News & Commentary

Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, greets a Salvadoran migrant in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, June 27, 2019, who was deported from the U.S. after crossing the Paso del Norte international border from El Paso.

‘The Cabrini Pledge’ calls faithful to be keepers of hope for migrants and refugees

At the start of National Migration Week, taking place this year Sept. 22-28, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration invited the faithful to join "The Cabrini Pledge" and be guardians of hope for migrants and ...
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A statue of Christ is pictured during Via Crucis, or Stations of the Cross, in El Crucero, Nicaragua. Nicaragua's dictatorship is reported to have banned the traditional Stations of the Cross processions in the streets during Lent. (OSV News photo/Oswaldo Rivas, Reuters)

Attacks on Nicaragua’s Catholic entities must stop, says Human Rights Watch head

Nicaragua's assaults on Catholic and other educational institutions, its stripping political opponents of citizenship, and its arrest of political opponents must stop, said Human Rights Watch's acting executive director, Tirana Hassan.
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Pope Francis looks out to the crowd before his weekly general audience in the Vatican audience hall Feb. 15, 2023. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Nicaraguan president who jailed bishop is ‘unbalanced,’ pope says

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has strongly persecuted the church in the country and jailed a prominent bishop, is "unbalanced," Pope Francis said.
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Vatican accepts ‘positio’ in Mother Lange’s cause; dicastery to review documents on her life

ARBUTUS, Md. (OSV News) — The canonization cause of Mother Mary Lange, founder of the world’s first sustained women’s religious community for Black women, has taken a step forward. Sister Rita Michelle Proctor, superior general of the Baltimore-based Oblate Sisters ...
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Polish experts reject claim JPII ‘covered up abuse,’ urge all church records be opened to give full context 

KRAKOW, Poland (OSV News) — The fact that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla — the future Pope John Paul II — knew about abuse when he was an archbishop of Krakow, Poland, is neither new nor surprising, experts say. What remains to ...
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Delaware bill would break seal of confession, require priest to report what penitent says 

WILMINGTON, Del. (OSV News) — The Delaware General Assembly is taking aim at a basic tenet of the Catholic Church and wants to break the seal of confession between a priest and penitent. House Bill 74 would do away with ...
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McCarrick admits knowing victim as a child, denies sexual assaults

(OSV News) — Disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whose attorneys have argued he should not stand trial due to “progressive and irreparable cognitive deficits,” recalled the name of the man he allegedly sexually abused as a child, although he denied ...
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