We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

Feast date: Jul 20

Saint Margaret, whose feast is celebrated on July 20, is a virgin and martyr. She is also called "Marina". Margaret belonged to Pisidian Antioch in Asia Minor, where her father was a pagan priest. Her mother died soon after Margaret's birth, so she was nursed by a pious woman who lived about five or six leagues from Antioch. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, she was disowned by her father and adopted by her nurse.

 

One day, while she was engaged in watching the flocks of her mistress, a lustful Roman prefect named Olybrius caught sight of her, and attracted by her great beauty sought to make her his concubine or wife. When neither cajolery nor threats of punishment could succeed in moving her to yield to his desires, he had her brought before him in public trial at Antioch. Threatened with death unless she renounced the Christian faith, the holy virgin refused to adore the gods of the empire. An attempt was made to burn her, but the flames, we are told in her Acts, left her unharmed. She was then bound hand and foot and thrown into a cauldron of boiling water, but at her prayer her bonds were broken and she stood up uninjured. Finally the prefect ordered her to be beheaded.

 

The Greek Church honors her under the name Marine on July13, and the Latin, as Margaret on July 20. Her Acts place her death in the persecution of Diocletian (A.D. 303-5), but in fact even the century to which she belonged is uncertain. St. Margaret is represented in art sometimes as a shepherdess, or as leading a chained dragon, again carrying a little cross or a girdle in her hand, or standing by a large vessel which recalls the cauldron into which she was plunged. Relics said to belong to the saint are venerated in very many parts of Europe; at Rome, Montefiascone, Brusels, Bruges, Paris, Froidmont, Troyes, and various other places. Curiously enough this virgin has been widely venerated for many centuries as a special patron of women who are pregnant.

Bishop William Shomali, the auxiliary bishop for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said this week the community has been “very distressed” following the bombing of Holy Family Church in Gaza

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 19, 2025 / 11:30 am (CNA).

Bishop William Shomali, the auxiliary bishop for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said this week the community has been “very distressed” following the bombing of Holy Family Church in Gaza, with the prelate calling for the protection of nearby Chirstian villages. 

On July 17, the Israeli military bombed the only Catholic parish in Gaza. The strike killed three and injured nine, including the parish priest Father Gabriel Romanelli. 

The Israel Defense Forces subsequently apologized for the strike, stating that “fragments from a shell fired during operational activity in the area hit the church mistakenly.” Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa later seemed to imply that the strike was intentional, telling an Italian newspaper that “everybody [in Gaza] believes it wasn’t” a mistake. 

The day after the strike, Pizzaballa and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III visited Gaza, providing “spiritual comfort, moral comfort, and also material comfort which is much needed.” 

In an interview with “EWTN News In Depth” on Friday, Shomali — who serves as general vicar and patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine — said that the patriarch and his colleagues were able to bring one of the wounded back to Jerusalem where he is now “under treatment.”

As the Vatican is now urging a ceasefire, Shomali said it is “great in itself” that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke on the phone with Pope Leo XIV, following a written message from the Holy Father offering prayers. 

Shomali said that the Holy See has asked “frequently” for a ceasefire “during the time of Pope Francis and even now with Leo XIV.” He reflected on Pope Francis’ “very close” relationship with Father Gabriel Romanelli and the people in Gaza.

Pope Francis “knew every detail about the life of the Christian community in Gaza,” he said. It was “unique, to say the truth. Every pope has his own style. The style of our Holy Father is different, but we know that he asks a lot about Gaza, and the telegram he sent yesterday showed his closeness to Father Gabriel and to the community.”

During the interview, Shomali said the situation in the West Bank continues to be “critical” for a number of reasons. He highlighted the “daily confrontation between Palestinians and the settlers."

“We are suffering now because in two of our Christian villages, Tayibe and Abu, settlers enter almost every day to conquer more land and to enlarge the settlements,” Shomali said.

He explained that they have asked Israel Defense Forces “to prevent settlers from coming to the Christian village of Tayibe” and now are “waiting [for] the answer.”

“We hope they can do something,” Shomali said. “But…the settlers have weapons and I don't believe that the army would like to be in confrontation with the settlers who are more than 700 people in the West Bank.” 

“It is really difficult to convince them to change their mentality, which is very…ideological because they consider all the land in the West Bank theirs and it's a matter of time for them to take it without any sense of guilt,” the prelate said. 

