A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts.
www.catholicnewsagency.com
-
At least 40 people — most of them children — died in a fire in a Coptic Orthodox church in Giza Governorate, Egypt, on Sunday, according to government and church officials. The cause of the blaze has so far not been established. Reuters reported that an electrical fire broke out at the church where people gathered during the Divine Liturgy celebration. The blaze reportedly blocked the exit from the church and caused a stampede.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252035/reports-of-at-least-40-people-most-of-them-children-killed-in-church-fire-in-egypt
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that he spoke with Pope Francis over the phone on Friday and thanked the pope for his prayers and humanitarian support. In a tweet posted on August 12, Zelenskyy wrote that he had briefed the pope on Russia’s “horrible crimes” and aggression against Ukraine. “Our people need support of world spiritual leaders who should convey to the world the truth about acts of horror committed by the aggressor,” the Ukrainian president said. Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his interest in a potential visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Pope Francis is scheduled to participate in September in the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Kazakhstan, where he could potentially meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who is expected to participate in the congress.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252031/in-phone-call-president-zelenskyy-thanks-pope-francis-for-praying-for-ukraine
At least seven people have been arrested in connection with a devastating June massacre at a Catholic Church in Nigeria, the governor of Ondo State in the West African country has confirmed. Four of the arrests were made on August 1, according to General Lucky Irabor, Chief of Nigeria’s Defense Staff. One of the arrested suspects is a high-ranking member of ISWAP — the so-called Islamic State in West Africa Province and a breakaway faction of Boko Haram, a group that at least one government official had blamed following the attack. Two other suspects were arrested Aug. 9, and Ondo State’s governor, Arakunrin Akeredolu, reported that another person who housed the suspects before the attack was also arrested, Vatican News reported. It has not yet been announced if the suspects have been formally charged, and their names have not been released. On June 5, several gunmen attacked Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, Nigeria, killing at least 40 people and injuring scores more with bullets and explosives. The victims spanned in age from a 2- and a 3-year-old all the way to 85.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252029/arrests-made-in-nigeria-pentecost-massacre
Today, the Church celebrates the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This significant feast day recalls the spiritual and physical departure of the mother of Jesus Christ from the earth, when both her soul and her body were taken into the presence of God. Although the bodily assumption of Mary is not explicitly recorded in Scripture, Catholic tradition identifies her with the “woman clothed with the sun” who is described in the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation. Venerable Pope Pius XII confirmed this belief about the Virgin Mary as the perennial teaching of the Church when he defined it formally as a dogma of Catholic faith in 1950, invoking papal infallibility to proclaim, “that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/the-assumption-561