Caracas Archbishop Raúl Biord Castillo. / Credit: Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM)

Caracas, Venezuela, Jan 9, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

On Friday, Jan. 10, according to Venezuelan law, the new president of the republic who won the July 28, 2024, election for the 2025–2031 term must be sworn in. 

While the country’s National Electoral Council certified incumbent President Nicholas Maduro as the winner, it failed to produce the vote tallies as required by law to substantiate the results. Meanwhile opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia claimed a landslide victory and said his campaign had collected 80% of the vote tallies to prove it.

To date, various countries around the world have recognized González as the president legitimately elected by all Venezuelans.

In the midst of the complicated political and social scenario, Caracas Archbishop Raúl Biord called for “respect for human and citizen rights” during the inauguration of the 2025 Jubilee Year in Caracas on Jan. 6.

The prelate asked that political actors guarantee, in a democratic framework, “freedom of thought, expression, and social action, and for the end of all forms of intimidation and hatred, wherever it may come from.”

The message from the archbishop of Caracas follows those issued by the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference since last July in which the bishops have repeatedly stated that “the truth, even if it is hidden or reduced to the opinion of a few, will finally prevail.”

“Disregarding popular sovereignty manifested through the vote is morally unacceptable, since it seriously deviates from truth and justice,” the bishops wrote in September 2024.

International tour ahead of inauguration day

In recent days, González has been on a tour of various countries in an effort to garner support for being sworn in as president on Jan. 10.

The opposition leader met last Saturday in Buenos Aires with Argentine President Javier Milei, who recognized González as president-elect and expressed his support for achieving a democratic transition in Venezuela.

After the opposition leader along with Milei greeted a large crowd of Venezuelans gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, González was emphatic in pointing out that “by whatever means” he would arrive in Venezuela on Jan. 10.

González also met with Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou and held a virtual conversation with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña on Jan. 6.

Former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana said regarding González’s intention to enter Venezuela that there are nine former presidents from the region willing to accompany him on a plane to the country, which would depart from the Dominican Republic, the last stop on the tour, on Thursday, Jan. 9.

On Jan. 7, González arrived in Panama after meeting in Washington, D.C., with U.S. President Joe Biden, various congressmen and senators, and part of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.

In tandem with González’s tour, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called on Venezuelans to participate in a new day of protest in the country’s main cities on Jan. 9.

Despite being in hiding for several months, Machado has assured that she will accompany the protesters in the streets on that day, one that will be “historic” and remembered by many generations in the future.

The government’s response

Diosdado Cabello, the Venezuelan minister of interior, justice, and peace, said that as soon as González sets foot in Venezuela, “he will be arrested and convicted for all the crimes he is accused of.”

“He says he’s coming with former presidents. Come, former presidents, we’re waiting for you. [Juan Manuel] Santos, come; [Andrés] Pastrana, come; [Vicente] Fox, come; [Jorge] Quiroga, you will be welcome. Everyone has their space ready, prepared to receive you. Some will say ‘No, they don’t dare.’ We’re not going to dare? When it comes to defending the homeland, we dare to do everything, everything. We’re not going to allow criminals from other countries to come to Venezuela to try to invade our country,” warned the socialist regime’s second in command during a Jan. 6 press conference.

Cabello and other political leaders, including Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, have assured in recent days that Maduro will be the one to take power in the country for a third consecutive term on Jan. 10.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Sister Tonia of the Heart of Jesus Borsellino at the booth for the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament at SEEK25 in Salt Lake City on Jan. 3, 2025. / Credit: Kate Quiñones/CNA

CNA Staff, Jan 9, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Before Sister Tonia of the Heart of Jesus Borsellino became a religious sister of the Mercedarians of the Blessed Sacrament, she was an intern for Catholic News Agency (CNA).

Sister Tonia shared her discernment story with CNA last week at SEEK25 in Salt Lake City — one of many SEEK conferences she has attended, both as a student and as a religious sister. 

In 2017, when Sister Tonia was in the midst of her discernment process, she attended a SEEK conference — not as a participant but as a reporter for CNA. It was at that conference that she had an experience that confirmed her call to her vocation. 

In December 2016, she had visited the Mercedarian Sisters for a “Come and See,” shortly before she left for SEEK 2017 in San Antonio. At the event, Sister Tonia sought spiritual direction and decided to apply to the community — but she still wasn’t sure she was called to be a sister.

