We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

In a message to an international conference in Rome, Cardinal Pietro Parolin warns that humanity risks “its own extinction” if artificial life forms fail to respect human dignity, and he calls for interdisciplinary and multicultural cooperation to guide technology toward true human progress.

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As European and African leaders prepare to meet in Luanda, Angola, for the 7th EU-African Union summit, major Catholic and development groups are calling for a major shift in relations between the two continent.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops have elected Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City as their next president and Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, TX as vice-president.

In his catechesis, Pope Leo highlights the importance of fraternity in our lives and describes it as something "deeply human". He explains that even though today's wars, tensions, and conflicts make fraternity seem difficult, without it, "we would not be able to survive, grow, or learn."

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A letter from the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, definitively confirms the negative opinion of the Bishop of Bayeux-Lisieux concerning supposed apparitions said to have occurred in Dozulé, France, in the 1970s.

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CNA Staff, Nov 11, 2025 / 18:16 pm (CNA).

As a group of mostly teenagers made its way home from a Catholic youth retreat in the mountains of Southern California this past weekend, the bus rolled over at a winding turn, injuring 26. 

Nearly 40 parishioners of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Santa Ana were on their way home from a three-day retreat at Camp Nawakwa in the San Bernardino Mountains on the evening of Nov. 9 when their bus crashed on a two-lane highway near Running Springs. 

When emergency responders arrived, passengers were still escaping from the bus, with many exiting through the roof hatch. Twenty-six passengers were treated for their injuries, including 20 who were later hospitalized, according to the San Bernardino County Fire Department. Three passengers had major injuries.

Jarryd Gonzales, a spokesman for the Diocese of Orange, told CNA that the Diocese of Orange “offers heartfelt prayers and support to the youth, families, and staff of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Santa Ana who were involved in a serious bus accident.”

“We extend our deepest gratitude to the first-responder agencies for their prompt and professional response in safely evacuating passengers and ensuring they received proper medical attention,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales said about 125 people participated in the retreat, which started Friday and ended Sunday. Most left the retreat in vans, except for the one group that took the bus.

Gonzales said the diocese will continue to “provide further updates as information becomes available.”

“Until then, our entire Diocese of Orange community will keep all those affected in prayer, and we thank all for their continued support,” he said.

Baltimore, Maryland, Nov 11, 2025 / 17:46 pm (CNA).

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is launching an initiative called “You Are Not Alone” to focus on providing accompaniment to migrants who are at risk of being deported.

Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the USCCB Committee on Migration, announced the nationwide initiative during the conference’s Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore on Nov. 11.

The initiative, which was inspired by similar efforts in Catholic dioceses throughout the country, will focus on four key areas: emergency and family support, accompaniment and pastoral care, communication of Church teaching, and solidarity through prayer and public witness. 

Seitz said the Catholic Church has been “accompanying newcomers to this land since before our country’s founding.” He said — in addition to spiritual and corporal works of mercy — the Church “cannot abandon our long-standing advocacy for just and meaningful reform to our immigration system.”

He said clergy will continue “proclaiming the God-given dignity of every person from the moment of conception through every stage of life until natural death,” which includes the dignity of those who migrated to the United States. 

The bishop said many dioceses have launched migrant accompaniment initiatives already.

For example, the Diocese of San Diego launched its Faithful Accompaniment in Trust & Hope (FAITH) initiative on Aug. 4. The diocese works with interfaith partners to provide spiritual accompaniment to migrants during court proceedings and throughout the court process.

Seitz reiterates opposition to ‘mass deportations’

In his address to his fellow bishops, Seitz criticized President Donald Trump’s administration for carrying out its “campaign promise of mass deportations,” which he said is “intimidating and dehumanizing the immigrants in our midst regardless of how they came to be there.”

He said the accompaniment initiative was launched because Trump’s immigration policy has created “a situation unlike anything we’ve seen previously.” He specifically referenced efforts to revoke Temporary Protected Status designations for migrants in several countries, including Venezuela and Nicaragua, and restrictions on certain visas.

“Those who lack legal status are far from the only ones impacted by this approach,” Seitz said.

