Vatican Radio reports that so far this year nearly 1,900 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe—far surpassing the 700 dead recorded in 2013 and 500 in 2012. • Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka, a former Vatican official and one-time head of the Archdiocese of Detroit, died at age 86 on Aug. 20 in Novi, Mich. • At 105, the Rev. Jacques Clemens celebrates Mass every Sunday at St. Benoit Catholic Church in Ham-sur-Heure-Nalinnes, Belgium, making him perhaps the world’s oldest living priest who still holds a regular service. • A stolen consecrated host intended for use at a Satanic “black mass,” the focus of a lawsuit filed by Archbishop Paul Coakley, was turned over to the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City on Aug. 21. • The global climate campaign 350.org urged Pope Francis on Aug. 27 to support publicly the growing fossil-fuel divestment movement and to order the Vatican Bank to sell off any fossil-fuel holdings. • Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, in a letter to the world’s bishops’ conferences released on Aug. 21, denounced violence against religious minorities in eastern Ukraine and complained bitterly about “claims and accusations” circulated by Russian Orthodox leaders.
News Briefs
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez was one of several community leaders who joined to open the Family Assistance Program, aiding those affected by recent ICE raids.
On Friday, Pope Leo XIV issued a statement on the theme "Migrants, missionaries of hope."
In Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” an ordinary electrician has a transcendent encounter—with U.F.O.s, not God.
Many of my acquaintances have given up “reading about something that didn't happen.” But fiction has long-term and concrete value, both mentally and socially.