Continuing a years-long trend, the Catholic Church in Germany saw a significant drop in membership this past year, losing more than 200,000 members in 2018.

According to the German Bishops’ Conference, the Catholic Church in the country declined by 216,078 members last year. Protestant Churches saw a similar drop, with 220,000 members leaving during that time period.

Fr Hans Langendörfer, SJ, secretary of the German Bishops’ Conference, said the numbers show a need for the Church in Germany to be “more self-critical and constructive.”

“The current statistics are worrying. There is nothing to gloss over about the numbers, they confirm a trend that has shaped the Church in recent years,” he said in a statement.

Adding that a loss of trust and credibility has caused great damage, the priest went on to say that Church leaders must examine the question of how to make the Catholic Church a welcoming environment, where people can find hope and feel at home.

One of Pope Francis’s top aides delivered a personal letter from the pontiff to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, among other things expressing Francis’s “deep concern” for the humanitarian situation in Idlib, a rebel-controlled area in northwestern Syria that’s been the target of Russian-backed airstrikes since April.

A Vatican statement on July 22 indicated that Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, who heads the Vatican’s department for Promoting Integral Human Development, met that morning in Damascus with Assad, accompanied by Italian Cardinal Mario Zenari, the Pope’s ambassador in Syria.

The statement, issued by new papal spokesman Matteo Bruni, said that the letter “expresses the deep concern of His Holiness Pope Francis for the humanitarian situation in Syria, with particular reference to the dramatic consequences facing the civilian population in Idlib.”

Airstrikes in Idlib alone left at least 17 civilians dead, including seven children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The observatory warned that the death toll could rise significantly as bodies are cleared from rubble.

A pregnant woman and a child were among four people killed in attacks by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria’s Plateau State on mid July.

The attackers targeted the villages of Ancha and Tafigana in the Bassa Local Government area, as reported by news site Nasoweseeamonline.
Margaret Wakili, 27, from Ancha village and who was 6 months pregnant, was killed at the farm where she was visiting her husband. They both fled but the attackers caught his wife. As they killed her he heard them shout “‘Allahu Akbar, we have killed infidel, we need to kill more,” he said. He identified the 8 attackers as Fulani from Hayin Rukuba. An older woman in the village also was killed.

In Tafigana, 46-year-old Thomas Wollo, and his 7-year-old son Nggwe Thomas were beheaded when they returned home from choir practice on July 14 night.

Following the killings, the attackers went on to a nearby village where they destroyed crops to the value of millions of naira, according to Zongo Law-rence, Publicity Secretary of Miango Youth Development Association.

Pope Francis appointed Professor Stefan Walter Hell, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, and of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is of international scope, multi-racial in its composition and non-sectarian in the election of its Members. The Academy’s work includes six areas: Basic Sciences, Sciences, and Technology of Global Problems, Science of the Problems of the Developing World, Scientific Policy, Bio-ethics, and Epistemology.

Professor Hell has worked on the error of fluorescence of super-resolution, which made it possible to visualize details with a ten times greater superior precision, attaining the resolution of a few nano-meters; thus the micro-scopes became nano-scopes. He has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Kavli Prize for Nano-Science and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014.

The British government should consider sanctions on countries where Christians are persecuted, according an independent review for the Foreign Secretary.

The report, by the Church of England Bishop of Truro Philip Mounstephen, reco-mmends the UK “be prepared to impose sanctions against perpetrators of Freedom of Religious Belief (FoRB) abuses.”

It also recommends the government explore how social media strategies can promote religious freedom and counter religious hate, and that a standard definition of FoRB be established.

Foreign Secretary Jeremys Hunt said that if he becomes prime minister, he would make sure all the recommendations were acted on.

It is estimated 5 that one third of the world’s population suffers from religious persecution in some form, with Christians constituting “by far the most widely per-secuted religion,” the report says.

Examples include the removal of crosses, the destruction of Church buildings and other Church symbols and the killing and abduction of clergy.

The report details how the eradication of Christians and other 33 minorities on pain of “the sword” or other violent means was revealed to be the stated objective of extremist groups in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, north-east Nigeria and the Philippines.

“The main impact of such genocidal acts against Christians is internal displacement and exodus. Christianity now faces the possibility of being wiped-out in parts of the Middle East where its roots go back furthest. In Palestine, Christian numbers are below 1.5 percent; in Syria the Christian population has declined from 1.7 million in 2011 to below 450,000 and in Iraq, largely through the ‘ethnic 37 cleansing’ of ancient Christian communities from the Nineveh Plains, Christian numbers have slumped from 1.5 million before 2003 to below 120,000 today. Christianity is at risk of disappearing, representing a massive setback for plurality in the region. It is that plurality which has been a key for security and stability in the region for hundreds of years.” Christianity is at existential risk in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Since 2003, over 1 million Christians fled the country, reducing the size of the Christian population by nearly 80%.

The Vatican announced  that Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman will be canonized on October 13 in Rome.

During a consistory of cardinals on July 1, Pope Francis decreed that New-man and four other blesseds will be canonized together in St Peter’s Square.

Indian Sister Mariam Thresia, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family; Italian Sister Giuseppina Vannini; Brazilian Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes, and Mar-guerite Bays, a Swiss consecrated virgin of the Third Order of St Francis will be canonized alongside Newman.

Their canonizations will take place during the 2019 Special Synod of Bishops from the Pan-Amazonian region to be held at the Vatican on Oct. 6-27.

Newman was a 19th century theologian, poet, Catholic priest and cardinal. Originally an Anglican priest, he converted to Catholicism in 1845 and his writings are considered among some of the most important Church-writings in recent centuries.

Pope Francis has named the first women members of the Vatican department that oversees religious orders.

On 8 July 2019, it was announced the Pope had named a raft of new appointments to the board of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, including seven women.

A Vatican spokesman confirmed  that they are the first female members to hold such a position on the body.

The women chosen include the following superiors general from religious order: Kathleen Appler of the Daughters of Charity, Yvonne Reungoat, of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters), Françoise Massy of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, Luigia  Coccia, of the Comboni missionary sisters, Simona Brambilla, Consolata Missionary Sisters, M. Rita Calvo Sanz, of the Order of the Company of Mary Our Lady. He also named Olga Krizova, general president of the Don Bosco Secular Volunteer Institute.

German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, widely seen as a key opponent of Pope Francis, has penned a rare essay openly criticizing the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, saying the official preparatory document breaks with Catholic teaching.

According to Brandmüller’s essay, published on June 27, on the Settimo Cielo blog of Italian journalist Sandro Magister, the Synod’s recently published preparatory document “burdens the Synod of Bishops, and finally the Pope, with a grave breach with the depositumfidei, which in its consequence means the self-destruction of the Church or the change of the Corpus Christi mysticum into a secular NGO with an ecological-social-psychological mandate.”

Published on June 17, the document, known as the instrumentum laboris, will set the ground work for the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, that will take place in Rome on Oct. 6-27. Among other things, it opened a cautious door to the ordination of married “elders” as a possible solution to the region’s priest shortage. In his essay, Brandmüller insisted that “the Instrumentum Laboris contradicts the binding teaching of the Church in decisive points and thus has to be qualified as heretical.”

“Inasmuch as even the fact of Divine Revelation is here being questioned, or misunderstood, one also now has to speak, additionally, of apostasy,” he said, voicing grievances over the document’s take on liturgy, spirituality and priestly celibacy.