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Speaking to priests, religious sisters, and missionaries living in Kazakhstan, where Catholics make up less than 1% of the population, Pope Francis on Thursday said that God’s power is made manifest when “we acknowledge our littleness.” “The Gospel says that being little, poor in spirit, is a blessing, a beatitude, and indeed the first of the beatitudes,” Pope Francis said in Nur-Sultan’s Cathedral of Our Lady Of Perpetual Help on September 15. Kazakhstan is a majority-Muslim country home to an ethnically diverse minority of Catholics — an estimated 125,000 out of the Central Asian country’s population of 19 million.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252297/pope-francis-tells-kazakhstan-s-small-catholic-community-being-little-is-a-blessing
Discussing on the flight from Kazakhstan to Italy on Thursday the moral degradation of the West, particularly concerning the advance of legal euthanasia, Pope Francis said the region has taken the wrong path and that killing should be left “to the animals.” Pressed on the problem of euthanasia, Pope Francis said: “To kill is not human, period. If you kill — with motivation yes — in the end you will kill more. It’s not human. Let’s leave killing to the animals.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252304/pope-francis-the-west-has-taken-the-wrong-paths
By a broad majority, members of the European Parliament on Thursday condemned the escalating repression against the Catholic Church and others in Nicaragua. The resolution, passed September 15, criticized the arbitrary “arrest of Bishop Rolando Álvarez” of Matagalpa and called “for his and others’ immediate and unconditional release and the annulment of all legal proceedings against them.” Pope Francis on Thursday called for dialogue, saying: “There have been talks with the government; there is dialogue. That doesn’t mean you approve of everything the government does or you disapprove of everything. It does not. There is dialogue and there is a need to solve problems.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252307/european-parliament-condemns-growing-repression-of-catholic-church-in-nicaragua-calls-for-release-of-bishop
Today, the Church celebrates Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, martyrs. Saint Cornelius was elected Pope in 251 during the persecutions of the Emperor Decius. Cornelius decreed that apostates must be welcomed back and insisted that they perform an adequate penance. In 253 Cornelius was exiled by the emperor Gallus and died of the hardships he endured in exile. Saint Cyprian of Carthage is second in importance only to the great Saint Augustine as a figure and Father of the African church. He was a close friend of Pope Cornelius, and supported him both against the anti-pope Novatian and in his views concerning the re-admittance of apostates into the Church. He was martyred during the persecutions of the emperor Valerian.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-cornelius-pope-martyr-and-st-cyprian-bishop-martyr-596