News Briefing: Church in the World

Pope Leo told priests from southern Lebanon he was praying for peace in their region during an unexpected video call. The apostolic nuncio to Lebanon Archbishop Paolo Borgia asked 13 Maronite and Roman Catholic priests to join a call on the morning of 6 May and once they were online announced that the Pope would join them. 

The parish priest of the village of Rmeish Fr Najib al-Amil said Leo, speaking in French, “gave us peace and his blessings“. He told the Associated Press that the Pope’s message was “reassuring, particularly as we live in constant worry over here”. 

The same day a strike by the Israeli military hit an apartment block in Beirut, while a spokesperson also issued a statement condemning an image circulating on social media showing an Israeli soldier in Lebanon placing a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary, emphasising that “the conduct of the soldier completely deviates from the values expected of its personnel”.

An Ethiopian Catholic bishop urged authorities in Saudi Arabia to choose a “civilisation of love” over capital punishment, after a Saudi court reportedly handed down death sentences to more than 200 young Ethiopian prisoners facing accusations of drug-related crimes. 

“The cry of the poor and the marginalised must reach the ears of the international community. We cannot remain silent while the lives of so many hang in the balance,” said Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin of the Catholic Eparchy of Adigrat. He appealed to the international community to intervene diplomatically to halt the planned execution. 

“We earnestly petition your esteemed organisations to engage in urgent, high-level dialogue with the authorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to seek a stay of execution and a commutation of these death sentences,” he said. The bishop affirmed the dignity of every human life, insisting that the individuals are children and parents rather than mere statistics.

The Pope voiced “deep concern” about violence in the Sahel after a series of terrorist attacks in Chad and Mali. 

“I offer the assurance of my heartfelt prayers for the victims and my spiritual closeness to all those who are suffering as a result of the tragic events,” Pope Leo said after praying the Regina Caeli in St Peter’s Square on Sunday. 

“I fervently hope that every form of violence may cease, and I encourage all efforts aimed at fostering peace and development in that beloved land.” 

The previous day he had addressed the directors of the John Paul II Foundation for the Sahel, urging them to cooperate with the Holy See to “contribute to the respect and promotion of the inalienable human dignity of the peoples of the Sahel, through projects of integral human development”.  

During an audience with Muslim leaders from Senegal on 9 May, Leo said their country’s spirit of teranga and interreligious dialogue are “a valuable means of easing tensions and building lasting peace”.

Thieves broke into a chapel in eastern Nigeria and stole the Blessed Sacrament. Church authorities described the theft from the Adoration Chapel of St Mulumba Catholic Parish along Wetheral Road in Owerri, during a rainstorm in the early hours of 6 May, as a serious act of desecration. 

The parish priest Fr Raymond Madu called the act alarming and deeply offensive to the faith community. The Archbishop of Owerri Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji directed parishes to observe a one-week period of prayer for reparation, with daily prayers between 4pm and 6pm. 

The diocese also reinforced strict guidelines around the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, warning that it must never be left unattended under any circumstance. The incident raised fresh concerns about the security of places of worship in the region.

The Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA) condemned recurring attacks targeting foreign nationals in South Africa. In a statement published on 5 May, the bishops described the violence as a grave violation of human dignity and democratic principles. 

“IMBISA emphasises that acts of xenophobia perpetrated against migrants violate the dignity of the human person, fundamental rights and the basic principles of democratic states governed by the rule of law,” it said. 

“IMBISA also calls upon public authorities and civil society to adopt a welcoming, respectful and accountable stance towards xenophobic practices, contributing to the construction of a more humane, peaceful, inclusive society committed to the dignity of all people in the region.” 

Citing Catholic social teaching and Pope Francis’ reminder that welcoming the migrant is an encounter with Christ, the bishops – representing nine countries across the region – called for a “deeper conversion of heart” in the treatment of refugees. 

The appeal comes amid rising violence targeting foreign nationals in South Africa, especially in provinces like Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Protesters have accused migrants of taking their jobs, a charge the South African government and the Church have refuted.

Johan Viljoen, a distinguished humanitarian and former director of the Denis Hurley Peace Institute, died on 6 May aged 65. The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) his death “with deep sorrow”. 

Viljoen was received into the Catholic Church in 1991, having studied law, served in the military and ministered as an Anglican priest. He dedicated his life to serving the most vulnerable, notably leading the SACBC Aids Office during the height of the HIV/Aids crisis to provide life-saving treatment to thousands. 

