Prince of Peace Parish

Pope Francis praises the vow of poverty in religious life as a bond that builds communion, as he greets the Canoness Sisters of the Holy Spirit in Saxony.

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"La Chimera" directed by Alice Rohrwacher and released in 2023 is one of the movies selected by Vatican Official and film expert, Msgr Dario Viganò, to be part of the Dicastery of Evangelization's "Jubilee is Culture" initiative. Father Greg Apparcel, CSP, film critic, associate pastor of St. Patrick's Catholic American Parish in Rome, and the Paulist Fathers’ Procurator General to the Holy See brings us this review.

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Pope Francis commends members of Caritas Toledo for 60 years of charitable service, urging them to continue fostering societal change through charity, justice, and faith.

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Following a recent visit to the Holy Land, Alistair Dutton speaks to Vatican News about the "inhumanity and brutality" of the ongoing conflict and the resilience of Palestinian Christians.

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The Catholic Bishops of South Korea have criticized President Yoon Suk Yeol’s recent declaration of martial law, urging him to take responsibility for what they described as a “procedurally illegitimate” decision.

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Madrid, Spain, Dec 4, 2024 / 17:10 pm (CNA).

“Faith is not imposed, but it doesn’t hide” is how Jaime Mayor Oreja, the driving force behind the pro-life and pro-family summit held Dec. 1–2 in Spain’s Senate chamber, summed up the Christian position in the face of forces in the world that seek to suppress outward expressions of faith. 

The theme for this year’s event was “For Freedom and the Culture of Life.”

Spain’s former minister of the interior and honorary president of the Political Network for Values ​​(PNfV) denounced “the sick obsession against the Christian foundations [of society], the contempt for science and biology, and the perverse manipulation of history” by those who tried to prevent the meeting from being held. Some 300 political and civic leaders from 45 countries on three continents participated in the event.

“They call us fundamentalists because we defend the foundations [of society]. But it’s the opposite, because we defend the regeneration” of the Western world, argued Mayor, who affirmed the group’s conviction of being “at the forefront of the debate over the future,” which will be characterized by being “between those who don’t believe in anything and those who want to believe and have permanent [points of] reference.”

“We don’t have to be afraid at all, even though the prevailing fashion is to be enraged,” Mayor said while proclaiming that “the defense of the right to life is the foundation, the pillar of all our positions within this cultural debate.”

“Let’s not lose our cool, as they are losing theirs with us,” the leader urged, before concluding that “by the solidity of our foundations, not by embracing extremism, let us know how to fulfill our obligation to the truth: to tell the truth, to defend the truth, and also sometimes to suffer for the truth.”

Lola Velarde, the executive director of the PNfV, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that the participants in the summit had come to Spain to “defend the infinite dignity of the human person, from which a culture of life is born and of course the freedom to be able to defend these values.”

José Antonio Kast: ‘They hate us because they fear us’

During the summit’s introductory panel, the leader of the Republican Party of Chile, José Antonio Kast, also spoke.

In the words of Chilean politician Jaime Guzmán, who was murdered by left-wing groups, Kast gave an explanation for the attempts to cancel, persecute, and disqualify this summit: “They hate us because they fear us. And they fear us because they know we can’t be eliminated.”

“They know that we are brave and that we will never give up in the defense of our values,” he added.

Kast recalled that 10 years ago the first international summit of the PNfV was held, a time during which “this network has been strengthened and expanded with parliamentarians from dozens of countries, with opinion leaders, with researchers, advisers, and members of different governments.”

Kast announced that he was stepping down as president of the PNfV to mount another electoral bid for the presidency of Chile. “The time has come for me and my family to face a tremendous challenge, which is to run for president of our country, and we are doing it as a family,” he said.

Kast ran against Gabriel Boric in the 2021 Chilean presidential election and lost.

Before the summit began in the Senate, the apostolic nuncio in Spain, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, celebrated Mass at the Monastery of the Incarnation, located near the Senate chamber, where a small group of abortion advocates gathered.

Aúza emphasized that human dignity, as set forth in Dignitas Infinita, is the “fundamental principle and basis of our culture,” without whose recognition “it would not be possible to live in society.”

The prelate explained that this dignity exists “beyond all circumstances” and must be defended “in every cultural context” and, after thanking the participants in the summit for their work, encouraged them to “educate the conscience of many to recognize the centrality of human dignity.”

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

CNA Staff, Dec 4, 2024 / 16:40 pm (CNA).

