St. Columba Catholic Church

Seattle, Wash., Apr 19, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The Texas House of Representatives this week approved a sweeping school choice bill, one hailed by the state’s Catholic bishops and which could significantly reshape how families access private and religious education in the state.

Senate Bill 2 passed 86–63 after intense debate. The bill would create a $1 billion Education Savings Account (ESA) program, giving eligible families up to $10,000 per student to spend on tuition, transportation, therapy, and other education-related expenses. It previously passed the state Senate in February. 

The measure now heads to a conference committee where lawmakers will reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions.

Texas Catholic leaders welcomed the bill’s passage this week. 

“Thank you to all who worked so hard for passage of this legislation that will give parents a true choice for the education of their children,” Bishop Michael Olson of the Diocese of Fort Worth said on X.

The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops likewise praised the vote, calling it the result of sustained collaboration. 

“We have worked alongside you and so many others for this day,” the bishops wrote, naming state House Speaker Dustin Burrows, state Gov. Greg Abbott, and other legislative champions of parental choice.

Abbott, who has made school choice a central plank of his legislative agenda, praised the bill’s passage. “I look forward to this school choice legislation reaching my desk, when I will swiftly sign it into law,” he posted on Instagram.

The vote was also celebrated by longtime school choice advocates. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has supported ESA legislation for years, called the bill’s passage a generational victory.

Growing share of Catholic students take part in school choice

This week the National Catholic Educational Association reported that nearly 1 in 5 Catholic school students across the U.S. now participate in a school choice program — up nearly 5 percentage points from last year. 

In states with robust choice legislation, Catholic schools are seeing enrollment stabilize and even grow after decades of decline.

Texas’ 230 Catholic schools serve approximately 75,000 students, many from working-class and immigrant families. With tuition averaging more than $7,000 per year, schools have long relied on parish subsidies and scholarship funds to make education accessible, meaning the proposed ESA could make Catholic education a sustainable option for many families. 

While Catholic leaders and school choice advocates cheered the vote, others in the Texas Legislature criticized the measure. Every state House Democrat opposed the bill, arguing that it would siphon funds away from public schools already facing budget shortfalls.

State Rep. James Talarico proposed putting the issue to a statewide vote. His amendment failed.

“Private school vouchers will take money out of our public schools and give it to wealthy parents who are already sending their kids to private school,” he claimed after the vote.

Amendments to expand the bill’s eligibility and support lower-income families were also rejected, drawing further criticism from Democrats and public school advocates.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Thursday that he would recommend the state Senate concur with the House version without changes. 

“I’ve fought for school choice for my entire legislative career. Now, in consultation with Sen. Brandon Creighton, I am recommending the Senate concur with Senate Bill 2 — the largest school choice launch in American history,” Patrick wrote on X.

The bill also expands vocational training pathways. State Rep. Gary Gates told CNA the ESA framework aligns with House Bill 20, which he authored to allow high school students to attend Texas State Technical College full time.

“We have an incredible shortage of highly skilled labor in this country,” Gates said. “Here, a high school student could come out of school with no debt.”

If enacted, the ESA program could launch as early as the coming academic year.

CNA Newsroom, Apr 19, 2025 / 07:35 am (CNA).

U.S. Vice President JD Vance was received at the Vatican Secretariat of State by Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Holy Saturday morning, where the two discussed international relations, religious freedom, and humanitarian concerns.

The April 19 meeting included Secretary of State Parolin and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for relations with states and international organizations, according to a statement from the Holy See Press Office.

“During the cordial talks, satisfaction was expressed for the good existing bilateral relations between the Holy See and the United States of America, and the common commitment to protect the right to freedom of religion and conscience was reiterated,” the Vatican statement noted.

The discussions centered on the pressing problems of the global stage, “especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.”

Both parties expressed hope for continued positive collaboration between the U.S. government and the Catholic Church in America, with the Vatican acknowledging the Church’s “valuable service to the most vulnerable people.”

During his time in Rome, Vance and his family participated in the solemn Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday evening at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Holy Saturday meeting took place at a time when the Vatican and President Donald Trump’s administration have traded back-and-forths over plans to deport large numbers of immigrants who entered the country illegally.

The administration has received praise from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for its efforts to curtail gender ideology and government mandates that jeopardize religious freedom. However, the bishops have also sued the administration over its decision to cut funding for nongovernmental organizations that provide services to migrants, which has affected numerous Catholic organizations.

Hannah Brockhaus contributed to this report.

ACI MENA, Apr 19, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

This year’s Easter celebrations in the Holy Land are expected to unfold under a complex and emotional landscape marked by sorrow and hope as war continues in Gaza and security tensions escalate across the West Bank and Jerusalem. 