“So really we are in front of an ideological conflict with two narratives where a negotiation for peace [is] very difficult,” he added. 

CNA Newsroom, Jul 19, 2025 / 10:45 am (CNA).

From Detroit to California to Florida, Catholic clergy are rallying to show support and solidarity for immigrants facing deportations.

While the Tennessee bishops and Bishop Alberto Rojas of San Bernardino recently granted dispensations to the Sunday Mass obligation for those who fear arrest, other Catholic clergy are attending marches to show solidarity and support for immigrants. 

In Detroit, one Catholic priest took a unique approach — delivering a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

Father David Buersmeyer, ​the ​ombudsman of the Office of the Archbishop of Detroit, shared his growing concerns about immigration enforcement operations in a letter addressed to ICE’s Detroit field office and its director Kevin Raycraft.

“Over the last few months, not only in Detroit but throughout the nation, we have been seeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel become more confrontational [and] less transparent, in ways that have created more fear and chaos among many of our immigrant communities,” Buersmeyer told CNA.

Buersmeyer is a chaplain for Strangers No Longer, a Michigan-based Catholic grassroots immigration advocacy group. Earlier this week, the group held a prayerful march to the local ICE office to deliver the letter, which was signed by Buersmeyer and the group’s board president, Judith Brooks.

Archbishop Edward Weisenburger of Detroit also joined the march, which was made up of several hundreds of people, including Catholic clergy, women religious, Protestant clergy, and Jewish leadership, according to Buersmeyer. 

The procession began with prayer at the Most Holy Trinity Church — which Buersmeyer calls “a longtime symbol” for immigrants and those in need — and ended at the nearby ICE office. 

Though the office refused to accept the letter at the door, Buersmeyer said the advocates passed the correspondence on to a congressman and a senator who agreed to deliver it to the director. 

The letter cited concerns about facemasks and lack of identification of ICE agents during immigration action, urging the director to enforce ID requirements and ban facemasks. Additionally, the letter urged ICE to not act without a federal warrant and to communicate with local police during enforcement. 

Finally, the letter criticized the separation of families when ICE arrests men, leaving women and children behind. 

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement this week that “rather than separate families, ICE asks mothers if they want to be removed with their children or if the child should be placed with someone else safe the parent designates.”

Despite being turned away at the door by ICE staff, Buersmeyer hopes for “dialogue.” 

“Our hope is that enough people will come to see that the current procedures in place for treating immigrants leads too easily to inhumane, unjust, and unnecessary actions,” Buersmeyer said.

“That in turn can lead to a dialogue about national policies that can provide a more just and less knee-jerk framework for handling immigration cases.”

The subject of masking and identification is being discussed in Michigan and around the US. Earlier this week, the Michigan attorney general and other attorneys general sent a letter urging federal lawmakers to prohibit ICE officers from wearing masks. 

Several federal Democrat legislators recently proposed a bill that would require ICE agencies to better identify themselves. 

But in the same week, the Department of Homeland Security reported a spike in assaults and doxxing of ICE agents and expressed concern over “charged” rhetoric in the media.  

“Because our city has a major ICE field office we wanted to let him know that there are large numbers of community leaders who have the pulse of the people being affected by these newer enforcement procedures and that there are ways to both respect the work that ICE needs to do and to lessen that fear and work more positively,” Buersmeyer said. 

For Buersmeyer, the march was also about “solidarity” and living out Catholic social teaching. 

“We wanted to publicly witness to our support of such communities,” he said. 

Across the country in Los Angeles, a local Catholic priest had a similar goal — he hoped to bring spiritual guidance to his flock amid the unrest. 

Father Brendan Busse, the pastor at Dolores Mission Church, said that intensified activity from immigration and customs enforcement has deeply shaken the people he serves.

In the largely Hispanic neighborhood of Boyle Heights, people are filled with “anxiety” and have to make “hard decisions,” Busse explained. 

“We've received calls here at the parish — you know, ‘Father, I'm not sure our family feels safe coming to Mass,’” Busse told EWTN News President Montse Alvarado on “EWTN News in Depth” this week. “I think it's affected everybody."

Busse participated in a June 10 peaceful gathering in Los Angeles's Grand Park as well as a procession to a federal building, along with other faith leaders including Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, who has repeatedly called for action on immigration reform.

“We walked between protesters and National Guardsmen in a moment that was very tense,” Busse recalled. “And we brought into that place a spirit of peace.”