“Viljoen worked extensively with refugees in Mozambique, Angola and South Africa through the SACBC Refugee Bureau and the Jesuit Refugee Service. His work focused on health care, education, legal assistance, advocacy, and emergency relief for people fleeing war and persecution,” the SACBC said in a statement. 

In April 2017, Viljoen was appointed director of the Denis Hurley Peace Institute, the SACBC body dedicated to peacebuilding, conflict analysis and advocacy in Africa. The SACBC Secretariat held a memorial Mass celebrating his life on Monday.

The Colombian Bishops’ Conference launched a school for “digital missionaries”. Nearly 500 people connected live to the first of an eventual seven monthly sessions on 2 May. According to the conference’s digital ministry office, “more than 1,400 people who signed up to view a recording of the initial session”.

The secretary for the Dicastery for Communication Mgr Lucio Adrián Ruiz also joined the session from Rome, commenting on the topic of digital evangelisation that Catholics “are called to widen the tent of our hearts and our gaze, to discover all those who need the Lord, even in those places in life where many seek him without knowing it”.  

Mgr Ruiz warned against the danger of reducing evangelisation to metrics, saying: “Our mission goes against the current. It’s not measured in followers but in communion, in encounter.”  

After the final session, the Digital Missionaries School plans to hold an in-person national gathering in the Archdiocese of Cali to consolidate and commission a network of digital missionaries.

The bishops of Venezuela voiced “profound consternation and sorrow” after the government revealed that a political prisoner sought for more than a year by his 82-year-old mother had died last July. 

Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, a 51-year-old businessman, was arrested in Caracas on 1 January 2025 by the DGCIM, the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, a national secret police agency whose officials stand accused of torture. Quero Navas was charged with treason, conspiracy and terrorism and received no legal counsel after his arrest.  

His family was never told which prison he was in. His mother Carmen Navas became an icon among the families of political prisoners as she travelled across Caracas visiting prisons to demand news of her son’s whereabouts. The bishops’ Commission for Justice and Peace said that it “accompanied” Carmen Navas “with prayer and in sorrow”. 

“She personifies the Via Crucis of so many Venezuelan families. Her tireless search, marked by harassment and uncertainty, cries out to heaven,” the commission added in a statement released on Sunday, when Venezuela marked Mother’s Day. 

Last week, Venezuela’s government announced Quero Navas had died of respiratory failure last July, nine days after he was hospitalised in the Military Hospital of Caracas on 15 July with gastrointestinal bleeding and a fever.

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Haiti Alix Didier Fils-Aimé visited Pope Leo in Rome on 9 May, and also met the Holy See’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Secretary for Relations with States and International Organisations Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher. 

According to a statement from the Holy See Press Office, the “cordial” conversations at the Secretariat of State acknowledged good relations between the Holy See and Haiti and covered the Church’s contribution to Haiti amid challenges both humanitarian and in terms of security and migration. The statement said Haiti needed the help of the international community to address its current difficulties.

Voice of the Faithful, a lay group that promotes transparency in the Catholic Church in the United States, published its 2025 diocesan financial transparency report on 7 May. The group found that the overall transparency score for US dioceses dropped 6 points, from 71 per cent in 2024 to 66 per cent in 2025. 

In 2025, the number of dioceses posting current audited financial reports of their central operations decreased from 114 to 112.  The all-time high for posting current audited reports was 116 dioceses in 2023. Voice of the Faithful said the downward trend in reporting is due primarily to dioceses failing to post information in a timely fashion.  

“Our hope is that dioceses will make progress toward more consistent financial reporting going forward,” the group said in a statement. Despite lower scores, Voice of the Faithful said the overall financial transparency picture “is still positive”, with many dioceses demonstrating dedication to transparency and accountability.  

Five dioceses scored 100 per cent, while only six scored 20 per cent or lower. The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and the Dioceses of Lexington, Kentucky, Nashville, Tennessee, Rochester, New York and Youngstown, Ohio, received perfect transparency scores in 2025. The Archdiocese of New York received the lowest transparency score with 12 per cent.

The Dicastery for Bishops directed the Archbishop of New Orleans James Checchio to investigate the handling of abuse allegations in the Diocese of Baton Rouge under the terms of the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi. 

The Louisiana diocese removed Fr Charbel Jamhoury from ministry in February and revoked his safeguarding credentials after allegations of sexual misconduct. 

Jake Zumo, a diocesan volunteer, said he and an alleged victim had reported claims to Bishop Michael Duca of Baton Rouge in October, and that he contacted police in December despite Duca discouraging him from doing so. 

Zumo submitted a report of the diocese’s conduct to the Catholic Bishop Abuse Reporting Service in February, and told The Pillar website that he had learned of the Vos estis investigation last week.