He said most deportees “have no criminal convictions,” and the administration has pressured immigration enforcement “to increase the number of arrests.”

“Our immigrant brothers and sisters … are living in a deep state of fear,” Seitz said. “Many are too afraid to work, send their children to school, or avail themselves to the sacraments.”

Seitz, earlier in the day, noted that bishops are primarily pastors, and “because we’re pastors … we care about our people, and we care particularly for those who are most vulnerable and those who are most in need.”

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged the American bishops to be vocal on the dignity of migrants. In October, the pontiff met with American bishops, including Seitz, and other supporters of migrants. 

According to one person present, Dylan Corbett, the founding executive director of Hope Border Institute, Leo told the group: “The Church cannot stay silent before injustice. You stand with me, and I stand with you.”

Baltimore, Maryland, Nov 11, 2025 / 17:16 pm (CNA).

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved the consecration of the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 2026 to accompany the country’s 250th anniversary.

At the USCCB Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore, bishops voted “to entrust our nation to the love and care of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” Devoting the nation is an opportunity “to remind everyone of our task to serve our nation by perfecting the temporal order with the spirit of the Gospel as taught by the Second Vatican Council,” Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, said.

“One hundred years ago, in 1925, in his encyclical instituting the feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius XI, drawing on the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, referred to the pious custom of consecrating oneself, families, and even nations to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a way to recognize the kinship of Christ,” said Rhoades, who serves on an advisory board for President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission.

To help Catholics prepare for the consecration, Rhoades said the bishops will develop prayer resources, including a novena. He said they are already putting together other resources for use by dioceses, parishes, and other groups to engage Catholics.

“In his fourth and last encyclical, Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis brought devotion to the Sacred Heart to the forefront of Catholic life as the ultimate symbol of both human and divine love, calling it a wellspring of peace and unity,” said Rhoades, who has served as chair of the USCCB Committee on Religious Liberty. 

Francis “wrote of how the Sacred Heart teaches us to build up in this world God’s kingdom of love and justice. Then in his first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, Pope Leo XIV, following upon Pope Francis’ teaching, invites us to contemplate Christ’s love, the love that moves us to mission in our suffering world today,” Rhoades said.

Before bishops voted to consecrate the U.S. to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle asked if the bishops will include catechetical materials to guide Catholics, as the devotion “is ultimately inviting people into a deeper relationship with the very person of Jesus himself.”

Etienne said the “devotion to the Sacred Heart is such a rich devotion and almost complex.” 

Rhoades responded they “do intend to have catechetical materials,” because “there is such an abundance of beautiful teaching.” 

At the request of Bishop Arturo Cepeda of San Antonio, Rhoades said the bishops can provide the materials in various languages “to have as many of our people involved as possible.” He said the resources will also allow individuals and families to make their own consecration, as the  consecration simultaneously happens across the nation.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski proposed a celebration during the bishops’ spring meeting in Orlando, Florida, in June at the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and suggested inviting Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other officials to attend.

History of the devotion

The story behind the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus dates back to 1673. At a monastery belonging to the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary in eastern France, Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque began experiencing visions of the Sacred Heart that continued for 18 months.

Sister Margaret Mary learned ways to venerate the Sacred Heart of Christ during her visions. These devotions included a Holy Hour on Thursdays, the creation of the feast of the Sacred Heart after Corpus Christi, and the reception of the Eucharist on the first Friday of every month.

On June 16, 1675, Jesus told Sister Margaret Mary to promote a feast that honored his Sacred Heart. He also gave Sister Margaret Mary 12 promises to all who venerated and promoted the devotion of the Sacred Heart.

The Vatican was first hesitant to declare a feast of the Sacred Heart. But as the devotion spread throughout France, the Vatican granted the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to France in 1765. In 1856, Blessed Pius IX designated the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi as the feast of the Sacred Heart for the universal Church.

Baltimore, Maryland, Nov 11, 2025 / 16:04 pm (CNA).

U.S. bishops said immigration enforcement in the United States is a “crisis situation” affecting human dignity and religious liberty in the nation.

At a press conference during the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore, USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Broglio; Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas; and Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, discussed migrants and the “uncertainty” they feel amid immigration enforcement in the nation. 