“I was unsure — was this the right answer?” she recalled thinking. 

This internal dilemma played out in her mind while she interviewed a Catholic speaker for CNA. 

“I was interviewing this Catholic speaker, and at the end, he just looked at me and said, ‘I just need to tell you something’ and that the Holy Spirit was telling him to tell me how much God loves me,” she said.

“I just got emotional and I knew that the Lord was saying, ‘I’m confirming and leading you to be my bride,’” Sister Tonia said.

Years later, Sister Tonia has returned to SEEK as a religious sister. When asked how it feels to return as a fully professed sister, she said: “It’s amazing.”

“There’s a lot of awe of how the Lord works and how his hand is on everything,” Sister Tonia said.

“To be here at SEEK and to see I was there as one of these students and that the Lord has done so much since then — there’s just a lot of pondering in my heart, like Mary, of how the Lord works, how his love is so much more than I could have thought.”

Sister Tonia shared her gratitude that SEEK provides this opportunity “to encounter Jesus and to learn more about our faith and to have these opportunities to meet different religious communities.”

Along with keynote talks, breakout sessions, and prayer opportunities, SEEK gathers apostolates, religious orders, and other Catholic organizations together in “Mission Way,” a large area of booths that SEEK attendees can visit.

It was actually at SEEK where a couple of Sister Tonia’s college friends — who later went on to become sisters in the same order — first encountered the Mercedarian sisters.

Sister Tonia — who was studying at University of Florida in Gainesville at the time — was deeply involved in campus ministry with several friends. While at SEEK, members of the campus ministry invited the Mercedarians to join a retreat they were hosting on campus. 

Several of Sister Tonia’s friends from campus ministry then went on to join the Mercedarians after college, which was how Sister Tonia first got to know her community.

“My friends were entering with the community, and I saw them and how they became more fully themselves,” Sister Tonia recalled. “I got to know the community a little bit through them.”

The Mercedarian sisters in Sister Tonia’s junior year of college started a community in Gainesville, Florida, to minister to the University of Florida.

“I got to see their day-to-day life and really get to know them,” Sister Tonia recalled.

When she graduated from the University of Florida in 2017, Sister Tonia joined the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and professed her final vows on April 3, 2024.

Sister Tonia said she had considered other communities for their apostolates, looking for something related to communications. But her vocation director advised her to “look at the spirituality of the community.”

“The spirituality, the charism never changes,” Sister Tonia said. “Our charism is about the Eucharist and redemption through the Eucharist — spreading the love of the Eucharist through education and evangelization of children and youth.” 

“And that was my heart,” she continued. “Desiring to bring people to know Jesus in the Eucharist felt like home, and the sisters felt like family. So the Lord was slowly prompting my heart to see that this was where he was leading me.” 

The community is contemplative and active, meaning they pray for more than four hours every day in addition to serving their apostolates. On top of this, the sisters have a silent hour of Eucharistic adoration.

“Our day starts with the Eucharist, then we go out then to our apostolates,” Sister Tonia explained. She serves in campus ministry three days a week and runs the communications for the community at the regional house in Baton Rouge, where she has been for the past four years.

The Mercedarian sisters have more than 400 religious sisters in 12 different countries — and the community is growing in the U.S. They recently opened a new house of formation in Baton Rouge in addition to the community of professed sisters there.

“It’s incredible to see how the Lord works,” Sister Tonia said. “Now I get to use all these gifts and talents that I’ve studied or just learned along the way, and I get to bring that to continue to build the Eucharistic kingdom for our community.” 

A connection to EWTN 

While she was personally discerning religious life, Sister Tonia was a guest on EWTN’s “Life on the Rock” where she shared about the campus ministry work she was involved in at University of Florida. She was telling a story about how the campus ministry would reach out to students to invite them to light a candle and pray before Jesus in Eucharistic adoration. 

“As I’m explaining this on the show, I’m getting really passionate, and the host of the show says, ‘Well, forget about communications; just go be a sister,’” Sister Tonia recalled.

She said the comment by co-host Doug Barry “caught me very off guard.”

