The Catholic Church in East Saint James Parish

null / Credit: Vinokurov Kirill/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 30, 2025 / 17:54 pm (CNA).

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released a report showing widespread fraud in its permanent residence program for unaccompanied minors, which has led to a backlog in the issuance of visas to foreign-born priests and religious, whose visas fall under the same category.

According to a report published on July 24, USCIS has identified widespread age and identity fraud among applicants to the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) visa program intended for unaccompanied immigrants under 21 years old.

USCIS revealed that of the 300,000 SIJ applicants it reviewed from 2013 to 2024, most SIJ petitioners were over the age of 18. In 2024 alone, 52% of applicants were 18, 19, and 20 years old. One-third of all SIJ applicants were males over the age of 18. The vast majority of applicants, 73.6%, originated from El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras.

Typically, SIJ petitioners must submit evidence that they were “declared dependent on a state juvenile court” or that they had been committed in some way to a state agency or court-appointed entity or individual.

To obtain consent for SIJ classification, they must provide the “factual reasons why the state court found the alien was abused, neglected, or abandoned by one or both parents, and why it is in the alien’s best interests to remain in the United States,” along with “evidence that a state court either granted or recognized some form of relief from parental maltreatment.” 

Applicants committed fraud in various ways, including falsifying their age, name, and country of citizenship on official documents. In some cases, over-18 applicants to the SIJ program entered the U.S. without inspection and “filed court state petitions requesting other adult aliens who also recently entered the United States without inspection be appointed their guardians so they can file SIJ petitions.”

How does this impact foreign-born priests and religious?

News of widespread fraud in the juvenile program comes months after it was revealed that an influx of minor visa applicants resulted in an unprecedented backlog in the employment-based fourth preference (EB-4) visa category — the same category used by foreign-born priests and religious. 

“Demand for SIJ immigrant visas creates significant pressure on the EB-4 category,” the USCIS report states. “These immigrant visas are numerically limited and allocated based on country of origin. Other special immigrants rely on visas from the EB-4 category. This results in significant wait times for other special immigrants in the United States.” 

The report noted “ministers of religion” are among the other special immigrants who draw visas from the EB-4 category.

According to data trends in the report regarding wait times for EB-4 visas, increasing demand in the category began to escalate in 2016. By March 2025 — two years after the Biden administration added juveniles to the category — the wait time for the category extended to five years and seven months.

Each year, Congress decides how many green cards — visas that grant permanent residence in the U.S. — may be made available per year. These green cards are divided into categories based on various factors, including employment or relationship status to U.S. citizens. 

“The process to obtain permanent residence status, to get permanent residency, which a couple of years ago could probably be done in somewhere between 12 to 24 months, now is going to take significantly longer,” Miguel Naranjo, director of religious immigration services at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, told CNA in March. 

“There’s a huge demand in the EB-4 category,” Naranjo continued, saying that religious workers had not been previously affected by the surge in unaccompanied minors until the past year and a half, after the State Department designated the whole category as “subject to backlog” due to the sheer rise in demand across the category.

The rise came after the Biden administration’s addition of minors to the category in March 2023, leading to the program distributing all available green cards in the category well before the end of the 2023-2024 fiscal year. More green cards will not be made available till the start of the next 2025-2026 fiscal year in October.

Due to the backlog, many priests and religious who are trying to remain in the U.S. to continue their ministries are in danger of being forced to leave the country before their green card application has been processed for at least one year. 

Typically, religious workers enter the U.S. on R-1 visas, which have a five-year limit. In the meantime, religious workers hoping to stay in the U.S. apply for visas in the EB-4 category. However, the influx of minor applicants has caused a major backlog in the category, meaning that many religious workers will be forced to leave the country when their R-1 visas expire. 

“It makes me feel sad and betrayed,” said Father Paschal Anionye, a priest from the Diocese of Warri in Nigeria who works in New York, in reaction to the USCIS findings, “especially as my hopes — and those of many Nigerians and Africans in general — to live safely and to study and serve in a multicultural, multiethnic, and diverse environment are crushed.”

Anionye further described the situation faced by foreign-born priests and religious as “disheartening,” given the needs of Catholic dioceses across the U.S.

The Nigerian priest, who is in the U.S. on an R-1 visa issued in April 2023, is planning to file for his green card after his visa is renewed in October.

He told CNA: “I’ll feel terrible, horrified, and disappointed” should he be forced to return to Nigeria before his green card application is processed, “as I came to the U.S. not only to seek a safe environment from Christian persecution in Nigeria ... but with a genuine intention to serve as a missionary, as has always been my desire from my early days in the seminary.”

