We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

Amid the escalation of hostilities between Iran and Israel, the possibility of a spillover of war beyond regional borders raises fears of disastrous consequences.

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Amid the ongoing Jubilee of Sport, Father Chase Hilgenbrinck, a former professional football player, reflects on the positive values that sport offers as well as the fact that it can be a source of resilience and fraternity.

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Locust Grove, Virginia, Jun 14, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

High school can be tough, but on rare occasions it can be a place of grace. It was for the McCoppin family, and especially for eldest daughter Kelly, who just graduated from Saint John Paul the Great High School in Potomac Shores, Virginia. 

According to Kelly’s mother, Courteney McCoppin, Kelly started out attending public school but due to a variety of social factors, coupled with the deaths of two grandparents, she sank into depression.

“Her freshman year in public school was just awful. She was spiraling,” Courteney said. “I knew we had to get her out.”

A friend recommended Saint John Paul the Great Catholic High School, which is led by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia. Courteney remembers going to the website and being so impressed that she quickly signed up for a tour.

“It was a beacon of light,” she said. They enrolled Kelly and that summer she tried out for cheerleading. The opportunity for a fresh start was exciting, but there were still some reservations about the Catholic environment. 

“Kelly said to me, ‘What if I become Catholic?’” Courteney shared with The Arlington Catholic Herald. “At the time, I was still in a position of being anti-Catholic. My mom, who had died, was Jewish and my dad was agnostic. Both became atheists later in life.”

Courtney’s father-in-law, on the other hand, had been Catholic. Before he passed away, he used every opportunity he could to teach the children about the faith.

“Every night when we would visit, our grandpa would pray with us,” Kelly said. “He taught us the Our Father and Hail Mary. My sister Alyssa was the one who would pray the rosary with him and go to Mass with him.”

As Kelly started her first year at Saint John Paul the Great, Courteney said she didn’t care if her daughter became Catholic. In her mind, anything was better than what they had left behind. As soon as Kelly got to Saint John Paul the Great she became interested in the faith. 

“It was in my human persons class when we were studying Aquinas. It was his causation argument that really confirmed everything for me,” Kelly said. 

“It was the logical explanation.” 

She began to go to the chapel, meet with Father Christopher F. Tipton, the school’s chaplain, and attend “Evenings with Jesus” events at the school. She then asked her family if they could start going to Mass on Sundays.

“While Kelly was opening up to the faith I was on my own journey,” Courteney said. “I read her human person textbook as well as the book, ‘A Song for Nagasaki’ [by Paul Glynn]. I felt a strong connection to the author and I just got swept up.”

That December, on the last Sunday before Christmas, the family agreed to go to church at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Manassas. They’ve continued attending since. 

“Everything just fell into place,” Courteney said. “That January in 2023 the parish set up an RCIA program customized for our whole family. We entered into the Church at the Easter Vigil, April 8, 2023. I was baptized and confirmed with Kelly, Alyssa, and our son, Rhys. My husband, James, was confirmed because he was already baptized.”

The McCoppin family is grateful for the role Saint John Paul the Great High School played in their faith journey, especially Kelly, who just graduated in May. 

“I think John Paul the Great is the best school in the country and the bioethics program is so beautiful,” Kelly said. “We have so many incredible opportunities and the teachers care so much.” 

Kelly plans to attend Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, this fall with the intent of studying Spanish and nursing. 

This story was first published by The Arlington Catholic Herald on June 5, 2025. It has been adapted by CNA and is reprinted here with permission.

Pope Leo XIV decries the military escalation between Iran and Israel and renews his appeal for dialogue and the pursuit of a world free from the nuclear threat.

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Bishop Willy Ngumbi Ngengele of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) says the planned beatification of Floribert Bwana Chui Bin Kositi is a thing of pride for the people of the country.

Pope Leo XIV continues his predecessor’s Saturday Jubilee audiences, focusing on St Irenaeus as a witness of hope as he welcomes athletes to St Peter’s Basilica for the Jubilee of Sport.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 13, 2025 / 18:09 pm (CNA).

