Christopher Graney, an adjunct scholar at the Vatican Observatory, told “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Veronica Dudo on Oct. 2: “From a modern astronomy perspective, Earth is not an ordinary place. Doesn’t mean that there’s no other planets like Earth elsewhere in the universe, but the universe is certainly not full of worlds like Earth.”

Graney asks readers to look at Earth in the context of the vast universe in his new book “A Universe of Earths: Our Planet and Other Worlds, Copernicus to NASA” (Oxford University Press, 2026).

For much of modern history, astronomers believed Earth was unremarkable and that many Earth-like worlds populated the universe, Graney said. However, Graney debunks this theory and argues for a more realistic approach to our solar system.

“Not long ago, at least in terms of Church history, astronomers thought Earth was very ordinary,” he said. “They thought that there were lots of places like Earth. You will find this in historical writings from the 19th century especially.”

For example, Jesuit Father Angelo Secchi, a pioneering Italian astronomer in the 19th century considered one of the founders of astrophysics, favored the idea that the universe contained many inhabited worlds. He wrote that stars were suns distributing “life and goodness” to “innumerable beings blessed by the hand of the Omnipotent,” reflecting a common 19th-century belief that life existed throughout the cosmos.

In modern astronomy, “we know that Mars is completely lifeless, or at least there’s so little life on there if it has any that we haven’t found it yet … we’ve observed planets orbiting other stars. The universe is so diverse. Those star systems, those planets seem very different from Earth,” he said.

At the Vatican Observatory, Graney focuses his research on the history of science by studying asteroids, galaxies, and cosmology.

When asked whether the Vatican was aware of any extraterrestrial sightings or signs elsewhere in the solar system, Graney dismissed theories that the Vatican is concealing evidence of alien life, saying such stories are “a lot more dull” in reality and that any life elsewhere in the universe is likely too far away to have reached Earth.

“It’s more boring, I guess, than the Vatican hiding space aliens. But that’s the way it is,” Graney said.

The docudrama features several prominent Catholic figures including Archbishop Paul Coakley of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City; Archbishop José Gómez of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles; Father Chris Alar of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception; Curtis Martin, the founder of FOCUS; evangelist Chris Stefanick; and many more.

The film will be in theaters across the United States Oct. 4–8.

The inspiration for the film came as a response to the docudrama “Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist,” which was released in theaters in 2024. Created by the same filmmakers as “Adore Him,” “Jesus Thirsts” was made in response to a poll that showed that roughly 70% of Catholics don’t believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

“We wanted to demonstrate that Jesus is real in the Eucharist,” Deacon Steve Greco, the filmmaker behind both films, told EWTN News in an interview. “So the people who saw that movie, many of them were inspired to say, ‘OK, now that Jesus is real, I have to do something different. My life has to be different.’ And in changing your life and your world, it really comes down to ‘I need to really be connected with him.’”

He added: “So “Adore Him: He Is Here” is really meant to be a continuation, almost like a sequel, to the very first movie in which in order to activate Jesus, to activate the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we need to understand how to worship him. And Eucharistic adoration changes our entire life.”

Greco also believes this film is necessary for today because “the Church is really being led back to Eucharist in a way like never before.”

“We have this great activation going on in which people are really desiring the Blessed Sacrament and the Eucharist and going before the Blessed Sacrament in a way like never before,” he said. “We see more and more churches going to 24/7 adoration. Theyʼre expanding their hours of adoration. More and more people are going before the Blessed Sacrament to really be energized and to receive graces.”

For those who are feeling called to go to Eucharistic adoration, potentially for the first time, Greco would advise them to “start with 10 minutes and just talk to the Lord. Just have a conversation like with your best friend and just be quiet.”

Then those 10 minutes can turn into 20, then half an hour, and finally a full hour. But, the most important thing you need to do, he said, is to “open up your heart to his love.”

“You will find that when you go before the Blessed Sacrament, if you open your heart and youʼre silent before the Lord and youʼre listening before the Lord, … God will come to you in a powerful way and show you that you are his beloved,” Greco added.

With this in mind, he said he hopes viewers of the film will take away “that first of all, Jesus is real; the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist is real. The Blessed Sacrament is there for us to allow us to get to really experience his love in a way like never before. We hope that people go to the Blessed Sacrament, to the chapel.”

“When they see this movie [we hope] they just start going and believing and get into the habit of going a few times a week if not every day and just let God love you and that will transform their life. That will give them hope and joy.”

In his homily during Mass at Our Lady of the Conception Cathedral of Mbanza Congo Diocese on Sept. 27, Kiaziku reflected on the vulnerability of children living in situations of abandonment and called on families, authorities, and society to take greater responsibility for their protection.

“The abduction of children to be taken to the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC] is a horrible thing,” the bishop said.

He warned that children who are abducted could become victims of “organ trafficking, modern slavery, and prostitution.”

The bishop described such forms of exploitation as a serious threat to the dignity and safety of minors and urged the local community to remain vigilant.

“Children who are taken away do not go to paradise — no, they go to hell. We must do everything to ensure that this does not happen among us,” he added, calling on “families, authorities, and society as a whole” to remain attentive and vigilant.”

Kiaziku said the protection of children should not be left solely to individual families or government institutions but should be regarded as a responsibility shared by the entire community.

“Preventing child abduction and trafficking must be assumed as a collective responsibility, especially in a region bordering the DRC,” he said.

Movement of people has been reported between Angola and the DRC Zaire province, where the Diocese of Mbanza Kongo is located, and has important crossing points such as Luvo.

Angola and the DRC share a land border of approximately 2,511 kilometers (about 1,560 miles), including about 225 kilometers (approximately 140 miles) in Cabinda province. The remainder is in mainland Angola, including Zaire province.

Kiaziku also drew attention to children who have been abandoned in the province, saying that some of them are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. He appealed for solidarity with children living without adequate family protection, making a particular appeal to families who have the means to welcome children into their homes.

“How good it would be, for example, if families who can do so adopted one of those children,” Kiaziku said.

The bishop said such solidarity could help protect children from situations of abandonment and reduce their exposure to exploitation and other dangers.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

In response, the Diocese of San Jose, California, led by Bishop Oscar Cantú, has launched a landmark convalidation initiative under the California bishops’ “Radiate Love” campaign, witnessing dozens of couples enter into the sacrament of matrimony over the past few months.

Originally planned as a small pilot program, the initiative received a massive swell in interest from local families seeking to place Christ at the center of their marriages. Because of the high volume of registrants, celebrations took place across multiple communal Masses presided over by diocesan bishops on July 25, Aug. 1, and Sept. 26, alongside separate private ceremonies for couples who requested them.

The initiative began after the director for Adult Spirituality and Family Life for the Diocese of San Jose, Jose Soto, noticed how many couples attending weekly Mass with their children refrained from Communion due to their marital status.

“We adapted the title ‘Radiate Love’ because it was used by the California bishops as a way to promote marriage and family in 2024-2025,” Soto said. “So, as that initiative was drawing to a close, I created a Radiate Love task force, which was about four or five marriages that I put out an invitation to, and they were passionate about marriage and family, and they helped me put on events throughout the year. One of them said, ‘Jose, my heart breaks when I see couples ... come to church, they bring their kids to Mass on Sunday, and they donʼt take Communion, and I wonder if thereʼs anything we can do to help those couples.’ And that’s how it started.”

While organizers initially planned for a small cohort of 12 to 15 couples to establish a framework, news of the program spread through parishes. After the time to sign up was over, there were a total of 102 couples ready to begin.

“We were just so excited and overwhelmed at the same time, but it was so joyful,” Soto said. “It just said to me that there’s a need out there, and that couples are willing to come forward when they are welcomed, and when they are, when they see that thereʼs an initiative from the Church to walk with them, to journey with them.”

Volunteer mentors Veronica and Richard Wildanger, who had their own civil marriage convalidated 22 years ago, joined the task force after being approached by Soto to support the “wonderfully successful” surge of applicants.

To ensure couples received thorough pastoral care, the diocese implemented the Witness to Love program for marriage preparation by pairing up civilly married couples with experienced mentor couples to walk them through the process. The Wildangers believed this was the next step in turning their marriage toward God.

“And the fact that the diocese offered it up, all of a sudden it was like someone stretching a hand out and saying, here, just hold my hand and we’ll guide you through every step,” Veronica said.

For candidates like Mireya Aristizábal and Juan David Díaz, who were married civilly three years after moving from Colombia, the program provided both spiritual clarity and personal connection as a couple.

“But in my heart, there was always that little itch,” Aristizábal said in Spanish. “Because I said, ‘Well, I want to be with my partner, but I want to be with him before God.’ That is, the sacrament of matrimony. It’s that, the desire to have and to live the sacrament to its fullest.”

Her husband saw the decision as a way to support his wife’s spiritual life while growing in his own faith.

“She was invited to the party, but they weren’t giving her dinner,” he said in Spanish. “So it’s very difficult … to block her from her beliefs. I said, ‘No, I also believe in God, I like the Catholic Church, so let’s go.’”

According to Aristizábal, the preparation process helped ground their relationship in shared spiritual formation, finding their community in their new home to join them for the celebration on Sept. 26.

“The impact has been drawing us closer to God, knowing that we are seeking him, and that we want to put him in first place in our lives,” Aristizábal said in Spanish.

Throughout the program, organizers and mentors emphasized the theology of sacramental marriage as an unbreakable covenant rather than a mere social agreement, Soto explained.

“When you bring God into it, this is now a covenantal marriage, not sort of a contractual marriage, but a sacramental marriage,” Wildanger told EWTN News. “Our Lord is now present, and you owe a responsibility to God to really try to help your spouse get to heaven. Itʼs not solely at this level; itʼs more of an also at this level. And God is now watching and present in you and can bring graces from that.”

Soto noted that elevating civil unions into sacramental covenants provides families with a deeper sense of purpose, stating that couples can “mirror that when they give themselves to each other in holy matrimony.”

For many couples, receiving the Eucharist after years of abstaining was an emotional milestone. Some even had exceeded 30 years of only civil marriage, causing many tears of joy, according to Veronica Wildanger.

Rather than detracting from the intimacy of the sacrament, participating in a group ceremony highlighted the universal nature of the Church.

“That makes me see that the Church is unity, and that sharing this sacrament with other people demonstrates that the Church is still very much alive, that it believes in marriage, and that it wants to keep fighting for it,” Aristizábal said.

For couples who did not reach the program in time, or were limited due to missing documentation, time constraints, or anxieties — all of which Soto claimed were obstacles experienced by couples during the last year, the message of encouragement is clear: Do not be afraid.

“I would just say that the Church welcomes you, and the Church is here with open arms, and that whenever you are ready, we are here to walk with you every step of the way,” Soto said. “So my advice would just be to, if you have it in your heart, if thereʼs been a tug in your heart that says, maybe I should get married in the Church, to listen to it, to respond to it.”

“The Work of God was not imagined by a man,” he would later say. “For many years, the Lord had been inspiring it in an inept and deaf instrument, who saw it for the first time on the Feast of the Guardian Angels.”

It was, the saint understood, the answer to the prayers he repeatedly addressed to God: “Domine, ut videam!” and “Domine, ut sit!” (“Lord, that I may see!” and “Lord, that it may come to be!”)

On that October day, the founder of Opus Dei was making a spiritual retreat at the Central House of the Vincentian missionaries in Madrid. “I received enlightenment regarding the whole Work ... Deeply moved, I knelt down, I was alone in my room in the interval between talks, and thanked the Lord; I recall with emotion the ringing of the bells of the parish church of Our Lady of the Angels.”

On that occasion, Vázquez de Prada notes, St. Josemaría’s mind “was illuminated with a clear, general idea of ​​his mission.”

“The scattered notes the retreatant had brought with him to meditate upon during the retreat consisted of ideas that were, it seems, unsystematized. In the days that followed, he compiled them in an orderly fashion, in accordance with the general enlightenment he had just received regarding the whole work,” the author explains.

Building on that foundation, over the years St. Josemaría “drafted documents that he would later hand to his children in Opus Dei,” Vázquez de Prada continues.

In 1930, he wrote in a letter: “We have come to say with the humility of one who knows himself to be a sinner and of little account (“homo peccator sum” — I am a sinful man [Luke 5:8], we say with Peter), yet with the faith of one who allows himself to be guided by the hand of God, that holiness is not reserved for a privileged few: that the Lord calls all of us, that he expects love from everyone, from everyone, wherever they may be; from everyone, whatever their state in life, their profession, or their trade.”

“For that ordinary, everyday life without pretense can be a means of holiness; there is no need to abandon one’s state in life to seek God — if the Lord has not given a soul a religious vocation — since every way of life on this earth can be an occasion for an encounter with Christ,” the founder of Opus Dei said.

What is Opus Dei?

Its official Spanish-language website defines Opus Dei as “a hierarchical institution of the Catholic Church, a personal prelature, whose purpose is to contribute to the Church’s evangelizing mission.”

“Specifically, the aim is to spread a deep awareness of the universal call to holiness and the sanctifying value of ordinary work,” the website adds.

Among the faithful who discover a “vocation to Opus Dei” and request to join, a distinction is made between numeraries, who live apostolic celibacy and are fully available for the work of the prelature; associates, who also live apostolic celibacy but whose personal, family, or professional circumstances limit that availability; and supernumeraries, whether married or single, who do not commit to celibacy. Priests incardinated in the prelature are drawn from the ranks of numeraries or associates.

According to the most recent data released by Opus Dei, around 94,450 people are part of the institution, which is present in 68 countries across five continents.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Under the decision reached in the virtual plenary session, content clearly linking Bolsonaro to the initiative must be removed. However, posts where there is reasonable doubt regarding the link to the candidate are to be preserved. This applies to a post by comedian Antonio Tabet, which was permitted to remain online by the reporting justice, André Mendonça.

The case began on Sept. 24 when Tabet posted an image of the dark-skinned Our Lady of Aparecida on X with the caption: “The militia family hates black women so much that they decided to attack Our Lady of Aparecida.” The post did not mention Bolsonaro by name. The senator is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who was president of Brazil from 2019-2023.

The following day, Mendonça, the vice president of the Superior Electoral Court and the rapporteur for the case, ordered the removal of content that claimed Bolsonaro or his family intended to strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her title as the patroness of Brazil.

Upon reconsidering his vote, the judge concluded there was doubt regarding the link between Tabet’s post and Bolsonaro and decided to allow the post to stay online.

“As it is reasonable to take the content to be ambiguous, I believe the solution most consistent with the criteria of minimal intervention [by the courts] and heightened protection of freedom of expression is to keep the post online,” Mendonça said.

According to the judge, the decisions ordering the removal of the content specifically naming Flávio Bolsonaro “do not amount to prior restraint” nor did they violate religious freedom.

“Confusing a ‘fake news’ report with a restriction on faith represents a distortion of the decision’s actual substance. Faith was not on trial,” Mendonça said. He further noted that “the insinuation that the decisions issued in these proceedings sought to prevent Catholics from expressing support for or devotion to Our Lady of Aparecida is particularly baffling” and emphasized: “Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the decisions warrants such a conclusion.”

He also stated that this change does not alter the other points of his decision and emphasized that he considers “objectively false” the claims that Bolsonaro “had authored, presented, proposed, supported, or concretely orchestrated an initiative aimed at removing Our Lady of Aparecida from her status as the patroness of Brazil.”

The president of the Supreme Electoral Court, Justice Nunes Marques, concurred with Mendonça and stated that the decision “protects religious freedom in its collective and democratic dimension.”

“In my view, the relief granted protects religious freedom in its collective and democratic dimension, as it prevents the faith of millions of Brazilians from being instrumentalized within days of the election [Oct. 4] through a claim without a factual basis designed to artificially stir up emotional reactions among the electorate,” Marques said.

He also highlighted that “the contested post did not need to name the candidate to attribute the claim to him; because it was disseminated at the height of the false narrativeʼs circulation — accompanied by the image of the patroness. Its message was only fully realized and achieved its intended effect due to the context of current news stories in which it was embedded.” Nevertheless, Marques’ difference of opinion regarding Tabet does not alter the effect of the ruling.

This story was first published by ACI Digital, the Portuguese-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

“The priority is the victim, not institutional reputation. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish how many such crimes have occurred in the past, since 11 March 1990,” the bishops said in a statement, according to a Sept. 28 Delfi report.

The investigation follows a case involving Father Tadas Švedavičius, a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Vilnius who was charged in connection with 34 criminal counts of child sexual abuse, possession of child pornography, and distributing alcohol to minors over the course of 20 years, the report said. The conference will consult the Holy See and Lithuanian law enforcement during the investigation.

Filipino bishops back calls to ban political dynasties

Catholic bishops in the Philippines have voiced their support for a nationwide signature campaign calling for the end of political dynasties in the country.

“Public office must never become a family inheritance. It is a public trust entrusted to the people,” Bishop Elias Ayuban Jr. of Cubao said at a launch event for the anti-dynasty initiative known as “Dapat Isa Lang” at the Obispado de Cubao in Quezon City, according to a Sept. 30 press release from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

The conference at large backed the initiative in a pastoral statement on Sept. 25, declaring: “As pastors of God’s people, we cannot remain indifferent to matters that touch the moral foundations of our society, the dignity of our people, justice, equality, and the common good. For these reasons, we support the call to enact a genuine, meaningful, and effective Anti-Political Dynasty Law that will faithfully give effect to the mandate of our Constitution.”

