to its website, was “founded in 1989 by concerned U.S. bishops, Maryknoll, the Jesuits, and representatives of other religious orders in order to promote mutual support and fraternal ties between the Church in China and the U.S. Church.” - San Antonio archbishop issues pastoral letter on solidarity with migrants (Archdiocese of San Antonio)
Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, M.Sp.S., of San Antonio issued a pastoral letter, “We Will Come to You: United in Solidarity with Our Brothers and Sisters in Migration.” “I prayed over this letter for a long time before writing it to you,” Archbishop García-Siller began. “What follows is at times deeply personal: it arises from my own encounters with God in the lives of migrants, from years of walking alongside those who have endured migration’s trials and from my own family history and migration story.” “As a reflection on the prevailing climate of immigration enforcement, it is offered in love, grounded not in ideology but in walking with you: listening to your pastors, sitting in silence with families who no longer feel safe to leave their homes, and accompanying our sisters and brothers who have migrated, missionaries of hope among us,” he continued. “You are the heart of this letter. The Church will not be silent.” The letter concluded with a call for five “urgent reforms”: “protect sensitive locations,” “keep families together,” “restore asylum and due process,” “end mass detention and mass deportation,” and “build just pathways to citizenship.” - Theme song released for 2027 World Youth Day (WYD Seoul 2027 LOC)
The local organizing committee of the 2027 World Youth Day released the event’s official theme song: “Confidite, Ego Vici Mundum” (Take Courage, I Have Overcome the World, John 16:13). The theme song was released on August 3, a year to the day before the event is scheduled to begin in Seoul, South Korea. - US-Canadian ecumenical conference focuses on 'visible justice' (NATI-RETI 2026)
The Canadian Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches of Christ of the USA organized a two-week training course, “Where now for visible justice?”, which began on August 3. “Whether discussing climate, race, politics, economics, or solidarity with indigenous communities, the question of justice—and the church’s role in embodying it—will intersect with all theological and ecumenical reflections,” according to the organizers of the course, which is taking place in Detroit and Toronto. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops is among the members of the Canadian Council of Churches; the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is not a member of the National Council of Churches. - Triduum begins at Santa Maria Maggiore (Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major)
A triduum began on August 2 at the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major, in preparation for the liturgical memorial of the anniversary of its dedication on August 5. On the feast day, Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, the basilica’s archpriest since July 2025, will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass, with a reenactment of the miracle of the snow. - 'Listen to the Lord's call and follow him decisively,' Pope tells Ecuadorian young people (CWN)
Pope Leo XIV challenged the young participants in the Ecuadorian bishops’ 7th National Youth Day to “listen to the Lord’s call and follow him decisively.” - Pope encourages youth in Medjugorje to rediscover beauty of encountering the Lord (Vatican News)
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, sent a message in the Pontiff’s name to participants in the annual youth festival in Medjugorje. Pope Leo encouraged participants to encounter Christ through prayer, the sacraments, and listening to the Word of God, and in doing so to rediscover “the beauty of a personal encounter with the Lord, who quenches every heart and gives the strength to always begin anew.” Medjugorje In 2024, Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Note About the Spiritual Experience Connected with Medjugorje, granted cautious approval to Medjugorje devotions. - Pope recalls suffering of Albanian faithful under Communist regime (Vatican News)
In a message to Cardinal Ernest Simoni, Pope Leo XIV recalled the sufferings of the Albanian faithful under the Communist regime there (1946-1991). Cardinal Simoni, a prisoner of the regime from 1963 to 1981, returned to Spaç Prison, a site where he was interned, to celebrate Mass on July 31. “No chain is strong enough to imprison a conscience enlightened by the Gospel; no night is so long that it can prevent the dawn the Lord prepares for His children; and no prison is deep enough to separate a person from the love of God,” Pope Leo wrote. “The blood of those who suffered and died among those mountains has watered that land, making it a silent witness to fidelity, courage and hope.” - Gunmen abduct 3 from Nigerian church (Premium Times (Abuja))
