Such restrictions on federal funding are made “without any compelling government interest,” the Justice Department said in an Aug. 25 memorandum opinion issued to the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services.

In its 2004 decision Locke v. Davey, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public authorities are free to withhold funding from programs and activities that are explicitly religious in nature.

In its memorandum, however, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said restricting federal funding based on either the religious status of an organization or the use of funds for religious purposes is “not required” under the U.S. Constitution.

Such restrictions “discriminate based on anticipated religious use without any compelling governmental interest,” the memorandum said, and as a result they “violate the Free Exercise Clause.”

“Use-based religious restrictions on generally available federal funding programs are presumptively unconstitutional,” the document said.

The memorandum specifically addressed programs administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which controls billions of dollars in federal funding. It was not immediately clear if the directive applied to other federal departments. A spokesman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The religious freedom legal group First Liberty, meanwhile, hailed the memorandum as “a major victory for religious liberty.”

Faith-based organizations and schools “can now apply for and utilize federal grants without scrubbing the religious aspects of their programs,” the group said.

First Liberty argued that opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel “serve as binding legal guidance for the executive branch,” meaning the memo “effectively instructs all federal agencies to rewrite their grant-making rules to align with this new standard.”

The group noted that one of its network attorneys is Joshua Davey, part of the namesake of the 2004 Supreme Court case that established the precedent of restricting federal funds for religious activities and groups.

That decision “has never been formally overturned,” First Liberty said, but “that could change in the very near future.”

A five-month-long investigation by Republicans in the U.S. Senate found that abortion pill manufacturing companies are falling short on critical oversight while bringing in millions of dollars in revenue.

The manufacturers are not fulfilling their obligation to oversee prescribers while making tens of millions of dollars each year, according to the report, released by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana).

The investigation also found that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “lack of guardrails ensuring a sufficient provider-patient relationship creates accountability gaps for a product that carries risks of significant adverse health outcomes,” according to the report.

Three companies, Danco Laboratories, GenBioPro, and Evita Solutions, reportedly did not provide details on how they followed existing federal regulations, according to the report.

Among its findings, the report cited an undercover investigation that found that a girl as young as 13 years old could buy abortion pills.

Cassidy, a doctor and the chairman of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, headed the investigation.

“Abortion drug companies are putting mothers at risk through their failure to properly oversee the prescription and distribution of their products. We are seeing that the explosion in online sales of chemical abortion drugs has opened the door to coercion and abuse of women,” said Cassidy in a statement.

“FDA and the sponsors of these drugs have a responsibility to the American people to crack down on these prescribers that violate the prescribing requirements and reinstate the safeguards that keep mothers and babies safe,” he continued.

40 Days for Life says it will cover legal fees for arrests over New Jersey protest law

The pro-life group 40 Days for Life says it will cover legal fees if protesters are arrested under New Jersey’s new abortion clinic buffer zone law.

A new law signed by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Aug. 20 could lead to legal crackdowns on protests near abortion clinics. The law criminalizes “interference” with “reproductive” or “gender-affirming” care.

The law further criminalizes inflicting “emotional harm” against those seeking or providing “reproductive health care services.” It also bans filming and sharing videos within 100 feet of an abortion clinic.

40 Days for Life, a group that organizes prayer vigils outside abortion clinics, has pledged to cover legal fees for peaceful protesters should the law be used to target them.

“If New Jersey — or anywhere else — targets a 40 Days for Life participant for peacefully and lawfully praying in public, our Institute of Law & Justice will have your back,” the group said on Aug. 28.

The group’s CEO Shawn Carney told the New York Post, meanwhile, that the services would be covered “at no cost.”

Catholic Virginians launch campaign against abortion ballot measure

Catholic leaders in Virginia are launching a campaign to oppose a ballot measure that would enshrine a right to abortion in the state.

The Protect Virginia 2026 campaign urges Catholics to vote against the state’s “Right to Reproductive Freedom” amendment which will be on the ballot in November.

Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout voiced opposition against the “radical” amendment in a letter to Catholics in the state.

“Every life is sacred,” Knestout said. “The Church has always taught that abortion is an intrinsic evil. It takes one of God’s greatest gifts – a human life.”

“No law can ever make right what is intrinsically wrong,” he continued. “Let us pray for the courage to confront this evil that threatens to destroy life, to be persistent yet compassionate in our advocacy, and to vote so that we stand up for the great good that God has given us.”

“Let us commit ourselves to defending those who cannot speak for themselves and to witnessing to the Gospel of Life in both word and deed.”

The annual “Top Gun Father and Son” camping event welcomes dads and sons for a mission to grow closer, strengthen their relationships through challenges and reflections, and partake in faith-filled adventures.

Encounters, Convictions, and Your Decisions (ECYD), an international Catholic association of adolescents with the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi, hosts the annual weekend at Camp Castleton in Virginia for boys in fifth to eighth grade and their fathers.

The event is only one of the fruits of ECYD, which also carries out other youth clubs, camps, leadership trainings, and gatherings.

Father Vito Crincoli, LC, the director of the ECYD Leadership Training program in D.C., told EWTN News the ECYD ministry is “based on the spirituality of Jesus calling you to be his friend.”

“Itʼs an international movement,” he said. “In Washington, D.C., in particular, weʼve been putting a lot of emphasis on forming dads to be mentors for our clubs.”

“One is because we donʼt have as many priests as we would like to run the youth ministry. But also, above all, we want to create vibrant apostles, vibrant laypeople, to run youth work. And because men really want to be mentors.”

“Weʼve noticed in these past years of our ministry that thereʼs been such a desire for the men to want to be involved. And we saw that precisely through the father-son weekends we do. It awakens something in them.”

Men “want to do more,” Crincoli said. “They want to give more.”

Finding unexpected inspiration from film

While the camp grew out of the desire to minister to Catholic men, it was ultimately a fictional adventure film about U.S. Navy aviators that set the idea into motion.

After noticing a “father and son tone” in the 2022 film “Top Gun: Maverick,” Crincoli was inspired to bring together families for the event, which now welcomes anywhere from 20 to 40 fathers and sons.

Crincoli was inspired by the relationship between the film’s characters Pete Mitchell and Bradley Bradshaw, better known by their call signs “Maverick” and “Rooster.”

While the two Top Gun pilots are not related, Crincoli noticed a bond between them that is unique to a father and his son.

In the movie, “Maverick is trying to be the best dad he could be for Rooster. Experiencing his own limitations, but also just trying,” Crincoli explained. “And then Rooster is looking for the type of dad he wants: ‘I need a role model in my life. Someone who can guide me.’”

“Weʼre really trying to tell the dads: ‘Be a dad as a mission.’ Itʼs a mission of love. The whole idea of Top Gun Father and Son is that you and your son are a team. Youʼre preparing your son for life.”

“Thatʼs what Maverick was doing with Rooster. He was preparing him for battle.”

Top Gun Father and Son

While at the camp, the group has previously been joined by members of the U.S. Naval Academy, including a Catholic former Top Gun pilot who “gave a talk to the dads about learning to fly with your kids — learning to fly with them through life.”

A pivotal part is the “moment where the dads earn their wings,” he said. “We had somebody donate real Navy wings to us.”

“Itʼs a ceremony. Weʼll have the wings on the table, the flag, the dads line up and then … the dads become ‘Top Gun dads’” and “they get their wings.” It “begins the mission of the weekend.”

To help the participants live out the mission, the dads have “a training camp,” Crincoli said. “In that training camp we have different activities.”

The activities include anything from dodgeball and nighttime “missions” to quiet time in prayer. The weekend includes “different dynamics and different adventures” to create fellowship and teamwork between the fathers and sons.

During dodgeball, “itʼs the fathers and sons as teams against each other,” Crincoli explained. “But then, if their son gets hit with the ball, the dad has to go and rescue his son.”

“Thereʼs even a night mission that the son and the dad have to do together. There was one year that we did a mission where the dads and kids had to crack codes and to find the missing pilot. But they have to do it together — the son and dad.”

The event also includes father and sons giving each other their own call signs and explaining why they chose them for each other. Itʼs a “dynamic of ‘How well do you know your son, and how well does your son know you?’”

Along with the mission-center games, the group most importantly spends time in prayer throughout the weekend.

The “most beautiful” part of the event is when “we have the adoration — father-son adoration together,” Crincoli said. “The dad and his kid, they both come up to receive the blessing with the Blessed Sacrament. Itʼs a very intimate moment.”

“Then we have the finishing Mass. And after the Mass, the dads and the kids are together,” and “itʼs the award ceremony.”

Then, “the dads give their wings to their sons” and “as theyʼre pinning the wings to their son, theyʼre praying over their kids. Theyʼre blessing them. Theyʼre encouraging them.”

The many ‘lights’ that come from the event

The last day includes “a debriefing with the dads,” Crincoli said. “We sit down with the dads and we start asking them, ‘What has this weekend been for you?’”

“The dads begin to express different comments,” Crincoli said. He further reflected on some of the past insights he has heard from fathers. 

“The men say, ‘It is great to be with men that believe what I believe.’”

“Another, he goes, ‘Itʼs beautiful, itʼs great, to be with men who are strongly Catholic, who are bonded by their sons, and that we could be a community.’ One of the dads said, ‘I really want to be a mentor in this because ... this is an extension of my fatherhood.’”

After the weekend, “they come back,” Crincoli said. They come back as mentors for ECYD clubs or take part in its other camps.

“There are so many different lights that come from this,” he said.

The next annual Top Gun Father and Son will be held the weekend of Oct. 17–18. It will include the presence of members of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former Navy Seabee chief who will support the weekend with leadership and inspiration.

West was sued by the couple for not adhering to the terms of the surrogacy contract, which included a clause allowing them to request abortion of the baby if it were found to have fetal abnormalities.

The mother sought refuge in Texas and gave birth there to the baby, whom she named Gabriel; the state ordered a hospital system to provide the baby life-giving care.

The controversial case has generated significant commentary around gestational surrogacy, the practice in which a woman is paid to grow and birth a baby for the parents.

The Catholic Church explicitly opposes surrogacy, describing it as a comprehensively immoral practice that offends the dignity of everyone involved. But why specifically does the Church so strongly forbid this arrangement?

Practice is ‘contrary to the unity of marriage’ and of human dignity

Joseph Meaney, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, described surrogacy as an arrangement in which “a woman agrees to carry a child for another — either a couple or another individual — with the express purpose of giving that child to them.”

“Traditional” surrogacy involves using the birthing mother as the biological mother, Meaney said. One example of this, he said, can be found in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis’ account of Sarai allowing her servant Hagar to serve as a surrogate with the former’s husband, Abram.

The “modern version” of surrogacy, meanwhile, involves impregnating a surrogate using in vitro fertilization (IVF) either via a donor or using gametes from the “intending parents.”

The Catholic Church has condemned and prohibited this practice for decades.

Meaney pointed to the 1987 instruction from what was then the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith known as Donum Vitae, which describes surrogate motherhood as “contrary to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of the procreation of the human person.”

The practice of surrogacy, according to the instruction, “represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity, and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; [and] it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological, and moral elements which constitute those families.”

Meaney summed up the instruction’s claims on surrogacy as: “It’s bad, bad, really bad, worse than bad.”

Joe Zalot, the director of education at the Catholic bioethics center, told EWTN News that the dispute in Texas over baby Gabriel is a “textbook example” of what is wrong with surrogacy.

That case, he said, demonstrates “how commercial surrogacy denigrates the surrogate, seeking to reduce her to a subservient role viz-a-viz the genetic ‘parents,’ as well as how surrogacy contracts denigrate the dignity of the preborn child through the demand that it be killed if a prenatal anomaly is diagnosed.”

Catholic opposition to surrogacy has become more outspoken in recent years. Both Zalot and Meaney pointed to Pope Francis’ January 2024 address to the Holy See’s diplomatic corps; in those remarks Francis decried surrogacy as “deplorable.”

The practice “represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child,” the pope said. He expressed hope for an international ban on the procedure.

In the United States, meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) says in its ethical guidance for Catholic healthcare that Catholic health providers may not participate in surrogacy arrangements.

The bishops in that directive cite “the dignity of the child and of marriage” as well as “the uniqueness of the mother-child relationship.”

In an August 2025 essay, Meaney further argued against “altruistic surrogacy” in which a woman agrees to carry a child for someone else with no monetary reimbursement.

The intentions of these women, he acknowledged, “seem … frequently generous” and compassionate. Yet such arrangements retain “most of the unethical qualities” of commercial surrogacy, he said.

He further noted that the biblical account of Sarai’s arrangement with Hagar functions as “a cautionary tale of how badly such arrangements can go,” insofar as Hagar and her child Ishmael “ended up banished and almost died in the wilderness.”

The practice is widely legal in the U.S. Only one state, Louisiana, outlaws commercial surrogacy entirely; more than a dozen states broadly allow it, while a majority of states are at least generally permissive of it.

Meaney said the matter “really does come down to ethics. There’s what can be done, and what should be done; there’s the technically possible, and the moral. And the two are not coterminous.”

“One’s reproductive capacity should be reserved for the sacred purpose of bringing a new life into the world, not a commercial contract with strangers,” he said.

The National Legal Foundation, Claybrook LLC, Troutman Pepper Locke, First Liberty Institute, and Alliance Defending Freedom filed the petition on Aug. 11. The filing follows a May 13 ruling by a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that rejected Hall’s attempt to sue Virginia officials for blocking her from using a $5,000 Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant for a youth ministries degree, citing the 2004 Supreme Court decision Locke v. Davey.

“It is odious to our Constitution for a state to fund a degree in music but refuse to fund a degree in music & worship,” Steven Fitschen of National Legal Foundation said in a press release announcing the petition. “The Free Exercise clause is meant to encourage and even prefer religion. But Virginia’s decision to deny funding based upon religious use is the type of hostility toward religion rejected by the First Amendment.”

Diocese of Scranton reopens St. Pius X Seminary after over 20 years

St. Pius X Seminary in the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, has been reestablished 22 years after its closure in 2004 due to a declining number of vocations to the priesthood.

Bishop Joseph Bambera presided over the seminary’s official opening on Aug. 23, welcoming four seminarians to the freshly renovated building that was formerly the Cathedral Convent building, according to a press release from the diocese.

“As we re-establish the ministry of Saint Pius X Seminary, what an incredible gift this is,” Bambera said during his homily at the seminary’s first Mass, according to the release. Bambera had been a seminarian at St. Pius X Seminary in Dalton 48 years ago.

The release noted that the decision to reestablish the seminary came from Bambera’s wish “to make the first stage of priestly formation more closely connected to the Diocese of Scranton and the people the seminarians may one day serve.”

“We are excited because it’s going to give these men, as they start seminary, an opportunity to get to know the Diocese better,” Father Alex Roche, diocesan secretary for clergy formation and rector of St. Pius X Seminary, said in the release. “It’s also going to give the people of the Diocese a chance to get to know our seminarians before they go elsewhere to continue their studies in theology.”

Justice Barrett to speak at Benedictine College’s library dedication

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will deliver a speech at the upcoming dedication of Benedictine College’s Independence Hall-inspired library on Sept. 26.

“This is an exciting milestone for Benedictine College,” Benedictine College President Stephen D. Minnis said in a press release on Aug. 25. “The library will not only demonstrate our commitment to academic excellence and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, but it will also be a symbol of our love for this great country of ours.”

“The college is pleased to have Justice Barrett as part of the dedication ceremony,” the press release said, noting that the dedication for the Moritz Library in D’Aniello Hall will be free and open to the public.

Barrett earned her bachelor’s degree from Rhodes College and her law degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Students revive 1982 robotic arm at Catholic University despite lost documentation

A group of students from The Catholic University of America have brought to life a robotic space arm built in 1982 after documentation for the piece of technology has been lost for years.

Originally developed by Engineering Dean Emeritus and Ordinary Professor Charles Cuong Nguyen, the arm had been part of a pioneering technological effort to build the International Space Station, according to the university’s press release on Aug. 12.

The project to revive the arm, which is capable of a wide range of precise movements within a thousandth of an inch, was carried out by three students, including a high school Da Vinci Scholar, and was led by Nguyen. 

The students included Saliha Kavafogolu, an undergraduate intern from Yale University; Nathan Arega, a high school Da Vinci Scholar; and Ha (Jessica) Ngo-Tang, a biomedical engineering doctoral candidate.

California parents ask Supreme Court to overturn ruling excluding them from state program

Three California parents have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to exclude them from a state program over the religious materials they chose to home-school their children.

“The Ninth Circuit declared the homes of these parents to be ‘public school programs’ in order to justify the state’s religious discrimination,” Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel for First Liberty Institute, said in an Aug. 20 press release. “Parents should not be punished for choosing quality religious curriculum meeting the state’s standard that they teach to their own children in their own home just because it’s religious.”

The state of California’s tuition-free charter schools allow parents to home-school their children and have access to state funds to purchase curriculum. However, the press release notes, parents “can’t select a religious curriculum, even if they purchase it with their own funds, and their children’s work samples are rejected if they include religious wording or derive from materials created by religious publishers.”

The petition states that “California’s policy singles out parents who wish to give their children a faith-based education and excludes them from homeschooling benefits and support extended to other California families.”

The proposed bill, AB 1709, is scheduled for its third reading in the state Senate on Aug. 28. The amended measure originally would have prohibited “anyone under the age of 16 from having a social media account,” as the conference’s action alert still asserted as of Aug. 28.

However, the bill was amended over the summer to simply restrict “addictive features” for youth under 16.

The Catholic conference wrote in its alert that studies “repeatedly show that social media is damaging to young kids.” The bishops said mental illness and self-harm have “skyrocketed” among youth since 2007, the year the iPhone was first released.

“Young people self-report feeling addicted, experiencing damaging messages to their body image and self-esteem from the comparisons and endless scrolling, receiving unwanted contact by strangers, and exposure to harmful content including eating disorders, suicidal ideation, violence, pornography, and drug use,” the conference wrote.

On Aug. 26, tech company Meta — the creator of Facebook and Instagram — agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion in a settlement after 29 states sued the company in a consolidated federal case. The settlement resolved claims that Meta’s platforms fueled addictive and harmful social media use among young people.

A much larger bipartisan coalition of 47 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories signed the settlement itself. Florida and New Mexico did not participate in the settlement.

“Children have a right to be children and to parental protection from harmful materials,” the California bishops said.

Apparently still referring to the original bill — which was introduced in February and would have banned social media outright for youth under age 16 — the alert continues: “Establishing the age of receiving a social media account at 16 helps preserve childrenʼs social and emotional development and parents' rights to safeguard their children from such harms.”

About 20 U.S. states have enacted social media and minor-safety laws, but so far enforcement is a patchwork: Some laws are in force, some are partly blocked, some are fully enjoined, and some have not taken effect yet.

Texas did not join the multistate Meta lawsuit. Instead, state Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a separate settlement the same day, under which Meta will pay the state more than $1 billion, or up to about $1.335 billion if YouTube and TikTok adopt similar teen-safety terms.

The Texas payout is larger than almost every other state’s share of the national deal; only California could receive more, up to $2.2 billion. The settlement is supposed to fund youth mental health services, crisis resources, digital literacy, after-school programs, and school grants in the state.

In addition to the payouts, both deals require Meta to verify users’ ages, cap most minors at two hours a day on Facebook and Instagram (with messaging exceptions), block overnight access and many nighttime notifications, set school-hour notification limits, hide likes and reactions by default, and restrict addictive features and inappropriate content for users under 18.