More than 500 faith leaders signed a letter to the Ohio General Assembly on 4 May calling on elected leaders to strike down the state’s system of capital punishment. 

“Now is the time for Ohio to rid itself of its outdated and immoral death penalty. As people who are motivated by faith and sparked by profound love for the common good, we are calling on you to endorse the bipartisan, multi-faith effort to abolish the death penalty in Ohio,” the letter said. 

Catholic leaders were among the signatories alongside Protestant congregations and organisations, as well as Jewish and Muslim groups. 

“As people of faith, we are committed to policies rooted in justice and grounded in the promise of redemption,” they wrote. “While we come from varied backgrounds and political stances, we stand together against state-sanctioned murder. Instead, we are motivated by the restorative power of empathy and investments in transformation.” 

Across the US, 23 states have abolished capital punishment. Ohio is one of four states with executive holds on the death penalty. The last execution in that state was held in 2018.

Miami Catholic leaders in early May called on Florida lawmakers to help pay for security expenses at private Catholic schools. Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2026 budget proposes to spend $300 million on student safety measures, but the funding would only be used for public schools. 

Jim Rigg, superintendent of Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Miami, told the Miami Herald that it was unfair to prevent parochial schools from receiving state money for added security measures. 

“A child’s life is beyond price in any type of school be that a public school or a private school. I would hope that our state lawmakers would understand the value of a child’s life and be willing to support this,” Rigg said. “We are seeing acts of violence against Catholic people in the United States, and we believe wholeheartedly that our students need to be safe,” Rigg said.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is set to ordain its largest cohort of new priests since 2003 this weekend. 

Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez will preside at the ceremony in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul as eight men are ordained, the largest group of priestly ordinations in one year in 23 years, according to data compiled by CatholicPhilly. 

In 2003 there were ordinations for nine new priests in the archdiocese, which covers south-eastern Pennsylvania. Between 2022 and 2026, 29 priests were ordained for Philadelphia. That is the highest total in a five-year span since 1999 and 2003, when 33 men were priests were ordained. 

A study by the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate by Georgetown University in Washington has shown that the total number of priests ordained this year across the Catholic Church in the US is above 400, similar to last year.

A Catholic medical centre in Seoul adopted what it said was South Korea’s first medical artificial intelligence ethics code in a healthcare institution. The Archdiocese of Seoul announced the new code during a symposium on Ethical AI Transformation on 7 May, attended by the apostolic nuncio to Archbishop Giovanni Gaspari.

The code has four guiding principles: values and missions, human-centricity and control, trustworthiness and data ethics and social justice and responsibility. These principles provide 12 guidelines designed to help the use of AI in healthcare stay grounded in human dignity, ethical responsibility and the common good. 

Archbishop Peter Chung Soon-taick of Seoul said that the essence of medicine lies not just in passing on knowledge but “in a human relationship in which one life recognises and respects another”. While addressing the symposium he added: “A machine may be able to analyse suffering, but it cannot stand with us before that suffering.”  

The archbishop emphasised said those who suffer “must always remain the responsibility of human beings”. He observed: “Even when artificial intelligence one day becomes fully integrated into the medical field, I pray that those who suffer may still come to feel, through the presence of healthcare professionals at their side, that they are beloved of God”.

Church leaders across denominations in India launched the National Federation of Churches in India (NFCI) to provide a united response to the multiple challenges faces Christian communities, including rising hate crimes, attacks on pastors and the faithful, stringent anti-conversion laws and attempts at confiscation of Church properties. 

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) formally launched the NFCI during the Fourth National Ecumenical Bishops’ Fellowship Meeting on 8 May at St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences in Bengaluru. 

The ecumenical body was set up to counter “a critical situation facing many challenges and difficulties such as violent attacks on pastors and faithful, stringent anti-conversion laws in some states, and the attempts to takeover Church properties through the amendments of FCRA and the proposed Christian Welfare / Property Board, the urgent need for a united front to face such issues was strongly felt”. 

Envisioned as an umbrella organisation, the NFCI will serve as “a national ecumenical body of Churches, an apex body of Christ’s disciples in India. It will represent the Churches by presenting a united face of Christianity and serving as the single voice of the Christian community to the nation.” 

The Archbishop of Hyderabad Cardinal Anthony Poola, the CBCI president, will be the NFCI chairman, while Archbishop Joseph D’Souza, Bishop Joseph Kallarangatt, and Bishop Vincent Vinod Kumar of the Church of South India will be the conveners.

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