Pope Francis announced he will create 13 new cardinals on Nov. 28, including Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Washing-ton. The Pope made the announcement at the end of his Angelus address on Oct. 25, telling the crowd in St Peter’s Square the names of the nine cardinals under the age of 80, who will be eligible to vote in a conclave, and the names of four elderly churchmen whose red hats are a sign of esteem and honour.
Once the consistory is held in late November, there will be 128 cardinals under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave. Pope Francis will have created just over 57% of them. Sixteen of the cardinals created by St John Paul II will still be under 80 as will 39 of the cardinals created by Pope Benedict XVI; Pope Francis will have created 73 of the electors. Italians will continue to have an outsized portion of the electors, rising to 22 of the 128; the United States will stay at nine voters with Cardinal-designate Gregory taking Cardinal Wuerl’s place.
Here is the full list of the new cardinals, in the order named by the Pope:
• Maltese Bishop Mario Grech, 63, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops.
• Italian Bishop Marcello Semeraro, 72, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes.
• Archbishop Antoine Kambanda of Kigali, Rwanda, who will turn 62 on Nov. 10.
• Archbishop Gregory, 72.
• Archbishop Jose F. Advincula of Capiz, Philippines, 68.
• Archbishop Celestino Aos Braco of Santiago, Chile, 75.
• Bishop Cornelius Sim, apostolic vicar of Brunei, 69.
• Italian Archbishop Paolo Lojudice of Siena, 56.
• Franciscan Father Mauro Gambetti, custos of the Sacred Convent of Assisi in Assisi, who was to celebrate his 55th birthday on Oct. 27.
• Retired Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel of San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, 80.
• Retired Italian Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, a former nuncio, 80.
• Italian Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, 86.
• Italian Father Enrico Feroci, 80, former director of Rome’s Caritas.

A laicized priest who had been the spiritual director to six people who said they experienced visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje has been excommunicated.
Tomislav Vlasic, who had been a Franciscan priest until he was laicized in 2009, was excommu-nicated on July 15 by a decree of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican. The excommunication was announced by the Diocese of Brescia, Italy, where the laicized priest lives.
The Brescia diocese said that since his laicization, Vlasic “has continued to carry out apostolic activities with individuals and groups, through conferences and online; he has continued to present himself as a religious and priest of the Catholic Church, simulating the celebration of sacraments.”
The diocese said Vlasic has been the source of “serious scandal to Catholics,” by disobeying the directives of ecclesiastical authorities. When he was laicized, Vlasic was forbidden from teaching or engaging in apostolic work, and especially from teaching about Medjugorje.
He was in 2009 accused of teaching false doctrine, manipulating consciences, disobeying ecclesiastical authority, and of committing acts of sexual mis-conduct. A person who is excommunicated is prohibited from receiving the sacramentals until the penalty has been lifted.
Alleged Marian apparitions in Medjugorje have long been a subject of controversy in the Church, which have been investigated by the Church but not yet authenticated or rejected.
The alleged apparitions began on June 24, 1981, when six children in Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, began to experience phenomena which they have claimed to be apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Pope Francis warned Europe’s leaders on October 27 that the project of European unity is at risk unless they “rediscover the path of fraternity” that inspired the project’s founders.
In a letter signed on Oct. 22, the feast day of St John Paul II, and released on Oct. 27, the Pope wrote: “We can either continue to pursue the path we have taken in the past decade, yielding to the temptation to auto-nomy and thus to ever greater misunder-standing, disagreement and conflict, or we can rediscover the path of fraternity that inspired and guided the founders of modern Europe, beginning precisely with Robert Schuman.”
He made the remarks in a letter marking three milestones: the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE); the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the European Union; and the 50th anniversary of the Holy See’s presence as a Permanent Observer at the Council of Europe.
The letter was addressed to the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who had planned to travel to the Belgian capital, Brussels, on Oct. 28-30.
In the letter, the Pope noted that the cardinal intended to make “significant visits to the authorities of the European Union, the Plenary Assembly of COMECE and the authorities of the Council of Europe.”
But the Vatican announced on Oct. 27 that Parolin had cancelled the trip because of new restrictions seeking to slow the spread of the corona virus.
The Argentine Pope explained in the letter that he wanted to share his reflections on the future of Europe, a continent that he said was “so dear to me,” not only because of his family’s Italian roots, but also because of Europe’s “central role … in the history of humanity.”
He said that the pandemic had underlined the importance of cooperation between European countries and the danger of giving in to “the temptation to go it alone, seeking unilateral solutions to a problem that transcends state borders.”
The Pope made a lyrical appeal addressed directly to Europe, urging the continent not to dwell on past glories.
He said: “Sooner or later, we realize that we ourselves have changed; we find ourselves weary and listless in the present and possessed of little hope as we look to the future. Without ideals, we find ourselves weak and divided, more prone to complain and to be attracted by those who make complaint and division a style of personal, social and political life.” In his letter, the Pope called for a “healthy secularism” in Europe, where believers were free to profess their faith in public.

