St. Daniel Church

Bolaños stated that he expected the Church in Spain to finance most of the fund; the bishops’ conference countered that “it could not accept a plan that excluded victims of sexual abuse in other organizations,” Reuters reported.

Extrapolating from a survey of 8,000 people, a parliamentary commission announced in October that an estimated 230,000 Spaniards (0.6% of the population) had been abused by priests and that an additional estimated 210,000 (0.5%) had been abused by laity in Catholic institutions.

In December, an audit commissioned by the Spanish bishops, and conducted by a law firm, found that a far smaller number—at least 2,056 minors, most of them male—were abused by Spanish clergy.

At his April 24 general audience, held in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis reflected on the life of grace according to the Spirit, in the latest talk in a series of Wednesday general audiences devoted to the virtues and vices.

The commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the attacks—including a moment of silence and a procession from one targeted church to the other—“was a moment of great spiritual intensity for the Catholic community of Sri Lanka,” said Father Jude Chrysantha Fernando, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Colombo. “The memory of these heroes of the faith is alive and a source of inspiration for many.”

The teenager who was arrested after the assault on Mar Mari Emmanuel was a part of the group, which was organized around a “religiously motivated, violent extremist ideology,” a spokesman for prosecutors said. Police said that the arrests were made to keep the community safe from further attacks.

Officials did not identify those arrested because they are minors. Nor did they identify the religion with which the teenagers were allied. But witnesses have reported that the teen who attacked Mar Mari Emmanuel shouted about insults to the prophet Mohammed.

Australian courts have banned social-media platforms in Australia from showing videos of the violent attack on the Assyrian Orthodox prelate. X (formerly Twitter) has announced that it will challenge the ban.

“Inaccuracies (now corrected) had crept in during the transition from the original version of the interview (in Italian) to translations into other languages, leaving room for misinterpretations,” Fides reported. “We therefore apologize to the Cardinal himself and to all those who may have been perplexed or embittered by the content and catchphrases used in the reactions to the article.”

The Capuchin Franciscan cardinal is the sole African member of the Pope’s nine-member advisory Council of Cardinals.

The Pope of “martyred Ukraine” and of Gaza that “suffers so much.” He offered a prayer for peace in the Holy Land, “that they may be two states, free and with good relations.”

In their statement Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne and Bishops Gregor Hanke of Eichstätt, Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, and Stefan Oster of Passau said that Synodal Council proposed by the episcopal conference is “not compatible with the sacramental constitution of the Church,” as the Vatican has repeatedly warned. They went on to say that because they do not accept the initiative, it is not accurate to say that it has the support of the episcopal conference.

The four bishops said that they will wait for the Synod on Synodality to provide more guidance on how to create a synodal structure that is more in keeping with the mission of the universal Church.

Cardinal Victor Fernandez, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that his offie is “finalizing a new text with clear guidelines and norms for discernment of apparitions and other phenomena.”

The statement, Intricately Woven by the Lord, acknowledges the “complex but essential pastoral task” of helping people who suffer from gender dysphoria. But the statement adds: “The sexual identity of the person as man or woman is not purely cultural or social construction. It belongs to the specific manner in which the image of God exists.”

In a remarkably mild expression of opposition to “gender-affirming” surgery, the bishops’ statement says: “We cannot encourage support for reconstructive or drug based medical intervention that harms the body.”

Dr. Hilary Cass, who prepared her report for the National Health Service, said that she was dismayed by the reaction to her report, and particularly by grossly inaccurate accounts of what she had actually written.