Pope Francis appealed to South Sudan leaders to "lower the tension in the country" as Catholic bishops in Sudan and South Sudan expressed alarm at the escalating violence in the world's youngest nation and warned of a catastrophe if full-scale war returns.
OSV News interviewed Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas for his thoughts on current U.S. immigration policy and the challenges faced by those he serves in his borderlands community.
The number of Catholics and permanent deacons in the world rose in 2023, while the number of seminarians, priests, men and women in religious orders, and baptisms all declined, according to Vatican statistics.
It was an all too familiar scene in Starke during the March 20 execution of Eddie James. Two groups trying to make sense of proper punishment of a man who murdered two people — a grandmother and a child.
Some clutched rosaries, others took selfies or touched the protective glass in front of the seemingly sleeping young man, who died of leukemia at 15 in 2006 and is generating a devotion that astonishes even Assisi's bishop.
Representatives of Catholic and immigration advocacy organizations, and Washington's new Cardinal Robert McElroy, grappled with the need to send a clear moral message on the dignity of migrants amid the "uncertainty" of the political moment at a recent event in the nation's capital.
The U.S. should not retreat from its vital role in defending and promoting religious freedom around the globe, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged in a March 25 event unveiling its 2025 annual report. The cover of the report featured Bishop Rolando Álvarez, a Catholic prelate imprisoned and later exiled by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, whose regime has targeted Catholic and other faith communities who voiced opposition to his dictatorship.