He further expressed fear of putting his mother and siblings at higher risk, saying his return would not only make him a target but also would renew threats against them. “I lost a cousin to kidnappers in 2015 and continue to carry trauma related to safety concerns,” he added. 

Criminality among SIJ applicants

Troubling data in the report also identified a subset of 18,829 of the older applicants to the program were “engaged in significant criminality,” with records showing 36,920 law enforcement encounters among these individuals, indicating multiple arrests for some.

According to the report, at least 120 petitioners were arrested for murder, and 200 approved petitioners convicted of sex offenses and required to register in the National Sex Offender Registry. Other SIJ petitioners were arrested for additional grave offenses including attempted murder, assault, rape, child molestation, possession and distribution of child sex abuse material, domestic violence, carjacking, and drug trafficking. 

Over 500 SIJ applicants approved for SIJ classification since 2013 were known or suspected members of violent gangs.

In some instances, the report notes, these gang members, who obtained lawful permanent residence status as SIJs, were “wanted by foreign law enforcement authorities for murders they allegedly committed before entering the U.S. without inspection and filed [SIJ petitions].” 

Although the number is relatively small, the report also identified known or suspected terrorists filing SIJ petitions, including “an alien from Tajikistan suspected of plotting an Islamic State (IS) terrorist attack in the United States.”

“Criminal aliens are infiltrating the U.S. through a program meant to protect abused, neglected, or abandoned alien children,” said USCIS spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser, who criticized “activist” judges and the Biden administration’s open border policies.

Congress has introduced bipartisan legislation to help keep religious workers, including Catholic priests and religious, in the country by extending their visas instead of sending them back to their home countries amid the backlog in the EB-4 category.

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Rochester, New York. / Credit: DanielPenfield via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

CNA Staff, Jul 30, 2025 / 16:39 pm (CNA).

Hundreds of clergy abuse victims agreed to a massive settlement from the Diocese of Rochester, New York, this week, bringing the diocese’s yearslong bankruptcy proceedings closer to an end. 

Documents obtained by CNA show a near-unanimous vote in favor of accepting the diocese’s proposed $246 million settlement plan, with just a handful of “abstain” votes and none voting against it. 

The payment comes after years of wrangling in U.S. bankruptcy court as the diocese, the survivors, and diocesan insurance providers worked to come to a settlement amount on which all of them could agree. 

In 2022 the diocese said it would pay $55 million into a settlement fund, with Bishop Salvatore Matano noting that “additional recoveries” could come from diocesan insurers. 

Earlier this month Continental Insurance Co. agreed to pay $120 million into the settlement fund, bringing the total contributions from the diocese, its parishes, and insurers up to the $246 million figure. 

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Paul Warren said in court this week that he intended to approve the agreement in September. 

In a statement on Wednesday, the diocese said it was “hopeful that the bankruptcy plan will be approved … and help to ease the hurt and suffering of the survivors, who have endured this painful process for six years.” The diocese first filed for bankruptcy in 2019.

“We pray that they will know the peace of Jesus and their faith, so scarred by those who so betrayed their trust, will be restored in Our Lord who is our ultimate hope,” the statement said. 

The settlement, once it has been approved, will be among the larger payouts of any U.S. diocese for an abuse or bankruptcy proceeding.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, holds the record for the largest diocesan payout in the U.S. so far after it agreed last year to a $323 million settlement.

The U.S. record for any diocese or archdiocese, meanwhile, was set by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, also last year, when it agreed to an $880 million payout. 

In some cases parishioners have legally challenged the terms of diocesan bankruptcy settlements. Catholics in the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, earlier this month convinced the state Supreme Court to issue a temporary halt on settlement payments the diocese is requiring of parishes. The Vatican is currently considering a dispute over parish mergers there. 

Dioceses and archdioceses pay for settlements from a variety of sources, including parish contributions, insurance payouts, and the sale of diocesan property.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupy an encampment on the campus of UCLA on April 25, 2024, in Los Angeles. / Credit: Eric Thayer/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 30, 2025 / 16:09 pm (CNA).

The University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) has agreed to a permanent court order forbidding campus antisemitism and a $6.13 million settlement after a number of discrimination complaints were filed against the school by Jewish students.

In June 2024, three students sued UCLA after the school “allowed a group of activists to set up barricades in the center of campus” to block Jewish students from accessing “critical educational infrastructure,” according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court. The suit was managed in part by the religious liberty law firm Becket.

