A group of Discalced Carmelite nuns is leaving a historic convent in Cordoba, having failed to attract enough vocations to remain viable.

The prioress of a the San José monastery, founded in 1612, announced “with great pain and sadness” that the nuns would be joining another Carmelite community in the Salamanca diocese.

The Cordoba Carmelites had enjoyed the support of Pope Francis, who was friendly with their former prioress, Mother Adriana of Jesus Crucified. Her death in 2023 left the monastery with only four members: below the minimum required for a religious community. But the convent remained open, granted a special dispensation from that requirement with the Pope’s support. The departure of another member left only three nuns in the monastery, leading to the decision to vacate.

The Dicastery for Divine Worship has authorized the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass (TLM) in 56 parishes, including 34 in the United States, the Vatican has disclosed.

In announcing the number of permissions granted, the Dicastery for Divine Worship reaffirmed its ruling that the TLM cannot be celebrated in parish churches without Vatican approval.

The figures disclosed in the Official Gazette of the dicastery include only decisions made through the end of 2022; numbers for 2023 and beyond are not yet available.

New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care has issued its final report into abuse committed in government and religious institutions.

The report found that “of the estimated 655,000 children, young people and adults in care from 1950 to 2019, it is estimated that 200,000 were abused and even more were neglected ... It is a national disgrace that hundreds of thousands of children, young people and adults were abused and neglected in the care of the State and faith-based institutions.”

The report linked the abuse to the growth of the welfare state and to government policies toward indigenous persons, many of whom were placed in “care settings.”

Part 4 of the final report recounted stories of sexual abuse in Catholic and other institutions.

The final report is a culmination of a series of earlier reports, including a report on abuse committed by members of the Order of the Brothers of St. John of God.

Fulfilling a recent pledge, the Knights of Columbus have covered mosaics by Father Marko Ivan Rupnik at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, DC.

“There was a strong consensus to prioritize the needs of victims, especially because the allegations are current, unresolved, and horrific,” the Knights of Columbus said in a statement.

Last October, amid an outcry, the Pope waived the statute of limitations in the Rupnik case, allowing the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to investigate multiple charges of sexual abuse against the former Jesuit. Father Rupnik in now a priest in good standing in a Slovenian diocese.

In March 2020, Father Rupnik was invited to take the place of the Preacher of the Papal Household in preaching a Lenten sermon to the Roman Curia—despite Rupnik’s canonical conviction, two months earlier, of the offense of absolving an accomplice in a sexual sin. Rupnik was subsequently excommunicated, and the excommunication was swiftly lifted.

Kenya’s bishops have denounced police brutality in reaction to the Finance Bill protests that began on June 18.

“We regret that we lost young lives to police brutality,” the prelates said in their statement (video). “No law allows unwarranted arrest, torture, or killing of people.”

The bishops praised the young protestors for “driving change and highlighting our social ills,” but cautioned them against intolerance.

“We must drive for social systems that respect God,” the bishops said. “There is a real risk that as you push for a truly transformative agenda, you become intolerant to ideas and visions that are not similar to yours ... We, therefore, request that you open up yourselves for inclusive conversations so that you are also enriched by perspectives that may not be obvious to you.”

The East African nation of 57 million (map) is 82% Christian (21% Catholic), 8% Muslim, and 8% ethnic religionist. Pope Francis made an apostolic journey there in 2015.

As he concluded his first visit to Ukraine since the 2022 Russian invasion, the Pope’s Secretary of State met with two Ukrainian Catholic priests who were recently freed from Russian captivity.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin asked the priests about their imprisonment and their current health. “Both priests expressed gratitude for the prayers and tireless concern of the Pope and the Holy See for their fate,” the Religious Information Service of Ukraine reported.

“We need a new bond between the young and the elderly,” Pope Francis tweeted on July 24, underscoring a theme repeated frequently during his pontificate.

“May those with more life experience water the shoots of hope of those who are still growing,” he continued. “May we come to know the beauty of life and build a fraternal society.”

The chairmen of the US bishops’ Committee on Migration and Committee on International Justice and Peace have expressed support for the Stateless Protection Act of 2024 (S 3987/HR 7755), sponsored by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).

“Motivated by our belief that each person is endowed by God with an inherent dignity that confers certain universal, inviolable, and inalienable rights, the USCCB is deeply concerned for those who have been deprived of the most basic of political rights—their national identity,” Bishops Mark Seitz and A. Elias Zaidan wrote in a letter to members of Congress.

“This concern has only been heightened by recent and alarming abuses witnessed in places such as Nicaragua, where Catholic clergy and laypersons have specifically been targeted by the state and stripped of their citizenship,” the prelates continued. “If enacted, this bill would define ‘stateless person’ for the first time in U.S. law, afford protection to stateless persons through a new form of relief and path to permanent residency known as Stateless Protected Status, and support initiatives aimed at preventing statelessness and related human rights violations.”

A Texas court has dealt a major setback to the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, in his bid to show “systematic criminal conduct” by a Catholic agency involved with migrants.

Judge Bobby Flores ruled that Paxton cannot question the executive director of a local office of Catholic Charities. A previous court decision had rejected Paxton’s attempt to close down the migrant center, saying that the attorney general had “failed to establish probable grounds” for his claim that Annunciation House had broken criminal laws.

The late Bishop Eamonn Casey was removed from his post in the Galway diocese in 1992 because of sex-abuse allegations, not because of his affair with an American woman, according to an investigation by RTE television and the Irish Mail.

Bishop Casey resigned after the release of reports that he had fathered a child. But the RTE/Mail investigation found reports that he had abused minors, both in Ireland and in previous assignments in England.