St. Columba Catholic Church

National Catholic Register, Oct 9, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA).

A new film called “Return to Our Lady of Champion” will premiere on EWTN on the day the national shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Champion celebrates the second annual solemnity of Our Lady of Champion — Oct. 9. The documentary focuses on three bishops most responsible for bringing the shrine to national attention.

The film follows Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wisconsin; Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh; and Bishop John Doerfler of Marquette, Michigan, as they return to the shrine to discuss their part in the events leading up to Our Lady of Champion being declared the only approved Marian apparition in the United States and this shrine being raised to national status.

In the film, the bishops also share their own Marian stories, highlighting how their devotion to Our Lady began in their youth and how that devotion eventually tied into their roles as these events progressed. In the film, viewers hear firsthand the bishops’ vivid memories.

“I have to say there’s no question in my mind that this is an act of divine providence,” Zubik said, recounting his own introduction to this holy ground in Champion and learning about the three apparitions of Our Lady to Adele Brise in 1859.

Neither Zubik (who shepherded the Diocese of Green Bay from 2003 to 2007) nor Ricken had ever heard about the apparitions in Champion before they were appointed to head the Green Bay Diocese.

“I say to people, even today, the Queen of Heaven touched down right here — not quite fully — but she touched down right here. She loved us so much,” Ricken said.

When he arrived in the diocese in 2008, he immediately wanted to learn all about the shrine. In the film, he recalls those early days, learning about Brise, the “seer” of Our Lady of Champion, and the area, and seeing the providential connections, such as the name of this Dairy State town being the same name as Brise’s hometown of Champion, Belgium. “So there’s a lot to study here, a lot to get to know,” he said.

“It’s just a beautiful tapestry, a Mary tapestry, to see what she does,” Ricken emphasized. This includes how the lives and devotions of the bishops played into the whole process of bringing the devotion and the shrine to prominence. Their personal stories of how they came to love Mary were part of their personal preparation, not realized at the time, for when they arrived here. Ricken shares a heartwarming example: how, as a young child, he learned of Mary and the rosary from his mother — and how that all became part of overcoming asthma attacks.

As close-up listeners to the conversation of the three bishops, viewers hear their thoughts about Brise’s simplicity and call to teach the faith. Highlights of these segments include shots of the apparition chapel and the shrine grounds. 

The bishops also speak clearly and conversationally about the theology of Marian apparitions. 

“It was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the nudging of Our Lady that moved me in the direction to say we should take a look at this a little further,” Zubik noted. He then recalled giving then-Father Doerfler, who was his chancellor and vicar general at the time, the task of researching the apparitions. Later, Doerfler also became rector at the shrine for two years when it was first known as the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help.

When Ricken arrived, the approval process ramped up. 

“What a wonderful gift this is as a bishop to be able to walk into a place where Our Lady appeared,” he said joyfully. He also recounts some of the stories of answered prayers and healings from people he encountered during visits to the shrine. “I like to listen to people,” he said.

Following are his recollections about the steps to declaring these authentic apparitions and establishing the national shrine.

Viewers learn from the bishops’ conversations fascinating personal connections between them and these Marian appearances.

For example, Ricken shared that he attended seminary at the American College in Louvain, Belgium. He discovered it “was only 11 kilometers [7 miles] from Champion, Adele’s hometown, where she was going to join the convent. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a strange coincidence.’ And so I understood something of the Belgian culture by my three years there and studying the faith of the people there and understanding what their approach was. Then I could start to see maybe I was chosen because of that background,” he recalled.

In Wisconsin “this town is named after Champion [Belgium], which is where Adele made her promises,” Ricken added. “And she felt she lived out her promises here in this place in Champion, Wisconsin.”

The bishops also discuss the “heavenly peace,” as pilgrims describe it, found at the shrine. Some beautiful insights on Jesus and Mary healing divided hearts are also presented.

Doerfler observed that the “answer to so many divisions we’re experiencing is a return to the Lord, and … this is what Mary wants. She wants to bring people to her Son, to heal the divided human heart.”

