News Briefing: Church in the World

A Caritas Ukraine social worker died in a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv which also wounded her 10-year-old son. 

“With heavy hearts, we share the tragic news of the death of our colleague Yana Zhernovskaya, a social worker at Caritas Kharkiv,” said a statement from Caritas Ukraine last week. “On 26 July, we lost Yana in a Russian missile strike that struck her family’s home.” She had moved to Kharkiv after the 2022 invasion and the destruction of her hometown of Vovchansk. 

“Every day, she devoted herself to helping others,” said the Caritas statement. “This is a heavy loss for the entire Caritas community. Every day, despite the war, our colleagues support people who are going through the most difficult moments of their lives. Today, we mourn one of our own.” 

In his weekly video message on 26 July, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said that recent strikes had deliberately targeted residential neighbourhoods of Ukrainian cities. 

“It is telling that yet another crime against international law has been committed – cluster munitions were used, deliberately aimed at killing the civilian population,” he alleged.

A Polish man was arrested in Bosnia-Herzegovina on suspicion of vandalising statues of the Virgin Mary at the shrine of Medjugorje.  

On the night of 28 July, the white statue of Our Lady on Apparition Hill – where millions of pilgrims have gathered in prayer since 1981 when six young people claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary on the spot – was daubed with the words “devil in a skirt” in black spray paint. Other images of Mary were also vandalised and an outdoor altar connected to the parish church was set on fire.  

The parish of St James said in a statement that it had received the news of the attacks “with great sadness”. It said: “We pray for the conversion of the hearts of those who committed this act, that the Lord may touch them with His grace and lead them on the path of goodness … May this event encourage us … not to return evil for evil.” 

A Polish Catholic filmmaker who interviewed the suspect for a docudrama charting stories of personal religious conversion appealed for online commenters to show him charity. Jan Sobierajski said that the suspect had endured personal challenges including job loss, marriage breakdown and other crises.  

“In moments like it is very easy to pass judgement,” wrote Sobierajski. “That does not justify what happened … [which] remains very painful. But before we condemn a person, it is worth remembering that behind his actions there may be a tragedy that is not visible at first glance.”

Churches in Europe have fallen short in their care of Sinti and Roma people, a German bishop said as he marked the memorial of those who died in the Holocaust. 

Bishop Matthias Heinrich, an auxiliary in the Archdiocese of Berlin, spoke at an event marking the European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma at the state memorial site in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on 2 August.

Bishop Heinrich, the German bishops’ conference lead for the pastoral care of Sinti and Roma, called for everyone to “be sensitive to all forms” of prejudice against these communities.  

“Our place is at the side of the victims and their descendants,” he said. “It is painful to see that the Church has also owed the Sinti and Roma a great deal. The shared memory of the crimes of the past strengthens and encourages us in our efforts to shape our relations today in a spirit of solidarity and truth.”  

At an ecumenical memorial service the same day in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Ingrid Bachler, a senior pastor of the Evangelical Church in Austria, said that “remembering was an act of justice”.

Injustice had not ended with the end of the war, she said, quoting the survivor Otto Rosenberg: “The war was over, but distrust towards Sinti, Roma and Jenische was not.” Bachler said injustice “could only end where people are prepared to open their hearts”. 

During the Second World War, approximately 500,000 Sinti and Roma were killed, including in the “liquidation” of the so-called “gypsy camp” in Auschwitz on the night of 2-3 August 1944, when 4,300 prisoners died at the hands of the SS.

The Diocese of Fulda has distanced itself from a retired priest who referred to the attacks on the Christopher Street Day (CSD) Pride march in Berlin as a “signal from heaven” and a “call to reflection and repentance” for Germany.  

In a letter to the Fuldaer Zeitung, the 87-year-old Fr Winfried Abel described the CSD as a form of “unculture”. While he said Islamist violence as such was not justified, due to its anti-Christian attitude, and terrorists should be stopped, Abel claimed there was a link between the growth of Islamism in Europe and the decline of the Christian West.  

