News Briefing: Church in the World

The Catholic bishops of Ohio released a statement recalling “the great declarations in our founding documents to establish a free country where people can flourish” ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary. 

“We reflect upon the promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to worship God free from government intervention,” they said. 

“We take seriously the truth that our rights come from God and recognise the great blessings that God has bestowed on our country. Therefore, as proud and faithful citizens of the United States, we need to take responsibility to support the common good of our country and to love our neighbours as ourselves.” 

The bishops said they were “deeply grieved” by the situation facing Haitian immigrants in Ohio. On 25 June, the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can proceed with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian and Syrian nationals. 

“As many parts of their home country suffer from incessant violence and utter despair, those in Ohio and elsewhere in the US may be forced to abandon familial stability, jobs and community due to policy decisions,” the bishops said, adding that they find “no moral justification” for terminating the Haitian immigrants’ TPS protections.

Hundreds joined a prayer pilgrimage at the base of Mount Cristo Rey, a New Mexico spiritual landmark that has been thrust into the national border security debate. Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces, New Mexico, led the pilgrims up the mountain on 28 June. 

Bishop Baldacchino celebrated Mass and called on Catholics to promote unity, “welcome without fear” and religious liberty, the El Paso Times reported. 

“On Mount Cristo Rey, we came as a people from neighbouring states and countries, but as we climbed up, we became family and we have now together placed ourselves at the feet of Christ the King,” Baldacchino said. “Today’s Mass is a prayer made visible: that the Church will be one, and that civil leaders will defend religious liberty so that the Gospel can be lived and worship can be freely offered.” 

The pilgrims sang and prayed as they ascended the mountain to reach a 29-foot-tall limestone statue of Jesus Christ.  The Trump administration seeks to expropriate a 1.3-mile stretch of adjacent land to construct a border wall. The Diocese of Las Cruces has sued to stop the administration’s plan.

A US-based mining company reached a $150-million settlement with 1,373 Peruvians who alleged they suffered toxic injuries as children from living near one of its facilities. 

Cardinal Pedro Barreto, then-Archbishop of Huancayo in the Peruvian Andes, backed the case brought in 2007 on behalf of 17 children against the Doe Run Resources Corporation which operated the La Oroya smelter. 

Cardinal Barreto was involved in years of campaigns and investigations on behalf of locals and faced death threats from some who wanted the smelter to remain open. He also contacted St Louis University’s School of Public Health, whose researchers found that the children had some of the highest blood lead levels ever recorded. 

Church leaders in St Louis, where Doe Run is headquartered, supported the litigation initially filed in a Missouri court, before it was consolidated with 40 other cases in federal court. It was due to come to trial last week before all parties announced the settlement.

A US bankruptcy judge told the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont in late June that she might dismiss its bid to reorganise its depleting finances if a viable plan was not submitted soon, according to the Vermont Digger. 

The diocese filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2024 after a series of priest misconduct settlements reduced its claimed assets by half, to a reported $35 million. Since then, the diocese has reportedly paid more than $2 million in legal fees. 

To raise funds, the diocese is selling its South Burlington headquarters for $3.13 million, prompting Bishop John McDermott to move his chancery offices to Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont Catholic reported. 

Lawyers said there had been little progress at a court hearing on 23 June.  Judge Heather Cooper gave the parties until autumn to agree on a plan or face the end of the process.

Bishop Ronald Fabbro of London, Ontario retired on Monday to be succeeded by Bishop Daniel Miehm, after leading the Canadian diocese for more than 20 years. Fabbro, a Basilian, won credit early in his tenure for his response to the clerical abuse crisis, meeting survivors and developing safeguarding structures. 

In 2024, a priest of the diocese alleged the bishop had failed to report an allegation of inappropriate conduct against another priest. A Holy See investigation under the terms of the motu proprio Vos Estis Lux Mundi ruled that Bishop Fabbro “was not negligent in his office and episcopal responsibilities regarding the complaint”, according to a statement from the diocese in October 2025.

The Trustees of the Christian Brothers (Oceania Province) announced plans for a bankruptcy settlement which willing bring an end to the congregation’s institutional presence in Australia dating from 1843. 

A statement from the Trustees, who manage financial redress for victims of abuse linked to the Christian Brothers, said they sought a Creditors’ Scheme Arrangement to distribute remaining assets, including around 36 properties, at an estimated value of AU$212 million. Former Christian Brothers institutions now operated by the independent entity Edmund Rice Education Australia are not affected.  

“The creditors eligible to participate in the proposed scheme will include the victims and survivors of abuse experienced in our facilities (including those who have not yet come forward),” it said. “Their interests, as well as all those of all our other creditors, remain our highest priority.”

The scheme also includes provision for the support of the remaining 176 Christian Brothers in the province, whose average age is over 80.

