Cardinal Robert McElroy gives his first homily as the shepherd of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on March 11, 2025. / Credit: Patrick Ruddy/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 30, 2025 / 18:42 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Robert McElroy delivered a homily on Sunday urging Catholics to “embrace in a sustained, unwavering, prophetic, and compassionate way” migrants to the U.S. at a Mass for the 11th World Day of Migrants and Refugees. 

“For the past 110 years, Mass has been celebrated throughout our country to honor and support immigrants and refugees who have come to our nation as part of that stream of men and women from every land who have built up the United States into a great nation,” McElroy said in his homily at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Northwest D.C. on Sept. 28.  

“But this year is different from the 110 years that have preceded it,” he said, “for this year we are confronting — both as a nation and as a Church — an unprecedented assault upon millions of immigrant men and women and families in our midst.”

McElroy described the Trump administration’s approach to immigration as “a comprehensive campaign to uproot millions of families” that “relies on fear and terror at its core.” The Trump administration’s goal, he said, “is simple and unitary: to rob undocumented immigrants of any real peace in their lives so that in misery they will ‘self-deport.’” 

Addressing the administration’s assertion that all migrants who enter the country illegally should be removed, McElroy argued that the Gospel “proposes a far different measure” that migrants are “our neighbors.” 

Referencing the parable of the good Samaritan, McElroy argued that “the most striking element” of the story was “that the Samaritan was willing to reject the norms of society which said that because of his birth and status he had no obligation to the victim, who was a Jew.” 

“The piercing insight and glory of the Samaritan was that he rejected the narrowness and myopia of the law to understand that the victim he was passing by was truly his neighbor and that both God and the moral law obligated him to treat him as neighbor,” he stated. 

McElroy referenced the Catholic community in Washington, D.C., who he said has witnessed many migrants of faith who “have been swept up and deported in the crackdown which has been unleashed in our nation.”

“We are witnessing a comprehensive governmental assault designed to produce fear and terror among millions of men and women who have through their presence in our nation been nurturing precisely the religious, cultural, communitarian, and familial bonds that are most frayed and most valuable at this moment in our country’s history,” McElroy said.

McElroy noted that Catholic social teaching categorizes border security and the deportation of criminals convicted of “serious crimes” as legitimate national goals.

However, he said, “at times, our government asserts that these goals constitute the essence and scope of its immigration enforcement efforts, and if that were true Catholic teaching would raise no objection.”

Ultimately, the cardinal called on Catholics to “form our stance and action as people of faith,” to “stand in solidarity with the undocumented men and women whose lives are being upended by the government’s campaign of fear and terror.”

Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan carries the thurible around the altar inside Louis Armstrong Stadium on April 20, 2024. / Credit: Jeffrey Bruno

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 30, 2025 / 17:32 pm (CNA).

Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan is calling on the faithful to contact New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to oppose the assisted suicide legislation that currently awaits her signature.

“Our fight against assisted suicide is not over,” Brennan said in a post on the social media platform X.

Assisted suicide is not yet legal in New York, but the Medical Aid in Dying Act was passed by the state Legislature in June and will become legal upon Hochul’s signature. The law will allow terminally ill New York residents who are over 18 to request medically assisted death.

“Gov. Hochul, we know difficult decisions weigh heavily on leaders and you carefully consider the impact of every decision on New Yorkers,” Brennan wrote. “As you review the assisted suicide legislation, we respectfully urge you to veto it.”

“Assisted suicide targets the poor, the vulnerable, and especially individuals suffering with mental illness. There are better ways to support those facing end-of-life challenges, through improved palliative care, pain management, and compassionate support systems.”

In a video to the faithful, Brennan addressed Hochul and said: “You championed New York’s suicide prevention program and invested millions of dollars to, as you said, ‘ensure New Yorkers are aware of this critical resource.’ That groundbreaking program has worked to provide the right training and crisis intervention measures to prevent suicides.”

Hochul has previously launched several campaigns to bring New York suicide rates down including a crisis hotline and initiatives to help schools, hospitals, first responders, and veterans. She has also helped develop and fund a number of youth suicide prevention programs.

The programs offer “hope to those who are most in need,” Brennan said. He added: “But now you are being asked to sign a bill that contradicts your efforts and targets high-risk populations. How can we justify preventing suicide for some while helping others to die?”

In support of the New York State Catholic Conference’s mission to “work with the government to shape laws and policies that pursue social justice, respect for life, and the common good,” Brennan asked the faithful to message the governor directly with a pre-written email to stop the legislation.

“I urge Catholics to reach out to Gov. Hochul now and to ask her to stay consistent on this issue,” Brennan said. “Let us continue to pray for the respect of all life and the human dignity of all people.”

