Pope Francis told prisoners to “talk to God about our pain and help each other carry it” during a visit to Verona last Saturday, his second visit to northern Italy in a month.
Speaking at the Monitorio prison, the longest engagement of his day in the city, Francis said he had learned of recent suicides in the prison.
“This is a sad and terrible act to which only unsustainable pain and despair can lead,” he said, and insisted that “God is one” to all religions and cultures. “With Him by our side, we can overcome despair and live every moment as the right time to begin again.”
Addressing clergy and religious in the Basilica of Saint Zeno, Verona’s patron, he urged them to be “bold in mission” and asked confessors not to “torture the penitents” in the Sacrament of Reconciliation because “you are the instruments for forgiving”.
He also chaired a meeting of the “Arena of Peace” in the city’s amphitheatre, attended by 12,500 people, and celebrated the Vigil Mass of Pentecost in the Bentegodi Stadium, home of the Serie A football club Hellas Verona.
A record 18,000 people hiked from Paris to Chartres over the Pentecost weekend in France’s largest annual traditionalist pilgrimage.
The pilgrimage organised by the Our Lady of Christianity association – which celebrates Mass in the old rite – has steadily grown year on year, and attracted a large number of young people to its overtly Catholic banners and often firmly traditionalist message. Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the prominent conservative theologian, attended to celebrate the final Mass.
However, pilgrims along the 100km route also said they saw the pilgrimage as a spiritual experience in reaction to what they see as a growing de-Christianisation of French society. “I’m going to Chartres because I’m Catholic, not because I’m a tradi,” one Parisian who attends his local church told the daily La Croix, using French slang for traditionalist.
“I feel less alone,” one young mother said, explaining that for her, being Catholic means opposing abortion and euthanasia – contrary to the current government’s position – and defending the family. She said Islam was “a real civilisational danger” but called her child’s veiled Muslim nanny “an extraordinary woman.”
Catholic bishops in Slovakia expressed shock and called for prayers after a gunman shot the country’s prime minister multiple times in the abdomen. Robert Fico, who remains in a serious condition, was attacked on 15 May in the central town of Handlova, around 125 miles east of the capital Bratislava.
Pope Francis condemned “this vile and violent act” in a telegram to the Slovak president and promised his prayers for Fico’s recovery. “We must actively work for peace,” said Archbishop Bernard Bober of Košice, chairman of the Slovak Bishops’ Conference.
“It is important that we respect each other and strengthen the good in each of us,” he continued, calling on the public to reject all forms of violence. He expressed deep regret at the assassination attempt.
Archbishop Stanislav Zvolenský of Bratislava celebrated Pentecost Mass last Sunday for “Peace in Slovakia”, during the national spring pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in the town of Sastin.
Pope Francis wishes to visit Turkey in 2025 to celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, according to the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
The Patriarch Bartholomew announced the plan on 16 May in remarks to the Portuguese press. He was in Lisbon to participate in a forum on interreligious dialogue organised by the KAICIID International Dialogue Centre.
“His Holiness Pope Francis wants to celebrate this very important anniversary together, and he plans to come to our country to visit with us in Constantinople at the patriarchate, and then proceed together to Nicaea, Iznik,” Bartholomew said.
“We have formed a mixed commission with four Catholics and four Orthodox to meet a few days from now in Istanbul, to arrange all the details of this important meeting to take place next year.”
Justice and Peace Europe, the network of European national commissions, asked candidates for the European elections next month to commit to “strong engagement” with Armenia and Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave of Azerbaijan from which around 150,000 fled last September.
The network’s presidents Maria Hammershoy and Archbishop Antoine Hérouard of Dijon said the EU “should exert pressure on both sides, and especially on Azerbaijan, to resolve all outstanding issues exclusively through negotiations and peaceful means in full respect of each country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
They also called on the EU to demand an independent mission to monitor the condition of ancient Christian sites in Nagorno-Karabakh and possible human rights violations.
Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a priest in Nigeria on 15 May. Fr Basil Gbuzu, a priest of the Archdiocese of Onitsha, is the fourth priest kidnapped in Nigeria in 2024.
The archdiocese asked “all Christ’s faithful and all men and women of good will earnestly to pray for the quick and safe release of the priest as we intensify our efforts to ensure his freedom”. However, the kidnappers had not contacted the archdiocese last week with any demands.
There were 28 abductions of clergy and religious in Nigeria last year.
The Archbishop of Kinshasa Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo met the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi on 16 May.
The cardinal said he had requested the meeting to “shed light on various points” after months of tension between the Church and the government of DR Congo which led a state prosecutor to order an investigation of charges of “seditious behaviour” against Ambongo.
Speaking after his meeting with the president, Ambongo said there had been “more of a misunderstanding than a real problem” and expressed “satisfaction and gratitude” for their discussion. “It was necessary for us to meet to clarify all these subjects that may have created unease,” he said. “And now that we talked, everything becomes clear.”
The cardinal has been a sharp critic of the government’s response to insurgents in the east of the country, but insisted that he and Tshisekedi recognised that each was pursuing “the well-being of the Congolese people”.
Kenya’s Conference of Catholic Bishops has called for “swift action” and “generous acts of Charity” to mitigate effects of flooding that has killed hundreds since April.
They challenged authorities at county and national levels to mobilise disaster management resources with “greater urgency” to prevent further destruction. The message, issued on 7 May, also thanked Pope Francis for his “spiritual proximity” to the people of Kenya.
Signed by the conference president Archbishop Maurice Muhatia Makumba of Kisumu, the statement urged the government “to begin the necessary work of rebuilding and rehabilitation” as soon as torrential rains have subsided.
Floods have left at least 290 people dead, displaced more than 300,000 and destroyed property, infrastructure and livelihoods across the country, including 2,000 schools have gone. In Nairobi, slum areas were badly hit, with flimsy homes washed away.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa praised the contribution of the Catholic Church to Zimbabwe’s socio-economic development. He spoke at the episcopal jubilee commemorations of Archbishop Robert Ndlovu of Harare last week.
“May I acknowledge, with a deep sense of gratitude, the work of Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, as strategic socio-economic development partners,” the president said.
“Roman Catholic schools, hospital and many other institutions have been instrumental in driving our national development especially in education and health sectors,” he added. “We look forward to the support of the Catholic Church to stamp out drug and substance abuse.”
USAID Zimbabwe has partnered with Catholic Relief Services Zimbabwe (CRS) to reach more than 13,400 people in dire need of food through a project worth $2 million. According to officials, the project aims to reduce communities’ dependency on humanitarian assistance following an El Niño-induced drought and amid soaring prices of basic commodities.
CRS Zimbabwe planned to work with the Archdiocese of Bulawayo to support the food needs of 3,200 drought-affected households in rural communities neighbouring Zimbabwe’s second city. Each household will receive 50kgs cereals, 10kgs pulses, and 3.75l of cooking oil every month over five months, conditional on their participation in community asset-building activities.
“Our goal is to ensure that households meet their basic food requirements by promoting climate-smart agriculture practices,” said Tapfuma Murove, country representative for CRS.
Madagascar’s bishops denounced a law that would punish paedophiles with castration.
The Malagasy parliament passed a bill in February authorising surgical castration for convicted rapists of children aged 10-13, and chemical castration for rape of children aged 14-17, as a response to the scale of largely-unreported rape in the country.
The island’s bishops’ conference issued a statement calling this “torture” and contrary to human rights. “The human body, as the work of God, is sacred. So nothing and no one has authority over it, not even the law.”
Human rights groups also condemned the law, while acknowledging that Madagascar needed to address its “rape culture”.
Churches in Myanmar’s Christian-majority Chin state came under attack as the military junta sought control of a key town in the region.
