We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

Feast date: Aug 04

On August 4, the Church celebrates the feast day of St. John Vianney, patron of priests. 

John Vianney, also known as the Holy Curé de Ars, was born May 8, 1786 in Dardilly, near Lyon, France to a family of farmers. He was ordained a priest in 1815 and became curate in Ecully. He was then sent to the remote French community of Ars in 1818 to be a parish priest.

Upon his arrival, the priest immediately began praying and working for the conversion of his parishioners. Although he saw himself as unworthy of his mission as pastor, he allowed himself to be consumed by the love of God as he served the people. 

Vianney slowly helped to revive the community’s faith through both his prayers and the witness of his lifestyle. He gave powerful homilies on the mercy and love of God, and it is said that even staunch sinners were converted upon hearing him.  In addition, he restored his church, formed an orphanage, “La Providence,” and cared for the poor.

His reputation as a confessor grew rapidly, and pilgrims traveled from all over France to come to him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Firmly committed to the conversion of the people, he would spend up to 16 hours a day in the confessional.

Plagued by many trials and besieged by the devil, the St. John Vianney remained firm in his faith, and lived a life of devotion to God.  Dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament, he spent much time in prayer and practiced much mortification. He lived on little food and sleep, while working without rest in unfailing humility, gentleness, patience and cheerfulness, until he was well into his 70s.

John Vianney died on August 4, 1859. Over 1,000 people attended his funeral, including the bishop and priests of the diocese, who already viewed his life as a model of priestly holiness.

The Holy Curé of Ars was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925.  He is the patron of priests.  Over 450,000 pilgrims travel to Ars every year in remembrance of his holy life.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI, commemorating the 150th anniversary of St. John Vianney’s death, declared the Year for Priests.  The Pope wrote a Letter to Clergy, encouraging all priests to look to the Curé of Ars as an example of dedication to one’s priestly calling.

Rome Newsroom, Aug 3, 2025 / 07:35 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday announced that the dates of the next World Youth Day, to be held in Seoul, South Korea, will be Aug. 3–8, 2027.

“After this jubilee, the ‘pilgrimage of hope’ of young people continues and will take us to Asia,” the pontiff said in a message before praying the Angelus at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, 10 miles east of Rome, where he had just celebrated Mass for 1 million participants from 146 countries.

“I renew the invitation that Pope Francis extended in Lisbon two years ago,” he added, referring to World Youth Day in Portugal in 2023.

This new edition of World Youth Day, he said, will mark an important stage in the faith journey of the new generations. The theme will be: “Take courage, I have overcome the world.”

Leo XIV concluded his Angelus address with a powerful missionary call: “You, young pilgrims of hope, will be witnesses of this to the ends of the earth! I look forward to seeing you in Seoul: Let us continue to dream together and to hope together.”

The 2027 World Youth Day will be the first to be held in South Korea and the second in Asia, following the historic gathering of young people in Manila, Philippines, in 1995.

The pontiff defined the Jubilee of Youth, held in Rome from July 28 to Aug. 3, as “an outpouring of grace for the Church and for the whole world!” He also thanked the 1 million pilgrims who attended for their witness and enthusiasm.

In English, the pope recalled the teens and young adults who suffer in “every land bloodied by war” and mentioned in particular the young people of Gaza and Ukraine, whose lives are marked by the violence and uncertainty of war.

Leo XIV also spoke in Spanish, telling those present they are “the sign that a different world is possible.” He concluded in Italian with the affirmation that with Christ, faith is possible: “with his love, with his forgiveness, and with the power of his Spirit.”

Mass at Tor Vergata

The pope could not contain his emotion at his second and final grand meeting with young people on the 237-acre grounds of Tor Vergata, where more than 1 million young pilgrims had spent the night following a prayer vigil and Eucharistic adoration led by Leo on Aug. 2.

A burst of joy swept through the area upon seeing the pontiff descend from the helicopter on the morning of Aug. 3. After an intense night of vigil, marked by a moving moment of silent Eucharistic adoration, Leo XIV told the young people that they are not made for a life that is “taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through gift of self in love.”

The Jubilee of Youth, part of the Catholic Church’s yearlong Jubilee of Hope in 2025, has served as a bridge between the American pope and young people, with whom he has been able to strengthen a relationship thanks to his ability to speak three languages.

In his homily, Pope Leo invited the pilgrims to open their hearts to God and venture with him “towards eternity.”

Most of the pontiff’s homily was delivered in Italian, with short paragraphs in English and Spanish.

The pope focused on the human desire for fulfillment and asked the young people not to satisfy the thirst of their hearts with “cheap imitations.”

“There is a burning question in our hearts, a need for truth that we cannot ignore, which leads us to ask ourselves: What is true happiness? What is the true meaning of life? What can free us from being trapped in meaninglessness, boredom, and mediocrity?” he said.

