News Briefing: Church in the World

Pope Leo prayed for the Philippines after typhoons hit the country. Caritas Philippines mobilised its national network to respond to the impact of Super Typhoon Fung-wong after it made landfall on 9 November. It forced the evacuation of more than one million people from areas at risk of flooding and landslides in the northwest Philippines. Diocesan authorities in Manila, Caceres, Kalookan and Virac called on parishes to shelter the homeless. 

Days earlier, Archbishop Alberto Sy Uy of Cebu had urged the Catholic community to open the doors of homes, churches and institutions to the 400,000 people displaced by Typhoon Kalmaegi on 4 November. The archbishop hoped the “unprecedented” floods, which killed more than 220 people, “awaken in us a greater ecological and moral conversion and remind us that caring for our common home is an act of faith, justice, and love.” 

After causing serious damage in the Philippines, Typhoon Kalmaegi hit Vietnam’s central coastal areas on 6 November, sweeping through three provinces in the Diocese of Quy Nhon. 

The Perugian branch of the Confraternity of Santiago de Compostela began work with local authorities to create a new pilgrimage route in southern Japan. 

The “Way of the Gospel” will take pilgrims to the places where the first missionaries worked and where “hidden Christians” lived. The project is a collaboration between the Italian group and the prefectures of Kagoshima, Kumamoto and Nagasaki, with the relevant municipalities, and in close contact with the Japanese dioceses of Kagoshima, Nagasaki and Fukuoka. 

The route between Kagoshima and Nagasaki will cover sites known to early Christian missionaries such as St Francis Xavier, while honouring the Japanese Christian community which, despite the persecution of Christian missionaries from the end of the sixteenth century, preserved its faith for almost three centuries. 

In 2018, Unesco approved the inclusion of the “hidden Christian sites” in the prefectures of Nagasaki and Kumamoto on the World Heritage List.

Two archdioceses warned Catholics that visiting a banned Marian shrine in South Korea will incur automatic excommunication.

Archbishop Simon Poh of Kuching, in Malaysia, said Catholics were “not allowed” to join activities or pilgrimages to the shrine of Naju where the Korean Catholic convert Julia Kim claimed in 1985 that her statue of the Virgin Mary had wept tears and leaked fragrant oil. Kim also alleged she had received a series of messages from Mary.  

The chancery of the Archdiocese of Singapore said last month that “all faithful” who had previously visited Naju “must stop doing so” and “approach a priest for the sacrament of reconciliation for the excommunication to be lifted”.  

In 1998 the Archbishop of Gwangju, Kim’s diocese, declared there was no evidence the events at Naju were “supernatural and thus from God”.

Cardinal Sebastian Francis presided at the beatification of the pioneering nun who established the first indigenous convent in the Indian state of Kerala. The Malaysian cardinal, whose parents hailed from Kerala, was the special representative of Pope Leo XIV at the beatification ceremony for Mother Eliswa (1831-1913) at the Basilica of Our Lady of Ransom, Vallarpardom, in Kochi. Cardinal Oswald Gracias unveiled an image of Blessed Mother Eliswa, and her relics were placed on the altar.

Mother Eliswa became a nun after the death of her husband in 1851. Along with her sister Thresia and daughter Anna, she founded the Third Order of the Carmelite Discalced (TOCD), the present Congregation of Teresian Carmelites (CTC). She is also credited with establishing the first convent school, boarding house and orphanage for girls.  Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to her intercession on 14 April 2025.

A blind Christian in Pakistan was arrested on blasphemy charges which could carry the death penalty. Muslim colleagues of Nadeem Masih, who has an iron rod in one leg, accused him of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, leading to his arrest in Lahore on 21 October.  

His mother Martha Yousah said Masih’s accusers had stolen her son’s money in the past, taking out loans “they have refused to pay”. She said Masih was allegedly beaten by police in custody and forced to confess. His lawyer has pointed out “major discrepancies” in the police report and said he would apply for bail at the Lahore High Court.  

Naeem Yousaf, director of the Catholic Church in Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace, said Masih was “a victim of injustice and human indifference”. Pakistan ranks number eight on the charity Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most persecution.