Ricken shared how he goes to the apparition room, which contains a chapel, and tells “the Blessed Mother this, this, this, this. … I’m kneeling there before the statue, and she just looks at you — I’ve had experiences where those eyes seem alive, and a lot of people do. … She always centers you back on, ‘Follow me. Follow me as I lead you to peace. Follow me.’ That’s what Jesus said, ‘Follow me. I’m the giver of peace. Come to the Giver.’ We work here. We’re at her service. So when she tells us she wants this, we’ll do it. The future is in her hands. We don’t know how to do it [but] we’ll take a step of faith and do it.”

The other bishops also discuss the poignant moments of prayer while walking the perimeter of the property praying the rosary, as Brise and other local faithful did during the Peshtigo fire in 1871.

The engrossing and enlightening conversation of this trio of bishops closest to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion draws viewers ever closer to the shrine and to our Blessed Mother, who reminded the faithful in rural Wisconsin: “Go and fear nothing; I will help you.”

WATCH

“Return to Our Lady of Champion” will premiere on EWTN on Oct. 9 at 10 p.m. ET.

VISIT

Here is the schedule of events for the solemnity at Our Lady of Champion Shrine, Oct. 7–9.

This article was first published by the National Catholic Register on Oct. 8, 2024, and has been adapted by CNA.

Is today's Republican Party capable of exercising any check on Donald Trump? Which senator would have the courage to say no to a reelected Trump?

CNA Staff, Oct 8, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

A charter school in Oklahoma is aiming to be the first publicly-funded religious charter school in the United States after it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday after lower courts ruled against it this summer.

St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School and Oklahoma’s charter school board filed separate petitions Oct. 7 with the Supreme Court after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled last summer that the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board could not authorize a charter with a Catholic school.

The court in its ruling said that extending public funding to a religious school would be a “slippery slope” that could lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.”

The court subsequently ordered the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to rescind the school’s contract.

St. Isidore petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Oklahoma decision on the basis of Supreme Court precedent and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment on Monday. The school was represented by the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic of Notre Dame Law School, a teaching law practice that trains Notre Dame law students.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal nonprofit that defends First Amendment rights, filed a petition the same day on behalf of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board.

In the Oct. 7 petition, ADF argued that the Oklahoma Supreme Court had ruled contrary to the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court, which “has repeatedly struck down states’ attempts to exclude religious schools, parents, and students from publicly available benefits based solely on their religion.”

For instance, a 2022 Supreme Court ruling found that Maine couldn’t exclude religious schools from a tuition aid program because it violates the free exercise clause.

Michael Scaperlanda, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and chairman of the board of St. Isidore, said that a mission of Catholic education “is to serve the whole community by building new learning opportunities so that every child can thrive in a school that suits her own needs.”

“Too many children in our state don’t have that chance,” Scaperlanda said in an Oct. 7 statement. “We want to help solve that problem by opening a school for children who find the available options unable to meet their needs and who lack the resources to consider other choices.”

Oklahoma ranked 49th in education in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, with 84% of its eighth graders testing “not proficient” in math and 76% of its fourth graders “not proficient” in reading.

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more choices, not fewer. There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs,” ADF senior counsel Phil Sechler said in an Oct. 7 statement. “The U.S. Constitution protects St. Isidore’s freedom to operate according to its faith and supports the board’s decision to approve such learning options for Oklahoma families.”

Sechler said the case is about “bolster[ing] religious freedom across Oklahoma.”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 8, 2024 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

A group of 10 scientists is suing the publisher that retracted their studies showing the health risks associated with abortion drugs.

The suit against Sage Publications, filed on Oct. 3 in the Superior Court for Ventura County, California, alleges that the researchers’ studies were retracted simply because of the scientists’ pro-life views.

At the center of the lawsuit are three studies that Sage published in the scientific journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology (HSRME) in 2019, 2021, and 2022.

One of the articles was cited heavily in the recent Supreme Court case AHM v. FDA in which a coalition of doctors from the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and several other groups sought to compel the FDA to revoke its approval of the abortion drug mifepristone because of its associated dangers to women’s health and well-being.

