Saint Joseph Catholic Church

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Rhode Island’s attorney general released a report on clerical sexual abuse in the Diocese of Providence, the state’s sole diocese.

The attorney general “identified 75 credibly accused clergy, including 61 Diocesan priests and deacons, 13 religious order members, and one extern priest, who reportedly abused over 300 victims from 1950 to 2011,” according to the report. “Particularly under Bishops Russell McVinney and Louis Gelineau, accused priests were repeatedly returned to ministry, in positions where they had access to, and sexually abused, more children.”

Bishop McVinney was diocesan bishop from 1948 to 1971; Bishop Gelineau, from 1971 to 1997, when he resigned at the age of 69.

In a brief exchange with reporters on the evening of March 3, Pope Leo XIV said he “cannot comment” on Jimmy Lai.

The Catholic democracy advocate who was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong.

1,250 converts are expected to be received into the Church in Singapore this Easter—the highest number since 2016.

The Southeast Asian nation of 6.1 million (map) is 22% Christian, 15% Muslim, 15% Buddhist, and 5% Hindu, with 36% adhering to Chinese folk religion.

Commenting on the Iran war, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, condemned the killing of civilians, decried the concept of preventive war, and called for respect for international law and multilateral diplomacy.

“The Holy See forcefully reiterates its condemnation of every form of involvement of civilians and civilian structures—such as homes, schools, hospitals, and places of worship—in military operations, and asks that the principle of the inviolability of human dignity and the sacredness of life always be protected,” Cardinal Parolin said in an interview with Vatican News.

“If states were to be recognized as having a right to ‘preventive war,’ according to their own criteria and without a supranational legal framework, the whole world would risk being set ablaze,” he added. “This erosion of international law is truly worrying: justice has given way to force; the force of law has been replaced by the law of force, with the conviction that peace can arise only after the enemy has been annihilated.”

Pope Leo XIV received Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Metropolitan Nathanael Symeonides, on March 4.

“This visit reflects a shared commitment to the ongoing work of Christian unity as we commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea,” Cardinal Cupich said in a social media post.

The bishops of Sudan and South Sudan issued a statement deploring the massacre of over 170 civilians in South Sudan.

“We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, these heinous and senseless killings,” the bishops said. “There can be no justification whatsoever for the murder of innocent civilians. Such acts are an offence against God, the Author of Life, and a grave sin against humanity.”

In its reporting on the massacre, BBC attributed the violence to “a group of unidentified men.”

The apostolic vicar of Northern Arabia—who ministers to the faithful in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia—called for a ceasefire in the Iran war and asked all Christians to pray for peace.

In a statement dated March 4 and released today, Bishop Aldo Berardi, OSST, urged “all Christians to pray unceasingly and not grow weary in prayer. As Christians, we proclaim that Christ is our Peace, the principle of reconciliation, and the source of communion.”

Fire destroyed the cathedral of the Diocese of Wukari in Nigeria, a Lagos-based newspaper reported. The cause of the fire is unknown.

A Hindu mob vandalized and desecrated a Catholic church in Dengaswargi, a village in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, according to Catholic Connect, a website of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India.

Odisha (Orissa) (map) was the site of a 2008 anti-Christian pogrom in which an estimated 100 Christians were murdered, and 50,000 fled their homes.