UCLA agreed to the payout on July 28 after fighting the lawsuit for over a year. 

Some of the millions will be allocated to the defendants that brought the case forward, while more than $2 million of the funds will be donated to organizations that combat antisemitism on campus including the campus Hillel chapter, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Jewish Federation Los Angeles. 

“We are pleased with the terms of today’s settlement. The injunction and other terms UCLA has agreed to demonstrate real progress in the fight against antisemitism,” the plaintiffs said in a July 28 statement.

“When antisemites were terrorizing Jews and excluding them from campus, UCLA chose to protect the thugs and help keep Jews out,” said Yitzchok Frankel, a recent UCLA law graduate and plaintiff in the case. “That was shameful, and it is sad that my own school defended those actions for more than a year.”

“But today’s court judgment brings justice back to our campus and ensures Jews will be safe and be treated equally once again.”

According to the case, the actions in the lawsuit started after Hamas launched its attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. 

Protests broke out on campus as activists reportedly chanted antisemitic threats including “death to the Jews.” The university’s chancellor at the time, Gene Block, in a May 23, 2024, House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing, admitted UCLA was not “immune to the disturbing rise of antisemitism that has occurred across our country” following the Oct. 7 attack.

The following spring, the actions continued with what became known as a “Jew Exclusion Zone” on campus that prevented Jewish students from accessing “the heart of campus, including classroom buildings and the main undergraduate library.”

To enter the area, a person had to make a statement “pledging their allegiance to the activists’ views,” according to the lawsuit. UCLA’s administration knew about the extreme actions but “did nothing to stop it.”

For a full week, UCLA failed to clear the area and ordered campus police to stand down and allow the encampment to stay. The administration even stationed security staff around the area to keep students from attempting to enter the area blocked by the protestors. 

Last summer, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi barred the university from continuing to facilitate antisemitic exclusion on campus. The agreed judgment this week will officially bring the lawsuit to a close and make Scarsi’s previous decision permanent.

“Campus administrators across the country willingly bent the knee to antisemites during the encampments,” Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and an attorney for the students, said this week.

“They are now on notice: Treating Jews like second-class citizens is wrong, illegal, and very costly. UCLA should be commended for accepting judgment against that misbehavior and setting the precedent that allowing mistreatment of Jews violates the Constitution and civil rights laws. Students across the country are safer for it.”

Ryan Bethea (left) and Father Carlos Martins (right), co-hosts of “The Exorcist Files” podcast. / Credit: The Exorcist Files

CNA Staff, Jul 30, 2025 / 13:09 pm (CNA).

The popular podcasting priest Father Carlos Martins is no longer facing criminal charges after an incident at an Illinois parish last year led to misdemeanor allegations. 

The Burke Law Group said in a Wednesday press release that the priest, who hosts “The Exorcist Files” podcast, had been “fully cleared of all charges” stemming from a Nov. 21, 2024, event held at Queen of Apostles Parish in Joliet, Illinois.

Attorney Marcella Burke told CNA in November that the disputed incident occurred when Martins touched a young girl’s hair while telling a joke about his own baldness. The joke occurred publicly “in a classroom setting with teachers, clergy, parish staff, and volunteers present.”

The incident led to Will County prosecutors filing a criminal complaint against Martins in January, one that alleged that Martins went so far as to place the girl’s hair in his mouth.

On Wednesday the Burke Law Group said that prosecutors “withdrew those charges and dismissed the case” without any finding of any wrongdoing or criminal liability on the part of the priest.

Burke on Wednesday told CNA the charge carried a maximum penalty of 365 days in jail and a $2,500 fine.

In the press release the attorney said the dismissal of the charges was “exactly the result we were expecting.”

“What he was charged with was simply absurd,” Burke said. “This was a case that never should have been brought forward. The court’s ruling is a full vindication of Father Martins’ innocence from the beginning of any and all criminal wrongdoing.”

Martins, meanwhile, said in the release that he was “deeply grateful to all who offered their prayers and support during this time.” 

“I am thankful for the truth coming to light and look forward to resuming my ministry and continuing to preach the Gospel,” the priest said. 

Martins is a priest of the Companions of the Cross order. The order had not yet released a statement on the case by Wednesday afternoon. 

Martins was visiting the Illinois parish as part of his national touring exhibit of a relic of the arm of St. Jude the Apostle via the ministry Treasures of the Church. 

The priest told EWTN News in 2023 that it was “the first time the arm of the saint … [had] left Italy.”