The scientists argue that while their studies were peer-reviewed and had previously been praised for their academic rigor, the publisher retracted them in bad faith for political reasons.

The scientists are being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom and Consovoy McCarthy PLLC.

What did the chemical abortion study say?

The 2021 study cited in AHM v. FDA said that emergency room visits “are at greater risk to occur following a chemical rather than a surgical abortion.”

It showed that in a study cohort of 423,000 women undergoing chemical abortions between 1999 and 2015, there were 121,283 subsequent emergency room visits occurring within 30 days of the procedure.

The study concluded that “the incidence and per-abortion rate of ER visits following any induced [chemical] abortion are growing, but chemical abortion is consistently and progressively associated with more postabortion ER visit morbidity than surgical abortion.”

The study also said that there is a “distinct trend of a growing number of women miscoded as receiving treatment for spontaneous abortion in the ER following a chemical abortion.”

Why were the studies retracted?

As AHM v. FDA was working its way through the courts in 2023, Chris Adkins, a professor at the South University School of Pharmacy in Savannah, Georgia, submitted a concern to Sage in which he accused the scientists associated with the three studies of exaggerating their findings and misrepresenting the data in ways that were “grossly misleading.”

States Newsroom, which first reported on Adkins’ accusations, reported him saying of the researchers: “I can’t prove that there was intent to deceive, but I struggled to find an alternative reason to present your data in such a way that exaggerates the magnitude.”

States Newsroom also reported that Adkins was worried about the legal status of abortion after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

“I now have a daughter that is born in a world where there is no Roe v. Wade, no federal recognition that women have the right of bodily autonomy,” Adkins said, adding: “I’m going to support her in whatever way I can.” 

After learning of Adkins’ concerns Sage discovered that all but one of the article’s authors had an affiliation with one or more of the pro-life organizations the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Elliot Institute, and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Sage claimed that this presented a conflict of interest regarding the studies concerning abortion.

Sage also conducted a post-publication peer review in which they claimed to have identified “fundamental problems with the study design and methodology, unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions, material errors in the authors’ analysis of the data, and misleading presentations of the data.”

Sage concluded that the studies demonstrated a “lack of scientific rigor” that “invalidate[s] the authors’ conclusions in whole or in part.”

Scientists respond

In their lawsuit, the studies’ authors claim that they “complied with all submission guidelines and all requirements in Sage’s publishing agreements.”

The suit said that “following each submission, HSRME conducted a double-blind peer review of each article, which Sage claims is thorough and rigorous” and that “after peer review, HSRME accepted all three articles for publication.”

According to the suit, the authors’ attempts to respond to the accusations and to prove the scientific validity of their studies were rebuffed and ignored by Sage.

In addition to retracting the studies, the lead researcher associated with the articles, Dr. James Studnicki, was removed from the board of the HSRME without any prior notice and with no explanation other than his association with the retracted articles.

The researchers allege that Sage intentionally sought to discredit them and ruin their reputations because of their pro-life views.

“Sage’s wrongdoing,” the suit states, “has been causing enormous and incalculable harm to the authors’ professional reputations, as Sage intended.”

Phil Sechler, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement announcing the suit that “politics should never sway science, especially when that science is vital for saving and protecting lives.”

“Sage punished these highly respected and credentialed scientists simply because they believe in preserving life from conception to natural death,” he continued. “These actions have caused irreparable harm to the authors of these articles, and we are urging Sage to come to the arbitration table — as it is legally bound to do — rescind the retractions, and remedy the reputational damage the researchers have suffered at the hands of abortion lobbyists.”

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oct 8, 2024 / 15:45 pm (CNA).

“Mother, Under Your Gaze We Seek Unity” was the theme that brought together more than 2.3 million of the faithful this past weekend to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lujan in Argentina as part of the 50th Youth Pilgrimage.

Coming from the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, which organized the pilgrimage through the Popular Piety Commission, the pilgrims began to arrive in Luján during the day on Saturday under a radiant sun after walking more than 37 miles to the shrine and continued to pour in on Sunday.

On their way, they received the blessing of priests, support from volunteers, and inspiration from music groups from the different dioceses of western Buenos Aires.