Parents will also have the option to permanently make their children’s Facebook news feeds “chronological” rather than algorithmic, meaning the feeds will simply display posts in chronological order rather than in an order selected by Facebook’s algorithm.

Australia became the first country to ban social media accounts for youth under 16 when the rule took effect in December 2025. France later became the first EU country to pass a similar ban, but for children under 15. The measure was approved in July and will be phased in beginning in September.

The DOJ and the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, a religious freedom advocacy group, held the meeting in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27 to address the rise in attacks against houses of worship and faith-based communities.

Participants consisted of leaders from diverse faith backgrounds, including Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

The leaders spoke with Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, and Karen Schneier Dresbach, executive vice president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation — a coalition of business and religious leaders working worldwide on behalf of religious freedom, human rights, and the protection of houses of worship.

“No American should ever fear violence for simply practicing their faith," Dhillon said in a statement.

"The Department of Justiceʼs Civil Rights Division has zero tolerance for attacks on houses of worship, and we will continue to investigate and prosecute those who target Americans because of their religion,” Dhillon said.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has zero tolerance for attacks on houses of worship, and we will continue to investigate and prosecute those who target Americans because of their religion.”

Harmeet Dhillon

assistant attorney general for civil rights for the Department of Justice

“Iʼm grateful to the Appeal of Conscience Foundation and the faith leaders gathered here today for their partnership in this work. Protecting religious liberty is a fundamental American value, and this Department will keep fighting to defend it,” Dhillon said in a statement.

The event also included a panel discussion among leaders and the presentation of a statement by participating groups read by Serbian Orthodox Bishop of Eastern America Irinej Dobrijevic and Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, according to a press release.

The statement called for stronger legislation to protect houses of worship and for the establishment of an ongoing body of religious leaders to monitor threats. The leaders asked that the DOJ work in tandem with the groups to help ensure that people of faith can worship safely.

The gathering comes amid rising concerns over attacks against houses of worship across the U.S. The meeting was held on Aug. 27, the first anniversary of the fatal shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis in which two children were killed.

Bishops’ concern about religiously motivated violence continues

In 2026, “the Committee for Religious Liberty continues to be concerned about politically and religiously motivated violence,” the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said.

The U.S. bishops previously laid out “areas of critical concern” in their 2026 religious liberty report, including threats of political and anti-religious violence.

“In recent years, the USCCB has expressed concern about politically motivated violence. The polarization that has long been the subject of commentary by religious leaders appears to be devolving into a cycle of attack and retribution,” the bishops said in the report.

“Polarization is not simply a phenomenon ‘out there.’ It names a tendency within many people to turn away from truth in order to remain loyal to their political tribe. But Catholics are called to be conformed to Christ, not to partisan political leaders, media personalities, and social media influencers,” they said.

The bishops called for expanded federal support for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which funds security upgrades for houses of worship. They said funding is insufficient because fewer than half of applicants receive grants, despite rising threats.

“As we learn more about the devastating flashfloods in Nepal, I offer the prayers and solidarity of the Catholic community in the United States for our brothers and sisters impacted by this disaster,” Bishop Elias Zaidan said in an Aug. 27 statement. “I also encourage long-term efforts to help affected communities rebuild their homes, livelihoods, and critical infrastructure.”

The floods began after a glacier collapse triggered catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-Tibet border. The casualty count continues to rise, as hundreds of people remain missing.

Zaidan, chair of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace, said Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. Church’s international aid agency, is tracking the situation closely and working with Caritas Nepal and other local partners to identify urgent needs and plan the most effective support.

“We appreciate the partnership of the U.S. government in supporting CRS’ essential work in these communities. We are also grateful to hear that the U.S. Department of State is closely monitoring the situation and deploying key personnel to support response efforts,” said Zaidan, Maronite Catholic bishop of the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles.

The U.S. Department of State said it is sending disaster advisers to help with rescue and cleanup efforts. The government said it also would distribute $500,000 in assistance via Catholic Relief Services.

“I exhort the international community to mobilize greater humanitarian assistance support for vulnerable families and communities in Nepal,” Zaidan said. “May the Immaculate Heart of Mary provide consolation and shelter to all those affected by this disaster, and may she inspire the international community to work together, as one family, to address the urgent needs of the Nepalese people.”

The Justice Department on Aug. 28 released an extensive report on the memo, which was drafted out of the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office and leaked in early 2023.

Upon its leak the memo drew immediate criticism from Catholics and religious liberty advocates around the country. The FBI quickly retracted the document after the leak, with the bureau claiming that it did “not meet our exacting standards.”

On Aug. 28 FBI Director Kash Patel described the contents of the memo as “unacceptable.” He said the release of information “about what occurred under [the Biden administration] is an important part of the process” of ongoing investigations into alleged government weaponization.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, meanwhile, described the memo as “a clear abuse of power,” one that targeted “conservative and religious beliefs disfavored by agents of government.”

Memo arose from 2020 investigation into violent extremist

The Aug. 28 report — released by the Department of Justice’s Weaponization Working Group — said the Catholic memo arose out of an FBI investigation that began in 2020 regarding an individual who moved to Virginia from New York and began writing “violent and racially-motivated” posts on the internet.

Richmond Domain Perspective Report

That individual was ultimately sentenced to two separate prison terms on vandalism and weapons charges. Prior to his second imprisonment, he reportedly began attending a Virginia chapel run by the Society of St. Pius X.

Federal agents began investigating the chapel and a priest associated with it; their investigation expanded to include another priest connected to the so-called SSPX Resistance, a breakaway group that the FBI alleged has neo-Nazi sympathies.

Based on those investigations, starting in late 2022 the Richmond field office began developing a “domain perspective” on the alleged “increasing intersection” of “radical-traditional Catholics” and “domestic violent extremists.”

Subsequent research turned up “only two additional cases,” the working group report said, and FBI investigators found “nothing linking Catholics or groups not in full communion with the Catholic Church to domestic extremism.”

The investigation progressed to the point where analysts were preparing to develop a high-level executive report of the inquiry to present to senior FBI officials. Yet after the leak of the memo on Feb. 8, 2023, that report was never developed.

The working group report described the FBI memo as using a “sweeping generalization” of “radical-traditionalist” Catholics. Internal FBI presentation materials obtained by EWTN News identify the “core ideology and beliefs” of such Catholics as including “conservative family values/roles” and a “tendency toward isolationism.”

The memo further identified such Catholics as believing in the “creation of a totalitarian, anti-pluralist Catholic nation” as well as the “rejection of religious neutrality and right to religious freedom.”

The document drew a distinction between “radical” Catholics and so-called “traditionalist Catholics” who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II traditions yet do not adhere to “the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric” of the “radical” group.

An internal review of the memo found no “constitutional concerns” related to the analysis, the working group report said. Yet the memo spawned “significant internal criticisms” in the FBI after its leak, the report said.

In particular, an agent with the bureau’s counterterrorism division said the unit found no “significant linkage” between violent extremists and “radical traditionalist” Catholics.

Bureau leadership ultimately ordered the deletion of the memo, though the working group report said the memo was still being worked on more than a month after that order came down.

Later in the year the bureau’s inspection division found that the drafters of the memo demonstrated a lack of “professional judgment” and that they “failed to adhere to FBI standards.” The division ordered “all individuals” involved in the memo’s production to be “admonished” and be subject to additional training.

The working group report noted that the personnel involved in the production of the memo “have been terminated from their positions.” It argued that “history” will “rightly judge the Richmond Catholic Memo as a grave failure of the FBI Richmond Field Office” to uphold First Amendment rights.

The controversial memo has generated sustained criticism from religious liberty advocates as well as numerous responses from lawmakers in Washington since it was leaked.

In March the conservative legal group Judicial Watch was in federal court arguing for the release of un-redacted files related to the memo. Attorney Meredith DiLiberto expressed disappointment at the time that heavy redaction practices had continued from the Biden administration to the Trump administration.

In December 2024 Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, warned the government to not destroy federal records including documents related to the FBI investigation. Hawley said at the time that he had received reports of employees “destroying records and other documents in an effort to conceal widespread misconduct that took place under the [Joe] Biden administration.”

The working group report released on Aug. 28 did not mention any reports of records destruction. But Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department “will not tolerate a weaponized bureaucracy that chills First Amendment activity.”

The working group’s investigations into alleged government weaponization “will continue,” Blanche said.

Five Catholic colleges and universities told EWTN News they are crafting classroom AI policies in light of the pope’s encyclical, as the University of Chicago moves — as first reported by the student newspaper The Chicago Maroon — to make social sciences classes fully analog this fall.

Belmont Abbey College

“The Chicago response in their core classes resonates strongly with where our thoughts are going, although theyʼre a bit ahead of us in formulating a general policy,” David Williams, dean of arts and sciences and professor of theology at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina, told EWTN News.

“Discussions on the pedagogical response to AI have been ongoing for some time now, with new impetus as we absorb Pope Leoʼs encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas,” Williams said. “There’s a significant contingent among the faculty who prefer the all-analog approach, at least in our core curriculum classes, and are teaching accordingly as a matter of individual choice.”

According to Williams, a faculty-led committee is expected to deliver a report to the university’s president and provost by the end of the fall 2026 semester.

“I wouldnʼt be surprised at all to see a recommendation similar to Chicagoʼs for all our core curriculum courses; the core here is a substantial part of the overall degree program, so that would be more than 40% of a graduateʼs coursework,” he said.

Ave Maria University

Daniel Davy, dean of faculty and associate professor of history at Ave Maria University in southwest Florida, told EWTN News that Pope Leo’s “concern for preserving genuine human formation, rather than outsourcing it to a machine, is at the heart of AMUʼs approach to teaching and learning” but noted that the university does not have plans to institute a university-wide AI ban.

“AMU approaches AI with what Pope Leo XIV calls in the encyclical a spirit of ‘prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace’ (par. 106), rather than either uncritical adoption or blanket prohibition,” Davy said in an email.

“AMU does not have a university-wide AI ban comparable to the University of Chicagoʼs Social Sciences Core policy; academic policy here is set at the course and department level, since pedagogical needs vary by discipline,” he continued, noting that the university’s academic honor code bans use of generative AI in any part of the writing process and in all freshmen- and sophomore-level courses.

“We are far less concerned with whether a student turns in a perfectly polished paper than with how the student grows through the act of trying to communicate an idea,” Davy said. “This is where generative AI poses its deepest danger, because it offloads the process of thinking onto a machine that cannot, in fact, think. Outsourcing that struggle diminishes a studentʼs own capacity to encounter truth more deeply in each discipline, and through that truth, ultimately, Christ, to whom every field of knowledge points.”

University of Mary

“Here at Mary, one of our charisms is Friendship with Truth,” David Echelbarger, vice president for academic affairs at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, told EWTN News. “Because we are made in the image of a Triune God who is himself a communion of Persons,” he said, “we are not made to arrive at the truth alone. We come to it through dialogue and conversation with other people.” 

“One concern with AI, then, is that it turns learning into an isolated, impersonal endeavor,” he said. “To counter that, many of our professors are incorporating into their courses activities that require hard and rigorous thinking together.”

Additionally, he said, all faculty members have been asked to place an AI policy on each of their assignments, clarifying the degree to which the technology is permitted for each individual assignment, “which is meant to help students understand when the use of AI is a hindrance to their intellectual formation and when it is a helpful learning tool.”

Benedictine College

Mariele Courtois, assistant professor of theology and director of the Center for Technology and Human Dignity at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, told EWTN News that the college’s “Academic Misconduct” statement was recently updated “to clearly state that AI cannot be used ‘in place of a student’s own effort,’ in order to respect the learning process and the special connection between students and their academic work, which should reveal the students’ own personalities and convictions.”

“While some classes, especially in the STEM fields, may utilize or learn about AI — including its function, risks, dangers, and potential promises — many professors choose to make their classes AI-free both in the lecture hall and for homework, especially in Theology and the humanities,” Courtois said in an email. “Benedictine College respects the prudential judgment of professors to make the pedagogical choices that are best suited to their particular class goals and the aims of their respective disciplines.”

Courtois noted the college’s Center for Technology and Human Dignity was recently founded “to help guide discussions about rising biomedical and digital technologies in light of Catholic moral teaching.”

In addition, she said, the theme of the college’s annual Symposium on Transforming Culture on Sept. 4–5 will be “The Church in an Algorithmic Age” and “will bring together intellectuals and students from many fields and business sectors to discuss the ethical questions and social implications for transformative technologies such as AI.”

University of St. Thomas

“With Pope Leo XIV, UST is alive both to the ways in which AI can serve the human and the ways in which the human can be made to serve the work of His hands,” Thomas Harmon, professor of theology and director of the University of St. Thomas’ honors program special projects, told EWTN News.

Harmon said the university, located in Houston, does not have a blanket ban on artificial intelligence but noted that many core courses prohibit screens and emphasize developing students’ own skills rather than relying on AI.

“We regard AI as an important and potentially very useful technology that needs to be utilized in ways that serve rather than replace human excellence, which requires training, formation, practice, and guidance by faculty mentors who themselves have already cultivated the habits we want our students to develop,” he said.

“Since it is so new, the ways in which it can be responsibly integrated into an excellent liberal education are not all clear yet, but we are confident that we will be able to integrate this new technology analogously to the ways in which we have integrated other useful technologies like books, pencils, white boards, and computers,” Harmon said.

“Iʼm very impressed with her credentials and her pro-life heart,” Dannenfelser said in an Aug. 26 interview with “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” anchor Abigail Galván. “She, behind the scenes, was working very hard to make sure that the FDA was moving in the right direction on a new study to base further action on.”

The position became vacant after Dr. Marty Makary was fired and is currently filled by acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas, whom Dannenfelser also described as “a very strong pro-life person.”

“We’ve been extremely disappointed from the beginning of the administration with the direction of the FDA and the inaction from the Department of Justice, or the undermining of the pro-life priorities at the Department of Justice,” Dannenfelser said. “What I think is that her naming is an indication of the right direction that … this administration is now taking.”

Confirmation hearings will begin as soon as the Senate is back in session. Dannenfelser said she anticipates the hearings “will probably go pretty well.”

“Now, it doesnʼt mean that the hard questions shouldnʼt be asked,” she said. “They must be asked, and one of those questions would be the direction of the study: How long it will take? What do you see about preliminary findings come out that the court has ordered to be communicated in early October? And do you support the Department of Justice doing what it can to settle this case and get the drugs immediately out of the mail?”

“Because there is a challenge from the state of Louisiana, representing many states, that are saying what we all know: They have basically nullified those state laws,” she continued. “Theyʼve put a burden on states to help women that should never have been in a horrible situation. So while itʼs a question about the Department of Justice, one should not claim that the FDA is the only entity that can do something about fixing this horrific problem that is occurring for children and women in this nation.”

Dannenfelser called for a return to the first Trump administration policy on abortion drugs.

“Weʼve been battling for quite some time from the beginning of this administration to get these drugs out of the mail, and all weʼre hoping for, and what all any sane voter wants to see, is that on the at least on the Republican side, that we return to the first Trump administration policy on the distribution of these drugs, that only in a Biden administration that put on an emergency cloak around the distribution around the COVID moment,” she said.

“Itʼs time to restore the first Trump administration rules — no reason why we shouldnʼt,” she said. “The DOJ can act now and should.”

But unlike most people, she had another set of refrigerators to worry about — the commercial ones at the food pantry she coordinates at her parish, St. Mary of the Lake in Gary.

“I have two or three freezers full of meat. I have two refrigerators full of refrigerated items. Panic sets in, because I do not have a generator there,” Simon told the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News.

Not having an alternative power source, Simon was able to secure alternative storage options for the food, allowing St. Mary’s to continue serving the poor as some in the region enter their third week without electricity.

The outages began on Aug. 11, when 100 mph wind gusts and heavy rain blew through northwest Indiana and east Chicago. Numerous municipalities in northern Indiana including Gary, Portage, Lake Station, and Munster suffered widespread power outages, with as many as 400,000 customers affected at the peak.

Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) announced that power would be restored for nearly all of its customers in the area by Aug. 25. But more than 7,000 customers in Gary were without power for two weeks. The outages heavily affected the predominantly African American city of about 70,000 people, which has a poverty rate of about 33%, more than three times higher than the national average.

Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, called for an investigation into NIPSCO over the lengthy outages.

‘Trying to meet the need’

While conditions were extremely difficult, they also fostered solidarity.

When Simon was searching for alternative options for storing St. Mary’s perishable food pantry items, she started calling around to other ministries around Gary that the Catholic food bank works alongside. Many of them were also struggling due to the lack of electricity, but a nearby Christian church that still had power offered to keep 100 containers of milk cold, while the local secular food bank was able to keep the meat frozen.

Last Saturday, the volunteers at St. Mary’s loaded up their cars and distributed nonperishable food to 200 households in a local housing complex, including for several people with disabilities who were trapped with nonfunctioning elevators amid the blackout. Other parishes around Gary, along with local Knights of Columbus councils, also stepped up to offer food and other aid to their neighbors.

Bishop Robert McClory of the Diocese of Gary said in an Aug. 14 social media message that the trying times in the region are an “opportunity for us ... to be attentive to each other’s needs, to check in on your neighbors."

“I know many of us have already experienced a certain solidarity coming together with our neighbors during this time of need,” McClory continued. “Now is our opportunity to allow our Christian witness to shine forth. Know that you’ll all be in my prayers, and as we work together to navigate through this, we trust in the Lord, and we seek, as St. Paul says, to bear each other’s burdens.”

Terry Seljan, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Gary, told the Register that while roughly 99% of those who had lost power have now had it restored, significant needs remain among residents recovering from the recent storms.

Many people had to throw away food from refrigerators and freezers and are seeking assistance to restock their food, he explained. Others whose sump pumps stopped working during the heavy rain lost appliances, mattresses, and other belongings due to water damage. Additionally, some people who were unable to work while local businesses were shut down are seeking help with rent, while others need building supplies to make home repairs they cannot afford to address through insurance.

Seljan said the organization is focusing primarily on providing financial assistance and is asking those who want to help to donate through its website.

Prayers are ‘greatly appreciated’

With the help of roughly 60 regular volunteers, the St. Mary of the Lake pantry normally distributes mostly nonperishable food on the third Monday of each month. Normally at this time of year, the pantry serves about 155 households, or roughly 450 individuals.

Amid the power outages, St. Mary’s also donated some 1,400 pounds of fresh produce grown at a massive community garden associated with the parish to the local fire station for further distribution.

Father Jayababu Nuthulapati, rector of the Cathedral of the Holy Angels in Gary and pastor of two other parishes, including St. Mary of the Lake, told the Register that prayers for their community are greatly appreciated.

“[The storm] was very devastating,” he said, but “we never stopped feeding the poor.”

“We continue doing that even in the difficult moments, because we want to be out there for the people. And I’m very grateful for the volunteers,” Nuthulapati said.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago and Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Gary have also been highly engaged, addressing the immediate and ongoing needs in the communities affected by the blackouts, including food, clothing, and housing assistance. 

On Aug. 22, the Chicago Bears announced a donation of $100,000 to the Chicago and Gary Catholic Charities to help them in this work. 

While St. Mary of the Lake’s pantry is managing with the help of the wider community, the church is currently seeking the donation of a backup generator to protect the investment of its food in the case of another emergency like this, Nuthulapati added.

For Simon, the experience has been a heartwarming show of community cooperation and a chance to practice gratitude.

“Thank God that we have what we have,” she said. “It could be worse. It could be a lot worse.”

