OSV News

The situation in the Gaza Strip is "extremely catastrophic," and people are dying not only from violence but from preventable illnesses, said the CEO of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Shortly after New Year's Day, 32 kidnapped migrants appeared in the border city of Rio Bravo, Mexico, after a media storm over their disappearance -- having been forced off an intercity bus by a drug cartel convoy.

Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana, passed away unexpectedly late Jan 19 due to complications from recent health problems, according to a post from the diocese. He was 63.

Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria has ended publication of The Catholic Post, the newspaper of the Diocese of Peoria founded nearly 90 years ago, and announced that "as we look to the future, we will develop new strategies in a wider communications plan."

Catholic Energies, an initiative of the Washington-based Catholic Climate Covenant, has converted three of the Passionist order's sites to solar energy, in New York, West Hartford, Connecticut, and — just since this past September — San Juan, Puerto Rico.

With a Wisconsin judge suspending his last remaining criminal trial for sexual abuse, former cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been granted a legal reprieve -- but clergy abuse survivors told OSV News the decision is a kind of "re-sentencing" for them and many fellow victims.

The Michigan Attorney General's Office Jan. 8 released its second of seven expected reports related to clergy sexual abuse in Michigan's seven dioceses and outlined its findings related to abuse allegations in the Diocese of Gaylord.

One of the most dangerous vices is gluttony, turning people who are meant to be custodians of creation into mere consumers and even exploiters and predators, Pope Francis said Jan. 10 at his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

As immigration shapes up to become a key election issue in 2024, the church must remain steadfast in its advocacy for migrants, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, told OSV News.

A now-retired Missouri priest has been barred from hearing confessions, months after diocesan tribunal judges found he had abused his ecclesiastical office through financial misconduct.

The Nashville Diocese said Jan. 6 that the associate pastor at a Franklin Catholic parish, Fr. Juan Carlos Garcia, has been removed from his parish post and from public ministry while the Franklin City Police Department investigates reports of sexual misconduct allegedly involving the priest.

The firing of a Catholic school teacher in a Long Island, New York, diocese for having an adult same-sex relationship has sparked protests, highlighting tensions between the local church's expectations for employees to abide by church teachings and confusion among rank-and-file Catholics about the Vatican's signals regarding same-sex couples following its decree permitting them non-liturgical blessings.

An Alabama Catholic priest has now been fully returned to the lay state months after he fled the country with a recent Catholic high school graduate whose parents expressed concern she had been groomed by the cleric while she was still a minor.

Bishop David O'Connell of Trenton, 68, suffered a heart attack Jan. 4 while in Rome and was taken to Santo Spirito hospital where he had emergency surgery to open a completely closed artery, according to a Jan. 5 diocesan statement.

A multiyear investigation overseen by the Catholic Church into Archbishop John Nienstedt, who resigned from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2015, has ended with the Vatican finding that he acted "imprudently" in several instances but not criminally under canon law, Archbishop Bernard Hebda said in a statement Jan. 5.

Gov. Caleb Mutfwang of Nigeria's Plateau state declared a week of mourning Jan. 1-8 to honor the deaths of at least 200 Christians killed over Christmas by Fulani Muslim herders, targeting Christians in the country. Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, Nigeria, said the attackers are "children of darkness" and come "from the deepest pit of hell."

In 2006, the U.S. bishops, along with other groups, founded Catholic Climate Covenant. This nonprofit offers a pledge you can take, and what better New Year's resolution to make than a commitment to our common home?

The U.S. Department of State has demanded the release of Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa and other imprisoned Nicaraguan religious leaders following a wave of detentions targeting Catholic clergy over the Christmas season.

Dublin, Ireland Archbishop Dermot Farrell has expressed concern over the "significant numbers" of people in Ireland "seeking to foment disinformation, suspicion and hatred" towards refugees and migrants.