Deaf Catholic community in Maryland grows with new chaplain, retreat, Eucharistic Congress

Father Mike Depcik offer Mass at the Seton Shrine Basilica in Emmitsburg, Maryland, during a recent retreat at the shrine. / Credit: Courtesy of the Seton ShrineCNA Staff, May 7, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).One of the few Deaf Catholic priests in the United States is working to renew the Church's ministry to the Deaf in Maryland and beyond through signed Masses, retreats, and an upcoming Eucharistic congress for the Deaf. Father Michael Depcik, who last year became the chaplain for the Deaf Ministry in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, was born deaf and grew up in a Deaf Catholic family in Chicago. According to Depcik, being "culturally Deaf" (a culture signified by the uppercase Deaf) is vastly different than losing hearing later in life. The distinction is important, Depcik explained, because the Deaf community is its own culture, with its own language. "We're proud to be Deaf, and we identify as Deaf people, and we use American Sign Language as the primary language," Depcik ...

Vatican to publish new document on Marian apparitions next week

Argentinian prelate Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández. / Credit: Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty ImagesRome Newsroom, May 7, 2024 / 09:02 am (CNA).The Vatican's doctrine office will publish a new document next week on discerning Marian apparitions and other supernatural events.The Holy See Press Office announced on Tuesday that Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), will unveil new norms for discernment regarding "apparitions and other supernatural phenomena" on Friday, May 17.In an interview with the National Catholic Register, CNA's sister news partner, last month, Fernandez said that the document will provide "clear guidelines and norms" for discernment.The new norms will be the first time that the Vatican's doctrinal office has issued a general document on apparitions in four decades. Pope Paul VI approved norms on "the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations" in 1978.Fernandez will speak at a livestreamed Va...

Justice Samuel Alito to address record-breaking 2024 class at Franciscan University

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito. / Credit; Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesCNA Staff, May 7, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is scheduled to give the commencement address on May 11 to the record-breaking 896 students in the class of 2024 at Franciscan University of Steubenville.On the occasion, Alito will also receive an honorary doctorate in Christian ethics "for his decades of exemplary public service and tireless efforts to protect and uphold justice and the rule of law," according to Franciscan's May 6 press release. Alito is known for his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 decision that reversed Roe v. Wade and determined that the Constitution could not confer a right to abortion. Alito is also known for backing religious liberty and gun rights. Prior to the graduation ceremony, Bishop Frank Caggiano of Bridgeport, Connecticut, is set to preside at the baccalaureate Mass and give...

Federal grant fund for security at houses of worship boosted by $400 million

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. / Credit: Albert H. Teich/ShutterstockWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 7, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).A federal grant program that provides security funding for houses of worship and other nonprofits will receive $400 million more than it had the previous year amid rising threats, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer."The fear, the trauma, when synagogues and other houses of worship have to be evacuated … stays with the congregants and people who go the next day wonder, 'Is it going to happen again? Am I safe?'" Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said in a Sunday news conference announcing the increased funding."So this is vicious, aimed of course at synagogues above all, but also at mosques and churches and temples, and it has to stop," he added. The Nonprofit Security Grant Program was created in 2004. Although all nonprofit organizations are eligible for funding, nearly all of the money is allocated to religious institutions.Th...

Minnesota bishops urge opposition to 'Equal Rights Amendment'

Bishop Robert Barron. CNA file photo. / nullCNA Staff, May 7, 2024 / 15:00 pm (CNA).The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis this week urged Catholics to join a rally to oppose a proposed constitutional amendment that they say "fails to protect Minnesotans from discrimination based on religion, could constitutionally mandate legal abortion up to the moment of birth, and promotes harmful gender ideology."The proposed amendment, sponsored by St. Paul Rep. Kaohly Her of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), adds several protected categories to the state's constitution, in part saying the state cannot discriminate against a person on the basis of sex.Within the category of sex, the proposal includes "making and effectuating decisions about all matters relating to one's own pregnancy? or decision whether to become or remain pregnant," as well as "gender identity or gender expression" and "sexual orientation."Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, speaking in a May 6 video m...