Two churches in New Jersey have won a victory against county officials who were excluding them from a historic preservation grant program, a ruling that comes after a key Catholic religious liberty clinic backed their lawsuit. 

First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based religious liberty legal group, said in a Monday press release that the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey issued a preliminary injunction against Morris County ordering officials to allow two churches to participate in the county’s Historic Preservation Trust Fund. 

In her ruling this week, District Judge Evelyn Padin said the case “illustrates the inherent tension” between the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom and its barring of government endorsement of religion. 

The court determined that a “likely free exercise clause violation” stemmed from the county’s policy. The injunction does not order the churches to receive county funding but rather to make them eligible for it. 

Jeremy Dys, an attorney with First Liberty Institute, said in the group’s press release that the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly “declared that all forms of religious discrimination by the government are unconstitutional.” 

“We are thrilled that the court recognized that religious institutions cannot be excluded from public funding programs like preservation grants simply because of their religious character or religious activities,” Dys said. 

The parishes, Mendham Methodist Church and Zion Lutheran Church Long Valley, were supported in their lawsuit by the University of Notre Dame School of Law’s Religious Liberty Clinic, which argued in June that the county’s barring the churches from the program “violates the law and harms congregations and their surrounding communities.”

The Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic had argued that barring the churches from the grant program “threatens significant harms that can never be undone,” up to and including church closures. 

The county policy is “squarely unconstitutional,” the clinic said.

The county rule came from a 2018 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that asserted that including the churches in the historic grant preservation program violated the state constitution. 

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider a review of the state Supreme Court’s decision, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a statement after that decision that the state rule appeared to be unconstitutional. 

“Barring religious organizations because they are religious from a general historic preservation grants program is pure discrimination against religion,” he said. 

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 4, 2024 / 16:10 pm (CNA).

Several United States Supreme Court justices during oral arguments on Wednesday morning challenged claims that a Tennessee law banning transgender drugs or surgeries for minors constitutes a form of “sex” discrimination.

The state law, which went into effect in July 2023, prohibits doctors from performing transgender surgeries on anyone under the age of 18 and does not allow doctors to prescribe them any drugs to facilitate a gender transition, such as puberty blockers or hormones.

Tennessee’s law is being challenged by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and by families who live in the state, who are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee.

The Supreme Court’s decision could have a wide-ranging effect across the country. There are currently 24 states that prohibit both transgender surgeries and drugs for minors. Another two states — New Hampshire and Arizona — prohibit the surgeries but not the drugs. Numerous state-level laws currently face legal challenges.

DOJ and ACLU argue ‘sex’ discrimination

United States Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who made oral arguments on behalf of the DOJ, told the justices that the state law “regulates by drawing sex-based lines” and that this constitutes a “facial sex classification, full stop,” which implicates the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. 

Attorney Chase Strangio, who argued on behalf of the ACLU, built on that claim, stating that a male can legally access puberty blockers and hormone treatments if he has early-onset puberty to ensure he goes through puberty at a normal age. However, Strangio said, a biological girl could not access the same drugs if she desires to go through puberty like a boy would.

“It is clearly a sex classification on its face,” Strangio added.

Prelogar said that under the law, “your access to drugs depends on your birth sex.”

“The state has left no out for those patients to obtain those medications when there’s a showing of individualized medical need,” she added. 

Many of the Republican-appointed justices, who make up six of the nine members of the court, appeared skeptical of that argument. They noted that the court ought to be cautious when ruling on questions when the medical standards are evolving and questioned whether this was a form of sex discrimination or simply a health and safety regulation. 

During oral arguments, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that several European countries are “pumping the brakes” on transgender drugs for children with heavy restrictions. He said when medical standards are evolving, that should be a “heavy yellow light, if not a red light” for the court when deciding whether to weigh in.

Kavanaugh further disagreed with the sex discrimination claim, stating that “it prohibits all boys and girls from transitioning.”

Justice Samuel Alito went further, citing a comprehensive review in the United Kingdom that prompted a near-total ban on transgender drugs for minors and legislative actions in other European countries to restrict those drugs.

In response, Prelogar claimed “there is a consensus that these treatments can be medically necessary for some adolescents” but acknowledged there could be some room for regulations that do not categorically ban transgender drugs for children.

The ACLU and DOJ received more sympathy from the three justices appointed by Democrats, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said “there are inherent differences between the sexes” but that “there are some children that actually need this treatment.” 

