Ukrainians will fight for their statehood to the last and will not stop until they liberate the last meter of Ukrainian land, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address for Ukrainian Statehood Day July 28.
The day marks the 988 baptism of “Kyivan Rus,” the origin of Christianity in the region, but this is the first year Ukrainians marked Statehood Day, reported Religious Information Service of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy stressed that Ukrainians need neither fireworks nor pomp to show the importance of statehood for the Ukrainian people.
“Today we defend (Ukraine) with weapons in hands. For 155 days in a row,” he said, referring to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion. “We can say that for us, State-hood Day is every day. Every day we fight so that everyone on the planet finally understands: We are not a colony, not an enclave, not a protectorate …not a province, but a free, independent, sovereign, indivisible and independent state.”
Zelenskyy outlined the main historic events that laid the basis for Ukraine’s statehood and noted: “All stages of the history of Ukraine’s statehood, its defense and struggle for it can be described in one sentence: We existed, exist and will exist. We will exist, because our state has incredible sons and daughters who have stood up for its de-fence.”
The United Nations reported July 25 more than 5,200 civilians had been killed and more than 7,000 injured in Ukraine since the war began.

Olympic track and field gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin, who broke her own world record in the 400-meter hurdles at the World Athletics Championships on July 23 in Oregon, is using her time in the limelight to share her Christian faith.
After smashing her previous record set a month ago, she gave all credit to God in a social media post that has since gone viral with over 400,000 likes.
Her 50.68-second finish was the fourth time this year that the 22-year-old New Jersey resident broke the world record in the event.
In an Instagram post following the win, McLaughlin quoted Hebrews 4:16, which describes God’s generosity in giving his people what they need: “So let us come BOLDLY to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
In her Instagram caption, McLaughlin added that prayer and hard work “divinely culminated in 50.68 seconds.”
In an NBC Sports interview following her latest victory, McLaughlin was asked how she accomplished her goal. She said, “I’ll have to start off by saying all the glory to God.” She continued by saying that God gave her the strength to achieve this milestone.
McLaughlin is not Catholic, but she grew up in a devout Christian household and attended Union Catholic Regional High School in Scotch Plains, N.J.

Six years after Father Jacques Hamel was murdered by knife-wielding terrorists while celebrating Mass at his parish church in northern France, locals gathered to commemorate his life and to pray.
“We enter into prayer where Jacques fell, victim of the madness of men,” Archbishop Dominique Lebrun of Rouen said at the suburban Rouen church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. An eyewitness said the 85-year-old priest twice told the attackers “Begone, Satan!” before they slit his throat.
Three nuns and several parishioners were present when the attack took place. One elderly parishioner was severely hurt when the attackers tried to take him hostage. The two attackers, both 19 years old, were killed by police as they exited the church.
Hamel’s death shocked France and much of the world. Pope Francis offered a Mass for the priest shortly after the attack, calling Hamel a martyr.
In March, four men were convicted of terrorist conspiracy after a three-week long trial. Three of the men convicted received between 8 and 13 years in prison.

The words “I am sorry” are powerful.
For Tammy Ward of the Samson First Nation, those words from Pope Francis brought tears as she listened on the Muskwa, or Bear Park, Powwow Grounds.
“It’s just very powerful,” Ward told The Catholic Register, Toronto-based newspaper, after Pope Francis finished delivering his historic apology on Indigenous land for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools and other wrongs done on the church’s behalf. “For me, it’s the healing.”
Ward leaned into her 21-year-old daughter, Aleea Foureyes, for comfort as Pope Francis confessed the sins Catholics committed against Indigenous Canadians in residential schools.
“In the face of this deplorable evil, the church kneels before God and implores His forgiveness for the sins of her children,” Pope Francis said, invoking St. John Paul II’s 1998 bull, “Incarnationis Mysterium.” “I myself wish to reaffirm this, with shame and unambiguously. I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”
Pope Francis delivered his apology on the treaty land of the Ermineskin and Samson Cree Nations, the Louis Bull Tribe and the Montana First Nation, as part of his “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada. The site was near one of Canada’s largest residential schools. For 49-year-old Ward, it brought memories of her relationship with her parents.
“I always thought my parents didn’t love me. I was always wondering why they were silent,” she said. Years later she understood how a childhood spent institutionalized in residential schools had left her parents unprepared for family life.

Preaching at a Mass celebrated in Canada’s largest stadium, Pope Francis reflected on the elderly, who he said should be honoured, and who serve as an example to the Church on how to pass on faith in a loving way.
“In addition to being children of a history that needs to be preserved, we are authors of a history yet to be written,” the Holy Father said.
“The grandparents who went before, the elderly who had dreams and hopes for us, and made great sacrifices for us, ask us an essential question: what kind of a society do you want to build?”
Developing a theme he introduced Monday in his speech at Sacred Heart parish, the pope reflected on the importance of presenting the faith to others in a loving way, rather than with proselytism.
“From our grandparents we learned that love is never forced; it never deprives others of their interior freedom. That is the way Joachim and Anne loved Mary; and that is how Mary loved Jesus, with a love that never smothered him or held him back, but accompanied him in embracing the mission for which he had come into the world,” Pope Francis said.

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.