Prayers, processions, and seminars mark first anniversary of bloodshed in Manipur, India

Catholic bishops lead the faithful in prayer on the one-year anniversary of the May 3, 2023, violence in Manipur, India. / Credit: Anto AkkaraNew Delhi, India, May 7, 2024 / 14:31 pm (CNA).Several cities across India on May 3 observed the first anniversary of the mayhem and bloodshed that took place in Manipur state in northeast India, which left hundreds of Christians dead, with special prayer meetings, candlelight processions, seminars, and even protests.According to the government's estimate, as many as 230 died in the bloody ethnic conflict that engulfed Manipur beginning on May 3, 2023, while some observers estimate the actual figure to be much higher. Manipur, located east of Bangladesh and at the border with Myanmar, is home to 3.3 million people. For decades, members of the Meitei, Kuki, and Naga tribes have fought over land and religious differences. Beginning in May of last year, a protracted violent clash between the majority Meiteis, most of whom are ...

Uganda's Catholic dioceses notified of limited stock of altar wine for Mass

null / Credit: © Mazur/catholicnews.org.ukACI Africa, May 7, 2024 / 13:32 pm (CNA).Catholic dioceses in Uganda have been notified of a limited stock of wine for Masses due to delays in shipping. In an April 30 letter to financial administrators of Uganda's various episcopal sees, the leadership of J.W. Interservices Ltd., a company under the auspices of the Uganda Episcopal Conference that is involved in the procurement and shipment of wine alongside other goods and services, provided details of the altar wine shortage. "This is to inform you that due to the Middle East wars, the ship's usual passage through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea were suspended and canceled," wrote Father Asiku Alfred Tulu, the director of J.W. Interservices Ltd."The ships have been diverted to take longer and safer routes through the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, which has caused a major crisis and delays of their arrival to Mombasa Port [Kenya]," Tulu explained.The diversion of the ship...

Why Tom Brady and Garth Brooks will be at the Vatican this weekend

Singer-songwriter Garth Brooks (left), former NFL quarterback Tom Brady (right), and other celebrity guests will meet Pope Francis in an audience at Apostolic Palace on May 11, 2024, as participants in the Vatican's World Meeting on Human Fraternity. / Credit: SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images; Daniel Ibañez/CNA; TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty ImagesRome Newsroom, May 7, 2024 / 12:30 pm (CNA).Garth Brooks may have friends in low places, but this Saturday he will perform at a high-level Vatican event with Nobel Peace Prize winners, business leaders, and professional athletes, including former NFL quarterback Tom Brady.Brady, Brooks, and other celebrity guests will meet Pope Francis in an audience at the Apostolic Palace on the morning of May 11 as participants in the Vatican's World Meeting on Human Fraternity.It will be the second time that the longtime quarterback for the New England Patriots has met a pope. Brady met John Paul II in 2004 after winning the Super Bowl.Brady...

Pope Francis appoints new bishop to Diocese of Knoxville

Pope Francis on May 7, 2024, appointed Father James Mark Beckman, 61, a priest of the Diocese of Nashville, as the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville. / Credit: Diocese of NashvilleRome Newsroom, May 7, 2024 / 11:50 am (CNA).Pope Francis on Tuesday appointed a new bishop to the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, following former Bishop Richard Stika's resignation last year. The Holy See Press Office announced that Father James Mark Beckman, 61, will be installed as the new bishop of the diocese. The installation will occur in July. The bishopric since June 2023 has been under the care of Louisville Archbishop Shelton Fabre, who has served as apostolic administrator following Stika's departure that month.Beckman, a Tennessee native, has been a priest with the Diocese of Nashville since his ordination on July 13, 1990. He received a bachelor's degree in history from St. Ambrose College in 1984 and a master's degree in religious studies from the Catholic University ...

'Love of neighbor at a global scale': Dioceses launch faith-driven environmental programs

Solar panels on the affordable housing Bishop Valero Residence in Astoria, Queens. / Credit: Catholic Charities Brooklyn and QueensCNA Staff, May 6, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).Catholic dioceses around the U.S. are setting ambitious goals and launching environmental programs inspired in part by the Pope Francis-led effort to make ecological care a priority for the global Church.The Holy Father has made environmentalism a major focus of his pontificate. His 2015 encyclical Laudato Si' was heralded at the time of its publication as a revolutionary papal document for its emphasis on Catholic ecological responsibility and for its call for "swift and unified global action" in the "care for our common home."In October of last year, Francis published a new apostolic exhortation titled Laudate Deum, meant as a further call to address what he called the "global social issue" of climate change. The pope said that in the eight years since Laudato Si' was published, "our responses have not been ...