The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability have announced the launch of an investigation into more than 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including two major Catholic nonprofits, that provided taxpayer-funded services to migrants during the Biden administration. 

Catholic Charities USA and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) are among those named in the investigation. According to a June 11 press release, the probe will investigate whether the NGOs “used taxpayer dollars to facilitate illegal activity” by migrants who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration.

All the NGOs named in the investigation have been sent a letter requesting that they fill out a survey. The letter also expresses concern that some of the NGOs continue to actively advise “illegal aliens on how to avoid and impede law enforcement officials, which can only be seen as an attempt to undermine the work of the federal government.”

“The chairmen request each NGO complete a survey that includes questions on the government grants, contracts, and disbursements they have received; any lawsuits against the U.S. federal government they are petitioning; amicus briefs they have filed in any lawsuit brought against the U.S. federal government; any legal service, translation service, transportation, housing, sheltering, or any other form of assistance provided to illegal immigrants or unaccompanied alien children since January 2021; and more,” the press release stated. 

USCCB spokesperson Chieko Noguchi told CNA that “we have received the questionnaire and will respond.” 

“For over 45 years the USCCB has entered into agreements with the federal government to serve groups of people specifically authorized by the federal government to receive assistance,” Noguchi said. She added that “this included refugees, people granted asylum, unaccompanied children, victims of human trafficking, and Afghans who assisted the U.S. military abroad.” 

The investigation comes after the USCCB announced in April that it would not renew its cooperative agreements with the federal government on migration and refugee services, which had been ongoing for nearly half of a century. The USCCB began phasing out its programs shortly after.

The Biden administration provided the USCCB with more than $100 million annually, which the bishops allocated to affiliated Catholic nongovernmental organizations, according to the USCCB’s audited financial statements. In recent years, federal funding covered more than 95% of the bishops’ spending on the programs.

Other non-Catholic NGOs named as subjects of the probe include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), and the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

Vatican City, Jun 13, 2025 / 17:39 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV will canonize seven blesseds on Oct. 19, including two Venezuelans: José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, considered the “doctor of the poor,” and María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez, a nun and founder of the Sister Slaves of Jesus.

The canonizations were confirmed by the Holy See Press Office on June 13 following the decision by the pope during the first consistory of his pontificate.

In addition to Hernández and Rendiles, who are highly venerated in Latin America, the blesseds who will be proclaimed saints in October are: Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, an Armenian bishop and martyr killed in 1915 during the Ottoman genocide; Peter To Rot, a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea, martyred during the Japanese occupation in World War II; Vincenza Maria Poloni, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona; Maria Troncatti, an Italian Salesian missionary known for her work among the Shuar Indigenous people of Ecuador; and Bartolo Longo, an Italian lawyer, former Satanic priest converted to Catholicism, promoter of the recitation of the rosary, and founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii.

This consistory, held in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, was originally convened by Pope Francis at the end of February while he was hospitalized, although no specific date was set at the time.

At that meeting with cardinals, Leo XIV also decreed that Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati would also be canonized along with Blessed Carlo Acutis on Sept. 7. This will be the first canonization ceremony presided over by the new pontiff.

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

Vatican City, Jun 13, 2025 / 17:09 pm (CNA).

The Vatican has recognized two miracles attributed to Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati’s intercession that make possible his canonization on Sept. 7. The most recent miracle involved the healing of an American seminarian.

Frassati, who died at the age of 24 in 1925, is beloved by many Catholic young people today for his enthusiastic witness to holiness that reaches “to the heights.”

The young man from the northern Italian city of Turin was an avid mountaineer and Third Order Dominican known for his charitable outreach.

Pope Leo XIV will canonize Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati together with Blessed Carlo Acutis on Sept. 7 as the first new saints declared in his pontificate.

The miracle

Pope Francis recognized the miraculous healing in a decree on Nov. 25, 2024, of a seminarian of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who was ordained a priest in June 2023.

Father Juan Gutierrez, 38, then a seminarian at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, tore his Achilles tendon while playing basketball with other seminarians in 2017. 

Concerned about the long and painful recovery and expenses, Gutierrez headed for the seminary chapel the day after getting an MRI “with a heavy heart.” 

As he prayed, Gutierrez felt inspired to make a novena to Frassati. A few days into the novena, Gutierrez went into the chapel to pray when nobody was there. As he prayed, he recalled feeling an unusual sensation around his injured foot.

“I was praying, and I started to feel a sensation of heat around the area of my injury. And I honestly thought that maybe something was catching on fire, underneath the pews,” Gutierrez recalled at a press conference on Dec. 16, 2024, at St. John the Baptist Parish in Los Angeles County, where he now serves as an associate pastor. 

The seminarian remembered from his experiences with the charismatic renewal movement that heat can be associated with healing from God. He found himself gazing at the tabernacle, weeping. 

“That event touched me deeply,” Gutierrez said.

He was not only touched spiritually, but he was also healed physically. Incredibly, he was able to walk normally again and no longer needed a brace.

Monsignor Robert Sarno, a former official of the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints who served as the archiepiscopal delegate in the diocesan process in Los Angeles that examined the healing, told CNA that when Gutierrez went to the orthopedic surgeon a week later, “the orthopedic surgeon, after seeing the MRI and conducting physical investigations, said to him, ‘You must have someone in heaven who likes you.’”

Gutierrez was able to immediately resume playing the sports that he loved without any difficulties. The healing was verified by a diocesan inquiry and the examination of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints’ medical board, theologians, and the cardinals and bishops.

Sarno noted that it is fitting that a young man playing basketball received the healing given that Frassati was known for his love of sport and outdoor activities.

‘To the heights’ of holiness

Born on Holy Saturday, April 6, 1901, Frassati was the son of the founder and director of the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

At the age of 17, he joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society and dedicated much of his spare time to taking care of the poor, the homeless, and the sick as well as demobilized servicemen returning from World War I.

Frassati was also involved in the Apostleship of Prayer and Catholic Action. He obtained permission to receive daily Communion.

On a photograph of what would be his last climb, Frassati wrote the phrase, “Verso L’Alto,” which means “to the heights.” This phrase has become a motto for Catholics inspired by Frassati to strive for the summit of eternal life with Christ.

Frassati died of polio on July 4, 1925. His doctors later speculated that the young man had caught polio while serving the sick.

Pope John Paul II, who beatified Frassati in 1990, called him a “man of the Eight Beatitudes,” describing him as “entirely immersed in the mystery of God and totally dedicated to the constant service of his neighbor.”

For Gutierrez, his healing is a reminder “that prayer works.” 

“The saints can help us to pray for our needs and that there is somebody listening to our prayers,” he said. “God is always listening to our prayers.”

A version of this story was originally published on Nov. 24, 2024, and was updated on June 13, 2025.

Vatican City, Jun 13, 2025 / 16:39 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV stated that “the gravest poverty is not to know God” and that having him accompany us on the journey of life puts material wealth into perspective, because “we discover the real treasure that we need.”

“Wealth often disappoints and can lead to tragic situations of poverty — above all the poverty born of the failure to recognize our need for God and of the attempt to live without him,” the pontiff noted.

The Holy Father made these observations in his message, released June 13 by the Vatican press office, for the ninth World Day of the Poor, which will be held on Sunday, Nov. 16.

As Pope Francis did when he decried the globalization of indifference, Pope Leo warned of the risk of “becoming hardened and resigned” in the face of new forms of impoverishment.

He thus framed the social responsibility of promoting the common good, which characterizes the Catholic Church, as grounded in “God’s creative act, which gives everyone a share in the goods of the earth,” and like these goods, “the fruits of human labor should be equally accessible to all.” 

The pontiff quoted St. Augustine on the subject: “You give bread to a hungry person; but it would be better if none were hungry, so that you would have no need to give it away. You clothe the naked, but would that all were clothed and that there be no need for supply this lack.”

The Holy Father made it clear that helping the poor is “a matter of justice before it is a question of charity.” He also noted how when we encounter poor or impoverished people, sometimes “we too may have less than before and are losing what once seemed secure: a home, sufficient food for each day, access to health care and a good education, information, religious freedom, and freedom of expression.”

For the pontiff, the World Day of the Poor seeks to remind the Church that the poor are “at the heart of all our pastoral activity,” not only of its ”charitable work but also of the message that she celebrates and proclaims.”

“God took on their poverty in order to enrich us through their voices, their stories, and their faces,” he noted in the message he signed June 13, the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of the poor.

In fact, in the text he made it clear that the poor “are not a distraction for the Church but our beloved brothers and sisters.” In this sense, he emphasized that “by their lives, their words, and their wisdom, they put us in contact with the truth of the Gospel.”

The Holy Father emphasized in his message that the poor are not mere “recipients” of the Church’s pastoral care but rather defined them as “creative subjects” who challenge us “to find novel ways of living out the Gospel today.”

In this way, he pointed out that every form of poverty is a call “to experience the Gospel concretely and to offer effective signs of hope.”

The pope noted how people without resources can become witnesses of a “a strong and steadfast hope, precisely because they embody it in the midst of uncertainty, poverty, instability, and marginalization.”

“They cannot rely on the security of power and possessions; on the contrary, they are at their mercy and often victims of them. Their hope must necessarily be sought elsewhere,” he added.

Thus, he indicated that when God is placed at the center as “our first and only hope,” it is precisely when “we too pass from fleeting hopes to a lasting hope.”

Worst discrimination suffered by poor is ‘lack of spiritual care’

The pontiff cited the encyclical Evangelii Gaudium of his predecessor, Pope Francis, who stated that the worst discrimination suffered by the poor is “the lack of spiritual care.”

“This is a rule of faith and the secret of hope: All this earth’s goods, material realities, worldly pleasures, economic prosperity, however important, cannot bring happiness to our hearts,” he emphasized.

The Holy Father also reflected on the “circular relationship” that exists between the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. “Hope is born of faith, which nourishes and sustains it on the foundation of charity, the mother of all virtues. All of us need charity, here and now,” he said.

Pope Leo therefore affirmed that charity is a reality that “engages us and guides our decisions toward the common good” and pointed out that “those who lack charity not only lack faith and hope; they also rob their neighbors of hope.”

Referring specifically to the Christian hope that the Word of God proclaims, he noted that it is a “certainty at every step of life’s journey” because it does not depend on human strength “but on the promise of God, who is always faithful.”

For this reason, he said that Christians, from the beginning, have sought to identify hope with the symbol of the anchor, which provides stability and security. “Amid life’s trials, our hope is inspired by the firm and reassuring certainty of God’s love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That hope does not disappoint,” he reiterated.

Charity is the greatest social commandment of the Church

Therefore, Leo emphasized that the biblical summons to hope entails “the duty to shoulder our responsibilities in history, without hesitation,” noting that “charity, in fact, is the greatest social commandment,” as stated in No. 1889 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The pontiff explained that “poverty has structural causes that must be addressed and eliminated. In the meantime, each of us is called to offer new signs of hope that will bear witness to Christian charity, just as many saints have done over the centuries.”

For the pope, hospitals and schools are institutions created to reach out to the most vulnerable and marginalized, and they “should be part of every country’s public policy.” However, he lamented that “wars and inequalities often prevent this from happening.”

He also highlighted as concrete examples of hope “group homes, communities for minors, centers for listening and acceptance, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and schools for low-income students.” 

And, he added: “How many of these quiet signs of hope often go unnoticed and yet are so important for setting aside our indifference and inspiring others to become involved in various forms of volunteer work!”

Finally, he called for promoting the development of policies to combat “forms of poverty both old and new, as well as implementing new initiatives to support and assist the poorest of the poor.”

“Labor, education, housing, and health are the foundations of a security that will never be attained by the use of arms. I express my appreciation for those initiatives that already exist, and for the efforts demonstrated daily on the international level by great numbers of men and women of goodwill,” he said.

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