“My face turned super red because I was thinking about religious life. All these thoughts were in my prayer, and I was not expecting him to say that,” Sister Tonia recalled. “It was a little way of the Lord speaking through it.”

When asked what her advice would be to others who are discerning, Sister Tonia said to “ask the Lord to lead.”

“Our vocations are not something for us to figure out. They’re not a puzzle,” she said. “It’s through our relationship with the Lord that he leads us to our vocation.”

She noted that “our primary vocation is holiness.”

“So what does your prayer life look like? How are you in communion with the Lord?” she asked.

She advised those who are discerning to focus on “building that relationship with him, spending time in adoration, just receiving his love, and then following where he leads.”

“It’s all in him,” Sister Tonia added.

Sister Tonia’s archival story on SEEK 2017 in San Antonio can be found here.

Firefighters run as a brush fire burns in Pacific Palisades, California, on Jan. 7, 2025. A fast-moving brushfire in a Los Angeles suburb burned buildings and sparked evacuations as “life-threatening” winds whipped the region. / Credit: David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images

Seattle, Wash., Jan 8, 2025 / 21:58 pm (CNA).

A raging wildfire in the Pacific Palisades sector of Los Angeles has destroyed Corpus Christi Catholic Church and forced the closure of 65 Catholic schools, archdiocesan officials said. 

An image shared by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles shows the church reduced to a steel frame. Announcing the “terrible sad news of our church” on Corpus Christi’s website, Father Liam Kidney indicated that “the priests are safe with family and friends.”

Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez urged prayers on social media, writing: “Please keep praying for all those suffering in the wildfires sweeping through Southern California. My heart goes out to our neighbors who have lost their homes and livelihoods.”

In addition to Corpus Christi, there may be about four more parishes that are threatened and are either under an evacuation order or warning, Father Andrew Hedstrom, associate pastor at St. Linus Catholic Church in Norwalk, California, wrote on X.

Paul Escala, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Los Angeles Archdiocese, attributed the string of school closures to evacuation orders, power outages, poor air quality, and staff displacement. “We are in nearly every neighborhood across all three counties,” he told CNA. 

“Some neighborhoods have been completely wiped out, and yet we have really only one parish church that has reported catastrophic loss,” he said. Escala identified that site as Corpus Christi, a 1950s-era church in an affluent neighborhood between Santa Monica and Malibu.

The status of the parish school remains unclear. “Buildings, including the library and gymnasium, have been reported to have suffered significant damage,” Escala said. “But the school itself, we have not verified that it has been a complete loss.” 

Access is restricted to first responders and select media. “It’s too early to know,” Escala added. “Law enforcement has restricted entry, and once it’s declared safe, we’ll be able to assess the extent of the damage.”

Escala stressed that the archdiocese is working to support displaced families. “Our focus is on our families and our parishioners,” he said. “We’re going to work very closely with those families of students and our staff to identify alternative schools if the area is not deemed safe for use and/or the buildings are no longer functional.”

Pablo Kay, editor in chief of Angelus, the official news outlet of the archdiocese, said the neighborhood “has been close to being wiped out” according to fire crews and local news reports. 

“So what we know is that the church burned,” he noted. “Whether anything was spared in the sanctuary — we probably won’t know for several days.” Kay added that reports of damage to a classroom or other parts of the school remain unconfirmed.

The Los Angeles Fire Department estimates the blaze at nearly 16,000 acres, with around 300 structures destroyed. As of Wednesday evening, the Palisades Fire, Eaton Fire, and Hurst Fire were at zero percent containment.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark, New Jersey. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/ACI Prensa

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 8, 2025 / 18:20 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, in a letter addressed to clergy, religious, and faithful announced the launch of a multiyear “pastoral conversion” plan for the archdiocese based on the framework proposed by the final document produced by the Synod on Synodality.

“Pastoral conversion requires nothing more or less than our willingness to be open to what God’s word is saying to us and to listen to one another,” Tobin wrote, adding: “The term that best describes the journey that we are traveling together now is ‘synodality.’”

Following a multiyear process of the Synod on Synodality, which began in 2021, Pope Francis adopted the final document, “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission,” in October 2024.

The 52-page document, approved by 355 synod members in attendance, outlines substantial proposals for Church renewal, including expansion of women’s leadership roles, greater lay participation in decision-making, and significant structural reforms, including strengthening pastoral councils at parish and diocesan levels.

