OSV News Showcase | August 30, 2024

The hum and hiss of the printing presses at Our Sunday Visitor provide the background music to my writings today, and I can’t help but feel a little connected to the first printing presses, Archbishop Joh.and F. Noll bought over a hundred years ago and that would be the beginning of OSV.

The OSV News team just spent a week together at our headquarters in Huntington, Indiana, praying, strategizing, and enjoying each other’s company. We also produced some news stories, a selection of which you can find below.

But even after a few long days of work, we are all still looking forward to the beginning of next week. We are very happy to bring you this news.

Megan Marley

Digital Editor

PS: Did you like this overview? Sign up here to receive our emails.

Faith, prayer and a transcendent hope in Christ sustained a Ukrainian Catholic priest through more than a year and a half of Russian captivity and torture. Now he is sharing his story to remind others that God “loves us and wants to save us.”

While the selection of a running mate has had little discernible impact on elections in recent decades, experts told OSV News that the selection of vice presidential candidates can signal how a presidential candidate plans to campaign or govern, including on issues important to Catholics, such as abortion, climate, immigration and labor.

Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, recently spoke with OSV News after returning from the 10th Meeting of Bishops and Pastoral Agents for Migration from North America, Central America and the Caribbean, which took place Aug. 19-23 in Panama. Bishop Seitz and several fellow bishops—including Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—made a pastoral visit to the Darien Gap. The remote region, located on the border between Colombia and Panama, has become a major—and deadly—migration route as thousands of people navigate the rugged, dense terrain while battling crime and disease.

In an unusual case, two priests in Steubenville are fighting over legal custody of a toddler currently in their care.

As Congo remains the epicentre of the latest MPOX outbreak, leaders of the country’s Catholic Church are calling for more action, while expressing concern over rising case numbers.

Catholic health care professionals have condemned the August 15 kidnapping of 20 Catholic medical students in Nigeria.

This fall, Nebraska voters will face two conflicting constitutional amendments on abortion on the same ballot in what is being seen as a historic first for the state.

Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, has warned that drug cartels control the border between Mexico and Guatemala, sparking outbreaks of violence that have sent hundreds of Mexicans fleeing to his diocese.

Australian volunteers working in East Timor say excitement is building ahead of Pope Francis’ visit in September, when more than half of the predominantly Catholic population is expected to flock to the capital, Dili.

CNS ROME: The best way to ensure that evangelization is about Jesus and not about yourself is to spend time in prayer and especially in Eucharistic adoration, Pope Francis told members of the Oblates of St. Joseph.

As the one-year mark of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip approaches, sparked by the Hamas attack on southern Israeli farming communities on October 7, the patriarchs and heads of the churches in Jerusalem urged the warring sides to “swiftly reach an agreement” for a ceasefire.

Catholics in the southern Italian city of Enna, Sicily, protested the local church’s role in covering up sexual abuse after a court recently ruled that the diocesan bishop wanted to protect a priest accused of abusing multiple minors as a seminarian.

QUESTION CORNER: For some background, “general absolution” is sacramental absolution that a priest grants to a large group of people at once, without hearing the spoken confessions of each individual’s sins. As you might expect, the Church reserves general absolution for fairly extreme situations.