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
-
Acknowledging the discouragement that can be experienced by Catholic leaders in secularizing societies, Pope Francis on Wednesday urged a gathering of Portuguese clergy, consecrated people, and pastoral workers to stay in the boat with Jesus and revive their “restless” enthusiasm for spreading the Gospel. The pope delivered the encouraging message in his homily for Wednesday vespers, or evening prayer, to bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, seminarians, and pastoral workers gathered in the church of Lisbon’s iconic Mosterio dos Jerónimos, a former monastery now used as a public ceremony hall and museum space. The official welcoming ceremony for World Youth Day with Pope Francis will take place at Meeting Hill (Eduardo VII Park) later today.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254976/pope-francs-world-youth-day-lisbon-vespers-evangelization
The chairman of the US bishops’ peace committee this week urged Catholics to pray fervently for progress in nuclear arms control, warning of the thousands of nuclear weapons in the world today and the “horrors” that would result from a nuclear exchange, ahead of the 78th anniversary of the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those attacks brought about an end to World War II at the cost of upwards of 200,000 Japanese civilian lives; they remain to date the only use of nuclear weapons in war. “With the wars and threat of wars today, the menace of over 10,000 nuclear weapons in our world must not recede further from the public consciousness of today’s generation,” the bishops said. The bishop in his statement urged the world to “remain vigilant never to lose sight of the extraordinary dangers these weapons pose to humanity” and to “be attentive to the differences between just and unjust considerations of statecraft.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254979/bishop-s-peace-chairman-warns-of-menace-of-nuclear-weapons
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) last week requested that Governor Ron DeSantis “choose life” and stay the execution of James Phillip Barnes, who is scheduled to die Thursday, and commute his sentence to life without parole. Barnes, 61, strangled his wife, Linda, to death in 1997. While serving a life sentence for that crime, he confessed in 2005 to the 1988 murder of Patricia “Patsy” Miller, a Melbourne, Florida, nurse. Barnes himself has dropped all legal appeals after doctors declared him competent to understand his legal situation and has said he wants to accept his punishment. “Simply put, no one should be executed in our modern penal system, even if they willingly accept it. The alternative punishment of life in prison without parole is a severe penalty that still provides closure to victims and protects society,” the bishops said.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254977/florida-bishops-request-clemency-for-death-row-inmate
Today, the Church celebrates Saint Nicodemus, a secret disciple of Jesus. As a member of the Sanhedrin, he would meet Jesus by night so that the others would not see him with Jesus. Eventually, it was Nicodemus who reminded the Sanhedrin that Jesus had the right to a trial. Together with Saint Joseph of Arimathea, he prepared Jesus' body and placed him in the tomb. Tradition holds that Saint Nicodemus was martyred, though no record remains.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-nicodemus-552