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

“I am very sorry to hear of her passing, and I am praying for those who are mourning her loss,” said Bishop Mark Beckman of Knoxville in a statement. "She made a wonderful contribution to our world and our community, and she will be greatly missed.”

The artist passed away on Aug. 25 at the age of 80 following a brief battle with cancer. Parton is being remembered across the world for her work as a singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist whose career spanned over 60 years.

“East Tennessee knew Dolly Parton as more than a world-famous star. We knew her as one of our own,” the diocese said in a statement.

“She was shaped by these hills and these churches. Her life shows what can grow from faith, perseverance, imagination, and love for oneʼs neighbors — even from humble beginnings,” the statement said.

Parton, who was not Catholic, sang and spoke frequently about her Christian faith and love for Jesus. Some of her public views — including her support for same‑sex marriage — differed from Catholic teaching. She was publicly silent on her views about abortion.

“She first sang in a small Pentecostal church, long before the world knew her name,” the diocesan statement said. Parton included the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame in her Dollywood theme park.

“She never hid her faith. It showed up in the hymns she recorded across six decades, in how openly she talked about God, and in the millions of free books her Imagination Library has placed in childrenʼs hands,” the statement said.

Parton’s “life carried the spirit of our mountain home far beyond the Smokies,” the statement said.

“As Catholics, we entrust her to the mercy of Almighty God. We pray that Jesus, who is the resurrection and the life, will receive her into His eternal kingdom,” the statement said.

Remembering Parton’s ‘generosity’

Father Jim Sichko, a papal missionary of mercy who has repeatedly referred to Parton as a friend, also mourned the artist’s passing, calling her “a woman whose extraordinary gifts reached far beyond the stage.”

“As a Papal Missionary of Mercy, I will remember Dolly not simply as an icon of American music, but as a woman who understood that blessings are meant to be shared,” Sichko said in a statement.

Sichko, a priest of the Diocese of Lexington, said he “had the privilege of welcoming Dolly to my church on several occasions.” He added: “She generously used her presence and influence to help raise money to support my ministry and its work of mercy.”

Parton “never forgot where she came from, and she never seemed to forget the people who needed a helping hand,” Sichko said.

“Her faith, generosity, humor, and unmistakable spirit touched millions,” he said.

"My faith impacts everything that I do because I do believe that, through God, all things are possible,” Parton said in a 2023 interview with Fox News. “And so I always ask God to bless everything that I do and the people that I work with and to bring all the right things and right people into my life and to take the wrong ones out.”

“So, I try to just live through love as much as I can,” Parton said.

“Unfortunately, too often Catholics and Catholic leaders are acting more like thermometers instead of thermostats,” Jonathan Lewis, mission strategy officer for the Paulist Fathers and co-director of the Communion Project, told EWTN News.

“Weʼre reading the temperature of the room or the culture, instead of setting the temperature according to our values and the truths of the Church,” he said.

“So, part of what this effort is aimed to do is to lower the temperature of division and distrust, starting with those of us Catholics who call ourselves brothers and sisters, who are a real spiritual family,” Lewis said.

“As we approach any election season, thereʼs always a need to help lower the temperature, have more thoughtful conversations, discern our Catholic values,” he said.

The Catholic initiative hopes to heal toxic polarization in the Church by creating dialogue, providing resources, promoting unity through national communication methods, and by aiding local communities to create unification at their level, organizers said. Exact plans are still being formed.

“Weʼre just beginning … and trying to share,” Lewis said. “Weʼre starting with a lot of resources” and “adapting resources that already existed.”

“Then weʼre planning, over the next year or two years, to develop programs for dioceses and organizations and religious communities, students in Catholic schools.”

The movement to start the project began in 2022 at the Paulist Fathers’ general assembly.

“One of the priorities of the Paulists is to read the signs of the times, like the Second Vatican Council tells us to do, so that we can respond in a spirit-filled way,” Lewis said.

At the gathering, they discussed “the realities of the United States and the Church in the United States today that we need to respond to or engage,” he said. “And thatʼs when the topic of toxic polarization emerged.”

"The polarization affecting the U.S. Catholic Church is not merely a matter of policy dispute or partisan loyalty,” said Father Ricky Manalo, CSP, co-director of the Communion Project. “It is a deeply spiritual and relational rupture, shaping how Catholics imagine moral life, celebrate the sacraments, interpret tradition, and remain in communion amid difference.”

“Within Catholic life, polarization is more than disagreement; it is the loss of our capacity to remain in relationship, even amid difference, as one body in Christ,” he said.

Inspired by Pope Francis, the group founded The Paulist Initiative on Polarization as a national partnership of Catholic leaders committed to strengthening unity across political, theological, and cultural divisions.

In 2025, the effort was renamed the Communion Project following Pope Leo XIV’s public commitment to building communion in the Church.

“This is really a priority of Pope Leo,” Lewis said. “In his first inaugural Mass, Pope Leo said his first great desire would be for a unified Church in communion. We really see this as an initiative that is trying to live out the message and the priority of the Holy Father.”

Polarization in the U.S.

When people think of polarization, they usually first think of “left and right politics, Republicans, Democrats,” Lewis said. “And certainly thatʼs one area, but I really see polarization showing up in a lot of different ways.”

“This isnʼt only in public life or in politics, where one might expect, itʼs also in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States,” Lewis said.

It can come up due to division surrounding the liturgy, or cultural or generational differences, but ultimately the goal is to remind Catholics of shared beliefs and values.

The project hopes to help the faithful “see that while people might prioritize different dimensions of our Catholic social teaching, thereʼs unity within that work, and we need to bring people together,” Lewis said.

For example, the Church has a mission to protect human dignity, and “some people focus on ending the death penalty,” while “other people might focus on ending abortion and the work of the pro-life movement,” Lewis explained. “Even if weʼre working in different areas, those areas are not in conflict.”

Connection through communication

The initiative’s resources and formation experiences are organized around three interconnected dimensions: the head, the heart, and the hands.

The project offers a “development of resources that impact our head, meaning our knowledge and our self-awareness,” and “also our hearts in terms of our prayer and discernment,” Lewis said.

There are also resources that impact “our hands,” which focus on “building skills and building relationships,” Lewis said.

“So we want to help organizations and churches work with leaders in particular, to equip them with the resources and programming to help them make a positive impact in their local community,” he said.

The resources can be found in the Communion Project’s “resource library” on its website, which offers a number of options for people to independently utilize or bring to a group. It also offers gatherings and workshops to aid its cause.

In the online library, people can find upcoming events, online courses, prayers for communion, articles, learning sessions to be used in small groups, and a Communion Project podcast.

It also has educational videos provided by outside organizations including Georgetown University, University of Notre Dame, and Boston College.

So far the podcast has included conversations with Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore on what happens when the faithful stop seeing one another as brothers and sisters, and University of Notre Dameʼs Tim O’Malley on liturgical division and what it means to live in communion with people.

The first episode featured a conversation “with Tim Busch, founder of Napa Institute, and Father James Martin from America Media, two people who speak to very different parts of the Church … but have developed a personal friendship,” Lewis said.

“It was a great opportunity to put people in the same place to talk about their friendship, of their shared faith, realizing that what unites us is so much stronger than what divides us,” he said.

“What matters most is gathering around a particular Eucharistic table and a particular family table and having hard conversations or sitting in discomfort, because love compels us to do hard things,” Lewis said.

The initiative is only “just beginning in terms of programming and trying to share.” But since starting, “thereʼs a great interest” among local communities wanting to be involved.

“The path of healing begins not in dominating strength, but in shared vulnerability. When both Church and nation dare to move toward one another — wounded yet willing — they may discover that grace lives precisely in the places we thought were beyond repair,” Manalo said.

Now, Our Lady of Grace is memorializing that connection in a fresco by Minnesota-based artist Mark Balma.

Balma is in the process of painting two large frescoes at the altar of Our Lady of Grace. On the right, already finished, is an image of Mary and the angel at the Annunciation. Green and blue ribbons painted in the bottom-right corner pay tribute to the school and the community.

“In the centuries-old tradition of Catholic sacred art, images have always carried more than beauty — they carry the prayers, memories, and stories of the communities who create and encounter them,” Rámond Mitchell, director of liturgy for Our Lady of Grace, told EWTN News.

“Sacred art has a unique ability to hold memory, communicate faith, and invite people into prayer,” Mitchell continued.

“Because our two communities had walked so closely with one another through such a difficult time, we wanted to create a lasting remembrance within our own sacred space as a reminder of the people we accompanied, the lives that were forever changed, and the hope and faith that sustained us,” Mitchell said.

Meaning of the ribbons

Balma painted blue-and-green ribbons onto a vase within his Annunciation fresco as a tribute to the community of Annunciation Church and School.

Mitchell explained how blue-and-green ribbons were an important symbol to the community after the shooting.

“Following the shooting, people throughout the surrounding community tied blue-and-green ribbons to doors, trees, lampposts, fences, and other places as a visible sign of solidarity and remembrance,” Mitchell said.

“In the fresco, the ribbons are tied around a water jug beside Mary. We wanted the ribbons to feel integrated into the scene rather than separate from it,” Mitchell continued. “The water jug is an ordinary object, much like the ordinary details of daily life that surrounded Mary when the angel appeared to her.”

“In that way, the ribbons become part of an ordinary moment that has been transformed by the presence of God and a reminder of the Annunciation community and of the sacredness of their lives and stories,” Mitchell continued.

Balma, who was in the Twin Cities at the time of the shooting, was asked to “find a way to honor the Annunciation community.”

“This tragedy really touched me and I prayed for guidance at how to best honor the children and families,” Balma told EWTN News.

“As a painter I try to find within Scriptures a word or concept that might help me unlock a vision to reveal a fresh way to transform the words into images,” Balma said. “For instance in the Annunciation fresco, the line ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord’ became the focal point of the imagery.”

“My concept for the Annunciation fresco is different than most historical depictions. They usually place an older-looking Mary in a room or cloister visited by Gabriel and the Holy Spirit,” Balma said. “As I studied the Scriptures, I found no reference to her being in a room.”

Balma pointed out that at the time of the Annunciation, Mary “was not that much older than the children” of Annunciation School.

“I imagined the 14-year-old Mary as carrying on her daily chores like going to the well for water,” Balma said. “So full of beautiful symbolism, the water vase then became the place I could attach the ribbons that were placed in the community in remembrance of the children.”

“Water is healing, and tying the ribbons around the vase seemed to be the heartfelt way to honor the children,” Balma said.

Sister communities

The community at Our Lady of Grace stepped up after the shooting; it was a tragedy that struck them deeply.

“Annunciation is not far from Our Lady of Grace, and there have long been many connections between our two communities,” Mitchell said. “Some of our parishioners attended Annunciation themselves, while others have children or grandchildren who attended the school. Our teachers knew teachers there, and some members of our parish community were neighbors or friends of students, staff, and families affected by the shooting.”

“Because of those relationships, the tragedy was felt very deeply at Our Lady of Grace,” Mitchell said. “In the aftermath, our parish and school community was able to offer a place of safety, hospitality, prayer, and support. Our campus became a place where members of the Annunciation community could simply be together when so much of their world had been disrupted.”

The principal of Annunciation was present at the live painting session when Balma painted the ribbons into the fresco, which was a particularly significant moment, Mitchell said.

“Having members of the Annunciation community participate in and witness the creation of the work has made the memorial even more meaningful,” Mitchell said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) refugee office proposed a rule on June 26 to update how it runs the program for unaccompanied children, including adding tougher background checks for adults who want to take in those children.

In a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., William Quinn, general counsel for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), warned that the proposed rule could negatively affect unaccompanied children and their families.

The rule would add more requirements for evaluating sponsors before releasing unaccompanied migrant children from federal custody to them, including proof of identity and income, and background checks for sponsors and adult household members.

The bishops said they’re “grateful” for efforts to ensure “children are placed in safe and stable environments upon their release from government custody” but warned proposed sponsor‑vetting rules exclude otherwise eligible parents and relatives from sponsoring children, the letter said.

The bishops said they fear the proposed rule could keep children separated from their families longer because some parents or relatives “without lawful immigration status” may not have the documents the government would require including proof of identity and income. Under federal law, prospective sponsors may be noncitizens, including those without lawful immigration status.

The bishops warned that without enough flexibility, the rules could block eligible parents and relatives from taking in children, making reunification harder and keeping kids in government custody longer.

Longer custody stays for migrant children

The bishops said they are concerned about a “striking increase in the average length of time children are already spending” in the government’s care, the letter said.

The letter detailed federal data that found an increase in the average length of care over the past 10 fiscal years. Average monthly time in government care has surged in fiscal 2026 even as far fewer children entered the system, according to HHS data.

The average length of care in fiscal 2026 so far is nearly 190 days, according to federal data. The number is up from 2025, when the average stay was 117 days.

Previously, the highest monthly average length of care was 69 days in fiscal 2020. The average decreased during the Biden administration with an average number of 33 days in government care in 2021 and 29 days in 2022.

The bishops’ letter also points to government research indicating that children who remain in custody for prolonged periods of time can experience more stress, anxiety, and behavioral issues. These affects could lead to higher levels of defiance, hopelessness, and frustration, as well as more instances of self-harm and suicidal ideation, the letter said.

Proposed recommendations

“Pope Leo XIV has referred to children as ‘the most vulnerable group within the global movements of migration,’” the letter said.

“Unaccompanied children are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking, domestic servitude, and other exploitative situations. The Church considers it a moral obligation on the part of society as a whole to ensure that all children are protected from such harms, consistent with their God-given dignity,” the letter said.

To carry out this obligation, the bishops said they urge the government “to maintain and ensure reasonable flexibility regarding sponsor suitability requirements proposed.”

They asked that the government allow “deviation from the enumerated list of documents on a case-by-case basis” and allow “waivers for the requirement to collect Social Security or taxpayer identification numbers.”

They added that an “inability to show formal proof of income should not automatically disqualify a prospective sponsor.”

The bishops said while the changes aim to fix problems in how sponsors are vetted, the government’s own poor recordkeeping is one reason those problems exist. A 2024 HHS inspector general report found serious failures in how the agency documented the vetting.

The letter highlighted the need for “post-release services,” including access to legal counsel, enforcement of federal anti-trafficking and child labor laws, and general protection of children after reunification with a safe sponsor.

In a heated exchange that aired on the evening of Aug. 24 on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Watters asked El-Sayed if he thinks opposing sharia — the religious law of the Islamic faith — is akin to “white supremacy.”

Watters pointed to a 2022 speech El-Sayed made for the Oklahoma branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations where he likened the 2010 passage of a law preemptively banning sharia in Oklahoma to white supremacist “forces” in the state who “destroyed Black Wall Street” and “drove native peoples from their lands.” That law passed with over 70% of the vote but was struck down by a federal judge.

Responding to Watters, El-Sayed said: “I don’t begrudge you your right to practice your faith as you choose. I don’t know why the idea that I could practice my faith as I choose is a problem.”

“Nobody is trying to push sharia law on anyone else,” he continued. “Just like I hope nobody is trying to push canon law on anybody else, because we live in America, where you should have the freedom of your religion.”

He said that with Muslims comprising around 1% of the U.S. population, preemptively trying to ban sharia law “seems to me to be deliberately targeting the Muslim community because theyʼre different.”

Watters and El-Sayed also sparred during the interview on topics including immigration enforcement, environmental issues, transgender medical procedures, taxes, Iran, and the economy.

El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to an EWTN News inquiry inviting him to further discuss the matter.

Difference between canon law and sharia law

Sharia law, which governs Islamic religious practice along with family matters and financial transactions, also deals with aspects of political governance and public law, forming part or all of the political and legal systems in several Muslim-majority countries.

Canon law, on the other hand, regulates only the Catholic Church’s internal structure and functions, including rules about clergy, sacraments, and other ecclesiastical and administrative norms. It does not function as a civil or political legal code for the state or for non-Catholics, as sharia can for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Catholics are generally expected to obey the just civil laws of their countries, and canon law does not affect those laws.

Catholic media personality Michael Knowles mocked El-Sayed’s position on X, writing: “[T]he Catholic Church requires ministers to use plant oils in sacraments with the blessings of a bishop, so why shouldnʼt courts allow Muslim men to have four wives?"

Kyle Shideler, the director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, wrote on X that El-Sayed’s comparison between canon and sharia law is “deliberately misleading.”

He noted that sharia law contains elements that conflict with U.S. laws, including “Islamic marriage contracts which conflict with policies on child welfare,” among others.

The Democrat is set to face Republican nominee Mike Rogers in the general election in Michigan this fall.

El-Sayed was born in Michigan to Egyptian parents. An epidemiologist, if elected he would be the first Muslim and the first Egyptian-American elected to serve in the U.S. Senate.

This story was updated on Aug. 28, 2026, noting that El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to an EWTN News request for comment.

The disputed public displays are located within sight of each other at El Pueblo de Los Angeles, which has long been marked as a historical monument commemorating the founding of the city in 1781. The site was first established by settlers from Spain known as “los pobladores.”

The cross is displayed year-round at the head of Olvera Street, while the Nativity is displayed about 150 feet away in a gazebo in the site’s plaza every Christmas season.

Los Angeles resident Jack Gerritsen sued the city government alleging that the displays violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids federal and state government entities from favoring specific religions.

Gerritsen alleged that the displays make him “feel excluded as a nonbeliever.” A U.S. district court initially ruled against him, leading him to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

In an Aug. 24 filing, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty asked the appeals court to allow a group of merchants on Olvera Street to intervene in the case as defendants alongside the city. The merchants have “a significant and legally protected interest in preserving the historic and cultural heritage of El Pueblo,” the filing said.

The business owners, the filing said, have “concrete economic interests in preserving the cross and nativity as important attractions that draw visitors to the area.”

The merchants help bring a “growing volume of visitors” to the area who travel there to witness the site’s “authentic and uninterrupted links to its historic past.”

The court filing notes that the area immediately surrounding the disputed monuments has considerable historic resources, including La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, a Catholic parish the roots of which date to 1784, shortly after the city’s founding.

The plaza also hosts an annual “Blessing of the Animals” during the season of Lent at which a cardinal or archbishop provides benedictions to local pets.

One of the business owners who operates a cafe on Olvera Street, Edward Flores, said in the filing that his own heritage includes a Mexican Catholic background, but he said “Chinese and Italian heritage groups” are also present in the neighborhood.

“Preserving our distinct cultures and educating others about our roles in the founding and growth of Los Angeles ennobles Americans across all ethnicities, faiths, cultures, and generations to take pride in their own contributions and to see more clearly their future potential,” Flores wrote.

The filing suggested that, under existing court precedent, both the cross and the Nativity may not be sufficiently “established” to violate the establishment clause at issue in the suit.

The “longstanding and historic nature of the cross and nativity,” meanwhile, “reflect the precise nature of the Merchants’ interests they seek to protect.”

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas rebuked the Trump administration in the Aug. 21 ruling for what she said was a “direct” infringement on normal federal policy rules.

The U.S. government through the Department of State had issued a policy on Jan. 14 suspending new immigrant visas to dozens of countries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed consular offices to adhere to the policy and deny new visas to nationals of 75 countries.

In making the policy, the government alleged that immigrants from those countries were at risk of becoming “public charges.”

The Catholic Legal Immigration Network subsequently sued, arguing that the White House had in part “invented a visa processing regime” that violated U.S. statutory rules.

In her ruling, Vargas described the decision as “not a challenging case.”

Congress established “comprehensive procedures” related to immigrant visa approvals, she said; those rules rely on consular officers to determine whether or not immigrants should receive visas.