“Synodal leadership affirms the fact that every baptized person has the right and the responsibility to participate in the Church’s life and ministry,” Tobin wrote.

“The same is true of our ecclesial structures,” the archbishop said of Newark’s parishes, schools, institutions, and ministries.

Quoting the Holy Father’s first apostolic exhortation in 2013, which states “We cannot leave things as they presently are,” Tobin declared: “We must allow the Holy Spirit to renew us, as individuals and as communities, so that we can effectively carry the joy of the Gospel to others here at home and to the ends of the earth.”

Following the directive of the final document, the initiative, titled “We Are His Witnesses,” proposes a series of recommendations for structural changes to be implemented across the archdiocese in the coming years.

In the first place, Tobin revealed that he has instructed all parishes across the archdiocese to establish “fully functioning pastoral and finance councils” by July. At this time, the archbishop also said he expects all parish leaders to have completed training in “the synodal style of leadership with a missionary outlook.”

Tobin also shared that pastors have been asked to find ways to lead their congregations in “reflecting on what it means to be a ‘shared parish’” through small groups “based on the word of God,” while parishes across the archdiocese have been asked to “be open to new alliances with other parishes,” regardless of size or location.

“I want to make it clear that We Are His Witnesses is not a project with a hidden agenda for closing or consolidating parishes, schools, or other institutions,” Tobin noted in the letter. “We have something very different in mind, namely the pastoral conversion of our hearts and minds to prepare us, as an archdiocese, for the work of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ now and in the future.”

The initiative has been entrusted to auxiliary Bishop Michael Saporito, who is expected to lead the newly-founded Commission on Pastoral Planning, a group of lay faithful, clergy, and religious, in presenting a comprehensive pastoral plan for Newark by the summer of 2026.

Students at St. Dominic Academy in Auburn, Maine. / Credit: Courtesy of Becket

CNA Staff, Jan 8, 2025 / 18:00 pm (CNA).

Catholic parents who live in rural Maine — far from any public schools — are challenging a state law that excludes most faith-based schools from Maine’s rural tuition assistance program.  

Maine’s tuition assistance program — the second-oldest in the nation — is designed to help rural families attend private school in areas that do not have public schools. In 1982, Maine began excluding faith-based private schools, leading to a Supreme Court case that struck down the exclusion as religious discrimination in 2022.

Though the landmark 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision Carson v. Makin affirmed that the “sectarian exclusion” violates the free exercise clause because it excludes schools on the basis of their religious exercise, Maine state officials quickly passed a law that in effect excluded most religious schools. This law most directly affects the rural families that are now unable to use the tuition program to send their children to local Catholic schools.

Catholic parents Kevin and Valori Radonis, along with the local Catholic school St. Dominic Academy, are challenging the state law in federal appeals court. Another couple, Daniel and Nancy Cronin, live in an area without a public school and want their son, who has dyslexia, to attend St. Dominic’s so he can receive necessary academic support.

The Radonises believe the state is “cheating” them out of the choice to send their children to Catholic school “by cutting faith-based schools out of Maine’s tuition program.”

“As Catholics, we want to raise our children in an environment that teaches them to put their faith at the heart of everything they do,” they said in a statement. “We pray the court puts an end to this exclusion once and for all.” 

The latest legal challenge against the Maine law highlights a concern that for participating schools, Maine’s new law would give the Maine Human Rights Commission the final word on admissions, conduct speech, and policies about Catholic beliefs on marriage, gender, and family life. This effectively prevents Catholic schools from being able to participate in the program.  

“Three years ago in the Carson case, the Supreme Court ordered Maine to stop leaving families like the Radonises out in the cold,” Adèle Keim, senior counsel at Becket, said in a press release. “But Maine wouldn’t listen. Now Maine wants to have bureaucrats in Augusta tell St. Dominic how Catholic it can be.”

The tuition program has been embroiled in legal challenges in recent years as the state continues to exclude most faith-based schools, preventing rural families who cannot access public schools. 

In an appeal last year against the new law, lawyers called it a “poison pill” law and alleged that it targeted religious schools. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey — a proponent of the law — said in 2022 that he intended to “ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.”

Notably, the law applies to in-state private schools but not to out-of-state boarding schools that receive Maine funds from the same program. 

“Maine should drop its newest effort to ‘end run’ the Supreme Court and let St. Dominic get back to serving the Maine families that need it most,” Keim said.

A ruling from the court is expected early this year.

A priest gives Communion to children at the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024. / Credit: Eduardo Berdejo/EWTN News

Lima Newsroom, Jan 8, 2025 / 14:40 pm (CNA).

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has announced the launch of its annual collection in support of the Church’s mission in different areas of Central and South America as well as the Caribbean.

“With the support of parishioners like you, the collection for the Church in Latin America helps countless poor and marginalized people experience God’s love and share it with their neighbors,” said Bishop Daniel H. Mueggenborg of Reno, Nevada, the chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on National Collections, in a Jan. 7 statement. 

The prelate also recalled the example of Blessed Stanley Rother, a priest from Oklahoma whom he met in 1981 and who was later martyred in Guatemala while dedicating his life to serving Latin American Catholics most in need.

“Blessed Stanley Rother ministered in Guatemala, even in the face of great danger because God had called him to love and care for Latin Americans in need. Father Rother’s ministry to the poor threatened the interests of powerful people and it ultimately led to his death,” the bishop said.

Mueggenborg shared that this heroic testimony “helped to inspire my own priestly vocation and my sense of solidarity with Catholics in Latin America.” 

”The Collection for the Church in Latin America is an opportunity for all of us to answer that same call. It may not cost us our lives, but a financial sacrifice, even a small one, will go toward impacting the lives of many,” the prelate encouraged.

U.S. Church aid by the numbers

Last year, the collection raised $6.2 million, which went to more than 250 ministries in places where the Church cannot sustain itself without outside help, the USCCB said.

More than half of the funds were used to cover pastoral needs, about 28% went to disaster relief, and about 20% supported vocations and the formation of clergy and religious.

The following are examples of some of the projects that benefited from the collection:

— In Haiti, 330 lay leaders were trained in Catholic social teaching on ecology, combined with practices to improve soil and water, and reforestation to prevent erosion.

— In Honduras, the Diocese of Choluteca received support to serve migrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa as part of a program that integrates evangelizing the poor with respect and social sensitivity.

— In the Dominican Republic, 18 young women who joined the Poor Clares are receiving support as they pray for the world from their cloistered convent. 

— In Ecuador, the International Eucharistic Congress, held in September 2024 with participants from 40 countries in attendance, was subsidized.

— In Brazil, the Archdiocese of San Salvador de Bahía implemented a social program that included converting cooking oil into cheap fuel and a World Day of the Poor festival with food, music, and a Eucharistic procession through impoverished neighborhoods.

Many dioceses will be taking up this collection the weekend of Jan. 25-26. It’s also possible to contribute online at #iGiveCatholicTogether.

This story was first publishedby ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Pope Francis greets young people gathered for his general audience on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Jan 8, 2025 / 12:35 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis used his first general audience of the year to address the scourge of exploitation and violence against children, urging Christians worldwide not to remain indifferent to their pain and suffering.

Putting a spotlight on the “scourge of child labor,” the Holy Father lamented that there are “too many children forced to work” who are unable to smile, dream, or nurture their talents.

“In every part of the globe, there are children who are exploited by an economy that does not respect life, an economy that, in so doing, consumes our greatest store of hope and love,” he said on Wednesday.

Speaking to hundreds of international pilgrims gathered inside the Paul VI Hall in Vatican City, the pope said society — especially Christians “who recognize themselves as children of God” — must not turn a blind eye to the plight of vulnerable children. 

“[Christians] cannot accept that our little sisters and brothers, instead of being loved and protected, are robbed of their childhood, of their dreams, victims of exploitation and marginalization,” he said.

In spite of great technological advancements, the Holy Father said, such progress has often disregarded the dignity of children, “who are a gift from God,” and failed to address their current and future needs. 

“Today we want to turn our gaze toward Mars or toward virtual worlds, but we struggle to look in the eye a child who has been left at the margins and who is exploited or abused,” he said.

“The century that generates artificial intelligence and plans multiplanetary existences has not yet reckoned with the scourge of humiliated, exploited, mortally wounded childhood,” he continued.

Before extending his greetings to different pilgrim groups from around the world, the pope prayed: “Let us ask the Lord to open our minds and hearts to care and tenderness, and for every boy and every girl in the world to be able to grow in age, wisdom, and grace, receiving and giving love.”

Pope praises CircAfrica for its ‘mission’ to do good

At the end of the pope’s first general audience since the opening of the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, 50 members of CirCAfrica, a circus company currently on tour in Rome, performed a short extract from their show for the pope and pilgrims inside the Paul VI Hall.

Praising circus artists’ mission of “doing good and making us laugh,” the Holy Father, who was seen tapping his feet to the music during the show, thanked the dancers, acrobats, and jugglers from various African nations for making him and others “laugh like children.” 

Sister Simona Brambilla, the new Prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life / Credit: Vatican News

ACI Prensa Staff, Jan 8, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Pope Francis has marked another milestone in his pontificate by appointing, for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, a woman to head a Vatican dicastery. She is Italian nun Sister Simona Brambilla, the new prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Brambilla, who will turn 60 on March 27, had been serving as secretary of the same dicastery since October 2023. At that time, she was the second woman to hold such a position, after Sister Alessandra Smerilli was appointed to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in 2021.

Moreover, just last month, on Dec. 13, 2024, Brambilla was appointed by the pope to be a member of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, which “is responsible for the preparation and realization of the Ordinary General Assembly” of the Synod of Bishops.

Regarding this appointment, the Italian nun said: “I deeply believe in the synodal journey. We have lived and are living an experience of the Spirit, which impels the Church to walk together, in mutual listening and mutual edification. From this experience there is no going back.”

“We go forward; and we go inward, deeper, involved and caught up in a spiral movement that, with strength and gentleness, brings us to the essentials of who we are as Christians: brothers and sisters in Christ, lightened, disarmed, and freed from the various armors and vestments we may be wearing,” she added. 

A few years earlier, in July 2019, Brambilla and six other women became the first members of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Brambilla, who as secretary oversaw the apostolic visitation to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and the suppression of the Carmelite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington, Texas, served for 13 years as superior general of the Consolata Missionaries.

She joined the congregation in 1988 and was sent to Mozambique as a missionary. The nun was also the order’s first general councillor. This experience allowed her to write a thesis on evangelization and inculturation in the African country and to obtain a doctorate in psychology in 2008 at the Gregorian Institute of Psychology, where she also taught.

The nun is also a professional nurse, practicing at the hospital in Merate, Italy.

In October 2023, in an interview with ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian-language news partner, the nun shared that “the experience of fruitful contact with different realities, peoples, cultures, particular Churches, forms of Consecrated Life in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe has transformed me and strengthened in me the awareness that the encounter with others is a source of growth, of exchange of gifts, of grace” with the call to “sow the Gospel” and make it germinate everywhere.

What can be done to renew consecrated life?

In that interview, Brambilla answered the question on what can be done to renew consecrated life as follows: “I feel the need and desire to study with those who have much more knowledge and wisdom than me and who have long offered their skills and their energies of mind, heart, and soul to accompany the paths of consecrated men and women in different fields.”

In this way, she continued, she will be able to help others better, also considering the importance of listening to “everyone, their various experiences and paths, is a fundamental step to let the Spirit guide us, to open our hearts, our inner senses to his light… so that he may show us his ways, to walk with them together.”

The nun also highlighted the importance of “littleness” when questioned about the lack of vocations in the Church, offering as a point of reference a speech by Pope Francis in September 2022 in Kazakhstan.

Brambilla quoted, among others, the following passage: “the Gospel says that being ‘little,’ poor in spirit, is a blessing, the first beatitude, because smallness humbly gives us the power of God and leads us to not base our ecclesial activity on our own capacities. This is a grace! I repeat: There is a hidden grace in being a small Church.”

In January 2024, the new prefect gave an interview to the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire in which she said that her appointment as secretary of the Dicastery for Consecrated Life “finds its place within an ecclesial path that is increasingly synodal, open, inclusive, dialogical, and evangelical” and in which she noted what Pope Francis had said in his homily on Jan. 1 a year ago.

“The Church needs Mary in order to recover her own feminine face, to resemble more fully the woman, Virgin and Mother, who is her model and perfect image, to make space for women and to be ‘generative’ through a pastoral ministry marked by concern and care, patience and maternal courage,” the pope said at that time in the excerpt cited by the nun.

Asked whether her appointment would “demasculinize” the Catholic Church, the new prefect emphasized that “this is a reflection to be continued and expanded by everyone but also to be translated into an effective practice that certainly passes through a greater participation of women at the various levels of the life of the Church.”

It also requires “a careful study of the feminine dimension of the Church and of the mission in the broadest sense: models and dynamics of thought, affection, sensitivity, spirituality, action, mission that embody the two vital dimensions, the feminine and the masculine, and take into account the necessary, beneficial, and blessed interaction between the two.”

Despite the questions it may have raised, Brambilla’s appointment does not contradict Church teaching. Although the ministerial priesthood is reserved for men, the Church recognizes the equal dignity and complementarity of men and women.

Pope Francis has emphasized the need for a “more incisive female presence in the Church” and this appointment is a step in that direction. Brambilla’s appointment does not entail sacramental functions reserved for the priesthood but rather an administrative and pastoral leadership role that reflects the richness of the gifts and abilities that women bring to the Church, as demonstrated by the long history of influential women in Catholicism.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

St. Francis Xavier statue in front St. Joseph Cathedral in Beijing, China, Feb. 25, 2016. / Credit: Zvonimir Atletic/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 8, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

China’s oldest priest has passed away, leaving behind a legacy of brave adherence to the faith of the Catholic Church in the face of persecution. 

Father Joseph Guo Fude, SVD, died on Dec. 30, 2024, two months from what would have been his 105th birthday. He was one of the few remaining Catholic priests in China who had been ordained prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

“Father Guo is a symbol of the courageous faith and extraordinary suffering of China’s Catholics,” Benedict Rogers, human rights activist and author of “The China Nexus: Thirty Years in and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny,” told CNA.

Rogers noted that although the priest had “spent a quarter of a century in prison,” he continued serving and ministering to his people through his 90s. “He treated prison not as the harsh injustice that it was but as an opportunity to grow in faith, spirituality, and prayer.”

According to AsiaNews, which reported the Chinese cleric’s passing, Guo spent a total of 25 years in prison during his lifetime.

“Looking back on my life,” Guo reportedly wrote following the occasion of his 100th birthday, “prison became a place where I could reflect, pray, and grow spiritually ... My imprisonment gave me the strength to face life’s challenges and continue to serve God, knowing that every trial was part of his divine plan. My experience in prison taught me that earthly riches are ephemeral, while faith in God is the only true wealth.”

Born in February 1920, Guo was ordained to the priesthood in 1947. He was first imprisoned in 1959 during China’s ideological reform movement for “subversive activity against the state.” He was imprisoned a second time from 1967 to 1979 on espionage charges and again in 1982 “for spreading the faith,” according to AsiaNews.

“As we reflect on Father Guo’s remarkable and inspirational life,” Rogers added, “let us take this opportunity to pray for the persecuted Church in China, advocate for religious freedom, and be guided by Father Guo’s example of persistent, determined, steadfast, and defiant faith in the face of brutal repression.”

This past fall, the Vatican renewed its agreement with China on the appointment of Catholic bishops for another four years. Despite the appearance of friendlier relations on the surface, a report published in October 2024 by the Hudson Institute found that the “religious repression of the Catholic Church in China has intensified” since the deal went into effect in 2018.

“Father Guo’s story is typical of Catholic clerics who lived during the Mao years,” Hudson Institute policy expert Nina Shea told CNA. “They all seem to have spent many years in prisons and labor camps and suffered greatly.”

As for the current state of Vatican-China affairs, Shea recently reported on the plight of 10 bishops who have faced persecution at the hands of the CCP. Injustices in the report include “indefinite detention without due process, disappearances, open-ended security police investigations, banishments from their dioceses, or other impediments to their episcopal ministries including threats, surveillance, interrogation, and so-called reeducation.”

Parents protest the Montgomery County School Board's policy blocking them from opting out their children from pro-homosexual and transgender materials. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Becket

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 8, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The large majority of parents, including most Catholic parents, are against school policies that impose gender ideology by permitting biological males in girls’ spaces and hiding information about a child’s gender identity from his or her parents, according to a poll released this week.

A poll of 1,000 parents throughout the country, commissioned by the nonprofit group Parents Defending Education (PDE), found that more than three-fourths of parents across ideological and political lines oppose school policies that allow biological males who identify as transgender girls to participate in girls’ sports teams or access female bathrooms and locker rooms.

Nearly three-fourths of Catholic parents surveyed also oppose biological males on girls’ sports teams and nearly 60% oppose biological males using girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms, which was slightly lower than the general population polled.

The poll found that about three-fourths of parents oppose school policies that encourage or require teachers, counselors, school nurses, and coaches to hide a child’s gender identity information from parents in certain circumstances if their child begins to identify as transgender. This includes nearly three-fourths of Catholic parents.

Such policies often prevent officials from notifying parents about their child identifying as transgender without first obtaining express consent from the child.

According to the poll, about 90% of parents want schools to focus on core subjects such as math, reading, writing, science, and social studies. Slightly more than half of parents want to reduce the influence of the United States Department of Education and slightly less than half of parents believe the department is appropriately using resources to advance students’ education.

“These results highlight that parents are dissatisfied with a number of elements of the modern American education system — and that there is broad-based consensus that it’s time for schools to get back to basics,” PDE President Nicole Neily, a Catholic mother of two school-age children, said in a statement.

“For far too long, federal bureaucrats have sacrificed the needs of students and families in order to appease unions’ and activists’ insatiable demands for money and power,” Neily added.

Disconnect between politicians, school officials, and parents

The poll found bipartisan opposition to schools enforcing gender ideology through these policies among parents. Yet, unity among parents has not led to bipartisan agreement within the federal government, state governments, or local school boards.

According to the poll, 86% of Republican parents, 80% of politically independent parents, and 60% of Democratic parents oppose biological males in girls’ sports. It also found that 92% of Republicans, 75% of independents, and 58% of Democrats oppose biological males being permitted in female bathrooms and locker rooms.

About 88% of Republican parents, 72% of independent parents, and 58% of Democratic parents are also opposed to school policies that encourage or require teachers, nurses, coaches, and other school officials to hide information from parents if their child self-identifies with a gender that is inconsistent with his or her biological sex.

Despite bipartisan agreement among parents, about half of the states in the country permit biological males to participate in girls’ athletic competitions and to access female locker rooms, bathrooms, dormitories, and other private spaces when those males self-identify as transgender girls. These policies exist in states run by mostly Democratic lawmakers.

As of Oct. 30, 2024, PDE also found at least 1,143 school districts — which operate nearly 21,000 schools and serve more than 12.2 million children — have policies that encourage or require school officials to hide information from parents in certain circumstances if their child begins to identify as a gender inconsistent with his or her sex. 

The list is incomplete, but the PDE encourages parents to report those policies to their organization for schools missing from the list.

In April 2023, California became the first state to impose a law that forces teachers and other school officials to hide a child’s self-described transgender identity from parents in certain circumstances, which has prompted lawsuits challenging the policy.

At the federal level, President Joe Biden’s Education Department revised Title IX regulations to redefine sex discrimination to apply to a person’s self-asserted “gender identity” in schools, colleges, and other educational institutions. The enforcement of this policy has been blocked by judges for 26 states after Republican state officials filed lawsuits warning that the language would overrule their policies that separate athletics, bathrooms, and locker rooms on the basis of biological sex.

Neily told CNA that school districts often impose the policy of hiding information from parents “under the guise of safety” when officials believe the parents will not support a child’s self-asserted transgender identity.

However, Neily said, school employees are already mandatory reporters and are obligated to notify Child Protective Services (CPS) if they believe a child is in danger, which can then be investigated by CPS. The policy of hiding information from parents, she said, allows school officials to make a “unilateral decision” that parents are unsafe. She expressed concern about “those kinds of snap judgments.”

One reason for the disconnect between officials and parents, according to Neily, is that “many parents aren’t aware that these policies are in place” and some parents do not “have the time or the bandwidth or the wherewithal to even know to ask these kinds of questions.”

Neily expressed optimism that the incoming President-elect Donald Trump administration can reverse the Biden-era policies at the federal level and recognize that “families and parents are stakeholders” rather than simply considering “activists and teacher’s unions.”

Trump has promised to take executive action on Day 1 to stop what he calls “transgender lunacy.”