Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced Monday morning that they had made an arrest in the alleged murder of Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell, a native of Ireland who spent most of his four decades as a priest ministering in L.A.’s inner city.
At the dedication of a shrine to honor Blessed Stanley Rother, the first martyr from the U.S. recognized by the Catholic Church, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City said Father Rother was an ordinary man with deep faith, who charted a path anybody can follow.
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell, a native of Ireland who spent most of his four decades as a priest ministering in L.A.’s inner city, was shot and killed in his home in Hacienda Heights, a neighborhood east of Los Angeles.
Now about two weeks removed from witnessing billowing black smoke from a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the pastor of the town’s lone Catholic church fears the fallout could accelerate the decline of an already small and aging community.
The FBI is facing scrutiny after a leaked memo suggested some “radical traditionalist” Catholics pose threats of racial or ethnically motivated violence. The memo has since been retracted by the bureau, a spokesperson told OSV News.
In the midst of increasing gun violence across the country, Catholic leaders are looking for answers.
Father Martin Maria de Porres Ward’s devotion as a missionary in Brazil has inspired Catholics from that country and admirers back in his native U.S. to promote him for sainthood. He is the seventh African American person to be advocated for sainthood.
As Ukraine faces the one-year anniversary Feb. 24 of the full-scale invasion of its country by Russian forces, Catholic Church leaders and providers of humanitarian relief there say the conflict has taken its toll but has not defeated the Ukrainian people.
During Black History Month in February, Catholics are being invited to register to attend this summer’s National Black Catholic Congress, which over the years has made history of its own.
With the Diocese of San Diego facing around 400 lawsuits over alleged sexual abuse of minors by priests, religious, and laity, stimulated by a 2019 California law that opened a three-year window for victims to sue without statute of limitation limits, Cardinal Robert McElroy has informed clergy and faithful that the diocese may have to file for bankruptcy.
