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Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr on Saturday urged Catholics in the state of Ohio to reject a November ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights under the state's constitution. The amendment, if passed, would dictate that Ohio “shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against” a woman’s attempt to get an abortion. State law currently prohibits abortion after the point at which an unborn child’s heartbeat is detected, generally around six weeks of pregnancy. Under the amendment, lawmakers could prohibit abortion “after fetal viability,” or when a child could survive outside its mother’s uterus, generally at around 24 weeks of pregnancy. The state would be prohibited from doing so, however, in cases where a doctor determined that an abortion was necessary to protect the mother’s “life or health.” The archbishop urged Catholics to pray for the amendment’s defeat, to raise awareness of the measure, and to vote against the initiative in the November 7 general election.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255086/cincinnati-archbishop-urges-catholics-to-reject-state-abortion-amendment-in-november
The Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas, has removed two of its incardinated priests from ministry after receiving substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse. Father Alejandro Ortega of St. Monica Catholic Church in Converse, and Father Jesus Eduardo “Lalo” Martinez-Solis of St. Joseph-Honey Creek church in Spring Branch were both accused of sexually abusing minors. The allegations were referred to law enforcement, the archdiocese said. Both men had their faculties removed and are prohibited from identifying themselves as priests. They are forbidden from wearing clerical clothing and using clerical titles.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255088/san-antonio-archdiocese-removes-two-priests-over-allegations-of-child-sex-abuse
The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega prohibited two priests from returning to Nicaragua from Lisbon, Portugal, where they participated in World Youth Day, a lawyer who has conducted research into the human rights abuses of the regime reported. Lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina said that Father Tomás Sergio Zamora Calderón and Father William Mora were returning to Nicaragua after participating in World Youth Dayin Lisbon, August 1-6, attended by Pope Francis and more than a million young people from around the world, including a delegation from Nicaragua. In recent months the dictatorship of Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, has denied entry to Nicaragua "to more than half a dozen priests and lay people, most of them Nicaraguan citizens."
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255090/dictatorship-in-nicaragua-blocks-two-priests-who-attended-wyd-from-returning-to-the-country
Today, Catholics and many other Christians celebrate 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. 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