As Iraqis sort through the rubble of the latest terrorist attack Tuesday, an attack on a busy market in downtown Baghdad that left at least 30 people dead, one Catholic priest in Iraq says it’s important not just to focus on the horror of life in the country but also the hope.
Pope Francis sent a letter of encouragement to residents of a Mexican diocese afflicted by battling drug cartels, a conflict that has cast attention on the lawlessness covering wide swaths of Mexico and the government’s inability to pacify the country.
Haiti-born clergy in Brooklyn kept their emotions in check as a transfer of power in their homeland was completed Tuesday, July 20, following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
Cardinal Bechara Rai, the Maronite patriarch, pleaded for the intercession of Lebanon’s beloved St. Charbel Makhlouf as the beleaguered country spirals deeper into collapse, further roiled by the resignation of the prime minister-designate.
Pope Francis, Sunday, expressed closeness to Cuba in his traditional noontime Angelus address, and he voiced the hope that the country will become more just and fraternal. While those words may elicit only quiet reaction within Cuba itself, a band of Cuban expatriates who gathered in St. Peter’s Square didn’t disguise their anguish.
Many people may not think about religious repression since it doesn’t happen in the United States. For those who may argue that it does, then it doesn’t happen on the scale and terror of those living in countries with authoritarian regimes.
One of the main findings of the survey was that the demand for Catholic institution’s services from the immigrant community throughout the COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased. And those Catholic institutions responded with a number of new services, the survey found. These included: financial assistance, COVID-19 testing, education, contact tracing, and quarantine services, mental health services, grief support and assistance with funeral expenses, and delivery of food and sanitation supplies for infected and other homebound persons.
In Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, a particularly hard-hit area south of Bonn, one priest, Father Joerg Meyrer, helped in the emergency response. He told the German Catholic news agency KNA that the area was completely without fresh water and electricity.
Saying he was acting for the good of the unity of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has restored limits on the celebration of the Mass according to the Roman Missal in use before the Second Vatican Council, overturning or severely restricting permissions St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI had given to celebrate the so-called Tridentine-rite Mass.
In the Diocese of Brooklyn, Haitian Catholics renew pleas for peace and prayer a week after the July 7 assassination of president Jovenel Moïse in their long-suffering homeland.