The government’s policy, meanwhile, “categorically prohibits the issuance of immigrant visas based upon the nationality of the applicant,” a rule Vargas said is “a direct abrogation of this statutory scheme.”

Vargas said her order would vacate the government’s policy and “set aside and vacate any refusal of an immigrant visa that was based solely upon” that policy.

In a press release after the ruling, the Catholic legal group said it welcomed the decision, describing the government’s rule as one that “disrupted lawful immigration pathways and separated families around the world.”

Anna Gallagher, the group’s executive director, said the case “at its heart … is about keeping families together.”

“The suspension of lawful visa issuance across 75 countries separated spouses, parents and children who were simply following the legal immigration process,” Gallagher said, arguing that the ruling “allow[s] families to once again move forward toward reunification.”

The court’s ruling is the second high-profile loss this summer for the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump had exceeded his authority when he signed an executive order to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents in the country illegally.

In June, however, the high court ruled in favor of several other restrictive immigration policies from the Trump administration, including one that allowed the government to end temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian migrants. Those policies have received pushback and criticism from the U.S. bishops.

In July, the Archdiocese of Chicago withdrew Pfleger — longtime pastor of St. Sabina Church — from ministry to review an allegation of sexual abuse. A woman claimed that Pfleger abused her when she was a child more than 30 years ago. This is the fifth of several accusations of sexual abuse against Pfleger, all of which the archdiocese has cleared him of.

After reviewing a joint investigation, Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, has approved Pfleger to return to ministry “effective immediately.”

The archdiocese announced that “there is no reason to believe Father Pfleger is guilty of this allegation.”

“The Independent Review Board, assisted by our Office of Child Protection and outside investigators, thoroughly reviewed the allegation,” Cupich’s letter, addressed to the St. Sabina Parish community, read.

“An independent inquiry assures the public and the person making the accusation of a fair and impartial review of all matters related to such cases,” the letter continued. “It also protects the rights and interests of the accused cleric, especially if the board concludes there is no reason to believe the accused is guilty of the allegation. In that case, the cleric has the freedom to return to ministry without a cloud of suspicion over him.”

“In short, no one should underestimate the value of an independent and disciplined inquiry, even if it is made public and requires a substantial amount of time,” the letter continued.

“Thank you God,” Pfleger wrote in a Facebook post. “And thanks to all who have stood with me.”

Cupich also wrote about suffering in his letter and thanked the parish for its “prayers and support” for Pfleger.

“This coming weekend, Jesus tells us that being a disciple is about taking up our crosses and following him,” Cupich wrote. “Notice that Jesus redefines our sufferings in life. Sufferings are not punishments or even tests of our endurance for pain. Rather, Jesus calls them crosses and thus associates them with his own,” Cupich pointed out.

“He wants us to see discipleship as participating in the salvation of the world; discipleship involves joining our sufferings, our crosses to His on Calvary. Following Him, being a disciple, is then not a demanding chore, but a great gift. As we carry our crosses alongside Jesus, He transforms our sufferings into something much bigger than we ever imagined,” Cupich continued.

“It is in this spirit that I want to recognize the suffering you and Father Mike have endured, for I know his absence has been real and painful,” Cupich said.

Pfleger has pastored the predominantly Black parish St. Sabina, located on the South Side of Chicago, since 1981. While most priest’s assignments last about seven years, Pfleger’s has lasted 45 years.

Pfleger has a storied history in Chicago, leading fierce activism against drugs and guns along with outreach to prostitutes and drug dealers.

Some of the priest’s words and actions have put him at the center of controversy. The late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago suspended Pfleger in 2011 after the priest threatened to leave the priesthood if George reassigned him. The cardinal reinstated him as St. Sabina’s pastor after Pfleger apologized. In 2019, Cupich publicly denounced Pfleger’s decision to invite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to speak at St. Sabina.

“Remember your dignity as disciples, those who can claim that Jesus joins your sufferings to His for the salvation of the world,” Cupich concluded in his letter to the parish. “You will have my support and prayers as you continue to be a light in the community, a great witness that has distinguished St. Sabina’s for generations.”

The parish will hold a press conference on Aug. 26 at 11 a.m. Pfleger did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Alexis “Lexi” Arguello died of complications during an abortion at the Planned Parenthood in Fort Collins; her grandparents claimed the clinic waited too long to call 911.

The three-day “Justice for Lexi” campaign, taking place Aug. 27–29, aims to draw attention to the “the tragic death of Lexi Arguello and the numerous abortion injuries sustained by other unprotected women in unregulated abortion clinics across the state,” according to Operation Rescue, a watchdog group working to end abortion in the U.S. In the 1980s and 1990s, the group organized peaceful sit-ins and blockades in front of abortion clinics, which sometimes led to arrests.

A press conference on Aug. 28 will be held on the sidewalk in front of the Fort Collins Planned Parenthood, where 12 other women have been injured, according to the group. Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Rodriguez-Novelo of the Archdiocese of Denver will speak at the prayer rally following the press conference.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler, a former abortionist who now heads the Colorado Chapter of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a group that promotes patients’ rights for unborn babies and mothers, is set to speak at the event.

“The tragic loss of Lexi’s life and at least 13 ambulances from Fort Collins since January 2025 witness to the dangers of later abortion, magnified by lack of oversight, transparency and accountability,” Wheeler stated in an Aug. 24 press release.

“Women and Coloradans do not understand the dangers of abortion after the first trimester, and are not told the facilities are not regulated or inspected to be sure that anesthesia is safe, sterilization protocols are enforced, clinicians are adequately trained, or that the staff and facility are prepared, equipped and capable to manage emergencies like hemorrhage, uterine perforation or acute respiratory failure, known complications,” Wheeler continued.

Dr. Tom Perille, who heads Democrats for Life of Colorado, insists that women’s safety must come first.

“For two consecutive years, bills have been introduced in the Colorado Assembly to grant the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment the authority to license, regulate, and inspect second and third trimester abortion facilities like they do other high risk healthcare facilities,” Perille said in the release. “Both times, the bills were defeated along party lines at the bequest of the abortion industry.”

“Putting the abortion industry’s financial interests above the health and safety of Colorado women must stop,” he said.

Operation Rescue has been monitoring the Fort Collins Planned Parenthood since Arguello’s death last year, according to the press release.

“Since Lexi’s tragic death, our team has documented at least 12 more women injured at this same Planned Parenthood,” Sarah Neely, COO of Operation Rescue, said in a statement. “Another late-term Planned Parenthood located in Denver has injured nine women. Not one incident has been investigated, not even the death of Lexi, when evidence and testimony suggested Planned Parenthood staff waited too long to call 911.”

In one case on July 9, Planned Parenthood in Fort Collins called 911 for a “hemorrhaging” patient.

Attorney Alexandra Snyder of Life Legal Defense Foundation, a pro-life nonprofit defending unborn children, called for more safety regulations for abortion.

“The need for adequate regulations is most pronounced in facilities that perform second- and third-trimester abortions, like the one that treated Lexi before she died,” Snyder said. “Colorado’s legislature has twice rejected attempts to impose even basic safety requirements. We will continue to fight for laws that protect women in Colorado from this unconscionable neglect on the part of the Legislature.”

“We hope that Lexi’s death will finally compel lawmakers to require abortion clinics to meet the same patient safety standards required of other medical facilities,” Snyder said.

The letter, sent to President Donald Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, called for an extension because conditions in El Salvador remain “unsafe” and the removal of those living in the U.S. would be “detrimental” to communities.

“We believe that sending hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran TPS holders back into an unstable and unfamiliar country that does not have the capability to support its own nationals is a danger to those individuals and a decision that would have severe negative consequences for years to come,” the letter said.

“A thoughtful review of the current conditions in El Salvador, consideration of their contributions as TPS holders to the United States and the administration’s obligation to respect the statutory framework which governs TPS, supports an extension of El Salvador’s TPS designation,” the letter said.

The 97 faith-based organizations and 174 faith leaders “have a shared purpose in respecting human life, upholding the inherent dignity of every individual person, maintaining the family unit, and protecting those who are unable to safely return to their home country due to conflict, natural disasters, or some other extraordinary condition,” the leaders wrote.

The letter was signed by many Catholic leaders and institutions including Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer of Atlanta, and Bishop Stephen Parkes of Savannah, Georgia, as well as individuals from numerous religious orders.

The letter detailed that about 20% of TPS holders from El Salvador entered the U.S. when they were 16 or younger and “later became adults; some married and had children who were born in the United States.”

“They are our neighbors, our friends, and loved ones, and this administration should view them as such and value their contribution to the nation,” the letter said. Terminating TPS will cause the individuals “trauma and hardship” if separated from their families, the letter said.

Leaders call conditions ‘harmful’ as U.S. government cites low risk

“The current conditions in El Salvador remain harmful for TPS holders who face a possible return to their country,” the leaders said.

El Salvador has remained in a state of emergency since March 2022. The declaration was “in response to its efforts to tame organized crime, suspending basic human rights protections,” the letter said.

While the letter noted that returning to the nation is unsafe due to mass incarceration, enforced disappearances, and dangerous environmental conditions, the U.S. State Department lists El Salvador under a Level 1 advisory — “exercise normal precautions — as of June 2026.

The designation is the lowest safety and security risk level in the U.S. Department of Stateʼs travel advisory system.

While the nation was once one of the most violent countries, a 2025 Congressional Research Service report said data from Salvadoran police authorities revealed a measurable reduction in homicides in the country since 2015.

From 2015 through 2024, the homicide rate declined by more than 98%, according to Salvadoran security officials. The Salvadoran government claimed its crackdown on gang activity reduced El Salvadorʼs homicide rate to 1.9 homicides per 100,000 people in 2024, down from 53.1 per 100,000 in 2018.

The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador noted that over the past few years “there has been a significant reduction in gang-related activity,” but there is still “violent crime” throughout the country.

A 2026 World Report by Human Rights Watch found that the state of emergency “remains in effect, suspending constitutional rights.”

“Authorities have committed widespread abuses, including mass arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, and due process violations,” the report said.

While the violations continue, it did report that gang violence has “markedly declined.”

“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that — temporary,” according to DHS. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”

Eoin Richard Connolly had organized an anti-Islam demonstration near the church just west of downtown on Aug. 23. An Instagram video captures him being chased from the church and doused in blue paint before he flees into a Starbucks.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said in a statement: “Several individuals participating in a rally at a nearby location moved their demonstration to the sidewalk directly outside of Precious Blood Church. Then, when the demonstrators made their way into the church they were asked to leave by a surprised group of women volunteers who were cleaning and locking up the church following the 12:30 p.m. Mass.”

The archdiocese said the parish had no participation in the demonstration, nor did it give permission for its filming.

“The individuals shown in the filming removing another person from the church are not staff nor are they affiliated with the parish in any way. In addition, the man wearing a clerical shirt seen in some of the videos is not part of the parish nor Archdiocese and is believed to be clergy member of another Christian denomination,” the statement said.

“The Archdiocese respects the right to peaceful expression while also recognizing the importance of maintaining a safe and orderly environment for those gathering for religious worship,” the statement said.

Jeff Lee, spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said officers responded around 2:25 p.m. on Aug. 23 to a report that 20 to 30 protestors were inside the church. No charges have been filed, Lee said.

Connolly said on Instagram that he planned the “march to the Southern California Islamic Center to stand against the war on AMERICANS by Jihadist sympathizers and Antifa Terrorists.” He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Shepherding Future Shepherds, an initiative through the International Institute for Culture, announced Aug. 18 that it will partner with the Avila Institute’s High Calling Program to support men discerning the priesthood. Shepherding Future Shepherds’ social media has generated more than 7.8 million views on its videos highlighting inspirational stories of modern-day priests.

The initiative’s program director, Matthew Haas, told EWTN News that Shepherding Future Shepherds’ partnership with High Calling will center on accompaniment, reaching out to men who feel they might have a call to the priesthood and offering “not only resources but an entire program that will take you through a formal process of discernment to make sure that this is truly your call.”

“We’re encouraging not only that reflection on that discernment but helping to provide them with the tools and resources to work through that to help uncover where it is that Godʼs calling them,” he said.

Haas said that since 2025, the initiative has not only reached people through social media and its newsletter but has also attracted more than 6,000 people to its weekly prayer group for vocations.

“We’re very hopeful despite all the negativity thatʼs out there,” Haas said. “Just the fact that weʼve seen the growth that we have is really encouraging, and it shows that a lot of people do care about the priesthood and … seeing it replenished, and understand that this is something that needs attention.”

Haas said a national poll the group conducted on people’s views of the priesthood revealed that those ages 18 to 25 held “the most negative view of priesthood,” with concerns over “predatory behavior” in the wake of the Church’s sex-abuse scandal cited by 1 in 4 adults in the demographic.

“Weʼre definitely up against the challenge,” Haas said. “And I think thatʼs so much of it is just that the sense of, you know, a cultural association with the priesthood.”

Ultimately, he said, “thatʼs where weʼre trying to show stories of these role models of priests who are alive today.”

“We donʼt want people to say, ‘Oh, that was a thousand years ago and thatʼs not relevant to me today,’” Haas said. “We want to say, ‘No, these priests are doing wonderful things today and serving the Church, serving our people … in all sorts of different capacities.’”

The trial in Plymouth Superior Court has ignited a national debate around mental health and postpartum psychosis. Supporters have argued that Clancy — who strangled her three small children on Jan. 24, 2023, at her Duxbury, Massachusetts, home — was suffering from postpartum mental conditions that mitigated her alleged responsibility in the killings.

Her legal team has conceded that she killed the children but has argued that she was not responsible for her actions. Clancy tried to take her own life just after she allegedly carried out the murders.

On Aug. 24 Kirk Heilbrun, a professor of psychology at Drexel University, appeared as a witness for the prosecution at the trial. During his testimony he said Clancy claimed to have told her children “Go to God, baby” as she was strangling them.

“That was part of her expectation that she and the children would be together in heaven with God,” Heilbrun said. “She was raised as a Catholic, and this, as I understand Catholic considerations — that’s not necessarily what happens.”

“But when I asked her about that, when I said, ‘Isn’t suicide a mortal sin?’” he continued, at which point Judge William Sullivan halted the proceedings and held a discussion with attorneys.

After a 20-minute recess, Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington asked for a mistrial, claiming that the prosecution was guilty of “intentional misconduct” for “injecting” religion into the proceedings. He cited another instance earlier in the trial in which the Catholic faith was discussed.

Prosecutors argued against the request. Sullivan ultimately denied the request for the mistrial, though he said he would tell the jury to “disregard” Heilbrun’s remarks about Catholicism.

“I’m going to tell them it’s an inappropriate area of inquiry, and that this witness’ understanding of Catholic dogma or Catholic teaching is irrelevant,” Sullivan said.

The trial continued on Aug. 25 with several more witnesses. Heilbrun himself returned to the stand, stating that he felt Clancy was “criminally responsible” for the alleged murders of her children.

“She retained an awareness of the illegality of killing others, including her children,” he told the court. “Her moral awareness of this killing was influenced by her strong desire to die and, if she was dead, not to leave her children behind.”

Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki had earlier in August brought the lawsuit against the state in U.S. district court alongside a Lutheran care home and several Christian doctors. The suit argues that the Illinois “End-of-Life Options” law requires doctors to participate in helping patients kill themselves even if the doctors conscientiously object to doing so.

On Aug. 21, the district court said the state would be restrained from enforcing the suicide rules against the objectors while the lawsuit continues through the federal court system. The Thomas More Society, which is representing the plaintiffs in the suit, announced the order in a press release on Aug. 24.

Peter Breen, the head of litigation at the Catholic legal group, described the order as “a critical first victory” for the religious objectors in the case.

Dr. Mary Keen Kirchoff, one of the doctors participating in the suit, said in the press release that the federal order “means I can go back to focusing on caring for my patients instead of wondering whether staying true to who I am is going to cost me my career.”

The doctor said she was “grateful I can keep practicing medicine according to my integrity and my faith without that threat hanging over me,” though she admitted that the arrangement was only “for now.”

In issuing its order, the district court noted that the block on the suicide rules only applies to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and that the state can otherwise broadly enforce the suicide law.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed the law in December 2025. The measure permits doctors to help “qualified terminally ill patients” kill themselves with lethal doses of medication.

Patients must have the “mental capacity … to make medical decisions” and must be facing death within six months as determined by two physicians.

Pritzker in signing the law claimed the suicide rule “honors [the] strength and courage” of state residents suffering from terminal illnesses. 

This is not the first victory opponents of assisted suicide have won in U.S. courts this year. In July the state of New York agreed to a similar order after a coalition of religious sisters brought suit against the state’s assisted suicide law in federal court.

As in Illinois, the New York agreement applies only to the plaintiffs in that lawsuit and only while the suit itself is litigated in federal court.

This year, 65 have registered so far, which is keeping apace with last year’s “dramatic increase” in conversions, Father Nathaniel Sanders, the undergraduate chaplain at Harvard, told EWTN News.

Last year’s group, which came from both the Harvard Catholic Center and St. Paul’s, was the “largest class of people becoming Catholic in our history … So, there is something really exciting happening here," Sanders also noted in a recent episode of "The Great American Road Trip," a cultural and tourism initiative created to celebrate the countryʼs 250th anniversary.

In the episode, the family of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy travels to Boston while their daughter, Paloma, is considering various college options, including Harvard. The young womanʼs parents arrived with reservations about the possibility of their daughter studying there, as they fear it threatens to undermine the Christian upbringing she received at home.

However, a meeting with Sanders ultimately gives them a different perspective.

A growing Catholic community

In the video, the chaplain speaks not only about those preparing to join the Church but he also highlights the increase in student participation in Catholic life at Harvard.

“Student attendance at Mass is very good right now. It has definitely increased by 10% to 20% in recent years,” he notes.

According to a report published in December 2025 by The Wall Street Journal, Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s currently draws an average of about 300 students, up from around 200 a few years ago.

Sanders says one of the characteristics of this community is the profile of the participants.

“We have very intelligent, high-achieving students. We can give talks on a range of issues, and the students ask great questions,” he explains in the video. “I am really grateful for what God is doing here.”

The Holy Spirit is behind the increase in conversions

Regarding the growth, Sanders told EWTN News that “there’s nothing particular about Harvard” that explains it. “There’s a wider trend going on among young people, and I attribute that to the Holy Spirit. I think there are real cultural factors at play leading students to want to discover more about the faith.”

He said a lot of the conversions on campus are driven through Bible study groups on campus. “We run about 30 different Bible studies, with the help of the FOCUS missionaries,” who “do a lot of outreach, get people involved.”

He credited many conversions to a study being led by “a dynamic student on a sports team who will run a Bible study with the help of the missionaries. A lot of converts have come through that.”

The two main groups of students he sees becoming Catholic at Harvard are unchurched youth who grew up in culturally Catholic homes but never received the sacraments and former evangelical Protestants.

“Fewer children are being baptized these days, so those who were never churched, who were raised culturally Catholic, in some sense, are coming in showing interest in the faith,” he told EWTN News.

The second group, former “megachurch Protestants, begin to read” about the Catholic faith, he said, “and then that’s sort of the end of it” — they convert.

Students speak out

John Phillips, a former president of the Harvard Catholic Center, told The Wall Street Journal last year that he had nearly turned down his admission to Harvard because he had previously attended only Catholic schools and feared he would not be able to grow in his faith within such a secular environment.

However, upon arriving on campus in 2022, he found students who, while taking their academic studies seriously, were equally committed to Catholicism.

