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.

The Jesuit publication “La Civiltà Cattolica” publishes a transcript of the dialogue between Pope Francis and the Jesuits of Portugal during the Pontiff’s visit to Lisbon for WYD 2023. In the conversation, the Holy Father addresses a range of topics, sharing insights on the Church’s challenges and his vision for inclusivity, doctrinal development, and the Synod.
In an open dialogue with the Jesuits of Lisbon during his visit to Portugal for World Youth Day, Pope Francis engaged with them in conversation and covered a wide array of topics, sharing profound insights on the Church’s contemporary challenges and his vision for inclusivity, doctrinal progression, and the Synod. Central to the discussion was the theme of inclusivity. Throughout World Youth Day in Lisbon, the rallying cry for an all-embracing Church resonated powerfully with the words “Todos, todos” (Everyone, everyone), pronounced by Pope Francis as he stressed that the Church “has space for everyone.” He emphasized the pivotal importance of creating a space for all individuals, irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity, within the Church. This message continued to echo through his exchange with the Jesuits of Portugal.

A Cameroonian priest and intellectual has published a ground-breaking book that could potentially change the way African Traditional Religion is perceived by the Catholic Church.
In Studying the Faith of Our Ancestors: A New Approach to African Traditional Religion, Father Humphrey Tatah Mbuy argues that African Traditional Religion has historically been misunderstood and denigrated, due to a lack of understanding of its intrinsic value. He argues that ATR must be studied as a religion in its own right, and contends that Christianity as we know it today actually has its roots in African Traditional religion. The book argues that Africans have always been a people steeped in faith, but the colonizing influence of the west made the African peoples feel inferior and their religious practices demonized.
“There are no pagan in Africa,” Mbuy told Crux in an exclusive interview shortly after the launch of the book on August 12. “There is no African who does not believe in the Supreme.”
The narrative has always been that God was brought to Africa by western missionaries. Is this book a negation of that narrative?
“Coming to Christianity, Jesus Christ would have been born African, because the Jews were in Egypt and we drove them out, and when they went out he came back to Africa, and would have been still back in his home and we again drove them out. … There is no such thing as a “pagan” in Africa.”

Catholics in Argentina appear both somewhat startled and also divided by the surprising recent success of a firebrand politician who’s termed the country’s most famous native son, Pope Francis, a “communist,” an “imbecile” and even a “leftist son of a b*.”
That politician, Javier Milei, was the big winner of the country’s Aug. 13 primaries, coming in first place with 30% of the vote, ahead of both the major right and left-wing coalitions, and despite lacking a strong party structure of his own.
Milei ended up ahead of Patricia Bullrich, whose right-wing coalition obtained 28% of the ballots, and of Sergio Massa, the current Economy Minister in Argentina’s center-left Peronist coalition, who got 27%of support.
In another tweet last year, Milei criticized Francis after the pontiff said citizens should pay taxes to protect the poor’s dignity. Milei asserted that the pontiff was “always standing on the evil’s side” and told him: “Your model is poverty.”
Once during a TV show, Milei was criticizing the concept of social justice and attacked Pope Francis for his defense of it, calling him “the imbecile who is in Rome.”
During an interview earlier this year to a progressive Argentinian journalist, Francis appeared indirectly to compare Milei to Adolf Hitler, saying that the Austrian-born dictator was initially presented as “a new politician, who spoke beautifully, who seduced the people.”
“Everybody voted for little Adolfo, and that is how we ended, right?” the pope said, adding that he fears “saviours without history.” He also declared that he was worried about the progress of the far-right around the world.
In general, observers in Argentina say that Catholic reaction to Milei’s verbal assaults on the pope break largely along political lines, with progressives expressing outrage but conservatives largely silent.
“Many [Argentine Catholics] were happy about [Francis’s] election as the pope in 2013, but disliked his ideas and the documents he released and ceased to approve of him,” said Father Lorenzo De Vedia, known as “Padre Toto,” a priest who works at a slum in Buenos Aires.

The Director of the Holy See Press Office says the second part of the Laudato si’ encyclical letter which Pope Francis mentioned on August 21 will focus on the recent climate crises.
Speaking off-the-cuff to a delegation of lawyers from member countries of the Council of Europe on August 21, Pope Francis said he was writing a second part of his Laudato si’ encyclical to update it to “current issues”.
The Pope was expressing his appreciation for the attorneys’ commitment to developing a legal framework aimed at protecting the environment.
“We must never forget that the younger generations have the right to receive a beautiful and livable world from us, and that this implies that we have a grave responsibility towards creation which we have received from the generous hands of God,” said the Pope. “Thank you for your contribution.”
In a statement later, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, explained that the new updated version of Laudato si’ will focus in particular on the most recent extreme weather events and catastrophes affecting people across five continents.

The chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party warned on August 17 of efforts from the Chinese government to subvert Christianity by changing parts of the Bible.
“The Chinese Communist Party is rewriting the Bible,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wiscon-sin, said in a pre-recorded message to the biannual gathering of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago held Aug. 14 through Aug. 18.
Gallagher discussed two examples in which the Chinese government has rewritten parts of the Bible and taught it as fact. In one example, he noted a mis-representation of the account in the Gospel of John in which Christ says, “Let he among you with-out sin cast the first stone” when a woman is accused of adultery.
“It’s a beautiful story of forgiveness and mercy – unless, of course, you’re a CCP official,” Gallagher said. “Then it’s a story of a dissident challenging the authority of the state. A possible sneak preview of what a Bible with socialist characteristics might look like appeared in a Chinese university textbook in 2020. The rewritten Gospel of John excerpt ends not with mercy but with Jesus himself stoning the adulterous woman to death.”