In an open letter to the diocese last year, he said that “so-called Pride Parades” were “symptoms of a society that has crossed the boundaries of decency” and declared he longed wished to be a priest in the diocese. 

In statement the diocese wrote: “It cannot and must not be accepted that in our country people experience an existential threat owing to their sexual identity.”  

It continued: “As the Church we believe that every person is an image of God and has an inalienable identity. From this belief arises our mission to treat all people with respect, dignity and love – regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity. The CSD stands for the concern to draw attention to the dignity of all people and to stand up against exclusion and violence.”

The Advocate, a leading LGBT+ publication, ranked the Catholic Church in the United States eleventh out of 20 churches based on their level of LGBT+ support. 

It said the experience of being an LGBT+ Catholic “varies by parish and region, and sometimes from priest to priest. Parishes have denied sacraments to queer individuals. Some parishes have fired LGBTQ+ employees in the United States from jobs at Catholic schools and churches because of their orientation and gender identity.” 

The Advocate cited Pope Francis’ outreach toward the LGBT+ community, and Pope Leo’s initial gestures indicating he may follow the same path, as strong evidence of Catholicism’s growing openness to LGBT+ people. 

It said Pope Leo XIV has made it clear he supports the existing position allowing informal blessings for same-sex couples but rejects efforts to formalise those blessings in ways that resemble marriage rites. The Advocate ranked the Catholic Church one place below the Quakers and one above the Eastern Orthodox Church.

More than 50 lawsuits have been filed against the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island since a new state law took effect on 1 July that allowed plaintiffs to seek civil damages for previously expired claims. 

The lawsuits include allegations covering a 20-year timeframe from 1969 to 1989, and the victims’ ages ranged from 6 to 12 years old. Until the passage of the new law, none had been able to file lawsuits due to the statute of limitations. 

Earlier this year, the Rhode Island Attorney General released the results of its investigation into diocesan documents dating back to the early 1950s, finding credible evidence that dozens of clergy members abused more than 300 children. 

In the lawsuits, St Aloysius Home, a former Church-run orphanage, is named more than any other diocesan entity, The Boston Globe reported. In the attorney general’s report, St Aloysius had the third-highest number of sexual abuse victims of any diocesan location.

An argument between a woman and a Catholic parish in Albuquerque, New Mexico that started on social media escalated to a gun being pulled on parish grounds. There were no reported injuries. 

Fr Vincent Chavez of St Therese of the Infant Jesus Catholic Church had voiced public support for the building of a mosque in the neighbourhood when he started receiving angry messages online from a woman. He then called her out personally on the church marquee. 

According to police, that resulted in the woman’s boyfriend, identified as 72-year-old David Romero, going to the church parking lot and getting into a screaming match with a church groundskeeper. Police said the worker pepper sprayed him and Romero pulled out a gun. 

Local Jewish and Islamic leaders condemned the violence and expressed solidarity with Fr Chavez. Meanwhile, the man accused of brandishing the gun faces two charges of assault with a deadly weapon.

The Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher condemned legislation that will allow people to obtain Voluntary Assisted Dying after only a consultation held by telephone or over the internet. 

A federal ban on “tele-consultation” was recently repealed by Australia’s ruling Labor party, weeks before the last remaining territory of Australia where assisted dying is illegal prepares to vote on the issue. 

Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory is to vote this month on the legislation of Voluntary Assisted Dying. If the bill is passed, assisted dying will be legal everywhere on the Australian continent.  

Fisher said the “tele-consultations” were being promoted as “tele-health” but were really “tele-death”. He told Vatican News the concept – which is opposed by Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – removed crucial safeguards in discerning the needs of individual patients. 

Fisher also urged the Catholic Church in countries where assisted dying is now legal to “educate” other countries where it is not legal to “make the case for being reverent and safeguarding human life”. 

