The regional government of Castile and León in Spain highlighted the beatification cause of Queen Isabella during a meeting with the archbishop of Valladolid and president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, Luis Argüello.
During a meeting between Argüello and the minister of culture, tourism, and sport, Alberto Díaz Pico, the regional government expressed its “interest in promoting the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Philip II (in 2027), as well as highlighting the beatification cause of Isabella, the Catholic Monarch, and its historical and cultural significance,” according to an Aug. 27 statement issued by the government.
Isabella and her husband, King Ferdinand, were given the title “the Catholic Monarchs” by Pope Alexander VI through the papal bull Si Convenit for their defense of the Catholic faith.
“Furthermore, the commitment to continue collaborating with the Church on the conservation, protection, and enhancement of the ecclesiastical heritage of Castile and León has been reaffirmed, with a view to exploring ways to expand and strengthen existing support measures,” the statement added.
The statement also highlighted “the good rapport and the determination to maintain close collaboration on matters of mutual interest regarding the culture, heritage, and history of Castile and León.”
Isabella, the Catholic Monarch
Isabella I of Castile was born in Madrigal de las Altas Torres on April 22, 1451, Holy Thursday that year. After being recognized as Princess of Asturias in 1468, she married Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 and had six children, two of whom predeceased her. Upon the death of Enrique IV, she was proclaimed queen in 1474, according to the Archdiocese of Valladolid.
During her reign, she championed the reconquest of Granada from the Muslims and the voyage of Christopher Columbus, which led to the discovery of the Americas in October 1492. She also promoted the evangelization and protection of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, going so far as to ban their enslavement. She died on Nov. 26, 1504, from uterine cancer.
The cause for her beatification was initiated in Valladolid in 1958; the diocesan phase concluded in 1990, after which the process moved to Rome.
Historians have already favorably reviewed the documentation, but the theological assessment regarding the heroic nature of her virtues is still pending. Once that takes place, and following the popeʼs approval, she may be recognized as venerable, awaiting a miracle for her beatification.
Enraizados (the “Rooted in Christ and in Society Association”) has an annual Mass celebrated in memory of Isabella. In the manifesto the group published in 2026, it included a prayer by the queen: “I am afraid, Lord, of being afraid and not knowing how to fight. I am afraid, Lord, of being afraid and being capable of denying you. I ask you, Lord, that in your greatness, you do not forget me. And that, with your love, you grant the strength to die for you.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
The U.S. Department of Justice this week said that the government’s practice of restricting federal funding from religious activities is “presumptively unconstitutional,” paving the way for greater public funding of religious groups.
Such restrictions on federal funding are made “without any compelling government interest,” the Justice Department said in an Aug. 25 memorandum opinion issued to the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services.
In its 2004 decision Locke v. Davey, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public authorities are free to withhold funding from programs and activities that are explicitly religious in nature.
In its memorandum, however, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said restricting federal funding based on either the religious status of an organization or the use of funds for religious purposes is “not required” under the U.S. Constitution.
Such restrictions “discriminate based on anticipated religious use without any compelling governmental interest,” the memorandum said, and as a result they “violate the Free Exercise Clause.”
“Use-based religious restrictions on generally available federal funding programs are presumptively unconstitutional,” the document said.
The memorandum specifically addressed programs administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which controls billions of dollars in federal funding. It was not immediately clear if the directive applied to other federal departments. A spokesman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The religious freedom legal group First Liberty, meanwhile, hailed the memorandum as “a major victory for religious liberty.”
Faith-based organizations and schools “can now apply for and utilize federal grants without scrubbing the religious aspects of their programs,” the group said.
First Liberty argued that opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel “serve as binding legal guidance for the executive branch,” meaning the memo “effectively instructs all federal agencies to rewrite their grant-making rules to align with this new standard.”
The group noted that one of its network attorneys is Joshua Davey, part of the namesake of the 2004 Supreme Court case that established the precedent of restricting federal funds for religious activities and groups.
That decision “has never been formally overturned,” First Liberty said, but “that could change in the very near future.”
The practice of surrogacy made national news in August when surrogate mother McKenna West fled to Texas to give birth to a baby after its biological parents requested it be aborted due to a treatable heart condition.
The mother sought refuge in Texas and gave birth there to the baby, whom she named Gabriel; the state ordered a hospital system to provide the baby life-giving care.
The controversial case has generated significant commentary around gestational surrogacy, the practice in which a woman is paid to grow and birth a baby for the parents.
The Catholic Church explicitly opposes surrogacy, describing it as a comprehensively immoral practice that offends the dignity of everyone involved. But why specifically does the Church so strongly forbid this arrangement?
Practice is ‘contrary to the unity of marriage’ and of human dignity
Joseph Meaney, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, described surrogacy as an arrangement in which “a woman agrees to carry a child for another — either a couple or another individual — with the express purpose of giving that child to them.”