2 synod calls expose tensions in Syriac Catholic Church

A dispute over two proposed meetings of Syriac Catholic bishops has brought internal tensions in the Church into public view. Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan called a synod for Nov. 17–20, while another invitation called bishops to meet Sept. 29–30.

The patriarchate said Church law gives Younan the first right to convene the synod and considers the separate September invitation unlawful. It has also rejected claims that the patriarch failed to call a synod in recent years, ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News, reported Sept. 30.

An unnamed source cited by ACI MENA disputed that account and questioned the timing of Younanʼs invitation. The disagreement comes amid wider tensions involving the patriarch and Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Vaticanʼs Dicastery for the Eastern Churches. Younan has publicly accused the cardinal of encouraging bishops to seek his removal, placing the synod dispute within a broader debate over leadership and authority in the Syriac Catholic Church.

Angolan bishop: Religious zeal must not come at expense of family responsibilities

Bishop Maurício Agostinho Camuto of Angola’s Diocese of Caxito has cautioned Catholics against religious practices that could lead them to neglect their family responsibilities.

“Jesus does not ask for spending more time in the Church than caring for the family,” Camuto said in his homily during Mass at St. Anne’s Cathedral on Sept. 27, ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, reported. “Religious involvement should not result in the abandonment of family responsibilities,” he said, citing situations in which “there are even wives whose husbands almost want to separate from them because they spend more time in the Church than at home, taking care of the family, taking care of the husband.”

The bishop further called for stronger formation and accompaniment of members of apostolic groups and movements, particularly through catechesis and participation in the sacramental life of the Church.

Japanese cardinal calls faithful to act on behalf of migrants and refugees

Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo is encouraging Catholics to go beyond words and take action on behalf of migrants and refugees.

Kikuchi echoed calls from Pope Leo XIV to move from “merely managing migration” to “full and immediate protection of human rights” in a Sept. 27 reflection, according to UCA News.

The reflection came on World Day of Refugees, Migrants, and Displaced Persons on Sept. 27. Kikuchi further urged Catholics to reflect especially on the pope’s appeal for children and to ask themselves, “What can we ourselves do for ‘these little ones’?”

Protestant march in Catholic Northern Ireland town permitted; archbishops respond

The Northern Ireland Parades Commission has reversed a ruling previously prohibiting the Protestant Orange Order from marching through the Catholic majority town of Portadown for the first time in nearly three decades, according to a Sept. 30 America Magazine report.

The Sept. 27 march resulted in a clash between Protestant members of the Orange Order and protesters blocking their path from Drumcree Church, according to the report.

Addressing the tension, Archbishop Eamon Martin of the Archdiocese of Armagh and Archbishop John McDowell of the Church of Ireland in Armagh issued a joint statement following the Sept. 27 march.

“As our community faces the crisis in Drumcree today, in which so many sincere views, painful histories and important issues are at stake, we cannot think of any time in the last 30 years when this simple message needs to be more urgently heard. How can we be good neighbors to each other?” the archbishops said. “We call for the urgent creation of a constructive, inclusive and reconciling initiative to patiently find a way through this current crisis. Too much is at stake.”

Christian parliamentarian raises security concerns as coalition mission ends in Iraq

The end of the international coalitionʼs mission in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region has renewed security concerns among Christians, according to Ramy Noori Syawish, an elected Christian member of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament.

Syawish told ACI MENA Sept. 30 that the continuing threat from ISIS, armed groups outside state control, and uncontrolled weapons raises questions about the ability of Iraqi and Kurdish forces to respond to another major security crisis. He said smaller communities could be particularly vulnerable because of their declining numbers and dependence on the state for protection. He also pointed to economic hardship and irregular public-sector salaries as factors driving emigration. Syawish said the next Kurdistan Regional Government should prioritize services in Christian areas and address long-running disputes over land and property.

Religion in public life sparks debate over Syriaʼs direction

A series of incidents during the summer has fueled debate over the growing presence of religion in Syriaʼs public life.

The controversies have touched womenʼs dress, education, employment, entertainment, and the way public institutions are being run, according to a Sept. 29 report from ACI MENA. Other disputes followed a dress code directive for female government employees, the separation of male and female students at a Damascus school, and religious questions reportedly included on an employment form.

The debate has also reached the arts, while questions over some public appointments have raised concerns about whether professional qualifications or other considerations are shaping hiring decisions. Some allegations surrounding these cases remain disputed or unverified.

The estate of a child killed in utero during the third trimester collected $200,000 under New Mexico’s wrongful death law.

The case, Wabbington v. Boyd, argued by Albuquerque medical malpractice attorney Mike Seibel, described the unborn baby as a “person” who was "entitled to equal protection under the law.” Seibel advocates for women who have been injured by abortion.

The baby’s mother had been under the influence of methamphetamine when she went to an abortion clinic in 2020 and was thus unable to give valid informed consent, but the abortion was provided anyway.

The lawsuit said that abortionists also failed to inform her of support available to her in the state or refer her to the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department.

Seibel told Live Action News that the case was the first time an abortionist was ever sued for the wrongful death of a baby.

3 states file lawsuit against telehealth abortion

Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama have filed lawsuits against providers who ship abortion drugs into their states and against California, Massachusetts, and New York over their laws shielding abortion pill providers.

The states’ Sept. 30 lawsuit against abortion providers calls mail-order abortion “one of the most dramatic and sweeping interstate conflicts in modern history.”

“If state sovereignty means anything, it means that states like Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama cannot be forced to endure open violations of their laws, deaths of their babies, and harms to their women and girls simply because an out-of-state actor disagrees with their sovereign prerogative to choose life within their borders,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit names as defendants several abortion pill providers, including Cambridge Reproductive Health Consultants Inc. in Massachusetts and A Safe Choice Network Inc. in California.

A separate lawsuit brought by the states asks the U.S. Supreme Court to rule the abortion shield laws of California, Massachusetts, and New York unconstitutional.

Poland opens first abortion pill delivery locker

Activist groups in Poland have launched a locker to distribute abortion pills, which they say is the first of its kind in the world.

Women Help Women, a global group that provides abortion pills without physicians, and the Polish abortion activism group Abortion Dream Team put the locker across from Parliament in Warsaw.

The organization gives women who are seeking abortion a six-digit code to open one of 22 numbered lockers.

Abortion is legal in Poland in cases of rape or incest or if there is risk to the mother’s life or health.

Respect Life Month prioritizes abortion pill

As Respect Life Month kicks off in October, the U.S. Catholic bishops are emphasizing the importance of opposing abortion pills.

Toledo Bishop Daniel Thomas, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pro-life committee, released a statement on Sept. 29 describing the risks of injury and exploitation from abortion pills as “affronts to human dignity.”

“Today, with easier access to abortion pills, the abortion rate is tragically climbing, along with increased health risks,” Thomas said. “This means that more women, many of whom have been misinformed about the nature and risks of the abortion pill, will have an abortion alone at home, without any medical supervision. It also sets up additional opportunities for exploitation by violent partners or human traffickers.”

Thomas urged the faithful to pray and take action against abortion.

“Our Blessed Mother is our model for upholding the sanctity of all human life in every stage and circumstance,” Thomas continued. “We entrust all our efforts to protect mothers and babies to her motherly care, which we greatly need at this time.”

“I thank the many thousands of Catholics across the country who have embraced the nationwide invitation to prayer and action on abortion pills, and I ask that we continue our prayers and advocacy throughout the month of October,” Thomas said.

Bishop Burbidge calls for weekly fasting, rosary against abortion amendment

As Virginians prepare to vote on an amendment that could create a right to abortion in the state’s constitution, Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington is calling on the faithful to take up weekly fasting and prayer throughout October.

The “Catholics Vote No” campaign urges Catholics to vote no on the Virginia Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment along with the Virginia Remove Constitutional Same-Sex Marriage Ban Amendment.

Burbidge asked Catholics to fast every Friday and pray the rosary each Sunday this October.

“Our Catholics Vote No campaign is rooted in prayer and fasting,” Burbidge said in a statement. “Therefore, On Fridays, I ask that you pray the Stations of the Cross. And fast—which means eating only one full meal and no meat.”

“On Sundays, I ask that you pray the Rosary and fast from social media for at least a few hours—especially before and after Mass,” he said.

“It would be a powerful force if all in the Diocese of Arlington were united in these efforts,” Burbidge continued. “We entrust them to the Lord’s amazing grace, so all that is just, right, and true will be done in this election.”

In an interview in the October issue of Herder Korrespondenz, Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp said he traveled to Rome in June to present the matter to the Dicastery for the Clergy and the General Secretariat of the Synod.

Bonny linked a possible arrangement to the Synod on Synodality’s implementation phase. “I trust that an appropriate arrangement can be found by the end of the synodal process in the fall of 2028,” Bonny said according to CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News. “It would be a fatal blow to the credibility and implementation of the entire synodal process if no arrangement were reached by then.”

Bonny first outlined his plans in March. He also participated in the German Synodal Way as an observer.

At the German bishops’ plenary assembly in 2022, Bonny said that “Rome must learn to live with a healthy dose of Germanic culture.” He referred to an open style of consultation and discussion, not the ordination of married men; the address was also released as a podcast.

Confidence in Pope Leo

The Vatican has not publicly commented on Bonny’s most recent remarks or announced any decision concerning his proposal.

Bonny told the German magazine he was continuing discussions within the Belgian bishops’ conference and holding conversations with potential candidates about further formation.

He said the Flemish dioceses faced a serious shortage of priests and that any step toward ordaining married men would need the agreement of both the Belgian bishops’ conference and the Vatican.

“How this step could take place with the agreement of the bishops’ conference and the Vatican is a question for the coming months,” Bonny said.

Bonny said canonists had told him canon law offered various lawful ways to address the question, but he did not identify a specific canonical mechanism or say Vatican officials had endorsed one.

He also said his confidence rested partly on Pope Leo XIV’s exercise of his office as a bridge-builder and on conversations with bishops in several countries and continents whom he said faced similar circumstances.

Under Canon 1042 of the Code of Canon Law, a man who has a wife is impeded from receiving sacred orders except when he is legitimately destined for the permanent diaconate. A diocesan bishop cannot unilaterally set aside that impediment or introduce a different priestly-ordination discipline in his diocese.

David Long, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America and a canonist, told EWTN News in March that the question of ordaining married men “does not lie within the authority of a diocesan bishop acting on his own.”

“Any current change in practice in a Latin diocese would require action by the Holy See and could not be accomplished by a unilateral decision by a diocesan bishop, no matter how pastorally urgent the circumstances may be,” he said.

Adam Blai, a lay adviser in the Pittsburgh Diocese on cases involving alleged demonic activity, told “EWTN News Nightly” on Oct. 1 that the number of cases there has risen sharply in the past five years. He said he and his team pray with people weekly and that exorcists he works with nationwide report being extremely busy.

“For some reason, there’s an increase,” said Blai, who also teaches priests how to perform exorcisms at the Pope Leo XIII Institute at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois. “But the more important, beautiful part is the Holy Spirit is raising up this ministry.”

Blai said warding off attack from demonic spirits starts with avoiding occult or other practices that invite in the spirits. “They need permission,” he said. “The evil spirits need permission from God to do what they do.”

“When we play with the occult, with divination, with ghost hunting, with Ouija boards, we are reaching out to random spirits and saying, ‘I want my comfort or my information from you right now on my terms, Iʼm not going to wait on God, Iʼm not going to trust God, Iʼm not going to trust his providence or his grace, I’m going to seek out other spirits,’” Blai continued. “And when we do that, we form a relationship with them. And thatʼs the root of these extraordinary demonic problems.”

Blai said the Church has learned to “carefully discern” whether something is a spiritual problem, medical problem, misunderstanding, or even a false claim of possession.

“If we start saying these dramatic prayers over a person with mental illness that has delusional ideas, we could encourage those ideas,” he said.

Ultimately, Blai noted that the bishop has sole authority to determine which priests may say exorcism prayers. “Every priest has the power to do exorcisms in their ordination. What they donʼt have is permission to pick up the exorcism rite and pray it over somebody until the bishop gives that to them,” he said.

“Now, all that being said, is it wise to have a priest who is pious, has a good, solid spiritual life, is well known to the bishop? Absolutely. And do some priests have gifts of discernment that may help them in the ministry? Yes, but itʼs not required,” he concluded. “Jesus tends to provide the other people and gifts and support around the ministry that that exorcist needs.”

In the book, he presents the apostolate founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer in 1928 through the experiences and testimonies of some 20 members. “Opus Dei” in Latin means the “Work of God,” commonly referred to by members of the apostolate as “the Work.”

Valero has spent many years answering questions about this institution, which has nearly 100,000 members across almost 70 countries worldwide.

Speaking with ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, he noted that “sometimes, answering the way I used to — ‘from the top down’ —  makes it harder to explain” what it actually means to belong to the Catholic Churchʼs only personal prelature.

Thus, when he was offered the chance to write the book in late 2025, he decided to tackle the challenge “from the bottom up.”

“It is the people themselves who speak about their lives. Having done it that way, I think it is far more effective, because it’s more real. Or rather, it doesn’t explain everything to you, but what it does explain, it explains very well.”

The book’s pages feature a range of members: supernumeraries (men and women with a vocation to marriage); numeraries like Valero and associates (both groups being celibate for apostolic reasons); and assistant numeraries.

The role played by this latter category of members has recently been the subject of controversy due to allegations made by 43 assistant numeraries in Argentina who claimed to have been “victims of trafficking.” Valero said his approach to this specific vocation within Opus Dei “has been a major learning experience.”

“I realized it’s not up to me to explain what that vocation is, but rather for them to explain it, and they do so very well. I was deeply impressed,” explained the spokesman, who has included the testimonies of two assistant numeraries in his book. “One at the beginning and one at the end. To make it clear that this is very important within the Work,” he indicated.

‘It’s a privilege to speak about the things I love’

Throughout his work in communications for Opus Dei as an institution, Valero has navigated periods of intense media activity, such as during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United Kingdom or the release of books like “The Da Vinci Code.”

In the first chapter of the book, where he recounts his own vocation, he notes that Opus Dei “doesn’t promote a political program or a structured project to transform society.” During the conversation with ACI Prensa, he added that the Work “has no program to improve the world, but rather to improve people.”

He further noted: “We have many formation programs to help people become like Jesus Christ — to be in the world, respond to God, sanctify everyday realities, etc., and to encourage and inspire them so that they change the world.”

Thus, Valero argued, trusting in the use of freedom, they can work together on their initiatives to change the world. “It’s an idea we need to develop further because, obviously, we haven’t communicated it entirely well, as many people don’t understand it. We need to communicate better about that.”

Reforming the statutes: ‘The Work changes with the Church’

With the centennial of the founding of Opus Dei approaching in two years, the prelature is undertaking the process of modifying its statutes, as directed by Pope Francis in the 2022 motu proprio Ad Charisma Tuendum.

In June 2025, Opus Dei submitted a proposal for modification and is awaiting the decision of Pope Leo XIV.

“They say the Church is ‘semper reformanda’ [‘always reforming’]. The world changes, the Church changes, and the Work changes along with the Church, because the Work is part of the Church,” Valero explained.

He acknowledged that within the institution, “the way directors govern today is very different from how things were done 40 years ago.”

“Governance in the Work is about accompanying and supporting people. It’s not about giving them orders. I haven’t given any order nor received any order,” he emphasized.

Regarding the statutory reform, the spokesman stated that “we are seeking to refine the legal framework” with the same spirit that guided its founder in the beginning: “Everything that comes from God through the Holy See, we accept with great love. We see that it’s something that God wants and that gives us great peace.”

“We want to imitate Christ and sanctify the world and bring Godʼs love to people. That’s what we are doing now. If the legal framework needs to be changed in some way, well, thatʼs what needs to be done, and thereʼs no problem with that,” he added.

Reality versus myths

Finally, Valero expressed his hope that the book would be read by Opus Dei members “to appreciate the variety of ways this vocation is lived out” and also by others “so that they might see, instead of the abstract myths they have heard about, the reality of the people themselves.”

“I am really hopeful that many people will read it and that this will lead to a greater understanding of what Opus Dei is,” he concluded.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Fabre reminded Catholics of their “responsibility to vote” and to “form our consciences according to the Gospel and Church teaching” in the video messages produced by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The bishops released the videos as U.S. voters prepare for the 2026 midterm elections Nov. 3 that will decide control of Congress, dozens of governorships, and hundreds of state‑level offices nationwide.

“Our identity in Christ must come before any political identity,” said Fabre, chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

Our identity in Christ must come before any political identity.”

Bishop Shelton Fabre of Louisville

Chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development

Fabre said voting is a moral act rooted in the dignity of human life, charity toward others, and the pursuit of the common good.

“We discern and we pray, and we participate in public life by voting, but also in many other ways, by advocating for the human dignity of each and every person, and also always reminding political structures and political groups that our concern is for the common good,” Fabre said in the video "Forming Our Consciences and Voting.”

“At the center of my decision is my desire to be the best disciple of Jesus Christ that I can be,” Fabre said in the video "The Call to Put Faith Before Politics."

