The Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, has decreed that state legislative leaders may not be admitted to Holy Communion within his diocese, because of their work to pass the state Reproductive Health Act. The bishop also directed that Catholic Legislators who have voted for legislation promoting abortion should not present themselves to receive Holy Communion until they have first gone to confession. “In accord with canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law… Illinois Senate President John Cullerton and Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan, who facilitated the passage of the Act Concerning Abortion of 2017 (House Bill 40) as well as the Reproductive Health Act of 2019 (Senate Bill 25), are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois because they have obstinately persisted in promoting the abominable crime and very grave sin of abortion as evidenced by the influence they exerted in their leadership roles and their repeated votes and obdurate public support for abortion rights over an extended period of time,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki wrote in a June 2 decree.

“These persons may be readmitted to Holy Communion only after they have truly repented these grave sins and furthermore have made suitable reparation for damages and scandal, or at least have seriously promised to do so, as determined in my judgment or in the judgment of their diocesan bishop in consultation with me or my successor,” the bishop added.

Pope Francis told Jesuits in Romania that tensions and struggles within the Church have left it wounded and that the only path forward is through humble dialogue, not futile arguments. “I think of the Church as a field hospital. The Church is so wounded, and today it is also so wounded by tensions within it,” the Pope told the Jesuits during a meeting on May 31 in Bucharest.

“Meekness, it takes meekness! And it takes a lot of courage to be meek! But you have to go forward with meekness,” the Pope said. “This is not the time to convince, to have discussions. If someone has a sincere doubt, yes, one can dialogue, clarify. But don’t respond to the attacks.”

As has become customary when the Pope meets Jesuits during a foreign trip, a transcript of his remarks was released weeks later by the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica.

According to the text published on June 13, Francis told the 22 Jesuits that in moments of “tribulation and fury,” Christians must imitate Jesus who “didn’t argue with the Pharisees and the Sadducees as he had done before when they tried to set traps.” Instead, “Jesus remained silent.”

“There’s no talking at the moment of fierce fury. When persecution is taking place, what remains to be lived is witness and loving closeness, in prayer, in charity and in goodness,” he said. “You embrace the cross.”

Francis met with the Jesuits at the apostolic nunciature in Bucharest at the end of his first day in the country. According to La Civilta Cattolica, the Pope spent nearly an hour with the group answering their questions “in a relaxed and family atmosphere.”

Asked about where he finds consolation in moments of trial, the Pope said he seeks it in prayer and especially in meeting with “God’s people.”

“God’s people understand things better than we do. God’s people have an under-standing, the sensus fidei, (sense of faith) that corrects your line and puts you on the right path,” the Pope said. “You should hear what people say to me when I meet them! They have a nose for understanding situations.” Another Jesuit asked the Pope his thoughts regarding marriage annulments and the difficulties faced by many couples who “are unable to make it to the end of the process” because “the tribunals don’t work.”

Women in traditional white dresses have carried a centuries-old statue of the Virgin Mary to mark Whit on June 10 in an annual ritual in the eastern German town of Rosenthal. Hundreds of Catholic Sorbs, a Slavic minority, held prayers in rural churches in about a dozen areas before walking to Rosenthal for another service. They then ended their pilgrimage walking with the young women carrying the 1480 wooden statue of Mary through the town to a field for an open-air mass.

The ritual marks Whit Monday, the day after Whitsun or Pentecost, which falls seven weeks after Easter Sunday and is the day the Holy Spirit is said to have descended upon the apostles. The day is a national holiday in Germany and many other countries

After 137 years of ongoing construction, Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia received a building permit on June 6.

Construction on the basilica is expected to be completed in 2026.

Architect Antoni Gaudí began his work on Sagrada Familia in 1883, and in 1914 stopped all other projects to work exclusively on the basilica, to which he dedicated himself until his death in 1926.

“It was a historical anomaly that La Sagrada Familia did not have a license,” said Janet Sanz, deputy mayor for Ecology, Urbanism and Mobility, according to NPR.