“Traditional” surrogacy involves using the birthing mother as the biological mother, Meaney said. One example of this, he said, can be found in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis’ account of Sarai allowing her servant Hagar to serve as a surrogate with the former’s husband, Abram.
The “modern version” of surrogacy, meanwhile, involves impregnating a surrogate using in vitro fertilization (IVF) either via a donor or using gametes from the “intending parents.”
The Catholic Church has condemned and prohibited this practice for decades.
Meaney pointed to the 1987 instruction from what was then the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith known as Donum Vitae,which describes surrogate motherhood as “contrary to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of the procreation of the human person.”
The practice of surrogacy, according to the instruction, “represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity, and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; [and] it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological, and moral elements which constitute those families.”
Meaney summed up the instruction’s claims on surrogacy as: “It’s bad, bad, really bad, worse than bad.”
Joe Zalot, the director of education at the Catholic bioethics center, told EWTN News that the dispute in Texas over baby Gabriel is a “textbook example” of what is wrong with surrogacy.
That case, he said, demonstrates “how commercial surrogacy denigrates the surrogate, seeking to reduce her to a subservient role viz-a-viz the genetic ‘parents,’ as well as how surrogacy contracts denigrate the dignity of the preborn child through the demand that it be killed if a prenatal anomaly is diagnosed.”
Catholic opposition to surrogacy has become more outspoken in recent years. Both Zalot and Meaney pointed to Pope Francis’ January 2024 address to the Holy See’s diplomatic corps; in those remarks Francis decried surrogacy as “deplorable.”
The practice “represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child,” the pope said. He expressed hope for an international ban on the procedure.
In the United States, meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) says in its ethical guidance for Catholic healthcare that Catholic health providers may not participate in surrogacy arrangements.
The bishops in that directive cite “the dignity of the child and of marriage” as well as “the uniqueness of the mother-child relationship.”
In an August 2025 essay, Meaney further argued against “altruistic surrogacy” in which a woman agrees to carry a child for someone else with no monetary reimbursement.
The intentions of these women, he acknowledged, “seem … frequently generous” and compassionate. Yet such arrangements retain “most of the unethical qualities” of commercial surrogacy, he said.
He further noted that the biblical account of Sarai’s arrangement with Hagar functions as “a cautionary tale of how badly such arrangements can go,” insofar as Hagar and her child Ishmael “ended up banished and almost died in the wilderness.”
The practice is widely legal in the U.S. Only one state, Louisiana, outlaws commercial surrogacy entirely; more than a dozen states broadly allow it, while a majority of states are at least generally permissive of it.
Meaney said the matter “really does come down to ethics. There’s what can be done, and what should be done; there’s the technically possible, and the moral. And the two are not coterminous.”
“One’s reproductive capacity should be reserved for the sacred purpose of bringing a new life into the world, not a commercial contract with strangers,” he said.
Inspired by the movie “Top Gun: Maverick,” a D.C.-based youth ministry is using a weekendlong camp to build mentors and strengthen the bonds between Catholic fathers and their sons.
The annual “Top Gun Father and Son” camping event welcomes dads and sons for a mission to grow closer, strengthen their relationships through challenges and reflections, and partake in faith-filled adventures.
Encounters, Convictions, and Your Decisions (ECYD), an international Catholic association of adolescents with the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi, hosts the annual weekend at Camp Castleton in Virginia for boys in fifth to eighth grade and their fathers.
The event is only one of the fruits of ECYD, which also carries out other youth clubs, camps, leadership trainings, and gatherings.
Father Vito Crincoli, LC, the director of the ECYD Leadership Training program in D.C., told EWTN News the ECYD ministry is “based on the spirituality of Jesus calling you to be his friend.”
“Itʼs an international movement,” he said. “In Washington, D.C., in particular, weʼve been putting a lot of emphasis on forming dads to be mentors for our clubs.”
“One is because we donʼt have as many priests as we would like to run the youth ministry. But also, above all, we want to create vibrant apostles, vibrant laypeople, to run youth work. And because men really want to be mentors.”
“Weʼve noticed in these past years of our ministry that thereʼs been such a desire for the men to want to be involved. And we saw that precisely through the father-son weekends we do. It awakens something in them.”
Men “want to do more,” Crincoli said. “They want to give more.”
A father and his son at the 2024 Top Gun Father and Son weekend event at Camp Castleton in Virginia. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Vito Crincoli
Finding unexpected inspiration from film
While the camp grew out of the desire to minister to Catholic men, it was ultimately a fictional adventure film about U.S. Navy aviators that set the idea into motion.
After noticing a “father and son tone” in the 2022 film “Top Gun: Maverick,” Crincoli was inspired to bring together families for the event, which now welcomes anywhere from 20 to 40 fathers and sons.
Crincoli was inspired by the relationship between the film’s characters Pete Mitchell and Bradley Bradshaw, better known by their call signs “Maverick” and “Rooster.”
While the two Top Gun pilots are not related, Crincoli noticed a bond between them that is unique to a father and his son.
