Religion News Service

"I've got bruises all over my body," the Rev. Michael Woolf, who was thrown to the ground and arrested by police, said.

Like his five fellow defendants, Brian Straw was flanked by supporters as he entered the courtroom at the Everett Dirksen federal courthouse on Wednesday (Nov. 12) for his arraignment on charges related to protests that have taken place for weeks outside an immigrant processing facility in Broadview.

 

For three Guatemalan roofers, there has only been one place they have found community in the six years since the first one arrived here — Catholic Mass. As one of the three men, the most talkative of the Mayan language Q'eqchi'-speaking group, put it, "We don't know anybody other than the parish here."

If the U.S. bishops, meeting in Baltimore this week, could speak with one voice united with the pope, they would project a moral voice worth listening to.

At 25, Jane Sammon was drawn to the movement's love for the Catholic Church, their willingness to live in voluntary poverty and their readiness to risk jail opposing the Vietnam War.

In a city of about 100,000, the 13,000 parishioners at St. Francis of Assisi have become a force to be reckoned with. 

"It is important that our Catholic detainees are able to receive pastoral care and have access to the sacraments," Bishop Kevin Rhoades told RNS. "Their religious liberty, part of their human dignity, needs to be respected."

The skills that sustain interfaith marriages require the same virtues that sustain a pluralistic society.

The Episcopal Diocese of Texas announced on Saturday (Nov. 1) that one of its priests, a Kenyan national, has been detained by immigration officials despite working in the state legally.

"We will not retreat, and we will use every nonviolent tool at our disposal, to call this nation, this Congress, to stop all of this partisan fighting and get down to the business of the people," said the Rev. William Barber II.

 'The detention conditions are horrid, and they're almost jubilant about those conditions,' said the vice president for advocacy at Jesuit Refugee Service/USA during a webinar his organization held with Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski. Wenski continues to be the only archbishop in the nation allowed to provide a consistent flow of priests inside immigrant detention facilities in Florida.

Johnson initially claimed he was not aware of the instances, despite having been directly asked about one of the incidents in a press conference earlier this month.

Disaster relief groups have moved supplies into place, mobilized volunteers and started raising funds to respond to Hurricane Melissa, which has killed more than 20 people and flooded out thousands in the Caribbean.

Latino Christian leaders meeting in Southern California discussed how best to pastor congregations newly traumatized by the Trump mass deportation policy.

As older progressive priests retire or die, younger conservative priests will have a profound impact on parish life. A new study of U.S. priests gives us data on which to reflect as the church faces its future.

Leaders of Washington-area congregations are responding to the continuing federal government shutdown with many approaches, including encouraging employees going to work without pay, offering food and, in some cases, giving financial assistance.