John Hume, Irish Catholic Nobel Peace Prize laureate, dies (Reuters) John Hume, a Roman Catholic architect of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending 30 years of sectarian violence, died on Monday at the age of 83, his SDLP party said. Hume, who is credited with kick-starting peace negotiations in the British region, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 with Northern Ireland‘s then first minister, David Trimble of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party…
D.C. pastor tests positive for COVID; health officials struggle to stop its spread (The Washington Post) The pastor of a Catholic church on Capitol Hill who urged people not to “cower in fear” of the novel coronavirus has contracted covid-19, the disease the virus causes, prompting D.C. health officials to tell about 250 staff and parishioners to self-quarantine for two weeks…
No political barbs at scaled-back annual Catholic parish picnic (AP) The COVID-19 pandemic forced a scaling back of this year’s 140th picnic in far western Kentucky. This year’s event would have hosted a showdown between McGrath and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is running for a seventh term. McConnell called the annual picnic “one of Kentucky’s greatest traditions” in a statement Saturday. He said a political action committee, the Bluegrass Committee, gave a $5,000 donation this year to St. Jerome Catholic Church, which hosts the picnic and fundraiser…
Pope expresses solidarity with Nicaraguans after attack on cathedral (The Tablet) During his Angelus address this Sunday, 2 August, the Pope declared his support and sympathy for the people of Nicaragua, after an attack on the Cathedral of Managua earlier this week. The attack on Friday 31 July saw a hooded man enter the Cathedral, located in Nicaragua’s largest city, and throw a Molotov cocktail. Although no-one was injured in the attack, it caused a fire that seriously damaged a 400-year-old crucifix housed in the cathedral…
Archdiocese offers online course on Junipero Serra (Archdiocese of San Francisco) Saint Junipero Serra, O.F.M., S.T.D. (1713-84) has historically been revered as the “Apostle of California.” Since his Canonization by Pope Francis in Washington, DC on 23 September 2015 and his Beatification at Saint Peter’s Basilica on 25 September 1988, at which time Pope John Paul II declared him a “shining example of Christian virtue,” he is now “Saint Junipero,” the “Patron of California…”