The Diocese of San Bernardino faces similar challenges, leading to the archbishop’s decision to dispense Mass attendance for those affected by ICE activity. 

John Andrews, a spokesman for the San Bernardino diocese, said that ICE has come onto parish property twice that he is aware of, including the arrest of a parishioner of Our Lady of Lourdes in Montclair. 

“A man who was doing landscaping work on the parish property was taken into custody there, arrested, and was later taken to an immigration facility in Texas,” Andrews told “EWTN News In-Depth.”

In Florida, meanwhile, concerns have proliferated over the state’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention facility for illegal immigrants in the Everglades. State leaders have touted the facility’s remote location as well as its being surrounded by dangerous wildlife. 

Venice, Florida, Bishop Frank Dewane said earlier this month that it was “unbecoming of public officials and corrosive of the common good” to speak of the threat of alligators and other dangerous animals in the context of the immigrants housed there. 

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, meanwhile, told “EWTN News in Depth” this week that his “greatest concern is the health and care of the people that are being detained there.”

“It's in a very isolated place far away from medical facilities. It's in a swamp that is very hot on a tarmac, which makes it even hotter,” the bishop said. 

The archbishop said that advocates are calling for “a minimum of standards,” and that “one of those standards should be access to pastoral care.” 

He described the difficulty of arranging Masses and spiritual care at the detention center, claiming that the Florida state government and the federal government are “arguing among themselves who is accountable for this place.”

The prelate said people should be aware of the difference between illegal immigration and “violent crime or felonies.”

“Most of the the immense majority of these people,” he said, “are here and working in honest jobs and trying to make a living for themselves and their families, trying to just have a future of hope for themselves and their families.”

Father Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of Gaza's Holy Family Catholic Church, was slightly injured in the leg and side during the Israeli army attack two days ago, which resulted in three deaths and several serious injuries among the Christians gathered in the Catholic parish. He was reached by L'Osservatore Romano's correspondent, Roberto Cetera. This is the testimony he shared with the Vatican media.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 19, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

In the wake of an Israeli missile strike on Gaza’s only Catholic church this week that left three dead, the regional director of the Jerusalem field office for the Pontifical Mission, Joseph Hazboun, spoke with “EWTN News Nightly” on July 18 about the situation facing the people there. 

Citing Pope Leo XIV’s phone call Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hazboun told “EWTN News Nightly” Anchor Tara Mergener that he hopes “more pressure will be put to end this tragic and meaningless war that has taken so many lives.” 

Pope Leo in a telegram as well as on social media also issued a call for an immediate ceasefire after the deadly attack.

The director for the Pontifical Mission, a Vatican-sponsored charity, noted that the attack on Holy Family Church in Gaza has sparked “a lot of solidarity internationally,” which he called “very good.”

Israel said the church was “mistakenly” hit and that it “regrets” the damage caused to the city’s only Catholic parish. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on X that the parish had been hit by “fragments from a shell.” The church has been sheltering more than 600 people since the war broke out, including Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims. 

“The cause of the incident is under review,” the statement read. “The IDF directs its strikes solely at military targets and makes every feasible effort to mitigate harm to civilians and religious structures, and regrets any unintentional damage caused to them.”

The Pontifical Mission has been operating in Gaza for “decades,” according to Hazboun. In recent years, the charity has provided critical aid such as water, food, and psychosocial support for mothers and children through various local partners. 

Most recently, the organization was able to purchase fresh vegetables from a local market in Gaza — which Hazboun said due to widespread food scarcity was “surprising to us” — and distribute them in cooperation with the Near East Council of Churches to over 500 families. The Pontifical Mission was also able to buy and distribute five and a half tons of flour, which it also gave to over 500 families. Hazboun noted “the tragic news of people going to the distribution centers and getting killed just for some kilos of flour.”

According to Hazboun, the Christian community in Gaza was very active prior to the war that started in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. “There were once around 17 centers providing services,” he said, including several hospitals, schools, cultural centers, and various scouting troops.

“It was a very vibrant community,” he said. “Unfortunately, during the war many of the institutions were targeted and now they are inoperational.”

“The YMCA is dysfunctional,” he continued. “The Arab Orthodox Cultural center is destroyed — and so unfortunately we are not sure how things will look after the war. It all depends on how many will remain in Gaza.”

Nevertheless, Hazboun said he is “confident” that many Christians will remain in Gaza.