Clergy training

Another USCCB video titled “Preaching Faithful Citizenship and the Call to Put Faith Before Politics,” released last month, features Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas; Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore; and Archbishop Alexander K. Sample of Portland, Oregon. Catholics must witness to Christ’s love in how they speak, act, and engage politically — not only in what positions they hold, the prelates say in the 16-minute video.

“We need to be agents that promote unity among people, dialogue among people, meaningful conversations among people, respecting the dignity of each and every person who is my neighbor,” Sample said in the video. “This is the whole surrounding question around the story of the good Samaritan. And Jesus teaches us in that parable, and we can instruct our people to look there, because that whole parable of the good Samaritan begins with the question, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”

Lori said: “I think that that is one of the things that we have to learn to do continually in the life of the Church is to encounter one another, not because we agree on everything, but precisely in those things where we might disagree, but looking at the other person, not as a position to be disagreed with, but a person made in Godʼs image and likeness and called to eternal life.”

A written guide for clergy offers a structured training plan to help them teach Catholics how to engage in political life with a well-formed conscience rooted in Church teaching.

The archdiocese said it will ordain 12 priests in 2027, one in January and 11 in June, and overall, the numbers have grown from 28 seminarians in 2007, 52 in 2020, and 66 this year. In 2026, 14 men, ranging in age from 17 to 36, entered formation from 14 different parishes, according to the archdiocese.

“This has not been sudden,” Archbishop William E. Lori said, according to the archdiocese. “It’s been building every year, and this is due to a lot of people praying before the Blessed Sacrament. It’s due to a good vocations team. It’s also due to pastors who are encouraging vocations in their parishes — and to parents who are generously open to the possibility that their son might have a priestly vocation.”

Father Steven Roth, vocations director and associate vicar for clergy, told EWTN News that when Lori came to Baltimore, the archbishop was given staggering statistics on the declining number of clergy there, and “from the start, he was determined to reverse that trend.”

Lori ordained five priests and 12 transitional deacons at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in May 2026, the archdiocese said.

“We did the counterintuitive,” Roth said. “We raised the bar for the application process. Because of that, we now have 66 vocations directors,” he said of the 66 current seminarians.

“Our success is based on the men who have said yes. Theyʼre the best advertisement for us,” he said, recounting a scenario where a man was on the fence about applying to seminary, but a seminarian on a summer assignment at a parish helped the man decide to apply.

Roth said newly ordained priests are filling positions that have been empty for years: hospital, high school and college chaplaincies, and parishes that have not had an associate pastor in decades.

He said they are already seeing the positive effects: at one parish in particular, he said, there has been “a drastic difference” since the arrival of a young priest who is assisting the pastor: "To have a young priest with vigor, it just energizes the community; it excites everyone to continue this work … there are more people now, and the energy in the parish is different.”

What brought the initial increase, Roth said, were efforts to get parish leadership to see there was a need for more vocations. “They’ve run with it,” he said. “Pastors have been huge supporters of the archbishop’s push and the key to the rising numbers.”

Many parishes have created a culture of vocation awareness, encouraging Eucharistic adoration and welcoming him and Father Lenin Suarez, the associate director of vocations, to speak. Pastors have personally invited young men to go to attend discernment retreats such as Quo Vadis, and Quo Vadis Beyond, directed toward high school-aged men.

The archdiocese said both of its propaedeutic houses, in Emmitsburg and Baltimore, are full, and three of this year’s new seminarians will spend that first year, the propaedeutic year — a period of prayer, discernment, and human formation — at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary instead, working with the Source of All Hope program among the homeless.

Formation can last up to nine years, Roth said, and is intended to be a time of healthy discernment in which the men have the opportunity to reflect on their experiences.

In addition to academics, the archdiocese said seminarians undergo background checks, meet with priests and spiritual directors, and work at various parish ministries as they discern and before they are formally accepted.

“We have an intense process, once we think they’re capable of formation, then we give them the application” to the seminary, Roth said. “We don’t just send an application to everyone.”

While there are men who leave, Roth said it’s a small number. “We do have men who discern out and become wonderful husbands and fathers,” he said.

Roth said the quality of the candidates is impressive.

“I’m impressed with them all the time,” he said. He described how some have a charism for working with the poor in Baltimore City, spending time with the drug addicted and the homeless. “They’re not afraid at all,” Roth said.

He also described the fraternity among the seminarians, calling it “incredible.”

“When a man is accepted as a seminarian, the other guys immediately start emailing him, inviting him to events,” Roth said. “If a man is sick, or if a family member of his is sick or dies, they all rally around” and care for him.

A few years ago, a man in a college seminary broke his leg in a football game. The other seminarians reconfigured the seminary so he could come back sooner while he was still in a wheelchair. “It was inspiring to me,” Roth said. “They were all cheering him on.”

The vocations director said that while “we celebrate not only the number as well as the caliber” of the young men, “the work is not done. There is so much more opportunity for evangelization. That is why we have to keep praying for vocations.”

“Our priests work so hard, they are stretched to the limits. We hope to start expanding our evangelization efforts,” Roth said. “We’ve envisioned journeying with families who’ve lost a loved one. What usually happens when someone dies is the parish works with the family though the funeral, and that’s it. At best you get an invite to an All Souls liturgy later in the year. Imagine if a priest had the time to walk with the family in the months and years after a death, or facilitate a group of laypeople to support the family?”

Regarding the sacraments, Roth said while the Church is good at providing them, it is not great with the follow-up. He would like to see priests supporting young married couples through the first years of marriage and after the baptism of their children. He’d also like to see priests and lay members reach out to fallen away Catholics, showing care and inviting them back to the Church.

Roth said he hopes publicity about the rising numbers of seminarians doesn’t mean people will stop praying for more priests. On the contrary, he said, “the archbishop says this is the time for more prayers, for more men to say yes. We are asking for more vocations in every realm: more marriages; for more young women to enter religious communities.”

“This is a very broad project. This does not mean the job is done, it’s just the beginning,” he said.

Hegseth introduced the Office of Religious Affairs at the Department of Defense (DOD) in his Sept. 30 State of the Force Address at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, which was attended by 600 officers and service members.

In his speech, Hegseth said the office will report directly to him and to the secretaries who serve after him. He said there will be “no staff filters” and “no bureaucratic dilution” but rather a “direct line to the secretary” for the chaplains.

“This wonʼt be a paper-pushing shop,” he said. “It will have real teeth. It will protect budgets, demand infrastructure, and strengthen religious support. The experts, our chaplains, will finally have an advocate at the highest levels. Policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission.”

In a statement to EWTN News, the Catholic military archdiocese said it hopes the new office “will enhance and strengthen the support offered to the men, women and their families who serve in the military, and to the chaplain corps who strive to accompany our soldiers, sailors, and airmen across all service branches.”

“Placing spiritual readiness alongside other departmental priorities, and shortening the timeline between identified field needs and senior decisions can have the practical effect of resolving legacy constraints that historically limited chaplaincy support,” the statement said. “This Archdiocese appreciates the initiative and welcomes its implementation.”

Structural change

Hegseth explained the new structure is meant to ensure chaplains do not need to go through secular bureaucracy.

The secretary said, under the old system, “we let people with no expertise in faith or religion dictate the spiritual life of our warriors,” and the chaplains “were buried echelons deep, waiting for permission.”

“Decisions about faith and religion were made by secular careerists in cubicles and lawyers running around with red tape,” he said.

The secretary blamed the previous structure for budget cuts, failures to adequately meet needs for resourcing and manpower, and a lack of support for chapels on bases. He said faith had been treated as “an afterthought” even though only 5% of the military is nonreligious.

“Our department therefore has a sacred duty — first-class religious support wherever we send our warriors,” Hegseth said. “... For far too long, you know, we didnʼt prioritize that duty at all.”

Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, has supported some of Hegseth’s other reforms of the chaplaincy as well.

Broglio celebrated Hegseth’s removal of the official spiritual fitness guide, which the secretary said was “pushing secular humanism” and treating chaplains like “emotional support officers” rather than as chaplains.

The archbishop said the change allowed chaplains to focus on spiritual ministry “above and beyond everything else that they might ask the chaplains to do.”

Broglio also spoke positively of Hegseth’s decision to change the chaplain insignia on uniforms to reflect the faith role instead of the military rank.

“If the decision to eliminate the rank insignia for chaplains so as to favor the insignia indicating religious affiliation contributes to making chaplains more approachable, the archdiocese favors it,” the archbishop said in March.

Alternatively, the archdiocese faced problems with the Army in 2025 amid canceled religious contracts, which the DOD ultimately worked to restore.

Apart from the chaplaincy, Broglio has criticized some military decisions from President Donald Trump’s administration. In April, he echoed the concerns of Pope Leo XIV, saying it was “hard” to see how the Iran war could be justified under Catholic just war doctrine.

The archbishop was also critical of earlier threats to annex Greenland, along with attacks on alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela that killed more than 100 people.

Missionaries of St. John the Baptist, a Catholic religious association that runs the Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel in Park Hills, Kentucky — just south of Cincinnati, Ohio — faces a lawsuit that seeks to block its construction of a grotto shrine that pays homage to the Marian apparitions in 1858 in Lourdes, France.

The city board initially approved the chapel’s request to construct the shrine by granting it a variance from a zoning ordinance that would have typically prevented construction in that location, but two neighbors objected to the shrine and filed a lawsuit.

The case went up to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which ruled against the chapel, finding that the city board exceeded its authority when it gave the chapel a variance from the ordinance.

Joel and Elizabeth Frederic, the neighbors, expressed concerns about traffic and parking if the shrine were to become a pilgrimage site. The chapel argued the shrine would simply include a statue of Mary inside a grotto, a statue of St. Bernadette — who witnessed the apparitions — and a patio and walkway.

The Catholic association that operates the chapel argues that blocking the construction of the shrine would violate the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which states that zoning laws cannot substantially burden a church’s exercise of religion. This is also the law cited by the city council as its reason for approving the chapel’s variance.

“Telling a church it can’t build a modest place for prayer and reflection on its own property is outrageous,” Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel at the First Liberty Institute, which is providing legal representation to the chapel, said in a statement.

“Federal law provides clear protections for how faith-based organizations can use their property to support their mission,” she said. “This is an important case for religious freedom.”

Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled. The case could set nationwide precedent for how cities are expected to handle zoning laws that could impose burdens on religious practice.

The award, presented on Sept. 24, recognizes scientists under the age of 45 who have distinguished themselves through their research and show “exceptional promise” in their field. Recipients of this medal include several Nobel laureates and the physicist Stephen Hawking.

Öberg holds the Thomas Dudley Cabot Chair in the Natural Sciences at Harvard University and directs the Öberg Astrochemistry Laboratory at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Her work focuses, among other topics, on chemical processes related to planet formation and chemical habitability.

But beyond her scientific career, Öberg has spoken publicly about her conversion to Catholicism and how her pursuit of knowledge influenced her journey toward faith.

In a 2011 interview with the Augustine Institute, she explained that there were aspects of the world that began to make it difficult for her to accept a strictly materialist worldview.

“There were certain facts about the world that made me very skeptical of atheism or pure materialism. I thought it was pretty obvious there is moral realism in this world, that there are things that are good and evil, regardless of what people think about them,” she noted.

Reading C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” played an important role in that process. As she explained, the British writer’s proposal seemed reasonable to her.

“His explanation of Christianity struck me as very sensible, and it seemed to fit with the data about the world I had already gathered,” she stated.

For Öberg, however, intellectually accepting the faith was not the end of the journey. “What took time was the aspect of charity — living out the faith and truly building a relationship with God,” she explained.

The scientist has also reflected on the limits and scope of the scientific method when it comes to God. She was clear in that interview: “You can never use the scientific method to prove or disprove God.”

In her view, science does allow us to appreciate something she considers especially significant: “how intelligible the universe is, how subject to laws it is.” She added: “This cannot be taken for granted. It is magnificent.”

The beauty of the universe also plays an important role in her understanding of the relationship between science and faith. “I am moved. And beauty is, in a sense, just as impressive to me,” she said.

For this reason, Öberg said she believes that science and faith need not be presented as opposing paths.

The scientist has also spoken openly about being Catholic.

“I am very open about the fact that I am Catholic,” she said in the interview. At the same time, she explained that she prefers this openness to foster dialogue rather than lead to imposition.

“I try to be open and then invite people to come and talk to me, rather than preaching to them,” she noted.

Öberg has also expressed a special affinity for the Dominican tradition and for St. Thomas Aquinas, whom she cited as a particularly important figure for the way he united faith and reason.

Her brother, Erik Öberg, an economist specializing in macroeconomics at Uppsala University in Sweden, publicly celebrated the recognition Karin received via his LinkedIn account. “I’m very proud of her,” he stated.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Generac Power Systems, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer of generators, will pay a monetary settlement to a former employee and update its religious workplace rules after it reportedly failed to fully adhere to “reasonable accommodation” rules in the dispute.

The former worker in question had reportedly wished to continue using biologically accurate pronouns to refer to an employee who believed themself to be the opposite sex. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission intervened in the dispute and announced its resolution on Sept. 30.

The commission said Generac had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to “fully engage in the reasonable accommodation interactive process” before denying the religious accommodation.

The company denied the religious employee’s accommodation request “even after the [employee] informed Generac that using non-biological pronouns went against his sincerely held religious belief,” the employment commission said.

The corporation will pay out monetary relief to the employee, who has since resigned from the company, the commission said.

In addition, the company will “update its religious accommodation policies and provide training with the goal of promoting greater understanding and effective handling of religious accommodation requests going forward.”

A Generac spokesman said in the government’s press release that the company is “committed to treating employees fairly and respectfully” and in accordance with U.S. and state law.

The commission says that employers are obligated to make reasonable accommodations for religious employees unless doing so would “create an undue hardship” for the employer.

The accommodation rule “aims to prevent individuals from being forced to choose between their religious convictions and practices and their job,” the government says.

Pike, who was convicted in 1996 of the brutal 1995 torture and killing of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, was scheduled to be executed on Sept. 30 by lethal injection.

Yet officials said she survived the administration of two syringes of lethal pentobarbital, after which she was transported to a medical facility for treatment.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee subsequently suspended executions in the state for the remainder of the year and ordered an investigation into the state’s capital punishment procedures.

In a statement on Oct. 1, Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, said the group was “stunned and bewildered” by the “unprecedented” incident.

Valliancourt Murphy said the group, which works to oppose the death penalty across the U.S., was praying for both Pike and for Slemmer’s family; it acknowledged that the situation “must surely be retraumatizing” for the latter.

“There is nothing normal about taking a life, and last night’s horrifying events reminds us of that,” she said.

The group in its statement referenced Tennessee’s botched execution of Tony Carruthers earlier in the year. The medical team overseeing that execution had failed to find a vein when attempting to set up a backup IV line for the lethal drugs. The state ultimately suspended Carruthers’ execution for a year.

“For Tennessee to have two botched executions in a matter of months is beyond alarming. It is the epitome of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ under the Eighth Amendment,” Valliancourt Murphy said.

“We pray this is the needed wake up call for Gov. Lee — in fact, for everyone — to recognize the barbarism of capital punishment,” she added.

Had she been successfully executed by the state, Pike would have been the first woman subject to capital punishment there in 200 years.

The Death Penalty Information Center says the state has executed 17 convicted criminals since 2000, the vast majority with lethal injection, though several have been electrocuted to death.

Five hundred twelve people died in Victoria, a southeastern Australian state whose capital is Melbourne, after being administered a voluntary assisted dying (VAD) substance in the year ending June 30, according to the Victorian Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board’s annual report.

The total was up 31.6% from 389 deaths in 2024-2025 and represented 1.1% of all deaths in the state, the report said. It also recorded 1,156 applications, nearly 40% more than in the prior year.

Of the 512 deaths, 372 followed self-administration of the VAD substance and 140 followed practitioner administration, the report said. The board said VAD deaths were nearly four times the number reported in the program’s first full year after Victoria’s law came into force in 2019.

Victoria’s new report is the latest evidence of a national trend. Since Victoria became the first Australian state to introduce VAD, more than 14,000 people nationwide have applied for access, and more than 7,000 have died after using a VAD substance, according to Go Gentle Australia’s 2026 State of VAD report, an advocacy group that supports the practice. The group said VAD now accounts for an estimated 2%-3% of deaths nationally.

VAD is available in Australia’s six states and the Australian Capital Territory. The Northern Territory passed its own law in August, though the system is not expected to begin operating until 2028.

Victoria’s Parliament passed amendments in November 2025. Scheduled to take effect April 19, 2027, the changes will broaden eligibility, shorten the minimum request period from nine days to five, and allow some health professionals to initiate discussions about VAD as part of end-of-life care.

In an October 2025 pastoral letter, Victoria’s Catholic bishops warned the changes would allow practitioners to raise euthanasia and assisted suicide with patients who “may be at their most vulnerable.” They said this would further weaken safeguards and urged lawmakers to strengthen access to palliative care instead.

Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher likewise said the Church must offer “positive alternatives,” including palliative care, pastoral care, and respite care for families caring for the dying and elderly.

The senators’ amicus brief comes after a lower court decision in Woolard v. Thurmond that ruled home-school independent-study programs are public-school programs.