On its website Treasures of the Church says the 16-month-long tour was attended by “almost 2 million pilgrims” while visiting numerous dioceses and locations.

Left to right: Cathleen Davey, president, Holy Name Foundation; Jeffrey A. Brown, acting commissioner for the New Jersey Department of Health; Joan Noble, Douglas M. Noble Family Foundation; Michael Maron, president and CEO of Holy Name Medical Center; U.S. Rep. Nellie Pou; New Jersey state Sen. Paul A. Sarlo; and New Jersey state Sen. Joseph A. Lagana. / Credit: Holy Name

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 29, 2025 / 17:29 pm (CNA).

Holy Name Medical Center, the only independent Catholic health system in New Jersey, announced it has received a $75 million gift, the largest-ever donation to a U.S.-based Catholic health system. 

“This transformational gift is not just about its remarkable size; it’s about the profound impact it will have on Holy Name’s ability to tackle some of the most critical health care challenges facing our community in the decades to come,” the hospital’s president and CEO, Michael Maron, said in a press release on Monday in which he announced the sizable donation from the Douglas M. Noble Family Foundation.

Holy Name Medical Center, located in Teaneck, New Jersey, hosted a special event to celebrate the gift and honor the legacy of the late Dr. Doug Noble, an accomplished neuroradiologist who passed away in 2019. His mother, Joan Noble, made the donation to the hospital on its 100th anniversary in honor of her son.

“My son was a very special person. Not only to me, as his mother, but also to the people in his world of medicine. Doug was an intelligent, dynamic individual sharing so much — energetically and with integrity and love,” Noble said at the event. “It became clear to me in order to make Doug’s legacy endure beyond any one individual’s or organization’s memory, including my own, I needed to give the gift that was Doug’s to a place that would appreciate it — and him; one that would turn his compassionate vision into reality in a way that he would endorse.”

“It was a challenging journey,” she added, “but through Father Roy Regaspi and prayer, I was blessed to be introduced to the people and mission of Holy Name. It is here at Holy Name where I found Doug’s legacy would live on.”

“In deciding where to bestow the funds of the Douglas M. Noble Family Foundation, the fact that Holy Name is a faith-based Catholic health organization entered strongly into Joan Noble’s decision,” Cathleen Davey, president of the Holy Name Foundation, told CNA. “Mrs. Noble told us she had prayed on the question for some time and that her prayers were answered with Holy Name.”

“Doug was a person of faith, and we learned that his desire to emulate Jesus as a healer was something very close to his heart,” Davey said. “Where could these funds promote the kind of medical competence and compassionate care that Doug himself delivered? Where could young physicians be trained as Doug himself taught — not only in the knowledge and skills of doctoring but in the concept of servant leadership?”

“So in getting to know Holy Name, it became apparent to Mrs. Noble that ours was the kind of health system Doug would have appreciated and endorsed,” Davey continued.

The historic gift will be used to expand the hospital’s specialized care units, according to Maron, including the hospital’s Level III neonatal intensive care unit as well as a new neuroendovascular institute.

The funds will also help launch the hospital’s graduate medical education program to help counter ongoing physician shortages.

“The potential impact is limitless — enhancing patient care, fueling medical innovation, attracting the best physician talent, and allowing us to continuously grow and adapt in line with our core values of compassion and healing,” Maron said.

New Jersey Democrat state Sen. Paul Sarlo, who is Catholic, also attended the event.

“Congratulations to Holy Name and God bless the Noble Family Foundation for this donation,” Sarlo said at the event, adding: “This does not happen in a vacuum. This family doesn’t make this contribution to any institution. It made it to Holy Name because when you walk into this place you feel like you belong. You are rooted in that Catholic mission. This gift is a compliment to each and every individual in this hospital. The work you do, day in and day out, ensures folks receive the care they need with gifts like this.”

U.S. Rep. Nellie Pou and state Sens. Joseph Lagana and Gordon Johnson were also present.

Notre Dame Catholic Church in Kerrville, Texas. / Credit: Sophie Abuzeid

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 29, 2025 / 16:59 pm (CNA).

A coalition of Protestant denominations filed a lawsuit on July 28 to challenge a policy from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration that makes it easier for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to arrest suspects at churches and other sensitive locations.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January rescinded the previous administration’s guidelines that had prevented ICE agents from conducting immigration arrests at churches and other sensitive locations unless there is approval from a supervisor or there is an urgent need to take enforcement action, such as an imminent threat.