“They were working on the church in a very irregular way,” she said. “And we were very clear that, like everyone else, La Sagrada Familia should comply with the law.”

A permit had been applied for in 1885, but the city’s council never responded to the application. Three years ago, the authorities discovered that the building did not have the proper paper-work.

Syriac Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Nizar Semaan begins his new mission in Iraq with hope “that Christianity will flourish again” in his homeland.

Semaan chose the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh, Iraq, his birthplace, as the site of his episcopal ordination on June 7.

Still scarred from the Islamic State group and not yet fully restored, the church, Semaan said, is “a symbol of what happened to our cities and villages in 2014 until the liberation (in 2017) from ISIS.”

It’s also the church where the new bishop was ordained a priest in 1991. Located in the Ninevah Plain, Qaraqosh was the largest Christian city in Iraq. Its 50,000 residents – all of them Christians were expelled by Islamic State forces in a single night during the summer of 2014. They were among 120,000 Christians up-rooted from Mosul and the Ninevah Plain that summer.

When Pascal Siakam was in his young teens attending a minor seminary in Cameroon – and mostly playing soccer in his free time – he likely never imagined he’d be playing in the NBA Finals.

Studying for the priest-hood, it turned out, was more of his father’s idea, and not a personal calling. Now-25-year-old forward for the Toronto Raptors, who are playing in their first Finals against the Golden State Warriors.

The 6-foot-9 player, drafted by the Raptors in 2016, also is a possible candidate for the NBA’s Most Improved Player award. He made just one 3-point shot in his first season; he now averages one 3-point shot made per game.

In 2017, ESPN writer Jackie MacMullan went to Cameroon to visit Siakam’s hometown of Douala and St Andrews Seminary in Bafia for a feature story.

She interviewed the semi-nary’s director, Msgr Armel Collins Ndjama, who said through an interpreter that he knew early on that Pascal’s father had a vision “and Pascal was not sharing it.”

“I knew we would probably not be able to train him to be a priest, but I still hoped we could teach him to be a man,” the priest added.

Siakam similarly agreed that he did not think he had a vocation to the priesthood, but he also didn’t want to go against his father. “There isn’t a better man I’ve known in my life,” he told ESPN about his dad, who died before Siakam’s first college game after complications following a car accident.

Pope Francis has met with Brazil’s indigenous chief Raoni, who is on a European tour to raise awareness about the dangers facing the Amazon. The pope’s meeting with one of the great leaders of the Kayapo people living in the Amazonian forest in Brazil, took place at the Vatican on May 27.

“Through this meeting, Pope Francis reaffirms his attention to the Amazonian peoples and environment and his commitment to the preservation of the common home,” the Holy See explained in a statement.

The Vatican also said that the meeting was part of the preparation of the next Synod of Bishops’ special assembly on Amazonia to be held next October in the Vatican.

The working document, which will serve as a basis for the debates of this assembly, is scheduled to be published in June, Cardinal Pedro Barreto of Huancayo (Peru) and member of the pre-synodal council, announced a few days ago.

A conference in Taiwan has been told that China’s communist government is increasingly using so-called ‘sharp power’ to stymie international scrutiny of its poor human rights record, including the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.

At the same time, the Beijing regime has been tightening controls on its own people, warned academics, student leaders and rights’ campaigners.

The term ‘sharp power’ was coined in December 2017 in a report of the United States non-profit National Endowment for Democracy to describe censor-ship and other tactics used to weaken independent institutions.

Wikipedia defines sharp power as the use of manipulative diplomatic policies by one country to influence and under-mine the political system of a target nation.

The May 18-20 conference in Taiwan marking the 30th anniversary of the June 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre was organized by the Hong Kong-based New School for Democracy and the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.

More than 50 scholars, student leaders and witnesses of the Tiananmen Square protest, as well as representatives of overseas support groups and Hong Kong democratic parties, were present as speakers and discussants.