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July 1, 2016
MEXICO CITY – Mexicans turned out in droves to oust the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party in June 5 regional elections. Exit polls showed voters citing crime and corruption for removing the party of increasingly unpopular President Enrique Pena Nieto in seven of the 12 states holding gubernatorial elections.
Canada Day often seems a rather tepid, bureaucratic affair celebrating the day Great Britain’s Parliament managed to pass a law granting four small North American colonies the right to elect their own politicians to a single House of Commons — not a shot fired and no declaration of independence. But why limit ourselves to such a paltry notion of Canada’s origins?
NEW YORK – Poor, destitute refugees now comprise half the people living in Lebanon, according to Cardinal Bechara Rai, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church.
July 2, 2016
WASHINGTON – Hoping to make the world safer, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has published a guidebook on countering dangerous speech, authored by a young American who helped quell intertribal conflict in Kenya during its 2013 elections.
SAN DIEGO – It may sound like an oxymoron, but Father Michael A. Mikstay says some of the most peaceful moments of his military chaplaincy have been spent in a war zone.
BOGOTA, Colombia – When Pope Francis visits Colombia early next year, his visit may become a celebration of peace in a country with the longest-running war in the Western Hemisphere.
July 3, 2016
When Pope Francis said this week that the church should ask forgiveness from gay people for the way it has treated them, he sparked yet another round of global headlines about how his unpredictable papacy is changing Catholicism.
JERUSALEM – Stuart Levy, a nurse at a Jerusalem hospital, updates his ward’s work schedule several times a week, with staffers’ vacations, birthdays and more religious holidays than many people know exist.
SAN DIEGO – There is something distinctive about the chapel where Father William J. Brunner now celebrates Mass. It floats. To be more precise, it's in a space aboard the U.S. Navy's warship USS America docked in San Diego.
July 4, 2016
The city council in Pensacola, Fla., will consider ending the traditional practice of inviting local clergy to deliver an opening prayer at meetings in order to thwart an invocation planned for July 14 by a representative of the Satanic Temple West Florida.
WARSAW, Poland – Young people attending World Youth Day 2016 in Krakow, Poland, will have to walk 18 miles to and from one of its key sites, event organizers said.
July 5, 2016
VATICAN CITY – To mark the 800th anniversary of the "Pardon of Assisi," an indulgence earned by visiting faithful who confess their sins and make a sincere promise of repentance, Pope Francis will visit a stone chapel rebuilt by St. Francis of Assisi.
TORONTO – Ontario's largest Catholic school board expects a huge increase in funding for renewal projects over the next two years following an injection of capital from the provincial government.
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis said he will continue pressing for a church that is open and understanding despite opposition from some clerics who "say no to everything."
OTTAWA – Canada’s recently departed Ambassador of Religious Freedom believes his former office has been “diminished” under the current government and he expressed alarm at a general waning of respect for religious freedom and conscience rights.
LILONGWE, Malawi – In Malawi, where 40 percent of the population needs food aid, the country's bishops have called for international help to avert a crisis.
A South African cardinal who recently rejected calls for the Catholic Church to apologize to gay people has said the abortion rate among black women in the U.S. is “a genocide” and added: “Isn’t this something we should be apologizing for?”
NEW YORK – Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and prolific author who died July 2 at age 87 in his New York home, has been remembered in tributes from around the world for standing up for human dignity and for being a witness to the world of the atrocities of the Holocaust.
July 6, 2016
VATICAN CITY – As the Vatican trial of five people accused of complicity in leaking private documents moved toward a conclusion, Vatican prosecutors requested that four of the five defendants be convicted and that three of them serve jail time.
A Belgian court has fined a Catholic care home for refusing to let a terminally ill woman receive a lethal injection on their property.