For Christians in Gaza, full participation in Easter rituals is impossible due to the blockade and closed crossings. Meanwhile, many West Bank Christians face significant hurdles in obtaining Israeli permits to enter Jerusalem amid increasingly tight security restrictions.

Despite these challenges, churches in Jerusalem and across Palestine insist on observing Holy Week traditions — even if on a smaller scale and under exceptional circumstances. For the Christian community here, Easter is not merely a religious tradition but an act of faith and resistance — a cry for life in the face of death and destruction.

In this spirit, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has announced the schedule for this year’s Holy Week celebrations, presided over by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The celebrations began on April 13 with Palm Sunday and will culminate on April 20 with a solemn entry into the Holy Sepulcher followed by Easter Mass and the traditional procession inside the church.

A season without pilgrims

Despite the difficult circumstances, churches in the Holy Land remain committed to marking Holy Week — even in its most modest expressions.

For many local Christians, Easter is not just about rituals and festivities but a profound declaration of faith, belonging, and hope — a message that confronts daily sorrow and uncertainty.

The burden of emigration

What weighs even heavier on this year’s celebrations is the continued absence of pilgrims and tourists for a second consecutive year. 

This absence has dealt a painful blow not only spiritually but also economically to hundreds of Christian families who rely on religious tourism as their main source of livelihood. 

In cities like Bethlehem and Jerusalem, markets are nearly stagnant, olive wood carving workshops are struggling with unsold inventory, and hotels, restaurants, and shops are witnessing an unprecedented slowdown, leaving many without work and facing serious financial hardship.

This dire reality has led more Christian families to consider emigration in search of stability and survival, raising real concerns about the future of the Christian presence in the very land where the Gospel was first proclaimed.

Hope amid crisis

Still, the tone of hope has not been absent from Church leaders’ messages. 

Pizzaballa issued a heartfelt appeal to pilgrims not to hesitate in coming to the Holy Land. “Your presence is a presence of peace... and we need peace,” he said in his message.

Father Francesco Patton, custos of the Holy Land, echoed this call, describing visits to the sacred sites as “an act of faith and a tangible expression of support for local Christians,” who, despite everything, remain deeply rooted in their land.

This story was first published by ACI MENA, CNA's Arabic-language news partner, and has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Pope Francis' top diplomats met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on April 19, where the two sides discussed migrants and refugees following months of clashes between U.S. church leaders and the Trump administration over immigration policy and foreign aid. 

The internet is a space of human gathering, and people today often begin their search for meaning online. As Catholics, we should be there to help. So, when we look at who is gaining audience and popularity on the digital continent, we must also be looking for the voices that are missing. 

Rome Newsroom, Apr 19, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Two families of mixed Catholic and Orthodox Christian members are looking forward to celebrating Easter together on the same date in 2025 as they also hope to one day see greater unity among all Christians.

Joseph Lovskiy, who is the only Catholic in his Russian Orthodox family, summed it up with one word: “joy.” 

From the city of Yekaterinburg in Russia, Lovskiy’s wife, three children, and six grandchildren are all Russian Orthodox. His youngest son is a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church.  

“Since Easter falls on the same date this year, the only feeling one can have is joy,” he told CNA in a written interview translated from Russian. 

Like Lovskiy, Father Richard Sofatzis, a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia, also grew up in a mixed Catholic and Orthodox environment, since his father is Greek Orthodox and his mother, who died in 2017, was Catholic.

“Unity between ... as John Paul II said, the two lungs of Christianity, East and West, has been something that’s been very dear to me. I’ve prayed for it many times,” Sofatzis told CNA by phone. “I guess I think it’s something we can work towards, aspire to, but it does seem at times very difficult to obtain."

This year marks the 1,700th anniversary of an important Church council, the Council of Nicaea, which was held from May to August 325. Among other important decisions, the council established a unified way to calculate the date of Easter each year. Pope Gregory XIII enacted further reforms in 1582, which gave the Catholic Church the Gregorian calendar it follows today. 

But because the Catholic and Orthodox had split in 1024, the Orthodox countries did not accept the changes to the calendar made by Pope Gregory. And so, the two churches often celebrate major feasts such as Christmas and Easter on different days — because they are calculated using different calendars. There are exceptions, however, when occasionally the calendars align, as will happen for Easter in 2025.

Sofatzis said the Council of Nicaea and other Church councils that followed are admirable for the way they overcame fierce and difficult debates to give a clear, unified expression of the faith and its teachings — an example for all Christians seeking unity. 

“It’s good that we’re celebrating the occasion,” he said. “The fact that Easter is the same this year is, I think, really important. I’m really hoping more than anything else, even if [Catholics and Orthodox] can’t achieve full unity, we could work towards that common date for Easter — something I’ve been looking forward to for many years.”

But the Catholic priest added that the full unity of the “two lungs” must be worked out by the hierarchies, and that is quite difficult due to political and cultural pressures. Meanwhile, however, his family and others live out ecumenism in their relationships every day.

