Today, Public Religion Re-search Institute (PRRI) released a new survey report finding that church attendance and the im-portance of religion continue to decline among most Americans. “Religion and Congregations in a Time of Social and Political Upheaval,” details the findings of a national survey examining the health of American religious congregations in the wake of seismic social and political shifts, including the COVID-19 pan-demic, nationwide protests for racial justice, the 2020 election and January 6 insurrection, and ongoing legislative battles over reproductive and LGBTQ rights.
Today, fewer than 2 in 10 Americans (16%) say religion is the most important thing in their lives; notably that number more than doubles for white evangeli-cal Protestants (42%) and Black Protestants (38%). Nearly 1 in 3 Americans overall (29%) say religion is not important, a 10% increase from a decade ago.
Current attendance at religi-ous services is lower than report-ed in 2019 before COVID-19, with the number of Americans who attend once a week decreas-ing from 19% to 16%. Between 2019-2022, attendance at least a few times a year dropped to half or less for white Catholics (73% to 45%) and Hispanic Catholics (65% to 47%). While more than 6 out of 10 white evangelical Protestants, Protestants of color, and Latter-day Saints remain regular churchgoers, their atten-dance also experienced slight declines since 2019. Attendance had dropped below 50% prior to 2019 for white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants and non-Christian religions, and attend-ance for those groups experienced further declines over the past three years.
Yet among the faithful, Chri-stian churchgoers are satisfied with their current congregations; more than 8 in 10 churchgoers (82%) say they are optimistic about the future of their church.  This optimism spans across Christian denominations. Nearly 9 in 10 Christians who attend church services at least a few times a year (89%) are proud to say that they are associated with their church.
While the political landscape has become increasingly polari-zed, and 4 in 10 churchgoers report that hot-button political and social issues like abortion and racism are discussed in their churches, fewer than 2 in 10 churchgoers (13%) say that their church is more politically divided than it was five years ago. Only a slightly higher amount (18%) wants their church to address political divisions in America.

Italo-American director Martin Scorsese told the Jesuits’ international magazine in Rome on May 27 that he had decided to answer Pope Francis’s recent call to show Jesus to the cinema-going public. “I’ve responded to the appeal which the pope made to artists in the only way I know how: imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus, and I’m set to start making it,” said the 80-year-old Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas dir-ector, who made the controver-sial Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. Speaking as a guest of twice-monthly Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattollica, Scorsese, who has Sicilian-born grandpa-rents on both sides, told editor-in-chief Father Antonio Spadaro: “I’ve answered the pope’s call to make us see Jesus,” The great director, who won an Oscar for The Departed in 2006, spoke freely about his life and work for a major interview with the Jesuit organ.

The bishop of Antwerp, Belgium, said that because Pope Francis has not voiced his opposition specifically to the Flemish bishops’ decision to bless same-sex unions, he has taken that as tacit approval for their action.
Bishop Johan Bonny said in a May 17 interview with Katholi-sch.de that he had had “two conversations” with Francis from which he inferred he knew that he and his brother bishops were “not going against the Pope.”
The Flemish ordinary said he was not allowed to share the precise contents of those conversations, but stressed that knowing the Pope’s stance was “very important for me and for the other bishops in Flanders.”
Bishop Bonny and the other Flemish bishops of Belgium introduced a blessing for same-sex couples in September 2022, pu-blishing a handout containing a suggested liturgy and prayers and basing their argument on Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation on the 2014-2015 Synod on the Family, Amoris Laetitia.

Two German dioceses are forging ahead with lay participation in Church governance, despite warnings from the Vatican.
The dioceses have begun to put reforms proposed by the German synodal path initiative into practice, especially that of involving the laity in governance.
In the Diocese of Osnabrück, which has been vacant since the Pope accepted Bishop Franz-Josef Bode’s resignation in March, talks have begun between the nine priest members of the cathedral chapter and nine lay Catholics.
The Osnabrück diocese has thereby adopted a model developed by the neighbouring Archdiocese of Paderborn. The diocesan Catholic Council, or “Katholikenrat”, which represents lay Catholics in the diocese, selected nine lay members keeping strictly to a generation- and gender-equitable method.
This 18-member group will now discuss the profile of the future bishop and exchange opinions on possible named persons. These talks will continue until the summer holidays and are strictly confidential.
On the basis of the talks the cathedral chapter will then draw up a list of  names which the cathedral chapter will then send to the Vatican via the apostolic nuncio in Berlin, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic.
The Vatican will then choose three names – the so-called terna – from the list and the Osnabrück chapter alone and not the nine members of the laity, will choose one of them as future bishop.

