At the conclusion of his August 5 general audience, Pope Leo XIV said:

“I am heartened by news of an agreement which aims at the disarmament of Hamas and Israel’s military withdrawal from the Strip, and I call for intense prayers for the success of these negotiations,” said Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, the Maronite bishop of Los Angeles. “To further strengthen this advance, I call on the United States, Israel, and the international community to facilitate greater amounts of humanitarian and development assistance to the Strip.”

“Conscious of the extreme challenges inherent in this ongoing peace process, let us entrust the hearts and minds of the negotiators to the maternal care of Our Lady of Wisdom, that she may illumine and enliven their efforts to finally achieve peace in those sacred lands,” Bishop Zaidan concluded.

The episcopal conference’s president and secretary-general recalled that Pope Pius XI’s “teaching about the kingship of Christ—who does not impose himself with arms, but reigns from the cross—became in Mexico a popular cry that no army could extinguish: ‘Long live Christ the King and Holy Mary of Guadalupe!’ One hundred years later, that cry is still a program: to recognize that no human power is absolute, because God alone is Lord of conscience and of history.”

Stating that “we do not commemorate a war or celebrate a victory,” Bishops Ramón Castro Castro and Héctor Pérez Villarreal said that “we commemorate, instead, three things”:

• “the fidelity of a believing people who, in the midst of fear, continued to pray in their homes, baptize their children in secret, protect their priests and keep the faith alive when there were no churches open”
• “the testimony of the martyrs, who did not kill for Christ, but died for Him, forgiving their executioners”
• “the lesson learned at a very high price: that religious freedom is not a privilege of the clergy, but a right of every human person, and that its denial always ends up costing blood”

While describing Peter Löw’s offer as a “well-intentioned action,” the diocese said that “Catholic parents are obliged to have their children baptized as soon as possible and to bring them up in the Christian faith. Since there are no costs for the church celebration of baptism, the financial aspect, which is brought to the fore in the ‘Starnberg Guardian Angel’ campaign, is unlikely to be decisive.”

“The despair on the faces of Congolese mothers reveals the human cost of Ebola,” Guglielmo Gallone reported. “It is a human cost that goes beyond the grim figures cited by the World Health Organization (WHO), which reports 3,605 confirmed cases and 1,587 deaths, a fatality rate of 44 percent.”

Gallone added that “Having begun in May in Ituri province, the Ebola outbreak has spread to four other provinces; the rate of transmission is described by the WHO [World Health Organization] as ‘exceptional,’ necessitating an urgent strengthening of the health response.”

Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, reported that “one of the campaign’s central objectives is to move beyond a narrow understanding of prevention as merely a response to abuse or the implementation of protocols. Instead, it seeks to make care a permanent dimension of community and pastoral life.”

Participants in the colloquium, whose theme was “Dialogue on the Contribution of Christianity and Confucianism to an Ideal Society: The New Heaven, the New Earth, and Datong (Great Unity),” agreed that “a just and peaceful society depends on leadership rooted in integrity, humility, service, and concern for the common good.”

“Care for the vulnerable, future generations, and our common home is both a moral and spiritual responsibility,” the statement continued. “Hope for a better world calls us to work together through the trials and imperfections of the present.”

The Pontiff recalled Cardinal Langa, who ministered during the Mozambican Civil War (1977-1992), as a “distinguished shepherd.” The Pope explained:

Faithful to Jesus, Master and Lord, he learned from him the art of closeness in the shepherding of souls, devoting himself with simplicity, zeal and perseverance to the flock entrusted to him, without allowing himself to be discouraged by difficulties, instead seeing them as places in need of the Good News, especially when it was necessary to proclaim the Gospel of peace and reconciliation for a future of fraternity among all Mozambicans.

Bishops in Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru welcomed the Vatican’s August 5 announcement that Pope Leo XIV will visit the three nations in November.

Born in 1927 and ordained to the priesthood in 1957, Langa was named bishop of Xai-Xai in 1976 and retired in 2004. He became Mozambique’s second cardinal when Pope Francis created him a cardinal in 2015.

“Keeping religious practice alive and giving new impetus to the Church in a particularly impoverished area, one also struck by famines, epidemics, and natural disasters, sums up the ministry” of the prelate, the Vatican newspaper reported. “Regarded as a father by the priests of the African nation, he had focused particularly on the formation and welfare of the diocesan clergy within the Mozambican Episcopal Conference.”