News Briefing: Church in the World

Catholic bishops in the Democratic Republic of Congo expressed their spiritual solidarity with the people of Kinshasa and its surrounding areas in the wake of devastating floods that swept through the city on 5-6 April, claiming at least 33 lives. 

Torrential rains caused the Ndjili River, which runs through Kinshasa, to overflow. Severe flooding that destroyed more than 30,000 homes, according to the Public Health Ministry. Local priest Fr Patrick Lonkoy Bolengu said the city was “torn apart”.

In a statement on 7 April, Congolese bishops voiced their profound sorrow at the “heart-breaking consequences of the torrential rains”.  

“The floods have claimed lives and caused severe material damage,” they said in a statement signed by the president of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo, Archbishop Fulgence Muteba of Lubumbashi. “We share in the suffering of all those affected.”

US funding cuts have affected the work of Africa’s refugee centres, a Catholic official in Angola reported. 

“The devastating impacts on these cuts have resulted in the blocked essential funds from organisations like the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Jesuit Refugee Services,” said Sr Carla Bamberg, executive director of Angola’s Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants.  

“The consequences of these cuts are visible in refugee communities. The lack of financial support has resulted in reduction of essential services such as food assistance, health care and psychosocial support,” Bamberg said. 

The Trump administration’s cuts have faced consistent criticism from Catholic leaders. During his Senate confirmation hearing, President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, faced questions at his about the cuts to humanitarian aid programmes.  

“This is going to be the challenge, because I think the president – and I fully support the president and the secretary – have addressed a long-overdue problem within some of our foreign aid, which is millions if not billions of our dollars have been going to places around the world that are not aligned with United States interests,” Burch told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

US bishops ‘heartbroken’ to end government partnership

The assault on solidarity

The Justice and Peace Commission of the Diocese of Kumbo, in Cameroon’s wartorn North West region, said the separatist conflict was responsible for a spike in human trafficking. 

In a statement 8 April, the commission’s coordinator Sr Minkoue Falie CND said that traffickers have capitalised on the vulnerability, poverty and unemployment triggered by the separatist war, to trap many youths, particularly girls, in trafficking rings. She said the traffickers “keep changing their strategies”, making it harder to apprehend them.  

“The ongoing crises in the two Anglophone regions have increased vulnerability, unemployment, and hardship in our communities. Traffickers are taking advantage of this, and the rate of human trafficking has drastically increased in the past years.” 

Sr Falie continued: “We write once again to call your attention to the growing phenomenon of human trafficking taking roots in our diocese.” She urged families whose members had fallen victim to the traffickers to immediately report to the authorities.

“Many of our sons and daughters, friends, and relatives were promised jobs in big companies and are now stranded in Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, etc, always demanding more money for one thing or another as we write.”

General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema was declared the provisional winner of Gabon’s presidential election. The military leader triumphed over seven other candidates, securing 90.35 per cent of the vote, according to the interior minister Herrmann Immongault. 

The results, announced late on Sunday, show that 70.4 per cent of the 920,200 registered voters participated in the election. Around 2,450 observers – both national and international – stationed across 2,920 polling stations reported that the process was largely peaceful. However, the Constitutional Court retains the authority to review and confirm the final results. 

Before Saturday’s poll, Gabon’s Catholic bishops said the people of Gabon had a great opportunity to “turn a new page by choosing unity over division and truth over manipulation”. 

“The year 2025, a Jubilee Year of Hope as decreed by Pope Francis, is capital and very decisive for our country, Gabon. The history of our country has gone through dark times, but today we have the opportunity to write a new history based on a common commitment for a just, transparent, and peaceful election,” the bishops said in a statement 5 April.

Gabon general declared election victor after bishops’ appeal to ‘choose unity’

‘Keep politicians at arm’s length’

Fr Peter Konteh, the executive director of Caritas Freetown, urged the Sierra Leone authorities to take immediate action against maternal and infant deaths which he said are wholly preventable. 

The country has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world with 1,360 mothers dying for every 100,000 live births, according to the United Nations. The death rates for newborns, infants, and children under five are also among the highest globally, respectively at 34, 82, and 111 deaths per 1,000 live births.  

“As we reflect on the significance of maternal and newborn health, we recognise that every woman deserves the right to a safe and healthy pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum experience,” Konteh said in a statement to mark World Health Day 2025 on 7 April. “Unfortunately, countless women and newborns still face preventable risks due to inadequate healthcare access and support.” 

He said Caritas Freetown and all Catholic health facilities in the Archdiocese of Freetown were united in the commitment to advancing maternal and newborn health. “It is our collective responsibility to ensure that every mother has access to the quality care she needs at every stage of her journey,” he said.

