On the heights of Marseille, in the south of France, the sea stretches as far as the eye can see. The memorial dedicated to sailors and migrants lost at sea is there, at the foot of Notre-Dame de la Garde. The memorial stone is surmounted by a large Camargue cross – combining the traditional cross and an anchor.
It was in this striking landscape that Pope Francis came to launch another powerful appeal on the first day of his trip to Marseille on September 22, in front of the sun-soaked Mediterranean Sea in which migrants still drown every day.
“Too many people, fleeing conflict, poverty and environmental disasters in their search for a better future, find in the waves of the Mediterranean Sea the ultimate rejection,” lamented Francis, whose white robe was blown by the Mistral wind. “
“We are at a crossroads,” he said, “On the one hand, there is fraternity (…) on the other, indifference, which bloodies the Mediterranean.” He emphasized, “It’s either the culture of humanity and fraternity, or the culture of indifference – every man for himself.” And so this beautiful sea has become a huge cemetery.”
In the midst of religious leaders from Marseille of all religions and denominations, the Pope forcefully denounced both the “cruel trafficking” and the “fanaticism of indifference” towards those trying to reach Europe. “People who are at risk of drowning when abandoned on the waves must be rescued,” he thundered after a moment of silent reflection, visibly moved.
In this speech, the Pope echoed the feelings expressed at the very beginning of his pontificate. It was as if he wanted to renew the call made in Lampedusa in the summer of 2013. On the small island of Sicily, the newly elected Pope had criticized the world’s indifference to migrants. But this appeal, renewed twice in another Greek refugee camp on Lesbos in 2016 and 2021, has never really been heard.

Christianity’s growth in China has stalled since 2010.
That’s according to a new Pew Research Centre report measuring religion in China published today. In 2010, approximately 23.2 million adults in China self-identified as Christian. In 2018, 19.9 million adults did so, which Pew researchers say is not a “statistically significant gap.”
Among Chinese Christians, the percentages of zongjiao (Mandarin for “organized religion”) activity have also stagnated. Nearly 40 percent (38%) of Christians said they engaged in such activities once a week in 2010, but that figure dipped slightly to 35 percent in 2018.
“Some scholars have relied on a mix of fieldwork studies, claims by religious organizations, journalists’ observations and government statistics to suggest that China is experiencing a surge of religion and is perhaps even on a path to having a Christian majority by 2050,” the Pew report stated.

Cardinal Anders Arborelius, who has led the small Catholic community in Sweden since 1998, came to Washington, D.C., alongside Bishop Karin Johannesson, an assistant bishop in the Lutheran Archdiocese of Uppsala.
The two prelates, who share a devotion to Carmelite spirituality, took part in an ecumenical dialogue on the 19th-century St. Thérèse of Lisieux, held at the St. John Paul II National Shrine.
In separate NCR interviews after the event, Arborelius and Johannesson expressed hope that their collaboration might be a sign for how Christians of different denominations can work together. They also spoke about their expectations for Pope Francis’ upcoming Synod of Bishops, which will hold its first assembly in Rome next month.
“The synodal process is very exciting and an important development for the Catholic Church,” said Johannesson. Arborelius said he hoped the assembly would “help people to a more profound encounter with Christ and to follow him more faithfully and serve those in need.”
Following are NCR’s interviews with Arborelius and Johannesson, presented together and lightly edited for length and context.
Many Catholics are anticipating the first session of the Synod of Bishops in Rome this October. Cardinal, can you describe a bit what it has been like for the Swedish Catholic Church to prepare for the synod? Bishop, how has the Lutheran community in Sweden experienced the synod?
Are there items that either of you personally hope the synod might discuss?
Card. Arborelius: Evangelization in a post-Christian world is a most urgent subject. To help people to a more profound encounter with Christ and to follow him more faithfully and serve those in need.
Bp Johannesson: The synodal process is very exciting and an important development for the Catholic Church. The synod’s working document is very interesting, and I can recognize many issues that are common for all our churches. I really hope that the synod will take time to discuss how a synodal church can fulfill her mission through a renewed ecumenical commitment. We have so much in common and we have to cooperate for the mission of the church today. I also hope that the theology about “the priesthood of all believers” that is not unknown in Catholic theology but very dear for us Lutherans can be used in the synodal process.

