Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako said in the Aug. 1 letter that he would only consider returning to the Iraqi capital if President Abdul Latif Rashid formally recognized him as the leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the holder of all its endowments.
Sako relocated July 21 to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region weeks after Rashid revoked a 2013 presidential decree acknowledging that the cardinal is the head of the roughly 630,000-strong Eastern Catholic Church and the figure responsible for overseeing its assets.
“Without this decree, I will remain in Erbil [the capital of  Kurdistan Region] until your term ends, and work with the new president to issue an official decree that continues with a tradition that dates back 14 centuries,” Sako told Rashid, whose four-year term ends in October 2026.
In the letter, entitled “A final message to His Excellency the President of the Republic, Dr. Abdul Latif Rashid,” Sako said he had learned that the president was in the process of issuing identity papers to Iraqi Church leaders.

Spiritual worldliness is one of the most dangerous temptations facing priests and the Church because it “reduces spirituality to appearance” while disconnecting it from the Gospel, Pope Francis warned in a recently released letter to the priests of Rome.
“[Spiritual worldliness] leads us to be ‘workers of the spirit,’ men clad of sacred forms that actually continue to think and act according to the fashions of the world,” the pope wrote.
The pope’s message was communicated in a lengthy letter released by the Vatican on August 7 but which was dated Aug. 5, the memorial of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. The pope is the bishop of Rome and wrote the letter to provide what he described as the comfort of a “fraternal encounter.”
In his comments on spiritual worldliness, the pope drew heavily from the reflections of 20th-century theologian and cardinal Henri de Lubac, who wrote that the invasion of spiritual worldliness into the life of the Church would be “infinitely more disastrous than any simple moral worldliness” because spiritual worldliness “corrupts [the Church] by undermining her very principle.”
Pope Francis wrote that spiritual worldliness begins to take hold in the lives of priests not only through temptations to mediocrity, power and influence, and vainglory but also “from doctrinal intransigence and liturgical aestheticism,” which have the appearance of religiosity and even loving the Church but instead seek human glory and personal well-being.

Faith leaders in Kenya are warning against continued violent demonstrations, saying they could lead the country on the path to self-destruction.
Demonstrations this week against the high cost of living have left at least 23 people dead, according to a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, Jeremy Laurence.
“The UN Human Rights Office is very concerned by the widespread violence, and allegations of unnecessary or disproportionate use of force, including the use of firearms, by police during protests in Kenya. Reports say up to 23 people have been killed and dozens injured in the demonstrations in the past week,” Laurence said in a statement July 14.
More than 300 people have been arrested in connection with the protests.
Opposition leader Raila Omolo Odinga, who called for the protests, has promised more demonstrations next week, and that forecast has caught the attention of Church leaders in the East African country.
In a collective statement July 14, a cross-section of religious leaders, including representatives of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB), the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), and the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM), cautioned President William Ruto against allowing the country to descend on the path of an insurrection.
“The suffering individual Kenyans are experiencing is pushing them into hopelessness that can easily inspire insurrection,” said the religious leaders, in the statement signed by the Chairman of KCCB, Archbishop Martin Kivuva Musonde, NCCK Chairman Archbishop Timothy Ndambuki, and SUPKEM chairman Al Hajj Hassan Ole Naado,

Following the July 26 coup in Niger, Catholic Bishops of the Burkina-Niger Episcopal Conference have expressed concern that a military intervention in the African nation could unravel the fragile security situation in the Sahel, leading to a further spread in jihadism.
In an August 4 release signed by the President of the Episcopal Conference, Bishop Laurent Birfuoré Dabiré of Dori in Burkina Faso, the bishops expressed concern that an attack on Niger in attempts to restore constitutional order would lead to “a second Libya.”
The reference was to a 2011 NATO-led intervention in Libya that resulted in the overthrow of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, which many analysts blame for plunging the nation and surrounding region into chaos.
On July 26, Niger’s democratically-elected President, Mohamed Bazoum, was overthrown, and the commander of the presidential guard declared himself to be in charge in a televised address.
General Abdourahmane Tchiani declared: “We have decided to intervene and seize our responsibilities” in order to assert authority over the nation.
That announcement met with jubilation across the streets of Niger, with citizens chanting anti-French rhetoric and tearing down French flags, reflecting popular impressions that the ousted leader was a French stooge.
In response, the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, threatened that it would take military action if Bazoum wasn’t reinstated within a week. The chair of the regional body, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, said that its members “shall not waiver or flinch in our resolve to defend and preserve constitutional order.”

To end “Catholic Woodstock” – as World Youth Day has been called by the Portuguese press – Pope Francis told 1.5 million weary-eyed and sleep-deprived young people in Lisbon not to let their “great dreams” of changing the world be “stopped by fear.”
In his homily for the closing Mass of World Youth Day Aug. 6, the pope asked for “a bit of silence” from the pilgrims who, after staying overnight in Lisbon’s Tejo Park following the previous night’s vigil, at 6 a.m. were already dancing to techno music mixed by a DJ priest before the pope’s arrival. “Let’s all repeat this phrase in our hearts: ‘Don’t be afraid,’” he told the hushed crowd. “Jesus knows the hearts of each one of you, the successes and the failures, he knows your hearts,” Pope Francis said. “And today he tells you, here in Lisbon for this World Youth Day: ‘Don’t be afraid.’”
As dawn broke over the riverside park, pilgrims emerged from tents, tarps and sleeping bags to prepare for Mass. Violeta Marovic, 19, from Chicago, told Catholic News Service that the pilgrims spent the 10 hours between the previous night’s vigil and the papal Mass “sleeping very little,” dancing, playing games and exchanging gifts with other young people from around the world; she was wearing bracelets given to her by pilgrims from Italy and Poland. A theology major at the University of Dallas, Marovic said she normally gets “nervous” when she tells people what she studies, but she has been comforted by seeing the huge amount of people so passionate about their faith, noting that young Catholics often “feel alone” when practicing their religion in the United States. At the front of the crowd, which extended across both banks of Lisbon’s Trancão River, 30 cardinals, 700 bishops and 10,000 priests concelebrated the Mass with Pope Francis. Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was seated in the front row.