NEWS

MONTERREY, Mexico (CNS) — With his priestly robes and clean-cut appearance, Fr. Jose Luis Guerra hardly looks the part of a gangster. Yet the recently ordained priest hits the streets of a scruffy suburb of this northern Mexican city with his own posse, the Gang of Christ, which takes catechism classes and Christ’s witness out of the parish and into a peripheral place occupied by young men on the margins of society.

Una prueba de la Iglesia Católica universal se pudo escuchar a través de las 16 lenguas que compartieron oraciones, lecturas y canciones durante la Misa de Diversidad Cultural diocesana.

Eighth-grader Stephanie Hamrick was nervous when she was called upon to counsel a peer who was pregnant through the pro-life organization she volunteers with, Voces Unidas por la Vida. “She was very open to what we had to say to her,” recalls Hamrick a student and parishioner at St. Timothy in Mesa. “We showed her her ultrasound and she wanted to keep her baby. Seeing the ultrasound changed her perspective on abortion, and knowing it’s a real person inside of them, it changes their minds and hearts. I was really happy to help her.”

The tremor has claimed more than 240 lives so far — including at least 20 children trapped in a collapsed school.

Journalists covering Pope Francis' visit in Santiago, Chile, added not one, but two tales to their oral history of papal-trip misadventures.

HUE, Vietnam (CNS) — Tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics took part in a special online Mass and prayed to Our Lady of La Vang for their nation and the world to soon overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We never abandoned the hope that one day Fr. Tom would be released," the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity said. The priest was their chaplain before his kidnapping 18 months ago.

A homeless man who faithfully attended Mass at a church inside Vatican City for decades was buried in a Vatican cemetery after it was discovered he had died and was left unidentified in a hospital morgue.

Five young men are the first seminarians in the Diocese of Phoenix’s 50-year history to begin seminary life within diocesan boundaries.

Hospitality is a virtue which the Franciscan order has practiced for hundreds of years and one that was recognized in a special way during the local province's centennial celebration at the Franciscan Renewal Center (the Casa) in Scottsdale Nov. 13.