The archbishop of one of the world’s most dangerous dioceses has described how he has to have five guard dogs to protect him at home, and travels around with an armed escort. Archbishop Matthew Ndagoso of Kaduna in northern Nigeria gave Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) a glimpse into life in his diocese in northern Nigeria.
He said that eight of his priests had been kidnapped in just three years – three were killed, one is still missing and the others were freed. He added that one of the murdered priests in particular had shown tremendous courage.
The archbishop said: “While they were pointing an AK-47 at him, he told his attackers that they should repent of their evil, so they killed him.”
Life is increasingly dangerous for Christians in many parts of Nigeria, as highlighted in ACN’s 2022 edition of Persecuted and Forgotten?

The Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem joined Anglican pri-mates from every corner of the British Isles on Saturday for the coronation of His Majesty King Charles III at Westminster Abbey. Nine bishops from the Church of England also took part in the liturgy, which was des-cribed by a spokesman for Lam-beth Palace as “a Christian act of worship that honours the ancient tradition of anointing and crowning Monarchs.
The Archbishop of Canter-bury, Justin Welby, led the ser-vice, which was set in the context of a Eucharist. In his sermon, which reflected the theme “Called to Serve.”
“We are here to crown a King, and we crown a King to serve,” Archbishop Justin said. “What is given today is for the gain of all. For Jesus Christ announced a Kingdom in which the poor and oppressed are freed from the chains of injustice. The blind see. The bruised and broken-hearted are healed.
“That Kingdom sets the aims of all righteous government, all authority. And the Kingdom also sets the means of all government and authority. For Jesus doesn’t grasp power or hold onto status.
“The King of Kings, Jesus Christ, was anointed not to be served, but to serve. He creates the unchangeable law of good authority that with the privilege of power comes the duty to serve.
“Service is love in action. We see active love in our care for the most vulnerable, the way we nurture and encourage the young, in the conservation of the natural world. We have seen those priorities in the life of duty lived by our King.”
The Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Most Revd Dr Hosam Naoum, presented the chrism oil for anointing to Archbishop Justin. The oil was made from olives taken from trees growing in two monasteries on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The oil was blended and co-consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Theophilus III and Archbishop Hosam.
The King was anointed on his head, hands and breast in a sacred moment shielded from public view.
After this, various regalia and items from the collection of Crown Jewels were symbolically presented to the King.

A parish priest was shot dead as he drove on a rural Mexican highway on May 22, marking yet another attack in what has become the most murderous country for Catholic clergy.
Augustinian Father Javier García Villafaña was killed at around 7 p.m. (local time) in the municipality of Huandacareo in Michoacán state to the west of Mexico City. Father García was found dead with gunshot wounds.
The Archdiocese of Morelia acknowledged Father García’s death, but provided little information and did not respond to a request for comment. The Catholic Multimedia Center, which tracks attacks on the clergy, reported Father García had assumed responsibility for the Our Lord of Atonement Parish in Huandacareo on April 23.
The murder of Father García followed a May 21 attack on Archbishop Faustino Armendáriz Jiménez of Durango, who said an elderly man swung a knife at him in the sacristy of Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in the northwest Mexican state.
Archbishop Armendáriz was unharmed in the attack, though the knife slashed through his clothes, tearing them.
Father García’s death marks the ninth fatal attack on clergy during the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, according to the Catholic Multimedia Centre.
Church observers lack a cogent explanation for the attacks on the clergy, though they point to rising violence in Mexico after the federal government launched a crackdown on drug cartels in December 2006.