In the movie, “Maverick is trying to be the best dad he could be for Rooster. Experiencing his own limitations, but also just trying,” Crincoli explained. “And then Rooster is looking for the type of dad he wants: ‘I need a role model in my life. Someone who can guide me.’”
“Weʼre really trying to tell the dads: ‘Be a dad as a mission.’ Itʼs a mission of love. The whole idea ofTop Gun Father and Son is that you and your son are a team. Youʼre preparing your son for life.”
“Thatʼs what Maverick was doing with Rooster. He was preparing him for battle.”
Top Gun Father and Son
While at the camp, the group has previously been joined by members of the U.S. Naval Academy, including a Catholic former Top Gun pilot who “gave a talk to the dads about learning to fly with your kids — learning to fly with them through life.”
Retired Top Gun pilot Lt. Adam Farber speaks to participants at the 2024 Top Gun Father and Son weekend event held at Camp Castleton in Virginia. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Vito Crincoli
A pivotal part is the “moment where the dads earn their wings,” he said. “We had somebody donate real Navy wings to us.”
“Itʼs a ceremony. Weʼll have the wings on the table, the flag, the dads line up and then … the dads become ‘Top Gun dads’” and “they get their wings.” It “begins the mission of the weekend.”
To help the participants live out the mission, the dads have “a training camp,” Crincoli said. “In that training camp we have different activities.”
The activities include anything from dodgeball and nighttime “missions” to quiet time in prayer. The weekend includes “different dynamics and different adventures” to create fellowship and teamwork between the fathers and sons.
During dodgeball, “itʼs the fathers and sons as teams against each other,” Crincoli explained. “But then, if their son gets hit with the ball, the dad has to go and rescue his son.”
“Thereʼs even a night mission that the son and the dad have to do together. There was one year that we did a mission where the dads and kids had to crack codes and to find the missing pilot. But they have to do it together — the son and dad.”
The event also includes father and sons giving each other their own call signs and explaining why they chose them for each other. Itʼs a “dynamic of ‘How well do you know your son, and how well does your son know you?’”
Father Vito Crincoli and Top Gun Father and Son weekend participants hold the Encounters, Convictions, and Your Decisions flag at the 2024 Top Gun Father and Son weekend event at Camp Castleton in Virginia. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Vito Crincoli
Along with the mission-center games, the group most importantly spends time in prayer throughout the weekend.
The “most beautiful” part of the event is when “we have the adoration — father-son adoration together,” Crincoli said. “The dad and his kid, they both come up to receive the blessing with the Blessed Sacrament. Itʼs a very intimate moment.”
“Then we have the finishing Mass. And after the Mass, the dads and the kids are together,” and “itʼs the award ceremony.”
Then, “the dads give their wings to their sons” and “as theyʼre pinning the wings to their son, theyʼre praying over their kids. Theyʼre blessing them. Theyʼre encouraging them.”
A father blesses his son at the 2024 Top Gun Father and Son weekend event at Camp Castleton in Virginia. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Vito Crincoli
The many ‘lights’ that come from the event
The last day includes “a debriefing with the dads,” Crincoli said. “We sit down with the dads and we start asking them, ‘What has this weekend been for you?’”
“The dads begin to express different comments,” Crincoli said. He further reflected on some of the past insights he has heard from fathers.
“The men say, ‘It is great to be with men that believe what I believe.’”
“Another, he goes, ‘Itʼs beautiful, itʼs great, to be with men who are strongly Catholic, who are bonded by their sons, and that we could be a community.’ One of the dads said, ‘I really want to be a mentor in this because … this is an extension of my fatherhood.’”
After the weekend, “they come back,” Crincoli said. They come back as mentors for ECYD clubs or take part in its other camps.
“There are so many different lights that come from this,” he said.
The next annual Top Gun Father and Son will be held the weekend of Oct. 17–18. It will include the presence of members of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former Navy Seabee chief who will support the weekend with leadership and inspiration.
Senate GOP report finds dangerous lack of guardrails for abortion pill prescribing
A five-month-long investigation by Republicans in the U.S. Senate found that abortion pill manufacturing companies are falling short on critical oversight while bringing in millions of dollars in revenue.
The manufacturers are not fulfilling their obligation to oversee prescribers while making tens of millions of dollars each year, according to the report, released by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana).
The investigation also found that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “lack of guardrails ensuring a sufficient provider-patient relationship creates accountability gaps for a product that carries risks of significant adverse health outcomes,” according to the report.
Three companies, Danco Laboratories, GenBioPro, and Evita Solutions, reportedly did not provide details on how they followed existing federal regulations, according to the report.
Among its findings, the report cited an undercover investigation that found that a girl as young as 13 years old could buy abortion pills.
Cassidy, a doctor and the chairman of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, headed the investigation.
“Abortion drug companies are putting mothers at risk through their failure to properly oversee the prescription and distribution of their products. We are seeing that the explosion in online sales of chemical abortion drugs has opened the door to coercion and abuse of women,” said Cassidy in a statement.