Lobbying against the legislation is ‘critical’ 

Catholic bioethicist Father Tad Pacholczyk told CNA that “it’s critical” that New Yorkers “respond to the bishop’s call for action.” 

“The push of anti-life forces has continued unabated for many years, and the incessant turning of the wheels of their finely-tuned propaganda machine has managed to gradually draw more and more of us into a perspective of complacency when it comes to physician-assisted suicide,” he said.

Pacholczyk added: “Combined with a tendency to substitute emotion for ethical reasoning, prevalent in much of the media and society, I think we stand on the edge of a well-greased slope, poised to hurl down headlong.”

The bioethicist highlighted that if assisted suiside “is not outlawed and strong protections for vulnerable patients are not enacted,” the U.S is likely to replicate the repercussions seen in Canada, which is experiencing disproportionately high rates of premature deaths among vulnerable groups.

“We need to do what we can to light a fire and raise heightened awareness of the rights of patients not to be pressured in this manner,” Pacholczyk said. “We also need to take steps to offer real support and accompaniment to our loved ones as they pass through one of the most important stretches of their lives, so their journey can be indelibly imprinted by a genuinely good and holy death.”

null / Credit: crystal51/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 30, 2025 / 16:45 pm (CNA).

China tries to exert total control over religion, and the U.S. Department of State should redesignate China as a “country of particular concern” regarding religious freedom, according to reports by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

USCIRF, a federal commission that monitors religious freedom worldwide, said China uses surveillance, fines, retribution against family members, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, and other forms of abuse to control the Catholic Church and other religious communities in the nation. USCIRF issued an overview of the Chinese government’s persecution of religious leaders from various religious denominations this month.

In 2024, “religious freedom conditions in China remained among the worst in the world,” the USCIRF’s 2025 annual report said. USCIRF called for the State Department to renew its formal designation which can trigger legal action including diplomatic measures, sanctions, or international pressure. China has been redesignated as a country of particular concern nearly every year since 1999.

China used “high-tech surveillance outside places of worship and other means to repress religious freedom throughout the country,” the USCIRF wrote in its annual report. “It also weaponized transnational repression and disinformation by using emerging technologies to quash voices critical of the country’s religious freedom and related human rights violations,” the report said.

While the Vatican and China extended a provisional agreement on bishop appointments in 2024, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has intensified its “sinicization of religion” policy under President Xi Jinping that forces state-sanctioned religious groups to align their doctrines with the party’s political ideology. Many faithful communities hold underground religious gatherings because the country’s control over worship, publications, and finance is strong.

Authorities have threatened religious communities “to force them into silence,” the annual report said. The report detailed cases when Chinese authorities “detained, forcibly disappeared, or refused to disclose the whereabouts of underground Catholic clergy who declined to join the state-controlled Catholic organization.”

In a September report, USCIRF highlighted a case that began in February when authorities reportedly fined bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of the Diocese of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province $27,880 for celebrating Mass in public. In March, police detained Shao for a week for refusing to pay the fine and then arrested him again just before Holy Week to prevent him from celebrating Masses. 

In July, reports surfaced that authorities tried to force Shao to accept state-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association control by arresting and threatening religious and laypeople. 

The whereabouts of several of the detained underground Catholics, including bishops James Su Zhimin and Joseph Zhang Weizhu, remain unknown. 

Protestant churches faced similar punishments from law enforcement for refusing to join the state-controlled Protestant organization, USCIRF said. In turn, “police raided house churches and harassed, detained, fined, and imprisoned members on reportedly fabricated charges, including ‘fraud’ and ‘subversion.’”

After analyzing its findings, the USCIRF found: “Religious groups who refuse to submit to the government’s all-encompassing control over religious affairs face widespread persecution. State-controlled religious organizations implement sinicization through intrusive oversight and ‘Five-Year Sinicization Work Plans,’ which emphasize loyalty and conformity to [the Chinese Communist Party] ideological requirements.”

USCIRF’s recommendations

Besides calling for the country’s redesignation, the commission recommended the U.S. government with international partners sanction Chinese officials and entities responsible for “severe religious freedom violations.” It also called for working with partners to address China’s use of technology to commit religious freedom violations as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act, especially in regard to developing technologies and artificial intelligence. 

Congress should “consider legislation to tighten restrictions on China’s use of technologies that facilitate human rights abuses and suppression of freedom of religion or belief” and “ban paid lobbying in the United States by agents representing the Chinese government,” the report said.