The lawsuit brought by the Protestant coalition argues that the change in policy violates the First Amendment’s right to the free exercise of religion and two federal laws: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Churches suing the administration over the policy include several synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America along with Quaker churches, Baptist churches, and community churches. The nonprofit Democracy Forward is serving as co-counsel in the lawsuit.

“Raids in churches and sacred spaces violate decades of norms in both Democratic and Republican administrations, core constitutional protections, and basic human decency,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement.

“Faith communities should not have to choose between their spiritual commitments and the safety of their congregants,” Perryman said. “Democracy Forward is honored to be alongside these religious leaders in court. We will not give up until this unlawful and dangerous policy is struck down.”

Under the current rules, the formerly “sensitive” locations — such as churches, other houses of worship, schools, hospitals, shelters, and playgrounds — do not receive the special protections they had under the previous administration.

Yet a memo from DHS at the time instructed ICE agents to still maintain discretion and “balance a variety of interests” including the degree to which enforcement actions should be taken in one of those locations. It tells agents to use “a healthy dose of common sense.”

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin countered the lawsuit’s narrative in a statement provided to CNA, saying that any enforcement in houses of worship would be “extremely rare.”

“Our officers use discretion,” she said. “Officers would need secondary supervisor approval before any action can be taken in locations such as a church or a school.”

The lawsuit contends it is not enough that the discretion is “guided only by ‘common sense’” and said the policy “does not require any internal process before agents may carry out enforcement at these locations” and “does not require that exigent circumstances exist before agents enter.”

Effects of the DHS policy change

The lawsuit alleges that the policy change causes people to “reasonably fear attending houses of worship” and that some churches represented in the lawsuit “have seen both attendance and financial giving plummet.” It states that this impugns the free exercise of religion and argues that the new policy is not the least restrictive way to further the government’s interest of immigration enforcement.

“Congregations whose faith compels them to worship with open doors and open arms have suddenly had to lock those doors and train their staff how to respond to immigration raids,” the lawsuit contests. “In many places of faith across the United States, the open joy and spiritual restoration of communal worship has been replaced by isolation, concealment, and fear.”

Similar concerns have also been raised by Catholic dioceses. For example, the Diocese of San Bernardino, California, issued a Sunday Mass dispensation for those fearing deportation. Los Angeles Archbishop José Gómez said people are missing Mass amid such fears.

The lawsuit further states that the administration’s policy change has also “led to a growing number of immigration enforcement actions at or near these formerly protected areas.”

Although there are no allegations of targeted raids in churches, the lawsuit cites examples of immigration arrests on or near church properties.

It references two arrests in the San Bernardino Diocese: one in which men were chased into a church parking lot and another in which a man was doing landscaping work. It also references two arrests near churches in Los Angeles and the arrest of a man near a church in Oregon.

“The present threat of surveillance, interrogation, or arrest at their houses of worship means, among other things, fewer congregants participating in communal worship; a diminished ability to provide or participate in religious ministries; and interference with their ability to fulfill their religious mandates, including their obligations to welcome all comers to worship and not to put any person in harm’s way,” the lawsuit states.

McLaughlin, however, disputed these claims, saying that the policy change “gives our law enforcement the ability to do their jobs.”

“We are protecting our schools [and] places of worship by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and taking safe haven there because these criminals knew law enforcement couldn’t go inside under the Biden administration,” she said.

Other religious groups have brought similar lawsuits against the DHS following the policy shift.

Canon law professor Edward Peters had taught at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit since 2005. / Credit: Photo courtesy of CanonLaw.info

National Catholic Register, Jul 29, 2025 / 15:59 pm (CNA).

Canon law professor Edward Peters is the third faculty member at Detroit’s seminary to announce that he has been fired by Archbishop Edward Weisenburger in recent days.

Peters, 68, had taught at Sacred Heart Major Seminary since 2005.

“My Sacred Heart Major Seminary teaching contract was terminated by Abp. Weisenburger this week. I have retained counsel,” Peters wrote in a social media post Friday night.

“Except to offer my prayers for those affected by this news and to ask for theirs in return, I have no further comment at this time,” Peters said.

A representative of the Archdiocese of Detroit declined to comment Monday, telling the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, by email on Monday that “the Archdiocese of Detroit does not comment on archdiocesan or seminary personnel matters.”

Peters is an adviser to the Apostolic Signatura, which is the Holy See’s highest administrative tribunal. He was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to that position in May 2010, “becoming the first layman so appointed since the reconstitution of Signatura over 100 years ago,” according to an online biography.

Peters earned a doctorate in canon law from The Catholic University of America in 1991.

He published an English translation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law in 2001 and a textual history of the 1983 Code of Canon Law in 2005.