Upon arriving at the basilica in Luján, they were able to attend different Masses. The main Mass of the day for the huge crowd of pilgrims was held at 7 a.m. and celebrated by the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge García Cuerva, who arrived on foot from St. Cajetan Shrine located in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Liniers.

In his homily, the prelate addressed a few words to the Virgin of Luján: “To say to you ‘mother’ unites us; there is the foundation to begin to build the national unity so longed for,” he said.

“Saying to you ‘mother,’ ‘mom,’ makes us children and brothers and sisters. That is how we came on pilgrimage. As a people, all so different, all so equal. We have traveled many kilometers, we have brought our intentions to Mary” in an experience “with others” and with “solidarity and joy.”

Citing the “youth of 1975,” protagonists of the first Youth Pilgrimage to Luján, he said: “In each step we have taken up to this point we have experienced what it is to be a people who walk together toward their ideal of freedom and justice. And that is why we came. It is because we young people are increasingly understanding that we are part of a people, the people of God in Latin America, whose heart is the humble and the workers.”

‘Mother, look at your weary people’

At the feet of the Virgin, the archbishop referred to the situation in Argentina, with so many children “trapped by drugs,” others sick, young people “distressed by not being able to realize their life projects,” and those who “cannot make ends meet to feed their families.”

“Mother, look at your weary people, look at your people who are making a great effort to hold on to hope, to shoulder the country and overcome the crisis that we have been going through for years,” he prayed. “Look at your pilgrim people, who come with all their intentions, with their wounds and hopes.”

A call to humility ‘to build bridges’

The archbishop then referred to the poverty index for the first half of 2024 in Argentina: “In the face of crises, the wise seek solutions, the mediocre seek those to blame. There are many mediocre people who, faced with the appalling and painful 52.9% index of poverty, began to look for those to blame,” he said.

“From the house of Mary, we ask you: Please unite behind two or three important issues for all Argentines. Let us ask for the humility to work with others, to create consensus and agreements, and to build bridges, because the bravest thing we can do is ask for help,” he urged.

“Let us not give up on being brothers and sisters, on seeking solutions together, on building a more just and fraternal homeland, on freeing ourselves from prejudices, hatred, and sterile confrontations, on continuing to entrust our lives to the Virgin of Luján,” he urged, assuring that she “encourages us to continue walking in life, weary, but not dejected, beaten, but with hope and without giving up.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

CNA Staff, Oct 8, 2024 / 14:30 pm (CNA).

A Los Angeles Catholic church has been vandalized four times in the past two months.  

St. Francis de Sales in Sherman Oaks was damaged from graffiti and arson attacks on four occasions, beginning in August and continuing through September, said Father Michael Wakefield, the parish’s pastor. 

On Aug. 7, the parish’s beloved statue of St. Francis de Sales — the patron saint of the parish — was vandalized with yellow paint. The statue stands in front of the main doors of the church in the San Fernando Valley. 

Just over a week later, on Aug. 16, a window at the rectory where Wakefield lives was set on fire. The bottom-right corner of the window was set on fire, and the fire burned through the inside, scorching the interior venetian blinds, Wakefield recounted. 

“Fortunately, the fire burned out before any additional damage was caused,” he told CNA. 

Just over a month later, on Sept. 20, the St. Francis de Sales statue was vandalized a second time. “The ... letters ‘chomo’ are slang for ‘child molester,’” Wakefield explained. This vandalism is being treated as a “hate crime” by local police, he said.

A week later, on Sept. 8, the statue was vandalized a third time with black spray paint, though nothing was written on it. 

“Our maintenance person has cleaned the statue twice and is in the process of cleaning it a third time,” Wakefield said.

Wakefield notified the LAPD Van Nuys Division each time and said the parish plans to install additional security cameras this week. 

“Officers arrived and took my statement and completed a report leaving us the incident number,” he said. “The fire of the rectory window triggered a visit from the police officers as well as arson investigators.”  

“It is dispiriting and unnerving,” Wakefield said when asked for his reaction to the events. “Our churches are places of peace where God’s love is proclaimed.”