The State Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Pope Leo XIV waves to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for his general audience on Sept.24, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media

Rome Newsroom, Sep 30, 2025 / 15:36 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV responded to controversy over the Chicago cardinal’s plans to honor a Catholic U.S. senator who supports legalized abortion, saying that the senator’s record should be considered in its totality and that Americans should search together for the truth on ethical issues.

Several U.S. bishops condemned Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich’s plans to honor U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, with a “lifetime achievement award” for his work surrounding immigration policy despite his pro-abortion voting record. 

“I am not terribly familiar with the particular case. I think it’s important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I’m not mistaken, in 40 years of service in the United States Senate,” the pope told reporters on Tuesday in response to a question from EWTN News.

He said: “I understand the difficulty and the tensions. But I think as I myself have spoken in the past, it’s important to look at many issues that are related to the teachings of the Church.”

“Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” the pope explained. “Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro life.”

“So they are very complex issues and I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them,” he continued, “but I would ask first and foremost that they would have respect for one another and that we search together both as human beings and in that case as American citizens and citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics, to say that we need to be close to all of these ethical issues. And to find the way forward as a Church. The Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear.”

The number of U.S. bishops who have condemned Cupich’s decision to honor Durbin with a “lifetime achievement award” has risen to 10, including two bishops emeritus. 

The Chicago-born Pope Leo spoke to reporters as he was leaving the papal villa of Castel Gandolfo near Rome, where in recent weeks he has made it a practice to spend Tuesdays before returning to the Vatican.

Seven current bishops have joined Springfield, Illinois, Bishop Thomas Paprocki in calling on Cupich to reconsider honoring Durbin including Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco; Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska; Bishop James Wall of Gallup, New Mexico; Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wisconsin; Bishop Carl Kemme of Wichita, Kansas; Bishop James Johnston of St. Joseph-Kansas City, Missouri; and Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth, Texas. 

The recently retired Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, also addressed the controversy over the weekend in a statement released to the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, in which he referred to the move by Cupich as a “source of scandal.” 

Cupich has defended the award as being aligned with instructions by the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2022, which instructed bishops “to reach out to and engage in dialogue with Catholic politicians within their jurisdictions.”

A spokesperson for Cupich did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Responding to Cupich’s argument, Naumann said in the statement: “Dialogue does not require giving awards to Catholic political leaders who disregard the most fundamental of human rights, the right to life of the unborn.” 

Bishop Emeritus Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has also called on Cupich to reverse his decision to proceed with the award. 

In an interview on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo” on Sept. 25, Paprocki called on the Chicago cardinal to either withdraw the award or Durbin himself to decline it. 

A spokesperson for Durbin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cupich has since canceled meetings with two groups of Illinois Catholic leaders, the Catholic Conference of Illinois and a separate meeting of Illinois bishops, this past week. 

So far, the Illinois bishops of Peoria, Rockford, and Joliet have refrained from joining Paprocki in calling for Cupich to reverse his decision, while the Diocese of Belleville is currently awaiting the appointment of a new bishop, after its former Bishop Michael McGovern was appointed archbishop of Omaha.

This story was updated on Sept. 30, 2025, at 4:23 p.m. ET with the various bishops’ comments.

The flag of Slovakia, pictured in the country’s capital, Bratislava. / Credit: RossHelen/Shutterstock

Rome, Italy, Sep 30, 2025 / 11:30 am (CNA).

Slovakia’s recently-amended constitution, which aims to protect family, marriage, and parenthood, has been called an “important step” by the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia.

Saint Jerome Writing, a painting by Caravaggio, dated to 1605–06. / Credit: Public domain

CNA Staff, Sep 30, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

The Vulgate became the predominantly used Bible of the Middle Ages and has endured to this day.

null / Credit: maxuser/Shutterstock

Rome, Italy, Sep 29, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

What exactly is transhumanism, and how does the Church approach it? 

The longtime pro-life advocate Anna Záborská served in both the Slovak and European Parliaments during her political career. / Credit: The Collegium of Anton Neuwirth

Rome, Italy, Sep 27, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Anna Záborská, 77, built a career spanning both Slovak and European Parliaments while championing traditional family values, religious freedom, and the rights of the unborn.

St. Vincent de Paul. / Credit: Public domain

CNA Staff, Sep 27, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

On Sept. 27 the Catholic Church remembers St. Vincent de Paul, the 17th-century French priest known as the patron of Catholic charities.

Cardinal Lucian Mureşan, major archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church in Romania, died Sept. 25, 2025, at age 94. / Credit: Mihai Andrei, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

ACI Prensa Staff, Sep 26, 2025 / 15:58 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Lucian Mureşan carried out his ministry clandestinely until 1989. According to Vatican News, he died at his residence in Blaj, Romania, after several months of illness.