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
-
A Catholic diocese in Nigeria has announced “with joy” the release of a priest held captive for 40 days. The Diocese of Zaria in Kaduna State, northern Nigeria, said that Father Felix Zakari Fidson was released on May 3. Father Fidson had been abducted shortly after he left his residence at Saint Ann’s Zango Tama II on his way to the diocesan headquarters on Thursday, March 24, 2022. Nigeria has been experiencing insecurity since 2009, when a Boko Haram insurgency began with the aim of establishing an Islamic state. In 2021 alone, at least 25 Catholic priests and pastors in Nigeria were either killed or abducted.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251154/catholic-priest-in-nigeria-released-40-days-after-abduction
At the Vatican’s finance trial on Thursday, Cardinal Angelo Becciu said that Pope Francis had allowed the spending up to 1 million euros toward the liberation of a missionary nun abducted in Mali. Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez Argoti was kidnapped in February 2017 and held until her October 9, 2021 release. Becciu, who was the second-ranking official in the Secretariat of State from 2011 to 2018, said a security consultant advised the pope that she could work with a British intelligence firm, The Inkerman Group, to secure the nun’s release. The trial in which this information came out is still ongoing.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251156/pope-francis-permitted-spending-dollar-1m-to-free-nun-kidnapped-in-mali-cardinal-says
Today, the Church celebrates Saint Evodius of Antioch, one of the 72 disciples of Christ. Catholic tradition has always held that he was the first bishop of Antioch after Saint Peter. As bishop of Antioch, he was the first to coin the word “Christian” to refer to the disciples of Jesus. He probably died between the years 64-67, when he was then succeeded by Saint Ignatius of Antioch.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-evodius-of-antioch-468