“I saw a community I could be a part of,” Phillips explained.

Adaolisa Mba, now a senior and the Harvard Catholic Center’s formation chair, shared a similar experience with The Wall Street Journal: “It’s really impressive to be in a Catholic community with a lot of people my age. We motivate each other to be closer to God.”

‘I donʼt think thereʼs anything nefarious going on’

After visiting Boston College and heading on to Harvard, Paloma’s mother, Rachel Campos Duffy, remarked in the episode: “We have a saying in our house, and I say it all the time to the kids: My job isn’t to get you into Harvard, it’s to get you into heaven. So it’s kind of ironic that we’re now going to tour Harvard.”

The family had a chance to meet with Sanders during their visit, and Paloma’s father expressed to him his fear that the school might undermine the faith he had taught his children and weaken their convictions.

Addressing this concern, Sanders said: “I think it depends on the kids, whether or not they’re sort of coming with the virtues necessary to live out that life well. But I don’t think there is anything nefarious going on.”

“You come here because it’s the best opportunity. And if someone has a sense of themselves and a sense of God before coming, I think that will only flower,” he added.

The issue is not about preventing a young Catholic from having their beliefs challenged, Sanders said, but rather ensuring they have a sufficiently deep-rooted faith.

“If they are confident enough in their faith that they won’t have an existential crisis the first time it’s challenged in class, and they have the social skills,” he said, young Catholics can “thrive at Harvard.”

“Visiting Harvard seems to ease my parents’ concerns and the assumptions they had about the school, and I think they were pleasantly surprised to see how strong the Catholic community there is,” Paloma observed.

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.

His visit to Taybeh and Jenin followed an Israeli order issued in July declaring “the area of Taybeh and Rimon” a closed military zone, prohibiting Israelis and foreign nationals from entering or remaining there. The designated area includes part of Taybeh’s built-up area, agricultural land, and religious and historical sites.

Taybeh “represents a place which has been inhabited by followers of Jesus, by Christians, for 2,000 years,” said Monsignor Peter Vaccari, president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), a papal agency that provides humanitarian and pastoral support to Christians across the Middle East.

Taybeh “highlights the indigenous Christian population and remains to this day the only really Christian village that is left throughout the West Bank,” Vaccari said in interview Aug. 24, an excerpt of which was broadcast on “EWTN News Nightly.”

The persecution of the Christian population has “increased” as “radical settlers will take it upon themselves to either deface religious symbols, to interfere with the business enterprises of the people of Taybeh,” or “insert themselves in whatever way they feel they have the right to — which is a violation of international law,” Vaccari said.

Amid the conflict, on Aug. 15, Pizzaballa celebrated Mass at the Latin Church of Christ the Redeemer.

In his homily, Pizzaballa referred to the people of Taybeh as the “Christian voice, speaking out for justice, speaking out for the desire for dialogue with all people,” Vaccari said.

“He urged the people of Taybeh to guard their hearts ... against any kind of despair. Guard their hearts against any kind of contamination. Guard their hearts in a way that they would be those who would fight for justice and fight for the principles of justice,” Vaccari said.

“I may not have answers at the human and worldly level, but I believe in God,” Pizzaballa said. “And I am certain that, in him, we can continue to give birth to life, even here in Taybeh.”

“We will continue to do everything within our power to preserve the ecclesial presence here, at every level throughout the Holy Land,” he said.

Christian persecution continues to rise

In a separate interview with “EWTN News Nightly” on Aug. 21, Michael J. L. LaCivita, communications director at CNEWA, detailed the importance of Pizzaballa’s visit.

As Christians in the Holy Land “feel that theyʼre in danger of losing their homes and their livelihoods,” Pizzaballa was able “to assure them that they will not be abandoned” and “that we have not forgotten them,” he said.

Taybeh is “historically an agricultural village,” LaCivita said. “Itʼs surrounded by agricultural lands, olive groves, and oranges, and things of that nature. Itʼs quite a bustling place.”

Now, though, “they are under siege” and there is “violence,” LaCivita said.

“Their fields are being torched,” he said. “Even an ancient church dedicated to St. George, who was a very popular saint in the Palestinian community among Muslims as well as Christians ... was vandalized last year [and] set afire.”

“So theyʼre very much concerned about their livelihoods, especially now that the IDF has basically surrounded the village and said that it’s militarily closed off and will not permit either people in or out,” he said.

While the conflict continues, Catholics can “pray, because as we know, prayer moves mountains, and so we need to pray and pray for all people of goodwill,” LaCivita said.

“We need to work for justice so that there can be peace and unity. Because without justice we cannot have peace,” he said.

The faithful can also support the efforts of organizations like CNEWA, which work to “get the supplies and the food and the water that is needed” in the area, he said.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago and Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Gary, Indiana, will each receive $100,000 to aid in their efforts to help address immediate and ongoing needs in the affected communities including food, clothing, housing assistance, and other resources to help in recovery while many families are still without power, displaced from their homes, and begin to consider rebuilding plans.

On Aug. 11, high winds, heavy rain, and tornado activity swept through northwest Indiana and east Chicago causing severe damage to homes and other buildings. Gary, Indiana, was reported as being the hardest-hit city.

NIPSCO, one of Indiana’s largest natural gas and electric companies, reported nearly 400,000 outages after the storm. The company described the storm as the most destructive ever to strike its service area, causing historic damage to the electric system and producing its largest power outage ever.

As of Aug. 24, roughly 10,000 individuals remain without power in Gary.

“We are very grateful for this generous gift from the Bears, which will immediately benefit many people in need who have been impacted by recent storms and provide for ongoing recovery efforts,” Bishop Robert J. McClory of the Diocese of Gary said in a statement.

“Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Gary has been responding to local needs from day one. The support from the Bears and many other partners will help elevate efforts to reach the most vulnerable in our communities,” he added. “I encourage everyone to continue to pray, reach out to our neighbors who are suffering, and support efforts by Catholic Charities and others to assist those in need.”

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Gary Executive Director Terry Seljan said: "The devastating impact of the storms across northwest Indiana has turned lives upside down for thousands of families, leaving them to face unexpected challenges and uncertainty.”

He explained that currently their focus "is on helping our neighbors access the support and resources they need to stabilize so they can begin to recover and move forward.”

He added: “We are incredibly grateful to the Chicago Bears organization for their generous support and for the care and concern they have shown for our Northwest Indiana community. Their commitment is a powerful reminder of what can happen when people come together to help their neighbors in times of need. We hope others who are able will join them in supporting the Storm Relief Fund and helping bring relief, hope, and healing to families across our region."

Sally Blount, CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, also expressed her gratitude.

"We deeply value and respect the long-standing philanthropic leadership of the Chicago Bears organization. As one of our regionʼs largest human services providers, we are honored to be entrusted with distributing this critical funding,” she said.

“An unexpected expense of even a few hundred dollars can amount to a crisis for an individual or family already living on a very limited budget. This funding will make a big difference to families affected by the storm," she said.

Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada is preparing its response for short- and long-term aid while evacuating employees and volunteers.

Marie Baxter, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada, said she had a family of six — and their two cats, dog, and rabbit — staying in her office Saturday night.

“We have 200 employees and, on a rough estimate, would say that 20% of our staff are evacuated,” she told EWTN News. “We are also navigating assisting our volunteers, as many of whom also are evacuated. Volunteers provide critical manpower in our dining rooms and our food pantry.”

Catholic Charities worked with the Red Cross over the weekend while planning to step in for a long-term response.

Both St. Thomas Aquinas Cathedral and Holy Cross Catholic Church in Sparks opened doors for overnight guests, according to Baxter.

“Over the weekend, we were in regular communication with the Red Cross ready to provide volunteers, food, and other resources,” she said.

“Our most intensive role actually comes after the fire as we do all of the long-term case management for individuals referred to us by the Red Cross,” she said. “Red Cross and Washoe County Human Services Agency does the short-term stabilization; we take it from there.”

“We are also scaling up our food resources in our food pantry as we know we will see a surge of individuals once they are able to return home and have to throw out perishable foods due to extended power loss,” she said. “Many of those displaced on the north/northwest border of the fire live in lower-income neighborhoods or are seniors on fixed incomes.”

Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada has responded to wildfires “in and around our area the past seven years,” according to Baxter.

“We help with bridge housing, grocery replacement, household item replacement, et cetera,” she said. “We also help individuals replace essential documents, work with their insurance company (if they have insurance) and generally help them move back toward stability.”

“Where this fire burned, there are a lot of lower-income families and a lot of renters,” Baxter said. “There are often multiple families living in houses/trailers on a single land plot. When they are displaced, they are truly displaced.”

“Even when they are let back in, they could have damage or loss that makes it impossible for them to stay,” Baxter continued. “Just finding a new place and coming up with first/last monthʼs rent can be a huge barrier; tack on replacing your food, getting your kiddos back in school … this is where we shine at accompaniment.”

Hawk Fire Service did not yet have an anticipated timeline for when the nearly 90,000 evacuated people will be able to return to the area. The cause for the fire was identified as “human” by Hawk Fire. Officials anticipated that hot, dry, breezy conditions will spread the fire. There were a reported six people injured, three of whom were emergency responders.

“While the evacuation orders are still in place, we are stocking our pantry with additional food and extending what is available in our Essentials Closet so we can help individuals who need items while at the evacuation shelters or while they are staying with friends and family,” Baxter said.

“On campuses of various sizes, all across the United States, Catholicism is on the rise,” Hallow reported in an Aug. 19 study that found that OCIA participation increased by 87.6% from the 2024-25 school year to 2025-26.

Schools with the largest number of OCIA participants include Texas A&M, Arizona State University, the University of Illinois, the University of Oklahoma, Kansas State University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University. Hallow said it obtained OCIA data from nearly 60 U.S. colleges and universities.

Texas A&M saw the largest number of OCIA participants, increasing to 204 candidates and catechumens in 2025-26 from 121 in 2024-25.

Hallow said campus conversion growth is outpacing diocesan trends, noting that university parishes and Newman Centers reported faster increases than dioceses, which saw a 38% rise in 2025‑26.

“College-age young people may be entering the Church at a faster rate than the general American population,” Hallow said. “And when they enter or return to the Church, they’re doing so with a fire that spreads across various ministries.”

Hallow’s report noted that growth is not limited to college towns alone but that “campus ministries in and around some of America’s largest cities are reporting similar increases.”

“USC [University of Southern California], located in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, saw a 76% increase in OCIA participation this past school year,” the report said. “Further north, Stanford, located in the heart of Silicon Valley between San Jose and San Francisco, tripled its number of OCIA candidates and catechumens during the 2025-26 school year.”

New York University also reported an 88% increase in OCIA participation while its daily Mass attendance tripled, the Hallow report said.

The Hallow report said adult baptisms at Stanford University were unusually high this year. Dominican Father Bart Hutcherson said in the Hallow report that the parish typically sees about four adult baptisms annually, but he baptized 16 this Easter, nearly all of them Stanford students.

With an Ivy League law degree, a successful career, and the ability to travel, Robert Boxie III seemed to have it all. Yet, he said he felt the Lord calling him to something even greater: religious life.

Originally from southern Louisiana, Boxie grew up where “Catholicism runs deep in the soil,” he said in an Aug. 21 interview with “EWTN News In Depth” host Catherine Hadro.

With that faith instilled in him, Boxie went on to attend Vanderbilt University, where he received a degree in chemical engineering and a second degree in music. He then worked for a year in France teaching English.

Upon returning to the U.S., he continued his education at Harvard Law School before working as a law clerk in Maryland and then as an associate at a law firm in Washington, D.C.

Then, following much discernment, he entered seminary for the Archdiocese of Washington and was ordained a priest in 2016.

After a decade as a priest, Pope Leo XIV appointed Boxie an auxiliary bishop of Washington. Cardinal Robert McElroy ordained him into the order of bishops at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on July 8.

“Itʼs still new. Itʼs still fresh,” he said. “The ordination … was tremendous. It was a real gift to me, and my family, and my community.”

“Itʼs a new reality that Iʼve never experienced before, but itʼs one where I know that the Lord has prepared me for this moment,” he said. “There have been a number of graces before the ordination, at the ordination itself, and since then. Lordʼs just been incredibly generous with me.”

From lawyer to priest

Before attending law school, “my faith was just something very personal and very private,” Boxie said. “But it was really in law school where my faith became more public, and I was able to share it with others.”

Boxie joined the Catholic Law Student association and attended his first vocation retreat for the Archdiocese of Boston, where he really began to consider the priesthood.

“I eventually went on another vocation retreat for the Archdiocese of Washington to see if the first one was a fluke, or if that was just a happenstance,” he said.

While discerning, “I had a great clerkship. I was at a great law firm. I was doing some good work, making some good money, living in a great part of town, really living the D.C. life, if you will. And it was fun.”

“I felt as though Iʼd worked so hard to achieve this and wanted to see that to its natural end,” he said. But, “the Lord called, and he placed this desire that kept growing, and growing, and growing that I couldnʼt simply ignore, or couldnʼt simply disregard.”

A few years after his priestly ordination, Boxie began serving as chaplain at Howard University in Washington, D.C., which is “one of the premier historically Black colleges and universities in the United States.”

“For the six years that I spent at Howard, I had the best job as a priest in the United States, hands down. And I would put that to any other priest in the United States,” he said.

He also served as a priest in residence at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church.

Ministry to youth and African American communities

At 45, Boxie said he has “no problem being John the Beloved [who is believed to be the youngest of the Twelve Apostles] of the bishops’ conference.”

Boxie feels “a responsibility” to Catholic youth who have “an incredible amount to offer — their creativity, their ideas, their perspective, their zeal and enthusiasm,” he said.

Boxie’s appointment marked another milestone. It was the first time since 2017 an African American has been selected as a U.S. bishop.

“Itʼs huge, and itʼs much bigger than me,” Boxie said. “There has been a fraught history within the Catholic Church when it comes to Black people.”

“There was a significant period in the Church where African Americans were relegated as second-class citizens in the Church and in the house of God —  having to sit in the back of the church or in the choir rafters, receiving sacraments last, being denied even entry into the church.”

The “Church has done an incredible amount of good as well in the Black community, especially when it comes to education and schooling,” he said. “But there is still some healing that has to take place.”

Following his appointment, Boxie said he believes “people feel hope” and “that the Church hasnʼt forgotten them.”

“Black Catholic faith, Black spirituality in general, is one where you can find joy and suffering. And thereʼs so much suffering thatʼs going on around, and our experience is one where we can still find the joy in that. We can still find Godʼs plan and Godʼs providence in that,” he said.

‘Kindredness with the pope’

The bishop said he believes his appointment is a way to better minister and evangelize to the U.S. Black Catholic community. There are about 3 million Black Catholics in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.

Pope Leo “has African ancestry in his blood,” including family in “the Creole community in New Orleans,” Boxie said. “Iʼm also part of that Creole community in southwest Louisiana, and so I feel a kindredness with the pope.”

“Heʼs recently spoke about his own African history and how heʼs had both those who were enslaved and those who enslaved other human beings. And so heʼs aware of that. Heʼs sensitive to that,” Boxie said.

“Even his recent statement in Magnifica Humanitas, his first encyclical, apologizing for the sin of slavery and the horrors that ensued from that,” he said. “Iʼm so grateful for that.”

“Itʼs going to open up so many more avenues and doors for folks who have been disillusioned by the Church to take another look,” Boxie said.

“Leo is different,” he said. “I think heʼs very much continuing the tradition of past popes” while also “putting his own stamp, his own mark on it.”

In continuity with Pope Francis, Pope Leo “wants to select bishops and shepherds that are close to the people, that really have a sense of where people are, the smell of the sheep, and who are on the ground, in the trenches with folk.”

Mission as bishop

“I will be assisting Archbishop Cardinal McElroy, but as an auxiliary that gives me more flexibility to be out with the people,” Boxie said.

For those in D.C. “who are … working on the Hill, or in law firms, or lobbying groups — Iʼve been there and Iʼve had that experience as well,” he said.

“I feel as though I can have a special connection with the young people, young adults, that are here in the city, who are trying to navigate this space and this world, and figure out where the Lord is really calling them,” he said.

“I look forward to just connecting with so many people,” he said. “Because there are a number of folks who are seeking and who are searching.”

“And I was there too. Seeking and searching: ‘Where is the Lord in this? How is he calling me to glorify him with my life, with the gifts that he has given to me?’”

Rother, who grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, became a diocesan priest and went to work with the Indigenous Tz’utujil people of Santiago Atitlán in Guatemala, which ended with his murder in 1981. He was beatified on Sept. 23, 2017.

Rother attended Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where Coakley studied some years later. The archbishop recalled being in his third year of seminary when he received word that Rother had been killed.

“From the very beginning, from the earliest two days, when the news was still getting out about the death of this American missionary from Oklahoma, I was curious and inspired,” he said.

“At that stage of my own formation, I was looking for role models and witnesses and Stanley Rother appeared on the horizon as somebody that I was very attracted to. So, for all of those years ever since then, Iʼve read everything, Iʼve learned everything I could possibly find that was being produced about him.”

Coakley explained that when he received the phone call that he would be the next archbishop of Oklahoma City — due to the retirement of Archbishop Eusebius Beltran, who opened Rother’s cause for canonization — he knew he would be the one to carry Rother’s cause forward.

“When I had been appointed archbishop, but before it was even announced, I received that phone call telling me I was coming here; I disguised myself quite literally,” he recalled. “I was the bishop in Salina, Kansas, and I drove down to Okarche, Oklahoma [Rother’s birthplace], one Saturday morning, incognito, to pay my respects and to lay my ministry at the feet of Stanley Rother and pray for his intercession. So, heʼs been my companion all along the way since 1981, all these years.”

While Coakley said he believes many Catholics are still “becoming acquainted” with Rother’s life, his story resonates with those who do encounter him due to the fact that he was “just an ordinary priest, with ordinary struggles.”

“He struggled academically in seminary and yet he put his gifts at the service of others. He cultivated his gifts and he used his gifts as the Lord gave him the opportunity to do so,” he said.

Coakley added: “I think the one thing we can take from the life of Blessed Stanley … is to cultivate the gifts that God has given us. We donʼt need to go to Guatemala. We donʼt need to go anywhere. God has endowed each one of us with particular gifts. Develop those gifts, be generous in sharing those gifts, and thatʼs the way God is glorified.”

The archbishop also pointed out the impact Rother has had on vocations in Oklahoma City.

“Heʼs a very attractive figure I think for young men who are considering seminary for sure. We have seminarians that visit the shrine regularly from all over the country, actually,” he said. “But I think for our seminarians and priests here in Oklahoma, thereʼs a great sense of pride that heʼs one of us. He was formed by this local Church and he inspires us by his ordinary and yet heroic life.”

When speaking about the film, Coakley said the most important reason behind making it was to “make Blessed Stanley Rother more widely known to the wider Church.”

“Weʼre aware of him here in Oklahoma and we think we have a beautiful figure, an authentic, inspiring, attractive role model for priests and for all of the faithful, but we want more people to know about Blessed Stanley Rother,” he explained. “So, itʼs really in the interest of advancing his cause, introducing him to a much, much wider audience that we wanted to produce this documentary film.”

Coakley said he hopes viewers will leave the theater after watching the new film reminded that “all of us are called to holiness.”

“Stanley Rother would not have been the one in high school in the yearbook that said ‘most likely to become a saint’ … And yet all of us are called, it’s our vocation if you’re baptized, you’re called to be a saint. All of us are called to be saints. And Stanley Rother gives us a hope that for each one of us that is a possibility that is real.”

