Saint Joseph Catholic Church

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An 18th-century church in Edinburgh, Scotland, was desecrated on Christmas Eve, during the hours when the church was open for prayer between the Christmas Eve Vigil Mass and Midnight Mass.

“We ask prayers for reparation tonight on this Vigil of the Lord’s Nativity, for the attack upon the Child Jesus, taken from the throne above the altar; also for the desecration of relics in the Lady Chapel, violence at the crib in the side aisle, and blood spilled in the sanctuary, side chapel and nave,” St. Patrick’s Church said in a statement.

In a Christmas Day interview, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, told NPR that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies are “a great source of sadness for me, because I’ve had the opportunity to know so many [migrants] and know their stories, know their suffering.”

“I know that what they’re doing is exactly what any of us would’ve done to protect my family, to provide for their needs and protect them from danger,” he said, adding:

I think certainly my faith says that I need to welcome the stranger. I need to be concerned about the poor. And I don’t think that you can put a national designation on the person that Jesus would call us to care about and to serve. And I don’t think that we should look at that ability as being one that is limited by merely human limits, because we believe that it’s something that the Lord helps make possible when we work together in His name.

Father Raymond Njoku, an assistant priest at a parish in Ogbaku in Nigeria’s Imo State, was shot on Christmas Eve as he drove back to the parish rectory.

“His vehicle was riddled with bullets, but by God’s grace, none hit any vital organ,” an official of the Archdiocese of Owerri told the Lagos-based Vanguard. “His right hand was injured. He feigned death, and the gunmen fled.”

The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said in his Christmas message that “Christ comes to people in human flesh to transform them, to open up new perspectives for them, to bring joy where there is sadness, to warm where there is cold, to bring the heavenly light of hope where the enemy wants to plunge us into darkness.”

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk offered Christmas greetings to “places that no human power can reach,” to “our brothers and sisters in the occupied territories and all those who remain in Russian torture chambers.”

Addressing children, the Major Archbishop said, “Do not be like those who are scared and shut themselves in their homes, but, like shepherds with joyous carols, go out to your neighbors, relatives, and friends and sing to them that ‘Heaven and earth are now rejoicing. Angels and people are celebrating joyfully!’”