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Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — Authorities in Florida’s Miami-Dade area said at least six people have died but the number could rise as they search through the rubble of a pedestrian bridge that collapsed March 15 near Florida International University.
Via Twitter, the Archdiocese of Miami said it was “saddened to learn of the tragic event that has affected our community this afternoon. Please join us in praying for everyone involved.”
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — Dozens of Catholics, including men and women religious, were arrested in the rotunda of a Senate office building in Washington Feb. 27 as they called on lawmakers to help young adults brought to the U.S. as minors without documents obtain some sort of permanent legal status.
Many of the arrested included Sisters of Mercy, who recalled the arrival of their religious order to the U.S. and their contributions to the country, and asked that the young adults they called “Dreamers,” a reference to a legislative proposal, be allowed to do the same.
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s effort to end a program in March that protects young adults brought to the U.S. without legal permission as minors.
On Feb. 26, the court declined to hear and rule on whether the administration has the right to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program.
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — The head of an organization representing Jesuit middle and high schools in the U.S. and Canada is calling for stricter gun legislation, following the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead and many injured.
In a Feb. 21 letter addressed to U.S. President Donald Trump and to high-ranking members of Congress, Jesuit Father William Muller, executive director of Jesuit Schools Network of North America, said that those who survived the Feb. 14 shooting are “burdened now with the loss of classmates and peers senselessly murdered,” and said the Jesuit network stands “with so many voices against the proliferation of guns in our country.”
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput knows all too well the pain left behind after incidents like the 2018 Valentine’s Day shooting that has so far taken 17 lives at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
As archbishop in Denver, he took part in the funerals of Catholic high school students killed by fellow classmates at Columbine High School almost two decades ago. The Feb. 14 Florida killings, which authorities suspect were perpetrated by Nikolas Cruz, a former classmate of many of the dead, seemed to bring back the pain of April 20, 1999.
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — Catholics have to learn to see innocence in the faces of those coming to the U.S., just as they see the innocence of children in the womb, a Seattle auxiliary bishop said Feb. 3 in addressing one the largest gatherings of social ministry leaders from around the country.
But immigrants, children and adults, are sometimes seen as people who “do not deserve” fair wages or benefits or other forms of dignity, even though their exploitation helps maintain a certain level of well-being for many in this country, said Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio L. Elizondo of Seattle in his keynote address “Where Is Your Brother?” at the 2018 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington.
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The Diocese of Orange, California, received an early Christmas present in the form of a new bishop Dec. 19, when a man who entered the country as a young refugee from Vietnam in 1973 became its new auxiliary bishop.
Bishop Thanh Thai Nguyen, 64, became the second priest born in Vietnam to become a bishop in the United States. The first, Bishop Dominic M. Luong — an auxiliary bishop of the Orange Diocese from 2003 until his retirement in 2015 — died days before, on Dec. 6, at age 77.
WASHINGTON (CNS) — A priest in the Bronx, New York, tended to grieving families and asked for prayers for them as well as for victims of a Dec. 28 fire, one of the deadliest in New York City and the borough’s history, which left at least 12 dead and many fighting for their lives.
Father Jonathan Morris, pastor at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in the Bronx, spent hours following the fire consoling families at hospitals as they grappled with the injury, loss or uncertainty of what would happen to their loved ones.
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON – In the modern-age, news about Jesus doesn’t just sell newspapers, it racks up page views, too.
In 2016, when renovations around the site believed to protect the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem were underway, religious leaders agreed to the temporary removal of the marble slab covering the tomb so that restorers could install a moisture barrier to protect it. It would mark the first opening of the space in perhaps centuries. Read more »
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski said laws need to be changed to fix the country’s broken immigration system, but in the process, immigrants should not be demonized.
“Fixing illegal immigration does not require the demonization of the so-called ‘illegals,'” said Archbishop Wenski, addressing an audience at a Nov. 28 event in Miami sponsored by the Immigration Partnership and Coalition Fund.