Air strikes damaged a Catholic church and a Baptist church in the village of Lungtak, near Tonzang, as the military launched an offensive to flush out rebels from the area on 11-12 May. The bombardment also destroyed five houses and villagers fled their homes. Fr Titus En Za Khan, the local parish priest, fled to nearby forests with his congregation to escape the bombings.
The Chin Human Rights Organisation, a non-governmental organisation with special advisory status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, has reported a humanitarian crisis in the state.
The Australian bishops asked the Vatican to give official recognition to a liturgy incorporating Aboriginal language and culture.
The Missa Terra Spiritus Sancti (Mass of the Land of the Holy Spirit) has been used in the Diocese of Broome in Western Australia since 1973, when it was approved by the bishops for use ad experimentum.
The translation of the Roman rite, by Fr Kevin McKelson and Aboriginal elders, into five local language groups also “refined and developed the texts of the Mass to the needs of the community”, according to the Australian bishops’ conference.
The current liturgy, published in 2018, was approved by the bishops at their plenary in Sydney this month and submitted to Rome for recognitio.
At least 11 people have been killed in fighting between rival cartels in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. Local reports said two nuns were among the dead.
Police confirmed last week they had found 11 bodies in and around the village of Nuevo Morelia, and the Diocese of San Cristóbal confirmed that two women “who served the Catholic Church” were among those killed, although it did not specify if they were religious sisters.
Communities in the region have suffered from drug-related violence for some time. Confrontations between two local cartels flared up again two weeks ago when gang members set fire to abandoned houses in Nuevo Morelia and surrounding villages. Police and forensic experts were deployed to the area but locals said they remained largely unprotected.
A new Pew study indicated that while US attitudes to abortion remain confused, although support for legal abortion has increased since the Supreme Court issued its 2022 decision overturning Roe v Wade and allowing states to regulate the procedure.
It found 63 per cent of Americans said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 59 per cent who held that position in 2021. The percentage of people who think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases remained statistically unchanged, one point down at 36 per cent.
Views on the issues involved with abortion, however, remain muddled. When posed the statement “The decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman”, 56 per cent said it described their view extremely or very well, while 35 per cent felt the same way about the statement “Human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights”. Yet 32 per cent said both of these statements cohered with their views “somewhat well”.
A slightly higher proportion of women than men (64 per cent to 61 per cent) supported access to legal abortion in all or most cases. Among Catholics, 59 per cent supported legal abortion compared with 40 per cent who think the procedure should be illegal.
Word on Fire (WOF) sent a second “cease and desist” letter to the New York-based magazine Commonweal and to the theologian Massimo Faggioli, requesting the magazine remove an editor’s note that explained the removal of a paragraph from an online article by Faggioli to which Word on Fire previously objected.
The letter claimed the note was defamatory, like the original paragraph, and threatened to sue to the magazine if it did not comply. “The editor’s note, with the author’s permission, clearly was published with not only a reckless disregard for the truth and the publisher knowing that the statement was false but with what is clearly actual malice for WOF and its leadership,” it said.
Commentators said this claim had dubious legal grounds because public figures like Bishop Robert Barron of Winnona-Rochester, the founder of the WOF ministry, would face an exceedingly high burden in proving defamation. They also noted that the letter was not signed by the ministry’s lawyer.
A priest in Chicago apologised for performing a blessing of a same-sex couple, after a video of the ceremony became public.
Fr Joseph Williams CM said he was “deeply sorry for any confusion and/or anger that this has caused, particularly for the People of God”. Williams said he had “wanted to provide for them a meaningful moment of God’s grace”, but once he saw the video he realised it was “a very poor decision”.
He gave the blessing in his parish church to a Methodist minister, the Revd Kelli Knight, and her partner Myah. In the video, Williams asked “Do you freely recommit yourselves to love each other as holy spouses and to live in peace and harmony together forever?” The women replied: “We do, I do.”
The ceremony violated Vatican regulations which permit blessings of individuals in a same-sex relationship but not of their union.
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