The archbishop of Grouard-McLennan in Northern Alberta, Canada, says he is saddened but “not overcome” by the loss of a 121-year-old church to arson on May 22. A second church in Alberta, St Mary’s Cathedral, was also the victim of alleged attempted arson three days earlier, as local police seek assistance in identifying a man…
The Mexican Bishops’ Conference (CEM) expressed “consternation and pain” over the May 22 murder of Augustinian Fr Javier García Villafaña and demanded “an exhaustive and transparent investigation”. “We strongly condemn this act of violence that has not only taken a life but also threatens peace and justice in our nation,” the Mexican bishops said. “It’s…
Pope Francis has asked Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna to lead a mission “to help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine,” the Vatican press office said. The appointment of the cardinal, who is president of the Italian bishops’ conference and a long-time member of the Sant’Egidio Community, was confirmed May 20 by Matteo…
The Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior (Migob) announced in official media the “voluntary dissolution” of the Immaculate Conception Catholic University of the Archdiocese of Managua (UCICAM), which functioned as a formation centre for seminarians from the Nicaraguan capital. According to ministerial agreement 77-2023-OSFL, published May 18 in La Gaceta, the regime’s official newspaper, the minister…
The Diocese of Irapuato in the Mexican state of Guanajuato expressed its “profound consternation” over a fire deliberately set at Santiaguito (St James) Church and called it a “sacrilege”. In a statement published May 15, Fr Efrén Silva Plascencia, spokesman for the diocese, said that the fire “was set on the exterior by a male…
The number of victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Poland between 1944 and 1990 may be close to 1,100 with the number of abusers close to 300. Those are, however, not the official findings of the Church in Poland. On March 15, the bishops announced they will create a commission of experts…
An unidentified man is in custody after driving a car at high speed through a gate at the Vatican May 18, the Holy See press office said. A guard stationed at the Santa Anna entrance fired his weapon in the direction of the vehicle’s front tires, hitting the left front fender, but the vehicle proceeded…
After hundreds of public prayers for peace in Ukraine and 443 days after Russia launched an all-out war on the Eastern European country, Pope Francis welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the Vatican. The topics of the conversation May 13 included “the humanitarian and political situation in Ukraine caused by the ongoing war”, the Vatican…
An investigation by the Spanish newspaper El Pais has revealed that the Spanish Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno, who died in 2009, sexually abused as many as 85 boys and adolescents in the 1970s and 1980s and recorded the incidents in a secret diary as “blunders”, and that the Jesuits covered it up. A nephew…
Archbishop Ladislav Nemet of Belgrade, Serbia, told OSV News that “no child should be a victim of violence,” following a school shooting in that city that left eight children and one security guard dead, with six students and a teacher injured. On May 3, a 13-year-old male student at the Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School opened…