Saint Joseph Catholic Church

Bishop James Checchio of Metuchen (NJ), chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, issued a brief statement for the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests, which takes place on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope St. John Paul II instituted the world day of prayer in 2002.

The visit, announced two weeks after the discovery of unmarked children’s remains at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, has been planned for two years, according to the Canadian bishops’ conference. The meeting will take place before the end of the year and will “provide Pope Francis with a unique opportunity to hear directly from Indigenous Peoples, express his heartfelt closeness, address the impact of colonization and the implication of the Church in the residential schools, so as to respond to the suffering of Indigenous Peoples and the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma.”

On June 10, Pope Francis received seminarians from Ancona in Italy’s Marche region (map). “Clericalism is a perversion of the priesthood: it is a perversion. And rigidity is one of the manifestations,” the Pope said. “When I find a rigid seminarian or young priest, I say ‘something bad is happening to this one on the inside.’ Behind every rigidity, there is a serious problem, because rigidity lacks humanity.”

Pope Francis has named Bishop Lazarus You Heung-sik of Dejeon, South Korea, to become the new prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy. He will replace Cardinal Beniamino Stella, who is retiring at the age of 79.

Bishop You, who is 69, was ordained as a priest in Daejeon in 1979, named coadjutor bishop in 2003, and assumed the leadership of the diocese in 2005. He is likely to become a cardinal after taking his new role.

Earlier this week the Pope appointed Bishop Egidio Miragoli on Mondavi, Italy, to conduct an apostolic visitation of the Congregation for the Clergy, the Vatican body that supervises the world’s priests. The Pontiff had ordered a similar complete review of the work of the Congregation for Divine Worship after the resignation of Cardinal Robert Sarah, who had been prefect of that dicastery.

"I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that my all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays in nine consecutive months the grace of final perseverance; they shall not die in my disgrace, nor without receiving their sacraments. My divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment" (Jesus to St. Margaret Mary).

Saint Joseph’s Seminary in the Archdiocese of New York announced that it is hosting “a two-day retreat, June 9 and June 10, for Catholic church leaders, evangelical and Pentecostal pastors to discuss Christian unity building.” The retreat was organized by the John 17 Movement, founded in 2013 by Joe Tosini, a Pentecostal pastor.

In a video message to participants in a Vatican forum on Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis called on pastors to foster missionary collaboration with married couples. “So many families are unaware of the great gift they have received in the Sacrament [of Marriage], an effective sign of Christ’s presence which accompanies every moment of their lives,” the Pope said. “When a family fully discovers this gift, it feels the desire to share it with other families, because the joy of the encounter with the Lord tends to spread and generates other communion; it is naturally missionary.”