“As part of California’s publicly funded independent-study programs, parents can teach their own children in their own homes with limited oversight from a private, nonprofit corporation operating a charter school,” the brief said. “And subject to general state standards, parents can choose any curriculum they want for their homeschooling—with one exception: religion. That overt discrimination—which Respondents say is required by California’s Blaine Amendment—clearly violates the Constitution. And it is preposterous to say, as did the Ninth Circuit, that homeschooling parents are actually state actors.”

“This amicus brief argues that specifically restricting the rights of parents to use faith-based curriculum is unconstitutional, and I am hopeful that this argument will help the Supreme Court to determine that a California court decision should be overturned,” Hyde-Smith said in a Sept. 29 press release.

Catholic senators who signed on to the brief include Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Nebraska, and Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho.

Notre Dame religious-liberty advocates urge Supreme Court to allow state funding for religious studies

Notre Dame law professors and religious liberty organizations are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider a 2004 ruling that allows states to exclude students pursuing religious-ministry degrees from publicly funded scholarships.

The Sept. 14 brief argues that Locke v. Davey is hard to square with newer Supreme Court rulings that bar states from discriminating against religious students and institutions.

The brief comes amid religious liberty cases involving two Virginia students, Bethany Hall and Cameron Johnson, who were denied state scholarship funds because they are pursuing degrees related to religious ministry.

“This Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from barring religious institutions, and the individuals that they serve and educate, from public funding solely because they are religious or engage in religious activity or instruction,” the brief said. “Locke sits uneasily with these recent decisions.”

The Notre Dame Law School Education Law Project; the Notre Dame Program on Church, State, and Society; and Notre Dame Law School’s Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic are listed on the brief alongside the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

Baylor center to build chapel as student Mass attendance surges

St. Peter Catholic Student Center — the Catholic ministry adjacent to Baylor University in Texas — announced plans to build a new, larger chapel because the existing worship space is too small for the number of students attending Mass.

Father Henry Carter Finch of the Catholic center at one of the largest Baptist universities in the U.S. said: “Our community has grown tremendously the past few years, as more and more young people respond to the promptings of grace to seek the fullness of life in the Church.”

Finch said in a video message announcing the construction of the chapel that the pews are overflowing and the OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults) program is full.

According to the Catholic center’s website, the chapel will have 460 seats. An existing chapel has 175 seats with 220 in overflow configuration. The chapel is projected to cost $10 million.

News of the chapel comes as Catholic conversions have reportedly surged on college campuses across the country.

Catholic University rises in U.S. News’ ‘Best Colleges’ rankings

The Catholic University of America (CUA) has risen 21 places in U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Colleges” rankings.

CUA jumped from 169 to 148 in the 2027 edition of national university rankings and also debuted at No. 75 in the “Top Private Colleges” category. It rose three spots to No. 72 on the list of “Best Value Schools,” according to a Sept. 22 press release.

“This year’s rankings recognize what our students and families already know: Catholic University offers an exceptional education at a real value,” Karna Lozoya, vice president for university communications, said in the release. “A 21-spot jump is a testament to the dedication of our faculty and staff and to the investments we’ve made in academic excellence and student success.”

The Oct. 1 opinion from Laila Medina, the advocate general at the Court of Justice of the European Union, could prove decisive in a dispute between the Catholic Church and European leaders over whether or not baptismal records can be preserved in Church registers.

The Court of Justice is currently considering the case, which was brought by the Brussels Court of Appeal and which asked for clarification about whether the Diocese of Ghent’s refusal to erase names from baptismal records when requested is in violation of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Catholic leadership has expressed strong concerns over the issue. The Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union said in September that baptismal records are not merely a “list of members” of the Church but rather serve as a “record of historical events.”

Allowing baptismal record erasures would “constitute an infringement on the substance of the sacrament” and would “seriously impede” the functioning of the Church, the bishops said.

Pope Leo XIV has also expressed concern in the debate, having reportedly told the European bishops in May 2025 that he “considers the issue very important.”

In her Oct. 1 opinion, which is nonbinding on the justice court, Medina said European data rules apply to the case and that the “data processing in question,” i.e. the baptismal records, “must be in line” with those rules.

The Catholic Church must demonstrate “compelling legitimate grounds” for retaining someone’s name in the baptismal records after the person rejects, Medina said.

The Ghent Diocese had originally responded to the individual’s deletion request by striking through his name but still retaining his entry in a legible form. That measure, Medina said, “does not constitute erasure” under European data rules.

“The data must be rendered illegible to the extent necessary to ensure that the person is no longer identified or easily identifiable,” she said. She argued that “information concerning the fact that a baptism took place at a given place and time may be retained.”

Medina acknowledged that the issue was “complex” and that the European court must make a “case-by-case assessment” regarding such data disputes.

Though the report is nonbinding, advocate general opinions often help shape the outcome of cases in European courts. The Oct. 1 document noted that the judges are “now beginning their deliberations” in the case. A ruling is expected later in 2026 or in 2027.

In September the European bishops told the court that baptismal registers do not “bear witness to the faith of individual persons” but rather serve as a “fundamental evidentiary instrument” that in part helps the Church manage its other records related to marriage and confirmation.

Requiring the deletion of baptismal data, the bishops said, would dictate that the Church “adapt to [a person’s] feelings or opinions” in how it understands baptismal records.

This would require a shift in “theological reflection,” they said, which is “protected by Church autonomy.”

Here are some fascinating facts to know about St. Francis, the Franciscan order he founded, and the Blessed Mother:

• St. Francis had a vision where he saw his friars try to reach Christ by a steep red ladder, but they kept falling off. Then Jesus showed him a second, less steep, white ladder that had Our Lady at the top. He told Francis: “Advise your sons to go by the ladder of my mother.”
• Many have given testimony stating St. Francis was one of the strongest Marian devotees in Church history. Servant of God Thomas of Celano, one of Francis’ friars, said that Francis’ love for the Blessed Virgin was beyond words, “inexpressible … for it was she who made the Lord of Majesty our brother.”
• St. Francis made the Blessed Mother the patroness and queen of the Friars Minor. St. Bonaventure, one of Francis’ early biographers, wrote that Francis placed himself and his order under the protection and guidance of Mary for all time: “On one side we should show Mary in all her poverty of Bethlehem placing the most sweet son of God upon the rough straw of the manger. In the other half of our painting, we would portray Mary, the Immaculate Mother of God, and Queen of the Seraphic Order, in the chapel of Mary of the Angels stretching forth her arms in motherly protection over all her Franciscan sons and daughters.”
• It was one of St. Francis’ followers who was instrumental in the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The writings of Blessed John Duns Scotus (d. 1308), one of the greatest Franciscan theologians, led the Church in part to proclaim the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854.
• Praying with counted beads was a common method of meditation from the earliest centuries of the Church. Although we don’t have written proof that St. Francis prayed the rosary founded by St. Dominic, we do know that St. Dominic and St. Francis were contemporaries, and so it may be very probable he would know and pray it.

St. Francis’ devotion to the Blessed Mother is summarized beautifully in his “Salutation to the Blessed Virgin Mary”:

Hail, O Lady,
Mary, holy Mother of God:
you are the Virgin made Church
and the one chosen by the
most holy Father in heaven
whom he consecrated
with his most holy beloved Son
and with the Holy Spirit the Paraclete,
in whom there was and is
the fullness of grace and every good.
Hail his palace!
Hail his tabernacle!
Hail his home!
Hail his robe!
Hail his servant!
Hail his mother!

And hail all you holy virtues which through the grace and light of the Holy Spirit are poured into the hearts of the faithful so that from their faithless state you may make them faithful to God. Amen.

St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us!

It can be hard to talk about, as emotions run high on both sides of the debate. As chemical abortion pills become increasingly more accessible to women and girls across the U.S., it raises the question: How do we discuss abortion as Catholics in a charitable and truthful way?

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, said “the manner in which we speak is often more important than the details of what we say.”

“In approaching conversations around abortion, it’s important to acknowledge the woman’s fears,” Pacholczyk said. “It feels like a ‘crisis’ pregnancy as her worries snowball and she asks herself a thousand painful questions: What will my friends think of me if they find out? Will this make it impossible to finish college? I feel so alone, ashamed, and abandoned — why isn’t my boyfriend here to support me?”

“Acknowledging the woman’s fears by using sympathetic language can help open up a space of dialogue with advocates of abortion, as we seek to remind them of what a better response to an unexpected pregnancy should really look like,” Pacholczyk said.

“It should be almost self-evident that it would be better to respond with support and accompaniment in the midst of her turbulent fears, seeking to calm the waters rather than roiling them further by turning to the violence of abortion, which in the final analysis, layers on additional regret and turbulence,” Pacholczyk continued.

“Patience and a real willingness to listen to the person we are engaging with needs to prevail over our desire to try to quickly win the argument,” he added. “It can be helpful to ask calm and reasoned questions to move the discussion forward in place of making dramatic, vociferous, and inflammatory assertions that may serve only to keep the two parties at loggerheads.”

From a pro-life perspective, affirming the unborn child’s dignity is also a fundamental part of the conversation.

“We need to be attentive when it comes to abortion ‘rights’ language, seeking to offer the clarity that there really is no such thing as ‘rights’ that allow someone to directly target and victimize innocent bystanders,” Pacholczyk said. “An unborn child in a crisis pregnancy situation is surely an innocent bystander, as he or she is as much a victim of difficult circumstances as is the mother.”

“The authentic ‘rights’ we should all be able to agree on include the right to receive help in parenting from society as new moms face the daunting and unexpected prospect of caring for and raising a child for the first time,” Pacholczyk said.

Camille Pauley, who heads Healing the Culture, a Catholic organization that educates people on how to engage with difficult cultural issues like abortion, spoke to EWTN News about what it means to show charity to another person.

“Charity is to act for the good of the other person, who is made in the image and likeness of God,” Pauley said. “Persons who commit the evil of abortion are not ‘demonic monsters’ or ‘soulless savages.’ These are words that do damage to society and to ourselves when we use them.’

“Persons who have fallen into the sin of abortion are human beings who are either spiritually lost or have been deeply wounded, abandoned, betrayed, deceived, and sometimes abused or coerced,” Pauley said.

“At the same time, we shouldn’t confuse charity towards persons with charity toward abortion,” Pauley continued. “‘Abortion,’ in the common usage of the term, is evil, wrong, and sinful. It hurts women and unjustly kills an intrinsically valuable and sacred human being who has an inalienable right to life. To speak these words is an act of charity when they are used for the good of the other person.”

She emphasized that the woman and her baby shouldn’t be pitted against one another.

“The language we use must affirm that the interests of the woman are the same as the interests of the child,” Pauley said. “The pro-abortion movement always wants to separate the mother and her child and pit them against one another. We must never do this. Choosing to protect her child’s life is in the best interest of the child and his mother.”

Why does the Catholic Church teach that life is sacred?

In St. John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”), which continues to inform the pro-life cause today, the late pope connects the teaching on the sacredness of life to how man relates to God.

“Every individual, precisely by reason of the mystery of the Word of God who was made flesh, is entrusted to the maternal care of the Church,” JPII wrote. “Therefore every threat to human dignity and life must necessarily be felt in the Churchʼs very heart.”

He noted that the decision to have an abortion is “often tragic and painful” for the woman. However, serious reasons still “can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being,” he added.

But the responsibility doesn’t fall on the woman alone. The responsibility for any abortion extends throughout society, from the mother and father, to legislators, and to systems in place that prop up abortion, according to John Paul II, who went on to say in the encyclical that abortion goes against the right to life, which is foundational to human society, and criticized the language of “abortion rights.”

“To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others,” John Paul II wrote. “This is the death of true freedom.”

He emphasized that believers have a particular call to defending unborn children, as the incarnation of Jesus Christ, he said, reveals ”the incomparable value of every human person.”

He continued: “[Life is] a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.”

This year’s theme: ‘Mary, Mother of Life’

The U.S. bishops, in their Respect Life Month resources, point to Mary as “our model for upholding the sanctity of all human life” — highlighting this year’s theme: “Mary, Mother of Life.”

“In becoming the mother of Jesus, Mary becomes the mother of life,” the bishops wrote. “Mary’s acceptance in this unforeseen moment demonstrates how each of us must welcome the gift of new human life, even when that gift is unexpected or calls us to make sacrifices.”

The bishops encouraged Catholics to pray a Respect Life Novena from October 22–30. For more resources about Respect Life month, visit: https://www.respectlife.org/.

The Carmelite nun, patron saint of missions, and the youngest doctor of the Church died at the age of 24 and was canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. She was declared the second patron saint of France in 1944, during the Battle of Normandy, by Pope Pius XII.

The town of Lisieux, a 90-minute train ride from Paris, is where Thérèse spent her entire religious life. It is the second most visited pilgrimage destination in France, after Lourdes, with over 2 million pilgrims every year.

Last year, in Pope Leo XIV’s message on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the canonization of St. Thérèse’s parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, he called the faithful to “put Jesus at the centre of your families, your activities, and your choices. Help your children discover His boundless love and tenderness, and strive to make them love Him in return as He deserves: this is the great lesson that Louis and Zélie teach us today, and which the Church and the world so urgently need. How could Thérèse have loved Jesus and Mary so much — and then passed on such a beautiful doctrine to us — if she had not learned it from her saintly parents from an early age?”

Thérèse lost her mother when she was just 4 years old and endured periods of illness and intense emotional sensitivity as a child. At 14, however, she experienced a moment of spiritual transformation where she received a special grace from God.

In France, young children left their shoes by the hearth at Christmas, and parents would fill them with gifts. But her sister Celine didnʼt want Thérèse to grow up, so they continued to place gifts in “baby” Thérèseʼs shoes. As she and Celine climbed the stairs to take off their hats their fatherʼs voice rose from the parlor below. Standing over the shoes, he said: “Thank goodness thatʼs the last time we shall have this kind of thing!” Thérèse froze, and her sister looked at her helplessly, knowing that in a few minutes she would be in tears over what their father had said.

But the tantrum never came. A special grace came over Thérèse as Jesus had done what she could not do herself. She swallowed her tears, walked slowly down the stairs, and went over the gifts in the shoes, as if she had never heard a word her father said. In her autobiography, “Story of Soul,” she referred to that Christmas as her “conversion.”

From childish to childlike

In his book “The Way of Trust and Love,” French priest Jacques Philippe explores St. Thérèse of Lisieuxʼs “Little Way” to holiness. He recalls that “through seemingly insignificant events, God can heal us deeply. Sometimes we feel a call from the Lord to step outside ourselves, to take a step forward, to become more mature, more free. There are times in life when we dwell on our immaturity, our complaints, our laments, our dependencies, and then suddenly one day we are given grace, a gift from God, but one that also calls upon our freedom. There is a choice to be made; it is both healing and conversion: freedom must choose to perform an act of courage.”

He then later proposes: “Let us then ask God this question: What is the ‘yes’ you are asking of me today? What is the small act of courage and trust you are asking me to do today?”

For St. Thérèse, it was about overcoming her emotional sensitivity. For others, it might be learning to control their tongue, be more optimistic, or manage their temper.

A ‘Little Way’ for everyone

From the very beginning of her life, Thérèse desired to be a saint; still, when she entered the convent, she also thought how inaccessible and unrealizable it was when she compared herself to others.

And here, perhaps, is where we can learn one of her most powerful teachings: never lose courage.

She goes on: “Instead of being discouraged, I told myself: God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults. But I will look for some means of going to heaven by a little way which is very short and very straight, a little way that is quite new … It is your arms, Jesus, which are the lift to carry me to heaven, and so there is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must stay little and become less and less.”

But by “little,” Thérèse does not suggest we think of ourselves as of small value; instead, she reminds us of an unchanging truth: We are children of God.

As St. John Paul II on his apostolic trip to France in June 1980 recalled: “There is something unique about it, a characteristic of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. In it, one finds both the confirmation and the renewal of the most fundamental and universal truth. What truth in the Gospel message is more fundamental and universal than this: God is our Father, and we are his children?”

And like children who trust, even if thrown into the air, in the safety of returning to their parents' arms, we must trust in the providence of our Father, with a deep knowledge of his unlimited and unconditional love for us: “In truth I tell you, unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).

A missionary without ever leaving home

Proclaimed the patron saint of missionaries for her support of the missions through constant prayer and sacrifice despite being a cloistered nun who never left her convent, she said: “My strength lies in prayer and sacrifice; they are invincible weapons, and touch hearts more surely than words can do, as I have learned by experience.”

To many, even in the convent, she seemed like an average, ordinary person. Her greatness showed in the constancy of her love for others in the simplest ways. Perhaps some of the missionary work we are called to do today doesn’t necessarily begin externally but within our hearts. As the saint herself wrote: “A word, a kindly smile, will often suffice to gladden a wounded and sorrowful heart.”

Thérèse also found strength in Scripture: “But above all it is the Gospels that occupy me during my prayers; in them I find everything that is necessary for my poor little soul. I constantly discover in them new lights, hidden and mysterious meanings.”

Her life was characterized by austerity, far from recognition and noise from the world. She died anonymously in 1897 at the young age of 24, and no more than 30 people attended her funeral.

This saint’s life and journal is a legacy for all who want to learn a simple and practical approach toward their relationship with God. Her advice is for everyone: “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”

The association’s first event on Oct. 1 will feature a lecture titled “Business Organization in the Church’s Social Thought.” It will be delivered by Calvo, author of “John Paul II, Friend of Man: Capitalism in the Thought of a Saint.”