Sharing Easter, sharing traditions

Lovskiy, who was raised by a Catholic mother and Russian Orthodox father, said he agreed with his wife before their marriage to raise their children in the Orthodox Church. Despite being the only Catholic in his family, he said he has never felt lonely: “We support one another.” 

After attending Easter Vigil Mass and liturgy in their respective churches, on Easter Sunday this year, the family will gather to enjoy a homemade meal of traditional Russian Orthodox dishes, including pies, dyed eggs, and “pashka,” a cheesy custard dessert with fruit, honey, and almonds, served with slices of a sweet Easter bread called “kulichi.” 

They will also feast on various meat dishes, including roasted and smoked meat and homemade Belarusian sausage.

Lovskiy said it is customary to have the food served at Easter blessed, but in the Orthodox Church, only eggs and “kulichi” are blessed — meat cannot be brought into the church — while in the Catholic Church, meat, sausage, salt, and bread are all brought for the Easter blessing.

Sofatzis’ family, including most of his seven siblings, three in-laws, and five nephews, will also have a big family lunch on Easter Sunday — but Greek Orthodox style.

The priest, who is an assistant at St. Patrick’s in Sutherland, a suburb of Sydney, will meet his extended Greek family at his aunt and uncle’s house after celebrating Easter Mass on Sunday morning.

“They’ll put on a big Easter spread with lamb; that’s the classic meat to eat … We all gather together, have a really large meal, and spend the afternoon catching up and talking and spending good quality time together,” he said. 

Another important food item for the Greek Orthodox is Easter cookies called “koulouria” (also known as “koulourakia”), which are butter-based pastries flavored with orange zest and vanilla and often topped with sesame seeds. 

Sofatzis said he taught himself how to make the braided or spiral-shaped cookies so he could keep the tradition alive. “You roll them out and spend a whole day in Holy Week making all the cookies, and then you give them to your friends and family,” he explained. 

When he was young, Sofatzis said there was one Greek tradition he looked forward to with particular joy every year: dyeing hardboiled eggs red, which are then used in an Easter Sunday egg tapping competition. 

“As a child, I would actually do the dyeing,” he said. “I would learn from my grandmother, and I would watch how she dyes the eggs, and how she patterned them with leaves and other things, puts the decorations on them.” 

“We say, ‘Christos Anesti!’ [‘Christ is Risen’]. And then you tap the heads of the eggs together, the tops of them, and you see who cracks the other. And then you go round until there’s the champion who has the strongest egg,” Sofatzis described, adding that he will compete against his cousins again this year. 

‘Double celebrations’

While for feast days Lovskiy attends Mass at his church, and his wife attends Divine Liturgy at hers, the rest of the celebrations are always shared, he noted. 

“In our families, both my parents’ and my own, there have never been any distinctions — whether a holiday is Catholic or Orthodox, we celebrate all holidays without any restrictions,” he said. 

Sofatzis’ family would also have “double traditions and double celebrations,” he said, noting that as children, he and his siblings “always enjoyed celebrating Easter twice” — doing all the usual things, like chocolate eggs, for Catholic Easter, and a few weeks later, the Greek traditions for Greek Easter. 

The priest’s Catholic mother, who was born in England, and Greek Orthodox father, who was born on the Greek island of Limnos, agreed before their marriage to baptize and raise their children in the Catholic faith but to send them to a Greek Orthodox primary and secondary school. 

“So it was a very mixed environment. … We grew up with an immersion, you could say, into the Orthodox tradition. We would go to the Divine Liturgy every month with school, sometimes on Thursdays, or sometimes on the weekend, the big feast days,” he said, adding that they took Greek dance lessons and participated in a lot of Greek cultural traditions.

But as a high schooler, doing his own study into papal authority, different understandings of certain scriptural passages, and the historical disputes, Sofatzis knew he wanted to remain Catholic. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 2023. He also has an older brother who is a priest.

While being part of different churches could have been a source of contention, Sofatzis said for his parents, and for him and his dad, there’s always been mutual understanding and support.

Sofatzis said his Greek father has “always been very supportive of me in my vocation. I’ve always known that whatever I wanted to do in life, dad would always support me.”

We’re all trapped on this same train, looking for some kind of escape or relief.  And as we remember at Easter, God is present here with us, in our community.

Scripture for Life: The resurrection is not a mystery to be clung to, but a practice to develop in ever new and deeper ways. 

This recipe from Milk Street Bakes mostly sticks to tradition but amps up the flavor with tangy buttermilk instead of regular milk, along with orange zest and a little Lyle's Golden Syrup for its bittersweet caramel notes. 

For generations, people of the Upper Rio Grande Valley and beyond have walked to reach El Santuario de Chimayó to commemorate Good Friday.