Pope Leo discussed the “urgent need to provide assistance to the civilian population in Gaza” with Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the State of Palestine. 

President Abbas’ visited the Vatican on 8 November to mark the tenth anniversary of the signing of the “Comprehensive Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Palestine”, which expressed both parties’ commitment to Palestinian self-determination and the two-state solution. It also stressed the symbolic and spiritual significance of Jerusalem for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. 

Fr John Paul SJ, rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, told an audience in London last week that “across the West Bank, radical settlers and ultra-nationalist groups are attacking Palestinian and Bedouin villages with growing impunity”.  

The Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell visited the West Bank and East Jerusalem on 7-11 November. On Sunday police ordered him to cut short a visit to a family in the south Hebron hills where his delegation was followed by Israeli settlers.

The Bishop of Bentiu Christian Carlassare MCCI called the violence in the Sudanese city of El Fasher “a tragedy”. At least 1,500 people have been killed in massacres in El Fasher following the capture of the area by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Bishop Carlassare, whose South Sudanese diocese borders Sudan, described the violence as a “genocidal slaughter”.  

The Sudan Doctors Network accused the RSF of making a “desperate attempt” to conceal evidence of mass killings in Darfur by burning bodies or burying them in mass graves. In a statement Sunday, the group warned the group’s crimes could not be “erased through concealment or burning”.

Ethiopian bishops condemned attacks on a Catholic community by suspected jihadists that left scores dead. The attacks in the volatile Oromia province in the country’s central region occurred in successive days at the end of last month. 

In a statement on 4 November, the bishops’ conference expressed “deep sorrow over the recent killings and destruction of property” during attacks on St Mary’s Church in West Harerghe. Ethiopia has suffered a surge in jihadist violence against Catholic and Ethiopian Orthodox communities during recent months. 

“The Catholic Church strongly condemns these inhumane acts and calls on the government to take immediate and necessary legal measures to ensure the safety and security of all citizens,” the bishops’ statement said.

Aid to the Church in Need launched a programme to support nuns in Mozambique helping victims of Islamist violence. Sr Aparecida Queiroz, a Daughter of Jesus missionary, told the charity: “We are speaking about people who lost everything, not just material goods, but their very identities. Many of these people lost family members, in the most brutal ways.” 

Fighting in the north of Mozambique since 2017 has killed thousands of people and displaced more than one million more. Queiroz said the nuns psychosocial support helped victims to “rebuild their identity, work through their pain and start being people again, to start working and dreaming again”.

Angola’s bishops renewed their call for national reconciliation to heal the wounds of civil war. They made their appeal during the National Reconciliation Congress last week which aimed to foster “forgiveness and reconciliation, restoration and renewal for a new stage of life” for the country. 

“The devastating effects of past and present wars cry out for reconciliation,” said Archbishop Zeferino Zeca Martins of Huambo, head of the bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission. 

“The Catholic Church does not seek to replace nor override any constitutionally established exercise. Promoting justice and being an instrument of peace and reconciliation among people is an absolute imperative.”

Archbishop Samuel Kleda of Douala accused the Cameroonian government of using violence to suppress protests following the disputed presidential election on 12 October. “We do not govern a people with weapons,” he said in a statement on Sunday, following reports that scores of people have been killed by police. 

President Paul Biya, 92, was declared the victor of the election by the Constitutional Council with over 53 per cent of the vote. His primary challenger, a former government spokesperson Issa Tchiroma Bakary, insisted that he instead won “a crushing majority”. Tchiroma vowed to reclaim his “victory” and urged Cameroonians to stay at home to show the world they dispute the result.

Without directly endorsing Tchiroma’s claim, Archbishop Kleda said the election presented “a kairos moment” for Cameroonians to write a new chapter in the country’s history. 

“After the proclamation of the results of the presidential election of 12 October 2025, many citizens who expected a better future had the firm conviction that their choice was not respected. They were despised and even ignored,” Kleda said. 

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church approved a special prayer against abortion. Meeting on 30 October, which Patriarch Kirill of Moscow chaired, approved the creation of a prayer for the “enlightenment of those intending to commit abortion”. The Russian synodal liturgical commission was given until 1 December to develop its text. 