Tennessee argues against discrimination claim

Tennessee Solicitor General J. Matthew Rice, who argued on behalf of the state, told the court that the law “protects minors from risky … medication” and is entirely based on “medical purpose — not a patient’s sex,” adding that the equal protection clause “does not require the states to blind themselves to medical reality or to treat unlike things the same.”

“These interventions often carry irreversible and life-altering consequences,” he said, claiming that there are “no established benefits.”

Sotomayor quickly interrupted Rice, saying: “I’m sorry counselor, every medical treatment has a risk.” She said that a boy with early onset puberty could obtain a puberty blocker to delay the growth of unwanted facial hair but that a girl could not access the same drug to delay the development of unwanted breasts, adding that one “can get that drug but the other can’t — that’s the sex-based difference.”

Rice countered, saying: “Those are not the same medical treatment.”

“I don’t think that is an example where a sex-based line is being drawn,” he said, adding that the only thing that matters is “medical purpose.” He noted that there are already other laws restricting the prescription of hormones, arguing “you cannot use testosterone for purely cosmetic reasons” regardless of whether it is for a gender transition. 

“There is no medical treatment that boys can receive that girls can’t,” he said. 

Rice added that giving testosterone to a boy with a “deficiency” is not the same as giving testosterone to a girl who has “healthy” hormone levels and that such treatments for a girl could make her “infertile and permanently damaged.”

What the legislation does

The surgeries prohibited in the legislation include operations to remove or alter a child’s genitals to make them resemble the genitals of the opposite sex. It further prohibits chest surgeries and other aesthetic surgeries that would make the child appear more similar to the opposite sex.

Under the law, doctors cannot prescribe puberty blockers to facilitate a gender transition, which are drugs that halt a child’s natural development during puberty. When prescribed to facilitate a gender transition, the children normally begin receiving them before they are teenagers. The law also prevents doctors from prescribing excessive estrogen to boys and excessive testosterone to girls when intended to facilitate a gender transition.

Doctors and health care providers who violate the law can be fined up to $25,000. Some states have stricter penalties, including six that make it a felony. 

A report published in October by the medical watchdog group Do No Harm found that doctors in the United States provided at least 13,944 children with either transgender drugs or surgeries based on information that is publicly available — but warned that the number could be even higher. This included more than 5,700 children receiving surgeries.

St. Louis, Mo., Dec 4, 2024 / 15:40 pm (CNA).

A new amendment enshrining a right to “reproductive freedom” in Missouri is set to go into effect Thursday as the state attorney general argues that certain pro-life provisions should remain in effect despite the new amendment.

Missouri’s Amendment 3, which passed narrowly Nov. 5, mandates that the government “shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including “prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.”

Although the amendment language mentions that laws could be passed to restrict abortion past the point of “fetal viability,” the amendment simultaneously prohibits any interference with an abortion that a doctor determines is necessary to “protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”

On Election Day, a handful of the state’s most populous counties — which include urban areas such as Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia — carried the amendment to victory by an overall statewide margin of less than 2%. Meanwhile, over 100 of Missouri’s counties voted no.

Planned Parenthood asks judge to block pro-life measures

Planned Parenthood filed a 221-page lawsuit the day after the election asking a judge to block all of Missouri’s numerous pro-life protections in light of the new amendment, most notably the state’s 2019 “trigger law” that banned nearly all abortions in Missouri immediately after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Planned Parenthood went on to enumerate and challenge myriad other pro-life protections in Missouri, including the state’s 72-hour waiting period for abortions; the state’s ban on abortions done specifically for reasons of the race, sex, or a Down syndrome diagnosis of the baby; the state’s ban on “telemedicine” abortions; and the state’s requirement that only licensed physicians may perform abortions.

In addition, Missouri lawmakers in recent years have passed numerous laws designed to protect patients and limit the abortion industry’s influence, including 2017 regulations requiring that abortion doctors have surgical and admitting privileges to nearby hospitals; that abortion clinics must be licensed with the state; and that clinics must meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery.

By 2018, regulatory violations had shut down surgical abortions at all but one of the state’s abortion clinics.

In 2019, Missouri revoked the license of the state’s last abortion clinic, located in St. Louis, over safety concerns including reports of at least four botched abortions that took place there. The clinic ultimately won a 2020 decision from an independent state commission that allowed it to continue performing abortions until the overturning of Roe v. Wade allowed Missouri to ban abortion entirely, with a few exceptions. 

