Saint Joseph Catholic Church

commentary

The Church of the Gesu, a Jesuit parish that serves the Marquette University community, was vandalized on March 18.

“Most of the damaged items were from the 1960s and 1970s, aside from a statue of St. Anne which is over a century old,” according to a local media report.

The church’s pastor, Father Michael Simone, S.J., said that the perpetrator was experiencing a mental health crisis. “He needs our prayers,” he said. “He needs our help.”

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has documented over 400 acts of vandalism, arson, and other destruction at parishes and other Catholic sites in the United States since 2020. A tracker from CatholicVote.org lists additional attacks.

In a series of recent ad limina visits, Nigerian bishops spoke with Pope Leo about the conditions Christians face in Africa’s most populous nation.

“We discussed with him the violence, the insurgencies, and the difficulties we face as apostles on the ground,” said Archbishop Matthew Ndagoso, who leads Nigeria’s episcopal conference.

The issue of violence against Christians “came up very strongly with the Pope, and he told us that he will use whatever possibilities he has to highlight our situation and see what he can do for us,” added Archbishop Adewale Martins of Lagos.

The American Arbitration Association awarded $25.8 million to the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama, after ruling that the termite company Terminix “engaged in fraudulent concealment and intentional misconduct in its termite services provided to Catholic institutions.”

Termite damage led to the partial closing of the archdiocese’s cathedral in April 2025.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles cancelled its annual Mass celebrating Cesar Chavez’s legacy following the publication of a New York Times investigation into allegations that he sexually abused girls.

“The Chavez family informed the archdiocese that they had decided not to move forward with having a Mass this year,” an archdiocesan spokeswoman said.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site of Christ’s Resurrection, remains closed, three weeks after the outbreak of the Iran war.

“All holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, will remain closed… for security reasons in light of the current tensions in the region,” said the head of Israel’s Civil Administration.

Israeli officials closed the church on February 28, the first day of the war; on March 12, Iranian missile fragments fell near the church. Church officials expect that only clergy and religious will be permitted to celebrate Easter there.

Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, reported that “radical Jewish settlers have increased violent attacks on Palestinian civilians and villages in the West Bank.”

The settlers, according to the report, took control of a cement factory and quarry in Taybeh, the site of repeated attacks in 2025.

Father Bashar Fawadleh, pastor of the Latin-rite parish there, appealed for international assistance: “we ask the world to come and see, to stop these actions, and to allow us to live in safety and peace.”

The prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches said that “I have the impression that most of the world does not realize the catastrophe that is striking our civilization.”

“Those who promote war today are destroying everything that has been built since the Second World War,” said Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti. “I am not speaking only of ideals, but also of people and things—even historical monuments of immense value.”

Cardinal Gugerotti made his remarks in an interview devoted to the annual worldwide Good Friday collection for the Church in the Holy Land. Lamenting the plight of Christians in the Middle East, the prelate said:

Christian communities, which have always had the sense of being merely tolerated, now fear that they may no longer be tolerated at all. As a result, they want to flee.

The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network published new general regulations to guide “the identity, mission, and organization of this pontifical work globally.”

“The new document establishes clear criteria regarding the nature and functioning of the Network at an international level and marks a new step in its development as a work entrusted directly by the Holy See to the Society of Jesus,” the Network said in a March 19 statement. “In this sense, it reaffirms its place within the mission of the Jesuits and its priority status in apostolic ministries.”

The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network was founded in 1844 by young Jesuits; it was formerly known as the Apostleship of Prayer.

Pope Leo XIV issued a message marking the tenth anniversary of Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation on love in the family.

“On 19 March 2016, Pope Francis offered the universal Church a luminous message of hope regarding conjugal love and family life, which was the fruit of three years of synodal discernment enriched by the Jubilee Year of Mercy,” Pope Leo wrote. “On this tenth anniversary, we give thanks to the Lord for the stimulus that has encouraged reflection and pastoral conversion in the Church, and ask God for the courage to persevere on this path, always welcoming the Gospel anew in the joy of being able to proclaim it to all.”

The Pontiff concluded by convoking a meeting of the world’s episcopal conference presidents:

In light of the changes that continue to impact families, I have decided to convene the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences from around the world in October 2026, in an effort to proceed, in mutual listening, to a synodal discernment on the steps to be taken in order to proclaim the Gospel to families today, in light of Amoris Laetitia and taking into account what is currently being done in the local Churches.