In the latest expression of Ukrainian irritation with Pope Francis’s efforts to be even-handed with regard to Russia’s ongoing invasion, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has accused the pontiff of trafficking in “imperialist propaganda” during a recent video address to Russian youth.
The Vatican fired back , insisting that the pope “certainly did not intend to exalt imperalistic logic.”
The pope spoke to a gathering of Catholic youth in St. Petersburg on Aug. 25. When the Vatican released a transcript of his comments the next day, they focused on his call to the Russian youth to be “artisans of peace.”
There was, however, a section not included in the transcript and largely ignored in most news reports, including the Vatican’s own official media platforms. The comments were released later by the Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow and in a video from a church-run television agency.
In that section of his talk, Francis called on the youth not to “forget your identity.”
“You are heirs of the great Russia, the great Russia of the saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, that great, enlightened Russian empire, of so much culture, so much humanity,” the pope said.

At Pope Francis’s Mass in Ulaanbaatar on September 3 Sunday afternoon, which was attended by nearly 200 people from mainland China, one young Catholic from the mainland said life for the Church in his country is extremely difficult and asked that the pope help “save” them.
Speaking to Crux in broken English, the young man, named Li, said that if he had the chance to say something to Pope Francis, his message would be, “Pope, please save our Chinese (Church)!”
“Here (in Mongolia) everyone has no fear, they are not controlled. We have a Church in China, but if there’s a church you see around, it works for the government,” he said, saying there are still many Catholics in China who belong to the so-called “underground” Church, despite the pope’s efforts to heal the divide with a controversial 2018 agreement on the appointment of bishops.
Li said his family comes from Inner Mongolia, a northern region in China that borders Mongolia, and that he and his family have business in Mongolia, so it was easier for them to travel to attend the papal events.
Pope Francis is currently closing a four-day visit to Mongolia, the first a pope has ever made to the country, where Catholics number fewer than 1,500, one of the Church’s smallest flocks.

The archbishop of Berlin has released an official statement permitting priests under his jurisdiction to administer blessings to same-sex couples, emphasizing that his directive aligns with the intentions of Pope Francis.
Quoting Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia in a letter dated Aug. 21, Abp. Heiner Koch notes that “it is no longer possible to say that all who are in any so-called irregular situation are in a state of mortal sin and have lost sanctifying grace.”
“Pope Francis emphatically calls for pastoral discernment,” Koch writes. While rejecting “the legal equality of same-sex partnerships with marriage,” Francis “gives the local churches, the pastors, a lot of leeway in dealing with people in so-called ‘irregular’ situations.”
Koch also cites Amoris Laetitia §297 on inclusion: “It’s about including everyone; you have to help everyone to find their own way, to participate in ecclesial communion so that he may feel himself a recipient of an undeserved, unconditional and unrequited mercy.”
Further, the senior prelate notes that the prefect-designate of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Abp. Víctor Manuel Fernández, has expressed an “openness” to reflecting on same-sex blessings provided they are not confused with the sacrament of marriage.
“What Pope Francis says about the sacrament of the Eucharist in his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium applies to all sacraments, including marriage, and even more so to a sacramental such as blessing: ‘It is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak,’” Koch stresses.
“Blessing, therefore, does not have the meaning of ‘legitimize, approve, bless,’” the prelate insists. “As the blessed, we all remain guilty people who need the edifying grace of God for our path in life.”

Catholic charity providing thousands of free meals daily to schoolchildren in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, recently resumed operations after a brutal civil war precluded it from its mission for almost three years.
Since 2017, Mary’s Meals has worked with the Daughters of Charity in Tigray to bring food to schoolchildren there. Pre-2020 they fed an estimated 24,000 children a day, but the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent commencement of the country’s devastating civil war halted the program. Mary’s Meals had every intention of reopening in the fall of 2020 following COVID, but the start of the conflict precluded those plans.
“It was really heartbreaking to see that what we were expecting to be quite a joyous occasion in terms of the resumption of school feeding, children being welcomed back into schools and being able to return to what must have felt a bit more like normal life, suddenly being decimated by this terrible conflict,” Alex Keay, director of programs at Mary’s Meals International, told CNA.
Schoolchildren in Tigray, Ethiopia, eat biscuits and tea provided by Mary’s Meals. Copyright Mary’s Meals
Schoolchildren in Tigray, Ethiopia, eat biscuits and tea provided by Mary’s Meals. Copyright Mary’s Meals.

