- Pope Francis reflects on the Church as teacher of prayer (Vatican Press Office)
In May 2020, Pope Francis began a series Wednesday general audiences on prayer; that series has continued in 2021. - Myanmar military raids churches, temples (Fides)
The reported raids have taken place in Kachin State (map). - Pope expresses closeness to victims of violence in southern Colombia (Vatican News)
Over 175,000 civilians have lost their lives in the Colombian conflict, which began in 1964. Five years after a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), “dissident FARC rebels, leftist guerrillas, drug-trafficking groups and right-wing paramilitaries are all battling for control of the lucrative cocaine and illegal mining markets,” the report notes. - Hebei closes nuns' orphanage for the disabled (AsiaNews)
Hebei (map) is located in northeastern China. “The prohibition on contact with minors under the age of 18 suggests that the authorities are applying the New Religious Regulations, which prohibit the evangelization of minors,” AsiaNews reported. - Chaldean Patriarch, in Ramadan message, calls for removal of anti-Christian polemics from Iraqi textbooks (Fides)
Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako also recently called for a “secular and civil” Iraqi state that “does not deprive people of the right to practice their faith.” - Nigerian bishop builds mosque for displaced Muslims (Punch (Nigeria))
Bishop Stephen Mamza of Yola, the capital of Adamawa State (map), said that the majority of displaced persons “who thronged our camp were Christians, but there was also a large number of Muslims among them. And if we were able to build houses for all of them, and also built a church for the Christians among them, then it is only a matter of justice and fairness that we also provide a space of worship for the few Muslims among them.” - 'Vaccine passports' draw debate over medical necessity and ethics (National Catholic Register)
Receiving the Covid vaccination “is not a moral obligation, and therefore requiring it is clearly going too far,” said Joseph Meaney, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center. - New Jersey gubernatorial candidate faces criticism for anti-Catholic comments (New Jersey Globe)
Phil Rizzo, a Baptist pastor who is now a GOP gubernatorial candidate, once said of Catholics: “I don’t know if these people have ever heard the Gospel. Not only are they in bondage to their sin, but they’re in bondage to religion.” - Police, DA's office clashed amid Bishop Hart investigation, documents show (Casper Star Tribune)
In a separate investigation, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found that Bishop Joseph Hart, the retired Bishop of Cheyenne, was guilty of a “flagrant lack of prudence” in his relationships with boys, but ruled that accusations of sexual abuse by the bishop could not be proven “with moral certitude.” The CDF also criticized Bishop Hart for “his disregard of the urgent requests that he refrain from public engagements that would cause scandal” after a diocesan investigation found that the accusations against him were credible. - Priests in Daunte Wright's community urge Catholics to fight racism, police violence (National Catholic Reporter)
“I don’t understand the use of force, right on the spot on someone who is unarmed,” Father Marcel Okwara said following the killing of Daunte Wright. “When an African-American person is shot, it affects me, too, the priest.” Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis encouraged prayers for peace. - Scholar urges Catholics to have courage to speak out against Equality Act (CNS)
The US House of Representatives passed the Equality Act in 224-206 vote; the Senate is now considering it. - Pandemic's overarching failure is lack of cooperation, says Vatican health task force leader (CNS)
Sister Carol Keehan, the retired president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, leads the health task force of the Vatican COVID-19 Commission. She said that the pandemic’s overarching failure “has been the inability for individuals, corporations and nations to work together in an honest and transparent way.” - 7th Catholic peace activist sentenced to prison for nuclear base break-in (RNS)
The activists illegally entered a submarine base in Georgia. - El Paso bishop: Christianize the situation at the border--don't politicize it (The Tablet)
The word “crisis” “signifies a situation at the border that threatens to engulf our country in some major way,” added Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego. “That’s not true. That’s my reason for not using the word crisis. Because it’s not factually correct.” - CRS praises Biden administration's proposed boost to foreign assistance (CNA)
The US bishops founded Catholic Relief Services in 1943, and the majority of the members of its board of directors are bishops. - Cardinal Cupich pays tribute to Cardinal Bernardin's 1992 plan to confront abuse (CNS)
“Imagine if all the bishops had taken those documents home and fully implemented them in their dioceses, how much further ahead we would be” and “how many children might have been spared,” Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago said in an apparent reference to the 1992 report of the Cardinal’s Commission on Clerical Sexual Misconduct with Minors. - Pontifical academy concerned about neo-populism (Vatican News)
“Many nations are threatened by populism fueled by the media and fake news,” the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences said in its overview of a webinar on Pope Francis’s third encyclical letter, Fratelli tutti. “In some contexts, the basic human rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, expression and association are not respected.” The Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication has highlighted one of the speeches, “Fratelli tutti and the challenge of neo-populism,” by Rodrigo Guerra López. - German Catholics, Lutherans devote ecumenical week to end-of-life care (Vatican News)
“We want to promote palliative and hospice support, as well as a global culture of life in our society in a more coherent way,” said Lutheran leader Heinrich Bedford-Strohm and Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, the president of the German bishops’ conference.