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She spent the final 50 years of her life in a Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal. As the only Fatima visionary who spoke with the Virgin Mary during the series of apparitions, her written memoirs have provided an important account of the Fatima message. Lucia’s canonization cause opened in 2008, three years after her death, after Benedict XVI granted a dispensation for the usually required five-year waiting period. More than 15,000 letters, testimonies, and other documents were collected during the diocesan phase of her cause, which concluded in 2017. Pope Francis is planning to visit Fatima this summer when he travels to Portugal for World Youth Day. The pope will spend the morning of Aug. 5 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, about 75 miles northeast of Lisbon, where he will pray th...

The kidnappers shot the parish security guard, who died on the way to the hospital. In his June 20 statement, Klaver appealed for prayers for the soul of the late security guard and for the complete healing of Nwaohuocha.  “Let us pray for the full recovery of his health and for the repose of the soul of the deceased, who leaves [behind] a family [wife and children],” he said. The kidnapping and release of Nwaohuocha is the latest in a series of abductions that have targeted members of the clergy, seminarians, and other Christians in Africa’s most populous nation. On June 11, Father Jeremiah Yakubu, a priest of Kafanchan Diocese, was kidnapped and later released. On June 7, Father Charles Onomhoale Igechi, a member of the clergy of the Archdiocese of Benin City who was set to mark his...

In 2017, Pope Francis ordered reforms of both the order’s religious life and its constitution. He approved the order’s new constitutional charter and regulations last year. Burke, a 74-year-old American cardinal, had served as the Order of Malta’s cardinal patron since 2014. However, when then-Archbishop Angelo Becciu was appointed in 2017 as the pope’s special delegate to oversee the order’s reform, he effectively supplanted the role of the order’s cardinal patron, with Burke remaining in the post only nominally. Pope Francis made Ghirlanda a cardinal in 2022, one of the few men to be given a red hat as a priest without being first a bishop. Ghirlanda was given the Jesuit Church of the Gesù as his titular church. The Italian cardinal and canon lawyer is the former rector of the Pontifical...

The Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Pride Night arrived on Friday, with the protester and police presence you would expect after weeks of controversy stirred up around the guests invited to the event. The Dodgers received criticism from Catholic and conservative figures when they announced they would be giving an award to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of people who dress in drag as nuns who were among the first people to offer support to AIDS patients at a time when such help was severely lacking. The team reacted to the backlash by uninviting the Sisters from Pride Night, leading to an opposing backlash from its other Pride Night partners. It eventually apologized and re-invited the Sisters, drawing further condemnation from the likes of former vice president Mike Pence and U.S....

(OSV News) — Franciscan priests have returned to pastoral ministry at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, two months after the center decided to end their contract. The priests and brothers of Holy Name College Friary of Silver Spring, Maryland, resumed their service at the medical center June 13, according to a June 15 press release issued by the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, which exercises pastoral jurisdiction over the center. The U.S. Defense Health Agency (DHA) has awarded a five-year contract to the Franciscans that is renewable annually. On March 31, the Franciscans had been advised their contract — which was set to expire but had routinely been upheld for close to 20 years — would not be renewed. The center instead assigned the ministr...

Pope Francis signed the letter on June 9, two days after he underwent a three-hour surgery for an incisional hernia. A team of surgeons removed scar tissue and operated on a hernia in the pope’s abdominal wall at the site of a previous surgical incision. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said June 11 that Pope Francis’ “post-operative progress is normal.” He added that the pope watched Sunday Mass on television and received the Eucharist in his hospital room before praying the Angelus in the papal medical suite chapel and eating lunch with some hospital staff. The 86-year-old pope is expected to remain recovering in Rome’s Gemelli hospital for the next week. The Vatican has canceled all of the pope’s audiences, including his Sunday Angelus address, until June 18. In his mess...