With close to 30 major wars and conflicts raging throughout the world — among them, the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s war on Ukraine — Catholics across the country gathered Oct. 27 in response to Pope Francis’ call for a worldwide day of prayer for peace.
Nation
Amid wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, this year’s World Mission Sunday is “even more important” than ever, said an executive from the U.S. offices of the Pontifical Mission Societies. The universal Catholic Church will mark the observance Oct. 22, and the collection taken up that day forms the primary financial support for the societies, which have a presence in some 1,100 dioceses in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific Islands and parts of Europe.
In a sign of the growing Catholic community of southern Nevada and the Western United States, the Archdiocese of Las Vegas has become the newest archdiocese in America.
Two U.S. bishops have launched the National Catholic Mental Health Campaign, amid a global crisis in mental health and a decline in mental health resources in the U.S.
Grim developments on the southern U.S. border and the “frustrating” lack of immigration reform were on the minds of some 1,500 Southern California Catholics at the annual Mass in Recognition of All Immigrants Sept. 17 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York told OSV News the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, which is marked with solemn ceremonies across the U.S., should be observed with memories of lives lost and impacted by the day’s events. But he added it also is worth remembering the spirit of the following day, Sept. 12, 2001, when Americans came together as a nation.
On a day when history was made 60 years earlier with the March on Washington, Father Robert Boxie III, the Catholic chaplain at Howard University in the nation’s capital, noted that the campus ministry program there was making history of its own, with the blessing and dedication of its new Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center.
“The church doesn’t have a mission; the mission has a church,” said Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima, not quite pounding the table. Later, he told the group, “Our migrant ministry is the model for all of our ministries — the parish is bigger than the building.”
A group of 24 modern apostles were able to witness a glimpse of this during an Aug. 28-29 pastoral visit organized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on Pastoral Care of Migrants, Refugees and Travelers. Participants from the USCCB, the Catholic Migrant Farmworker Network and related ministries met in Yakima to witness, support, and learn from the migrant ministry carried out by the diocese.
“For us, it’s like a miracle,” Msgr. Terrence Watanabe, the Honolulu Diocese’s vicar of Maui and Lanai, said about Maria Lanakila Catholic Church in the town of Lahaina being seemingly untouched by the fierce Maui wildfires Aug. 8-9.
Joyful, singing crowds were walking through Lisbon long after the opening Mass of World Youth Day 2023 was over Aug. 1. The atmosphere surprised even those that lived in the Portuguese capital throughout their lives.