He stressed that the Pontifical Mission’s message to Gazans, especially to youths, has been that “as long as you see Gaza as a homeland, we will support you and we will provide everything that we can so that you can have a dignified life and see a future for yourself in Gaza.”

“If you decide that you no longer have a future in Gaza,” he said, “that’s your decision; we respect it and we ask for God’s blessing wherever you decide to go.”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 19, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

For more than 40 years, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., has welcomed visitors to its annual summer organ recital series, providing a unique opportunity to experience the grandeur of sacred music outside the liturgical setting.

“[The series is] a promotion of an extraordinary and almost mystical form of art that has existed for centuries,” Peter Latona, director of music at the basilica, told CNA.

Held on Sunday evenings throughout July and August, the series features performances on the basilica’s renowned chancel and gallery organs — together comprising more than 9,600 pipes. 

Each recital begins at 6 p.m. preceded by a half-hour carillon performance from the basilica’s 56-bell Knights’ Tower Carillon, performed by Jeremy Ng, a rising senior at Yale University and a certified carillonneur member of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America.

According to basilica officials, the organ series is intended to offer a musical experience as profound as the visual beauty of the church’s art and architecture.

“It provides visitors an opportunity to hear the marvelous instruments and enjoy music outside of the context of Mass in the same way they would walk through the basilica to soak in the beautiful mosaics and other works of art,” Benjamin LaPrairie, associate director of music at the basilica, told CNA.

While most concert attendees sit in the pews facing the “Christ in Majesty” mosaic, a few families visit the chapels, briefly praying and soaking up the beauty of the sacred space.

“Our mission as musicians of the basilica to ‘transform hearts and minds through the power and beauty of music in the Roman Catholic liturgy’ applies here as well,” Adam Chlebek, assistant director of music at the basilica, told CNA.

Each summer, musicians are selected from a global pool of applicants with the music department curating a lineup that features both emerging artists and internationally acclaimed performers. This year’s series opened with Chlebek himself, a recent graduate of the Eastman School of Music.

“Performing on this instrument, I feel a connection to the musical heritage that has been cultivated in the basilica since the organ’s installation and dedication in 1965,” Chlebek said. “I am honored to continue this heritage.”

Attendance is open to all, with a freewill offering accepted to support the program. The basilica encourages the public to take advantage of this opportunity to hear “one of the finest organs in Washington, D.C., in one of the most beautiful and inspiring sacred spaces in North America.”

Reflecting on the series — which draws about 100 attendees each week — Chlebek expressed his hopes for its impact: “My hope is that the audience comes away with their hearts and minds transformed.”

Latona noted that the audience demographic has evolved over time, now including more young people and people from diverse backgrounds.

“Our objective is to grow the audience so that more people get to share in this experience,” he  said.

The 2025 Summer Organ Recital Series runs through its final performance on Aug. 31. Details on upcoming performers are available on the basilica’s official website.

Canterbury, England, Jul 19, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The skull of St. Thomas More may be exhumed and preserved to coincide with the 500th anniversary of his historic martyrdom, according to a spokesperson for St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury, England, the Anglican church in which the relic reportedly currently rests.

As the church begins the initial steps in a “permissions process,” Sue Palmer, churchwarden at St. Dunstan Parochial Church Council (PCC), told CNA the council welcomes input from everyone interested in the saint and “would very much welcome communication with the Vatican.”

“It is unusual to have any relics in an Anglican church, especially those of a Catholic saint, and the PCC see this as an opportunity for ecumenical outreach and cooperation,” she said.

After More was beheaded in 1535 on the orders of King Henry VIII, his head was initially placed on a spike and displayed on London Bridge as a warning to those who dared to challenge the authority of the monarch, but it was later retrieved by More’s daughter, Margaret Roper.

Following her death in 1544, Margaret — along with her father’s head — was buried in the Roper’s family vault in St. Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury, and it has remained there ever since.

However, plans are now in place for the quincentenary of More’s death, which will occur in 10 years, and the church wishes to explore the possibility of exhuming and preserving what remains of the martyr’s relic as a tribute to his significance for Catholics and other Christians across the U.K. and the rest of the world.

A statement issued by St. Dunstan’s Church on July 6, the 490th anniversary of More’s execution, explained: “The 500th anniversary of More’s death is going to throw the spotlight on us and our church as a center of worship, pilgrimage, education, and hospitality because the head is the only remaining relic of Thomas More — his body is somewhere in St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London, but it is not possible to determine precisely where, so St. Dunstan’s Church is really important and the focus in 10 years’ time will very definitely be on us.”

