Freedom of speech, assembly and the press are gone in Hong Kong, and there’s good reason to fear religious liberty will be the next target.
That was the warning from Monsignor Javier Herrera-Corona, the Vatican’s unofficial envoy in Hong Kong, as he prepared to leave the city this spring after six years. Reuters reports that in four private meetings he encouraged some 50 Catholic missions in the city to safeguard their property, files and funds in anticipation of more mainland Chinese control.
“Change is coming, and you’d better be prepared,” Monsignor Herrera-Corona warned the missionaries, according to Reuters, which quoted an attendee as summarizing the monsignor’s message: “Hong Kong is not the great Catholic beachhead it was.”
Hong Kong’s Basic Law guarantees freedom of religion, and diverse faiths have flourished there. The city has also long been a haven for mainland Christians, who traveled to Hong Kong to study. Father Laszlo Ladany, a Hungarian Jesuit based in Hong Kong, famously reported on Chinese political and legal developments during the Mao Zedong era. Yet China has violated other liberties it swore to respect under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and there’s no reason to believe religious freedom will be an exception.

Pope Francis on Wednesday named three women to the Dicastery for Bishops, the first time women have been appointed to the Dicastery responsible for identifying future bishops globally.
The Holy See Press Office published the Pope’s latest appointments to the Dicastery in a statement on Wednesday.
The female members are Sister Raffaella Petrini, F.S.E., Secretary General of the Governorate of the Vatican City State; Sister Yvonne Reungoat, F.M.A, former Superior General of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians; and, Dr. Maria Lia Zervino, President of the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations.
The nomination of Dr. Zervino also marks the first appointment ever of a laywoman to the Vatican Dicastery.
Described as a ”close friend of the Pope,” she wrote an open letter to Francis in 2021, praising him “for being the Francis of the 21st century,” but saying that “not enough progress has been made in taking advantage of the wealth of women who make up a large part of the People of God.”
She wrote:
“I dream of a Church that has suitable women as judges in all the courts in which matrimonial cases are processed, in the formation teams of each seminary, and for exercising ministries such as listening, spiritual direction, pastoral health care, care for the planet, defense of human rights, etc., for which, by our nature, women are equally or sometimes better prepared than men. Not only consecrated women, but how many lay women in all regions of the globe are ready to serve!”
“And I dream that, during your pontificate, you will inaugurate, together with the Synods of Bishops, a different synod: the synod of the People of God, with proportional representation of the clergy, consecrated men and women, and lay men and women.”
“We will no longer be happy just because a woman votes for the first time but because many prepared lay women, in communion with all the other members of such synod, will have given their contribution and their vote that will add to the conclusions that will be placed in your hands.”
“Probably, Holy Father, you already have this ‘card in your deck’ to put synodality into practice and wait for the right moment to play it,” Zervino said at the time.

The bishop of Tilarán-Liberia in Costa Rica, Eugenio Salazar Mora, on July 6 knelt as he greeted the superior of the Missionaries of Charity, who were expelled from Nicaragua by the government of President Daniel Ortega.
The sisters of the order founded by St. Teresa of Calcutta were welcomed to Costa Rica at a parish in the town of Cañas.
A video posted by the bishop on Facebook shows him greeting the nuns one by one, who in turn kiss his episcopal ring. When he came to the superior, Salazar knelt down and it was he who kissed the sister’s hand.
The Diocese of Tilarán-Liberia explained that “the sign of reverence that [the bishop] makes toward the mother provincial is a sign of being at her disposal and of service toward this community.” ‘In receiving you we have received Jesus Christ.’
In another video, posted July 7, the bishop said he didn’t know the reasons for the expulsion of the nuns, who “remain silent be-cause they are religious, because of their spirituality of not seeking recognition, not getting involved in controversies, and they offer their pain for the Costa Rican people.”
“They have had difficult ti-mes, fearful for their personal safety, knowing that they are of several different nationalities and some of them are older. They were very worried until they arrived on Costa Rican territory,” the prelate continued.
“If it had been up to them, they would stay in Nicaragua; they love Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan people, especially those most in need,” the bishop noted.

In yet another wide-ranging interview, Pope Francis said Monday that he doesn’t plan to step down anytime soon, though he prays for the strength to do so when the time is right.
If the day comes when he does resign, the pontiff said he would prefer to be considered the “Bishop emeritus of Rome rather than pope emeritus” and to dedicate his time to the confession of the faithful, the practice of charity, and visiting the sick in some Italian parish.
“If I survive after resignation, I would like to do one thing: confess and go to see the sick,” he said.
On other fronts, the pope said pro-choice Catholic politicians should “talk to their pastor” about their “incoherence” with church teaching, and he repeated a familiar warning about the risks of a third world war.
Francis also answered – and, to some extent, dodged – questions about Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, the clerical sexual abuse scandals, abortion, his resignation, and why he doesn’t go back to his home country, Argentina.
The Pope’s remarks came in a July 11 interview with Mexican journalists Valentina Alazraki and Maria Antonieta Collins, published on the Vix streaming channel of Noticias Univision 24/7.
On the subject of war, Francis noted he changed the Catechism of the Catholic Church to say that both the use and possession of nuclear weapons is immoral, because an accident could lead to the killing of half of humanity: “We cannot play with death in our hands like that. We were playing with death.”

