OSV News

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, is spearheading a march and vigil to protest the Trump administration's plans for mass deportations on the feast of St. Óscar Romero. Seitz will be joined by Cardinal Fabbio Baggio of Bassano del Grappa, Italy, the undersecretary of the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, as well as bishops from the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

The U.S. Department of Education said March 11 it planned to cut about 50% of its workforce. Such cuts could also impact Catholic education, experts told OSV News.

The Mexican bishops' conference reiterated a call for unity as the country deals with threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, who promises to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican exports if migrants continue crossing the U.S. border and fentanyl is not stamped out.

"I hope that today, Ukraine can give America hope to not be afraid," said Metropolitan Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia. "Say what you have to say. Say what is true. Witness. Make a stand for the immigrants, for the poor, for the unjustly fired."

In February, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order pledging his administration's support for in vitro fertilization, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Medical Association and other groups issued statements opposing the move, highlighting the many ethical problems with IVF.
 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said March 10 that just 18% of programs of the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development will remain intact, and those will now fall under his purview at the State Department.

Poland's day of prayer for victims of clerical sexual abuse, scheduled each year for the first Friday in Lent, was overshadowed March 7 by a controversial opinion from the legal council of the Polish bishops' conference regarding an independent commission for the investigation of abuse cases that has been under development for the past two years.

As South Carolina prepared to carry out the first execution by firing squad in the U.S. since 2010, Catholic activists against the death penalty had sought clemency from that state's governor.

Cardinal McElroy was the principal celebrant and homilist and distributed ashes during the Ash Wednesday Mass. It was his first public Mass in the archdiocese since Pope Francis appointed him Jan. 6 to succeed the retiring archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory. Cardinal McElroy will be installed March 11.

President Donald Trump touted the "swift and unrelenting action" taken by his second administration in its first six weeks, telling lawmakers March 4 in an address to a joint session of Congress he was "just getting started."

Ukrainian bishops spoke up as international reaction continued over U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance's Feb. 28 televised White House clash with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Catholic bishops along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border issued a statement during a Feb. 28 press conference that capped a Feb. 26-28 meeting, held biannually for 40 years "to coordinate efforts in our shared mission to proclaim the Gospel."

Some Catholic policy analysts expressed concern about potential cuts to key safety net programs, such as Medicaid, a health care program for low-income Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Despite his illness, age and hospitalization, Pope Francis is still demonstrating his deep faith and exercising his role as pontiff, said a cardinal who once served as an auxiliary bishop of Rome.

U.S. President Donald Trump's new policies concerning unauthorized immigrants and mass deportation operations have caught some Latin American countries off guard, prompting them to improvise ways to deal with the unexpected arrival of high numbers of those being deported.

The Supreme Court on Feb. 25 threw out the murder conviction and death penalty for Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma man who has been on death row for a quarter century. At issue in the case was whether Glossip received a fair trial, and the high court found he did not.

A Kansas military chaplain who served during two wars is a step further along the path to possible sainthood, thanks to a declaration made by Pope Francis, currently in Rome's Gemelli hospital for severe respiratory illness.

A "silent genocide" — mimicking the Rwandan one of 1994 — is occurring in eastern Congo, said some Catholic Church sources, as shock greeted the killing of 70 people in a Protestant church in the North Kivu Province.

Among President Trump's more than 70 executive orders since the beginning of his second term are those involving withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the freezing of "clean energy" project funds in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. 

Pope Francis remains in critical condition and he continues to receive supplemental oxygen, but he has not experienced any further respiratory crises.