“American Martyr” will be shown in English in theaters Aug. 25 and 26 and in Spanish on Aug. 27.

Guertin is based in Philadelphia, and her work is currently on display at a visual arts center in North Carolina. Her debut solo art exhibition, “Hand in Hand,” is on view at Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury until Oct. 31.

Guertin also works as a fiber arts teacher and chair of the Craftsmanship Department at Martin Saints Classical High School, where she teaches students felting, embroidery, and repeat pattern design.

EWTN News spoke to Guertin about her unique art and the ways in which her faith inspires it.

EWTN News: What is fiber art? What drew you into this art form?

Guertin: Fiber art is a medium that utilizes textile and cloth-making processes for the purpose of beauty and expression. It is a very open art category and the techniques in fiber art are often repetitive and labor intensive.

When I was a freshman in college at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), I happened upon an open studio event at the fibers department. The artworks and projects I saw in the building were some of the most interesting Iʼd ever seen, and once I saw the variety of careers that were possible with a fibers degree, I changed my major from fashion to fibers and never looked back.

In the fibers program, I learned everything that goes into cloth making (such as knitting, weaving, and felting) and cloth decoration (such as dyeing, screen printing, and embroidery). I never tried a technique I didnʼt like.

How has faith played a role in your art? How do you pull from scriptural imagery and religious symbolism in your artwork?

My faith has been intertwined within my artwork from the very beginning. Throughout my life, art has been a way I explore different themes and ideas. By being made in the image of God, his creative power that crafted the universe is woven into our very being. When I am creative, I am participating in the Lordʼs creativity. This cooperation inspires and fuels my work.

I love to read the Bible, and the Lord has shown me his creativity and his love for textiles and patterns throughout the Old and New Testaments. From the making of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:1) to St. Paulʼs handkerchiefs (Acts 19:11-12), the Bible is filled with references to textiles and the making of cloth.

I also find so much inspiration from the natural world, his creation, and view it as an invitation to creativity with and for the Lord (cf. Romans 1:20). The Lord has been so generous with me and I am constantly inspired by his word and his world.

How is wool and sheep imagery important in your artwork?

Wool has been integral to my development and formation as an artist. As soon as I began working with wool in our 3D Fibers class at SCAD, I wanted to explore the Good Shepherd and Lamb of God symbols in the Bible. Seventeen years later, Iʼm still plumbing the depths of this imagery, and it is so rich.

I have been researching and exploring why sheep and shepherds are mentioned over 400 times in the Bible. What is so special about this creature? Through the Lordʼs own words, the sheep and shepherd relationship mirrors our relationship with him (Psalm 100:3).

Throughout the Scriptures, God likens his people to sheep (Ezekiel 34). We are the sheep of his pasture (Psalm 100:3), he is our shepherd (Psalm 23), and Jesus is the Good Shepherd (John 10:1-18), to name just a few. The simile is apt and the Lord has so much to tell us through this symbol. Like sheep, we are dependent, communal, habitual, and full of potential.

The way we view sheep, even today, mirrors our understanding of ourselves. Especially in our increasingly digital and artificial ways of living, I have found wool to be an antidote to our divisive and isolating culture. Wool has revealed our innate human dignity, the value of manual labor, the meaning in material, the beauty in pattern, the sacred in the ordinary, and the power of creativity.

What has your faith journey been like, and how has art been a part of it?

I am a Catholic convert from evangelical Protestantism. I was received into the Church during the Easter Vigil 15 years ago during my senior year at SCAD.

When, in my sophomore year, I discovered the power of my hands to transform wool into felt, my eyes were opened to a sacramental worldview. Especially because I was working with wool, a material so steeped in religious and scriptural symbolism, I understood the immense value in the creative act. Suddenly, the work of my hands held meaning!

I saw how beauty isnʼt superficial or unnecessary but is an essential channel that reveals the goodness and truth of the Father.

After I became Catholic two years later, I discovered the thousands of years of theological development that catalyzed and put language to everything I had experienced in fiber arts. St. John Paul II especially has had a great influence on my artwork and how I understand creativity and beauty.

To follow Guertin’s work, view her artwork here, visit her Instagram here, or visit her weekly newsletter here.

The law criminalizes inflicting “emotional harm” against those seeking or providing “reproductive health care services.” It also bans filming and sharing videos within 100 feet of an abortion clinic.

Under the new law, an officer can “order the immediate dispersal of a gathering that substantially impedes access to or departure from an entrance or driveway to a reproductive or gender-affirming health care facility during the business hours of the facility.”

The measure is a type of “bubble” law, which creates zones around abortion clinics where free speech is limited in “buffer zones.”

Violations of the law could be punished by up to 18 months’ imprisonment and/or a $10,000 fine.

New Jersey Right to Life Executive Director Marie Tasy criticized the law, describing its provisions as “inherently subjective” and the law itself as “a serious danger to free speech.”

“Peaceful sidewalk counseling, prayer, holding signs, or simply offering help and alternatives outside a facility can easily be labeled ‘intimidation’ by someone who claims to feel threatened, leaving pro-life advocates open to criminal charges that are difficult to disprove and chilling constitutionally protected expression,” Tasy said.

Catholic diocese leads campaign against abortion amendment referendum

The Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, is leading a campaign to oppose an amendment referendum that could create a right to abortion in the state constitution as well as another measure that would remove a same-sex marriage ban in the state.

The campaign Catholics Vote No is opposing the ballot measure titled the “Virginia Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment” as well as the “Virginia Remove Constitutional Same-Sex Marriage Ban Amendment.”

Arlington Bishop Michael Burbidge describes the measures as “very serious legal threats to human life and marriage” in a video statement.

“If written into Virginia’s Constitution, these unjust amendments would be extraordinarily difficult to reverse,” the campaign website states. The abortion amendment would “effectively” make Virginia “a sanctuary for abortion and commercial abortion businesses,” it states.

“Basic health and safety standards that protect women from harm would be eliminated, parents would be pushed out of life-altering decisions involving their family and children, and unregulated abortions would be possible, performed even on healthy babies up to the moment of birth for any reason with no limits,” the campaign says.

Live Action says it will keep referring to abortion as ‘killing’

The pro-life group Live Action has said it will not stop calling abortion “killing” after a pro-abortion group threatened the organization with legal action.

Live Action made the declaration in response to a cease-and-desist letter sent by the abortion-supporting legal group Amplify Legal. The dispute is over claims made by Live Action in multiple articles about abortion cases where the unborn baby had a serious life-threatening diagnosis.

“Each of our clients has described the decision to end their wanted pregnancy as the most compassionate choice for their own health, future fertility, and family’s wellbeing,” the letter read, arguing that Live Action News “repeatedly [wrote] about our clients intentionally ‘killing’ their babies.”

In its response Live Action said it would not follow the request to “delete years of reporting and commentary on the most contested moral and political question in American public life.”

“We are fighting for a culture and legal system that respects every human life and refuses to treat the sick, disabled, or unborn as disposable,” said Live Action Founder and President Lila Rose in a statement. “Legal threats against our First Amendment right to speak will not change that mission.”

Catholic dad Mark Houck continues pro-life work after federal legal battle

Catholic father Mark Houck is joining CatholicVote’s development team as a gift officer, the group announced this week.

Houck and his family are adjusting to life after their home in rural eastern Pennsylvania was raided by 20 armed federal agents in the early hours of Sept. 23, 2022. Houck was arrested in front of his family and interrogated for six hours. The incident led to nearly four years of legal battles, which concluded with the family earning a seven-figure settlement for damages.

“I am still very much unpacking spiritually what happened to us — very profound and certainly God is revealing his ultimate plan for us through it all, CatholicVote being the latest direction he has taken us,” Houck told EWTN News.

“We are so happy to be with an organization that shares our passion for our faith, the pro-life cause, and, of course, advocacy in the public square.”

Houck’s role in the organization "will extend beyond that [of a gift officer],” CatholicVote spokeswoman Laurie Olsen told EWTN News. He will “have a voice in all our pro-life efforts,” she said.

Houck, meanwhile, told EWTN News: “We measure success by one soul at a time.”

“Save a soul, you save your own soul. It is that one soul that gets me going and up early to head into Philadelphia and serve the common good with sidewalk advocacy,” he said.

Federal court strikes down Indiana abortion parental-consent law

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled on Aug. 18 against an Indiana law that prevents doctors from providing abortion assistance to minors without parental consent.

The 54-page ruling struck down a law that required parental consent to aid or assist a minor in obtaining an abortion. The ruling said that the parental-consent law violated the First Amendment.

Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed have filed suit against McKenna West seeking more than $100,000 in damages, alleging she breached their surrogacy agreement, which included a clause allowing them to request abortion of the baby if it were found to have fetal abnormalities.

West, a cardiac nurse from Alaska, gave birth on Aug. 12 in Dallas to a baby boy diagnosed prenatally with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious but treatable heart condition. West called the child Gabriel; Gilkar and Ahmed call him Rumi.

West had fled to Texas seeking the state’s protection for the baby after his birth. In an Aug. 20 op-ed in the New York Post, she said she was allowed only about 60 seconds with the newborn before the contracting couple took physical custody. She is currently barred from contact with the child under existing orders.

A hearing on parentage and related issues is scheduled for Aug. 25 in Dallas County.

West, a single mother, refused the request for an abortion following the diagnosis of the condition in April. The couple subsequently stopped paying for pregnancy-related expenses.

According to the pro-life group Live Action, West was willing to give birth in California, where the contracting couple reside, if they would commit to treating the baby’s heart condition, though they reportedly refused.

West said she chose Dallas Children’s Hospital in Texas due to its 100% success rate for the procedure the newborn needed.

“As a cardiac nurse, I knew this little one had a great shot at survival if given the opportunity to receive the necessary treatment,” she said.

The baby has undergone his first surgery for the heart condition and is receiving care in Texas under a court order secured by Attorney General Ken Paxton that required lifesaving treatment and barred his removal from the state.

Lee Budner, Gilkar and Ahmed’s attorney, said in a recent statement to TMZ that the couple is “devastated” that the baby’s birth and health issues have allegedly been “transformed into political theater” by West and Paxton.

In her op-ed, meanwhile, West denied claims that her actions were “political theater,” writing: “No woman should be forced to kill the baby inside her. Most importantly, every child deserves a chance to live.”

West stated she has given up any claims to the baby and is only requesting that the contracting couple commit to provide “the lifesaving treatment he needs. That is all it would take to end this.”

However, she wrote that the couple is “actively working to get the court order that required the baby’s continued treatment thrown out.”

Budner did not respond to EWTN News’ requests for comment, but TMZ reported that he said the couple is “following the advice of the baby’s medical team, just as any loving parent would,” adding that his clients, who are suing West for not aborting the child, “continue, as they always have, to place their baby’s health and well-being first.”

Irene Alexander, an associate professor of moral theology at the University of Dallas, told EWTN News that aborting a child with a treatable health condition is “almost like an Amazon mentality. If I don’t get exactly what I ordered, I want to send it back.”

Alexander described the practice of surrogacy, which the Catholic Church teaches is gravely immoral, as a “dissociation of all the aspects of human sexuality: love, parenthood, and the good of the child are all spliced into parts” that lead “the children to suffer because those things are inseparably connected.”

“Once you violate the order of reality that was intended to be one whole; once youʼve committed so many levels of injustice,” she said, “you’re left with the mess that does injustice to the child and to the unity of marriage.”

Christina Bennett, a news correspondent for Live Action, told “EWTN News Nightly” reporter Eric Rosales on Aug. 20: “Surrogacy exploits both mother and child. Women are not just wombs to be rented, and children are not just property to be sold with contracts to be signed.”

“Women deserve human dignity, children deserve human dignity, and surrogacy violates that, and it should be banned across the entire nation, as other countries have done,” she said.

[The dispute] “is a textbook example of what is wrong with surrogacy.

Joe Zalot

Ethicist, National Catholic Bioethics Center

Joe Zalot, an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told EWTN News that the case demonstrates “how commercial surrogacy denigrates the surrogate, seeking to reduce her to subservient role vis-a-vis the genetic ‘parents,’ as well as how surrogacy contracts denigrate the dignity of the preborn child through the demand that it be killed if a prenatal anomaly is diagnosed.”

The dispute “is a textbook example of what is wrong with surrogacy,” Zalot continued. The controversial practice, according to Church teaching, “is never permitted because it severs the ‘inseparable connection’ between procreation and union, it violates the child’s right to be gestated by, and born of, its biological mother, and it violates the exclusivity of marriage as spouses have a right to become parents only through each other.”

Kimberly Bird, a spokeswoman for Live Action, told Rosales that the “very dark reality around … these abortion clauses that are put in [surrogacy] contracts are absolutely atrocious … no one has a right to tell a woman” she must kill “the baby sheʼs carrying.”

“And absolutely surrogacy should be banned,” Bird continued. ”Other countries have done it or have at least put severe restrictions on it.”

Colombia lawmakers proposed a bill outlawing surrogacy this week, while the practice is illegal in dozens of other countries around the world.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday that the $850,000, 10-foot-tall bronze statues of St. Michael and St. Florian are so closely allied with Catholicism that putting them on a public building would amount to “government preferential treatment of a particular religion,” thus violating the state constitution.

“The likelihood that these statues of religious figures closely associated with the Catholic faith could be viewed by the public as endorsement of a particular religion, and thus subordination of others, is enhanced by the fact that the statues are not part of a larger collection of statues and monuments that includes nonreligious ones, or statues of figures of particular importance to other religions,” the state’s highest court said in a 34-page decision.

The unanimous court upheld a preliminary injunction on behalf of a dozen residents of the city of Quincy who object to the statues, which are currently in storage in a town south of Boston.

City officials have argued that the statues have secular purposes because the city is attempting to honor police officers, whose patron saint is St. Michael the Archangel, and firefighters, whose patron saint is the early Roman martyr St. Florian. Lawyers for the city have also argued that while both figures are Catholic saints, they are also honored by other religious traditions.

Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, which brought the initial lawsuit, praised the decision of the state’s highest court.

“Here in Massachusetts, our state constitution is clear: The government must remain neutral in matters of religion and must not elevate one faith above others. With today’s landmark ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court affirms those principles, which are the essential foundation of a pluralistic society where people of all faiths and no faith can flourish,” Rossman said in a written statement.

Rachel Laser, president and chief executive officer of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the decision “a win for religious freedom and church-state separation.”

“Police and fire services are for all Quincy residents, regardless of their religious belief. By trying to install large religious statues in front of the government building dedicated to public safety, [Quincy] Mayor [Thomas] Koch and the city are violating the constitutional promise of church-state separation and sending a message to all who rely on city services that one faith is favored over all others,” Laser said in a written statement.

The decision sends the case back to a state superior court, where a judge has already ruled that the plaintiffs have a high likelihood of succeeding. But it also sets up a potential appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court — as the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, reported in April — if the city’s mayor decides to go that route.

“This ruling is disappointing but is only preliminary,” said Joe Davis, senior counsel at Becket law group and lead attorney for the city.

“Quincy chose these statues to honor the courage and sacrifice of its firefighters and police. The City should not have to hide public art simply because some people may think of religion when they see it,” Davis said in a written statement. “As the Court noted today, this is not the final word for these statues, and we will continue defending Quincy’s right to honor its heroes.”

Koch, who chose the statues and authorized them quietly before a local newspaper reported their existence, also implied that the city will continue its legal fight to erect the statues.

“Quincy’s firefighters and police put their lives on the line for this city every day, and these statues were chosen to honor their bravery, service, and sacrifice,” Koch said in a written statement. “This decision is disappointing, but it is preliminary, and we will continue to fight for the ability to commemorate our first responders as the law permits.”

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

Since January 2025 and up until now, Overton has worked as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. Before that, she spent more than three years at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank.

On Aug. 19, Trump appointed her to head the FDA, though she will need to be confirmed by the Senate first, which is likely given the Republican majority.

She has a doctorate in clinical investigation from Johnson Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as well as a medical degree from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

Overton has been outspoken about the dangers of chemical abortion for women and babies, according to a 2023 AFPI brief she authored where she criticized federal policy that made abortion pills available via telehealth.

“Abortion is corrosive to children, women, and society broadly because it devalues and extinguishes innocent human life,” Overton wrote in 2023. “Unfortunately, federal policymakers have recently expanded access to abortion pills, also called chemical abortions, which are far more dangerous to women, enabling rapid access to abortion.”

About two-thirds of abortions in the United States are chemical, meaning they happen via mifepristone and misoprostol pills. These pills are available via mail in any state, even states where these drugs are illegal. Abortion by mail is highly unregulated, creating danger for female patients.

The abortion pill has continued to be left largely unregulated by Trump’s Food and Drug Administration, in spite of the documented danger to women, including coercion, poisonings, and physical harm.

Advocates for unborn children highlight the importance of opposing chemical abortions and protecting unborn children across state lines, as chemical abortion pills make state pro-life laws moot.

Hope for limitations on chemical abortions

Leading voices for life agree that the FDA should regulate mail-order chemical abortions. After being deeply disappointed so far by Trump’s FDA, they hope Overton is the woman for the task.

The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), an organization of medical doctors who believe in protecting unborn children and their mothers, “applauds the nomination,” said CEO Dr. Christina Francis.

“Dr. Overton has a track record of recognizing the dignity of all of our patients (including our fetal patients) and recognizing the value of life-affirming healthcare,” Francis told EWTN News.

“We are hopeful that Dr. Overton will reinstate vital safeguards around the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone,” Francis said. “Too many tragic incidents continue to pile up in which women have been left to handle the consequences of these potentially fatal drugs on their own.”

“As physicians, we demand the FDA do its job and reinstate essential safeguards for our patients,” Francis said.

Live Action, a group seeking to shift the culture and law on abortion, also viewed the nomination positively.

“Live Action is encouraged by President Trump’s nomination of Dr. Heidi Overton to lead the Food and Drug Administration,” said Live Action spokesman Noah Brandt.

“During Dr. Overton’s time at the America First Policy Institute, she helped lead important work exposing the dangers of chemical abortion and the serious risks posed by the abortion pill,” Brandt told EWTN News.

“We pray that if Dr. Overton is confirmed that she brings that same courage and leadership to the FDA, which has an enormous responsibility to protect the health and safety of America’s women and children,” Brandt said.

Brandt called on Overton to put a halt to chemical abortion pills entirely, beginning with mail-order abortions.

“If confirmed, Dr. Overton should pull the deadly abortion pill from the market completely by first ending mail-order abortions, which are killing babies across the country,” he said.

Kristi Hamrick, spokeswoman for Students for Life Action, called for Overton to take serious action against mifepristone.

“It’s a good thing to have a nominee who has been skeptical of the kinds of policies the FDA has been pushing, but we are not looking for words; we are looking for deeds,” Hamrick told EWTN News. “The reckless rubber-stamping of chemical abortion pills has implications for babies in the womb, their mothers, and even the environment.”

“We are looking for a first-ever review of chemical abortion pills, the abusers' dream drug, that is now being mailed illegally into many states with pro-life laws in place,” Hamrick said.

Hamrick also urged Overton to investigate the environmental impact of chemical abortion drugs in the nation’s drinking water supplies.

“The FDA has never looked into the environmental risks of allowing abortion water pollution nationwide, and you donʼt have to be pro-life to want clean drinking water,” Hamrick said.

“We would ask Dr. Overton to do the work never done before — really evaluate mifepristone, its distribution, and risks to babies, women, and all life, endangered species included,” Hamrick said.