“FDA and the sponsors of these drugs have a responsibility to the American people to crack down on these prescribers that violate the prescribing requirements and reinstate the safeguards that keep mothers and babies safe,” he continued.
40 Days for Life says it will cover legal fees for arrests over New Jersey protest law
The pro-life group 40 Days for Life says it will cover legal fees if protesters are arrested under New Jersey’s new abortion clinic buffer zone law.
A new law signed by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Aug. 20 could lead to legal crackdowns on protests near abortion clinics. The law criminalizes “interference” with “reproductive” or “gender-affirming” care.
The law further criminalizes inflicting “emotional harm” against those seeking or providing “reproductive health care services.” It also bans filming and sharing videos within 100 feet of an abortion clinic.
40 Days for Life, a group that organizes prayer vigils outside abortion clinics, has pledged to cover legal fees for peaceful protesters should the law be used to target them.
“If New Jersey — or anywhere else — targets a 40 Days for Life participant for peacefully and lawfully praying in public, our Institute of Law & Justice will have your back,” the group said on Aug. 28.
The group’s CEO Shawn Carney told the New York Post, meanwhile, that the services would be covered “at no cost.”
Catholic Virginians launch campaign against abortion ballot measure
Catholic leaders in Virginia are launching a campaign to oppose a ballot measure that would enshrine a right to abortion in the state.
The Protect Virginia 2026 campaign urges Catholics to vote against the state’s “Right to Reproductive Freedom” amendment which will be on the ballot in November.
Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout voiced opposition against the “radical” amendment in a letter to Catholics in the state.
“Every life is sacred,” Knestout said. “The Church has always taught that abortion is an intrinsic evil. It takes one of God’s greatest gifts – a human life.”
“No law can ever make right what is intrinsically wrong,” he continued. “Let us pray for the courage to confront this evil that threatens to destroy life, to be persistent yet compassionate in our advocacy, and to vote so that we stand up for the great good that God has given us.”
“Let us commit ourselves to defending those who cannot speak for themselves and to witnessing to the Gospel of Life in both word and deed.”
A new biography published in Lithuania recounts the life of Cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičius, SJ, one of the leading Catholic figures in the resistance to Soviet religious persecution. It details his work as editor of the underground Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania publication and his subsequent imprisonment by the KGB.
Written by journalist Regina Statkuvienė and published by the DONUM Foundation, “In the Light of the Altar” draws on recent interviews she conducted with Tamkevičius. The book also includes his letters and diary entries alongside accounts of his childhood, priesthood, underground activities, imprisonment, exile, and later episcopal ministry.
Tamkevičius was arrested in 1983 and sentenced to six years in a strict-regime labor camp followed by four years of exile in Siberia.
His story offers an insight into the experience of Catholics who resisted the Soviet Unionʼs efforts to suppress religious life and impose state atheism.
Sigitas Tamkevičius stands for a portrait during his military service in the Soviet Army in Khosta, Russia, in 1959. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičius
Catholic resistance in Soviet-occupied Lithuania
Founded by Tamkevičius in 1972, the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania (“Lietuvos katalikų bažnyčios kronika,” or “LKB Kronika”) was an underground publication documenting religious persecution and human rights abuses in Soviet-occupied Lithuania.
The Kronika recorded arrests and interrogations of clergy and lay Catholics, confiscation of Church property, restrictions on religious practice, and attempts by Soviet authorities to infiltrate the Church. It was a strictly factual catalog of human rights violations, not a literary magazine or a platform for theological commentary.
Its reports were secretly typed and reproduced, with editions being smuggled to Western diplomats and foreign journalists in Moscow, with activists often microfilming the pages and hiding the negatives inside everyday objects like book covers or flashlights.
Once in the West, the material was translated and disseminated internationally, including through Vatican Radio and Radio Free Europe, directly challenging Soviet claims that religious freedom existed behind the Iron Curtain.
Sigitas Tamkevičius, first from left, stands with fellow seminarians at his ordination to the priesthood in May 1962. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičius
In the bookʼs foreword, Archbishop Petar Rajič, current prefect of the Papal Household and former apostolic nuncio to Lithuania, described Tamkevičius as one of the most prominent witnesses to the Soviet era.
“Every Catholic who loves the Church should read the Chronicle,” Rajič wrote, calling it a testimony to the spiritual strength and resistance of the Lithuanian people, rooted in the victory of the cross of Christ and offering lessons for Catholics today and future generations.
Arrest and KGB interrogation
The Kronika not only exposed Soviet religious persecution to the outside world but also strengthened the underground Catholic resistance within Lithuania. The KGB consequently intensified efforts to identify and suppress those involved in producing and distributing the publication.
Cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičius reaches into the hiding place in the altar of the church in Simnas, Lithuania, where he once concealed copies of the underground Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, in 2021. | Credit: Jūratė Tamošiūnytė-Karašauskienė
Since Tamkevičius openly preached against state atheism and challenged Soviet restrictions on the Church, he was seen as a visible figure within the Catholic resistance movement.