“How quickly we went in this country from having no euthanasia legal at all to now more than 14,000 people have applied for it, more than 7,000 have died from it,” said Fisher, referring to the rapid expansion of laws for assisted dying in Australia.

While the Northern Territory was the first Australian state to legalise Voluntary Assisted Dying in 1996, a federal parliament repealed the legislation in 1997. That repeal was rescinded in 2022. In 2017, the state of Victoria legalised Voluntary Assisted Dying. Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales followed suit.  

In 2022 the federal ban on euthanasia was repealed and the Australian Capital Territory Act legalised Voluntary Assisted Dying, known as VAD. The Labor Party recently voted for MPs to be allowed a conscience vote on the VAD.

The Bishop of Kalookan Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David questioned the United States’ plan to build a 1,618-hectare artificial intelligence (AI) hub in the Philippines as part of the Trump administration’s Pax Silica initiative. Pax Silica is a coalition of at least 23 countries, including the Philippines, aiming to secure AI supply chains and counter China’s dominance in tech manufacturing. 

One of Pax Silica’s flagship programmes is the AI hub in the Philippines, touted to create up to 190,000 jobs and attract up to £50 billion in investments. Despite the projected economic gains, David said the Pax Silica hub raises crucial questions in the light of Catholic social teaching. 

“Will Pax Silica help build Filipino scientific capability, technological innovation, and industrial resilience?” he asked. “Or will it primarily serve the strategic interests of others while Filipinos provide the land, natural resources, water, energy, tax incentives and labour?” Other church groups also criticised the hub, saying it could deplete water resources and displace Indigenous communities.

Caritas Philippines rejected a call from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to “revisit” proposals to produce nuclear energy in the country. Marcos made this appeal during his fifth State of the Nation Address to the Philippines’ Congress, on 27 July. 

The president expressed confidence in the capacity of nuclear energy “to reinforce our energy security and to bring down the cost of electricity in our country”. 

However, in a statement on 30 July, Caritas Philippines president Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos said that nuclear power “is not a practical answer to today’s electricity crisis”. 

He warned: “It is costly and raises serious questions about safety, radioactive waste, public debt and accountability. Public concerns should not be dismissed as mere misunderstanding.” 

The country’s first nuclear power plant was completed in 1984 but was never commissioned due to safety and financial concerns.

The first gathering of Christian religious leaders and Confucian scholars took place on 4-5 August in the South Korean capital Seoul. The Christian-Confucian Colloquium is organised by the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue in collaboration with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, Sogang University, and the Korean Confucian Academy.  

“New Heaven, New Earth and Datong (Great Harmony, Great Unity): Christian-Confucian Dialogue for Building an Ideal Society” explored how Christianity and Confucianism – a philosophy and value-led lifestyle developed by Confucius in China between the fifth and sixth centuries BC – can jointly inspire responses to urgent social challenges today. 

Discussions addressed topics including social fragmentation, moral uncertainty, environmental degradation and threats to peace. The talks were expected to conclude with a call for continuing Christian-Confucian cooperation in areas including education, ethical formation and peace building.

The Holy See announced the episcopal consecration of Bishop Francis Xavier Duan Yongkun as coadjutor of the Diocese of Bameng, in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.  

The consecration took place on 29 July following his appointment on 15 June in accordance with the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China regarding the appointment of Bishops, according to the announcement. 

Bishop Duan Yongkun, 45, will have right of succession to the 65-year-old Bishop Matthias Du Jiang, who was secretly ordained bishop in 2004 to the diocese before the Holy See had officially recognised its erection on the initiative of the Chinese authorities, who granted him official recognition in 2010.

The Diocese of Dibrugarh in India’s north-eastern Assam state appealed for financial aid to help rebuild the lives of those affected by floods that have killed 82 people. Bishop Albert Hemrom of Dibrugarh told The Tablet that more than one million people have been affected by the unprecedented floods that swept away their houses. 