Speaking to ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, Calvo noted that “the Church’s social doctrine offers clear criteria for the Christian businessman to exercise his vocation with consistency, honesty, and a sense of responsibility toward their workers and the common good.”

In the business vocation, he noted, “God invites the businessman to assist in his creation, to improve it, and to make it more habitable for humanity.”

“Being a businessman transcends profit, though profit is necessary, because the businessman, through his expertise and effort, creates jobs, goods, and services that benefit those who acquire them, and contributes to building societies that are more worthy of the human person,” he said.

In this regard, he said his lecture aims to “help businessmen discover that their work, when well done, is also a path of service and holiness.”

“A business is not merely an instrument for generating profit but a community of people called to serve society,” Calvo emphasized.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

The bishops said their money grew mostly because long-term investments did well in 2025. Altogether, the investment pool made a 15.2% return, said Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the conference. The conference ended 2025 with an increase in net assets from $340.4 million to $383.9 million.

"The increase in net assets was due primarily to the performance of the long-term investment pool in 2025, which received $16.3 million in investment income (interest income and dividends) as well as an increase in unrealized gains of $27.2 million due to positive market performance,” Noguchi said.

The USCCB’s financial audits for 2024 and 2025 showed total operating expenses fell about $100 million because migrant program activity contracted. Funding for refugee programs fell from $180.46 million to $72.23 million.

The $43.6 million increase in net assets represents a nearly 13% increase, according to the audit, which reflects the USCCB’s financial position as of Dec. 31, 2025.

The USCCB said in its audit that it did not renew its refugee‑resettlement agreements after the federal suspension of grants “rendered the programs financially unsustainable leading to a reduction in conference staff whose positions were funded by those programs.”

According to the audit, the reduction of the refugee program and its staff contributed to a decrease in the conference’s overall operational expenses, which declined from $281.9 million in 2024 to $189.6 million in 2025.

Overall, the USCCB’s financial position has strengthened over the past four years, with its net assets growing from $268.4 million in 2022 to $304.9 million in 2023, according to its 2022-2023 audit, to $340.4 million in 2024, and $383.9 in 2025.

The year-to-year increase in net assets comes despite fluctuations in the conference’s investment portfolio. In 2022, the USCCB reported $75.4 million in unrealized investment losses. The portfolio returned to gains in the following years, with the conference reporting $35.4 million in unrealized investment gains in 2023, $11.6 million in 2024, and $27.2 million in 2025.

National collections declined slightly from $82.3 million in 2024 to $80.6 million in 2025, while national collections program expenses increased by $9.1 million, according to the report. However, national collections are “restricted by the donor for a specific purpose” and therefore do not play a role in offsetting the conference’s loss of refugee program funding.

The archbishop spent a night in custody after he could not complete the bail process before close of business, despite the court granting him bail of 80,000 Zambian kwacha (about $4,094) on Sept. 28.

Banda was arrested by Zambia’s Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) over the alleged possession of property suspected to have been unlawfully obtained, contrary to Section 319 of the Penal Code.

The charge relates to a blue Toyota Hilux bearing registration number ALF 7734, which the DEC alleges Banda had in his possession between April 22, 2021, and Dec. 27, 2023.

According to the particulars of the case, the vehicle is alleged to have been unlawfully obtained from the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA).

The DEC said the vehicle forms part of a wider investigation involving approximately 22 ZRA motor vehicles allegedly disposed of improperly.

The archbishop appeared before Magistrate Mwandu Nakazwe, where he pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The court granted him 80,000 Zambian kwacha (about $4,094) bail on his own recognizance (meaning he does not need to pay up front), requiring three working sureties (guarantors — usually family members or responsible parties) who are each bound to pay the sum of 50,000 Zambian kwacha (about $2,560) if the accused takes off or skips court.

The court also ordered the archbishop to surrender his travel documents.

Following his release, Banda will remain subject to the court process as he awaits further proceedings in the case.

The allegations against him remain unproven, and the archbishopʼs “not guilty” plea means the matter will now proceed through the judicial process.

The archbishop’s arrest has generated varied reactions among members of the public, with calls for calm and for the legal process to be allowed to proceed without inflammatory statements.

Members of the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed solidarity with Banda as he appeared before the DEC, calling for fairness, dignity, and due process.

In a statement issued Sept. 28, the Zambian bishops also called for spiritual solidarity with Banda as he faces the charges.

The bishops affirmed their deep respect for Banda’s pastoral ministry and his tireless dedication to serving the Church and the nation.

“In this moment, we recall the Church’s teaching that every person is entitled to fairness, dignity, and due process. We therefore call upon all concerned to ensure that these principles are upheld without prejudice or intimidation,” they said.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

The report, published on Sept. 30, found evidence that “more than 270 Catholic clerics abused nearly 1,000 children over the course of a century in the Dioceses of Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester,” state Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said.

Leaders of the three dioceses failed to respond to allegations of abuse over the years, the attorney general said; diocesan leadership often transferred accused priests to other parishes and “failed to consistently report allegations to law enforcement,” according to the report.

Among the contributing factors to the abuse epidemic, according to the report, was a “culture of reverence and indulgence” toward priests.

Around mid-century, priests “were viewed as holy, and their attention or attachment to a particular family was encouraged,” the report says. These social dynamics “allowed offending priests easy access to victims.”

The investigation was launched in 2019 and involved more than 300,000 pages of documentation as well as interviews with more than 100 people, including victims of child sex abuse.

The inquiry is similar to those that have been undertaken in other states, including in Michigan, where the state’s attorney general has periodically released reports on the seven dioceses there.

The Massachusetts report covers every diocese in the state except the Archdiocese of Boston. That archdiocese has been subject to lengthy scrutiny after having been among the earliest subjects of abuse inquiries starting in 2002.

The attorney general’s report said the three dioceses “often intentionally did not document child sexual abuse allegations or used coded and euphemistic language to conceal them.” The office said it “worked diligently to create as complete a record as possible” of abuse in the dioceses.

As with similar reports in other states, the Massachusetts investigation mostly concerned abuse that was decades old. The “majority of known abuse” occurred “before 2002,” prior to major public awareness of the clergy abuse scandal, the report said.

The report expressed hope that the investigation would “result in a stronger commitment to a safer environment within these dioceses.” It thanked the child abuse victims who came forward to contribute to the inquiry.

It was not immediately clear how many of the instances of abuse in the report had already been identified and/or reported by the three dioceses. A query to the state attorney general’s office was not immediately returned.

Dioceses apologize

Both the Worcester Diocese and the Fall River Diocese had issued responses to the report by the afternoon of Sept. 30 in which they apologized to victims of sexual abuse. A statement from the Diocese of Worcester said it would study the report to “identify any additional improvements” it could make to its child safety policies.

The diocese noted that the report found the “vast majority of cases” occurred decades ago and that it had significantly updated its screening procedures in the years since.

Fall River Bishop Edgar M. da Cunha, SDV, meanwhile, said in a statement that he was “filled with sorrow” over the details of the report.

The diocese has developed a “culture of protection” to ensure children are not abused, including reporting abuse allegations to law enforcement and enhancing safety protocols, the bishop said.

Da Cunha said that during his time as bishop he has “learned much about the best practices for protecting children and vulnerable adults in our care.”

Without them, he warned, the Church would become “a mere federation of individual communities, or even a Christian-flavored NGO [nongovernmental organization],” CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News, reported.

Archbishop Hubertus van Megen, the apostolic nuncio, spoke at the opening of the German bishops' conference fall plenary assembly in Fulda, which runs through Oct. 1.

The bishops' conference published the full address.

“The Catholic Church rests on two great pillars of its visible unity — the Petrine ministry and the Eucharist,” van Megen told the German bishops on Sept. 28. “The pope safeguards the unity of faith and ecclesial communion, while the Eucharist sacramentally realizes and nourishes this unity.”

The Eucharist “is not merely a symbol of unity,” van Megen said, but “actually creates and strengthens the communion of the Church.” The popeʼs ministry, he added, “is not an end in itself.” Its task is “to protect and foster that communion which finds its highest expression in the celebration of the Eucharist.”

The Dutch prelate cautioned that the two do not guarantee unity “in a purely organizational or mechanical sense.” Still, he said Christ “has given his Church enduring means through which its unity can be preserved and continually renewed.”

Speaking “as a representative of the Holy See,” the nuncio called Rome “the visible center and the guarantor of the unity of the universal Church, to which the Church in Germany also belongs.” He noted that the Church in Africa differs from the Church in Europe and that “no local Church is more or less a Church than another.”

Van Megen said synodality “can never be the concern of individual groups alone, while others are left behind.” He closed by telling the bishops that “where we remain in communion with him, where we listen to one another, where we preserve unity with the universal Church and the successor of Peter — there the Holy Spirit can open up new paths.”

The gathering in Fulda, in the central German state of Hesse, is also taking up life-protection questions and discussing artificial intelligence.

At a Sept. 29 press conference, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen said the Church “clearly” rejects legalizing surrogacy, arguing that it makes the child “the object of a contract among adults,” CNA Deutsch reported.

Auxiliary Bishop Anton Losinger of Augsburg warned that gene editing and prenatal genetic testing raise questions about the dignity of people with disabilities.

A question of ‘power’

Five days earlier, in an interview with katholisch.de, a portal run on behalf of the German bishops' conference, van Megen said his “impression is that Germans often want too much, too quickly.” He called the word “power,” common in documents of the controversial Synodal Way, “almost dangerous,” and said he hoped to travel to Rome at the end of October.

The Vatican has been reviewing the bylaws of the Synodal Conference, a planned permanent body meant to implement the Synodal Way, since late March.

The Roman Curia and the German bishops have held talks on its statute since 2025.

In an interview with ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, on Sept. 25, the auxiliary bishop of Nigeria’s Archdiocese of Abuja cautioned that digital technology, despite its benefits, should not displace Christians’ relationship with God, authentic human relationships, and sacramental life.

“Our world has changed, and the way human beings connect, think, and communicate has been radically rewritten by the digital revolution. But we must not allow digital noise to replace our silent prayers and quiet moments with our God,” Bishop Anselm Umoren told ACI Africa at the seventh annual general assembly of the Archdiocese of Abuja held under the theme “Christian Faith and the Evolving Communication Technology.”

Umoren challenged Christians to reflect on how they can preserve their faith amid rapid technological changes, warning that the digital environment encourages constant communication at the expense of contemplation.

“One of the dangers is that the digital world often demands constant communication. Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak. But the digital world sometimes tells us that we must speak constantly,” he said.

He added that social media platforms encourage users to react immediately to trending topics, share content, and express opinions, leaving little room for reflection.

“The danger is that we can become so busy scrolling, commenting, posting, and reacting — even inside the church during Mass — that we no longer know how to sit in holy silence,” the bishop said.

Emphasizing the importance of silence in the spiritual life, he explained that constant exposure to digital noise could make it difficult for Christians to hear Godʼs voice, reflect on their lives, and discern God’s will.

“Technology should not take away our capacity for contemplation. We must learn that there are moments when the phone must be put away, the notifications must stop, and the human heart must become quiet enough to listen to God,” he said.

Umoren highlighted what he described as a paradox of the digital age: unprecedented technological connectivity alongside growing loneliness.

“Our generation is living through a strange paradox. We live in an age of extraordinary technological connectivity and high productivity, yet we are also confronted by profound loneliness,” he said.

Umoren, a member of the Missionary Society of St. Paul Nigerian, observed that having thousands of online friends and followers does not necessarily translate into meaningful relationships or genuine companionship, particularly during difficult moments.

“A person may have thousands of friends and followers online but very few people who actually know them deeply or are physically present when they are in difficulty,” he said.

Umoren emphasized that Christianity is fundamentally rooted in relationships, both with God and with other people, rather than merely exchanging information.

“The Christian faith is about relationship. Christianity is not merely an exchange of information. It is communion with God and communion with other human beings,” he said.

While warning against the dangers of digital technology, Umoren acknowledged its potential to advance the Churchʼs evangelizing mission, describing cyberspace as a new mission territory.

“The digital world has become a new mission territory. Every Christian who has the motivation to proclaim the Gospel must recognize that cyberspace is now part of the mission field,” he said.

Reflecting on the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI), he noted that digital tools can assist with communication, research, education, and evangelization but cannot replace a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

“If we ask a machine to give us information about Jesus, that is different from knowing Jesus personally. Faith is not merely information about God. Faith is a relationship with God. Our digital tools can assist us, but they cannot believe for us. They cannot pray for us in the deepest sense. They cannot replace the encounter between the human heart and God,” he said.

The bishop also defended the pastoral value of livestreamed Masses, particularly for people who are sick, elderly, hospitalized, or otherwise unable to attend church physically.

He cautioned, however, against treating online participation as a substitute for gathering physically to celebrate the Eucharist.

“Livestreaming holy Mass is a beautiful pastoral provision … But livestreamed Mass can never replace the physical gathering of the Christian community around the altar,” he said.

He further underscored the importance of physical participation in the sacraments, noting that digital platforms cannot provide the experience of receiving the Eucharist or participating fully in sacramental life.

“You cannot receive the holy Eucharist through a phone screen. You cannot experience the healing touch of the sacraments through an application. You cannot fully substitute physical Christian fellowship with a digital connection,” he said.

According to Umoren, the Church must ensure that technological advances strengthen rather than weaken authentic Christian communion.

“The Church is a community of real people; we must safeguard the sanctity of real, physical, human, and authentic presence. Technology should support communion, not destroy it,” he said.

Turning to the formation of young people, the bishop called on the Church to go beyond discouraging excessive phone use and equip young people to engage responsibly with digital technology and use it to proclaim the Gospel.

“We should not simply tell young people, ‘Put your phones away.’ We should also teach them how to use their phones responsibly and evangelically. A young person who understands technology and has a strong relationship with Christ can become a powerful digital missionary,” he said.

He also urged the Church to help young people develop critical thinking and discernment amid the vast amount of information available online.

“Our children are growing up in an environment where they are exposed to enormous quantities of information. Not everything they see online is true, beautiful, or beneficial. They must develop the capacity to discern,” Umoren said.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

Church leaders in New York and Illinois have won multiple victories in recent weeks in federal district court after bringing suits against the newly launched suicide regimes in those states.

In New York, Rockville Centre Bishop John Barres and a coalition of four communities of religious sisters won a victory in July when U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci said the state would be barred from enforcing its new suicide law against the Catholic plaintiffs while their federal suit played out.

Two separate lawsuits in Illinois, meanwhile, have also brought relief to Catholic objectors. U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama said in August that Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki and several other plaintiffs, including Christian doctors and a Lutheran care home, would not have to abide by the state’s suicide law and help patients kill themselves.

In September, meanwhile, Valderrama ruled again in favor of a coalition of religious plaintiffs, including the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm as well as the Little Sisters of the Poor, all of whom had brought suit against the Illinois law.

In all three cases, the plaintiffs only won temporary reprieves meant to forestall enforcement of the law while the lawsuits continue through the federal court system.

And though advocates hailed the rulings, Chicago archbishop Cardinal Blase Cupich on Sept. 11 argued that the Illinois law should be struck down “permanently.”

“[T]he Church’s objection to this statute is not an attempt to impose Catholic teaching on non-Catholics,” the archbishop said at the time. Rather, “it is an effort to stop the State from compelling Catholic health care providers to violate their conscience.”

Church strongly opposes assisted suicide, euthanasia

The Catholic Church has been at the forefront of efforts to roll back assisted suicide in countries around the world in recent years. The controversial practice, which is growing in popularity around the world, allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to patients who wish to end their own lives.

Advocates of assisted suicide usually argue that the laws only allow doctors to help kill adult patients who are terminally ill and likely to die in the very near future. But in many cases where the practice has been introduced it has expanded to include broader classes of patients.

In the Netherlands in 2024, for instance, a physically healthy 29-year-old woman was allowed to kill herself with a doctor’s help on the grounds that she was suffering from depression. This year, the country recorded its first euthanasia of a child under the age of 12.

In Canada, meanwhile, about 100,000 people have taken their own lives since the country legalized assisted suicide in 2016. Thousands of those individuals reportedly did not have a “reasonably foreseeable death,” but doctors were allowed to help kill them anyway.

Numerous U.S. states have legalized the practice in recent years. New York’s and Illinois’ respective suicide laws went into effect this year.

In both cases the religious objectors were suing to stop the state from forcing them to promote assisted suicide. While narrow opt-out laws mean the Catholic care providers are not obligated to actively facilitate the specific act of suicide, the state laws require them to participate in the suicide regime in various other ways, including touting the alleged benefits of taking one’s own life.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing both the Springfield and Rockville Centre lawsuits, says that refusing to participate in such rules “invites significant fines, license revocation, or even time behind bars.”

In a statement to EWTN News, Paprocki said the “heart of the Catholic Church’s healthcare ministry” is “the healing work of Christ — to stand with the suffering, to comfort the dying, and to affirm the God-given dignity of every human life.”

The Illinois suicide law “undermines that mission by forcing Catholic hospitals and those who serve in them to push death onto their most vulnerable patients,” the bishop said.

“We must be free to serve the sick and the dying according to our faith, not according to the state’s mandate,” he added.