Missouri attorney general argues some pro-life regulations remain law 

In response to Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a legal brief in which he argued that Missouri’s regulations on abortion providers are consistent with Amendment 3 and are justified on grounds of patient safety and informed consent.

He also pointed out that Planned Parenthood has a history of violating Missouri’s abortion laws, many of which he said were passed in order to address specific problems that have occurred at Planned Parenthood facilities. 

Bailey also referenced an earlier letter he wrote to incoming Gov. Mike Kehoe in which he acknowledged that Amendment 3 coming into effect would render the state’s gestational bans on abortion “unenforceable” in most circumstances but would not “remove these statutes from the books,” meaning they could come back into effect immediately if Amendment 3 is altered in the future. 

Bailey noted that the amendment allows the state to “protect innocent life after viability,” about 24 weeks, a provision he said his office will “vigorously enforce.” In addition, Bailey said his office will continue to enforce laws designed to protect women from being coerced into abortion, as well as the state’s parental consent law that allows parents to prevent a minor child from getting an abortion. 

Despite the setback that the passage of Amendment 3 represented for the pro-life movement in Missouri, some leaders have expressed optimism that the closeness of the vote and the unity displayed by pro-life advocates in the state suggest a repeal of the amendment in the future remains a possibility. A St. Louis-area Republican representative has already introduced a resolution that could lead to a stateside vote to overturn Amendment 3. 

In a Dec. 3 press conference, Brian Westbrook of the St. Louis pro-life group Coalition Life urged Missourians to support Bailey’s efforts to keep the state’s regulations on abortion providers in place. He urged Missourians to oppose Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, contact their representatives, and support Bailey’s efforts to hold Planned Parenthood accountable.

“We cannot allow these facilities to operate without regulations and protections that have been put in place over decades to protect Missouri women,” Westbrook said.

“Simply put, the public needs to be aware of prior unsafe practices by Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers and the need to maintain commonsense safety standards that hold them accountable.”

The amendment’s appearance on the ballot was the subject of a protracted court battle earlier this year, with pro-lifers arguing that the final proposed language not only violated state law by failing to list which laws it would repeal but also misled voters about the scope and gravity of what they would be voting for. The Missouri Supreme Court ultimately voted 4-3 to allow the measure to appear before voters.

Vatican City, Dec 4, 2024 / 15:10 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis received the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, at the Vatican on Wednesday.

The meeting, which Orbán described as “an opportunity for peace,” lasted 35 minutes and took place in a room near the Paul VI classroom in the Vatican and not in the Apostolic Palace, as is customary, because it preceded the pope’s general audience.

Just prior to his meeting with the Holy Father, Orbán, a Calvinist, attended a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

In the traditional exchange of gifts, the Holy Father presented the Hungarian prime minister with a terra cotta work titled “Tenderness and Love” in addition to several volumes of papal documents, this year’s “Message for Peace,” and a book on the Statio Orbis of 2020.

For his part, Orbán presented Pope Francis with a copy of “The Life of Jesus Christ,” written in 1896 by French Dominican friar Louis Henri Didon, creator of the motto of the modern Olympic Games, “Faster, higher, stronger.” He also gave him a map of the Holy Land dated 1700.

After the audience with the Holy Father, Orbán met with the secretary of state of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and with Monsignor Mirosław Wachowski, undersecretary for Relations with States.

According to the Holy See’s press office, the meeting took place “in a cordial atmosphere” of “solid and fruitful bilateral relations.”

During the meeting, “deep gratitude” was expressed for “the commitment of the Catholic Church in promoting the development and well-being of Hungarian society.” 

In addition, issues of international relevance were addressed, such as the war in Ukraine, with special emphasis on its humanitarian consequences and efforts to promote peace.

Pro-family allies

Other issues discussed in the conversations included the central role of the family and the protection of new generations. 

Since taking office in 2010, Orbán has promoted various policies to support families, which have contributed to an increase in the birth rate and a reduction in the number of abortions. 

Also addressed was Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union, a position that the country assumed on July 1 and will maintain until Dec. 31. 

During this period, under Orbán’s leadership, Hungary has worked to strengthen the EU’s defense policy, contain illegal immigration, and address demographic challenges, among other priority objectives.

The occasion marked the fifth time Pope Francis has met with Orbán. During a previous audience in April 2022, they also focused their conversations on the war in Ukraine and the Ukrainian refugees received in Hungary.

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