French report: 330,000 children victims of sex abuse (AP) An estimated 330,000 children were victims of sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church over the past 70 years, according to a major report released Thursday that is France’s first major reckoning with the devastating phenomenon…
Pope urges clemency for U.S. death row prisoner (The New York Times) Pope Francis and two members of Congress have asked Missouri’s governor to stop the scheduled execution on Tuesday of a 61-year-old man, saying he should be spared because he is intellectually disabled. Ernest Lee Johnson, who is on death row at a state prison in Bonne Terre, Mo., for the 1994 murder of three convenience store employees, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection after 6 p.m. local time on Tuesday, his public defender, Jeremy Weis, said on Monday…
Turkson: Biden should not be denied Communion (NCR) U.S. President Joe Biden should not be denied Communion, said Cardinal Peter Turkson, warning that the denial of the sacrament should only take place in “extreme cases.” “The Eucharist should not in any way become a weapon,” Turkson said in an interview with AXIOS on HBO, which aired Oct. 3. “If you say somebody cannot receive Communion, you are basically doing a judgment that you are in a state of sin…”
German synod votes show Catholics support reforms (CNS) The second Synodal Assembly of German Catholics ended Oct. 2 with overwhelming support for a range of proposals that, if adopted, would bring widespread reform to the church. The assembly — 230 members including laity, academics, clergy and bishops — wrestled for three days in Frankfurt with decisions on which direction the church should take in future. The German Catholic Church has been struggling to regain its credibility and trust after a decade in which it was rocked by sexual abuse scandals and saw Catholics in large numbers turn their backs on the church…
Pro-lifers take to the streets in Mexico (CNS) Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Mexico in marches promoted as “pro-woman and pro-life” and repudiating a recent Supreme Court decision decriminalizing abortion. Marches in at least 89 cities across the country were “put together on short notice,” said Auxiliary Bishop Alfonso Miranda Guardiola of Monterrey, secretary-general of the Mexican bishops’ conference, which helped promote the Oct. 3 demonstrations…
Three Swiss Guards quit over refusal to take vaccine (Crux) Despite an oath to give their lives defending the pope, three members of the Vatican’s fabled Swiss Guard have abandoned the small force due to refusal to comply with a recent mandate to possess either a COVID-19 vaccination certificate or the results of a negative COVID test within the past 48 hours in order to work in the Vatican City State…
