Two violent attacks against the Catholic Church in Nigeria have been perpetrated in less than a week. A priest was killed and days later, on Aug. 2, gunmen stormed a Mass and abducted several people. According to the Vatican agency Fides, the slain priest was Father Samuel Opeyemi Oyetoro of the Diocese of Lokoja in…

Two priests who experienced firsthand recent acts of desecration at the Medjugorje Shrine and a Mexican parish have addressed the issue of how Catholics should best respond to such acts. Father Manuel Navarro, a priest of the Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain, was at the renowned Marian shrine on the night of July 27–28 when the…

A century after the patron saint of priests, St. John Vianney, died on Aug. 4, 1859, Pope John XXIII reflected on the life of the saint and what it means to be a holy priest. In contemplating his life, one immediately thinks of a priest who lived out great penance and whose “only motives were…

When most Catholics think about Carmelites, they picture friars and nuns in full habits. If they love St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Thérèse, they may even think about their teachings on prayer, the “Dark Night of the Soul,” and the “Little Way.” But like many of the so-called mendicant…

In response to President Donald Trump’s announcement last week of a deal between the U.S.-led Board of Peace, Israel, and Hamas, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called for “intense prayers” for the deal’s success as Gaza faces a worsening humanitarian crisis. In an Aug. 3 statement, Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, chairman of…