Catholics in England and Wales will be obliged to abstain from meat every Friday after a restoration of the discipline takes effect on Sept. 16, the first anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain. • “Things are worse than I thought,” said Haruo Someno, a Passionist priest volunteer for Caritas Japan cleaning up a community damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. “God is at work here, but finding out how is going to be a challenge that must be met.” • On May 12 Mexico’s Interior Ministry fired seven top officials after revelations that immigration officers had handed over migrants to criminal groups, who then demanded ransoms from victim’s relatives. • A Vatican instruction issued on May 13 requires bishops and pastors to “respond generously” to Catholics who seek to celebrate the Mass according to the Tridentine rite. • More than 70 Catholic scholars challenged the Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who was honored at the The Catholic University of America’s commencement, to uphold the church’s preferential option for the poor as he frames his 2012 legislative priorities. • The Melkite Catholic Church has opened the Al-Liqa’a (“the encounter”) cultural center in Beirut, Lebanon, with a mission of “building bridges across a divided world.”
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In Los Angeles, people stay for the movie credits. After the awful images of these fires are gone, they will stay to rebuild their city, too.
Catholic Charities USA is now accepting donations to its Los Angeles Wildfire Relief initiative, and the L.A. archdiocese has created a dedicated relief fund.
Warning of “the increasingly concrete threat of a world war,” Pope Francis called for “the diplomacy of hope” in his address to the ambassadors of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Sister Simona Brambilla, an Italian Consolata missionary, as prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.