A leading Nigerian human rights organization has published a report with sobering statistics on summary executions, maiming, forced disappearances and illegal detentions in Imo state of southeast Nigeria.
Presenting the report during a press conference May 21, Emeka Umeagbalasi, a Catholic human rights activist and chairman of the Intersociety organization, said that in just 29 months, from January 2021-May 2023, “security forces and allied militias killed 900 unarmed citizens, wounded 700, arrested 3,500, extorted 1,400, disappeared 300.”
In addition, the report said 1,200 civilian houses were burned down, displacing 30,000 owners and their families and forcing 500,000 citizens to flee.

According to the report, non-state actors, such as Fulani jihadists and other militias were responsible for most of the deaths — 700 — and for an additional 900 kidnappings that occurred during the same time period.
Most of those killed in Imo state and elsewhere in southeast Nigeria might have been targeted because of their Christian faith, the report’s authors stressed.
Umeagbalasi said that people are slain based on their ethnicity and religion, and he criticized the Nigerian police for rarely looking into the crimes.
“We are not against the police and security agencies performing their jobs,” Umeagbalasi told journalists, “but they have to do that within the confines of the law.”
“You don’t leave the fighting parties” and “turn a blind eye” on civilians, he said.

A leading Asian theologian says Pope Francis’ decision to include non-ordained women and men as voting members of October’s synod assembly is a “giant step” that will irreversibly change the Church’s decision-making processes.
Last month, the synod secretariat announced the Pope had authorised a reform to allow at least 70 non-bishops to be members of the 4-29 October synod assembly in the Vatican. This move will see women given a vote in a synod for the first time.
Fr Vimal Tirimanna is one of the theological advisers to the synod and a professor of moral theology who teaches in Sri Lanka and Rome.
“Things will never be reversed again. It’s a giant step, not a small step,” he told a webinar organised by The Tablet on the synod process on 17 May 2023.
“Even if nothing happens in the rest of the synodal process, this particular fact that 70 non-bishops are going to be there, is a big change. I don’t think it can be changed. At last, what Vatican II wanted has been realised – the process has begun.”
Fr Tirimanna, a Redemptorist priest who was involved in helping to draft the ”Enlarge the Space of Your Tent” synod document, explained that Francis’ reforms are a recovery of what took place in synods during the first millennium of Christianity.
He pointed out that when Paul VI established the synod of bishops in 1965, he never ruled out that synods would evolve, with the possibility of them becoming “synods of the People of God”.
The Pope’s changes, he said, are an attempt to “walk the talk” of Vatican II.
But Fr Tirimanna said there is still a lot of resistance to the synod among bishops, and from those who erroneously think the Pope is trying to take the Catholic Church in a “Protestant” direction.
“I am a little taken aback when I hear some voices, even here in Rome, which say, ‘Well this Pope has come from nowhere, and he’s trying to make the Catholic Church a Protestant Church’,” he said.

A court in military-ruled Myanmar has dismissed an appeal by a prominent ethnic Christian leader four weeks after he was imprisoned and a day before thousands of political prisoners were freed.
Myitkyina Prison Court in Kachin state rejected an appeal from Dr. Hkalam Samson on May 2, according to media reports, quoting the defendant’s lawyer.
His lawyer told reporters that Samson, a former leader of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) who was sentenced by the same court on April 7 to six years in prison for unlawful association, defaming the state and terrorism, will appeal to higher courts.
The prison court rejected his appeal a day before 2,135 political prisoners were freed from various prisons across the country on May 3, the day Myanmar marked Vesak, an auspicious day in the Buddhist majority nation.
Most of those who benefited had been sentenced under Section 505(a) of the penal code for inciting opposition to the military regime, which carries a maximum jail term of three years.
More than 21,000 people have been arrested since the military seized power after toppling Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi-led civilian government on Feb.1, 2021, according to a local monitoring group.

Amnesty International said in a report that it is deeply concerned about thousands of individuals still unjustly languishing in prisons across Myanmar, including Samson.

“This long overdue release should mark the first step towards the immediate release of all individuals who have been arbitrarily detained for exercising their basic rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly or other human rights,” Ming Ye Hah, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for campaigns, said in a statement on May 3.