Gunmen entered a Catholic church in Udi, Nigeria, on August 2 and abducted a seminarian and two fellow worshippers. “The kidnappers initially abducted the seminarian, catechist, and another person in the church,” said a witness to the incident. “But after they moved with the victims for a few minutes, the kidnappers asked the catechist to go back and then entered the bush with the seminarian and the other worshipper.” - Christ calls you to be missionaries, Vatican official tells 6,000 Mexican youth (Fides)
A Vatican official challenged the 6,000 participants in the Mexican bishops’ 15th National Missionary Youth Congress to be missionaries. “Let us begin with a truth that changes everything: every baptized person is called to be a missionary,” said Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, secretary of the Dicastery for Evangelization. “This is not a special vocation reserved for priests, religious, or a few heroic individuals. It is the grace and responsibility of our Baptism. It is the very identity of every Christian.” Archbishop Nwachukwu’s July 25 address to the gathering in San Luis Potosí had five sections: “The universal call to mission,” “The three essential qualities of a missionary,” “The mission of the Church and the role of the Dicastery for Evangelization,” “The example of Blessed Pauline Jaricot,” and “Mary, model of missionary youth.” The prelate concluded: The sea of humanity is vast. The world needs missionaries. The Church needs you. And Christ calls you. Do not be afraid to put out into the deep. Do not be afraid to give your lives. Do not be afraid to trust in God. That is why I ask you, from the depths of my heart: “Are you willing to sacrifice something of your own lives to bring the face of Christ to others?” - Priest brutally murdered in Nigeria (Nigerian Tribune)
A priest was brutally murdered in Ajaokuta, in Nigeria’s Kogi State. The body of Father Samuel Opeyemi Oyetoro was found by the side of a road with “severe machete cuts to the head,” a police spokesman said. - Vatican newspaper, Spanish bishops' official warn against politicization of Moroccans in Ceuta (CWN)
As most of the 60,000 Moroccans who surged into the Spanish city of Ceuta returned to their native land, the Vatican newspaper and a Spanish episcopal conference official warned against politicizing the incident. - In Belarus, Polish priests 'increasingly not allowed to continue their work' (Forum 18)
Archbishop Iosif Stanevsky of Minsk-Mogilev, Belarus, said that Polish priests “are increasingly not allowed” by the government to continue their ministry in the nation. “Since January, the regime’s chief religious affairs official Aleksandr Rumak has refused bishops’ requests for at least a dozen Polish Catholic priests to be allowed to continue their religious service in the country,” Forum 18 reported. “Most had served for several decades, one—Fr Marian Szerszeń—for 36 years.” In the aftermath of World War II, Poland’s Eastern Borderland region became part of the Soviet Union; much of that territory is now part of Belarus. The Eastern European nation of 9.5 million (map) is 82% Christian (63% Orthodox, 17% Catholic). - Florida AG warns bishops over vaccine mandates in Catholic schools (@AGJamesUthmeier)
Citing state law, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier warned the state’s bishops that a refusal by Catholic schools to grant religious exemptions to vaccine mandates is “troubling and may disqualify them from state scholarships and vouchers.” “As a Catholic, I am confident that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not require Catholic schools to compel students to take vaccines derived from the tissue of aborted children against the sincerely-held religious objections of their parents,” the attorney general wrote in his July 31 letter. Uthmeier cited several Church documents, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2020 note on the morality of COIVD vaccines. He concluded, “Please provide a response in writing no later than August 7, 2026.” - USCCB posts 'Introduction to NeoFertility' (USCCB)
The United States’ Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth posted “Introduction to NeoFertility & Chart Neo: A Medical Approach to Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM).” “Unlike conventional approaches that use treatments that suppress normal physiology to deal with dysfunction, RRM seeks to work with the body, treating reproductive abnormalities, not by bypassing the body’s processes but by diagnosing, understanding, and addressing underlying health concerns,” said Dr. Monica Minjeur, the author of the presentation. - In Medjugorje, vandals deface Marian statue, site fire to outdoor altar (Rome Reports)
Vandals defaced a statute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and set fire to an outdoor altar at the pilgrimage site of Medjugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Medjugorje parish office asked the faithful to respond “with prayer, fasting, and forgiveness. We pray for the conversion of the hearts of those who committed this act, that the Lord may touch them with His grace and lead them on the path of goodness.” In 2024, Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith granted cautious approval to Medjugorje devotions in its Note About the Spiritual Experience Connected with Medjugorje. - More...