In the Nov. 11 press conference, Broglio said immigration enforcement is “preventing people from bringing their children to church, to school, or … to the emergency room.”

He added: “We, as pastors, would like to alleviate that fear and assure ... people that we are with them.”

“I think there’s a remarkable unity among all the bishops. This is an issue of human dignity,” Broglio said. “The Gospel teaches us especially to be compassionate, reach out to the immigrants, and just [have] concern about their well-being.”

“For us, this issue is not an abstract one,” Seitz said. “It’s a personal one because we’re pastors … We care about our people, and we care particularly for those who are most vulnerable and those who are most in need.”

“Bishops across the board” are seeing “people in our dioceses being swept up in this effort to go after people who are immigrants,” Seitz said. “I say that in a very broad sense, because although what the government has been saying, ‘We’re after criminals,’ it’s extended much more broadly than that.”

“While we certainly agree that people who are some threat to our community ought to be taken off of our streets once they’re convicted, the sweep has taken up so many others and has the risk of setting aside any due process.”

Seitz said the right to due process is “a fundamental part of our nation’s basic approach that everyone has certain rights. Those rights ought to be respected with a process that allows us to ascertain whether they indeed did commit some act that was a violation of our law.”

A matter of religious liberty 

Denying Communion to detainees is “an issue of religious liberty,” the bishops said, adding that the USCCB Committee on Religious Liberty is “very concerned” about it.

The committee met on Nov. 10 to discuss how to ensure people in detention facilities receive “pastoral spiritual care and especially the grace of the sacraments,” Rhoades said. “One doesn’t lose that right when one is detained. Whether one is documented or undocumented — this is a fundamental right of the person.”

“It’s heartbreaking when you think of the suffering. Especially those who’ve been detained, separated from families, those who haven’t committed crimes,” Rhoades said. “They need spiritual support in this, and they need the sacraments.”

The bishops were asked by reporters if they plan to speak to the Trump administration about its immigration policies, which are affecting parishes across the United States. 

Seitz said the bishops are working on a statement at their fall meeting. “As bishops, we want to speak from who we are, and certainly, we address issues of principle, such as religious liberty … [and] human dignity,” he said.

“We’ll try to stick to our foundations … in any statement that we make,” he continued. “But we also want it to be something that’s very clear and that is rooted in the Gospel. … It will also, I believe, speak to immigrants, not simply to our government.”

“It will be a message of solidarity with our brothers and sisters who find themselves in difficulty or who find themselves in fear to let them know that they’re not alone, that their pastors are going on with them,” Seitz said.

Rhoades added that the goal of the message is also “to cross the aisle,” as the Church is “not partisan.” 

“We’re talking about human lives in the United States and really important principles of our country — including just human dignity [and] religious liberty,” Rhoades said. “I’m just hopeful that we can move beyond the impasse.”

Later in the day, Seitz announced that the USCCB is launching the “You Are Not Alone” initiative for migrants, which will focus on “emergency and family support, accompaniment and pastoral care, communications and Church teaching … and solidarity through prayer and public witness.”

Puebla, Mexico, Nov 11, 2025 / 15:34 pm (CNA).

The Catholic Church in Mexico expressed its opposition to the attempt to legalize euthanasia and warned of the “risk of validating totalitarian and eugenic ideologies.”

In an editorial in its weekly publication Desde la fe (“From the Faith”), titled “A Good Death and the Myth of Euthanasia,” the Archdiocese of Mexico City lamented that “a campaign to promote euthanasia has begun, taking it as a fact that euthanasia means the same thing as a good death.”

The editorial called it “a major error from an anthropological, legal, and human rights perspective” to believe that the Mexican Constitution “only protects a life with dignity,” while “life that involves pain and suffering is considered unworthy” of the person.

From this perspective, the archdiocese warned, “we would be at risk of validating totalitarian and eugenic ideologies that have existed throughout human history and have caused so much harm, discarding the lives of millions that “weren’t worth living.”