Levine was elected by a vote of CBA members at the organization’s annual general meeting in August for a one-year term. She has been a CBA member since 1988. She had served as the vice president in the previous term and earlier served as a consultor for the executive board and held editorial positions for CBA’s scholarly journal, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

Although the association is open to scholars of any religious faith, the president is typically a Catholic. Levine told EWTN News she was stunned to be elected to the role but expressed gratitude for the position.

“When I received notice from the chair of the nominating committee, I emailed another member to ask if this were a joke,” she said. “I was more than surprised, I was stunned. I was also, and remain, honored and grateful.”

Levine has served on several CBA task forces and continuing seminars, participated on panels, and presided over sessions. Much of her scholarly work has focused on the Gospels. She is also the first Jewish person to teach a New Testament course at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

“My primary role is to contribute to the work of the association: to work with my colleagues to make good work even better through discussion,” she said.

CBA’s constitution states that its work conforms to the teachings of the magisterium. Although the group is not operated by the Catholic Church, it offers consultation to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), including on translations of the Bible and faith formation and catechesis.

As its president, Levine said she wants to see certain suggestions in CBA’s strategic plan implemented, such as “strengthening international participation and expanding bilingual and global programming, producing resources for clergy and religious educators, and supporting professional development for biblical scholars.”

She said a particular interest of hers is partnering with local churches to offer public programs and working with the bishops “on providing up-to-date biblical guidelines for lectionary preaching and catechesis.”

Views on Scripture

Although Levine is not Catholic, she told EWTN News: “I am not interested in challenging doctrine.”

“I am interested in readings that promote abundant life, that are well grounded in history, and that also speak to communities today,” she said.

Levine does not believe “everything attributed to Jesus in the New Testament comes directly from Jesus,” she said. She noted that Christ spoke in Aramaic and the original New Testament text is Greek. She said “this view is entirely compatible with Catholic teaching.”

“However, I also believe that the proclamation of the Church is based on the words as received and not on an anterior scholarly reconstruction,” she said.

Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, teaches that everything in the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, which means “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings.”

Levine has also written on abortion and sexuality. She co-authored an article published in the Huffington Post in 2011 in which she discussed gender roles, no-fault divorce, same-sex civil marriages, birth control, abortion, and “private sexual expression.”

In the article, she stated: “People who read the Bible often find themselves on the opposite sides of many of these issues,” but “this does not mean that they are necessarily reading their texts incorrectly.” It asserted: “The Bible is open to multiple interpretations: we need to determine what is metaphor and what is to be taken literally, what is case specific and what is timeless, what is a matter of personal choice and what should be legislated.”

Levine told EWTN News: “Biblical texts on abortion are few” and there are “different views in Jewish and Catholic interpretation.” She said “people on various sides of this debate have used Scripture, and some uses are better grounded in history, language study, manuscript tradition, etc. than others.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.” It calls abortion and infanticide “abominable crimes.”

Levine also told EWTN News: “In matters of gender and sexuality, we need to consider not only what the Bible says, but also what the continuing teachings of religious traditions say as well as what science and even personal experience teaches.”

On matters related to gender identity, Levine similarly said: “There are better and less good readings, and these can be found in both opposition and promotion arguments.” She said: “In interpreting Scripture, we need to consider not only the historical context; we also need to consider what science, sociology, philosophy, etc. can teach us.”

The catechism’s teaching on same-sex sexual acts reads: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’”

It also teaches that God created people either male or female, and “everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.”

Levine said: “My major concern is that Scripture not be weaponized to make people feel that they are not loved and that they are not recognized as in the divine image.”

Catholic-Jewish relations

Though she was raised and remains an Orthodox Jew, Levine grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly Portuguese and Catholic. She said she developed an interest in the Catholic Church at a young age but also faced antisemitism, which motivated her to work toward better Catholic and Jewish relations.

“My parents explained to me that we Jews and our Catholic neighbors read the same books, like Genesis and Isaiah; said the same prayers, such as the Psalms; etc.,” Levine said.

“Then when I was 7, a girl said to me, ‘You killed our Lord,’ I could not fathom how a tradition that seemed so beautiful could say something so hateful,” she said. “I started asking questions then, and I continue to work to ensure that a Gospel of love not become a weapon of hate. At the same time, working in New Testament studies helps me recover part of Jewish history that the Synagogue did not preserve.”

She’s authored several books related to Christian and Jewish relations, including “The Bible With and Without Jesus,” which she co-authored with Bible scholar Marc Zvi Brettler. This book, she said, is meant “to show the logic of each tradition’s reception history and thus encourage mutual respect between Jews and Christians who share texts but who interpret them differently.”

Levine also co-edited “The Jewish Annotated New Testament,” which has Jewish commentary on Scriptures, and authored “Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi,” which analyzes Christ’s parables from a Jewish perspective.

“For the New Testament, my work has focused on the Gospels and in trying to understand how Jesus’ words, especially the parables, and actions, especially the healing narratives, would have been understood by his Jewish contemporaries,” Levine said. “In working with Scripture — the authoritative texts of a community — I think it essential to proceed with respect both for the texts and for those who hold those texts sacred.”

As president of the CBA, she said she also hopes to interact with the USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, “especially given the recent uptick in antisemitism.”

“Most of the antisemitism I have heard in church contexts comes from a combination of historical ignorance and tone-deafness,” she said. “It also often comes from making Judaism the negative foil in order to make Jesus look good. Nor should we think of Jesus as outside of rather than embedded within his Jewish tradition.”

Levine noted Christ’s “great commandment” — to love God and love your neighbor — comes from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. She said “misunderstanding of Jewish practice and belief leads to misunderstanding of Jesus.”

She acknowledged: “I do not worship Jesus as lord or savior, since my heart is completely fulfilled in my own Jewish practice and belief” and “I have never felt the call.”

“At the same time, I find that Jesus, reflecting Jewish tradition, has important things to say about ethics, especially in the parables … and his discussion of how to extend Torah practice, from murder to anger, from adultery to lust, and in teaching his followers how to live as if they already have one foot in the kingdom of heaven,” Levine said.

According to a statement by the archbishop, Foster, who was incardinated into the Archdiocese of San Antonio in 2009, has publicly referred to Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV as “usurpers.” He published messages allegedly received from God, Jesus, and the Blessed Mother by a member of the Mission of Divine Mercy, which he led, and which he said claimed that Pope Leo XIV is “not a true pope.”

Despite the archbishop’s multiple requests that Foster repent and stop his “schismatic actions and teachings,” the priest continued to celebrate Mass while omitting the names of both the late Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV from the Eucharistic Prayer.

In response to Foster’s disobedience, a tribunal of independent canon lawyers authorized by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith conducted a judicial process that began April 10, 2025. The tribunal spent over a year reviewing evidence consisting of Foster’s statements, actions, homilies, and teachings. It also heard testimony from witnesses.

On April 20, 2026, the tribunal declared Foster guilty of the crime of schism for his refusal of submission to the Roman pontiff. It imposed “latae sententiae” excommunication and removed him from the clerical state.

Foster did not exercise his right of appeal.

“To be Catholic is to be in communion with the pope, the bishop of Rome and the successor of Saint Peter, and with the college of bishops in communion with him,” García-Siller wrote.

“Throughout the history of the Church, those who sever ties from this sacred communion often profess to remain in communion with the true Church, even as they deny the successors to Peter and the Apostles, with whom they disagree,” the archbishop continued. “History has shown that these schisms, often initiated by charismatic leaders and based in politics, heresy, or poorly executed attempts at reform, always result in splintered communities who find themselves no longer in communion with the Catholic Church.”

“Sadly, this is the case with John Mary Foster and any who choose to follow him out of the Catholic Church,” he said. “Mr. Foster has chosen the path of disobedience.”

As a result of the sentence, Foster no longer possesses faculties to celebrate the sacraments except in the limited circumstances provided by canon law.

García-Siller said that though he has prohibited Foster from publicly celebrating Mass, “he continues to do so.”

The archbishop has prohibited all Catholics from attending any Mass, liturgical activity, or event sponsored by Foster or the Mission of Divine Mercy in Canyon Lake, telling EWTN News that “they continue to sew disunity.” He has also urged the faithful to cease all financial support to Foster and the Mission of Divine Mercy.

García-Siller said “the recent actions taken against him and the mission are painful but warranted” because “the archdiocese has sought repentance from John Mary Foster and the Mission of Divine Mercy” for many years.

He encouraged Catholics to pray for Foster’s repentance and reconciliation with the Church.

The council adopted the resolution, “Convocation of a Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs to Consider the Situation in Nicaragua,” on Aug. 19 in a 29-1 vote among member states, with only Brazil voting against the measure and Mexico abstaining. Haiti and Venezuela were absent.

Argentina, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the United States advanced the measure after presenting it at an Aug. 5 special session of the OAS Permanent Council. The U.S. is calling for the meeting to take place before Sept. 1, when the Ortega regime is set to codify its latest policy reforms, including the suspension of future elections. 

The move invokes one of the OAS’ highest‑level diplomatic tools, signaling that member states view Nicaragua’s political rupture as a regional concern with direct human rights implications. It comes after Ortega’s announcement and other constitutional changes aimed at blocking opposition figures from power.

In October 2023, the Permanent Council unanimously approved the resolution “Rejection of the Repressive Measures of the Government of Nicaragua Against Educational Institutions and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.” Nicaragua withdrew from the OAS in November 2023.

Commissioner Rosa María Payá, rapporteur for Nicaragua at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, expressed concern at the Aug. 5 OAS Permanent Council meeting over ongoing human rights abuses against Nicaraguans, including arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances.

Payá, a Cuban human right and democracy activist, told EWTN News: “We are very concerned about the situation of the persecution of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua and the persecution of the faith in general, and the practice and the exercise of the faith.”

“Iʼm Catholic myself and I also come from a society that has suffered the violation of human rights,” she said. “So I deeply understand what it is to to be afraid to speak your mind, what it is to be afraid of practicing and voicing your faith, which is a very primary human exercise.”

Payá is the daughter of the late Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, a Catholic opponent of Cuba’s totalitarian regime who in 1988 founded the Christian Liberation Movement, a peaceful democratic movement inspired by Catholic social teaching.

The bishops are calling for sustained and dedicated prayer from Aug. 18 to Oct. 31, with the campaign launching ahead of Respect Month Life in October.

USCCB President Archbishop Paul Coakley and Bishop Daniel Thomas, who heads the bishops’ committee on pro-life activities, urged Catholics to “join a focused effort of prayer and action to stop the spread of abortion pills.”

Activists have criticized the mailing of abortion pills as a largely unregulated and dangerous practice. Pro-life advocates were dealt a blow in May when the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily allowed for the continued mailing of abortion pills throughout the U.S. amid a legal dispute over the practice.

“Every abortion involves the death of a child and harm to the mother,” the two bishops wrote in an Aug. 18 letter. “Now with easier access to abortion pills, the abortion rate is tragically climbing, along with increased health risks.”

“The Food and Drug Administration has enabled a nationwide mail-order abortion industry by allowing abortion pills to be prescribed in telehealth appointments and sold both at neighborhood pharmacies and online, circumventing state laws that protect life in the womb,” the bishops wrote.

They said the federal government’s lack of regulation makes women “vulnerable to suffering an abortion alone at home, without any medical supervision” and “sets up additional opportunities for exploitation by violent partners or human traffickers.”

The bishops urged Catholics to visit the USCCB’s Respect Life campaign website, where visitors can “learn about the danger of abortion pills [and] send messages to pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies that are involved.”

The plaintiffs, including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Sikh Temple Sacramento, and several Quaker organizations, sought the injunction after DHS ended the policy that treated churches as “sensitive locations” in January 2025.

DHS previously restricted immigration enforcement from conducting arrests at churches and other sensitive locations unless there is approval from a supervisor or there is an urgent need to take enforcement action.

Instead, the Trump administration’s policy requires officials to use “discretion” and “common sense” when deciding where to conduct immigration enforcement.

The plaintiffs filed suit against DHS in the District of Maryland on Jan. 27, 2025, alleging that the policy violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

The district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, ordering DHS to follow its prior guidelines, most recently issued in 2021. On May 6, 2025, DHS appealed the preliminary injunction to the 4th Circuit.

The case is not the first lawsuit of its kind. Dozens of other religious groups have brought similar lawsuits against DHS following the policy shift.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in February he and Rev. Franklin Graham teamed up to oppose immigration enforcement in churches, warning that ICE’s presence at Sunday Mass was driving people away. He called the practice a violation of religious freedom, saying the federal government cannot harass people who come to worship.

Religious Freedom Restoration Act invoked

In the Aug. 18 decision, the senior circuit judge, Barbara Milano Keenan, wrote the judges “hold that the plaintiffs have standing to pursue their claims.” She said they agree with the lower court that DHS policy likely violates the plaintiffs’ rights under the RFRA.

“RFRA proscribes not only outright governmental prohibition of the free exercise of religion but also forbids indirect coercion, substantial pressure, or penalties being placed on such free exercise,” she said. “Governmental action meeting this test creates a substantial burden on free exercise, rendering that action subject to strict scrutiny.”

The decision was met with positive reactions from the plaintiffs, who said it “reaffirms a fundamental promise of religious liberty: every person should be able to gather, worship, pray, and serve their community without fear that immigration enforcement will unlawfully disrupt sacred spaces.”

“We are grateful that the court has preserved these protections while this case moves forward, and we will continue fighting to ensure that religious freedom remains meaningful for every congregation and every person who walks through our doors,” the coalition of plaintiffs said in a statement.

TPS is an immigration status granted to eligible foreign nationals from designated countries that are deemed unsafe to return to due to ongoing conflict, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary conditions.

Multiple nations will lose their designations in coming months. TPS for El Salvadoran nationals will expire Sept. 9. Designations for Sudan and Ukraine are set to expire Oct. 19, while Lebanon’s will end Nov. 27. TPS for Haiti ended July 27.

Bishop Brendan Cahill of Victoria, Texas, chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on Migration, said bishops are focused on Haitian nationals “because thatʼs the community most affected right now, and now lives in a fear because they could be deported any time.”

The situation there “is pretty dire,” he told EWTN News. “The government is ending the temporary protected status and wants to return people to Haiti,” but “in our judgment it’s not safe, and thereʼs a moral question of returning people to Haiti right now.”

“The bishops themselves from Haiti have … said ‘itʼs just not safe,’” he said.

In April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation, H.R. 1689, that would extend TPS for Haitians for three more years. No legislative efforts have gained traction in the Senate.

“Weʼre hoping, politically right now, for the Senate to agree to a resolution the House has already passed,” Cahill said.

In January, Cahill called on the administration to extend TPS for Haitians. In June, Cahill followed up after the Supreme Court allowed TPS designations for Haiti and Syria to end, calling for other options including “deferred enforced departure.”

“If we have, in good faith, offered temporary protected status, we should not return people until we deemed it safe to go back,” Cahill said in an interview. “And whatʼs the criteria? And thatʼs the question for politicians to work out: ‘Whatʼs the criteria for determining when it is safe that a person can return to their country?’”

“Justice is about human dignity and how we treat other human beings,” Cahill said. It’s an “injustice” to somebody who has been here legally, “to all of a sudden say, ‘Weʼre going to take it away and send you back,’” he said.

“Itʼs about justice and right reason,” he added.

Temporary protected status across U.S.

As of March 31, 2025, the U.S. provided TPS protections to about 1.3 million individuals from 17 countries including Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Ukraine, Honduras, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Syria, Burma, Nicaragua, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Lebanon.

Since the program’s inception, nearly 30 countries have received TPS designations, some more than once. TPS designations can be, and usually have been, extended.

TPS holders reside all over the United States. As of 2025, the largest populations of TPS holders live in Florida (403,965), Texas (147,080), New York (98,250), California (79,320), and Georgia (50,110), according to the National Immigration Forum.

The Trump administration has ended, or moved to end, TPS for 13 of the 17 nations. The programs for Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua ended throughout 2025.

In 2026, TPS for South Sudan, Burma, Haiti, Somalia, Yemen, Haiti, and Syria were terminated or expired. In February, a district court blocked the terminations for Haitian and Syrian nationals, but in June the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the administration to officially terminate the designations.

Self-deportation

Once TPS protection ends, a TPS holder will revert back to his or her previous immigration status, and those who no longer hold status in the U.S. will potentially be subject to removal proceedings.

While the TPS designations end, DHS is encouraging people without status to self-deport rather than be deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Once non-criminal illegal aliens submit their intent to depart through the CBP Home Mobile App and pass vetting, they will be temporarily deprioritized by ICE for detention or enforcement action before their scheduled departure,” DHS reported on its website.

Those who do self-deport will receive “cost-free travel, a $2,600 exit bonus, and forgiveness of any failure to depart fines,” according to DHS.

According to the department, those who self-deport can potentially return to the United States legally. It is unclear what would allow or block potential reentry, and returning is not guaranteed. Those who are deported by ICE are unable to return with legal status.

“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that — temporary,” DHS said in a statement shared with EWTN News. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) will receive the funding through the State Department’s Faith and Community Initiative (FCI) announced Aug. 6, alongside other international aid groups, including World Vision, Compassion International, and Samaritan’s Purse.

“CRS is so proud to be among the recipients of the new Faith and Community Initiative! We received $50 million in first-year funding to lead programming in Cameroon, Liberia, and Nigeria, working as part of a group of faith-based organizations,” CRS spokesperson Brittany Wichtendahl said in a statement to EWTN News.

“The funding will help improve hospitals, clinics, and the health networks in rural parts of the countries — where a lot of families have limited access to quality healthcare,” she said. “This investment reflects a core strength of CRS’ approach: working alongside trusted local Church, Caritas, and faith-based partners that are deeply rooted in the communities they serve.”

CRS’ financial statements show that U.S. government grants routinely constituted 40% to 50% of total revenue in fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2025, and the 2026 federal grants to the U.S.-based international humanitarian nonprofit organization are only a fraction of the government funding CRS previously received. CRS’ fiscal 2023 budget totaled $1.3 billion, rising to $1.4 billion in fiscal 2024 before dipping to $1.2 billion in fiscal 2025.

The aid CRS is set to receive is part of $850 million the State Department earmarked for distribution among faith-based groups over the course of five years.

The State Department also said an additional $570 million will be provided directly to faith-based hospitals and clinics under memorandums of understanding with country governments.

The State Department said leveraging faith-based and community-run hospitals and clinics ensures that “at least 80% of resources go toward frontline health services that reach patients and clients while streamlining overhead and management costs, a significant increase from the 35% to 40% of resources that went to frontline health services in historical awards from the State Department.”

The latest aid package comes after CRS received $235 million in food aid from the State Department for programs in Sudan and Ethiopia in July.

The case Kian v. Florida, which the Supreme Court agreed to hear in June, was brought after Florida chiropractor Hamed Kian was convicted of five felony counts for practicing without a license.

Kian was found guilty by a six-person jury; the state of Florida only requires 12-person juries in capital cases. Several other states have similar rules.

Kian sued the state arguing that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a right to a 12-person jury. He lost his appeal at the Fourth District Court of Appeal of Florida and subsequently appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which will hold arguments in the case in its upcoming term.

In their amicus filing, the U.S. bishops argued that the term “jury” in the U.S. has historically referenced a body of 12 jurors; the bishops pointed to “Founding-era dictionaries” as well as “common-law history.”

The bishops said they have a “strong interest” in the case, insofar as the Catholic Church over the centuries has played a “central role in shaping the legal culture from which the common-law jury emerged.”

