OSV News

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.

Since Christmas, Nicaraguan police and paramilitaries have detained more than a dozen priests, including an archdiocesan vicar, as the Sandinista regime escalates a campaign of terror against the Catholic Church -- an institution it has struggled to subdue.

As Pope Francis seeks to include more women in key church leadership positions, a Catholic social worker has been named to a pioneering post for women in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Caritas Dairy was inspired by Pope Francis' call for a more inclusive and sustainable food system, which supports farmers in producing and improving their capacities and resilience, said Archbishop Philip Subira Anyolo of Nairobi.

Six lay staff members from a now-closed diocesan Cáritas chapter were convicted on money laundering charges in Nicaragua on Christmas Eve as the Sandinista regime stepped up its crackdown on the Catholic Church over the Christmas season. The Nicaraguan government has also forbidden the enactment of traditional "posadas," the living Nativity scenes created in the streets in the days leading up to Christmas.