“I feel sad for the person or persons who are in such torment to do such acts,” he continued. “Our religious images, whether in marble or plaster or wood, point to the holy person each represents. Therefore an attack on a religious image is an act of desecration.” 

“But, we go forward confident of the intercession of the all-holy Mother of God and of St. Francis de Sales,” he noted. “God’s love is always more powerful than anything the human can produce.”  

A local report noted that there have been many cases of vandalism in the area in recent months, including arson, window-smashing, and break-ins at local businesses, according to KTLA 5.

The City of Los Angeles Public Record Reports did not respond to a request for police reports by the time of publication. 

Vatican City, Oct 8, 2024 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

Cardinals-designate from three continents said Tuesday the Church in the global south has a lot of nonmaterial gifts to share with the West, including the richness of priestly vocations and a joy-filled faith.

“When the Holy Father is talking about peripheries, I think the peripheries are moving. ... Maybe the peripheries are moving towards Europe,” Tokyo’s Archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, SVD, said in response to a question from CNA during a press briefing on the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 8.

The Japanese bishop’s comments on the contributions of the Church outside Europe were echoed by Archbishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo of Korhogo, Ivory Coast, and Archbishop Jaime Spengler, OFM, of Porto Alegre, Brazil, who also participated in the press briefing. 

All three men are participants in the synod and will be made cardinals at a consistory on Dec. 8, as announced by Pope Francis on Sunday.

The cardinal-designate from the Ivory Coast, Dogbo, said the Synod on Synodality discussed the theme of the exchange of gifts on Tuesday morning.

“We who come from African dioceses, we can say that they seem to be poor from a material standpoint, but spiritually these dioceses are so rich. And faith is lived with joy,” he said. “And this is something we must share with the universal Church.”

He also mentioned the great grace of many priestly vocations in the Church in Africa.

Kikuchi of Tokyo also pointed out the large number of vocations to the priesthood coming from countries in Asia, though he remarked that Japan is unfortunately not included in this.

“There is a point in [the synodal assembly] in which we discussed the exchange of gifts from one Church to the other — those who have and those who don’t have. Formerly it was understood as rich Churches, those who have money and resources, who support the poor countries like in Asia and Africa,” Kikuchi said. 

With more priestly vocations coming from Asian and African countries, however, “the exchange of gifts is changing ... from the developing countries to the developed countries,” he said.

Spengler, president of the Brazilian bishops’ conference and president of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) since 2023, said Brazil and other Latin American countries are celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of immigrants from Germany, Italy, and other countries to the continent.

“Somehow [these immigrants] promoted a process of evangelization in Latin America in a historical context other than our own, and they did this so well,” he said. “Today, if we have a Christian tradition that is strong and lively [in Latin America] we owe it to immigrants.”

The archbishop said the immigrants were brave to leave their own countries and cross the ocean, in some cases more than 200 years ago, to a continent where there was little at the time. But most importantly, he added, they brought the Catholic faith with them.

He said today’s challenge for the Church in traditionally Christian countries is understanding how to present the faith to the next generation.

Vatican City, Oct 8, 2024 / 13:30 pm (CNA).

The Synod on Synodality, meant to be a moment of encounter and dialogue for the global Church, has provided a venue for Catholic bishops from mainland China and Taiwan to meet together.

Bishop Norbert Pu is Taiwan’s first Indigenous bishop. He is a member of the Tsou community and has translated liturgical texts into the Tsou language. The 66-year-old bishop of Chiayi is a delegate in the nearly monthlong synod assembly as a representative of the Chinese Regional Bishops’ Conference of Taiwan.

In an interview with CNA, Pu said he is most looking forward to getting to know the different bishops, cardinals, and synod delegates from other parts of the world gathered at the Vatican for the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of Bishops.

Pu noted that he had already met with the two bishops from mainland China taking part in the synod and plans to meet with them again.

“It’s very important to dialogue with them, to respect each other. I think it’s good … not only for the Chinese, for the whole Church,” the Taiwanese bishop said.

Bishop Antonio Yao Shun of Jining, the first bishop consecrated in China under the terms of the Sino-Vatican agreement, represented the Church in China at the synod assembly in October 2023 along with Chinese Archbishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang before the two suddenly departed early without explanation. 

