Catholic News

• 'Stop the clamor of arms!': papal appeal to Israeli, Palestinian leaders (Vatican News)
  “Let us pray constantly that the Israelis and Palestinians may find the path of dialogue and forgiveness, to be patient builders of peace and justice, opening up, step after step, to a common hope, to a coexistence among brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis said in his appeal for peace, which followed his May 16 Regina Caeli address.
• Christ's Ascension brings us joy, Pope tells pilgrims (Vatican Press Office)
  “Brothers and sisters, on this Feast of the Ascension, while we contemplate Heaven, where Christ has ascended and sits at the right hand of the Father, let us ask Mary, Queen of Heaven, to help us be courageous witnesses to the Risen One in the world, in the concrete situations of life,” Pope Francis said at the conclusion of his May 16 Regina Caeli address to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
• Keep the faith, keep unity, keep the truth: papal Mass for Myanmar Catholics (Vatican Press Office)
  “The Lord always hears the cry of his people and dries their tears,” the Pope tweeted, referring to the plight of Myanmar’s people following the February coup d’état. “Dear brothers and sisters of Myanmar, do not stop looking up to heaven. Keep the faith!”
• US climate envoy Kerry meets with Pope on climate crisis (AP)
  “The Pope is one of the great voices of reason and compelling moral authority on the subject of the climate crisis,” the former US Secretary of State said in an interview after the meeting. “He’s been ahead of the curve. He’s been a leader. His encyclical Laudato si’ is really a very, very powerful document, eloquent and morally very persuasive.”
• Pope: Child abuse is a kind of 'psychological murder' (Vatican News)
  Pope Francis made his remarks in a May 15 address to members of the Meter Association, which seeks to end the scourge of child pornography.
• Be dynamic Christians, Pope tells French scouts (Vatican News)
  On May 14, Pope Francis delivered an address to a delegation from the Scouts Unitaires de France.
• Catholic schools are losing students at record rates, and hundreds are closing (Wall Street Journal)
  “At least 209 of the country’s nearly 6,000 Catholic schools have closed over the past year,” according to the report. “Nationwide, Catholic school enrollment fell 6.4% at the start of this school year, the largest single-year decline since the NCEA [National Catholic Educational Association] began tracking such data in the 1970s.”
• Historic Catholic church in Louisville vandalized (WDRB-TV)
  “The language that was used — it was inscribed in one of our doors — disturbed, myself, personally, as the manager of the parish under the leadership of our pastor . . . and he’s concerned about my safety,” said Bob Frazier, the administrator, business and rental manager for Christ the King Church.
• 'All of us are responsible for the communications we make': Pope recalls World Communications Day (@Pontifex)
  :All of us are responsible for the communications we make, for the information we share, for the control that we can exert over fake news by exposing it,” Pope Francis said on World Communications Day (papal message). “All of us are to be witnesses of the truth: to go, to see and to share.”
• Papal support for the Italian Charismatic Consultation (Vatican News)
  Pope Francis sent a video message to participants in the meeting.
• Papal call for participation in Laudato Si' Week (Vatican Press Office)
  Pope Francis devoted his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’ to care for our common home. “Today ‘Laudato Si’ Week’ begins, to educate more and more to listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor,” the Pope said on May 16. “I thank the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, the Global Catholic Climate Movement, Caritas Internationalis and the numerous member organizations, and I invite everyone to participate.”
• Charlotte diocese ends general dispensation from Sunday Mass obligation (Catholic News Herald)
  Masks and social distancing are no longer required during Mass, the North Carolina diocese said on May 14.
• Pelosi 'pleased' with Vatican statement on Communion and abortion (CNA)
  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she is “pleased with what the Vatican put out” on the controversy over the reception of Communion by Catholic politicians who favor legal abortion. Pelosi interpreted a statement by Cardinal Luis Ladaria as saying “don’t be divisive on the subject.” The cardinal actually was clear in saying that pro-abortion politicians should not receive the Eucharist, but Pelosi said she would “use my own judgment on that.”
• Pope urges Italians to welcome life, reverse demographic decline (Vatican News)
  “Children are the hope that makes a people reborn,” Pope Francis said in a May 14 address to a Rome conference on Italy’s demographic crisis. The Pontiff observed that “a society that does not welcome life stops living.” Italy’s declining birth rate—well below the “replacement level”—has commanded the attention of political leaders, and Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi participated in this week’s conference on “the general states of birth.”
• State Dept. releases annual religious freedom report (US Department of State)
  “The report is impressive and thorough,” writes a staff member of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “Secretary Anthony Blinken gave a stirring defense of the importance of protecting religious freedom for all.”
• Months after Argentina legalizes abortion, nation's president meets with Pontiff (AP)
  “In a break with usual practice, the Vatican communique about Fernandez’s visit omitted any reference to issues discussed between the president and Pope,” the Associated Press reported. “The brief statement provided only a rundown of topics Fernandez discussed with the Vatican secretary of state and foreign minister.”
• Vatican conference features liberal speakers on 'restart' (National Catholic Register)
  The heads of the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the US Treasury Department took part in a Vatican conference May 14 on “Dreaming of a Better Restart.” Population-control advocate Jeffrey Sachs also spoke at the meeting. It was sponsored by the Pontifical Academies of Science, whose chancellor, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, has frequently invited Sachs to speak, and has himself said that China is the country that best exemplifies Catholic social teaching.
• Former US ambassador says Vatican should push China on religious freedom (CNA)
  Sam Brownback, who was US ambassador for religious freedom during the Trump administration, has argued that the Vatican should press China harder in demands for religious freedom, noting a new State Department report that lists China as a “country of political concern” regarding religious liberty. Brownback said that the US urged the Vatican not to renew a secret agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops, because “this is not a regime we should be negotiating with.”
• Jewish, Catholic, Muslim leaders respond to Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Deseret News)
  “We join with the Holy Father, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and other brethren who have called on the international community to intervene in the promotion of a just peace in the Holy City,” the US bishops’ chairman for international justice and peace said in a statement.
• Following alleged coup plot, Nigerian bishops urge federal government to shun propaganda against religious leaders (Vanguard (Lagos))
  “While we reject any call for the destabilization of Nigeria or military takeover, we nonetheless say to the federal government of Nigeria, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, there is no need to focus your energy, time and resources in any form of propaganda against religious leaders who disagree with your performance,” the bishops said in a statement.
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