In a pastoral letter invoking Laudato Si’, Uganda’s Catholic bishops decried the worsening environmental damage across the country, attributing it to the “greed” and “insatiable desires” of a few. 

“If, today, Uganda loses close to 55 hectares of vegetation each year, it is partly because some people are taking more from the environment than they need in order to meet their insatiable appetite for material wealth,” they said. 

They urged the Ugandan authorities to implement the existing laws designed to keep the environment safe, saying that the country should not continue to lose lives as a result of environmental disasters like floods, landslides and prolonged dry seasons.

Stewards of the future: young people caring for Creation

Columbans schools winners inspired by Laudato Si’

The Maronite Patriarch Béchara Boutros Raï called for international aid so the 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon can return home. “We ask the international community for help to support the reconstruction of Syria and its economy,” he said, and “only then will the refugees want to return home”. Many of the refugees fled the regime of Bashar al-Assad which fell in December. 

“Lebanon does not close its doors to migrants – in the name of humanity, it cannot say ‘you do not enter’,” said the patriarch. “However, this situation risks drowning Lebanon.” He reported that “young Lebanese are leaving the country because the state cannot support six million inhabitants”. 

Lebanon hosts the highest per capita concentration of refugees globally and the influx of Syrian refugees has strained its resources. Many live in informal settlements and face hardship, with 90 per cent living in poverty and facing discrimination.

Catholic activists warned the Indian bishops’ conference that their support for the government’s Waqf Bill, affecting Islamic charitable donations, risks legitimising “state intrusion under the guise of reform”. 

Referring to a statement issued on 31 March by the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CBCI), which asked political parties to support the bill, 15 senior Catholic human rights activists, including John Dayal, Fr Cedric Prakash SJ besides leading nuns and academics, wrote a letter voicing their concern at the bishops’ intervention. 

In the letter to the CBCI dated 8 April, they said: “At a time when Christian institutions are themselves under increasing scrutiny and pressure from political and state authorities … we must be particularly vigilant in safeguarding the broader principles of minority rights and religious freedom.”

Activists warn Indian bishops’ Waqf intervention licences ‘state intrusion’

Hindu nationalists will turn on Christians, Indian bishops warned

Human traffickers in southeast Asia are claiming to be missionaries or pilgrims to mask their activities at national border controls, according to the Fides news agency.  

One reported case involved three Filipino women aged 23, 25 and 50 attempting to board a flight to Singapore with a stopover in Thailand. They claimed to be “volunteers belonging to the Catholic Church for missionary work in Thailand”, but Thai border authorities detected irregularities in their papers. The oldest woman who claimed to be a “preacher” was found under interrogation to be a human trafficker, while the younger women had been promised work teaching but ended up in a sex trafficking network.  

The Philippines Bureau of Immigration, which documented 998 cases of human trafficking in its 2024 report, said schemes often include “fake pilgrimages, arranged marriages, and surrogacy” and noted that many victims are targeted through social media.

Officials in the Chinese province of Zhejiang arrested Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou on 10 April and took him to an undisclosed location, preventing him from leading Holy Week liturgies in his diocese. 

Bishop Shao refused to join the state-sponsored Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) on acceding to the diocese as coadjutor in 2016, meaning the authorities refused to recognise him and consider the see vacant. 

They have repeatedly detained him to prevent him from participating in events in the diocese, and promote the role of the CCPA-backed Fr Ma Xianshi as the community’s leader.

Unregistered Chinese bishop faces fine and demolition threat

The enduring church – Catholicism in China

A report by Christian Solidarity Worldwide claimed priests in Nicaragua are required to show their homilies to the police.  It said homilies were checked to ensure they did not criticise the regime of President Daniel Ortega.  

Some clergy reported being assigned a permanent surveillance officer and were warned they could not leave their community without official permission. This affects dioceses with large numbers of exiled priests, who rely on clergy from other dioceses visiting each week to celebrate the liturgy.  

The Nicaraguan outlet La Prensa said that in some dioceses police visit individual parishes, demanding clergy provide them with a summary of parish activities. This “must include the Masses, mission activities, meetings with pastoral agents”, reported one priest.  

Holy Week processions have reportedly been banned across much of Nicaragua for the second year running.

The United States Supreme Court handed the Trump administration one defeat and one tie decision in two immigration related cases.

In an apparently unanimous decision, the court held that a lower court “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvadoran prison where he was mistakenly sent despite the fact he was in the country legally with a valid work permit, is married to a US citizen and has fathered a child who is also a US citizen.

In another case, the Supreme Court dismissed a case seeking to allow immigrants who have been detained to challenge their detention in any federal court. The migrants also sought to question whether the Trump administration had the right to invoke an eighteenth-century law to justify their mass deportation policy.

