NOTE: On May 16, this daily feature, The Church Bulletin, will become available exclusively to Patreon subscribers.  Don’t miss out: click here to learn how you can continue receiving these daily headlines in your in-box!


New York to send $35 million to abortion providers (AP) New York will give abortion providers $35 million to expand services and boost security in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court possibly overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday.  This year, lawmakers [also] used the state budget to pass a law enshrining existing regulations that require every insurance plan to cover all types of abortion, regardless of reason. That law has been the subject of an ongoing legal challenge by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany…

Pope’s knee problems cast doubt on travel this summer (Crux) A Lebanese government official said Pope Francis’s visit to the country next month, which had never been formally announced by the Vatican, was being postponed due to the pope’s health, casting doubt on Francis’s ambitious summer travel plans…

Bishops set day of fasting, prayer, to overturn Roe v. Wade (The Washington Times) America’s Roman Catholic bishops are asking the faithful to fast and pray on Friday to overturn the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. The bishops issued their call Tuesday after a week of roiling protests, disruptions of church services and vandalism over the leak of a draft opinion in the high court’s current case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization…

Officials across U.S. church, Vatican lament closing of CNS (NCR) Six months before he died, the late Cardinal John Foley praised Catholic News Service in a 2011 speech he delivered to the annual Catholic Media Convention. Christopher Gunty remembers Foley, who headed the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications for 23 years, saying that “if Catholic News Service didn’t exist, we’d have to create it.” Gunty, now the associate publisher and CEO of the Catholic Review, a monthly magazine for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, says he and his paper “rely heavily on CNS to inform our readers on what’s going on in the nation and the world, and without them, it’s going to be nearly impossible for us to do so…”

Charity sees “signs of hope” for Christians in Iraq (CNA) A Catholic charity said on Monday that there are “signs of hope” for Iraq’s beleaguered Christian minority despite insecurity, economic challenges, and political instability. Speakers from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a pontifical foundation offering financial support to Iraqi Christians, gave a cautiously optimistic assessment of the community’s future at a virtual press conference on May 9…

A new patron saint for Catholic journalism (Catholic World Report) As of May 15, Catholic journalists around the world will be able to count one of their number among the saints, as Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite killed at the Dachau concentration camp in 1942, is canonized in St. Peter’s Square. At a moment when Catholic opinion journalism is in danger of falling victim to the ever-present dangers of trivialization, tribalism and hysteria-mongering in this age of Internet and social media demagogy, St. Titus Brandsma’s example of courage and fidelity under great pressure is well worth pondering…