The Soviet authorities eventually arrested Tamkevičius in May 1983 and charged him with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” After six months of pretrial detention in the KGB isolation prison in Vilnius, he was sentenced in December to six years in a strict-regime labor camp in the Ural Mountains, followed by four years of exile in Siberia.
During his detention, Tamkevičius recalled psychological pressure from KGB interrogators. On one occasion, an interrogator offered him tea and biscuits. He drank the tea at around 2 p.m. and soon became extremely dizzy.
His next clear memory came hours later, when he heard the interrogator angrily questioning him about a document concerning the underground seminary. He was then told that it was already 10 p.m. “Only then did I realize that after drinking the tea I had lost consciousness,” he recalled.
Tamkevičius believed he had been drugged to extract information from him. The attempt failed. “Seeing how angry the interrogator was, I understood that he had managed to extract nothing from me,” he said.
Life in the labor camp
Tamkevičius recalled that his first assignment in the labor camp was peeling potatoes. “Each potato had to be taken out of almost ice-cold water,” he recalled. He feared that doing this for six years would make him ill, but after two weeks he was transferred to a metalworking workshop, where he collected metal shavings from lathes and carried them to containers.
Prisoners worked eight hours a day and were allotted another eight hours for sleep. The food was poor, consisting largely of “thin soup and watery porridge.” Later, after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, Tamkevičius was assigned to the camp kitchen and had to rise at 4 a.m. to prepare breakfast.
The ingredients were often badly preserved. Fish, he recalled, could be heavily salted and stored for years. He learned to make the most of what was available, washing the fish overnight and frying it separately so that prisoners could have a more edible meal.
During more than five years in captivity, Tamkevičius was transferred under guard seven times and encountered prisoners ranging from teenagers to murderers. The experience became for him a reflection on human nature and the consequences of abandoning moral law.
“A life without God, without the commandments of the Decalogue, a life without love,” he wrote, describing the selfishness, pride, lust, and greed that shaped much of prison life. His reflections ultimately turned toward his own imprisonment and vocation.
“Lord, what was it that brought me behind bars and barbed wire?” he asked. “The affairs of the Church? Yes. Concern for people’s moral lives? Yes. Living according to my conscience? Yes. Thank you, Lord, that the answer was ‘yes.’” For Tamkevičius, imprisonment was ultimately the consequence of refusing to compromise his faith in the face of communist oppression.
Bishop Sigitas Tamkevičius addresses young people gathered to meet Pope John Paul II at the Darius and Girėnas Stadium in Kaunas, Lithuania, in September 1993. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičius
From persecution to freedom
Tamkevičius was released in 1988 as Soviet repression began to weaken. He returned to Lithuania as the country moved toward independence, restored on March 11, 1990.
Tamkevičius' story offers a firsthand account of the cost of defending the faith under communism and the role of ordinary believers in preserving the Church through decades of persecution.
The Latin Mass and traditional Vietnamese prayers and catechetical texts written by missionaries prior to the Second Vatican Council are growing in popularity among young Vietnamese Catholics.
“Few Catholic communities in Southeast Asia still possess such a rich heritage,” Joseph Christopher Nguyen Thien Tuan Hoang, the leader of a Latin Mass community in Vietnam, said in an Aug. 25 UCA News report.
While there is no established parish dedicated to the Latin Mass according to the report, traditional communities are able to attend the liturgy when approval is granted and with the help of foreign visiting priests.
“Our biggest challenge is not hostility, but misunderstanding,” Hoang said. “If more Church leaders understood why some young Catholics are drawn to the older liturgy, I believe more people would have the opportunity to experience this part of the Churchʼs tradition.”
From Gaza to Taybeh, priests call for living Christian presence in Holy Land
Father Gabriel Romanelli of Holy Family Parish in Gaza City discussed the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza during a video appearance at the Rimini Meeting, a signature event hosted by the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.
Romanelli described Gaza as a devastated territory where water, electricity, and basic necessities remain scarce. The priest said his decision to stay was rooted in pastoral duty: the parish could not abandon children, people with disabilities, or struggling families.
ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News, reported Aug. 26 that Gaza’s Christian community now numbers 541 Catholics and Orthodox, and 60 members have died since the war began.
Father Francesco Ielpo, custos of the Holy Land, also spoke at the event, turning attention to the attacks facing the Christian town of Taybeh and called for concrete protection of fundamental rights. He also encouraged pilgrims to return, noting that their presence supports local Christians and strengthens their calling to care for the holy sites.
10 Catholic dioceses in the Philippines call for end to mining agreement
Bishops representing 10 Catholic dioceses in the Philippines have issued a joint pastoral statement addressed to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Environment Secretary Juan Miguel T. Cuna calling for an end to mining in the island of Sibuyan.