The court sided with Trump by insisting that habeas corpus motions be filed in the districts where the person is being detained, and it did not go on to assess objections to the constitutionality of the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.

‘Romeros for today’ must oppose US deportations

Where have all the ‘illegal’ migrants to the US gone?

The US bishops’ conference wrote to every member of Congress urging them to support the Religious Workforce Protection Act (RWPA). 

The legislation is “desperately needed to ensure communities across our nation can continue to enjoy the essential contributions of foreign-born religious workers who lawfully entered the United States on a nonimmigrant religious worker (R-1) visa”, the letter said. “Numbered among them are many Catholic priests, as well as religious sisters and brothers.” 

The letter was signed by the conference president Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who heads the Military Archdiocese, and Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, chair of the bishops’ migration committee. The RWPA was introduced by a bipartisan group of senators and aims to address the delay in processing visas for religious workers. 

“We would not be able to serve our diverse flocks, which reflect the rich tapestry of our society overall, without the faithful men and women who come to serve through the Religious Worker Visa Programme,” the bishops said.

The annual street Stations of the Cross for Peace and Justice in Washington, DC on Good Friday were to focus on injustices of the Trump administration. Sponsors – who “cast the story of Jesus’ final days in a contemporary context and meditate on the social sins of our own times” – include the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Franciscan Action Network and Leadership Conference of Women Religious. 

The first station outside the National Archives will focus on political corruption and the rule of law and pray for “moral governance” in the US. “God-given rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights are denied to immigrants and other vulnerable communities,” the prepared text says. “We lament that justice is undermined by perverse interpretations of the laws held in the National Archive.” 

Themes for other stations include systemic racism and discrimination at the Department of Justice, wealth inequality at the Internal Revenue Service, environmental degradation and resource extraction at the Environmental Protection Agency, the treatment of migrants and refugees at the US Customs and Border Patrol, and nonviolence and just peace at the White House. The station outside the International Monetary Fund emphasises the theme of sovereign debt forgiveness for the 2025 Jubilee. 

A final prayer says: “We long for moral governance that promotes justice, peace, and integrity of creation. We pray for the coming of the New Creation; we believe that another world is possible.”

Does Trump’s ‘America First’ clash with Catholic teaching?

The economic insanity of Trump’s tariff policy

The US bishops and the Jubilee USA Network sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging him to pursue global debt relief initiatives that will economically serve both developing countries and the US.  

In the letter, Bishop Abdallah Elias Zaidan, the Maronite bishop in Los Angeles who chairs the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, and Eric LeCompte, executive director at Jubilee USA Network – a coalition of religious, development, and advocacy groups – argued that “debt relief and restructuring make effective economic and security policies, strengthening our country’s global moral leadership”.  

They added that “these policies, which cost us little, contribute significantly to the stability of our trading partners, reduce food and fuel prices here at home, and support American jobs and exports”. The letter quoted Pope Francis’ call for foreign debt forgiveness as part of Jubilee celebrations.

Addressing the United Nations’ Disarmament Commission in New York on 8 April, a Vatican diplomat said that “at a time when the threat of nuclear conflict is once again alarmingly close, it is imperative to recommit, with renewed urgency, to the path of disarmament”, and also called for better regulation of the militarisation of artificial intelligence.

Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN, reiterated the Holy See’s call to all nations to “overcome the fallacy of nuclear deterrence” and “to accede to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”.  

Adopted by the UN in 2017, the treaty is a legally binding instrument towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons. However, neither the US nor Russia, which together account for approximately 88 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons, have adopted it.  

The archbishop warned of “the changing nature and complexity of conflicts and the undeniable reality that any use of these weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences”.

Ecumenical prayer vigil protests nuclear weapons

Archbishop Gallagher’s speech to the UN calling for nuclear disarmament

The Congregation of the Mission, founded by French priest St Vincent de Paul, will celebrate its four-hundredth anniversary at its Mother House in Paris at the end of April.

Events including days of prayer and formation will culminate in Mass at the Church of Saint Eustache on 1 May, presided over by Bishop Emmanuel Tois, an auxiliary in the Archdiocese of Paris. More than 150 representatives of the Congregation’s international provinces are expected to attend, including three cardinals and more than 20 bishops.  

The celebration will honour the spiritual legacy of St Vincent de Paul and Vincentian commitment to evangelisation and service to the poor. Founded in 1625, the Congregation comprises priests and brothers who live in religious community and dedicate their lives to prayer and service.  

The Congregation belongs to the broader Vincentian Family, a network of organisations including the Daughters of Charity and the St Vincent de Paul Society.

German police arrested six climbers in Cologne last weekend as they made their way down after scaling the soaring north spire of the city’s Gothic cathedral under a full moon. 

