We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

“Recognised as a martyr of honesty and moral integrity,” Floribert Bwana Chui Bin Kositi will be beatified on Sunday, 15 June 2025, in Rome, at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, during the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. In announcing this “joyful event,” the Bishop of Goma, Bishop Willy Ngumbi M. Afr., indicated that the location and date were communicated by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

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As gang violence spirals in Haiti, children are being pulled from classrooms and into chaos. Confiance Haiti is on the frontline, offering education, safety, and hope where the world has turned away.

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Pope Leo XIV praises the important global efforts of the Pontifical Mission Societies, marveling that they are "effectively the 'primary means' of awakening missionary responsibility among all the baptized and supporting ecclesial communities in areas where the Church is young.

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Pope Leo XIV has appointed Sr. Tiziana Merletti as the Secretary of the Dicastery for Consecrated Life, which is responsible for orders and religious congregations, as well as secular institutes.

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Bishop Nicolai Gennadevich Dubinin, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow, tells Vatican News that Pope Leo XIV has impressed the Church and people of Russia with his call for a “disarmed and disarming peace.”

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On the Jubilee of Sport in mid-June, the Augustinianum Institute in Rome will host an international conference to explore the Church’s desire to support the “Momentum of Hope” offered by sport.

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An American rabbi has voiced optimism for Catholic-Jewish relations after the election of Pope Leo XIV, saying his pontificate marks an opportunity for renewal given a spike in tensions during the last months of Francis’s papacy.

A festival of Catholic music drew more than 40,000 attendants on May 17 to Santa Bábara d'Oeste, a city with 180,000 inhabitants about 85 miles away from São Paulo, Brazil's major economic hub.

Puebla, Mexico, May 21, 2025 / 19:22 pm (CNA).

The Mexican Bishops’ Conference expressed its “profound consternation” following the assassination of two senior officials of the Mexico City government, which occurred Tuesday in the Mexican capital.

The victims of the shooting are Ximena Guzmán, private secretary to Clara Brugada, Mexico City’s mayor, and José Muñoz, adviser to the city government. 

“We join in the grief of their families, friends, and colleagues. To them, we express our closeness, prayers, and solidarity, asking God to grant them comfort, hope, and strength in the face of this painful loss,” the Mexican bishops expressed in a message following the assassinations.

The Mexico City government reported in a statement that the “direct attack” occurred in the Moderna neighborhood of the Benito Juárez borough, approximately four miles south of Mexico City’s historic Zócalo (main square).

“Personnel from the Mexico City Secretariat of Citizen Security and the attorney general’s office, both with support from the Mexican [federal] government, are already conducting the corresponding investigations to determine the motive for the attack. Additionally, video surveillance cameras in the area are being analyzed to identify the probable perpetrators, who are known to have been traveling on a motorcycle,” the Mexico City government stated. 

“There will be no impunity; those responsible will be arrested and must face justice,” the statement assured.

The Mexico City attorney general’s office stated that “according to initial reports, the incident occurred while the victims were in the course of their daily routines, when the vehicle they were traveling in was intercepted by individuals who reportedly opened fire from a motorcycle.”

“Departmental, forensic, and investigative police personnel are carrying out the corresponding investigations to determine the facts of the case,” he said, indicating that they are analyzing recordings “from video surveillance cameras in the area” and gathering information from witnesses “that will allow us to identify and locate the probable perpetrators.”

May Christ ‘sustain us in this dark moment’

In their statement, the Mexican bishops lamented that this recent crime “joins a painful chain of violent events that, as we noted in our statement of May 19, following the massacre of seven young people in Guanajuato, ‘is an alarming sign of the weakening of the social fabric, impunity, and the absence of peace in vast regions of our nation.’”

“As shepherds of the people of God, we do not resign ourselves to living with fear nor with violent death. We trust that, with the power of the Gospel and the collaboration of all, it is still possible to build a Mexico where life, justice, and peace flourish,” the bishops said.

“May Christ, our peace, sustain us in this dark moment. May Our Lady of Guadalupe, queen of peace, intercede for our nation,” they concluded.

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

CNA Staff, May 21, 2025 / 17:33 pm (CNA).

In response to national outcry over the case of Adriana Smith, a brain-dead pregnant woman on life support, the Georgia attorney general’s office released a statement clarifying that the state’s heartbeat law, which prohibits abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat, does not require Smith be kept alive.

“There is nothing in the LIFE act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” said the statement, issued by Attorney General Chris Carr’s office last week.  

Quoting the law itself, the statement continued: “Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’”

Doctors at Emory University Hospital declared Smith, who was nine weeks pregnant at the time, brain dead in February after she was diagnosed with multiple blood clots in her brain. 

According to Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, doctors told her that Georgia’s law protecting unborn children with a heartbeat required that they keep Smith on life support until her child could be safely delivered.

Echoing the attorney general’s statement, a spokesperson for the Georgia state House told the Washington Post this week that the LIFE Act is “completely irrelevant” regarding Smith’s situation, saying “any implication otherwise is just another gross mischaracterization of the intent of this legislation by liberal media outlets and left-wing activists.”

Although he supports the hospital’s decision to keep the unborn child alive until viability, state Sen. Ed Stetzer, the original sponsor of the LIFE Act, told CNA last week that “the removal of the life support of the mother is a separate act” from an abortion.

David Gibbs III, a lawyer at the National Center for Life and Liberty who was a lead attorney in the Terri Schiavo case, said he thinks there may be a misunderstanding about which law the hospital is invoking in Smith’s case. Georgia’s Advance Directive for Health Care Act may be the law at play here, Gibbs told CNA.

Section 31-32-9 of that law states that if a woman is pregnant and “in a terminal condition or state of permanent unconsciousness” and the unborn child is viable, certain life-sustaining procedures may not be withdrawn.

“The majority of states have advance directive laws with a pregnancy exclusion,” Gibbs explained. 

“When in doubt, the law should err on the side of life,” he said.

A pregnancy exclusion means that if a patient is pregnant, the law prioritizes the survival of her unborn child over her stated wishes in an advance directive if there is a conflict between her wishes and the child’s well-being.

Several Democratic Georgia legislators have continued to demand the attorney general provide clarification of the heartbeat law, and some are calling for its repeal.

In a letter sent to the attorney general’s office last Friday, state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes characterized the hospital’s decision to keep Smith on life support to sustain the life of her unborn child as “inhumane” and called it “a grotesque distortion of medical ethics and human decency.” She asked the attorney general to “speak clearly and candidly” about the applicability of the law. 

In a statement released Monday, state Reps. Kim Schofield, Viola Davis, and Sandra Scott called Smith’s case “barbaric” and cited the “emotional torture” her family is enduring. They are calling for the repeal of Georgia’s heartbeat law, even though Carr made it clear on Friday that the LIFE Act does not require Smith be kept alive.

Joe Zalot, an ethicist and director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA Wednesday: “I don’t know what’s barbaric or inhumane about seeking to sustain the life of the unborn child, who is a fellow human being.”

For its part, Emory Healthcare released a statement saying that while it cannot comment on particular patients, it “uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to support our providers as they make individualized treatment recommendations in compliance with Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws.”

“Our top priorities continue to be the safety and well-being of the patients we serve,” the statement continued.

Newkirk told 11Alive last week that Smith was transferred to Emory Midtown recently because she was told that the hospital is better at providing obstetric care.

On a GoFundMe page Newkirk has set up since the story broke last week, she said she was saddened to have “no say so regarding [Smith’s] lifeless body and unborn child,” who, she claimed, “will suffer disease which will lead to major disabilities.” 

Newkirk could not be reached for comment by time of publication.