Flor Molina crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her trafficker in 2002. At the time, she was under the impression the trip would last six months, provide housing, and enough money to return to Mexico to open a sewing shop and provide for her three children.
U.S. life has “dramatically changed” due to the yearlong pandemic, and alongside it, racial injustices and political divisions have shaken the nation, yet there is “comfort in God’s promise,” the U.S. bishops’ Administrative Committee said in a March 9 pastoral message.
As American Catholics continue to wrangle over the morality of COVID-19 vaccines using stem cell lines remotely derived from aborted fetuses, one Filipino Dominican priest, who’s both a moral theologian and an MIT-trained molecular biologist, is pleading with them to consider the potentially dangerous global consequences of their rhetoric.
If it becomes law, the American Rescue Plan Act would pit the great need Americans have for economic relief in this pandemic against those who insist the bill must include abortion funding, said the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the chairmen of seven USCCB committees.
Catholic prelates in Texas and Mississippi will, for the most part, maintain COVID-19 precautions at their parishes despite recent announcements from each state’s governors that restrictions will ease.
Ashley Lantz was one of the first local Catholic school teachers to receive the first vaccine shot when appointments opened in early January. As luck would have it — or rather, it being “a part of God’s plan,” as Lantz says — she found an afternoon appointment on Jan. 11, the first day of eligibility for teachers in New York City.
“Every time I tried to schedule a COVID-19 vaccination appointment, it was like I met with a brick wall,” said the 79-year-old Holy Names sister. She reached out to her doctor, attempted to navigate the Oregon Health Authority website and called the local public health information line.
Dennis R. DePerro, the 21st president of St. Bonaventure University, died of COVID-19 complications March 1. He was 62.
Pope Francis is set to become the first pontiff to set a foot in Iraq on March 5, when he lands in Baghdad after a four-hour trip from Rome.
When personal protective equipment (PPE) was hard to find early in the pandemic, St. John’s University Associate Professor Charles Fortmann saw the challenge and put on his thinking cap.