The letter, titled “Let Sibuyan Live: A Joint Call to Initiate the Cancellation of APMC’s Mining Agreement,” urges political leaders to carry out a comprehensive review of a mining agreement with Altai Philippines Mining Corp (APMC) in Sibuyan to ensure compliance with environmental laws, according to an Aug. 24 report from Inquirer.net.
The bishops expressed concern over the mining agreement’s threats to the island’s mountains, watersheds, rivers, coral reefs, and species unique to the island.
Recently appointed apostolic nuncio to Germany makes first visit
During the meeting, van Megen presented his official assignment letter as nuncio to the DBK chairman signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. "It was the first visit of an apostolic nuncio to the Secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference in more than 13 years,” the DBK noted in its announcement on social media.
Van Megen has served as nuncio to Kenya and South Sudan and held various positions within United Nations institutions.
UK member of Parliament calls for reforms before considering assisted suicide
Member of Parliament Zubir Ahmed, a former health minister in the British Labour Party and National Health Service doctor, has backed calls from Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a Catholic, to carry out health reforms before considering legislation on assisted suicide.
“What kind of society are we building if, before we’ve fixed the systems designed to care for people, we introduce a system designed to help them die?” Ahmed asked in an Aug. 25 op-ed in The Guardian. “As a former health minister who has seen the system from the inside, I am able to say it is not ready or equipped to answer this question.”
Syria’s Catholic schools seek to remain both strong and compassionate
With another school year approaching, Syria’s Christian schools are struggling to keep tuition affordable while covering salaries, taxes, electricity, books, and other rising expenses.
Father Fadi Najjar, secretary-general of Catholic educational institutions in Syria, said no child should be forced out because a family cannot pay, ACI MENA reported Aug. 27. At the same time, he cautioned that schools cannot fulfill their educational mission if they are treated solely as charitable institutions. Najjar appealed to churches and aid organizations to support families in genuine need and help protect the future of Christian education in Syria.
Catholic priest in Ghana suspended for ‘abandoning’ pastoral ministry
Ghana’s Diocese of Konongo-Mampong has imposed an indefinite canonical suspension on a priest of the diocese for taking a leave of absence and “abandoning his pastoral ministry” without legitimate permission.
Bishop John Opoku-Agyemang announced the suspension of Father Samuel Adapore on Aug. 24, ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, reported. The priest has been barred from administering any of the sacraments publicly, including the celebration of Mass, or officiating any other liturgical services.
The bishop said he made the decision “with a heavy heart but a great sense of duty to Holy Mother Church” to suspend the priest, who he noted had left his parish without telling anyone where he was going, including immediate family members.
Sierra Leonean priest cautions religious against shunning help for mental health struggles
The president of the Regional Union of Priests of West Africa has told members of the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life not to be ashamed of seeking psychological support, stressing that “mental-health struggles do not cancel their vocation,” ACI Africa reported Aug. 25.
“Our priests and religious spend their lives caring for others. We must also care for them. They need trusted friends, safe spaces for honest conversation, regular medical and psychological support, sufficient rest, and communities that listen without judgment,” Father Peter Konteh said following the resignation of Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of German’s Speyer Diocese over mental health struggles.
Christian city of Qamishli, Syria, turns 100
The city of Qamishli marked its centennial with a Christian community far smaller than the one that helped build the northeastern Syrian city.
Founded in 1926 after Christians fled Ottoman-era massacres, the city once had a population that was nearly 90% Christian, ACI MENA reported Aug. 25. Father Samir Kanoun, priest of the church of St. Yacoub Al-Nusaibini in Qamishli, said decades of migration, intensified after the Syrian crisis began in 2011, have reduced that share to about 20%, leaving roughly 2,000 Christian families.
Despite the decline, Qamishli retains a rich mix of Syriac, Armenian, Chaldean, Assyrian, and Protestant churches. Their cooperation grew stronger during the war through shared prayer, security coordination, and charitable work.
Kanoun remains hopeful, pointing to the city’s active young Christians and the Church’s efforts to preserve their faith, heritage, and sense of belonging to Syria.
Representatives for Liberty University student Bethany Hall have filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a decades-old court decision that has been used to bar Catholic institutions from receiving state funds.
The National Legal Foundation, Claybrook LLC, Troutman Pepper Locke, First Liberty Institute, and Alliance Defending Freedom filed the petition on Aug. 11. The filing follows a May 13 ruling by a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that rejected Hall’s attempt to sue Virginia officials for blocking her from using a $5,000 Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant for a youth ministries degree, citing the 2004 Supreme Court decision Locke v. Davey.
“It is odious to our Constitution for a state to fund a degree in music but refuse to fund a degree in music & worship,” Steven Fitschen of National Legal Foundation said in a press release announcing the petition. “The Free Exercise clause is meant to encourage and even prefer religion. But Virginia’s decision to deny funding based upon religious use is the type of hostility toward religion rejected by the First Amendment.”
Diocese of Scranton reopens St. Pius X Seminary after over 20 years
St. Pius X Seminary in the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, has been reestablished 22 years after its closure in 2004 due to a declining number of vocations to the priesthood.