The lawsuits are continuing their way through the federal courts and may reach the Supreme Court in time. Meanwhile, Catholic leaders continue to denounce the practice of assisted suicide, including Pope Leo XIV, who during a visit to France in September described the practice as “false compassion.”

“It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral,” the Holy Father said.

Parolin spoke Sept. 25 as an honoree of CAPP-USA, the U.S. arm of the Fondazione Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice, a Vatican foundation that promotes Catholic social teaching and was established by St. John Paul II in 1993.

Among those present at the event were the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) Mike Waltz, Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly, and the Holy See’s permanent observer to the U.N., Archbishop Christophe-Zakhia El-Kassis, who delivered the evening’s benediction.

Parolin said: “In the light of the Gospel, each generation must read the signs of its own times.”

Citing Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Parolin said modern technology is not humanity’s enemy but that dignity belongs to people, not systems or algorithms. He also recalled Rerum Novarum, the encyclical Pope Leo XIII penned in 1891 as the Church’s response to the industrial revolution and which laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching.

“In a world that builds towers, build places of encounter,” Parolin challenged his listeners. “In a world connected online and disconnected offline, be people of presence. In a world asking whether we can remain human, answer with the witness of your lives.”

He told attendees the foundation matters because its members are meant to be “bridge builders between the encyclicals … and the decisions made in daily life.”

Fragmentation and loneliness

Parolin said people “are more connected than any generation in history, and yet many of us are lonelier than ever.” Exchanging information instantly but struggling to encounter one another as human beings has led to fragmentation, he said, and families, communities, and nations are “divided into camps that no longer even speak the same language.”

He noted Pope Leo’s description of this moment in the opening lines of Magnifica Humanitas, saying: “We can either construct a new tower of Babel or build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

‘A fragmented world is a searching world’

Regarding the spiritual hunger many modern people are feeling, he said restlessness, especially among the young, is evidence that our hearts are made for God and cannot rest until we rest in him, citing St. Augustine.

“A fragmented world is also a searching world,” he noted.

“The human person is not self-made, but receives; he is a being created for relationship,” he said. “Leo expressed the hope that the world will come to recognize the human heart is the place where God desires to dwell.”

The Church’s social doctrine is “itself an expression of the spiritual life,” Parolin said, and results in a faith that becomes real “concern for the worker, the family, the poor, and the seeking of the common good.”

Freedom and pluralism not to blame, Parolin says

On freedom and pluralism, he rejected blaming “too much freedom” or “too many voices.”

The Church defends “freedom as a gift inseparable from human dignity,” he said, noting the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on “religious freedom as a right found in the very nature of the human person.”

But, he said, “freedom detached from truth and responsibility for others turns against itself.” Freedom, in the Christian vision, “is not the capacity to choose anything whatsoever. It is the capacity to choose the good.”

Authentic pluralism, he said, rests on dignity, the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity. “We should respect the family, communities, and institutions through which people flourish,” he urged.

The next day, Sept. 26, Parolin addressed the opening of the 81st U.N. General Assembly, whose theme is “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All.”

In a Sept. 29 teleconference, the group also revealed that recently retired Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw will give the keynote address at the march, taking place on Jan. 22, 2027.

“The truth cannot be denied and that’s why we have kept our message so simple and bold this year,” said Hayden Sledge, chief of staff for the March for Life.

“Truth doesn’t shout. It’s just there, waiting to be seen,” she said. “Truth has a way of bringing people together. That’s why for more than 50 years we’ve kept showing up to defend that truth. Some things remain true no matter the culture, politics, or the year. The truth is pro-life.”

The national march occurs every year near the anniversary of the legalization of abortion nationwide in the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. The event continues despite Roe’s reversal by the court in 2022 as abortion remains legal in dozens of U.S. states. In all, some 63 million babies have been aborted since the Roe decision, according to pro-life groups.

During the press conference, the committee shared the details of the expected program and the intentional decision behind the chosen theme.

Last year’s theme was “Life Is a Gift.”

“Last year, our theme spoke to the heart,” Sledge said. “This year, we are speaking to the head and making a clear statement about the truth at the heart of our mission, because truth does not change with an election or due to politics, or current trends. It’s unchanging. That’s why our theme is ‘The Truth Is Pro-Life.’”

Kershaw, a three-time Cy Young Award winner and the 2014 National League MVP, operates the nonprofit group Kershaw’s Challenge, which partners with other charities to improve the lives of children in need living in Los Angeles, Dallas, Zambia, and the Dominican Republic.

“Iʼm excited to get to be the speaker for the 2027 March for Life,” said Kershaw, while holding his 9-month-old daughter, Chloe, the youngest of his five children. “She’s excited for us to be there, too, and we can’t wait.”

In keeping with this year’s theme, the March for Life organizing committee is inviting individuals to ask “the hard questions” about human life when they interact with those outside the pro-life community.

“Today, itʼs hard to figure out what the truth is. Not because it isnʼt there, but because of the distractions. But sometimes all you have to do is look closer, get rid of the noise, the chaos, the confusion, and see whatʼs really there,” Sledge said.

The fourth annual Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage drew an estimated 4,500 people, with tens of thousands of others joining via livestream broadcast.

Hosted by the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph, the event included opportunities for joining in Eucharistic adoration and receiving the sacrament of reconciliation.

“Every year the pilgrimage grows. Every year, more people join us and every year those prayers are lifted up to heaven with greater enthusiasm,” said Dominican Father Patrick Briscoe, promoter general for social communication of the Province of St. Joseph, which extends from New England to Virginia to Ohio.

“It’s such a beautiful event,” said pilgrim Lauren Rodriguez, who traveled from Miami. “This is the second time I’ve come and this year I brought my husband. I just thought it was so impactful to see so much beauty, prayer, and truth in the preaching. It’s incredibly peaceful for as many activities that there are throughout the day.”

In preparation for the event, an estimated 100,000 Catholics participated in a nine-month novena, beginning on Jan. 31 and ending on Sept. 26, according to Dominican Father John Paul Kern, executive director of the Dominican Friars Foundation.

“I think Our Lady brings us closer to him and reveals something to us about her son in a very special way with him here at this event,” Kern said.

Dominican Father Peter John Cameron, the event’s principal speaker, described the rosary as a gift and a “chain that unites people to God.”

“The rosary is something truly unique and indescribably precious,” he told EWTN News. “Because more than just a form of prayer, the rosary is a relationship. The rosary is a dynamic experience of our sonship, of our daughtership, in God.”

“For someone like me who’s so busy, and so many people are busy, it’s a day dedicated to prayer, to soak it in, receive the graces,” Rodriguez told EWTN News. “You meet so many wonderful people from all over. It really is reaching so many people and touching so many hearts.”

The Catholic Church dedicates the entire month of October to the most holy rosary and celebrates the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on Oct. 7.

The two monuments are located at El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the historical center of the Southern California city, marking its founding in 1781.

Los Angeles resident Jack Gerritsen sued the city government claiming that the displays violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. Gerritsen identifies himself as a “nonbeliever” in the suit and claims the monuments make him feel “excluded” in the public space.

A U.S. district court ruled against Gerritsen, after which he appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. On Sept. 29, the religious liberty law firm Becket announced that the appeals court had also ruled against Gerritsen.

The plaintiff “failed to establish the requirements” to justify removing the monument, the appeals court said, including failing to establish that he would “suffer irreparable harm” if the monuments were left in place.

He further failed to affirm that removing the monuments would be “in the public interest,” the court noted.

The ruling comes after a group of merchants located on Olvera Street near the monuments asked to join the lawsuit in defense of the public displays.

Among them was cafe owner Edward Flores, who said that a cultural display such as the cross and Nativity helps “[ennoble] Americans across all ethnicities, faiths, cultures, and generations to take pride in their own contributions and to see more clearly their future potential.”

The appeals court ultimately ruled against the efforts of the merchants to join the suit, arguing that their participation in the legal proceeding was moot given the court’s dismissal of Gerritsen’s request.

But Andrea Butler, a lawyer at Becket who represented the merchants in their request, said in a news release that the ruling was “common sense.”

“Los Angeles belongs to people of every faith and none, and its public square naturally bears the marks of that diversity,” Butler said.

The case will be sent back to lower district court following the appeals ruling, according to Becket. The law firm said the monuments will remain “while courts move toward a final decision in the case.”

The ruling from the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Oklahoma comes more than a year after a Catholic charter school lost a similar lawsuit seeking to be included in Oklahoma’s charter school funding.

In his decision, U.S. District Judge David Russell said the state may not “single out religious schools for exclusion” from public charter funding “solely because of their religious character.”

The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board may not deny funding to the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, Russell held, though the order only applies so long as the lawsuit continues through the federal court system.

The Oklahoma government requires charter schools to identify as “nonsectarian” and not be affiliated with religious groups. That rule was previously challenged by a Catholic institution, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which sought funding from the charter school board and which sued the state in 2023 over being excluded from the state program.

That suit drew the backing of the U.S. bishops as well as numerous states who advocated expanded educational opportunities. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately declined to issue a ruling in the case after the court’s justices were split in the dispute, leaving the school without charter funding.

It’s unclear whether or not the Jewish charter school dispute will affect the status of the Catholic charter school. But in his ruling Russell said the denial of the school’s application on religious grounds constituted a “concrete” and “actual” injury.

A “long line of Supreme Court precedent” supports the school’s position that the denial of its public funding violates the U.S. Constitution, the judge said.

Daniel Chen, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the charter school, said in a press release that Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter funding was “destined to fail.”

“The Constitution doesn’t permit the state to welcome every kind of charter school except a religious one,” Chen said.

The state has 30 days to appeal to the federal Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, Becket said.

In the culture of the Church, Michael is often accompanied by his two fellow archangels — Sts. Gabriel and Raphael — with the three forming a phalanx of protection, healing, and petition for those who ask for their intercession. The Church celebrates the three archangels with a joint feast day on Sept. 29.

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel is hailed in the Book of Daniel as “the great prince who has charge of [God’s] people.”

Michael Aquilina, the executive vice president and trustee of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, Ohio, described Michael among angels as “the one most often named — and most often invoked — and most often seen in history-changing apparitions.”

Devotion to Michael, Aquilina told EWTN News, “has been with the Church from the beginning. And Michael has been with God’s people since before the beginning of the Church.”

Michael’s history in the Bible is depicted through Daniel, in Jude (in which he battles Satan for possession of Moses’ body), and in Revelation as he “wag[es] war with the dragon” alongside his fellow angels.

Michael, Aquilina said, was “a supremely important character who was there from the beginning of the story.” Rabbinic tradition holds that Michael was at the center of many of the great biblical dramas even if not explicitly mentioned.

He was an early subject of veneration in the Church, though Aquilina noted that the Reformation led to a steep decline in devotion to the angels — until the end of the 19th century, when Michael began an “amazing comeback journey” in the life of the Church.

Following a vision of Satan “running riot” on the planet, “Pope Leo [XIII] composed three prayers to St. Michael, ranging from short to long,” Aquilina said. “The brief one, he commanded, should be prayed at the end of every Mass.”

This was a regular feature of the Mass until the Vatican II era, after which it came to an end — though Pope John Paul II in 1994 urged Catholics to make the prayer a regular part of their lives.

“St. Michael is there for us in the day of battle, which is every day,” Aquilina said.

The St. Michael Prayer: St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil / May God rebuke him, we humbly pray / And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the divine power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

St. Gabriel the Archangel

Gabriel appears regularly in Scripture as a messenger of God’s word, both in the Old and New Testaments. Daniel identifies Gabriel as a “man” who came “to give [him] insight and understanding,” relaying prophetic answers to Daniel’s entreaties to God.

In the New Testament, Luke relays Gabriel’s appearances to both Zechariah and the Virgin Mary. At the former, he informs the priest that his wife, Elizabeth, will soon conceive a child; at the latter he informs Mary herself that she will do the same. The two children in question, of course, were respectively John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.

Christian tradition further associates Gabriel with the apostle Paul’s reference in his First Letter to the Thessalonians to the “archangel’s call” and “the sound of the trumpet of God.”

“Judgment will begin with the archangel’s call and the sound of the horn,” Aquilina told EWTN News. “Thus we hear often of Gabriel’s trumpet.”

Media workers in particular have “good professional reasons to go to Gabriel,” Aquilina said.

“Since he is the Bible’s great communicator — the great teller of good news — he is the natural patron of broadcasters and all those who work in electronic media,” he said.

“For the same reason, he’s the patron saint of preachers ... but also of postal workers, diplomats, and messengers.”

The St. Gabriel Prayer: O Blessed Archangel Gabriel, we beseech thee, do thou intercede for us at the throne of divine mercy in our present necessities, that as thou didst announce to Mary the mystery of the Incarnation, so through thy prayers and patronage in heaven we may obtain the benefits of the same, and sing the praise of God forever in the land of the living. Amen.

St. Raphael the Archangel

Lesser-known among the three great archangels, Raphael’s mission from God “is not obvious to the casual reader” of the Bible, Aquilina said. Yet his story, depicted in the Book of Tobit, is “something unique in the whole Bible.” In other depictions of angels, they come to Earth only briefly, to deliver a message or to help God’s favored people in some way.

“Raphael is different,” Aquilina said. “He stays around for the whole story, and by the end he’s become something more than an angel ... he’s become a friend.”

In Tobit, Raphael accompanies Tobias, the son of the book’s namesake, as he travels to retrieve money left by his father in another town, helping him along the way and arranging for his marriage to Sarah.

The biblical account “has in every generation provided insight and consolation to the devout,” Aquilina said.

Notably, Raphael deftly uses the natural world to work God’s miracles: “What we would ordinarily call catastrophes — blindness, multiple widowhood, destitution, estrangement — all these become providential channels of grace by the time the threads of the story are all wound up in the end.”

“Raphael is patron of many kinds of people,” Aquilina said. “Of course, he’s the patron of singles in search of a mate — and those in search of a friend. He is the patron of pharmacists because he provided the salve of healing. He is a patron for anyone in search of a cure.”

He is also the patron saint of blind people, travelers, sick people, and youth.

“Raphael’s story,” Aquilina said, “remains a model for those who would enjoy the friendship of the angels.”

Prayer to St. Raphael: St. Raphael, of the glorious seven who stand before the throne of him who lives and reigns, angel of health, the Lord has filled your hand with balm from heaven to soothe or cure our pains. Heal or cure the victim of disease. And guide our steps when doubtful of our ways. Amen.

This story was first published on Sept. 29, 2023, and has been updated.

Louis Geri was arrested in Washington on Oct. 5, 2025, on charges of threats to kidnap or injure a person as well as possession of a molotov cocktail.

Geri was present at the cathedral on the same day as its annual Red Mass, which honors lawmakers and judicial officials. Police later said Geri had specifically targeted Catholics and Supreme Court justices in a bomb plot.

In March, Geri pleaded guilty to a violation of the federal Hobbs Act, specifically an extortion charge, as well as possession of an unregistered firearm. He had reportedly drawn up a list of demands that included “hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments,” according to the government.

On Sept. 28 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced that Geri had been sentenced to 70 months in prison over the incident. He will also serve three years of supervised release, the government said. Prosecutors had originally sought an 87-month sentence.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro described the bomb threat as “an attack on our community and on the fundamental right to worship freely.”

Geri “chose to terrorize a sacred space, St. Matthew’s Cathedral, and endanger officers and parishioners, thereby preventing Supreme Court Justices from attending an annual religious event,” she said.

The 70-month sentence “reflects the seriousness of his conduct and our commitment to protecting every community from extremist threats and violence,” Pirro said.

Geri also said he was willing to use the bombs at the White House and the U.S. Capitol, according to the government. Photographs shared by the D.C. prosecutor’s office showed explosive devices that appeared to be assembled in part from fireworks and tinfoil.

On Sept. 23, the date of their liturgical memorial, the Diocese of Tlaxcala inaugurated the Jubilee of Holiness and Mission with a Mass. The jubilee will conclude on Sept. 23, 2027.

Cristóbal died a martyr in 1527, at around the age of 12, after his own father punished him for destroying idols. Antonio and Juan gave their lives two years later in 1529 while participating in an evangelization mission.

They were beatified on May 6, 1990, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and canonized by Pope Francis on Oct. 15, 2017, in St. Peterʼs Square at the Vatican.

‘They didn’t wait until they were adults’ to evangelize

In his homily for the Mass on Sept. 23, Bishop Julio César Salcedo Aquino of Tlaxcala highlighted that the celebration seeks to highlight the testimony of the three young martyrs as an example of holiness and renew “missionary zeal.”

The prelate pointed out that Cristóbal, Antonio, and Juan, even as children, “embodied to the letter the words of Christ.”

“God’s protection does not mean an absence of physical hardships or persecution” but rather the grace to “persevere in the faith,” he noted.

In this regard, Salcedo recalled that Cristóbal “did not fear threats from his own family,” while Antonio and Juan “maintained the joy of the mission despite knowing the danger they were in.”

“The protomartyrs of the Americas did not wait until they were adults or had some official title to become evangelizers,” he stated. Educated by Franciscan friars, he added, “they became the first catechists of their people [and thus] shared their experience of faith.”

The bishop pointed out that this commitment to evangelization ultimately led them to lay down their lives. “They were beaten with clubs and burned for bearing witness to the truth of the Gospel.” That they willingly shed their blood for Christ “was a very moving example to the Indigenous communities and opened the way for the faith on the continent,” he added.

