Catholic News Service

A Vatican official asked a group of bishops gathered at Mundelein Seminary June 2 to think of migrants, whether they arrive for the short or long term, as "parishioners" and organize pastoral plans to tend to them.  

A national Catholic group of over 50 religious and nonprofit organizations is urging President Joe Biden to address global COVID-19 vaccine access during the upcoming G7 summit.

Precious Blood Fr. Robert Schreiter, a world-renowned scholar and member of the faculty of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago since 1974, died June 1 at his home in Chicago at age 73. He had been in failing health.

As he did before naming a new prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, Pope Francis has asked a bishop to conduct an official visit of the Congregation for Clergy.

Several priests, some of whom were former students at a minor seminary located in the Vatican, testified at the ongoing trial of Fr. Gabriele Martinelli, who is accused of sexually abusing a younger student at the St. Pius X Pre-Seminary.

A June 7 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that hundreds of thousands of immigrants with a temporary immigration status cannot apply for a more permanent way to remain in the country if they first entered without authority to do so.

Military fire hit Our Lady, Queen of Peace Church in the village of Doungankha the morning of June 6. Church leaders said there were no casualties as people had fled to relatives' homes and into the jungle, ucanews.com reported.

People's hearts and the entire church must be wide open to wonder and devotion to Christ and ready to embrace everyone — sinner and saint alike, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis told a group of priests studying in Rome that if they do not want to be pastors, spending time with the faithful, they should request dismissal from the priesthood and concentrate on academics instead.

The House of Hansen, an unassuming small business in Chicago in business for over 100 years, makes and supplies vestments and liturgical wear — like bishops' mitres and zucchettos — to clergy locally and around the country.

New canon law provisions approved by Pope Francis are expected to help the Catholic Church safeguard against abuse.

The United States added Vatican City State to its list of countries that conform to international standards regarding the verification of the identity of persons conducting financial transactions through its institutions, including the so-called Vatican bank.

An Indonesian archbishop in Christian-majority Papua province says he was twice targeted this year by Islamic militants who planned to meet with him and blow themselves up.

On the final day of a historic meeting of bishops and international Catholic organizations gathered at Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago, they discussed the challenges the church faces even while trying to get Catholics to understand church teaching on migrants.

"God is always with us, in good and beautiful times and in difficult times, when we are happy or when we have a sadness," Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles told unaccompanied immigrant children at a Mass May 30.

Based on responses to a questionnaire sent to all U.S. dioceses, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate estimates there are about 19,000 deacons in the United States today. The number, though, is dropping, mirroring trends seen in religious life and the priesthood for the past half-century.

Ahead of a May 30 ecumenical prayer service to recall the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, Bishop David A. Konderla said it was important "to pause and reflect on how such an unspeakable horror could take place so that we can avoid any such evil in our own day."

Bishops in Baltimore and Washington announced June 2 they would lift the dispensation of the Sunday and holy day Mass obligation that was granted at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

The recent arrest of a Vatican-approved bishop, priests and seminarians in north-central China came as a shocking development, if not surprising, as religious persecution in the communist-led country has continued to intensify under President Xi Jinping.

"Even if our prayers were only mutterings, if they were compromised by a wavering faith, we must never stop trusting in him," the pope said June 2 during his weekly general audience.