Pax Christi International announced plans to honour the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with events involving silence, prayer, the reading of survivors’ testimonies and, where possible, a ceremony to float lanterns. The campaign “Lanterns for Peace: from Hiroshima to the World” is inspired by annual lantern ceremonies to mark the tragedy held in Japan.  

In a statement, Pax Christi said: “In an increasingly fragile world, where the nuclear threat has once again become a tangible reality, this commemoration is not only a moment of mourning, but a genuine call to conscience.” It added that the lanterns represent remembrance for lives lost, “hope for reconciliation and peace” and “a collective commitment to abolish nuclear weapons”. Pax Christi has issued a booklet with details about the ceremonies, including instructions on how to build a lantern.

Many Asian countries struggle to build climate resilience due to rising debt burdens, according to the author of a Church-backed report. The Filipino environmental activist Jing Ray Henderson published a regional report for the Turn Debt Into Hope campaign, supported by Caritas Asia, Caritas Internationalis and the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. She said that countries including the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were forced to borrow to fund recovery from natural disasters, but the resulting interest payments prevented investment in building resilience.

Bishops in the Central African Republic said “ecological conversion” was the only valid way to care for the environment as created by God. 

Concluding their plenary assembly on 15-22 June, the bishops expressed concern over the irresponsible attitude of citizens towards the environment, which they said has led to “the deterioration of roads, recurrent flooding, deforestation, predatory exploitation of mineral and natural resources and the abnormal contamination and discoloration of river waters”. 

They said these “are all warning signs” and cautioned that failure to act exposes humanity to even more catastrophes in the future. 

“We call for an integral ecological conversion involving public authorities, the Church, local communities, national and international economic actors, and every citizen,” the bishops said. Citing the vision of “a new heaven and a new earth” in the Book of Revelation, the bishops said this shouldn’t be viewed as an abstract promise but as a call to care for creation and protect the environment. 

“Every act of justice, every gesture of reconciliation, every commitment to peace and development, and every effort to protect and safeguard nature already participates in this work of new creation,” they said.

Catholic bishops in southwestern Nigeria condemned the reintegration of “repentant bandits” into society and security structures after another abduction attack on a school. They described the policy as a distortion of justice and an insult to victims of violent crimes across the country. 

In a statement issued on 22 June, the bishops of the Ibadan Ecclesiastical Province also called for the immediate release of 39 pupils and seven teachers abducted from three schools in Esiele, Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State in May. 

“It is over a whole month since 39 learners and seven teachers were kidnapped,” the bishops said. “Those children, who barely understood what happened to them, have now lived for over a month under the harshest conditions, with no roof over their heads, no good nutrition, and completely exposed to the elements in the forest.” 

The attackers murdered a teacher and a motorcyclist during the kidnapping and beheaded another teacher in the forest. The bishops – from the Archdiocese of Ibadan and the Dioceses of Ekiti, Ilorin, Ondo and Oyo – decried the inability of President Bola Tinubu government to curb rising violence across Nigeria, identifying the reintegration of bandits as a failed policy.

The Greek Orthodox and Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem visited Gaza on 22-23 June where they blessed a new healthcare clinic.  

Patriarch Theophilos III and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa visited the clinic established through a partnership between the Order of Malta and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem alongside Dr Josef Blotz, grand hospitaller of the Order of Malta, who described the blessing of the clinic as “a historic milestone”. 

The clinic is run by Malteser International, the humanitarian aid agency of the Order of Malta, which said around 30 staff members including doctors, nurses and pharmacists will begin providing primary health care to up to 100 people each day.  

“This clinic will provide lifesaving medical care to people in need and show them that they are not forgotten,” Blotz said.  

“Medical care for people in Gaza is currently in a catastrophic state,” said Dr Ali Ibrahim Al-Musaddar, medical director of the clinic.  “All hospitals in the Strip have sustained some level of damage, and critical shortages of medicines, medical supplies, and equipment continue to disrupt essential services.”  

Cardinal Pizzaballa also blessed a renovated building that will expand the kindergarten of the Holy Family Parish for the coming school year. “Preparations are underway to provide as many young people as possible with education,” he said. “Children who have seen so many terrible things need to encounter beauty again.”

A political declaration calling for an international moratorium on surrogacy was launched at a high-level side event at the United Nations Human Rights Council at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on 22 June.  

The governments of Italy and Chile led the initiative, and they co-hosted the launch alongside the governments of Cameroon and the Holy See, with the event moderated by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International. The declaration sets out a shared commitment to achieving the global abolition of surrogacy in line with international human rights law.  

“However noble the intention, the practice of surrogacy itself cannot be reconciled with the dignity and rights of the two persons it most directly concerns,” said Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN in Geneva.  