Salcedo pointed out that “children, adolescents, and young people exposed to so many secularist ideologies need models of piety and of apostolic and missionary generosity rooted in Gospel values.”

The Apostolic Penitentiary granted a plenary indulgence for the jubilee year at the Shrine of the Child Martyrs in the town of Atlihuetzia.

To obtain it, the faithful must fulfill the usual conditions: confession, Communion, prayer for the pope’s intentions, and detachment from all sin, even venial sin.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

A solemn Mass will be celebrated by Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, with Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, the papal legate for the basilicas of Assisi, in attendance, Vatican News reported.

Activities surrounding the anniversary began on Sept. 24 and will run until Oct. 5. In addition to liturgical celebrations, cultural events and various charitable initiatives are being celebrated — among them the traditional procession dedicated to the saint at the Porziuncola.

One of the key moments will be the “Transitus,” the observance commemorating St. Francis' final hours before his death.

The new bishop of Assisi, Felice Accrocca, noted that the figure of the saint continues to spark wide interest.

“St. Francis continues to fascinate people from all continents and cultures, thanks to his radical interpretation of the Gospel and his vision of society rooted in peace, fraternity, and hope,” he noted.

According to the prelate, many of the concerns Francis addressed during his lifetime remain relevant today. “Francis is, in fact, ahead of us,” he stated, referring to interfaith dialogue, the pursuit of peace, and care for our common home.

“His vision continues to inspire and challenge us,” he added.

A remembrance that looks to the future

For Accrocca, the anniversary is not merely about looking to the past.

Speaking to Vatican Media, he described the celebrations as a journey “between remembrance and the future.” Remembering Francis, he explained, can offer keys to understanding the present moment.

Accrocca highlighted that the saint’s teachings remain relevant because they constitute “a radical interpretation of the Gospel.”

A city that continues to welcome pilgrims

The October celebrations follow months of intense activity in Assisi.

Between February and March, the exposition of the mortal remains of St. Francis drew nearly 400,000 pilgrims, according to data presented at a press conference reported by Vatican News.

Fraternity will be another theme of the anniversary. Friar Marco Moroni, custos of the Sacred Convent of St. Francis, noted that the saint himself spoke of his brothers as a gift received from God.

“The Lord gave me brothers,” recalled Friar Moroni, quoting the Testament of St. Francis.

The friar explained that the Sacred Convent currently brings together more than 50 friars from some 20 different countries. For him, this life shared by people of diverse cultures demonstrates that fraternity, while not always easy, can be lived out in practice.

“It is also possible in the world,” he affirmed.

The events in October will also hold special significance as they coincide with the 40th anniversary of the interfaith gathering for peace convened by St. John Paul II in Assisi in 1986.

On that occasion, representatives of various religions came together to pray for peace. Four decades later, the anniversary of St. Francis’ death will once again place Assisi at the center of a gathering centered on that same theme.

The life and person of the saint has continued to impact new generations of Catholics. Among them is Carlo Acutis, who, although not from Assisi, asked to be buried there.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Pope Leo XIV titled this year’s observance of World Day of Migrants and Refugees “Even Just One of These Children,” citing Matthew 18:5: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., said in a homily on Sunday, Sept. 27, that “for the last year and a half, the people of the United States have witnessed the suffering of the undocumented in our midst, purposely and strategically magnified by our government, and for the most part, we have simply passed on by.”

McElroy wrote that “Jesus weeps all across our nation for the children who have been arrested, detained, transported to far-off centers with terrible living conditions, and cut off from their families.”

The cardinal described the case of a 5-year-old boy in Minneapolis, Liam Ramos, who along with his father was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and was “imprisoned for a month until an outraged federal judge ordered him to be released.”

After being held for about 10 days, on Jan. 31, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio ordered their release, writing in his order that the case grew from “the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

Biery attached a photo and two Gospel verses to his order: Matthew 19:14 (“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them”) and John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”).

In March an immigration judge denied the family’s asylum claim and ordered them removed to Ecuador.

McElroy also decried the government’s ending of temporary protected status (TPS) for nearly 1 million people, saying refugees admitted under it “never broke any law.”

The cardinal said: "They are being deported because of a general desire to exclude immigrants from American society. They are being deported because the bigotry that has often tarnished American immigrant history is rampant once again in our nation.”

The Trump administration has stated it ended TPS because it says conditions in many countries have improved and the program “has been abused and exploited by illegal aliens” and has become a “de facto amnesty” program.

TPS is granted when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) determines that a country is temporarily unsafe to return to because of armed conflict, disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Congress designed TPS in the Immigration Act of 1990 as a time-limited humanitarian designation intended to be temporary; it is not a path to citizenship.

TPS holders are lawfully present and authorized to work while the designation lasts. After termination of TPS, however, people who remain commit a civil immigration violation.

Yakima, Washington, bishop calls for ‘surgical deportation’

Bishop Joseph Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima, Washington, also issued a message on Sunday, lamenting that “Yakima County seems to be disproportionately targeted” by immigration enforcement actions. He cited Freedom of Information Act data he had obtained, which he said showed that “fewer than a fourth” of the people ICE had detained between March and August had a criminal record.

Tyson called for “a public policy that allows for a surgical deportation of those with serious criminal records” rather than the “indiscriminate deportation” of immigrants who “have lived here for years” and are often “detained in front of courthouses while pursuing legal pathways to regularize their legal status.”

Andrew Arthur, a national-security and immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, told EWTN News that “immigration laws — like every other law — are meaningless unless they are enforced.”

“Border security — which even the bishops support — is impossible without interior enforcement and deportations of those who entered illegally,” even if they have not committed other crimes, he said.

Referring to Tyson’s recommendation for “surgical deportations” for those with “serious criminal records,” Arthur, a former immigration judge, explained that the law does not require that “serious” crimes be committed before deportation takes place.

“A ‘serious crime’ is one that impacts or threatens any other person,” he said. Regardless “there is no reason to wait until a drunk driver kills someone before he is deported … There is no reason that the American people should be threatened by a criminal immigrant who should never have been here to begin with.”

McElroy also described ongoing immigration enforcement as a “wholesale war” on immigrants, which Arthur called a "reckless statement.”

“Using military terminology in this context denigrates federal officers who are tasked with a very difficult job,” Arthur said.

DHS affirms continued arrests of ‘anyone’ in country illegally

The Department of Homeland Security refuted a report circulating on Sept. 26 that said anonymous ICE officials claimed they were instructed to cease arresting illegal immigrants who had not committed crimes other than entering or remaining in the country illegally.

In a statement to EWTN News as well as in a social media post, DHS called the claim “false,” saying: “No one is off the table. We will continue to arrest any and all illegal aliens that come into our path. Anyone in our country illegally will be arrested and deported.”

“No matter what happened, we must overcome the evil that happened here, in our abbey, with goodness, love, and forgiveness,” Father Adrian Mantykiewicz told the congregation during his Sept. 26 homily at the Benedictine Abbey in Jarosław, Poland, where the knife attack had occurred two days earlier.

“Therefore, I ask you to forgive, because it has affected all of you,” he said, according to a transcript published by the Polish Jesuit news website DEON.pl.

Police arrested a 31-year-old Ukrainian man for the attack, which killed one priest and sent four other people to the hospital. Father Stanislaw Zbojniewicz died at the hospital from his injuries, and Father Marek Pienkowski remains in serious condition in the hospital.

Mantykiewicz told people not to blame the Ukrainian people because only one single person is responsible for the attack. He noted the convent — which is in a small town near the border with Ukraine — has provided support for many people who fled the Russia-Ukraine war.

“From this place, I also want to ask you not to blame the nation from which the torturer belonged, because the evil was committed by a specific person, a specific person who has a name, a life, and is responsible for his actions,” he said. “Other people did not do this. This was one, unique person.”

Mantykiewicz said he speaks in his own name and in the names of Zbojniewicz and Pienkowski when he says “very emphatically that we forgive and we ask you to pray for us.”

“For prayers for Father Stanislaw [Zbojniewicz], for the peace of his soul, for the health of Father Marek [Pienkowski], who is still fighting for his life in the hospital, and for me, that I may return to my duties as soon as possible and continue to serve you here,” he said.

The priest also asked people to pray for the attacker, specifically for “the grace of conversion,” saying “he needs this prayer the most.” He asked “not to respond to evil with evil but with love, support, understanding, and care” and to respect all people in the abbey, in the community, and in the country, including respect for Ukrainian refugees.

Mantykiewicz said in his homily that “this sermon is difficult for me,” but he said first and foremost, “I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, I am a disciple of my Master, I am a disciple of my Lord, and Christ teaches me to love.”

“Love that allowed itself to be crucified,” he said. “Love that gave its life for its enemies. Such is my Lord and Master. And I am his servant.”

According to prosecutors, a man identified as Ihor M. faced charges for the attack. According to a statement, the investigation is ongoing, but he was charged with murder, attempted murder, and causing serious injury to victims.

The suspect is receiving medical care, and prosecutors requested a public defender for him. He was appointed a Ukrainian translator.

In a Sept. 25 interview with Montse Alvarado on “EWTN News In Depth,” Cardinal Michael Czerny, who leads the Vatican’s Commission on AI, and San Jose Bishop Oscar Cantú, who heads the USCCB’s Task Force on Preserving Human Dignity formed in response Pope Leo XIV’s call for cooperation in  Magnifica Humanitas, discussed how AI may reshape the workforce.

Two days before Czerny and Cantú spoke on “EWTN News In Depth,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made an urgent appeal to the U.N. Security Council for international standards to curb risks from rapid AI development.

Czerny said: “Catholic social teaching says that companies, that investors and management, owe care to the workers.” 

“They are not to be used, exploited simply as part of the production process,” Czerny continued. “They are not just cogs in the machine, they are human beings who are living out their dignity in this very, very important field of work.” 

He called leaders in the AI industry to care for its people and employees, and not to “pursue profit or win the AI race at the expense of human dignity.”

Amid fears that AI will result in the loss of jobs, Czerny said: “I think we are treating it as a zero-sum game in an unhelpful sense.”

“Maybe we should say, ‘No, the question isnʼt whether jobs will be lost, the question is how much is AI going to help us to create more meaningful and more human beneficial work among its achievements?’” he said. “This has to be one of its goals, not just us protesting against job loss.”

Touching on the labor issue as well, Cantú said he hopes the reports from labs that he has met with are true in that they don’t anticipate significant job loss.

“But I think we should be prepared, and we should go into this wide-eyed and continuing to put forward for the lab developers that at the center needs to be human dignity and the common good,” Cantú said.

Speaking to ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, in an interview at the council’s first strategic planning meeting held Sept. 9–11, COP vice chairperson Father Alex Beukes said the new structure responds to the need for closer collaboration between bishops and priests.

Beukes compared the COP structure with the former Southern African Council of Priests, saying: “The one reason for the change to COP is that we found that there was not much collaboration between bishops and priests.”

He said COP was established by the bishops as a collaborative and synodal body through which priests can share their experiences and concerns.

Beukes said the previous arrangement brought priests together for meetings but did not give them sufficient space to address issues affecting their ministry in the different dioceses.

“Itʼs COP which changed that, because itʼs a collaborative ministry, and itʼs also synodal in its inception, that priests and bishops work together in solving various issues that are fundamental to the priesthood in the different dioceses in southern Africa,” he said.

Held under the theme “Strengthening Priestly Communion, Stewardship, and Mission for a Sustainable Church,” the meeting focused on strengthening collaboration between bishops and priests, establishing priorities for the period 2026–2029, and addressing key challenges affecting priestly life and ministry.

The two-day meeting brought together representatives from dioceses and archdioceses across South Africa and Eswatini, representing diverse experiences of diocesan, religious, and missionary priesthood.

In the interview, Beukes said the broad representation at the first strategic planning meeting provided an opportunity for priests and bishops from across South Africa to share their experiences and discuss issues affecting the priesthood.

“The beauty of this first encounter is that every diocese and archdiocese in all of South Africa is represented,” he said, adding that many dioceses had embraced the idea of closer collaboration between bishops and priests.

He explained that the discussions were not limited to bishops, with priests also contributing their experiences and concerns.

“And we could then speak together synodally, if you can actually call it that, and we can have a conversation in the spirit about issues that really affect the whole priesthood in the southern African diocese,” he said.

Beukes said COP’s structure, which brings together chairpersons of priests’ councils from different dioceses, would also support the implementation of the synodal process at the diocesan level.

He said the structure gives the chairpersons access to bishops, vicars general, and other members involved in the council of priests, enabling them to communicate issues raised by priests and follow up on their implementation.

On the priorities discussed during the strategic planning meeting, Beukes said participants had addressed several issues that priests had previously identified as important.

“Weʼve gone through a lot of priorities; we call them strategic priorities. And the ones that we have touched on are also ones that the priests in the general meeting had also asked us to look at. And we did,” he said.

He added that the meeting also brought in people with expertise on the issues under discussion, with finances among the priorities examined.

“We started with the priority on finances and how finances have changed over a period of time, and how it also affects parishes and affects priests who work in parishes,” Beukes said.

He said the discussions were intended to provide practical insights that priests could take back to their parishes and dioceses.

“All the priorities, those who speak to us, are things that we can take back to a parish council, but also to the diocese itself,” he said.

For priests from the participating dioceses, the meeting also provided an opportunity to address practical challenges affecting priestly life and ministry.

Father Sandile Mswane of the Diocese of Manzini, Eswatini, said the discussions covered finances, revenues, the changing face of the Church, healthcare, and self-care, describing the meeting as “an eye-opener” that would provide insights to share with priests in his diocese.

Father Albert Post of the Diocese of The Hague identified financial pressures, retirement policies, and mental stress among the concerns requiring attention, while Father Lawrence Kamala of the Diocese of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, said the meeting had highlighted the need to strengthen the bond between bishops and priests as well as among priests themselves.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service EWTN News in Africa, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

Families, students, and older people joined a warmly spirited program of personal testimonies, hopeful speeches, and musical performances celebrating life.

The march took place amid continuing political debate in Lithuania over family policy and declining birth rates. Lawmakers also remain divided over reproductive legislation, including access to abortion and in vitro fertilization.

Organizers stressed that the event sought to move beyond abstract slogans and political declarations by focusing on the realities of family life. Speakers addressed motherhood, fatherhood, and the challenges posed by child loss, disability, illness, and old age.

Throughout the march, participants and speakers affirmed the equal dignity of every person — especially unborn children — regardless of health, age, or ethnicity.

Saulius Karosas, a father, illustrated that conviction by describing how welcoming children with special needs reshaped his family’s outlook. After their fourth child, Iva, was born with Down syndrome, the family adopted Motiejus, a boy with the same condition. Karosas said embracing the children transformed the family’s understanding of human worth and beauty and how they recognize the value of others.

Courage and perseverance

The event also drew pro-life advocates from across Europe and the Americas. Featured speakers included Agnese Irbe, OFS, founder of Latvia’s Peripatos Philosophers’ Association; Marcin Perłowski, director of the Polish pro-life foundation Centrum Życia i Rodziny; and Patricia Sandoval, an international pro-life speaker and co-host of EWTN’s “Informe Provida.”

Sandoval described the Vilnius march as deeply moving. “I was impressed by the zeal of the youth that attended the march,” she told EWTN News, noting that they were “on the front line.” She recalled the peaceful atmosphere, in which participants sang “hymns and songs of joy,” and praised the event as “very well organized.”

Sandoval, who shared her testimony of undergoing three abortions and later working for Planned Parenthood, said speaking in Vilnius held particular significance. “Vilnius is the city of mercy,” she said, describing the opportunity to share her story as “a very emotional and very exciting moment.”

Offering spiritual encouragement to participants, Sandoval urged advocates to remain strong regardless of political outcomes. “Remain steadfast, persevere, and be faithful to do his will,” she said.

From Christian witness to practical help

Speaking to EWTN News, Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius said he hoped the event would help “a culture of life grow in Lithuania” — one in which every “human being is welcomed as a gift from the very beginning of life.”

For Grušas, that culture must be experienced concretely. “I would be especially glad to see a practical change,” he said, so that “a woman who feels anxious about her pregnancy knows where to turn, finds someone who will listen, and receives the support she needs.” He also said he hoped “families feel supported by their communities, employers, and public institutions.”

“We build a culture of life through many everyday decisions,” he said. In a city known as the “City of Mercy,” he added: “I hope mothers, children, and families will increasingly experience that mercy here.”

The archbishop also pointed to the responsibility of men. “A man’s steady presence can make an enormous difference,” he said, describing fatherhood as beginning before a child is born through “supporting the mother, listening to her, sharing her concerns, and preparing together to welcome the child.”

Grušas cited St. Joseph as a model of quiet responsibility. “He speaks no words in the Gospels, yet his care for Mary and Jesus is unmistakable.”

He described the march as “Christian witness with a civic dimension,” saying Catholics can participate in public life while seeking the common good. “We must keep in view both the dignity of the unborn child and the real needs of the mother,” he said, calling for public conversation “grounded in respect and followed by practical help.”

Builders of a culture of life

Archbishop Kęstutis Kėvalas of Kaunas told EWTN News at the march that building a culture of life requires men to embrace their roles as “fathers, leaders, and providers.” He urged them to take an active part in their children’s religious upbringing and formation.

