More than 1,500 people participated in a candlelight vigil of prayer and peace Tuesday evening, July 11 at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Led by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, leaders of various religions offered prayers and called for calm in the wake of the assassination of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, and the deaths of two black men by white police officers in Baton Rouge, La., and St. Paul, Minn.
The shooting of police officers July 7 near the end of a demonstration in Dallas to protest fatal shootings by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier in the week “calls us to a moment of national reflection,” said the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The theme for the 2016 Fortnight for Freedom, “Witnesses to Freedom,” unfolded as 1,500 people spent part of their July 4 holiday in Washington attending the observance’s closing Mass and venerating the relics of two saints martyred for their Catholic faith.
Relics of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, whose lives spanned the 15th and 16th centuries, were viewed at the Cathedral of St. Paul June 26 as part of a national tour coinciding with the Fortnight for Freedom.
At first glance, it’s difficult to distinguish Father Lukasz J. Willenberg, 34, as a Catholic priest as he gathers with U.S. Army paratroopers preparing for a training jump near Fayetteville, North Carolina. Instead of traditional black clerics, he sports fatigues, a camouflage helmet and a parachute.
A permanent solution to the refugee crises in the Middle East requires lasting peace and the repatriation of refugees, not resettlement to third countries, said Cardinal Bechara Rai, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, on a pastoral visit to the U.S.
In light of recent incidents in which attackers have used semi-automatic rifles to kill people, Archbishop Blase J. Cupich of Chicago and Bishop Kevin J. Farrell of Dallas, Texas, have called for a ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons, saying they have no place in the hands of civilians.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared, contrary to the plain meaning of current federal law, that the California Dept. of Managed Health Care can continue to force all health plans under its jurisdiction to cover elective abortions. The USCCB is calling for an immediate federal legislative remedy.
Members of St. Patrick parish in Elkhorn prayed June 16 for Lane Graves, a two-year-old boy killed in an alligator attack in Florida, his father and mother, Matthew and Melissa, and sister, four-year-old Ella, during a regularly scheduled morning Mass and special rosary.
Songs blared June 18 while a white horse-drawn hearse and a weeping crowd departed Barriada Esperanza sector of Guanica with the body of Angel Candelario Padro.