Two theologians — Ralph Martin, 82, and Eduardo Echeverria, 74 — were fired from Detroit’s seminary on July 23, they told the Register last week.

Martin told the Register the firing was “a shock” and that he didn’t get a full explanation for it.

“When I asked him for an explanation, he said he didn’t think it would be helpful to give any specifics but mentioned something about having concerns about my theological perspectives,” Martin said in a written statement, as the Register reported last week.

One thing all three now-former faculty members have in common is that they criticized Pope Francis publicly during the late pope’s pontificate.

In Peters’ case, he chided Pope Francis in his canon law blog, called “In Light of the Law.”

In April 2016, he described what he called “writing flaws” in Pope Francis’ encyclical Amoris Laetitia, keying in on Francis’ interest in allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics “in certain cases” to have “the help of the sacraments,” including the Eucharist.

Peters wrote that the encyclical makes what he called “a serious misuse of a conciliar teaching” of Vatican II when it conflates the periodic abstinence from sexual intercourse that a married couple may make with what he called “the angst” that “public adulterers experience when they cease engaging in illicit sexual intercourse.”

In August 2018, Peters criticized Pope Francis’ statements condemning the death penalty, referring to what he called “serious magisterial issues that I think Francis’ novel formulation has engendered” and saying he had “grave concerns” about Pope Francis’ “alteration” of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on that issue.

Weisenburger, who was installed March 18 as archbishop of Detroit after serving as bishop of Tucson, Arizona, for a little more than seven years, is an admirer of Pope Francis, as he made clear during a press conference on April 21, the day Pope Francis died. The archbishop called Francis “the perfect man at the right time” and suggested he was “a saint,” as the Register reported last week.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

The Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan. / Credit: Oilstreet via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.5)

CNA Staff, Jul 29, 2025 / 15:29 pm (CNA).

Eighty years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, several Catholic cardinals and archbishops will visit Japan for a pilgrimage of peace this August.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago; Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C.; Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle; and Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, will be part of the pilgrimage coordinated by the Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons (PWNW).

Throughout the five-day visit, the clergy, along with a delegation of pilgrims, will celebrate Mass, participate in dialogue on Catholic ethics and nuclear weapons, and visit historical sites and museums. The delegation will include staff and students from several U.S. universities.

The pilgrimage will begin by bringing together Catholic bishops from Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. alongside “hibakusha,” or atomic bomb survivors, for a panel discussion at the World Peace Memorial Cathedral in Hiroshima on Aug. 5. On Aug. 10, the pilgrimage will conclude with an ecumenical dialogue and academic symposium at Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki.

The pilgrimage — a joint effort between Japanese and U.S. bishops as well as various Catholic universities — centers on the theme of the Catholic Church’s jubilee year: “Pilgrims of Hope.”

“We are pilgrims of peace and hope, crossing continents and histories to remember the past and transform the future,” Wester said in a press release. “This journey to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not only a remembrance but a recommitment to the Gospel call for nonviolence and the abolition of nuclear weapons.” 

Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura of Nagasaki and Bishop Alexis Mitsuru Shirahama of Hiroshima worked with the Santa Fe and Seattle archdioceses to sponsor the pilgrimage. The archdioceses of Chicago and Washington are also supporting the pilgrimage, along with the U.S.-based Catholic universities of Georgetown University, Loyola University Chicago, and University of Notre Dame, as well as the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in North America and the Japanese universities of Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University and Sophia University, Tokyo.

Views on nuclear warfare

Views on nuclear weapons are still mixed in the U.S., though approval for the bombings has dropped since 1945. A 2025 Pew Research Survey found that 35% of Americans say the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, while 31% say that they were not; another 33% say they are unsure. But the bishops and cardinals who are heading to the pilgrimage in August are outspoken against nuclear warfare.

Cupich —  a leading Catholic voice on disarmament — recently wrote a column in the Chicago Catholic reflecting on the bombings where he noted that “the Church has a special responsibility in helping people resist ideas of retribution, hatred, ethnocentrism, and nationalism and in clearly presenting to the world an ethic of solidarity which gives priority to peace-building.”

“Politicians and the military have their roles in building peace, but so do all citizens,” Cupich wrote. “The entire population must be engaged in discussing and agreeing on the limits to warfare with a commitment that acts of intentionally killing innocents is unthinkable and never to be regarded as a regrettable but useful way to shorten a war.”

An estimated 150,000 to 250,000 people died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many of the deaths were instantaneous, while others died years later due to the radiation. 