Thus, he invited everyone to turn their desire for more into “a step stool, like children who stand on tiptoe, in order to peer through the window of encounter with God. We will then find ourselves before him, who is waiting for us, knocking gently on the window of our soul.”

During the Mass, the pope also addressed the experience of the limits and finiteness of things that happen, saying that these topics should not be taboo or topics “to be avoided.”

“The fragility they speak of is, in fact, part of the marvel of creation,” he emphasized, after quoting from the reading from Ecclesiastes. 

“Think of the image of grass: Is not a field of flowers beautiful? Of course, it is delicate, made up of small, vulnerable stems, prone to drying out, to being bent and broken. Yet at the same time these flowers are immediately replaced by others that sprout up after them, generously nourished and fertilized by the first ones as they decay on the ground,” he said.

He emphasized: “We too, dear friends, are made this way, we are made for this.”

Reflecting on the readings at Mass, the Holy Father made it clear that “buying, hoarding, and consuming are not enough.”

And he added: “We need to lift our eyes, to look upwards, to the ‘things that are above’ (Col 3:2), to realize that everything in the world has meaning only insofar as it serves to unite us to God and to our brothers and sisters in charity, helping us to grow in ‘compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience’ (Col 3:12).”

Evoking St. John Paul II, the founder of World Youth Days, he proclaimed: “Jesus is our hope.”

“It is he, as St. John Paul II said, ‘who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives ... to commit … to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal,’” Leo said.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 3, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

What if with a click you could find when the next Mass closest to your location will be?

That’s what Argentine computer science graduate Pablo Licheri envisioned. Eleven years ago, he made it possible for the faithful to participate in the Eucharist even when traveling and far from home by creating Catholic Mass Times, an app available in nine languages that instantly shows you the nearest Catholic churches with Mass, confession, and adoration times.

“If we are 1.3 billion Catholics, imagine what we can do if we also use our cellphones to get closer to God!” Licheri told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. He made the app using his own computer, programming it on weekends.

From zero to viral, without marketing or sponsorship

There is no company or major investors behind the technology. Not even advertising. “For almost 10 years, my wife and I financed everything,” Licheri said. To get the app up and running, “we worked really hard and used our own money, with time stolen from rest,” he explained.

Called Horarios de Misa in Spanish, the app surpassed 2 million downloads last week and has become the largest Catholic database in the world, with information on 125,000 churches.

There have been many challenges in compiling the information. Of the 3,000 dioceses worldwide, 70% don’t have a website. “I tried to contact the dioceses and parishes, but they often didn’t respond. Especially in the poorest countries. This reality is very different from what we see in countries like the United States, where dioceses operate almost like large companies,” he explained.

Consequently, he made a key decision to collect the data. He designed the app so that users can send information directly from it. “I personally uploaded all the churches in Buenos Aires, which were more than 200. Then people started traveling and sending information ... and that’s how it grew.”

The app has an internal team that updates the information. Through corrections provided by users, diocesan websites, or Google Maps, the Catholic Mass Times team fine-tunes any information that may have changed.

In fact, when you enter the app and select a Mass time, you can see the latest verification date.

The app also includes exotic destinations like the Maldives, where the public practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited.

“I thought there wouldn’t be any churches there. But I found out that at the Italian consulate, if you’re a foreigner and ask for permission, you can attend Mass. So, there’s the only Mass there is in that country, and it’s on the app,” Licheri explained.

Available on Android and IOS, the app’s simple and intuitive interface makes it an indispensable tool, especially for those traveling for work, vacation, or moving to a new city.

In addition to its primary function, the app has a pastoral and educational dimension: For the past three years, a weekly newsletter on faith, devotions, and Eucharistic reflections has been sent every Saturday, reaching more than 52,000 subscribers.

“It’s a concrete tool for getting closer to God,” Licheri said.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

CNA Staff, Aug 3, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Most people don’t go to graduate school for the rich liturgical life. But that’s exactly what Adelyn Phillips has found at “Teachers for Christ,” a nascent Catholic master’s program in St. Louis, where she is one of 12 students this summer. 

Phillips said she has found a vibrant community, structured daily prayer, and solid theological formation. “My time in this program has already been incomparably rich,” she said of the program. 

“Never before have I experienced such a beautiful integration of my faith, studies, and friendships,” she said. “I have been encouraged and called higher by the good example of my peers and have been greatly nourished by the liturgical life on campus.” 

After nearly two months into the budding Catholic education graduate program, housed just north of St. Louis along the Missouri River, Phillips is not the only student to have found herself in a formative spiritual oasis.

“When I discovered the Teachers for Christ program, it was like a dream come true,” said Dylan Bufkin, another student of the program, which is run by two leading Catholic education organizations: Augustine Institute and Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE).

After a year of teaching, Bufkin knew that he “had a deep love for teaching and Catholic education.” But he felt a tension between “the modern vision of education” and “a more humanistic approach to curriculum.”