Yao has said that many of the participants in last year’s synod assembly “showed interest in the development of the Church in China, eager to know more and to pray for us.”

The synod also provided an opportunity for the bishops from the People’s Republic of China to spend time with the bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Stephen Chow. 

During last year’s synod assembly, the cardinal and the two bishops even took a brief trip together to Naples where they offered Mass at the Chiesa della Sacra Famiglia dei Cinesi (Church of the Holy Family of the Chinese), a church built in 1732 as part of an institute founded by Pope Clement XII to train Chinese seminarians and teach missionaries the Chinese language to help with the evangelization of China.

A new synod delegate from China

For this year’s assembly, Yao has been replaced by Chinese Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu of Mindong diocese in China’s southern Fujian province.

Zhan Silu, 63, was formerly excommunicated for having been ordained a bishop without a papal mandate in Beijing in 2000. His excommunication was lifted in 2018 when the Vatican signed a historic provisional agreement with the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops.

When Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich was asked why Yao had been replaced by Zhan Silu, the relator general of the synod replied: “The Secretariat of State communicated the names to us, but we have no other information on the matter,” according to Asia News.

Without Yao, Archbishop Yang, 54, is the synod veteran among the two Chinese bishops. Since participating in last year’s synod assembly, Yang has been transferred to the Archdiocese of Hangzhou, a move that took place “within the framework of dialogue” of the provisional agreement with China, according to the Vatican. The change elevated him to the rank of archbishop.

Yang was ordained a bishop with Vatican approval in 2010 and served as the bishop of Zhoucun in mainland China’s Shandong Province from 2013 to June 2024. 

He participated in the 2023 National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body that is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s united front system, where it was decided that the Catholic Church should integrate its thought with the party and unite more closely to Xi Jinping, according to the official website of the Catholic Patriotic Association.

Zhan Silu and Yang are among the 368 voting delegates taking part in the second synod assembly at the Vatican Oct. 2–27.

The synod is taking place amid the ongoing dialogue between Beijing and Rome on the appointment of bishops. The Vatican has yet to announce if it renewed its provisional agreement with China, which is expected to have been renewed this fall for the third time since it was first signed in 2018.

Vatican-Taiwan relations

During the first week of the assembly, some synod delegates took a break from the day’s meetings to join in the celebration of Taiwan’s 113th National Day at a reception organized by the Embassy of the Republic of China to the Holy See just down the street from St. Peter’s Basilica.

Vatican City State is the only remaining country in Europe that recognizes Taiwan as a country.

The Holy See has had formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, formally called the Republic of China (ROC), since 1942, while the Church does not have official diplomatic relations with the mainland People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The island of Taiwan, fewer than 110 miles off the coast of China and home to a population of more than 23 million people, has maintained a vibrant democracy with robust civil liberties despite increased pressure from Beijing regarding the island’s status.

Unlike mainland China — where images of Christ and the Virgin Mary have been replaced with images of President Xi Jinping, according to a report released last week — Catholics in Taiwan enjoy religious freedom, which is enshrined in its constitution.

More than 10,000 people attended the National Eucharistic Congress in Taiwan last weekend, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Pope Francis sent a message to the congress, writing that he hoped it would “arouse in the hearts of the Christian faithful a true worship and love of the Eucharist.” The congress in the Diocese of Kaohsiung was the fifth Eucharistic congress held in Taiwan since 2011.

Bishop Pu told CNA that the congress presented an opportunity to let more people in Taiwan know about the Eucharist and its central importance to the Catholic faith.

“We hope we can always maintain this formal and good relationship with the Vatican. Because for Taiwan, this is very important. We hope that the world will see this because Taiwan is a democratic and free country, respected by other nations,” Pu said.

American Forests, a national conservation organization, is directing millions of dollars from the nation's largest climate law toward faith communities to plant trees in parts of cities long overlooked and underserved.

The Catholic parishes of upper East Tennessee are joining together to lead disaster-relief efforts as communities find themselves without water, basic necessities, and even roads to access assistance.