That responsibility, he said, belongs to every Christian. Too often, people assume that “somebody else will do this” rather than recognize that “we are the people who need to take personal responsibility in creating the culture of life.”

For Kėvalas, this means fostering “prayer groups, family movements, and also the consciousness of the culture of life.” Christians, he added, are called to become “collaborators of God” in transmitting life and the Gospel of Life.

Asked what most threatens a culture of life, the archbishop pointed beyond individual social trends to “the faith problem.” The deeper question, he said, is whether people understand that “we are given the gift of life” and are called to give others “the possibility of life.”

He also warned against a materialistic mindset in which families “count the cost” of having children primarily in material terms. Greater trust in God, he said, can foster “a culture of trust and encouragement.”

Ultimately, he called Catholics to reject passivity. “We need to be not those who are just looking or observing life, but ones creating life and building the culture,” he said. He compared this vocation to that of the builders of medieval cathedrals, who laid foundations they would never see completed, trusting that their work would contribute to “a beautiful creation.”

Last update on Sept. 30, 2026, with official number of participants.

The Order of Friars Minor announced the venue in a Sept. 26 statement. About 12,000 people are expected to attend the event.

The beatification Mass is set for 11 a.m., and no ticket is necessary, organizers said. Registration is required by Oct. 15.

Bishop Stephen D. Parkes of Savannah said the beatification will be “a date of great significance for the faithful within the Diocese of Savannah and the Archdiocese of Atlanta.”

Cardinal Frank Leo, metropolitan archbishop of Toronto, will serve as papal legate and preside over the beatification liturgy on All Hallows Eve. The beatification will be livestreamed on EWTN.

A Mass of Thanksgiving is set for 11:30 a.m. on Nov. 1 at Savannah’s Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist.

Who are the Georgia Martyrs?

In September 1597, Father Pedro de Corpa, Father Blas Rodríguez, Father Miguel de Añon, Brother Antonio de Badajóz, and Father Francisco de Veráscola were killed for defending the sanctity of marriage. They died in the region called La Florida, which included present-day Georgia.

The U.S. bishops petitioned Pope Pius XII to beatify the missionaries in 1941, and the cause officially began in the Diocese of Savannah in 1981. In January 2025, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of a decree recognizing the five Franciscans as martyrs for Christ who were killed for their faith after ministering among the Guale people.

The late Father Dominic Monti, OFM, a historian and vice postulator for the cause, said in a statement: “These were not ‘missions’ like those that were established later in California, where native people were gathered together under friar supervision. The Guale were already living in towns; the friars were welcomed into these villages by local chiefs and lived among the people. This model of evangelization resembled more contemporary methods.”

The friars learned the Guale language and lived peacefully among the people without Spanish soldiers. Monti said archaeological evidence shows “a blending of native and Christian motifs, showing that the Christian faith was thoroughly accepted by the native people.”

In 1597, Juanillo, the young heir to a Guale chiefdom, wanted to take a second wife. Friar Pedro de Corpa opposed the second marriage. He also made his opposition to Juanillo’s succession as chief known.

Juanillo, together with a band of like-minded allies, resorted to violence and killed Pedro de Corpa, OFM, on Sept. 14, 1597. The group then proceeded to other local missions, killing four other friars in the area.

A local chief urged Father Miguel de Añon and Brother Antonio de Badajóz to flee, but the unarmed friars disregarded the warning. A sixth friar, Francisco de Avila, was kidnapped and tortured until he was liberated months later, according to the order.

Father Roger Lopez, OFM, is a provincial councilor for the Franciscan Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe, part of the Order of Friars Minor, which has worked with the Diocese of Savannah to promote the Georgia Martyrs’ cause for canonization since the mid-20th century.

Lopez said: “The beatification of our brothers, Pedro de Corpa and Companions, stands as a profound message to the Church in America — that the love of Christ Jesus is more powerful than hatred. In every age, the use of force and violence are the weapons used by leaders to silence the Gospel of truth and peace. Such was the result for our friars four centuries ago in the present state of Georgia.”

Lopez said the Georgia Martyrs “invite all people of America to lay aside weapons of death and division. Their blood calls us to recommit to Jesus Christ’s Gospel of peaceful dialogue, mutual respect, and forgiveness in our families, country, and world.”

This story was updated at 5:34 p.m. ET on Sept. 28, 2026, to reflect the extended registration deadline, which is now Oct. 15 instead of Sept. 30.

In an interview with ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News, Warda said education, professional formation, and sustainable employment have become essential to strengthening Christian communities at a time when economic pressures continue to weigh heavily on young Iraqis.

The challenge is particularly significant for Christians because their numbers have declined considerably in recent decades, leaving smaller communities more vulnerable to economic pressures.

Speaking at the Catholic University of Erbil, Warda pointed to the structure of Iraq’s economy as part of the problem. Government spending and public-sector employment continue to play an outsized role, while the private sector has yet to generate enough sustainable jobs to meet the needs of a young and growing workforce.

A difficult transition from education to employment

World Bank data indicate that the country’s unemployment rate stands at 15.5%, while labor force participation is around 38%.

Demographics add another layer to the challenge: Iraqis between the ages of 15 and 29 make up approximately 29% of the population, placing continued pressure on the labor market.

The countryʼs heavy dependence on oil also affects its ability to generate employment. Oil accounted for approximately 88% of government revenue and 91% of merchandise exports in 2025, leaving the economy exposed to fluctuations in energy prices and revenues.

Against that backdrop, Warda said preparing young people for employment requires more than helping them earn university degrees. Education, he said, must also provide the practical and professional skills needed in an increasingly competitive labor market, particularly as opportunities for government employment become more limited.

He pointed to university students who take night jobs to finance their education as an example of both the pressures facing young Iraqis and their determination to pursue a future through work.

For Warda, their experience also demonstrates that young people are prepared to take responsibility when meaningful opportunities are available.

Moving beyond emergency assistance

Warda praised the support that Aid to the Church in Need provides through scholarships but said the challenge does not end when students graduate.

Helping young Christians move from education into employment, he said, must become a greater priority for the Church and other institutions seeking to sustain Iraqʼs Christian presence.

That requires a broader change in approach: from responding primarily to immediate needs to creating the conditions in which families and young people can become economically independent.

Warda called for greater investment in people, professional formation, employment, and projects capable of strengthening the private sector and providing young Iraqis with viable alternatives to dependence on government jobs.

The Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil has sought to follow that model through a network of educational, academic, healthcare, media, and humanitarian institutions.

Creating opportunities through Church institutions

Warda said institutions connected to the archdiocese currently employ approximately 950 people from different communities and backgrounds without discrimination. Yet he raised the question of whether even that number is enough when measured against the scale of the economic challenges facing Iraqi society and, in particular, its Christian communities.

For Warda, expanding sustainable employment will require partnerships and investment beyond what Church institutions can accomplish on their own.

He argued that the Churchʼs response should therefore be rooted not simply in charitable assistance but in justice, human dignity, and empowerment.

The ultimate purpose of assistance, he said, should be to give people the skills and opportunities they need to support themselves and their families rather than allowing short-term assistance to become a source of permanent dependence.

For Iraqʼs Christians, that approach places economic opportunity alongside education as an important part of the effort to preserve a living Christian presence in the country, one in which young people can see a future for themselves and their families in their homeland.

This story was first published by ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

The combined parish of St. Mary in El Paso, Illinois — where Sheen was baptized — and St. John in Benson, Illinois, will be the first parish in the world to be named after the new blessed. While the buildings themselves will retain their original names, the new parish name will take effect on Dec. 9, Sheen’s feast day, Tylka said.

“This has been a remarkable week of firsts for the Diocese of Peoria and the universal Catholic Church,” Tylka said in a statement released later on Sept. 26. “We have celebrated Archbishop Fulton Sheen becoming the first American-born bishop to be declared Blessed. For the first time, we have heard his name invoked as a Blessed in the Eucharistic Prayer. For the first time, we have prayed the Collect given to the Church for his feast. And today, I have the great joy of announcing another first: the establishment of the first parish in the world named Blessed Fulton Sheen Parish.”

The Sept. 26 Mass — celebrated by Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, who was baptized as a baby by Sheen — was one of many celebrated in thanksgiving for the beatification of Sheen, who was declared “blessed” on Sept. 24 in St. Louis.

“There is something profoundly fitting about this new parish carrying his name,” Tylka continued in the statement. “It was at St. Mary Church in El Paso that Fulton John Sheen was baptized. There, his life in Christ began. From those waters of Baptism flowed a remarkable life of faith, priesthood, preaching, teaching, missionary discipleship and evangelization that eventually touched millions of people around the world.”

A person must be proclaimed “blessed” by the Church before a parish can be named after him or her, Tylka explained to EWTN News’ Mark Irons on Saturday outside of St. Mary’s Church. Tylka said he signed the decree to name the parish after Sheen on Friday morning, less than 24 hours after Sheen’s beatification.

“It’s great,” Tylka said when asked by Irons what he thought about having the parish named after Sheen. “This is where he was baptized, this parish church — which will still be St. Mary’s Church, but it is St. Mary’s Church of Blessed Fulton Sheen Parish — to know that connection, that we’re continuing on that faith that God has given to us that he witnessed so well, just immense pride and certainly for the folks here … to be able to know that theirs is the first parish to ever honor the blessed.”

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Sheen, despite his humble origins in small-town Illinois, aspired to great things as an academic and as a communicator of the Catholic faith. On Thursday, before a crowd of more than 50,000 at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, the farm-boy-turned-mass-media star was declared “blessed” after the reading of a decree signed by Pope Leo XIV, a fellow Midwesterner.

Via his decree, Pope Leo announced Blessed Sheen’s feast day will be on Dec. 9, the anniversary of his death. His feast day is expected to be on the calendar of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Sheen was born in Illinois in 1895 and ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in 1919. He later became an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of New York and then bishop of Rochester, New York.

His international fame was largely due to his ability to use the new forms of media of his time to proclaim the Catholic faith.

Through his television program “Life Is Worth Living,” first broadcast during the 1950s, Sheen brought reflections on faith, morality, and the meaning of life into millions of homes, becoming one of the most recognizable Catholic figures on American television.

Mark Irons and Jonah McKeown contributed to this report.

This story was updated at 4:02 p.m. ET on Sept. 26, 2026, with the statement from the Diocese of Peoria/Bishop Tylka and comments to Mark Irons.

Among them will be a 27-year-old woman who will attend alongside a group of Cistercian nuns, hoping the visit will confirm the call to contemplative life she has felt since returning to the faith during the COVID-19 crisis. 

It is no coincidence that Yohanna, a sign-language interpreter for deaf people, has chosen Lourdes to mark this new beginning after years of volunteering with people with disabilities. It is a few dozen miles from here, at the Abbey of Sainte-Marie de Boulaur, one of the strongholds of monastic renewal in France, that her vocation took shape. And it is to join this community as an aspirant that she quit her job in Paris, just in time not to miss the Holy Father’s visit.

Her story reflects a broader generational movement in France, where adult baptisms reached a new record this year, driven largely by young adults. 

‘I wanted to give God everything’

But Yohanna’s story is a singular testament to divine grace. Placed in foster care at the age of 4, she grew up far from any religious practice in a life marked early on by bereavement and solitude.

Like so many of her generation, she first went looking for answers in the spiritual movements close to the New Age that flourish among young French people — an exploration that left its mark, literally, in the tattoos she still carries. She evokes these wanderings today with a smile rather than regret, for it was through them, she believes, that she eventually found her way back to God.

That way opened in the spring of 2020, in a university residence emptied by the first COVID-19 lockdown.

“All the students had left, and it felt a bit like the end of the world,” she recalled. “I had nothing; I had no one. And suddenly there was this thought of God that took hold of me. I became really eager to know more about him.”

She began learning how to pray through online resources and quickly made prayer part of her daily life. Once the lockdown was lifted, she developed a taste for stepping into every church she encountered to pray alone, while avoiding Masses, since she didn’t know any of the customs. The turning point came in 2023, when she moved to Paris and walked into a church on a weekday, just as a Mass was beginning.

“I didn’t even know there was a consecration, although it is the heart of the Catholic Mass. But I spent that whole celebration crying at the back of the church,” she remembered. “And at the end I said to the Lord: OK, I’ve understood. Now I want to give you everything, really everything, my whole life. Do what you want with me. And from that moment on, everything changed.”

After settling in a parish in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, she undertook a period of catechetical formation and received the sacrament of confirmation.

During the National Pilgrimage each August, she serves as an interpreter for deaf-blind pilgrims — an experience that transformed her understanding of the sanctuary. “The real miracle of Lourdes,” she said, “is perhaps simply that we all end up together.”

Her conversion was followed by the call to consecrated life almost immediately, but she was determined not to rush her decision, having been warned that new converts “might be very enthusiastic and immediately think of consecrated life, only to give it up quickly.”

An unexpected call

Guided by her parish priest and the vocations service of the Archdiocese of Paris, she began discerning with apostolic sisters, cloistered life being the last thing on her mind. “Given my personal background, I had enormous clichés about monastic life,” she said. “I imagined all sorts of old-fashioned things.”

It was in the middle of a difficult university year, at the end of December 2024, that she first went to the Cistercian abbey of Boulaur, simply because she “had always heard that monasteries were a good place to rest and get some air.” She has returned every holiday since. When the sisters offered her a stay inside the enclosure, she accepted with the thought that it would only confirm her prejudices.

“I thought that going inside the cloister for the first time would help me understand that this was not my path at all, and that would settle it,” she said. “But when I experienced the cloister for the first time, it was incredible. I felt completely in my place.”

“The Lord knows us better than we know ourselves,” she continued. “Sometimes he leads us to things that at first seem absurd, and afterward you realize that it fits perfectly.”

At the 2025 Jubilee of Youth in Rome, she encountered the universal Church for the first time among thousands of young people “so different from each other, and all there for the Lord.” That experience now shapes her expectations for Leo’s visit to a France witnessing record numbers of adult baptisms. 

Reflecting on the pope’s forthcoming visit to Lourdes, which Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes has described as that of “a simple pilgrim,” she said: “Pope Leo knows what is happening in our country, and I’m sure his words will help us on our way.” The official program already includes a special prayer for France, asking the Virgin Mary for the renewal of Christian families and the flourishing of vocations, “especially priestly and religious.”

Yohanna’s own vocation initially alarmed her foster parents. But faced with her perseverance and joy, they agreed to drive her to Boulaur themselves, giving them an opportunity to meet the sisters and discover the life she is preparing to embrace. From there, they will travel together to Lourdes for the pope’s visit.

“It will be a chance for them to meet the sisters and to see what a monastery really is, not just what people imagine,” she said. “That’s already a big step.”

Her aspirancy, the first step on the long road to the novitiate, is to last until June. She said her heart is “completely open” to what it will reveal. “If God calls me there, I’ll be so happy that I’ll offer him a big yes, with all my heart.”

“We’re social beings, so we want to join communities … where we can be our authentic selves,” said Joseph McInerney, the Knights’ chief strategy adviser and senior vice president for leader development.

The symposium, sponsored in part by the Knights, was focused on problems faced by young American men in 2026. The symposium focused primarily on public policy solutions advanced by both Republicans and Democrats but also included talks unrelated to government, such as McInerney’s, which was about the role of fraternal community in helping strengthen men.

Other conference sponsors included the Institute for Family Studies, the National Parents Organization, and the Men’s Health Network.

Although the Knights are known for being popular with older, retired men, McInerney noted significant growth in recent years with young men on college campuses and those who recently entered the workforce. He pointed out that men who are under 35 are the organization’s fastest-growing membership segment, and there are now more than 300 active college Knights councils, with nearly half of those in the United States.

“The lifeblood of the Knights is young men,” McInerney said, adding that “it’s a place where they can … spend time with other men — their peers — and that, frankly, is very powerful.”

McInerney pitched fraternal communities as a means to combat male loneliness and isolation but also to build up men into leaders and “better themselves so they can be better husbands, fathers, … and members of their community.”

Warning against isolation, which McInerney said is amplified through the internet and media, he said: “We’re not made for that.” Rather, “we’re made for rich and beautiful relationships with the people that we love.”

Although the broader symposium was not primarily focused on matters of faith, McInerney said a major attraction of the Knights for young men is faith formation. He referenced in particular the Knights’ Cor program, which develops small groups for men focused on prayer, formation, and fraternity. The Knights also run the McGivney Fellowship, which is a two-year leadership formation program.

“They become good people,” McInerney said of the goals of the Knights’ programs. “They become people who are worthy of trust, and those are the type of people we want to lead us.”

Speaking to EWTN News after his talk, McInerney noted that the uniqueness of the Knights of Columbus is that it is a Catholic fraternal organization that is also focused on serving others through charity, which he sees as another attraction for young men.

“We want to help people spiritually, but we also have this mandate to serve,” he said. “Thatʼs why we exist, [it] is to help other people. And so, when you join the group, thatʼs kind of part of the package deal that we offer.”

“Itʼs natural if youʼre working on your spiritual life, you want to share the grace that youʼre receiving in your relationship with God,” McInerney said.

McInerney said Catholic men who wish to join can visit their website and get connected to a local council.

“Whatever councilʼs closest to you, weʼll get that person in contact,” he said. “And then whatʼs most important. … Entry might be online there, but whatʼs most important is then getting that man in touch with a man face-to-face.”