Pope Francis’ endorsement of same-sex civil unions will lead the Catholic faithful to convert en masse to Orthodox Christia-nity and Protestantism, a senior Russian Orthodox Church official said Thursday.
Francis became the first pontiff to voice support for same-sex couples in a documentary that premiered in Rome on Wednesday. His stance marks a departure from the Vatican doctrine office’s 2003 document opposing the “legal recognition of homosexual unions.” Roman Silantyev, the head of human rights at the Orthodox Church’s World Russian People’s Council, called Pope Francis’ comments “a strong step toward degradation.”
“People will run to the Orthodox and Protestants after that,” Silantyev told the Podyom news website. “This might cause some kind of split since many Catholics are quite conservative.”
His comments come amid Russia’s increasing embrace of conservative values, with persisting intolerance toward the LGBT community and criticism of the liberal West. A majority of Russians voted this summer in favor of constitutional changes which, in addition to allowing President Vladimir Putin to extend his rule, added language defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman to the Constitution.
Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993. Twenty years later, it banned “homosexual propaganda toward minors,” which activists say the authorities use to prevent them from displaying LGBT flags and holding gay pride events.

Pope Francis set the tone of his speech on October 20 by recalling the historic Assisi Meeting desired by Saint Pope John Paul II on October 27, 1986, in which for the first time in Church history the Pope invited leaders of other religions to join him in prayer for peace for the human family. That meeting, he said, contained a prophetic seed “that by God’s grace has gradually matured through unprecedented encounters, acts of peacemaking and fresh initiatives of fraternity.” He noted that since that meeting many painful events have taken place, at times in the name of religion, but that we also acknowledge the fruitful steps undertaken since then in interreligious dialogue.

A Muslim jihadi has gone on a stabbing spree in Nice’s Notre-Dame Basilica, killing the male sacristan, beheading an elderly woman at the baptismal font and knifing a fleeing third woman who died in a nearby café.
The assailant in his 20s, identifying himself as “Ibrahim,” stabbed and wounded several others around the neo-gothic Basilica of the Assumption of our Lady around 9 am on Oct. 29.
Police shot and severely wounded the killer, who was heard repeatedly shouting “Allahu Akbar” [God is greatest] as he was taken away in an ambulance.
Just over a week ago, Emanuel Macron said he wanted to end ‘Islamic separatism’ in France because a minority of the country’s estimated six million Muslims risk forming a ‘counter-society’. We saw yet another example of this when a  history teacher was decapitated in the street on his way home in a Paris suburb. M Paty was murdered, Macron said, “because he taught the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe.” The president is now positioning himself as the defender of French values, determined to drain the Islamist swamp.
That Macron even gave an anti-Islamism speech was itself a sign of how fast the debate is moving in France. Five years ago, when Fox News referred to ‘no-go zones’ in Paris, the city’s mayor threatened to sue.

More than 180,000 people have stopped identifying with the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the past four years, according to official church numbers. Now there’s one more: President Donald Trump. Trump told Religion News Service in a written interview mediated by spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain that he doesn’t consider himself to be Presbyterian. He was confirmed in the church and has called himself Presbyterian numerous times over the years. But no more. “I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian,” Trump said in the statement. “Melania and I have gotten to visit some amazing churches and meet with great faith leaders from around the world. During the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak, I tuned into several virtual church services and know that millions of Americans did the same.”

On October 5, 2020, a mob of Islamic extremists attacked the homes of Coptic Christians in the Egyptian village of Dabous, located in the Upper Egypt region of Minya. According to International Christian Concern, two young Muslim adults beat up a ten-year old Coptic Christian child. Some Christian adults retaliated, triggering the attack the next day. Christians make up about 10% of Egypt’s 100 million people, making the country home to the largest Christian population in the Arab world. The vast majority of Christians belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church, the largest Church in the Oriental Orthodox communion – However there are about 350,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians, 300,000 Protestants, and just under 200,000 Catholics.