“Surrogacy violates the dignity of the child: by making gestation the object of a contract, surrogacy treats a human being as a product to be ordered, delivered, and paid for. Surrogacy equally violates the dignity of the woman. It is rarely the privileged who carry children for others. The market of surrogacy is built overwhelmingly on the material need of women in situations of poverty and economic vulnerability.”

A survivor of sexual abuse by a priest is suing the Archdiocese of Kraków for twenty million zloty (£4 million) in the largest compensation claim made to date against the Church in Poland.  

Janusz Szymik reported that he was first abused by a priest, known as Jan W, while he was a 12-year-old altar boy, repeated on hundreds of occasions between 1984 and 1989. He reported the abuse to Bishop Tadeusz Rakoczy of Bielsko-Żywiec in 1992 and again in 2007. 

In 2021, the Holy See disciplined Bishop Rakoczy for taking no action against Jan W, who admitted to sexual contact with Szymik and was laicised in 2024.  

Last year, a court ordered the Diocese of Bielsko-Żywiec to pay Szymik around 400,000 zloty (£80,000) in compensation while the judge decided that the Archdiocese of Kraków should answer for the priest’s actions, given that he was under its authority at the time.  

The Church has appealed the ruling, while Szymik has launched separate civil proceedings against the archdiocese. He said he was fighting “first and foremost for justice, as well as for fair compensation for the entire trauma”.

Doctors in the Netherlands euthanised a terminally ill child, the first death under a law extending the country’s end-of-life provisions to children under 12 with parental approval. Health Minister Sophie Hermans told the Dutch parliament a child between 1 and 12 years old died under the law late last year, without giving further details.  

Dutch law first allowed euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2002 under strict conditions that were gradually loosened. The Netherlands and neighbouring Belgium have the most liberal end-of-life laws in the world. A 2024 Dutch law extended provision, covering the gap between newborns and teenagers whose opinion must also be respected.

Under the 2024 Dutch law, euthanasia cases for children 1 to 12 are reviewed by state prosecutors, who can make doctors liable for the act. Medical boards oversee other cases. Belgium, which abolished all age limits in a 2014 amendment to its law, state prosecutors are only called in only if the medical board suspects foul play. 

Defenders of the Dutch law expected at most five to 10 cases annually. In practice, the euthanising of Belgian minors has been extremely rare.

The abbey island of Mont Saint Michel may be one of the most popular tourist destinations in France, but falling vocations mean the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem will remove its two remaining brothers there next year. 

The six Fraternities sisters on the island off the Normandy coast will continue their mission of prayer and hospitality there, the community said in a joint statement with the diocese of Doutances. The community, founded in 1975, has male and female branches. “We are leaving Mont-Saint-Michel with a heavy heart,” one brother said. 

The monks will be redeployed now that the Fraternities have reopened a novitiate after a two-year closure. A priest from the Community of Saint Martin will continue to offer Mass at the island’s parish church. 

The Paris-based Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem has reorganised in recent years after a damning report of an apostolic visit in 2021. It publicly acknowledged in 2024 that accusations of spiritual and sexual abuse against its founder Fr Pierre-Marie Delfieux were correct. Delfieux died in 2013.

An archbishop in southern France denounced the cancellation of a play about an integrated migrant by a far-right mayor, saying censorship revealed a temptation to withdraw into oneself. 

“I want to recall here the imperative duty to assist persons in danger, namely migrants,” said the Archbishop of Albi Jean-Louis Balsa in a statement. Florian Azéma, the National Rally mayor of Castres near Toulouse, recently cancelled a February municipal theatre showing of the play Passport about migrants. Balsa is the bishops’ conference spokesman on migrant issues. 

“Alexis Michalik’s play tells the story of a man from Eritrea, left for dead in the Calais jungle, who, paradoxically, was welcomed and successfully integrated. Why then interpret this story as ideology?” Balsa asked La Vie. 

“We must stop making these people scapegoats for society’s ills,” he said. “The question isn’t whether you’re left-wing or right-wing. The question is that you’re facing human beings.”

A church in Madrid opened its doors for rough sleepers to watch Spain play in the World Cup. Fr Ángel García said that the Church of San Antón in central Madrid would keep screening the matches from the central nave as long as Spain continues to win. “And we’ll keep going until we are the champions,” he told the website la Nueva España.  

It is not the first time the parish of San Antón, which is open 24 hours a day, has screened football matches. “We have also screen other major events like the visit of the Pope to Spain,” said Fr Ángel, the 89-year-old founder of the NGO Mensajeros de la Paz (“Messengers of Peace”) which helps vulnerable families and provides aid for international disasters.  

The televised football initiative attracted some criticism online. “If you celebrate the Mass that all the great saints in history have celebrated, you’re breaking communion and should look for a canon lawyer,” commented Fr Juan Manuel Góngora, a priest of the Diocese of Almeria with a right-wing following on social media. “If you turn a centre-city parish into a bar to watch the national team, you’re enacting the preferential option for the poor.”

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