Representatives from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops celebrated Mass Jan. 20 at the tomb of two Maryknoll sisters from the U.S. buried El Salvador — where they were murdered in 1980 — and called them “martyrs” and “models” for the Catholic Church.
Responding to the border crisis in Del Rio, Texas, and broader immigration issues, more than 150 Catholic organizations last week implored President Joe Biden to end a policy called Title 42 — federal permission for the immediate expulsion of migrants and limitation of their right to seek asylum.
In his 28 years as a priest in El Salvador, Father Manuel Acosta has witnessed his share of violence. He lived through the killings of Catholic clergy, men and women religious, catechists and countless lay ministers persecuted during the country’s civil conflict in the 1980s. He has also lived through decades of gang aggression against El Salvador’s poor.
In a moving tribute to four American women slain in El Salvador during the height of that country’s civil war in 1980, Auxiliary Bishop Raymond Chappetto led a memorial Mass marking the 40th anniversary of their deaths on Dec. 2.
In one of the regions of El Salvador most battered in a bloody war funded by American dollars, four Catholic women from the U.S. were hailed as examples of solidarity, of Christian faith and martyrdom, as Salvadorans remembered them Dec. 2, the 40th anniversary of their assassination.
On Dec. 2, Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and laywoman Jean Donovan will be remembered worldwide on the 40th anniversary of what many increasingly consider their martyrdom.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided Sept. 14 with President Donald Trump’s plan to end a particular immigration protection status that would have allowed people from six countries that have suffered disasters to remain in the United States.
On a bright and clear January afternoon, Bishop Oswaldo Escobar Aguilar walked into a cemetery and gently dusted off a white name plate on top of a sky-blue block of tombs. Making plans for the year ahead, he told secretary Violeta Esmeralda Serrano nearby that they needed to make sure the tombs were decorated with flowers Dec. 2.
Members of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in this southern Mexican city rose early Oct. 24 to feed but a fraction of the Central American migrants traveling in a caravan, which is trying to traverse Mexico and reach the United States border.
On Easter, as thousands of Salvadorans from around the country packed into the rural town of Lolotique, Catholic Church officials laid to rest a 36-year-old priest violently killed during Holy Week – the latest victim of an unending wave of violence that plagues the country.