Etienne of Seattle, who will be attending the pilgrimage for the second time, has worked with other leaders to promote the PWNW and its mission. The partnership is united around one purpose: “to protect all life and the environment” from nuclear harm. 

Wester, who will be making the pilgrimage for the third time, is also a vocal advocate for nuclear disarmament. Wester, whose Archdiocese of Santa Fe is home to the nuclear weapons facilities of Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, penned a pastoral letter in 2022 advocating for nuclear disarmament.

Wester also commemorated the anniversary of the testing of the first nuclear bomb in his home state of New Mexico. On July 16 — the anniversary of the detonation of the first nuclear bomb at the Trinity Test Site in the Jornada del Muerto desert — Catholic churches rang their bells at 5:29 a.m., the exact time of the first atomic explosion, as a call to prayer for peace.

Marian Days procession and closing Mass in 2023 in Carthage, Missouri. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Mother of the Redeemer Photography Group

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 29, 2025 / 12:43 pm (CNA).

Every summer, the small city of Carthage, Missouri, becomes a booming landmark of religion and culture as tens of thousands of pilgrims gather to celebrate family and faith, honor the Blessed Mother, and share in Vietnamese traditions.

The Marian Days (Ngày thánh Mẫu) pilgrimage originated as a way to create unity among Catholic immigrants after the Vietnam War. Nearly five decades later, the annual gathering continues to expand as more pilgrims return each year.

This year, the 46th Marian Days pilgrimage will be July 31 to Aug. 3 on the campus of the Congregation of the Mother of the Redeemer (CRM) in Carthage. Thousands of Catholics will take over the city to celebrate with daily Mass, processions, religious workshops, and Vietnamese culture.

Congregation of the Mother of the Redeemer 

The pilgrimage is organized by the CRM order, which is known for serving the Vietnamese community through ministry, evangelization, and its devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The order was originally founded in Vietnam in 1953 before establishing an unexpectedly strong presence in Carthage. Following the Vietnam War, when the country reunified as a socialist state under the Communist Party, 185 clergy members of the CRM fled with a number of others known as “the boat people.”

“In 1975, the wars had gone and our community left,” Father John Paul Tran, provincial minister of CRM, told CNA.

The priests and brothers left after struggling to preach the word of God under a communist regime. During their travels to America the members looked to Mary for guidance, prompting the order’s lasting devotion to her.

“Almost 200 members left Vietnam and [were] scattered around all the refugee camps in the United States,” Tran said. “There happened to be a big group of us in Fort Chaffee,” a resettlement center for Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in Arkansas. 

A chaplain at the base connected the group with then-Bishop Bernard Law of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri. “The bishop … [found] out about us and he sponsored us into his diocese.” The group then moved to Missouri to stay at the vacant Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) Seminary. 

“They were about to close it up,” Tran said of the OMI seminary. “So the bishop … asked them to rent it to us. So he brought every one of us back to this place in Carthage, [where] we live right now.”

Eventually, “we bought the place over from the OMI,” and the order turned the old seminary grounds into the CRM campus. “Then Marian Days started in 1978,” Tran said.

Pilgrimage to Carthage 

“Marian Days started … as a small gathering for the Vietnamese people, ‘the boat people,’ to gather, to give thanks, and to celebrate [and] march together. And just to encourage each other,”  Tran said. 

The first celebration was only one day with about 1,500 people. Today, the event lasts three days and welcomes so many that they have “stopped counting” how many join, but the priest said the city estimates “around 60,000 to 70,000 people.” 

Although the event is primarily organized and attended by the Vietnamese community, many locals and other groups also participate. Carthage has a population of about 15,600 people, but the event brings in almost five times the number of residents. Tran said that over the three days, “the city is packed.” 

Hundreds volunteer to help it go smoothly, including religious men and women from a number of Vietnamese orders, including sisters of the Congregation of Mary Queen. Sister Janine Tran, CMR, told CNA they “have been volunteering at Marian Days for over 40 years.” [Editor’s note: Sister Janine Tran is no known relation to Father John Paul Tran.]

In order to house the thousands, the CRM campus welcomes people to camp on the grounds. “We have 60 acres,” Father Tran explained. “It’s first come first served [of] any open space. They can put their tent and park their car there.”

“But then the city, they open up. Everybody who [has] a yard, they let the pilgrims [camp] on their yards and sometimes stay in their houses.” Some Vietnamese pilgrims have stayed with the same Carthage families for decades.

