Eileen Dinn was one of nine students from Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of Washington who spoke of the effects of gun violence prior to Mass the morning of March 24 sponsored by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington at St. Patrick’s Church.
Reminding bishops, pastors and Catholics around the world that all Latin-rite Catholics should celebrate the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church on the Monday after Pentecost this year, Cardinal Robert Sarah said the celebration should take precedence over any other possible liturgy that day.
For 20 years, youths from across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have brought Christ’s Passion to parishes by re-enacting the Stations of the Cross. Servants of the Cross, a family apostolate, began in 1998 with nine youths, and now approximately 50 young people between ages 6 and 23 take part.
Although the March for Our Lives in Washington March 24 and its “sibling” marches in cities across the country were brought on by teenagers, participants were all ages — from toddlers in strollers pushed by their parents to elderly marchers using walkers.
Celebrating Palm Sunday Mass with thousands of young people, Pope Francis urged them to continue singing and shouting “hosanna” in the world, proclaiming the lordship of Jesus and following his example of outreach to the poor and suffering.
Young people want to know they are valued members of the Catholic Church and that their questions and struggles are taken seriously enough that someone will spend time with them discussing issues rather than simply repeating “prefabricated” responses, said delegates to a meeting in Rome.
To tackle the question of global access to clean water, hundreds of experts, policymakers, nongovernmental groups and members of civil society came together for two water forums held in mid-March in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia.
Less than two months after Pope Francis spoke out about environmental destruction in the Amazon basin during a visit to Peru, bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean have issued a pastoral letter calling the region’s Catholics to an “integral ecological conversion.”