With the issuance of two re-cent Gallup polls on Americans’ belief in God and their views on morality, one could come to the conclusion that the United States could be in a heap of trouble.
One poll, issued June 15, found a record rating: Fully half of the survey’s respondents said they believe the country’s moral values are “poor.” And if that’s not enough, another 37% rated America’s moral values as “only fair,” and 78% said the nation’s morality is getting worse.
The other poll, released June 17, found that 81% of Americans believe in God. That’s an impressive number, until you realize that the percentage is the lowest ever recorded by Gallup when it has asked this question.
It’s down six percentage points from 2017. And according to Gallup, more than 90% of Americans believed in God between 1944 — when Gallup “first asked this question” — and 2011.
There are not a lot of polling organizations in the United States that focus on faith, religion and related matters. And one of the biggest, the Pew Research Cent-re, takes a hands-off policy when it comes to others’ findings.
“Pew Research Centre does not comment on research conducted/published by other pollsters or polling organizations,” said a June 23 email to Catholic News Service by Anna Schiller, senior communications manager for Pew’s research on religion and public life.

Pope Francis will beatify Pope John Paul 1 September 4 during a Mass at St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican Press Office has announced. Bishop Renato Marangoni will read the Rite of Beatification at the Mass, together with the Cardinal Beniamino Stella, po-stulator for the Cause of Canonization, and Stefania Falasca, the deputy postulator, the press office said.
Pope John Paul I was born as Albino Luciani in the northern Italian town of Forno di Canale (now Canale d’Agordo) on October 17, 1912.
“During the beatification, the team of postulators will gift the Holy Father with a reliquary containing the relics of the new Blessed,” according to the July 11 statement from the Press Office.
Ahead of the beatification, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis will preside over a prayer vigil in the Basilica of St. John Lateran on the evening of September 3.
The Pope’s Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome will celebrate the vigil in the Basilica which houses the Chair of the Bishop of Rome, of which John Paul I took possession on September 23, 1978.

Nigeria’s ruling party announced on July 10 that its ticket in the 2023 presidential election will not include a Christian, as presidential candidate Bola Tinubu selected Senator Kashim Shettima as his running mate in the 2023 general elections.
The announcement came less than a month after the Nigerian bishops’ conference warned that a ticket consisting only of Muslim candidates would further undermine national unity, amid years of bloody Christian persecution in the West African nation.
After the announcement Sunday, Christians expressed concern that ignoring the country’s custom of electing Muslims and Christians together could compound religious employment and property discrimination in the country.
Several high-profile members of the All Progressives Congress, Nigeria’s ruling party, having resigned their membership over the decision. The June 10 announcement was made in Daura, the hometown of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is leader of the APC. Buhari is term-limited and can not seek a third term in office.
With Catholic and other Christian leaders pushing back on the prospect that both Nigeria’s president and vice-president will be Muslims, the announcement has amplified division among Nigerians along religious lines, in a country where the fault lines of ethnicity and religion have claimed lives and livelihoods.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has 3 major religions, more than 400 languages and 250 ethnicities. Hundreds of Christians have been killed in the country in recent months, in terror attacks that have also seen more than a dozen priests kidnapped or killed.
Nigerian society is divided between a predominantly Muslim northern region and predominantly Christian southern areas. The country has customarily elected presidential tickets with one Muslim and one Christian candidate, usually representing both religious diversity and regional balance — a practice that many Nigerians believe has helped hold together a country with deep religious, regional, and economic rifts.

As Pope Francis’s native Argentina finds itself on the brink of hyperinflation and led by a president and vice president in a public dispute, the country’s bi-shops say the people are “starving,” hungry both in body and spirit.
“Today our homeland is a hungry, bewildered, worried and wounded people. Many families lack daily bread and decent work. Poverty has grown,” said Arch-bishop Carlos Alberto Sánchez of Tucuman on Saturday, July 9.
“There is hunger for justice and dignity, for respect and care for life in all its stages. There is hunger for social peace, respect for the constitution and authentic democracy.”
“There is hunger for dialogue, encounter and participation to overcome divisions and confrontations. There is a hunger for truth, for an education that puts the human person in first place, that does not impose ideologies, that leads to thinking and realizing oneself with dignity,” he said.
“There is a hunger for freedom and for a more secure and cordial life. There is a hunger for trust and joint work among all for the good of all. There is hunger for hope and consolation… There is hunger for fraternity and love,” saud Sánchez.

Pope Francis has urged the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishops to be shepherds of their flock and to be close to the faithful entrusted to their care, giving them courage and hope.
The Ukrainian Bishops are holding their annual Synod to discuss the theme of synodality in their Church. The meeting, running from 7-15 July, had to be moved from Kyiv to Przemysl, in Poland, due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. In a letter addressed to the Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), the Pope first of all reiterated his prayers and closeness to the Ukrainian people enduring the war waged by Russia against their country.