The worst-affected areas were the Upper Assam districts of Charaideo, Sivasagar and Jorhat. Poor rural communities, tea garden labourers, daily-wage earners, indigenous communities and marginal farmers suffered most, he said. Nearly 349 villages across Golaghat, Sivasagar, Charaideo, Bajali, Dhemaji, Sonitpur and Jorhat districts were affected. Several parish churches and convents were submerged. 

The diocese immediately mobilised its priests, religious congregations, volunteers and social service institutions to provide emergency relief and pastoral accompaniment to the affected. Lakwa Parish in Charaideo District suffered the worst of the flooding, Hemrom reported, and five Catholic communities and many neighbouring villages there remained inundated for several days.

Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil, the head of the Syro-Malabar Church, inaugurated the first National Conference of Catholic Congress for lay leaders on 1 August. 

The two-day Conference at the Animation and Renewal Centre in Panvel, Mumbai, under the Church’s Archdiocese of Kalyan, had as its theme “Community empowerment for national progress”. 

Church and community leaders from various dioceses across India gathered at India’s financial capital for the first national-level laity collaboration, focusing on unity, minority welfare and nation building. 

In the keynote address Glenn Ticlo, a member of the National Commission for Minorities, said the conference provided a meaningful platform to discuss the aspirations and concerns of minority communities and the need to ensure their welfare, empowerment, and equal participation in the country’s progress. 

“It was also an opportunity to reaffirm our shared commitment to harmony, inclusivity and nation-building through dialogue and collective action,” he said. Ticlo discussed the government’s 15-point programme for minorities and commitment to inclusive growth.

A Sri Lankan court sentenced two former senior officials to death after they were convicted for failing to prevent the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks. Suicide bombers targeted three hotels in Colombo and three churches – two Catholic and one Protestant – in the city of Batticaloa on 21 April 2019, killing more than 260 people. 

The court found that Pujith Jayasundara, the former Inspector General of Police, and Hemasiri Fernando, the former permanent secretary to the Ministry of Defence, failed to act on intelligence warnings and were complicit in the deaths through dereliction of duty. 

Catholic leaders have campaigned for a full inquiry into the attacks, arguing that wider government corruption was at work. Death sentences in Sri Lanka are normally commuted to life imprisonment.

Rebels in Sudan shot dead an Anglican priest weeks after a Catholic priest was killed in the same area. According to local reports, a faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army carried out the attack in South Kordofan state on 24 July in which the Revd Adel Idris Jongool was kidnapped and later murdered. 

The militia is fighting government forces and other rebel groups, driving fears that Islamist militants are driving jihadist violence in the Sudanese civil war. Rebels also attacked Korkel Theological College and kidnapped dozens of worshippers in the locality. Jongool died alongside two other lay persons, reportedly after gunmen had looted medical supplies stored at his parish. 

A month earlier, elsewhere in South Kordofan, soldiers shot dead Fr Yuhana Alamin, a priest of the Catholic Diocese of El Obeid, after he objected to the looting of medical supplies. 

A priest and academic ended a nearly six-year public dispute with his bishop in Cameroon by apologising for defying his authority. 

Fr George Jingwa Nkeze, the former president of the Catholic University Institute of Buea (CUIB), offered a formal apology to Bishop Michael Bibi of Buea in a letter dated 6 February, which the bishop acknowledged in a pastoral letter last week. 

Fr Nkeze acknowledged his failure to obey the bishop as his local ordinary and admitted he had made “errors of judgement” in the public dispute. 

“I write with a humble heart to express my sincere apology for my failure to fully abide by the directives you gave me as my local ordinary,” Fr Nkeze wrote. “As a priest incardinated in the Diocese of Buea, I recognise my obligation to live in obedience to you and to observe the directives you have established for priests under your pastoral care.” 

The dispute has divided the local Church since 2020, when Bishop Bibi – then acting as apostolic administrator of Buea – replaced Fr Nkeze with the historian Professor Victor Julius Ngoh as president of CUIB while the priest was on sabbatical leave in the US. 

