An Alabama priest disgraced after abandoning his parish to travel to Italy with an 18-year-old woman described himself as “married” to her in a Valentine’s Day letter.

“For us, it’s like a miracle,” Msgr. Terrence Watanabe said about Maria Lanakila Catholic Church in the town of Lahaina being seemingly untouched by the fierce Maui wildfires.

Latino participation is important: Recent polling data suggests that more than half of U.S. Catholics under 30 are Latino. Overall, Latinos make up more than 40 percent of Catholics in the United States.

Parsing the numbers and understanding the implications can be challenging. Are we learning anything new?

“I’m an African American woman in a space that is doing the kind of work that…Christ is calling us to do,” Cynthia Bailey Manns, who will participate in the Synod on Synodality as a voting member in October, said in an interview.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization could be an inevitability for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, according to a statement released Aug. 4 by Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone.