We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

The Holy Family Church, the only Catholic Church in Gaza, was struck by a raid this morning, resulting in three deaths and several injuries, including the Parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli. In a statement, the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem appeals to leaders "to raise their voices and to do all that is necessary in order to stop this tragedy which is humanly and morally unjustified."

Read all

 

At Castel Gandolfo, Pope Leo XIV received Greek Orthodox, Byzantine Catholic, and Latin Catholic pilgrims from the United States who are taking part in an ecumenical pilgrimage to Rome, Constantinople, and Nicea.

Read all

 

Pope Leo XIV sends a message to the 20th National Congress of the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions, and invites them to "promote peaceful societies in the service of human development."

Read all

 

ACI MENA, Jul 16, 2025 / 18:01 pm (CNA).

Church leaders in Jerusalem say they hold Israeli authorities responsible for “facilitating and enabling” settler attacks, warning that police silence in the face of emergency calls constitutes a form of complicity.

On Monday, the heads of churches visited the predominantly Christian town of Taybeh, east of Ramallah. The delegation was led by Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, joined by diplomats representing more than 20 countries. U.S. representatives canceled their participation at the last minute without explanation.

The visit carried a serious warning about the escalating threat to one of the oldest Christian communities in the Holy Land. Both church leaders and diplomats called for accountability for Israeli settlers and an end to the threats targeting a deeply rooted Christian community in the region.

Speaking on behalf of the church leaders, Theophilos III said: “We appeal to the conscience of the entire world, imploring its prayers, attention, and action, especially from our fellow Christians around the globe. The Church has maintained its faithful presence in this land for nearly 2,000 years, and we categorically reject these exclusionary messages.”

For his part, Cardinal Pizzaballa remarked: “Sadly, the temptation to emigrate remains because of the current situation.” He described the West Bank as an area “outside the rule of law,” adding: “The only law that applies here is the law of force,  the law of whoever holds power, not true law. We must work to restore the presence of law to this part of the country, so that everyone can rely on it to guarantee and enforce their rights.”

The churches demanded a transparent investigation, accountability for the perpetrators, and the dismantling of settlement outposts threatening local lands. They also called for international action to ensure Christians can remain on their land.

Among other incidents, on July 7, settlers set fire near the historic St. George (al-Khader) cemetery. Locals managed to contain the blaze before it reached the church, but the message was clear: “You have no future here” was written on a sign later placed near the site.  

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

Vatican City, Jul 16, 2025 / 17:15 pm (CNA).

Originally from China, Shushu arrived in Spain in 2016 at just 23 years of age with the sole purpose of studying the history of the Spanish language. What she didn't imagine was that she would have a transformative encounter with Christ Crucified, which would lead her to embrace the Catholic faith.

"We have no merit; it's all because the Lord guides us. His mercy is immense," said Shushu in an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, at the shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga in Spain.

The young Chinese mother was there with her husband Josemi and son, Emmanuel, to share the testimony of her conversion from atheism to Catholicism before thousands of young people gathered July 4 for the opening of the Marian Eucharistic Youth Day (JEMJ, by its Spanish acronym).

It all began on Oct. 31, in the city of Alcalá de Henares. Shushu had only been in Spain for a month and had attended a Halloween party, drawn by curiosity and the festive atmosphere. However, the grotesque zombie costumes, the clatter of chains dragging along the floor, and the shrill, mournful music disturbed her.

Restless and overwhelmed in her heart, she decided to leave and walk in no particular direction until she came upon the imposing Sts. Justus and Pastor Cathedral, where she began to hear almost heavenly music that contrasted drastically with the uneasiness she had just experienced.

Drawn by that melody, she decided to enter the church, and it was then that her eyes fell upon an image of Christ Crucified. She stood there transfixed, and the encounter marked a turning point in her life. "There was a very large cross, and I saw Jesus there, and it had a great impact on me," she told ACI Prensa.

She related that her childhood was spent in a profoundly atheistic environment, typical of communist China, where neither her family nor her closest friends believed in or spoke of God.

Despite this, when she looked at the cross, she thought: "There is a person on the cross. And by supernatural intuition, I thought it was God, that God himself was on the cross, and it couldn't be anyone else," she said.

The priest looked at her like a father

Overwhelmed by a sense of peace, she decided to approach a confessional to speak with a priest, unsure of what the Sacrament of Reconciliation consisted of.

When she finished speaking, she thanked the priest for listening to her, and as she was about to leave, the priest opened the screen in the confessional: “And he looked at me with a very special look,” Shushu recounted during the testimony she shared at the JEMJ.

She said the priest looked at her like a father would and that gave her “a lot of confidence.” She had the feeling that he had been waiting for her for a long time, and he was the one who introduced her to the Servants of the Home of the Mother, who would become her new “Spanish family.”

“I didn't know anything; I'd never seen a nun in my life,” Shushu recalled with humor and a certain aplomb. She commented that the nun’s  “angelic” happiness caught her attention: “I'd never seen someone so happy, so joyful, so young. I decided to convert after meeting the nuns,” she recounted.

‘I wanted to be a daughter of God’

At one point one of the nuns took her hand and asked, “Do you want to be baptized?” To which she replied, “What does it mean to be baptized?”

“She told me that being baptized means ‘being a daughter of God, like us.’ At that moment, I didn't understand anything, nor did I know why a Chinese woman could be a daughter of God or why God is my Father,” she explained.

However, the happiness emanating from the faces of the nuns at the Home of the Mother convinced her. “It was as if I felt this calling in my heart: I wanted to be baptized too, I wanted to be like them, a daughter of God.” Finally, she was baptized with the name Shushu María.

Her path to conversion was not easy, marked by the difficulties inherent in growing up in a deeply atheistic environment.

However, she managed to move forward thanks to the close guidance and witness of the sisters, whose support was key in her being able to open her heart to the faith.

"I was baptized in the same church where I first entered, and I was also married there," she said, in front of the crucifix where she had first encountered Jesus Christ.

Today, at 32, she stated with conviction that Spain is her “spiritual homeland” and the place where she was baptized and began “a new life.”

She also felt extremely grateful to be able to share her testimony at the shrine in Covadonga, “the heart of Spain and a very important place in its history.”

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

CNA Newsroom, Jul 16, 2025 / 16:35 pm (CNA).

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is opening a “Center for Faith” and eliminating a regulation that banned faith-based groups from receiving disaster loans. 

The SBA, a branch of the federal government established to bolster the economy by supporting small businesses, announced they would remove the longstanding regulation as part of the agency’s efforts to end faith-based discrimination by the government. 

The SBA previously prohibited any group “principally engaged in teaching, instructing, counseling, or indoctrinating religion” from applying for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), a regulation which the SBA is now nixing under the Trump administration. 

The SBA argues that the regulation is unconstitutional, citing the 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer. 

In the ruling, the court found that a Missouri state agency violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution when it refused to let a church participate in a state-funded program because of its religious affiliation. 

“We're rooting out religious discrimination — and embracing religious freedom,”  SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said in a post on X.

In addition to cutting the restriction against faith-based groups, the SBA is launching the Center for Faith under the agency’s Office of Economic Development. 

Set to be headed by Director of Faith Outreach Janna Bowman, the center will “focus on building partnerships with faith-driven organizations to increase awareness and access to capital, business counseling, contracting opportunities, and disaster recovery,” according to a SBA press release. 

The agency, Loeffler said, “is committed to ending the era of weaponized government that has systematically discriminated against Americans of faith – even denying them access to vital disaster relief in times of tragedy.”  

The new faith center was announced in the wake of President Donald Trump’s Feb. 7 executive order establishing the White House Faith Office, according to the SBA. 

Other federal agencies have also launched centers for faith, including the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and others. 

SBA’s first-ever faith center is designed to “improve access to agency resources for the faith community, ensuring that all SBA programs are accessible to eligible Americans regardless of their religious affiliation,” Loeffler said. 

“We are proud to uphold the principles of religious freedom that our nation was founded on — and look forward to forging lasting relationships that bring new small businesses into the SBA ecosystem,” she added.

Rome Newsroom, Jul 16, 2025 / 15:45 pm (CNA).

A team of 18 archaeologists, anthropologists, and forensic scientists have begun excavating an old septic tank this week at the former St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home run by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam, County Galway, western Ireland, now the site of a housing development.

Over the next two years, according to The Irish Times, an excavating machine will go through the site in search of remains for 796 children allegedly buried, in the words of the Bon Secours Sisters “in a disrespectful and unacceptable way” between 1925 and 1960.

The Bon Secours Sisters have released a statement apologizing for the treatment of the deceased babies, and their mothers during that time.

The goal of the excavation is to find, analyze, identify, and provide a decent burial for the children's remains — many of them newborns.

To identify them, DNA samples have been collected from more than 80 relatives who were invited to a symbolic event on July 8 to commemorate the start of the work.

The excavations — carried out with the help of experts from Colombia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States — are underway, some 11 years after local historian Catherine Corless revealed that 796 children had died at the institution between 1925 and 1961. Only two of the deceased children were buried in local graveyards.

In 2014, Corless published the investigation that, three years later, led to the discovery of the mass grave. In 2017, a preliminary excavation in the area found human remains, giving support to the suspicion of a mass burial site in "inhumane conditions."

"These babies are in a sewage system. They have to be taken out of there," Corless said Monday, after the site was enclosed with an 8-foot fence, according to The Irish Times.

‘Alarming’ infant mortality levels at these facilities

In January 2021, a national commission of inquiry revealed in a comprehensive report the “alarming” levels of infant mortality in these institutions for unmarried mothers in Ireland.

The 3,000-page document details what happened between 1922 and 1998 in 14 homes for unmarried mothers and a sample of four other county centers, where abandoned children and sick or disabled adults also lived.

In total, some 9,000 children died in these facilities, representing 15% of the 57,000 children who, along with their mothers, passed through the 18 homes investigated during the period under study.

One of the most shocking episodes occurred in 1943 in the Irish town of Bessborough, where three out of four children died in the care of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. According to the commission, more than 900 children died in that institution between 1922 and 1998, and to this day no documented burial site has been identified.

Widespread indifference toward the children

Most of the deaths, according to the documentation, occurred from respiratory illnesses or gastroenteritis. The report attributed these to appalling sanitary conditions, with limited access to hot, running water or a lack of sanitation, coupled with overcrowding and a lack of healthcare training for staff.

The report emphasized that the high mortality rate was known to local authorities, who failed to act for years due to “widespread indifference” toward these children.

When the report was made public, the Sisters of Bon Secours offered an official apology and pledged to contribute €12.97 million (over $15 million) to the government's victim compensation fund.

The order's then-regional superior, Sister Eileen O'Connor, acknowledged that “the babies and children who died were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way” and that the congregation “was part of the system in which they suffered hardship, loneliness, and terrible hurt.”

The former archbishop-elect of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, stated: “We can no longer run away from the extremely painful truths about how, collectively and individually, we failed in our duty of care to vulnerable women and their children.”

The Irish government also publicly apologized, as several of the centers investigated were public, although in practice they were run by nuns.

The former president of the Irish Bishops' Conference, Eamon Martin, asked that “anyone who can help, to do so” so that the babies can have a decent burial where their families can remember them.

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

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 16, 2025 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

A new study has found that “reciting the rosary privately” is the most popular Marian devotion among those discerning a religious vocation.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University published its June 2025 report: “Impact of Mary, Mother of the Church, on Ecclesial Vocations,” which includes results from six surveys with 1,091 respondents, 65% of whom were diocesan personnel in the U.S. — including bishops (9%), diocesan priests (40%), permanent deacons (10%), and deacon directors (7%). 

U.S. religious men and women accounted for the other 35% of respondents including religious priests (6%), major superiors of men (8%), and major superiors of women (21%). The majority of respondents are Latin Rite Catholic (95%), and 5% are Eastern Rite Catholic.

The surveys were conducted by CARA in collaboration with the Diocese of Saginaw from March to May 2025.

Marian devotions impact on vocational discernment

The study found that 59% of respondents reported that their devotion to Mary has had either “a meaningful impact” or “a great impact” on their “original sense of a vocation to serve Christ and the Church.” Religious priests (71%) were most likely to report so, while responding deacon directors (49%) were least likely.

The survey found that the most popular Marian devotion when discerning a vocation was “reciting the rosary privately.” Seven in 10 respondents reported that it “positively impacted them during their discernment period,” specifically among bishops, with 80% reporting that it did. 

When discerning a vocation to a particular religious community or diocese, 35% of respondents reported that a Marian dimension of that community was “significant" or "very significant.” 

Responding priests were found to be the most likely to report that the Marian dimension held some form of significance (47%) and deacon directors were the least likely (30%).

Of all survey respondents, 44% reported that they visited at least one apparition site before deciding on their current ecclesial vocation. Nearly three in 10 made pilgrimages to Guadalupe (29%) and Lourdes (28%), which were the two most common sites mentioned. 

Marian devotions related to Fátima, Lourdes, and Guadalupe were the most likely to have impacted a respondent’s “original sense of ecclesial vocation.” Of respondents, 44% reported Marian devotions related to Fatima had “a meaningful impact” or “a great impact” on their original sense of an ecclesial vocation, 43% to Lourdes, and 31% to Guadalupe. 

Influence of Marian devotions on those living out ecclesial vocations

When asked about their current devotion to Mary in a religious order, nearly all respondents (89%) reported they have a "strong devotion” (58%) or “some devotion” (31%).

An average of 75% of respondents reported that their devotion to Mary has either “strengthened” (34%) or “very much strengthened” (41%) them while living out their ecclesial vocation. A combined 80% reported that they turn to Mary for spiritual assistance “often” (36%) or “very often” (44%).

The study found that 80% of respondents indicated that their devotion to Mary has had either a “meaningful impact” (58%) or a “great impact” (22%) on their devotion to the Eucharist. 

Reciting the rosary alone (72%) was the most frequent Marian devotion that respondents reported doing “weekly” or “daily,” specifically among responding bishops with 87% answering that they do. Other popular Marian devotions included meditative or contemplative prayer with Our Lady (46%), reciting the rosary with others (37%), and reading spiritual writings on Mary (28%). 

Of respondents, 77% said at least one Marian site and its related devotions have strengthened them while living out their ecclesial vocation. Guadalupe (63%), Lourdes (59%), and Fátima (53%) were the most frequently mentioned. Responding bishops were most likely to report that Guadalupe (77%) and Lourdes (72%) have strengthened them.  

Role of Mary in religious men and women’s lives

Out of 710 respondents who specified how they view Mary in their lives, 167 expressed experiencing Mary’s presence in their life as a “companion, friend, guide and comforter.”  One respondent said: “Mary stands by me each day as I celebrate holy Mass, just as she stood by Christ at the foot of the Cross,” while another said Mary "is my comfort whenever I am afraid.”

A total of 129 respondents expressed that Mary plays the role of “intercessor” in their lives. One specified: “I wouldn't be who I am today, or where I am today, if it were not for Mary's intercessory role in my life.”

A total of 121 respondents answered that Mary plays the role of a “mother” in their ecclesial vocation. A respondent wrote that Mary as a mother “has always been there and continues to be there. I love her even more as I grow in my awareness of her love for me.”

The majority of respondents (74%) said the Catholic Church places the “right amount of emphasis” on devotion to Mary. Among the others, 5% reported that there is “too much emphasis” and 21% said there is “not enough emphasis.” 

CNA Newsroom, Jul 16, 2025 / 12:05 pm (CNA).

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has urged the Australian Law Reform Commission to ban all forms of surrogacy, including “altruistic” arrangements, in a nine-page letter highlighting the “profound harms” of the practice. 

“The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference calls on the Law Reform Commission to recommend the prohibition of all forms of surrogacy in Australia,” the bishops write in the letter, which was shared with CNA. 

“A woman is not a machine for reproduction,” the bishops argue in the letter, “she is a person made in the image of God, called to bear life with love, freedom, and dignity.”

“Surrogacy reduces this sacred role [of motherhood] to a service contract—an arrangement that denies the women’s full humanity,” the letter says. “Surrogacy attempts to divide a woman's body from her identity, as though she could be a vessel without being a mother.” 

Submitted to the commission on July 9 by Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Tony Percy — the conference’s delegate for life issues — the letter asserts that current laws fail to protect women and children from exploitation and trauma, emphasizing that children "have no voice" in surrogacy arrangements and deserve to be "received in love, not produced as part of a contractual arrangement."

“While the pain of infertility is real and deserving of compassion, not all responses to suffering are just. Surrogacy introduces new and profound harms,” the bishops say in the letter, noting the practice places both women and children at heightened risk for medical and emotional trauma. 

“For children,” the letter continues, “it breaches core human rights, including identity, parentage, and protection from commodification, which are rights affirmed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.” 

Commercial surrogacy, where surrogate mothers are paid to carry the child, is illegal in Australia. Only “altruistic” surrogacy, where the mother’s pregnancy expenses are covered but she makes no profit, is considered lawful. 

Because commercial surrogacy is illegal, Australian state and territory courts will generally not recognize those who engage in a commercial surrogacy arrangement as the legal parents of the child born through it. 

Some states, however, including New South Wales, have passed laws that allow the granting of legal parentage in certain circumstances after a commercial arrangement. The pathways, however, “often require admitting criminal conduct to the court,” according to the Review of Surrogacy Laws being considered by the law commission. 

“It is concerning that although commercial surrogacy is banned in Australia, including overseas arrangements in several jurisdictions, these laws are rarely enforced,” the bishops point out in their letter. 

“As a result, Australians are continuing to commission children through international commercial surrogacy with little scrutiny or consequence, undermining the intent of the legal prohibitions which are to protect children.”

The bishops’ letter includes testimony from former surrogate mothers who experienced “deep emotional, physical, and spiritual harm” when participating in the practice. 

One mother, identified as Cathy, stated: "The pain never goes away. I am still an emotional basket case and struggle every day with this… When I signed the paper, I thought I could do it. I did not realize it would break my heart. The pain and emptiness I feel have been unbearable.”

Another woman, called Sherrie, said: “I can’t describe the depth of sadness I felt when I came home without the child I loved, carried within me, and gave birth to. It was as if I had a child die.” 

She continued: “I just couldn’t help but love this child like my own, because it was my own… As I watched their car driving away that day on the gravel road, I felt like the dust left behind to scatter in the corn fields.” 

Ultimately, the bishops in the letter express deep concern for the terms of the review conducted by the commission, which they say “appear[s] to prioritize easier access to surrogacy,” rather than promoting the “fundamental rights and dignity of women and children.” 

“We reject the idea that expanding surrogacy serves the best interests of children or respects human dignity,” they write. “Any legal reform must begin with a clear commitment to protect children from commodification, women from exploitation, and society from the normalization of contract-based human reproduction.”

Vatican City, Jul 16, 2025 / 10:30 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged encounter and unity in a message to the players and spectators of a soccer game to support sick and injured children from war zones.

“It is still possible — it is always possible — to encounter one another, even in a time of divisions, bombs, and wars,” the pope said in a video played at the July 15 match in L’Aquila, a city in the Italian region of Abruzzo.

A team of music artists beat out a bipartisan group of Italian politicians 8-6 in the friendly “Partita del Cuore” (“Game of the Heart”).

The 34th edition of the event raised funds for significantly ill or injured children from poor and war-torn countries to receive free treatment at one of Europe’s top children’s hospitals, the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesù. The project is also supported by the Catholic charity Caritas Italia.

In his message, played before a sold-out Gran Sasso d’Italia Stadium and two million television viewers, Leo underlined the importance of challenging divisions by coming together to contribute to a good cause.

“Sport — when experienced well by those who practice it and those who cheer them on — has this great thing about it, that it transforms confrontation into encounter, division into inclusion, loneliness into community,” he said.

Tiziano Onesti, the president of the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital, told CNA the hospital is “always on the front lines” of supporting children in need.

“We take in many children who come from all over the world,” he said, especially those with complex illnesses, like leukemia, or serious injuries and mutilation from bombings.

While the children — some of whom come from Ukraine and Gaza — are hospitalized, their families “are welcomed in these reception centers where they don’t spend a penny, they don’t pay anything. The hospital covers all the expenses,” Onesti explained.

In his message, Pope Leo said the charity match recalled for him another famous soccer game, played during the Christmas truce of December 1914 between French, British, and German soldiers, near Ypres, Belgium.

The pontiff also pointed to the politicians participating in the game, saying it shows that “politics can unite rather than divide, if it does not settle for propaganda that feeds on the creation of enemies, but engages in the difficult and necessary art of dialogue, which seeks the common good.”

“In this case, match means encounter. An encounter where even opponents find a cause that unites them,” the pope said.

Players on the winning “singers” team included some of Italy’s most popular artists across the genres of rap, hip-hop, pop, and rock. 

Matteo Renzi, a senator and former prime minister of Italy, played on the politicians team alongside other national politicians. Three members of the government also took part: the Italian ministers of economy and finance, of agriculture, and of culture.

“The atmosphere was obviously first and foremost festive, fun, a moment of encounter between opponents, politicians and singers,” Onesti said. “But also within the political sphere, there were people from all sides; it was very bipartisan, both right and left.”

The Bambino Gesù, founded by a wealthy family in Rome in 1869, was Italy’s first pediatric hospital. It became the property of the Holy See in 1924. Today, the “pope’s hospital” is a world-renowned research center and hospital specializing in pediatric medicine.