So, he came to St. Louis. There, he found that the “campus’ spirituality underlies and drives a rich community that is fundamentally about holy and intellectual friendship.”

“Here was a place that was partnering with master teachers through the Institute of Catholic Liberal Education to provide expert counsel and wisdom to its students and was dedicated to forming teachers in the educational tradition of the Church,” Bufkin said. “It only helped that my intellectual heroes, like St. John Henry Newman and St. Thomas Aquinas, were front and center in the program’s self-understanding.”

The two-year program centers on spiritual formation alongside theological studies and practical application.

Teachers for Christ, Phillips said, “places tremendous emphasis on our spiritual and human formation.”

“Our curriculum beautifully incorporates faith and reason, and our common life as students on campus is full of shared work and play,” Phillips said. “Everything is ordered toward bringing us closer to God, so that we can in turn bring others closer to him.”

For Bufkin, there’s one word for it: “blessed.”

“We are so blessed to have consistent opportunity for devotion and liturgical prayer that constantly feeds us with the grace needed to pursue holiness as a student, whether that means going back to the books after dinner or serving our classmates’ needs before our own,” Bufkin said.

“The rigor, the friendships, the grace are so life-giving, and I would be hard-pressed to find a better campus to be the background of all this wonderful growth,” Bufkin added.

Educational renewal 

Like a monastery, there is no rent or tuition. For the first 14 months of the program, graduate students live, study, and pray on scholarship as part of the debt-free program.

During the program’s second year, students have a practical year at one of ICLE’s member schools where the schools provide housing and financial support.

After graduation, the program offers placement assistance as well as a yearlong mentorship with ICLE staff and master teachers.

The debt-free, scholarship-based program is designed to give students “a firm theological foundation” while forming them as educators, according to Jeffrey Lehman, the Augustine Institute philosophy and theology professor who directs Teachers for Christ.

During the program, students receive what Lehman calls “whole person formation.” In addition to their studies, students live in community, attend daily Mass, and pray morning and evening prayer together. 

Theology classes, which make up a third of the program’s coursework, ground students in “the Church’s ongoing efforts to evangelize and to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel,” Lehman said.

Funded by donors with a passion for Catholic education, the program is part of an ongoing effort to revive classical teaching. Through the program, students receive accreditation from ICLE, which provides a national alternative to the state teacher licensure. 

Students also receive practical training, with classroom apprenticeship opportunities at Catholic schools in the surrounding area. For the second year of the program, students are placed at one of the more than 200 ICLE member schools in the U.S. 

Across the nation and the world, a “great renewal of Catholic education” is underway, Lehman said.

“In recent decades, a grassroots educational renewal, long referred to as ‘classical education,’ has been growing and maturing throughout the United States,” Lehman explained.

The revival of classical education stretches across denominations and religious affiliations. It can be found everywhere from Catholic parish schools to the Chesterton Academies to publicly-funded charter schools like Great Hearts Academies or even the Jewish prep school Emet Classical Academy in New York.

But classical education, Lehman said, is returning to its source — Catholic education.

“As the renewal grows and matures, it returns more and more to the theory and practice of Catholic education that stretches back from the present to the earliest encounter between Christianity and the pedagogical traditions of Greece and Rome,” Lehman said.

Classical Catholic K-8’s are growing in popularity across the U.S., with success stories from Massachusetts to Colorado. But while Catholic liberal arts education may be trending, it’s nothing new.

“From very early in her own history, the Catholic Church has been the greatest definer, defender, and provider of a truly liberal education,” Lehman said.

This classical Catholic emphasis makes the program unique among graduate programs.

“In a way that is unparalleled among other master’s in education programs, ours is grounded in a solid philosophy and anthropology,” Phillips said.

“We recognize that we cannot teach well without an understanding of the truth about the world around us, ourselves, and our Creator,” she added.

Authorities say Russia launched a massive missile attack on Kyiv early Sunday, shortly after what is believed to be Moscow’s deadliest airstrike of the year on the Ukrainian capital killed at least 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150. The attacks prompted deadly retaliatory strikes by Ukraine on key Russian targets.

Read all

 

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday told more than a million Catholic youths at a closing Mass for a weeklong encounter with the next generation of faithful that they are “the sign that a different world is possible.”

At least 150,000 people have been killed in Sudan’s civil conflict, and about 12 million have fled their homes, leading to what the United Nations and other aid organisations describe as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Read all

 

The Palestinian government on Sunday called on the international community to intensify pressure on Israel to fully reopen border crossings into Gaza, citing worsening humanitarian conditions.

Read all

 

New social media and internet connections can be tools that “are misleading when they are controlled by commercialism and interests that fragment our relationships,” according to Pope Leo XIV.

The struggles of prayer are described in terms of a battle. While such a word has different connotations for people today, and it may not be as popularly received as it once was, it’s important that we don’t get stuck on the word.