A pro-LGBT Brazilian archbishop is invoking Pope Francis’ apostolic letter on liturgical formation and the documents of Vatican II to justify his choice to administer Holy Communion to a Muslim sheikh at a funeral service.
“Every reception of Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ was already desired by Him in the Last Supper,” argues the archbishop of Londrina, Geremias Steinmetz, quoting Pope Francis in a clarification issued on the diocesan website on Aug. 30.
A video of Abp. Steinmetz giving the Sacred Host to Sheikh Ahmad Saleh Mahairi at the funeral of Cdl. Geraldo Majella Agnelo on Aug. 28 went viral on social media, sparking outrage among faithful Catholics.
In the video, Sheikh Mahairi, founder of the King Faisal Mosque in Londrina, accepts the host in his hand and leaves without consuming it.
The Muslim leader told the diocese’s vicar general that he consumed the Eucharist after sitting down in his pew.
In his clarification, the archbishop defends the sheikh’s reception of Communion on the grounds that “he participated in the Eucharistic celebration, as a friend, and, entering the communion line, received the Body of Christ.”
Steinmetz said that Mahairi was friends with the late Albano Cavallin, a former archbishop of Londrina, who had explained to the Muslim leader many years ago that “the Eucharist is the body of Jesus, who is considered to be a prophet of Islam.”
Quoting Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate, the declaration on the relations of the Church with non-Christian religions, Steinmetz noted that the Church regards Muslims “with esteem” since “they adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the creator of Heaven and earth, who has spoken to men.”
Muslims “take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God,” Steinmetz continued, quoting verbatim from Vatican II.

Members of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) have lauded corruption “whistleblowers” in South Africa.
In a statement shared with ACI Africa on September 1, SACBC members liken entities and persons who have exposed corruption, including civil societies and activists to John the Baptist.
“We gratefully acknowledge your contribution to the disclosure of corruption in government departments, municipalities, and state-owned companies heard by the Zondo Commission,” they say.
Catholic Bishops of the three-nation Conference, including Botswana, Eswatini, and South Africa express their support for those who have denounced the vice of corruption, saying, “We stand with whistleblowers who have raised concerns about the delays being made by the National Prosecution Authority in holding to account the people and the businesses that the Zondo Commission recommended for prosecution.”
“Successful prosecution in cases of corruption has often been made possible through your contribution as whistle-blowers. You are a threat to those whose god has become their stomachs and are doing their best to let corruption define the character of our country. Thank you for standing up against them,” SACBC members say in the statement following their August 14 to 18 plenary.

Nicaragua’s seizure of the Jesuit-run Central American University in Managua on Aug. 16 was only the latest episode in the government’s five-year campaign to silence the Catholic Church.
Described by President Daniel Ortega’s regime as a “center of terrorism” for having attempted to shield student protesters during widespread anti-government demonstrations in 2018, the university has had its buildings, bank accounts and even its furniture seized. If past practice is any guide, it will soon be either shuttered or run by the state, with faculty and curriculums censored by the Sandinista government.
Since 2018, Catholic priests and laity critical of the government have been harassed, exiled, imprisoned, tortured and murdered. The regime has shut down more than 700 nonprofits and nongovernmental agencies, including the Catholic charity Caritas and the Red Cross.
This year, the government prohibited more than 1,000 Catholic processions during Lent and Easter. Priests were barred from anointing the sick, conducting baptisms and celebrating Mass. Even saying the rosary is now considered a subversive act in Nicaragua.
In February, Bishop Rolando Alvarez was arrested and sentenced to 26 years in prison for “anti-government activities” after he criticized the regime’s closure of Catholic radio and television stations. The religious order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa has been expelled from the country.