Bishop Joseph Bambera presided over the seminary’s official opening on Aug. 23, welcoming four seminarians to the freshly renovated building that was formerly the Cathedral Convent building, according to a press release from the diocese.
“As we re-establish the ministry of Saint Pius X Seminary, what an incredible gift this is,” Bambera said during his homily at the seminary’s first Mass, according to the release. Bambera had been a seminarian at St. Pius X Seminary in Dalton 48 years ago.
The release noted that the decision to reestablish the seminary came from Bambera’s wish “to make the first stage of priestly formation more closely connected to the Diocese of Scranton and the people the seminarians may one day serve.”
“We are excited because it’s going to give these men, as they start seminary, an opportunity to get to know the Diocese better,” Father Alex Roche, diocesan secretary for clergy formation and rector of St. Pius X Seminary, said in the release. “It’s also going to give the people of the Diocese a chance to get to know our seminarians before they go elsewhere to continue their studies in theology.”
Justice Barrett to speak at Benedictine College’s library dedication
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will deliver a speech at the upcoming dedication of Benedictine College’s Independence Hall-inspired library on Sept. 26.
“This is an exciting milestone for Benedictine College,” Benedictine College President Stephen D. Minnis said in a press release on Aug. 25. “The library will not only demonstrate our commitment to academic excellence and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, but it will also be a symbol of our love for this great country of ours.”
“The college is pleased to have Justice Barrett as part of the dedication ceremony,” the press release said, noting that the dedication for the Moritz Library in D’Aniello Hall will be free and open to the public.
Barrett earned her bachelor’s degree from Rhodes College and her law degree from the University of Notre Dame.
Students revive 1982 robotic arm at Catholic University despite lost documentation
A group of students from The Catholic University of America have brought to life a robotic space arm built in 1982 after documentation for the piece of technology has been lost for years.
Originally developed by Engineering Dean Emeritus and Ordinary Professor Charles Cuong Nguyen, the arm had been part of a pioneering technological effort to build the International Space Station, according to the university’s press release on Aug. 12.
The project to revive the arm, which is capable of a wide range of precise movements within a thousandth of an inch, was carried out by three students, including a high school Da Vinci Scholar, and was led by Nguyen.
The students included Saliha Kavafogolu, an undergraduate intern from Yale University; Nathan Arega, a high school Da Vinci Scholar; and Ha (Jessica) Ngo-Tang, a biomedical engineering doctoral candidate.
California parents ask Supreme Court to overturn ruling excluding them from state program
Three California parents have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to exclude them from a state program over the religious materials they chose to home-school their children.
“The Ninth Circuit declared the homes of these parents to be ‘public school programs’ in order to justify the state’s religious discrimination,” Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel for First Liberty Institute, said in an Aug. 20 press release. “Parents should not be punished for choosing quality religious curriculum meeting the state’s standard that they teach to their own children in their own home just because it’s religious.”
The state of California’s tuition-free charter schools allow parents to home-school their children and have access to state funds to purchase curriculum. However, the press release notes, parents “can’t select a religious curriculum, even if they purchase it with their own funds, and their children’s work samples are rejected if they include religious wording or derive from materials created by religious publishers.”
The petition states that “California’s policy singles out parents who wish to give their children a faith-based education and excludes them from homeschooling benefits and support extended to other California families.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was guilty of a “grave failure” of responsibility in the drafting of its controversial 2023 “Catholic memo” that sought to link racist and violent extremists with so-called “radical-traditionalist” Catholics, the U.S. Department of Justice said this week.
The Justice Department on Aug. 28 released an extensive report on the memo, which was drafted out of the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office and leaked in early 2023.
Upon its leak the memo drew immediate criticism from Catholics and religious liberty advocates around the country. The FBI quickly retracted the document after the leak, with the bureau claiming that it did “not meet our exacting standards.”
On Aug. 28 FBI Director Kash Patel described the contents of the memo as “unacceptable.” He said the release of information “about what occurred under [the Biden administration] is an important part of the process” of ongoing investigations into alleged government weaponization.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, meanwhile, described the memo as “a clear abuse of power,” one that targeted “conservative and religious beliefs disfavored by agents of government.”
Memo arose from 2020 investigation into violent extremist
The Aug. 28 report — released by the Department of Justice’s Weaponization Working Group — said the Catholic memo arose out of an FBI investigation that began in 2020 regarding an individual who moved to Virginia from New York and began writing “violent and racially-motivated” posts on the internet.
That individual was ultimately sentenced to two separate prison terms on vandalism and weapons charges. Prior to his second imprisonment, he reportedly began attending a Virginia chapel run by the Society of St. Pius X.
Federal agents began investigating the chapel and a priest associated with it; their investigation expanded to include another priest connected to the so-called SSPX Resistance, a breakaway group that the FBI alleged has neo-Nazi sympathies.
Based on those investigations, starting in late 2022 the Richmond field office began developing a “domain perspective” on the alleged “increasing intersection” of “radical-traditional Catholics” and “domestic violent extremists.”
