Bishops’ committee: transgender men ‘unknowingly admitted’ to seminary (NCR) A leader of the U.S. bishops’ conference has written to Catholic prelates throughout the country, alleging that an unspecified number of transgender men have been “unknowingly admitted” to diocesan seminaries and houses of formation for religious orders. Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who serves as the chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance, told the nation’s bishops in a Sept. 22 memo that they might consider “various options” to ensure that only people assigned male at birth are ordained to the Catholic priesthood…

Another majority Catholic state, San Marino, votes to legalize abortion (AP) San Marino residents on Sunday voted overwhelmingly to legalize abortion, rejecting a 150-year-old law that had criminalized it and making the tiny republic the latest majority Catholic state to approve the procedure under certain circumstances. Some 77% of voters approved a referendum proposal calling for abortion to be legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, according to official returns broadcast on San Marino RTV. Abortion would also be legal beyond that point if the woman’s life is in danger or if her physical or psychological health is at risk because of fetal anomalies or malformations…

Pope: Catholic Church must be open and welcoming (CNA) Pope Francis on Sunday said the Catholic Church must be open and welcoming toward others, warning that division and exclusion come from Satan. “We need to be vigilant about closure in the Church too,” he said before leading the Angelus prayer at the Vatican Sept. 26. “Because the devil, who is the divider – this is what the word ‘devil’ means – always insinuates suspicions to divide and exclude,” he added…

Bishop: Church needs to heal itself in order to heal the world (Crux) Bridgeport Bishop Frank Caggiano says for the church to inspire the world to live out the messages of Pope Francis, it first needs to fix its own fractures and come together. “The church is fracturing. It reflects the political fracturing even here in the United States. We don’t speak with a common voice because everything the pope is suggesting we do in the public sphere we also have to do within our own church and we’re having difficulty doing that,” said Caggiano…

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