Addressing the first meeting of the Council for the Implementation of State Demographic and Family Policy at the end of October, President Vladimir Putin described falling birth rates as a global challenge and acknowledged Russia’s own demographic decline. 

However, unlike other countries hoping to fix the problem with “uncontrolled, and even chaotic migration”, Putin claimed Russia is “supporting the family as the fundamental basis of Russian society and aiming to protect and preserve genuine family values and traditions”. 

In 2023, Russia officially recognised Pregnant Women’s Day as a new national holiday. Despite the reintroduction of symbolic and gendered public holidays, Russia’s demographic decline continues. The situation is exacerbated by the loss of life in the war against Ukraine and decreased immigration from the ex-Soviet republics.

Members of the Polish and German episcopate, the apostolic nuncio to Poland and governmental authorities from both countries will celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops in Wroclaw on 18-19 November. 

The letter marked the beginning of the process of reconciliation between Poles and Germans after the Second World War. Katarzyna Korzeniewska, a sociologist from Krakow, said the anniversary is especially poignant because politicians have resurrected anti-German grievances and Communist-era clichés since the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) party came to power a decade ago. 

“If the experts are correct in their description of PiS as a textbook example of a populist party, and populism feeds on conflict and fear, then it is understandable why the main goal of the Polish authorities at that time was to emphasise political differences and strengthen fears”, she told The Tablet.

German researchers criticised a study of abuse in the Diocese of Augsburg published last week. Martina Steber und Dietmar Süß of the University of Augsburg told the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung that the study “suffers from very fundamental methodological flaws”. It failed to seek archival traces or sources other than diocesan documents, nor did it make a systematic evaluation of the experiences of victims. 

They also queried the the independent commission responsible for the report, some of whose members were close to the Church, including a head of department from the bishop’s office. A diocesan spokesperson said that the descriptions of events in the study were based onstatements by victims and that questioning them again would risk “retraumatisation”, a danger which critics had “completely overlooked”.

More than 7,000 Muslim and Christian pilgrims gathered for the first interfaith pilgrimage to Lourdes in the south of France, organised in October by the movement Ensemble avec Marie (“Together with Mary”).  

The initiative was founded to encourage encounters of “peace and respect” inspired by the “proximity of the narratives of the Annunciation in the Gospel and the Qur’an”, after Lebanon began to observe the Feast of the Annunciation as a national day of Christian-Muslim dialogue in 2010.  

In September, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes submitted an application for its Marian procession to be inscribed in Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage list.

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration congregation in the United States sold a property valued at $2.6 million to the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians for the $30,000, the price the sisters paid when they purchased the land in 1966. The land housed the sisters’ Marywood Spirituality Centre. 

The sisters said they returned the land to the native tribes as an act of reparation for colonialism and the crimes committed at residential boarding schools. The land was taken from the Chippewa Indians by a treaty in 1842, the terms of which were so grossly unfair that a court called them “unconscionable” in 1976. 

“This return represents more than the restoration of land – it is the restoration of balance, dignity and our sacred connection to the places our ancestors once walked,” said John Johnson Sr, tribal president. He called the sisters’ decision to return the land an act of “generosity and courage”.

Pax Christi International concluded its 2025 World Gathering in Florence – “Building Bridges for Tomorrow” – with a celebration of its eightieth anniversary and a renewed commitment to continue its mission for reconciliation and peace.  

Marie Dennis, the director of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence, recalled Pax Christi’s origins in the aftermath of the World Wars and shared a renewed hope inspired by Pope Leo XIV’s call to build “unarmed and disarming peace”. She said that “nonviolence is not only the way forward: it lies at the very heart of the Gospel”. 

Delegates affirmed Pax Christi International’s advocacy work, with the key priorities of a just peace in the Holy Land, disarmament and integral human security, and climate justice. The former Bishop of Troyes Marc Stenger, the co-president of Pax Christi International, celebrated the concluding Mass.

The delegates from Pax Christi’s national groups around the world closed with an award ceremony where the Pax Christi International Peace Award was given to the Bishop of El Paso Mark Seitz and those in his diocese working with migrants on the Mexican border.

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