Marian Days 

Marian Days is “a big culture gathering, a family gathering, too. It’s religious, but then there’s a culture and a celebration to it,” Tran said. He explained that many pilgrims use the annual celebration as their family reunion and to unite with long-distance friends. 

Over the three days, pilgrims attend Mass, receive the sacraments, and deepen their faith at workshops and conferences “for [the] Vietnamese-speaking, for the English-speaking, and for the youth,” Tran said. 

On Saturday, pilgrims participate in a large procession with a statue of Our Lady of Fátima. The pilgrims process around the city as they pray the rosary, and many wear traditional Vietnamese attire while holding signs that indicate where they traveled from. 

The pilgrims get a strong sense of Vietnamese culture as hundreds of tents and booths are set up around the city with people selling traditional cuisine and people spreading the faith in “vocation booths.” This year, Sister Janine Tran said there is expected to be “10-12 religious communities” set up in the tents “to help promote the consecrated life.” 

In the evenings there are performances by attendees and even well-known entertainers to celebrate and honor Vietnamese heritage. Sister Janine shared that “this year, six of [the] sisters along with six young women from the Springfield Vietnamese Catholic community are doing a dance for Friday night’s entertainment to promote religious life as well as the Jubilee Year of Hope.”

After the festivities, the event will “end on Sunday morning with the closing Mass,” Father Tran said. Following the Mass, the pilgrims pack up and leave the small city behind for another year.

U.S. Office of Personnel Management headquarters building in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Another Believer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 29, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has issued new guidance to safeguard the right of federal employees to express religion in the workplace, including the display of religious imagery on desks, voluntary conversations, and prayer.

The new guidelines, issued by U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, were sent to the heads of all federal departments and agencies on Monday, July 28. The guidance is meant to clarify the religious liberty protections guaranteed in the First Amendment and already enshrined in federal law.

“Federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career,” Kupor said in a statement. “This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths. Under President Trump’s leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Michael Ross praised the memo in a statement to CNA, saying that “no American should have to check their faith at the door when they walk into the workplace.”

“We’re grateful for President Trump’s leadership in reaffirming every federal employee’s right to exercise their religious beliefs at work to the fullest extent permitted by law,” he said. “This is a critical step in restoring a workplace culture that respects and promotes religious freedom for every American.”

Protected religious expressions

The federal guidance clarifies religious liberty protections in five specific categories: display and use of items for religious purposes, expressions by groups of federal employees, conversations between federal employees, expressions directed at members of the public, and expressions in areas accessible to the public.

For the first category, the guidance states that employees can display and use religious items at their desks, on their person, and in assigned workplaces. This applies to a variety of items, such as Bibles, rosaries, jewelry, artwork, crosses, and mezuzahs.

The second category guarantees that federal employees can “engage in individual or communal religious expressions in both formal and informal settings alone or with fellow employees” when the employees are not on duty.

On the subject of conversations between employees, the guidance states that a person “may engage in conversations regarding religious topics.” This includes voluntary conversations that seek to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” as long as it is not harassing in nature.

The protection of religious conversations also extends to an employee encouraging a co-worker to participate in prayer or other expressions of faith “to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage co-workers [to] participate in other personal activities.” An employee cannot be disciplined in any way for not wanting to participate.

When engaging with members of the public as a private person — as long as the employee is not making a statement as part of his official duties — his or her religious expression must “not be suppressed,” according to the guidance. It states that constitutional rights “are not limited by the venue or the hearer.”

Additionally, the guidance states religious expressions, when done in an employee’s personal capacity, are permitted “in areas accessible to the public.” It states such religious expressions must “be treated in the same manner as if those expressions are made in areas inaccessible to the public.”

Examples of protected activities

The guidelines offer the heads of federal departments and agencies several examples of religious expressions that are protected.

In one example, it notes that an employee could keep a Bible on his or her desk to read during breaks or an employee could keep a rosary at his or her desk to pray during breaks. Employees can wear crosses or other clothing that displays a religious message.

The guidelines explain that a group of employees could form a prayer group or a group to study the Bible or other religious texts at the office, as long as they are not on duty. Employees should be allowed to use empty conference rooms for such activities, according to the guidance.

An employee is allowed to engage in a “polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should rethink his religious beliefs,” invite a member to church, or post a bulletin that advertises a religious service. Yet, conversations must be voluntary. If a co-worker does not want to continue the conversation, “the employee should honor the request.”

Other protected activities listed include a park ranger leading a tour through a national park joining a group in prayer or a doctor praying over his or her patient for recovery. It would also permit a security guard to display a crucifix, among many other protected activities.