Among the historical examples of 12-person juries the bishops cited include the General Fundamentals of Plymouth, “the earliest codified legal system by English colonists in North America,” which guaranteed that “all trials” would be “tried by a jury of twelve good and lawful men.”

The prelates disputed the Supreme Court’s 1970 ruling in the case Williams v. Florida, which held that the Sixth Amendment does not require 12 jurors in court cases.

That ruling in part “discard[ed] the robust common-law history of the jury right,” while the high court in that decision “set far too high a bar for historical relevance,” they said.

The bishops further cited the biblical commandment to “love your neighbor justly.” They pointed to the Catholic catechism’s mandate for public authorities to “dispense justice humanely by respecting the rights of everyone.”

They urged the Supreme Court to “return to its previously long-held understanding that the Constitution entitles criminal defendants to a jury of twelve of their peers.”

Numerous advocacy groups have also filed amicus briefs advocating the 12-juror standard, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Innocence Project, several dozen current and former prosecutors, and the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The relics will depart Lourdes, France, and travel to the U.S. in September. The opening celebration will be held Sept. 18–20 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Following the opening, the relics will continue on a yearlong pilgrimage. Housed in a 132-pound reliquary, the relics will visit about 140 locations and stop at cathedrals, basilicas, shrines, seminaries, Catholic universities, hospitals, and parishes.

“The message of Lourdes remains as relevant today as it was in 1858,” said Father Jim Phalan, the English-speaking chaplain for the sanctuary.

“Saint Bernadetteʼs humility, faith, and trust in God continue to inspire people throughout the world. We are honored to bring her relics once again to the United States and invite countless individuals to experience the grace, healing, and hope associated with Lourdes,” he said in a press release.

The original acts of St. Bernadette, official Latin‑language canonical records documenting the extraction and authentication of her relics preserved in the archives of Nevers, indicate that taken for the relics were fragments of two ribs, kneecaps, a sample of muscle from the external part of the right femur, hair, and various fragments that came from muscles and skin.

The tour builds upon the positive response to the first U.S. pilgrimage of the relics in 2022, which welcomed hundreds of thousands of faithful at churches and shrines across the country.

Tour participants will have opportunities for veneration of the relics, Eucharistic celebrations, Marian devotions, catechetical presentations, and prayers for the sick.

According to the sanctuary, the long-term goal of the tour is to deepen the relationship between American Catholics and the sanctuary while encouraging future pilgrimages to Lourdes.

The tour’s detailed schedule, participating dioceses, pilgrimage resources, and other opportunities to support the tour will be announced in the coming months.

St. Bernadette

Bernadette Soubirous was born in 1844 in Lourdes, France, into a poor family. In 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared 18 times to Bernadette in Lourdes, France. Since then, Lourdes has become one of the worldʼs most popular pilgrimage destinations.

The apparitions led to the discovery of a water spring, which is associated with physical and spiritual healing. The spring welcomes millions of pilgrims to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes to drink and bathe in the water.

Bernadette spent the rest of her life in prayer and service to others. She joined the Sisters of Charity of Nevers and lived a humble life despite becoming famous for the apparitions. She suffered from poor health for much of her life and died in 1879 at the age of 35.

On June 14, 1925, Pope Pius XI proclaimed Bernadette “blessed.” Her body was then transferred to the shrine in Nevers, France, on July 18, 1925. On Dec. 8, 1933, Pope Pius XI canonized St. Bernadette, and her feast day is celebrated on April 16 in the U.S.

In previous years — specifically from 2010 to 2025 — this percentage ranged between 8% to 16%.

In 1976, Franciscan University of Steubenville held its first youth conference on its campus in Steubenville, Ohio. Celebrating 50 years this summer, the youth conferences have helped over 1 million young people encounter Jesus Christ through dynamic talks, the Mass, Eucharistic adoration, confession, prayer, and fellowship.

So, what is it about the Steubenville Youth Conference that is having such an impact on young people and specifically vocations?

EWTN News spoke to a priest and a transitional deacon — both of whom credit their experience at a Steubenville Youth Conference with impacting their vocations — about their journeys to the priesthood and why they believe this conference is igniting a fire for the faith in the hearts of young people.

Seeing joyful priests changed everything

Father Rufino Corona is a Third Order Regular Franciscan in Steubenville who was ordained in 2020. Originally from Puebla, Mexico, Corona came to the United States with his parents at the age of 8 and grew up in San Diego.

As a teenager he was active in his youth group, and it was his youth minister who frequently told Corona that he could see him becoming a priest.

“It was something that he would say to me and I would kind of write it off,” Corona recalled. “Itʼs one of those things that as I look back now, I think part of the reason why was — for one thing, I was a teenager and really in that world, but also another thing, I feel like I had priests around me who were not bad priests but Iʼd seen people very passionate for the Gospel, be very passionate for evangelization, but that was not something that Iʼd ever really seen in a priest.”

He continued: “So all of a sudden I go to these youth conferences and, it wasnʼt necessarily one in particular, but it was these men were so on fire for the Lord, so on fire for the youth hearing the Gospel. That was really my first time seeing a priest just be passionate about the Lord, and be passionate about their faith, and be passionate for souls.”

Another impactful moment for Corona was the vocations call that takes place at the end of the weekend. On the last day of the conference, anyone who may be considering religious life is asked to stand up so they can receive a blessing.

“I joke about it now that that used to be my least favorite part of the weekend, because, especially, I went to four conferences, and especially in my third and fourth conference, I started to feel the Lord moving that way but I never got up,” he shared.

However, those moments also served as a “powerful witness” for him because Corona saw so many other men his age stand up and say that they were considering it, which was “part of what really started to open up my heart to it.”

A couple of years went by and Corona was put into a leadership position where he was ministering more to his peers and felt a great desire toward the sacrament of reconciliation as he was working with these individuals. Eventually he spoke to his spiritual director — a layman who worked at Franciscan University — who told him he could continue to pray about it or he could take a step. Corona decided to take a step.

He emailed the vocations director in San Diego but never heard back. However, after speaking more with his spiritual director he was encouraged to look into becoming a friar.

“He just knew how big brotherhood was for me and literally 24 hours into the Come and See [with the Franciscan friars], I knew thatʼs where I was supposed to be,” he recalled.

From the back bleachers to the altar

Deacon Arthur Bodenschatz is a transitional deacon in the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, who was ordained on June 6. He grew up in a very devout Catholic household. His parents met as NET missionaries — a youth ministry program — and instilled a love for evangelization in their four children.

In the second grade, Bodenschatz began to dress in all black to attend Mass — pretending that he was the priest. However, it wasn’t until he was 14 when he had a powerful encounter with God at a Steubenville Youth Conference that he knew he was meant to be a priest.

“The moment was during Saturday night adoration … and I was sitting on the back bleachers, in one of the uncomfortable spots, when the Eucharistic procession was going by and I just had a moment of locking eyes with the Lord in the Eucharist and just had a moment of realization, of grace, where I just knew that that was Jesus in the Eucharist. I knew that he loved me. I knew that I loved him. And I knew I was going to be a priest. And it was just a joyful moment filled with a lot of joyful tears,” he recalled.

After that experience, Bodenschatz went back home and became very involved with his youth group, began to attend daily Mass, and found a spiritual director.

After he graduated from high school, Bodenschatz went straight into Borromeo Seminary in Cleveland and will be ordained a priest in 2027.

“Iʼm looking forward to the completion of a nine-year journey. So much preparation leading up to it,” he shared. “And just the idea of celebrating that first Mass — it brings a smile to my face. Knowing that what I feel God has been calling me to for so long, that he wants to use me to turn bread and wine to his body and blood for the people of God … I just canʼt wait to be his instrument.”

The power of encountering a joyful Church

So, what is it about the Steubenville Youth Conferences that is inspiring so many vocations in young people?

For Bodenschatz, it was hearing the Gospel “in such a way that was personal to me.”

“Hearing the insistence and the repeated message that Jesus loves me and that the Holy Spirit is alive in me and wants to work in me was something that maybe Iʼd heard before but I was actually starting to experience it there,” he recalled. “So I think that was just a really powerful message that is embodied by the people who are up there speaking and embodied by the people up there leading worship and the whole community, the whole environment. Itʼs just so joyful.”

He added: “Whereas in my normal experience of parish life, I didnʼt see as much joy and I didnʼt see as many people my age or as many priests and sisters running around who were just so happy to be there. So I think something about that unique experience of just the universal Church so full of life really opened me up to what the Holy Spirit was doing in me.”

Corona echoed a similar sentiment in that it is powerful for young people to see the joy their peers are also carrying for the Lord and their faith.

“There is something about coming to a conference and seeing a thousand other kids there for the same reason,” he said. “It makes your faith seem like ‘OK, this is more than just my high school. OK, this is more than just my area. This is something real. This is something that Iʼm seeing other teens honoring God and so maybe thereʼs something here.’”

“I think that there is so much to the witness of the other groups that I think goes just a really, really long way because all of a sudden the faith becomes something so much more than my familyʼs thing or something so much more than, ‘Well I go to this youth group because thatʼs where my friends go.’”

Corona added: “Itʼs like, ‘Oh my gosh, I am surrounded by anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 to 4,500 teens who all believe that this is real’ or at least who are trying to and are wanting to see this as something real.”

The dispute began with what Wenski described as Uthmeierʼs “veiled threat” in a July 31 letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops. In it, the attorney general urged the bishops to bring Catholic schools into compliance with Florida law requiring religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates, on pain of the loss of state funding through its school choice scholarship program.

Florida has one of the most expansive school choice programs in the United States, whereby families can use state-funded scholarship money for a variety of education-related expenses, including private school tuition.

Uthmeier argued in his letter that “at least one diocese” in Florida appears to have adopted a policy based on what he characterized as the bishops' erroneous interpretation of guidance given to Wenski in 2011 by the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

The bioethics center’s then-president, John Haas, said Catholic institutions could not grant exemptions to vaccines on religious grounds because the Church has determined that utilizing vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines was “not intrinsically evil” because of the remoteness of the original, evil act of abortion.

At the same time, Haas made a distinction between religious and conscience objections, stating Catholic institutions should grant the latter “as liberally as possible for the sake of the delicate consciences” of Catholic parents. He also noted that the consciences of those making school policies must be respected.

Wenski told “EWTN News in Depth” host Catherine Hadro in an Aug. 14 interview: “If a Catholic has conscience objections to the vaccines you canʼt say that your objections come from your understanding of the Catholic faith because the vaccinations available and developed are not contrary to Church teachings.”

Religious exemptions or conscience exemptions?

The distinction between the two types of exemptions is important, making the Florida case complicated, Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, an attorney and the founder of The Conscience Project, told EWTN News.

While most states offer some combination of medical, religious, and conscience exemptions to vaccine mandates, Florida law does not explicitly protect conscience objections, only medical and religious ones.

Uthmeier argues that conscience objections fall under the protection of religious liberty, particularly for Catholics, for whom the formation of conscience is a central aspect of the faith.

“The teachings of the Catholic Church do not require Catholic schools to compel students to take vaccines derived from the tissue of aborted children against the sincerely held religious objections of their parents,” Uthmeier wrote.

The attorney general also noted that some Catholic families object to certain vaccines not only because of their connection to aborted fetal cell lines, but also because of concerns about the safety of vaccine ingredients and methods of production, including the use of mRNA technology, which he said brings a “heightened risk of health defects, including miscarriages.”

The National Catholic Bioethics Center declined to comment to EWTN News. However, the organization maintains resources on its website stating the Church’s position that although vaccines developed through morally problematic means may be used for grave reasons, vaccination is not a moral obligation for Catholics and, in order to protect human dignity and the free exercise of conscience, should be voluntary.

The organization also states that “public health measures and policies should be built upon sound science and ethical principles.”

Uthmeier: Parents' rights are being violated

Uthmeier told EWTN News he is concerned about the "religious freedoms and rights of parents.” He pointed out that many Catholic families have come to him noting the irony that their conscience rights are protected in public schools in Florida but not in Catholic ones.

Uthmeier also said families are confused because Catholic schools in several dioceses across the country do grant vaccine conscience and religious exemptions.

Because Catholic schools receive state scholarship funds, he argued, the state has an interest in ensuring that religious freedoms are protected.

“Where First Amendment rights [and] the religious beliefs of parents are being violated, we as a state have a duty to investigate and see what legal tools we may have to protect our parents in Florida,” he said.

While acknowledging that the state cannot dictate religious beliefs, he said he remains unconvinced that the bishops have identified an authentically religious reason for denying exemptions.

A Catholic himself, Uthmeier further pointed to what he said were long-standing Catholic teachings regarding parental authority and conscience rights.

“Respecting the right of conscience is deeply embedded in our catechism,” he said. “How these rights can be violated, and how Catholic Church officials can disagree on citing religious teaching across the country, perplexes me.”

Wenski: Catholic schools must protect the common good

Wenski likewise framed the controversy as a religious freedom issue, from the perspective of the Churchʼs right to determine and apply its own teachings.

He described Uthmeierʼs position as “an unfair and ill-advised interpretation of separation of Church and state” and argued that lawmakers never intended school-choice scholarships to impose a religious test on participating schools.

“The Church has a right to determine our own teachings,” he said.

Wenski told EWTN News that the bishops “certainly respect the rights of conscience of every person.” At the same time, he said Catholic social teaching also obligates schools to promote the common good and protect children through immunization.

“Weʼve witnessed in recent months an upsurge of cases of measles, and we know that that presents certain dangers for pregnant women,” Wenski said.

The archbishop noted that Catholic schools already grant medical exemptions when a physician certifies that a child should not be vaccinated.

But he maintained that parents who object to vaccination are free to choose another school.

"Nobody is forced to go to a Catholic school,” he said.

The bishops sent Uthmeier a formal response, Wenski said, outlining what they view as the religious freedom issues implicated by the attorney generalʼs intervention.

Wenski said the bishops are “prepared to protect our students, to defend our rights, and to preserve religious freedom” while remaining open to continued dialogue with the state.

Critics of Florida bishops’ policy disagree

While Wenski suggested the issue is largely settled within Catholic teaching, critics of the Florida bishops' policy disagree.

Yvonne Bontkowski, director of Children of God for Life, said the controversy reflects a deeper disagreement over how Catholics should respond to vaccines connected to abortion-derived cell lines.

“This is the first time I have ever seen where the state isnʼt asking the Church to violate its teaching, itʼs asking the Church to honor it,” she told EWTN News.

The organization argues that although the Church has determined it can be morally permissible to receive such vaccines under certain circumstances, Church teaching says Catholics still have a moral duty to advocate for ethical alternatives and resist what it sees as the continued exploitation of aborted fetal tissue in biomedical research.

Bontkowski cited a 2005 document from the Pontifical Academy for Life, which established the moral permissibility of the use of vaccines developed from aborted fetal cell lines in order to protect health but also affirmed that Catholics may exercise conscientious objection regarding such vaccines.

“Our conscience is directed to what is morally good,” she said. “The Vatican never said these vaccines are morally good. It said weʼre not sinning if we take them for grave reasons and on a temporary basis while we demand ethical alternatives.”

She argued that families exercising that duty should not be excluded from Catholic education, which, unlike immunization, is a moral obligation.

Canon law states that parents have both a right and a “most grave obligation” to provide a Catholic education for their children, while Canon 217 affirms that the faithful have the right to a Christian education “by which they are to be instructed properly to strive for the maturity of the human person and at the same time to know and live the mystery of salvation.”

Other critics contend that the debate ultimately turns on differing understandings of public health and the common good.

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and director of the National Vaccine Information Center, told EWTN News that Catholic school officials generally formulate vaccine and other public health policies based on the judgments of public health authorities.

But, she argued, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed public distrust in scientific and governmental institutions, especially regarding data about who is at greatest biological risk for vaccines “that could hurt or even kill people.”

“Unfortunately the entire notion of the common good rests upon the science,” Fisher said. “If the scientists and the government havenʼt done due diligence in doing the best science, or havenʼt told the full truth, that is a moral dilemma the Church is going to have to eventually grapple with.”

“This has been a long time coming,” Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City told EWTN News on the red carpet July 28.

Born in Okarche, Oklahoma, Rother was a farmer before he attended Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and was ordained a priest in 1963. After serving as an associate pastor at a parish in Oklahoma for five years, Rother received permission to join the staff at the Oklahoma diocese’s mission in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala.

He served the Tz’utujil people, who are descendants of the Mayans, in Guatemala, learning their native Tz’utujil language as well as Spanish. As their pastor, Rother celebrated Mass and helped translate the New Testament into the Tz’utujil language. He quickly gained the trust and love of the local people, ministering to them in their homes, sharing meals, helping them in the fields, and visiting the sick.

While Rother was in Guatemala, a civil war broke out and the Catholic Church was caught in its crosshairs. The priest’s name was placed on a death list. On July 28, 1981, three men entered the rectory at night and killed the beloved priest.

Rother’s cause for canonization opened in 2007 by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, and in 2016 Pope Francis recognized Rother as a martyr for the faith. He became the first American-born priest to be recognized as a martyr by the Catholic Church.

“We’ve been very intentionally promoting the cause of Blessed Stanley Rother for many years,” Coakley said. “He’s been beatified and now we’re working toward his canonization, and in order for that ever to happen we need more and more people seeking the intercession of Blessed Stanley Rother and seeking his divine favor so that miracles may be performed through his intercession. So that’s why we undertook this production, to introduce him to more and more people.”

The archbishop added that the film is “a beautiful depiction of the life of an ordinary Catholic who responded generously and faithfully to Godʼs grace and mercy and allowed the Lord to transform him and form him into the saint ultimately that we hope he will finally be named.”

Michael Scaperlanda, chancellor at the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, said: “This is an exciting moment for the archdiocese to have a nationwide release … of this wonderful documentary narrated by Martin Sheen.”

He highlighted the importance of sharing Rother’s story to a wider audience because it serves as a reminder that “even ordinary people can become saints.”

For Felipe Coche Pablo, the documentary is particularly personal. Pablo is a native of Santiago Atitlan and was baptized by Rother when he was 6 months old. He was 2 years old when Rother was killed.

When Rother’s cause was opened, Pablo was appointed to serve as the official church notary for Rother’s parish in Santiago Atitlán. It was then that he learned about the potential saint’s life and legacy.

Pablo said learning about Rother deeply impacted his life and taught him “to keep fighting in life. There are always stumbles, but you have to pick yourself back up, like he [Rother] did.”

Today, Pablo is the administrator at Colegio Católico Padre Aplaʼs — also known as the Blessed Stanley Rother Catholic School — in Santiago Atitlán. This school is part of the parish in which Rother served, Santiago Apóstol, or St. James the Apostle Church.

“We have 435 students and the education is trilingual — Tz’utujil, Spanish, and English,” he explained. “Our first language is the Mayan language, Tz’utujil. And he [Rother] was a priest that was very loved by the people because he learned the Mayan language Tz’utujil, like us, like what I speak.”

Pablo said he hopes viewers of the film will be inspired by Rother’s “service to others” and to “carry peace, love, evangelize, and what is most needed in life — look for God.”

Coakley added that he hopes viewers will leave the theater reminded that “all of us are called to holiness.”

“Stanley Rother would not have been the one in high school in the yearbook that said most likely to become a saint … And yet all of us are called, it’s our vocation if you’re baptized, you’re called to be a saint. All of us are called to be saints. And Stanley Rother gives us a hope that for each one of us that is a possibility that is real.”

“American Martyr” can be seen in theaters across the U.S. on Aug. 25 and 26 in English and in Spanish on Aug. 27.