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The president of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued a statement on the prophetic role of the Church in national life after a public official criticized a Pentecostal leader for speaking out on illegal mining.

“The Church, by her nature and divine mandate, cannot remain silent in the face of moral and social concerns,” said Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi of Sunyani. “When issues arise that threaten human dignity, the integrity of creation, or the common good—such as the grave harm caused by illegal mining—the Church has both the right and the duty to speak.”

“In a democratic society, a proper distinction exists between religious and political roles. Yet this must not silence the voice of conscience,” Bishop Gyamfi added. “The Church does not seek power but strives to illuminate public life with truth. When she speaks on justice, peace, and care for creation, she does so as a moral guide concerned for all.”

The number of Catholic weddings in Ireland fell by almost 51% between 2014 and 2024, from 13,071 to 6,425, the nation’s Central Statistics Office reported on April 28.

Civil marriages (6,743) are now more popular than Catholic weddings. Humanist, Spiritualist Union of Ireland, and OneSpirit ceremonies are the next most popular options; only 1% of wedding ceremonies take place in the Church of Ireland (Anglican).

In an interview with an Italian newspaper, Archbishop Georg Gänswein said that Pope Benedict XVI “never commented” on Pope Francis’s restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass, even though they caused him pain.

Archbishop Gänswein, Pope Benedict’s private secretary and now apostolic nuncio to three Baltic nations, denied that Pope Benedict’s resignation was linked to Vatican scandals; instead, he said, it was a result of prayer and reflection.

In a letter entitled “They returned to Jerusalem with great joy,” the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem emphasized the centrality of the liturgy and prayer amid war.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, O.F.M., said that “we must therefore keep the liturgy and prayer at the center of the life of our communities. Not just prayers for peace—which also need to be promoted—but prayer as a constant and enduring atmosphere of life, giving shape to our days, our weeks, our communities.”

“I am thinking in particular of the Liturgy of the Hours prayed in community, of lectio divina, of Eucharistic adoration: not practices for specialists, but simple and profound expressions of the Church’s prayer, capable of inserting our daily life—with all its fears and expectations—into a living relationship with God,” he continued. “Let us make prayer the beating heart of our parishes, our families, our schools.”

Writing in the Jesuit journal America, Cardinal Robert McElroy argued that “it is essential to identify and reject three major distortions of Catholic teaching on war and peace that have crept into our national dialogue.”

“The first distortion is the assertion that the just war tradition is the foundational stance toward war in Catholic teaching,” he wrote. “In reality, the fundamental stance of the Church toward war is that it must be avoided.”

“A second claim distorting the dialogue about Catholic teaching and the Iran war is the assertion that just war principles are merely a heuristic—that is, a mental shortcut or rule of thumb—rather than an objective set of stringent criteria for determining whether a war is morally legitimate in extreme circumstances,” Cardinal McElroy continued.

“A third claim about Catholic moral teaching distorting our current national dialogue is the assertion that while posing the central moral questions about a war rightfully belongs to the Church, the application of those norms and the determination of moral legitimacy to go to war belong solely to the leaders of government,” he added. “This assertion first arose concerning the American decision to invade Iraq in 2003.”

Addressing a UN commission meeting, a Vatican diplomat warned against delegating scientific decisions to AI.

Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, said that “delegating critical decision-making processes in scientific activities to AI systems” is a “cause for deep concern, particularly in sensitive areas such as medicine, health and bioethics. While AI can assist healthcare professionals with tasks such as pattern recognition, risk stratification and decision support, decisions regarding patient treatment and the weight of responsibility they entail must always remain with the human person.”

Archbishop Balestrero called for “proper ethical management and regulatory frameworks” for AI that are “centered on the human person, rather than mere criteria of utility or efficiency.”

“In line with the principle of subsidiarity, it is essential to establish and implement adequate safeguards and to foster collaboration among stakeholders,” he added.

The government of Azerbaijan, a nation that is 97% Muslim, destroyed the Holy Mother of God Cathedral, an Armenian Apostolic cathedral in Stepanakert.

Stepanakert is a city in Nagorno-Karabakh, an historic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan that Armenians call Artsakh.

“It is obvious that the Azerbaijani government continues to target Armenian Christian holy sites with the aim of erasing the Armenian trace from Artsakh,” the Armenian Apostolic Church said in a statement. “This state-level vandalism once again proves that Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian policy has not changed.”

The Armenian Apostolic Church (CNEWA profile) is among the Oriental Orthodox churches that ceased to be in full communion with the Holy See following the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451).