Subsequent research turned up “only two additional cases,” the working group report said, and FBI investigators found “nothing linking Catholics or groups not in full communion with the Catholic Church to domestic extremism.”
The investigation progressed to the point where analysts were preparing to develop a high-level executive report of the inquiry to present to senior FBI officials. Yet after the leak of the memo on Feb. 8, 2023, that report was never developed.
The working group report described the FBI memo as using a “sweeping generalization” of “radical-traditionalist” Catholics. Internal FBI presentation materials obtained by EWTN News identify the “core ideology and beliefs” of such Catholics as including “conservative family values/roles” and a “tendency toward isolationism.”
Part of an internal FBI presentation related to the bureau’s 2023 “Catholic memo.” | Credit: Provided by the Department of Justice
The memo further identified such Catholics as believing in the “creation of a totalitarian, anti-pluralist Catholic nation” as well as the “rejection of religious neutrality and right to religious freedom.”
The document drew a distinction between “radical” Catholics and so-called “traditionalist Catholics” who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II traditions yet do not adhere to “the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric” of the “radical” group.
An internal review of the memo found no “constitutional concerns” related to the analysis, the working group report said. Yet the memo spawned “significant internal criticisms” in the FBI after its leak, the report said.
In particular, an agent with the bureau’s counterterrorism division said the unit found no “significant linkage” between violent extremists and “radical traditionalist” Catholics.
Bureau leadership ultimately ordered the deletion of the memo, though the working group report said the memo was still being worked on more than a month after that order came down.
Later in the year the bureau’s inspection division found that the drafters of the memo demonstrated a lack of “professional judgment” and that they “failed to adhere to FBI standards.” The division ordered “all individuals” involved in the memo’s production to be “admonished” and be subject to additional training.
The working group report noted that the personnel involved in the production of the memo “have been terminated from their positions.” It argued that “history” will “rightly judge the Richmond Catholic Memo as a grave failure of the FBI Richmond Field Office” to uphold First Amendment rights.
The controversial memo has generated sustained criticism from religious liberty advocates as well as numerous responses from lawmakers in Washington since it was leaked.
In March the conservative legal group Judicial Watch was in federal court arguing for the release of un-redacted files related to the memo. Attorney Meredith DiLiberto expressed disappointment at the time that heavy redaction practices had continued from the Biden administration to the Trump administration.
In December 2024 Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, warned the government to not destroy federal records including documents related to the FBI investigation. Hawley said at the time that he had received reports of employees “destroying records and other documents in an effort to conceal widespread misconduct that took place under the [Joe] Biden administration.”
The working group report released on Aug. 28 did not mention any reports of records destruction. But Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department “will not tolerate a weaponized bureaucracy that chills First Amendment activity.”
The working group’s investigations into alleged government weaponization “will continue,” Blanche said.
The rule of law is deteriorating in the West Bank as tension continues to grow between settlers and the Palestinian population, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, said this week.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the Rimini Meeting in northern Italy on Aug. 26, the cardinal said the West Bank “has become a no-man’s land — or rather, a lawless land — where everything that happens goes unchecked, with no safeguards in terms of security or the rule of law.”
Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that he would continue to open settlements in the occupied land, Pizzaballa said: “This isn’t the first time he’s said that.”
“The government has stated very clearly that this is their intention, even though it makes a political solution in the near future increasingly difficult,” the cardinal continued. “I hope that all this drift — this political confrontation, including in language and positions — will moderate over time, because the Palestinian population is truly very tired and can no longer bear all of this.”
Pizzaballa explained that the situation in Gaza, from this point of view, is more stable than the West Bank, even while it continues to deteriorate.
“While there is a great deal of political debate, on the ground the human toll remains devastating,” he added.
The Rimini Meeting, officially named the Meeting for Friendship Among the Peoples, is an annual cultural festival organized by the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation. The 47th edition took place near the city of Rimini, Italy, from Aug. 21–26, and included a visit from Pope Leo XIV on Aug. 22.
Pizzaballa, a frequent speaker at recent editions of the gathering, participated in a dialogue with three young people on the final day of the 2026 meeting, touching on the topics of hope, suffering, and interreligious dialogue.
He also urged people to “listen to multiple voices,” including those with whom they do not agree, to understand and assess the events taking place in the Middle East.
“This is a task that must be undertaken continually in the Middle East,” he said, where “nothing is as it appears and everything is very complicated.”
In a conversation with the journalist Alessandro Banfi during the meeting, Pizzaballa underlined that “to assume that an agreement alone is enough to put an end” to what is happening in the Middle East “is presumptuous; it is an illusion.”
“Now, of course, we need agreements; we need to pursue political paths — but these must also be accompanied by educational, formative, human, and religious initiatives, which play a very important role in the Middle East in healing, in processing grief, and in addressing everything that has affected both the Israeli and Palestinian populations. And this doesn’t happen in the blink of an eye,” he said.