The statement continued: “We won’t be able to keep him to ourselves — ecumenically and globally we have a responsibility both to the relic and to Christians and scholars throughout the world, and judging by the comments in our visitors’ book, having the relic deteriorating in a vault is not good enough for many who venerate Thomas More.”

The statement went on to explain that the work to exhume the relic would need to begin as soon as possible, so the PCC has agreed that, subject to all the necessary permissions, the head is to be exhumed and then what remains of the relic will be conserved and exposed for pilgrims to visit and venerate.

Palmer emphasized that there are no plans to “display” the relic. “It makes him sound like a museum exhibit and our church is not a museum, nor is the relic an exhibit,” she said. “Anything considered would be done in consultation with the diocesan advisory committee, osteoarchaeologists, the wider (Catholic and non-Catholic) community, and anyone else interested in Thomas More. At all times it would be respectful and dignified, and be part of the story of our church and what it has to offer everyone.”

Palmer said there was good evidence to suggest that what remains of More’s skull is certainly within the Roper family vault. 

“Several openings of the vault in the last 200 years have noted the presence of the head in the niche, and the vault was last opened in 1997, so we have firsthand evidence of it still being there,” she said. “More’s body is in St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London, but I don’t believe it’s possible to establish which remains are his.”

About 1,500 people are believed to be buried in the crypt of the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, the former parish church of the Tower of London, the name of which refers to the story of St. Peter’s imprisonment under Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem.

Palmer went on to explain that the next steps in the permission process would be discussions with specialists, writing a faculty application for consideration by the diocesan advisory committee, and ultimately waiting for a decision from the commissary general, which she emphasized was “not guaranteed.” The commissary general is the equivalent of a diocesan judge.

St. Dunstan’s church is open seven days a week, with many pilgrims — both individuals and groups — who specifically visit to venerate St. Thomas More.

“Many have expressed a desire to have the relic preserved and possibly placed in a reliquary above ground rather than in a sealed vault as it is at present,” Palmer said. “Conservation and the possible commissioning of a reliquary, as well as obtaining all the relevant permissions, will take time.”

Suhail Abo Dawood, a young Catholic student from Gaza seriously wounded in the Israeli attack on the Holy Family parish on Thursday, tells Vatican media that his condition is improving. "Love", says the young man, who writes a column for the Holy See's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, "is stronger than war".

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ACI Prensa Staff, Jul 19, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV once again expressed his closeness to the people of Ukraine by sending packages of food destined to families who have suffered from the Russian army’s recent onslaught of attacks.

Thanks to the mediation of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity — the dicastery in charge of the pontiff’s charitable works also known as the Office of the Papal Almoner — and donations from the faithful, the aid will reach the village of Staryi Saltiv and the city of Shevchenkove, both affected by Russian bombing.

With this much-needed aid, which follows the aid sent in June, the Holy Father renews his gesture of solidarity with the victims of the bloody war that began in February 2022.

Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, told Vatican News that “charity does not go on vacation” and that Pope Leo XIV asked them to “act as quickly as possible.”

The trucks with the food packages left for Ukraine from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Basilica of Santa Sofia (Holy Wisdom) in Rome, which has become a center of solidarity for all Romans and a point of reference for the Ukrainian community in the Italian capital. In addition to the food, essential items were also donated.

On June 13, the Holy See also sent a truck with humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Food and essential items as well as mattresses, furniture, and children’s supplies also left from the Roman basilica.

On that occasion, Krajewski stated that the Vatican’s mission of solidarity has continued uninterrupted by the invasion of Ukrainian territory by the Russian army.

On the boxes containing the aid delivered directly to families in need, the words “Gift of Pope Leo XIV to the people of Kharkiv” can be read in Ukrainian and Italian.

On July 9, Pope Leo XIV took time out from his summer vacation in Castel Gandolfo to receive the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During their meeting, the two leaders discussed the ongoing conflict and “the urgency of pursuing just and lasting paths of peace.”

The pope also expressed his profound sorrow for the victims of the war and renewed his spiritual closeness to the Ukrainian people, encouraging all efforts aimed at the release of prisoners and the search for shared solutions.

Leo XIV also reaffirmed the Holy See’s willingness to welcome representatives of Russia and Ukraine to the Vatican for possible peace negotiations.

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