The editorial also noted that it is “appalling” to think that those suffering from terminal illnesses in Mexico “are being offered death as a way out of their situation.” This, the archdiocese warned, “means we are failing in our capacity to offer relief, support, and comfort, despite the advances of science.”

‘Law That Transcends’ would legalize euthanasia in Mexico

On Oct. 29, a bill known as “The Law That Transcends” was introduced in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) of the Mexican federal Congress.

Announcing the initiative, Samara Martínez, a pro-euthanasia activist who suffers from systemic lupus erythematosus, argued that “it is not a law about death, it is a law about life, with meaning until the last breath.”

“Denying the possibility of death with dignity does not preserve life, it prolongs suffering, and that is not justice, it is omission,” she said.

The bill is supported by the ruling Morena party, along with the Labor Party and the Citizens’ Movement.

According to Representative Patricia Mercado of the Citizens’ Movement party, euthanasia “reaffirms the right to a life with dignity”; while Sen. Emmanuel Reyes of Morena asserted that “today the conditions are right to move forward” with euthanasia legislation.

Ana Luisa Del Muro of the Labor Party stated that legalizing euthanasia aims to allow people to “die with dignity and, above all, without pain.”

Currently, Article 312 of the Mexican Federal Penal Code establishes a prison sentence of one to five years for anyone who “assists or induces another to commit suicide.”

Euthanasia ‘causes a lot of suffering’

In a video released by the National Front for the Family, Dr. Marta Tarasco Michel, co-founder of the Department of Bioethics at Anahuac University in Mexico, stated that “no one in principle wants to die,” and this “is very simple to demonstrate; it consists of administering a lethal injection containing the same type of medication used in capital punishment.”

In euthanasia, she said, “the patient will feel a lot of pain, will experience asphyxiation. This is said to be very quick, but suffocating is very difficult for anyone, so this causes a lot of suffering.”

Those promoting this legislative initiative, the expert said, “should at least clearly explain what euthanasia is, how little it actually resolves the situation, and also provide many more palliative care services.”

Dr. Luz Adriana Templos Esteban, president of the Mexican College of Palliative Care and Support, A.C., lamented in another video shared by the National Front for the Family that “although Mexico is one of the countries with fairly comprehensive regulations regarding palliative care, we don’t have adequate implementation, and evidently, within communities, individuals, and patients, there is a lack of awareness that you can receive palliative care as a human right.”

“Palliative care allows us to improve people’s quality of life and, obviously, offer a support system for both the patient and his family,” she emphasized, such that “we allow for a natural death within a framework of dignity and avoid suffering, which is precisely what people are seeking.”

“What people want is not euthanasia; what they want is to not suffer and, obviously, not to have their lives taken,” she affirmed.

‘We must end suffering, not do away with the suffering person’

In its editorial, the Archdiocese of Mexico City pointed out that “there is a romanticized notion that euthanasia means dying without pain, but there is also medical testimony that the person who undergoes death via lethal injection does in fact suffer, and it is not pleasant for loved ones to witness that scene.”

The archdiocese also noted that the initiative “mentions that euthanasia can be requested before a notary public and that there is the right to conscientious objection for doctors. The question that follows is: Wouldn’t notaries public also have the right to conscientious objection?”

Recalling the existence and development of palliative care, “which increasingly allows people to die at home, surrounded by their families, in a natural way,” the archdiocese emphasized that “we must make a reality of a phrase that is becoming increasingly well known: ‘We must end the pain, not do away with the suffering person.’”

“The resources that the state must dedicate to palliative care are considerable, but they are necessary for the dignity of all Mexicans, healthy and sick,” the editorial underscored, warning that “seeking to reduce these expenses by offering euthanasia is inhumane and is a symbol of a state faltering in its duty.”

The Archdiocese of Mexico City highlighted at the end of its editorial that Pope Leo XIV has called for November to be dedicated to prayer for suicide prevention, noting that “the pope reminds us that neither pain nor suffering takes away the value of life.”

“We urge the authorities of the state not to take the easy way out when dealing with illness, not to force notaries and doctors to act against their convictions and conscience, and to work to ensure that all the sick receive medication and treatment, specialized care, and the love of their families, so that death is not the answer to suffering,” the archdiocese stated.

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