Saint Joseph Catholic Church

The members of the Brazilian bishops’ Episcopal Commission for Missionary Action and Interecclesial Cooperation met yesterday with Pope Leo XIV and invited him to visit Brazil for the 7th American Missionary Congress, which will take place in 2029 in the Archdiocese of Curitiba.

The prelates discussed the work of the commission and thanked the Pope for beginning a series of Wednesday general audiences on the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Archbishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa, CP, of Cachoeiro do Itapemirim asked Pope Leo to “speak more about the wars in Africa, which are all due to natural resources, and which are spoken about very little in Brazil and elsewhere.”

Pope Leo XIV received María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan politician and pro-democracy activist who was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

“Today I had the blessing and the honor of being able to share time with His Holiness and to express our gratitude for his attention to what is happening in our country,” Machado said following yesterday’s audience. “I also conveyed to him the strength of the Venezuelan people, who remain steadfast and in prayer for the freedom of Venezuela, and I asked him to intercede for all Venezuelans who remain kidnapped and disappeared.”

Amid the Anglophone Crisis, an armed conflict that began in 2017, Cameroon’s bishops met in Kumba and devoted their meeting to the theme of “communion and collegiality.”

The central African nation of 32 million (map) is 58% Christian (28% Catholic), 22% Muslim, and 19% ethnic religionist. Pope Benedict XVI made an apostolic journey there in 2009.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, was the Pope’s legate at Sunday’s Mass marking the 800th anniversary of the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels, Belgium (video).

Cardinal Parolin preached that “it is not numerical weakness that undermines Christian witness, but the loss of evangelical boldness.”

“The Church does not stand above history, nor does she simply merge with it,” he added. “She journeys through it as a presence that accompanies, discerns and serves.”

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The Church celebrates the Optional Memorial of St. Hilary of Poitiers (310-367). Hilary was one of the great champions of the Catholic belief in the divinity of Christ. By his preaching, his treatise on the Trinity, his part in the Councils, his daring opposition to the Emperor Constantius, he showed himself a courageous apostle of the truth. He could not tolerate that the specious plea of safeguarding peace and unity should be allowed to dim the light of Gospel teaching. Bl. Pius IX proclaimed him a doctor of the Church.

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The president of Gabon’s episcopal conference condemned the recent rise of ritual killings of children in the central African nation.

“My heart is filled with sorrow for the ritual murders that are staining our beloved country with blood,” Bishop Jean Vincent Ondo Éyéne of Oyem said on the recent National Day for Combating All Forms of Violence and Attacks on Life. “I think of those who have been taken from life, whose bodies have been desecrated, and whose innocence has been broken.”

The central African nation of 2.5 million (map) is 84% Christian (52% Catholic) and 11% Muslim, with 3% adhering to ethnic religions.

Mary McAleese, Ireland’s president from 1997 to 2011, described infant baptism as “a long-standing, systemic and overlooked severe restriction on children’s rights with regard to religion.”

Writing in Ireland’s leading newspaper, McAleese charged that infant baptism violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).