Nkeze and his supporters within the university council strongly disapproved of the bishop’s decision and took the unprecedented step of taking him to court.  

According to Bibi, the departing priest also refused to hand over critical CUIB assets, including university bank accounts for which he remained a signatory. The bishop said he will reflect on the priest’s apology before giving an informed response.

A Ugandan court sentenced a suspended priest to 21 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to the murder of a Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) official, concluding a criminal case that drew widespread attention. 

Justice Flavia Nabakooza of the High Court in Entebbe handed down the sentence on 23 July after Fr Dominic Alinga admitted to the murder of URA officer John Bosco Ngorok and the attempted murder of motorcycle taxi (or “boda boda”) rider Moses Abigaba.

The court sentenced Alinga to 21 years’ imprisonment for murder and 10 years’ imprisonment for attempted murder. The sentences are to run concurrently. The court also ordered that compensation be paid to Abigaba, who survived the attack. 

According to Uganda’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), Alinga admitted responsibility for both offences during court proceedings. 

“The conviction demonstrates that criminal responsibility applies equally to all persons regardless of their social or religious status,” the ODPP said following the judgment. Alinga is a priest of the Diocese of Moroto in Uganda’s Karamoja region.  

He was ordained to the priesthood on 28 July 2020 and served at Iriiri Catholic Parish in Napak District before his suspension from priestly ministry on 17 July 2024 by the Bishop of Moroto Damiano Guzzetti. 

While confirming the authenticity of the suspension decree at the time, Bishop Guzzetti reportedly declined to disclose the reasons for the disciplinary measure, saying the matter was not public. Instead, the Italian-born Comboni missionary urged the faithful to pray for the priest “so that he may deeply receive the grace of conversion and amendment of life”.

A fire destroyed a girls’ dormitory at a school supported by the African Sisters Education Collaborative in Tanzania. While no casualties were reported, the sisters said pupils had lost all their possessions and the cause of the fire was under investigation. 

“We are grateful that everyone is safe,” the sisters said in a statement. “The girls who lived in the dorm have been moved to the school library for temporary shelter. This is an incredibly difficult time for the Bigwa community, especially the students, who lost their belongings, including clothing, sanitary supplies, school materials and treasured keepsakes.” 

The statement continued: “Please keep the Bigwa Secondary School community in your prayers as they begin to recover from this devastating loss. We also appreciate any financial support that will help them begin to recover and rebuild Bigwa.”

The search for miracles is driving Catholics away from the Catholic Church and into Pentecostal and evangelical churches, according Archbishop Ignatius Chama of Kasama, president of the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

Speaking on the sidelines of the twenty-first plenary assembly of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa, held at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Kenya’s Archdiocese of Nairobi on 19-26 July, Archbishop Chama said: “Young people mostly, even the older people, are moving away from the Catholic Church to Pentecostals, evangelicals, because of miracles these places promise.”

He continued: “Other Catholics are moving to Islam because now we are getting the threat of Islam in our country, especially the northern part where I’m coming from. The eastern and the central parts of the country are also experiencing this threat. There are [Muslim] strongholds there.” He said the Church is responding by strengthening catechesis.

The Archdiocese of Lilongwe launched an endowment fund to establish a “permanent base” in Malawi to “support the Church’s work in education, healthcare and community development, while reducing dependence on external donor funding”. 

Malawi’s bishops have raised concerns about the costs involved in running the Church and training seminarians.

“The Church has schools, but the population is growing and we need more schools,” said Bishop Vincent Mwakhwawa, an auxiliary in the archdiocese, at the launch of the Tiyende Limodzi Endowment Fund last week. 

“We have hospitals, but they are under increasing pressure and require more equipment. This initiative is about working together with generous Malawians to continue transforming lives and developing our country.” 

The Tiyende Limodzi Endowment Fund is aimed at securing the Church’s mission through sustainable local resource mobilisation. The country’s top bankers and legal minds have backed the initiative to help make the Church self-sustainable.

Stay updated — add us as a preferred news source on Google: