Ss. Joseph and Cabrini Parish

null / Credit: FreshStock/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Jan 22, 2025 / 16:15 pm (CNA).

The Vatican announced this week that Pope Francis has erected a new diocese in China and appointed Father Anthony Ji Weizhong as its first bishop.

The pope decided last October to suppress the Diocese of Fenyang in mainland China, which was originally erected in 1946 by Pope Pius XII, and at the same time erect the new Diocese of Lüliang.

Diocesan borders have been an area of dispute between the Vatican and China in the decades since the Chinese Communist Party came to power and started to redraw diocesan lines, seeking to bring them more in line with Chinese administrative boundaries.

Indeed, the territory of the newly-created Diocese of Lüliang conforms to the territory of the city of Lüliang, located about 400 miles southwest of Beijing in western Shanxi province. It will serve a total population of 3.3 million people, of whom approximately 20,000 are Catholics. A total of 51 priests and 26 religious sisters serve in the diocese. 

Pope Francis appointed Weizhong as bishop of Lüliang on Oct. 28, 2024, having approved Weizhong in the context of the “Provisional Agreement,” better known as the Vatican-China deal, which appears to give the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) some ability to choose episcopal candidates.

Weizhong, 51, was ordained a priest in 2001 for the Diocese of Fenyang. He studied in China and in Germany and served in Fenyang as deputy parish priest, head of the diocesan pastoral center, and as vicar general. He was ordained on Jan. 20 at the Cathedral Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The see of the Fenyang Diocese remained vacant after the death of Bishop Huo Cheng, who spent 14 years in prison during the Cultural Revolution and had led the Church of Fenyang in communion with the Holy See since 1991, AsiaNews reported.

Weizhong is the second Chinese bishop to be ordained since the Vatican in October renewed its “Provisional Agreement” with China on the appointment of Catholic bishops for an additional four years, until at least Oct. 22, 2028. Shortly after the Vatican renewed the deal last fall, Matthew Zhen Xuebin was consecrated as the new coadjutor bishop of Beijing, having been appointed in August. 

Originally signed in September 2018, the provisional agreement was previously renewed for a two-year period in 2020 and again in October 2022. The terms of the agreement have never been made public, though Pope Francis has said it includes a joint commission between the Chinese government and the Vatican on the appointment of Catholic bishops, overseen by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

The Holy See has acknowledged that China has several times violated the terms of the agreement by unilaterally appointing Catholic bishops in Shanghai and the “Diocese of Jiangxi,” a large diocese created by the Chinese government that is not recognized by the Vatican.

Chinese officials have reportedly ordered the removal of crosses from churches and have replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of President Xi Jinping, according to a 2024 report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

USCIRF also reports that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “sinicization of religion” campaign has led to censored religious texts, clergy forced to preach CCP ideology, and the required display of CCP slogans in churches.

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CNA Staff, Jan 22, 2025 / 15:45 pm (CNA).

The New York Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a Nassau County law prohibiting men from competing in female sports at a county-run facility is constitutional.

State Supreme Court Judge Bruce Cozzens ruled against the Long Island Roller Rebels, a women’s roller derby league that had sought to block a Nassau County law banning men from participating in women’s sporting events at the county’s parks and recreational facilities.

In his decision, the judge wrote that he “does not find that Local Law 121-24 excludes transgender women and girls from the public facilities based on their gender identity, and the plaintiffs have not shown discrimination under the Human Rights Law and the Civil Rights Law.” 

Cozzens ruled that the law was not discriminatory as those who identify as transgender can still play in coed sports leagues. In the decision, Cozzens emphasized the risk of injury for women if men are allowed to play on their sports teams.

“The plaintiff is not only asking that transgender athletics be included on female teams but also that they not disclose the transgender identity,” Cozzens wrote. “Potentially that creates an even greater risk to the females since they would not even be aware (nor it is assumed would they be permitted to inquire) if a player was a biological male.” 

“Common sense requires weight classification for wrestling and boxing clearly to protect the safety of the individuals. Common sense requires the same here,” Cozzens continued. 

Gabriella Larios, staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, opposed the decision in a statement, calling it discriminatory. 

“This decision is an outlier among the many courts to have considered the same question,” Larios continued. “It is also inconsistent with long-standing state law, which makes clear that Nassau’s ban unlawfully discriminates against transgender girls and women, as well as the teams that welcome them.” 

“This ban leaves a lasting stain on the county’s government and legislature, which have been relentless in their efforts to shut trans people out of sports,” Larios said. 

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman welcomed the decision, calling it “common sense.” 

“I’m very happy that State Supreme Court Judge Bruce Cozzens ruled that Nassau County’s local law banning biological males from playing on female sports teams is constitutional and that we did abide by the law,” Blakeman said in a statement shared with CNA. 

“As we’ve said all along, it’s just common sense,” Blakeman said. “Biological males should not play in female sports. They have a competitive advantage. It’s unfair, and it’s also unsafe.” 

Earlier this month, a federal court blocked a Department of Education rule banning discrimination against a person’s self-asserted “gender identity.” In addition, the Nassau decision closely followed a recent executive order signed by President Donald Trump affirming the biological reality of sex.

Blakeman said he was grateful that federal courts recently ruled in a similar manner.

“The federal courts have recently ruled the same way, so we have the federal courts and the state courts saying that you can make this distinction,” Blakeman noted. “We’re very happy that both courts have agreed with us.” 

“I’m gratified that we were the first in America to do it, and I think we set the tone for the rest of the nation,” Blakeman said.

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, speaks at the USCCB fall plenary assembly Nov. 14, 2023. / Credit: USCCB video

CNA Staff, Jan 22, 2025 / 15:15 pm (CNA).

The president of the U.S. bishops’ conference on Wednesday criticized some of President Donald Trump’s initial executive orders on key issues including immigration and capital punishment, warning that harm could be done to “the most vulnerable among us.”

Trump upon taking office on Monday signed a series of executive orders that included tough restrictions on immigration, a directive in favor of the death penalty, a withdrawal from a key global climate pact, and an order affirming the reality of biological sex.

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) president Archbishop Timothy Broglio on Wednesday said in a statement that he took issue with some of the orders, calling them “deeply troubling.”

“Some provisions contained in the executive orders, such as those focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us,” Broglio wrote.

Regarding the executive order on biological sex, Broglio expressed agreement with Trump.

“Other provisions in the executive orders can be seen in a more positive light, such as recognizing the truth about each human person as male or female,” Broglio said. 

Broglio stressed that neither the Catholic Church nor the USCCB is aligned with “any political party.” The Church’s teachings “remain unchanged” regardless of political leadership, he said. 

The prelate pointed to the 2025 Jubilee Year and said the U.S. bishops prayed that “as a nation blessed with many gifts, our actions demonstrate a genuine care for our most vulnerable sisters and brothers, including the unborn, the poor, the elderly and infirm, and migrants and refugees.”

“It is our hope that the leadership of our country will reconsider those actions which disregard not only the human dignity of a few, but of us all,” the archbishop said. 

The USCCB said it would publish further information on the executive orders on its website. 

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord represented the second time the president has pulled the country from the global environmental pact; he first withdrew from the agreement in 2020. Then-President Joe Biden rejoined the agreement in 2021. 

Trump’s pro-death penalty order was largely seen as a rebuke of Biden’s earlier policies on the death penalty, including a 2021 moratorium on federal executions as well as Biden’s December 2024 commutation of 37 prisoners on federal death row.

Trump’s immigration orders, meanwhile, were the culmination of several years’ worth of political promises to crack down on illegal crossings at the southern U.S. border. The president has vowed to enact major deportations of illegal immigrants living in the U.S.

Earlier this month Pope Francis strongly condemned Trump’s mass deportation plans in the United States, saying “if this is true it is a disgrace.”

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CNA Staff, Jan 22, 2025 / 14:45 pm (CNA).

Arlington Bishop Michael Burbidge on Wednesday urged Catholic families to offer a “heroic witness” to love by rejecting the practice of in vitro fertilization (IVF), which the prelate called “contrary to justice [and] replete with moral difficulties.”

In a pastoral letter released on Wednesday, Burbidge acknowledged the “natural desire for family” as well as the challenges faced by couples who are struggling with infertility. 

Yet the Virginia bishop said he has observed with concern the growing popularity of IVF both as a means of conceiving children and as a means to facilitate surrogacy. 

In the present day it “seems as if an extraordinary number of couples” have difficulty conceiving children, the bishop said. He acknowledged that the Catholic Church is supportive of numerous licit means of addressing infertility, including NaPro technology. 

IVF — which represented a “revolution of medicine” when it debuted in 1978 — nevertheless presents serious moral problems, Burbidge argued. 

Chief among them, the bishop noted, is how the procedure “both creates life and destroys life,” insofar as it often kills many human embryos even as it may produce one that goes on to grow through a full pregnancy.

“For every one of the more than 12 million children born by means of IVF since 1978, there are many tens of millions more missing brothers and sisters who have been either deliberately destroyed, experimented upon, or frozen in liquid nitrogen and denied their natural right to the fullness of their development,” the bishop said. 

The bishop stressed that children brought about from IVF possess “inalienable human dignity,” noting that that very dignity is what leads to the Church’s opposition to the practice. 

IVF, he said, “subverts human dignity by reducing human persons — man, woman, and child alike — into objects of a technical process.”

IVF technology, meanwhile, is further morally fraught in its “ability to bring about new life for individuals who desire children outside the context of the bond of marriage” through the practice of surrogacy. 

Surrogacy has increasingly come under fire in recent years from pro-life activists and critics who argue that it disrespects children and is exploitative of women. Italy has banned surrogacy since 2004 and last year banned its citizens from seeking it abroad. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has referred to the practice as “uterus renting.” In Europe, the practice is illegal in Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, and Spain as well. 

The Holy See, meanwhile, last year hosted a panel at the United Nations at which advocates stressed the need to regulate and eventually abolish surrogacy around the world.

Burbidge in his letter argued that it constitutes “a grave injustice to produce children who, from the start, are forcibly separated from their natural parents.”

Though the bishop warned against the possibility of a “federal IVF entitlement or mandate,” he also argued that the government could pursue “concrete ways to encourage earlier marriage and family formation” as well as support pregnancy and childbirth as a way to help families. 

The U.S. government, meanwhile, can take cues from Europe, he argued, where surrogacy is “recognized as exploitative and unjust and is almost universally impermissible.”

Burbidge further called on “all people of faith and goodwill to pray for those married couples experiencing infertility, for the efficacy of life-affirming fertility care, for an openness to God’s love and an ever-deeper experience of the virtues, and for the grace to accept whatever God’s will may be.”

The bishop released the letter on Jan. 22, the day the U.S. Catholic Church observes the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children. It was also the day in 1973 in which the Supreme Court ruled in the case Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion throughout the United States. 

Roe was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022. In the nearly three years since, numerous U.S. states have enacted sweeping pro-life protections that had been illegal under Roe. However, many states have enacted broad pro-abortion statutes and passed pro-abortion ballot initiatives. 

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CNA Staff, Jan 22, 2025 / 14:15 pm (CNA).

A Montana bill that could compel Catholic priests to break the seal of confession is being criticized by Catholics who say it could eliminate key religious liberty protections.

The proposed bill would “eliminate clergy exemption in mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect.” It states that clergy and others in the mandatory reporting group such as medical practitioners and social workers “may not refuse to make a report as required ... on the grounds of a physician-patient or similar privilege.”

While clergy are often mandatory reporters outside of the confessional, long-standing legal precedent in the U.S. recognizes the religious freedom of confessors and penitents to be exempt from those rules.

Clergy members are already mandatory reporters of child abuse or neglect in Montana, though current Montana law upholds the priest-penitent privilege, requiring that “a member of the clergy or priest may not, without the consent of the person making the confession, be examined as to any confession made to the individual.”

The sacramental seal of confession in the Catholic Church strictly prohibits priests from sharing anything a penitent says during the sacrament of reconciliation. Any priest who “directly violates the sacramental seal” incurs excommunication, according to the Code of Canon Law (Canon 1386).  

Montana Rep. Lukas Schubert, R-Kalispell, an outspoken critic of the bill and a Catholic himself, criticized the legislation in an interview with CNA, saying it targeted Catholics. 

“I believe that this bill is an attack on the Catholic faith,” Schubert told CNA. “This Democrat bill would attempt to require Catholic priests to break the seal of confession.”

Matthew Brower, the executive director of the Montana Catholic Conference, told CNA that the conference has been following the legislation closely and awaiting a potential hearing.

“Montana’s bishops have a good relationship with our lawmakers and that allows them the ability to effectively engage in our legislative process,” Brower said.  

Rep. Mary Ann Dunwell, D-Helena, who is sponsoring the bill, told CNA that the measure is designed “to protect children from sexual and other abuse.”

Asked about claims that the bill goes against Church teaching, Dunwell said: “This is about civil and criminal laws to protect children from child sex abuse. It’s not about canon law. Otherwise, there’d be no separation of church and state.” 

Regarding the priest-penitent privilege, the U.S. Supreme Court “recognizes the human need to disclose to a spiritual counselor, in total and absolute confidence, what are believed to be flawed acts or thoughts and to receive priestly consolation and guidance in return,” according to the 1980 Trammel v. United States decision.

The priest-penitent privilege extends to more than just Catholics; several Protestant denominations including the Episcopal Church and the American Lutheran Church also hold requirements for secrecy for confession.

“All Catholics, Christians, and people with common sense must oppose this bill,” Schubert said. 

Similar bills have been proposed in recent years. In May 2023 Delaware legislators proposed a bill requiring priests to break the seal of confession in cases of reporting sexual abuse. A similar law was proposed in Vermont around the same time. Both bills failed to advance in their respective legislatures.

Brower said those at the Montana Catholic Conference “look forward to working with our legislators to help clear up any misunderstandings they might have regarding mandatory reporting by clergy and the sacrament of penance.”

“This legislation may be a well-intentioned but simply misguided proposal,” Brower noted.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops headquarters in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 22, 2025 / 10:20 am (CNA).

Policies related to immigration, gender ideology, abortion, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) are among the top religious liberty concerns heading into 2025, according to a report published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

The USCCB Committee for Religious Liberty on Jan. 16 issued its Annual Report on the State of Religious Liberty, which highlights the legislative actions, potential executive actions, and U.S. Supreme Court cases the bishops are closely watching.

“We can become anxious that our unpopular positions on issues such as the dignity of all human life and the nature of marriage and the human person require us to compromise our integrity in order to secure political victories,” Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, wrote in the foreward of the document.

“This jubilee year offers us a chance to reflect on the necessity of patience and long-suffering in our work to bear witness to the truth,” added Rhoades, who chairs the USCCB’s religious liberty committee.

Immigrant-focused and other Catholic organizations

Although the document states that immigration policy “is not itself a religious liberty issue,” it enters the realm of religious liberty “when religious charities and social services are singled out for special hostility, or when their bona fide religious motivations are impugned as pretextual for self-interest.”

The bishops specifically reference Annunciation House, an El Paso-based nonprofit that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking to shut down. The attorney general has accused the Catholic nonprofit of “alien harboring” — an allegation they are contesting in the state Supreme Court.

Other Catholic nonprofits, including Catholic Charities affiliates, have also faced combative actions from state governments for allegedly facilitating illegal immigration — a claim the USCCB has denied.

The bishops also expressed concerns about a House Judiciary Committee investigation into Climate Action 100+ members, which are investors seeking to reduce carbon emissions. The report notes that “several of the companies are Catholic” and following the bishops’ investment guidelines.

Additionally, the USCCB is closely following the Supreme Court case Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission, which will determine whether Wisconsin is violating the charity’s First Amendment rights by denying its status as a religious organization because the state does not consider service to the poor to be a typical religious activity.

Bills and policies pushing gender ideology

The bishops are also watching legislation, executive actions, and one Supreme Court case related to gender ideology, including what critics say are efforts to violate religious liberty by implementing rules to prohibit “gender identity” discrimination.

On the legislative side, the bishops are closely following the federal Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on a person’s “gender identity.” The proposal — which lawmakers have introduced several times in recent years — would exclude some religious liberty protections.

The bishops warned the bill would force Catholic hospitals to “perform and promote life-altering gender ‘transitions.’” Some opponents have warned that the language would force hospitals to provide transgender surgeries to patients, including minors. 

Additionally, the USCCB is watching executive actions issued during former President Joe Biden’s administration, which reinterpret “sex” discrimination to include discrimination based on a person’s self-asserted gender identity. 

The Biden administration imposed that interpretation in education and health care regulations, which could have forced schools to blur sex-based separation of bathrooms, locker rooms, dormitories, and sports competitions and could have forced hospitals to perform transgender surgeries on patients, including minors.

President Donald Trump, however, reversed these rules in the first hours of his administration this week. The measures were also facing legal challenges.

The bishops will also follow an ongoing Supreme Court case that will determine whether Tennessee’s ban on minors receiving transgender drugs and surgeries constitutes a form of “sex” discrimination.

Abortion, IVF, and contraception

The bishops are also following abortion, IVF, and contraception mandates that could have an effect on religious liberty. 

On the legislative front, the bishops remain concerned about the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would legalize abortion nationwide and could override “conscience laws, state and federal, that protect the right of health care providers and professionals, employers, and insurers not to perform, assist in, refer for, cover, or pay for abortion,” according to the bishops.

The bishops are also following contraception and abortion-related mandates imposed by the Biden administration, including an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rule that reinterprets “sex” harassment to include discrimination based on a woman’s decision to have or not have an abortion. 

The rule requires that employers make accommodations for a woman who receives an abortion, which could include mandatory leave. These laws are being challenged in court.

Another concern for bishops is what they called an “intense bipartisan interest” in increasing the availability of IVF. They cited bills that introduce “an IVF mandate into Congress” by mandating insurance coverage, which the USCCB notes is “a mandate with which Catholic institutions cannot comply.”

The bishops expressed support for the Conscience Protection Act, which would bolster religious liberty and conscience protections in health care and health insurance regulatory rules.

Other religious liberty concerns

The bishops are also following other issues that could have religious liberty implications, which includes education, antisemitism, “debanking,” and cultural views about blasphemy. 

According to the bishops, “parental choice in education [is] one of the longest-running areas of concern for American Catholics.” The document references the ongoing Supreme Court case that will determine whether the school board in Montgomery County, Maryland, violated the First Amendment rights of parents by refusing to let them opt out of coursework that promotes gender ideology. 

The bishops are also following some bills, such as the Equal Campus Access Act, which would ensure that religious groups on college campuses receive the same treatment as secular ones.

The document also expresses concern about “widespread antisemitism,” which includes “reports of antisemitic incidents [that] emerged from the campus protests that began following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.”

Additionally, the bishops noted certain unique concerns such as “debanking,” which refers to banks closing accounts of people “on the basis of political and religious viewpoints.” The document also highlights the cultural acceptance of blasphemy and sacrilege, specifically noting the mockery of the Last Supper at the Paris Olympics.

Pope Francis waves to the crowd in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican during his Wednesday general audience on Jan. 22, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Jan 22, 2025 / 09:50 am (CNA).

Pope Francis on Wednesday continued his yearlong jubilee catechesis series on “Jesus Christ Our Hope,” emphasizing that those who trust in God have no reason to fear.

“The presence of the Lord always gives us this grace of not fearing,” the Holy Father said at his Jan. 22 general audience. “He says to Mary: ‘Do not be afraid! … And he says to us too: ‘Do not be afraid, keep going; do not be afraid!’”

Reflecting on St. Luke’s Gospel account of the annunciation and incarnation of Jesus Christ, the pope encouraged Catholics to constantly live in “the presence of the Lord” by welcoming the “Word of God” — just like the Blessed Virgin Mary — into their lives.

“Mary welcomes the Word in her own flesh and thus launches the greatest mission ever entrusted to a woman, to a human creature,” he told his listeners. “She places herself in service: She is full of everything, not like a slave but as a collaborator of God the Father.”

“Let ourselves open our ears to the divine Word and to welcome it and cherish it, so that it may transform our hearts into tabernacles of his presence, in hospitable homes where hope grows,” he added.

After greeting the groups of international pilgrims in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall, the pope asked people to pray for the people of Los Angeles, who are still suffering from the ongoing wildfires. 

The Holy Father also asked people to pray for peace in Ukraine, Myanmar, Israel, and Palestine. 

At the end of the general audience, the Pope also shared news he heard from Gaza: “Yesterday I called — I do it every day — the parish in Gaza: They were happy! There are 600 people there, between the parish and school.” 

“And they told me, ‘Today we had lentils with chicken.’ Something they were not used to doing in these times: just some vegetables, something … They were happy!”

Afordia speaks to CNA in Rome on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025, about being attacked by terrorists in Nigeria. / Credit: Alberto Basile/CNA

Vatican City, Jan 22, 2025 / 09:20 am (CNA).

A Nigerian woman whose husband was killed by Boko Haram in 2014 has asked for prayers for persecuted Christians and for the terrorist group, “that they will be saved, that Jesus will reveal himself to their heart, so that they will repent.” 

“I prayed for those that have killed my husband and said, ‘I have forgiven you from my heart. There is no problem.’ They don’t know what they are doing. They are unbelievers,” Afordia, who asked to be identified by her first name only, told CNA during an interview in Rome last week. 

Afordia traveled from her hometown of Mubi in northeast Nigeria — where extremism is concentrated — to share her testimony at a Jan. 15 presentation on worldwide Christian persecution from advocacy group Open Doors. 

The World Watch List 2025 identified Nigeria, which has been grappling with Muslim extremist violence since 2009, as one of the world’s worst countries for Christian persecution. The report found that 3,100 Christians were killed in Nigeria in 2024.

Afordia, whose husband was shot in front of her after declaring himself to be a Christian, said despite what it has cost her, she will never give up her faith in Jesus Christ. 

“What God is doing is the truth. Christianity is the truth. Christ is the only one that saves,” she told CNA. “Even if today, they will kill me, they will pierce my body, one, one, one, one, like that, I will not stop following Christ because he is the Savior of this body and the Savior of this life.” 

Afordia’s story   

Boko Haram, a Muslim extremist sect classified as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, attacked Mubi, Nigeria, on Oct. 29, 2014. 

Afordia described the confusion that broke out in Mubi that day, as the mid-morning’s business was broken by the noise of guns and bombs, and the city’s residents rushed home from work and school. 

Afordia, who helped support her family as a community health worker and poultry farmer, and her husband, a pastor at Triumph of Faith Pentecostal Church, got in their car to search for their five children, who had gone missing in the chaos of the attack. 

That was when the couple unwittingly drove into an ambush.  

“They stopped me and my husband asked both of us to come out of the car, which we did, and the Boko Haram started asking him questions: ‘Are you a Muslim or an infidel?’ He said, ‘I am not a Muslim. I am not an infidel. I am a Christian.’ And that was how he was asked to turn to the right-hand side of the road, which he did,” Afordia recalled.

“Immediately he went and knelt down and was praying,” she said. The extremists shot her husband five times in the head as she watched. 

After killing her husband, the men turned to Afordia and asked her the same questions. “I closed my eyes. I was so afraid, scared to see how they would kill me,” she said. “I raised my two hands to the sky. I was praying in my heart, ‘Lord, receive my soul today because I will go and see you.’ So in that position I heard a shout from the other side, from the Boko Haram themselves: ‘Stop it! Who asked you to kill this woman? Leave her alone.’”

Amazingly, the attackers let Afordia leave with her car and drive away. She soon found her youngest child, a teenager at the time, and the two of them abandoned the car and escaped into the mountains. 

With help, they were eventually evacuated to the state capital, where Afordia was eventually reunited with her other four young adult children. She returned to Mubi about a month later, after the town had been liberated by the government. She explained that many of Mubi’s residents, however, never went back after the attack. 

She recovered her husband’s body, which had dried in the sun, and gave it a proper burial, but she was suffering from trauma. “I was so scattered,” she described. “Sleepless nights. I was not myself. I was just walking like a mad woman. To me, life doesn’t mean anything again.”

The Open Doors group helped Afordia receive mental health treatment in Brazil. They also provided financial assistance, since she had lost her livelihood following the attack. 

“So that was how I was able to gather myself again,” she said. “And at that time thoughts were coming to my heart to remember what Jesus taught about forgiveness. And I was able to remember, and I prayed for those that have killed my husband.”

Today, Afordia is a retired grandmother to five who continues to grow her own produce and to assist at her Presbyterian church, where she teaches the faith. 

Asking for prayers, she said it would be better to be killed than to be subjugated to the brutal torture some Christians in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan countries have experienced.  

“So, so many cruel things are happening. I want the Christians where there is less persecution to pray for Christians [in Africa] that God would deliver them, that God will see them and rescue them.”

“What gives me courage?” she said. “In the first place, Christ is the one that gives life. There is no salvation in any other except in Christ."

“When God was creating his world, darkness covered it. And when darkness covered it in Genesis Chapter 1, God did not mind about that darkness. He continued to say let there be light, let there be this, let there be this. So this gives me courage to continue as a Christian, even though the devil is seriously attacking what God has initiated. It will not stop me from following Christ because I know that is the truth,” she affirmed. 

“Any other religion ... that comes is just to oppose what God has planned for man,” Afordia added. “He planned his things in a way that man should be saved.”

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (left) shakes hands with Father Josef Grünwidl, whom Pope Francis appointed as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Vienna on Jan. 22, 2025. / Credit: Archdiocese of Vienna/Stephan Schönlaub

Rome Newsroom, Jan 22, 2025 / 07:04 am (CNA).

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, OP, concluded his term as archbishop of Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday, his 80th birthday, when Pope Francis accepted his resignation.

Schönborn, a theologian who led Austria’s most populous archdiocese for three decades, helped write the Catechism of the Catholic Church and chaired the Austrian bishops’ conference for 22 years. He is currently chairman of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals.

The Vatican announced Jan. 22 that Pope Francis had accepted Schönborn’s resignation and appointed an apostolic administrator, Father Josef Grünwidl, to oversee the Vienna Archdiocese until the appointment of Schönborn’s successor.

“The fact that Rome has created an interim solution shows us that Pope Francis has apparently not yet made a decision on who should be the next archbishop of Vienna. Since the process is already well advanced, we hope for a decision in the coming weeks,” archdiocesan spokesman Michael Prüller said in a statement Wednesday.

Schönborn remains a member of the College of Cardinals, to which he was elevated in 1998, but at 80 years of age, he is no longer eligible to vote in a conclave.

In a video message to Vienna’s Catholics on Wednesday, Schönborn said: “Above all, I have to thank God and I have to thank you all. The decisive experience in my almost 30 years in office has been: Church only works together, society only works together.”

On Jan. 18, the cardinal celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving in St. Stephen’s Cathedral for his nearly 30 years at the helm of the Vienna Archdiocese.

In his homily, Schönborn reflected on his personal history of coming to Austria as a refugee at under 1 year of age and the welcome his family received.

“They come as strangers and make their home here, they become Austrians. They bring their languages, cultures, and religions with them. They enrich, not without tensions, our country and shape its future,” he said. “A sober look at the demographics of Austria and Europe must make it clear to us that the future will not be different. The success of this coexistence of residents and newcomers is crucial for our future.”

In his last public appearance as archbishop, the cardinal also lamented Austria’s shrinking Catholic population, saying he felt conflicted “between the joyful festival of thanksgiving that we are celebrating and the great farewell that so many people in our country are making, mostly in silence, from the Church.”

“Will the Europe of cathedrals become a large open-air museum for tourists from all over the world?” he added.

The Church leader was born to a titled family in 1945 in Bohemia in what was then Nazi Germany and is now part of the Czech Republic.

He grew up in western Austria, close to the border with Switzerland, and joined the Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominicans, in 1963. 

He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Vienna in 1970. He went on to study sacred theology in Paris and in Regensburg, Germany, under the then-Father Joseph Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI.

Schönborn was awarded a doctorate in sacred theology in the 1970s and was later made a member of the prestigious International Theological Commission of the Vatican.

He was editorial secretary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in 1991, Pope John Paul II named the theologian an auxiliary bishop of Vienna.

After being appointed coadjutor archbishop of Vienna in April 1995, he succeeded Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër, OSB, as archbishop of Vienna on Sept. 14, 1995.

Book cover/Cardinal Robert Sarah. / Credit: Cantagalli / Paul Badde/ACI Prensa

ACI Prensa Staff, Jan 22, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

“Does God Exist?: The Cry of Man Asking for Salvation” is the title of a new interview book by Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Congregation — now Dicastery — for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

In the book published in Italian at the end of 2024, the African cardinal answers various questions posed by journalist David Cantagalli and explains that the text “arises from an attempt to answer the questions of the editor … who with authentic apostolic zeal” wanted to ask “difficult questions.”

“I have sought the answers in my personal history and in my heart, in the magisterium of the Church and in that of the popes who have marked my life, and, last but not least, in the fruitful dialogue with friends, priests, and laypeople, who live an authentic passion for Christ and for the Church, bearing witness in the world to him whom they have encountered,” Sarah writes.

In a recent interview with Il Timone of Italy and reported by Religion en Libertad, the cardinal explained why it is man and not God who has “died” in the West: “The West is experiencing a profound identity and anthropological crisis in which man, in his truth and beauty, seems no longer to be aware of his dignity and his vocation to happiness, to the fulfilment of his personal being.”

The cardinal also noted that “it is obvious that all this has remote roots, starting from the substitution of the Augustinian ‘amo ergo sum’ (‘I love, therefore I am’) with the Cartesian ‘cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’), thus reducing relational ontology to subjective self-consciousness, depriving man of that healthy relationship with reality on which ontology, the knowledge of one’s being, is founded.”

The crisis of faith

Sarah warned that there is in fact a crisis of faith in today’s world and that it is now at “the deepest and most crucial” point.

As for those who give their lives to God, he emphasized that “I would not say that consecrated persons ‘don’t believe’; rather, I am convinced that, precisely because of the cultural conditions unfavorable to the radical nature of virginity for the kingdom of heaven, those who respond to the vocation today have a serious and radical initial intention.”

“The most discussed point is that of fidelity, over time, to the task that God has assigned. In an increasingly hostile cultural context, with the fragmentation of relationships, which does not allow us to perceive the support and warmth of a believing community, it is increasingly complex to live the radical nature of the Gospel. I believe that this is the crucial point for all laypeople and consecrated persons, for all the baptized.”

Regarding those who leave the Catholic Church, the African cardinal lamented that “those who leave are always making a mistake. They are making a mistake because they abandon [their] Mother; they are making a mistake because they commit a very dangerous act of pride, setting themselves up as judges of the Church.”

“Sometimes not everything is immediately understandable, and some things may seem completely inappropriate, not adequately considered, even pastorally unfounded or harmful; despite all this, this does not authorize them to leave.”

Who is Cardinal Robert Sarah?

Sarah, 79, is one of the most distinguished cardinals in Africa and the universal Church. He is a staunch defender of the liturgy, the right to life, the family, and religious freedom. On June 15, when he turns 80, he will no longer be a cardinal-elector for a possible conclave to elect the pope’s successor.

He has criticized gender ideology, an approach that considers gender to be a sociocultural construct rather than identical to one’s sex. 

In 2018, during the Synod of Bishops on Young People, he pointed out that “watering down” Catholic moral doctrine in the area of sexuality will not succeed in attracting young people.

He was prefect of the Congregation — now Dicastery — for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments during the pontificates of Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

He is the author of books such as “God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith,” “The Power of Silence,” “The Day is Now Far Spent,” and “From the Depths of Our Hearts,” the latter written with Pope Benedict XVI.

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