Catholic News

• Place people, not profits, at center of economic system, Pope tells Italy's Catholics (Vatican Radio)
  The Pope made his remarks in a video message for the 48th Social Week for Italian Catholics.
• Moscow patriarch: Bolshevik Revolution was a catastrophe (Moscow Patriarchate)
  The head of the Russian Orthodox Church said that the October Revolution of 1917 “led to truly catastrophic consequences for religious communities, to persecution of believers, destruction of churches and total anti-religious propaganda.” Criticizing moral relativism, he added that there is a distinction between the religious and “secular liberal” understandings of freedom.
• Ukrainian Catholic leader: do not look for political messiahs (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church)
  “We in Ukraine often wait for a new messiah who will come and put everything in order,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said during a visit to London.
• Pope's November-January schedule includes new World Day of the Poor (CNS)
  
• Church of England to debate blessings for same-sex couples (Daily Telegraph)
  
• Catalonia crisis deepens as Puigdemont declines to call snap election (France 24)
  L’Osservatore Romano (10/27 Italian ed.) devoted prominent front-page coverage to developments in Catalonia.
• Anglican primate to welcome Catholic-Lutheran declaration on justification (Anglican Communion News Service)
  At a service marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury will present Catholic and Lutheran representatives with an Anglican document welcoming the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
• Venezuela's opposition awarded Sakharov Prize for championing human rights (The Independent)
  
• New HHS strategic plan could be blueprint for pro-life health care policies (National Catholic Register)
  
• US seminarians take part in intensive language immersion program in Mexico (OSV Newsweekly)
  
• Low turnout taints Kenyatta victory in Kenya election re-run (Reuters)
  The nation’s bishops have called for peace amid what Reuters describes as a “bloody and chaotic election process.”
• Former Tablet editor discusses Britain's relations with Vatican (Vatican Radio)
  
• 2,800 JFK assassination files have been released, others withheld (NPR)
  L’Osservatore Romano (10/27 Italian ed.) devoted front-page coverage to this story.
• Italy holds annual day of Islamic-Christian dialogue (Eco di Parma)
  This year’s theme is “the role of women in intercultural and interreligious dialogue.”
• Papal audiences (10/26) (Vatican Press Office)
  In separate audiences, Pope Francis received the head of the Church of Scotland, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the apostolic nuncio to the European Union, the apostolic vicar of Southern Arabia, and a group from the Catholic University of Portugal.
• Pence: US aid to Middle East will go through faith-based groups, not UN agencies (National Catholic Register)
  US Vice President Mike Pence announced on October 25 that the Trump administration will funnel aid to the Middle East through faith-based groups, rather than UN agencies. The new policy responds to complaints that international aid was not reaching Christians in the region. Nina Shea of the Institute for Religious Freedom described the policy change as a “bombshell.”
• Myanmar: bishops' spokesman warns that 'a wrong word from the Holy Father can plunge the country into chaos' (CNS)
  “The Pope’s visit is keeping us very anxious, as many things can go wrong,” the spokesman for Myanmar’s bishops said. The Pontiff is scheduled to visit the nation in late November.
• Augustinian prior general writes strongly worded letter on Reformation's 500th anniversary (Order of Saint Augustine)
  “Luther not only abandoned the Order but abhorred religious life with all his might, rejected ascetic practices and piety, rejected praying the breviary and other obligations, radically altered sacramental theology, condemned the vows and promoted the abandonment and the mass exodus of vowed religious,” writes Father Alejandro Moral Antón in a letter republished in L’Osservatore Romano (10/26). “The damage done to the Order and to religious life in Germany was enormous.”
• USCCB issues letter to Congress on tax reform (USCCB)
  The letter offers 6 principles: “care for the poor, strengthening families, maintaining progressivity of the tax code, raising adequate revenue for the common good, avoiding cuts to poverty programs to finance tax reform, and incentivizing charitable giving and development.”
• Pope speaks to astronauts on International Space Station (Vatican Radio)
  
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