Security cameras filmed the climbers, five French and a Belgian aged between 18 and 27, as they broke into the tower below the spire after nightfall, wearing headgear to light the way. Custodians then went searching for them. They found several doors in the north tower opened and backpacks with climbing equipment left behind at one level. 

Police cars rushed to the cathedral – Germany’s most visited monument, which overlooks the Rhine – and cordoned off the building. A helicopter hovered overhead observing the intruders. When they were finally arrested, police accused them of trespassing and damaging property. They also found a camera, a portable telephone and a skeleton key on the oldest climber.

Hamming it up at the Cathedral

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The Dicastery for Clergy updated Church rules governing Mass intentions and stipends. Published in Italian last week, the new regulations stipulate that national bishops’ conferences may now allow priests to receive multiple offerings from various donors for a single Mass with a “collective intention”.  Yet “such consent of the donors can never be presumed … In the absence of explicit consent, it is always presumed that consent has not been given.” 

The decree comes into effect on 20 April and replaces the 1991 instruction Mos Iugiter. It states that clergy should celebrate the intentions of the faithful, especially the very poorest, “without receiving any offering”. It also bans the substitution of promised Masses with simple mentions during the liturgy, an act described as “gravely illicit”. It empowers bishops to redirect surplus Mass intentions to parishes or mission territories in need, to promote universal ecclesial solidarity.

The Vatican’s financial watchdog, established by Benedict XVI in 2010, recorded a decrease in suspicious activity including money laundering and the financing of terrorism.  

The Supervisory and Financial Information Authority (ASIF) received 79 fewer reports of suspicious financial activity in 2024 compared to 123 in 2023.  It hailed the 36 per cent decrease as “positive news” in a statement on its annual report, published last week. In 2024, the ASIF sent 11 reports of financial irregularity – the same number as in 2023 – to the Office of the Promoter of Justice, the Vatican prosecutor.  

The president of ASIF Dr Carmelo Barbagallo suggested this indicated greater precision in the identification of potential criminal financial activity. “This is evidenced by the quality of the relations and the various forms of cooperation with domestic and international authorities as well as the good results achieved by the IOR [Institute for Works of Religion],” he said.

“Among the activities carried out by the authority, I would like to emphasise the relevance of two of them: on the one hand, the ability to identify – for the purpose of subsequent recovery – the path of money illicitly obtained [and] on the other hand, the contribution given to the Vatican authorities and legal persons in the prevention of money laundering and the use of money derived from crimes.”

Faith in money

Orbán’s son-in-law bails out failed Vatican property investment in Budapest

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I was awarded the 2025 Templeton Prize. The annual award, valued at £1.1 million, is given to individuals whose exceptional work reflects Sir John Templeton’s vision of using scientific inquiry to explore profound questions about the universe and humanity’s role within it. 

Patriarch Bartholomew was recognised for making faith-based environmentalism a “central commitment” in his religious leadership and “his pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world”. 

In a video address last week, Bartholomew said: “Ecology is not a political or economic issue. It is mainly a spiritual and religious issue because God created and gave it to us to protect it, to cultivate it, to use it, but not to abuse it. This is the spiritual dimension of ecology.”

In their Easter message, the World Council of Churches (WCC) Secretary General Dr Jerry Pillay and its Central Committee Moderator Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm noted that all Christian churches marked Christ’s resurrection on the same day this year. 

“Could it not always be so, with a common feast of Easter, the heart of our shared faith?” they asked. “It would be a profound sign of reconciliation and a tangible expression of the unity for which Christ prayed.” They also mentioned that 2025 marks 1,700 years since the Council of Nicaea, whose Nicene Creed is recited by the vast majority of Christian churches.  

The Geneva-based WCC, which represents Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox Christians, has long advocated a common date for Easter in general, but some more traditional believers, especially the influential Russian Orthodox Church, are opposed to changing their calendars. 

The WCC Easter message, signed only by two officials who represent Protestant churches open to a common date, was clearly not approved by the whole council. All WCC members can have ut unim sint as their goal without agreeing on how calendars can be changed to achieve this. 

If his health holds up, Pope Francis plans to join Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Iznik, Turkey – the modern location of ancient Nicaea – to celebrate the creed’s anniversary.

Romanian Orthodox cast doubt on plans for common Easter date

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Pope Francis chose “Migrants, missionaries of hope” as the theme of the 111th World Day of Migrants and Refugees in October.

Reflecting the 2025 Jubilee, the theme highlights “the courage and tenacity of migrants and refugees, who bear witness daily to hope for the future” despite the difficulties they face, the Vatican said. In the communities where they are welcomed, migrants contribute to “revitalising” faith.  

The Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development announced the theme last week, adding that the day will be celebrated on 4-5 October, during the Jubilee of Migrants and the Missionary World.

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