Bishop William Patrick Callahan has warned of potential canonical penalties against Father James Altman of La Crosse. Father Altman said, “I stand by every single word I said”; Father Richard Heilman of the Diocese of Madison led a Rosary rally in the priest’s defense.

Father Tony Flannery, a Redemptorist priest who was suspended following an investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has rejected the Congregation’s renewed invitation to assent to Catholic teaching. The superior of the Redemptorist order had asked the Congregation to permit Father Flannery to return to public ministry.

“The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights —for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture —is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination,” the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference (whose board members are the state’s bishops) said at the top of its flyer. (The quotation is from the US bishops’ Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.)

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ, president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the EU, said of the British prime minister, “I don’t want to imply that Prime Minister Johnson is a populist, but his behavior has populist traits,” according to a Novena News translation. The prelate added that “such dangerous tendencies can be very damaging to the world order.”

The French Sulpician priest (1767-1832) (historical marker) ministered in Detroit, was one of the first professors at the University of Michigan, and was the Michigan Territory’s delegate in the US Congress.

“In this moment of dual life-threatening pandemics, COVID-19 and racism, the voice of the Church in America is, for the most part, eerily silent when it comes to the racial unrest in this country,” the National Black Sisters’ Conference said in a statement.

“For months I have pleaded with the city on your behalf, advocating for your need of the consolation of the Mass, and the consolation you derive from the practice of your faith and connection with your faith community. City Hall ignored us,” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone preached on September 20 following outdoor Eucharistic processions. “It has become clear to me that they just don’t care about you.”

The 273 workers in Molise (map) “face an uncertain future as a government subsidy that they are currently receiving is due to expire in November,” according to the report.

“Christians engaged in this field are called to put into effect, in a very concrete way, the Lord’s invitation to go out into the world and to proclaim the Gospel (Mk. 16:15),” Pope Francis said in a September 18 audience with the editors of the Belgian publication Tertio (Dutch-language website). “Because of his lofty professional conscience, the Christian journalist is required to offer a new witness in the world of communication without hiding the truth, nor manipulating information.”

St. Januarius, who was martyred during the persecutions of Diocletian, is the patron saint of Naples. A vial of his blood, preserved by the faithful since the 4th century, regularly turns into liquid form on his feast day and sometimes on certain other days.

During his September 20 Angelus address (video), Pope Francis discussed Matthew 20:1-16, the Gospel reading of the day.

Trey Trainor, chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said in an interview, “I don’t think a bishop has the right to tell a priest that he can’t come out and speak [in endorsing candidates]. When the priest takes the vow of obedience to the bishop, it is in the area of faith and morals, but they have a higher duty to our Lord, and if the bishop is putting something out there that is not right then the priest has an obligation to the faithful to correct it.”

“I repeat that it would be sad if, in providing the [Covid] vaccine, priority were given to the wealthiest, or if this vaccine became the property of this or that country, and was no longer for everyone,” Pope Francis said in a September 19 audience with Banco Farmaceutico (Italian website). “It must be universal, for all.”

The host of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition said, “Joe Biden is known to carry a rosary in his pocket and to go to Mass every Sunday. If elected, he would be only the second Catholic president in American history ... his faith is central to how he sees the world.” Sister Carol Keehan, former CEO of the Catholic Health Association, told NPR that “when Joe Biden talks about faith, he talks very much about things like the Gospel of Matthew.”

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, which is owned by the Washington Post, the chair of Hong Kong Watch said that “the Chinese Communist Party knows how to make use of what Lenin described as ‘useful idiots.’ Mao was adept at using ‘fellow travellers.’ When you have Vatican officials extolling the virtues of Chinese communism, as the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, did when he described it as the best example of Catholic Social Teaching, it is evident that the Vatican has provided Beijing with both useful idiots and fellow travellers.”

“Two years on, it’s clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party’s depredations,” writes US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, in a column appearing on the First Things web site. Pompeo argues that the Holy See should show moral leadership by pressing Beijing to recognize religious liberty and other fundamental human rights.

At St. Carthage’s Cathedral Parish in Lismore, (map), “the sacristy sustained damage as a result of the fire, but not the main part of the cathedral,” according to the report. Bishop Gregory Homeming, OCD, said, “I’m not disturbed by what has happened, it’s a building and I thank God that no one was injured.”

Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, in the northern Indian state of Punjab (map), has stepped down from his duties during the criminal proceedings but remains the diocese’s bishop.

“A nurse who is a practicing Apostolic Pentecostal Christian was hired by Wellpath to work in the GEO Central Texas Correctional Facility in downtown San Antonio,” according to the EEOC. “Before reporting to work, the nurse told a Wellpath human resources employee that her religious beliefs require her to dress modestly and to wear a scrub skirt instead of scrub pants while at work. In response, Wellpath denied the request for her religion-based accommodation and rescinded the nurse’s job offer.”

Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, 66, was apostolic nuncio to Panama (2005-08) and Bolivia (2008-17) before being named nuncio to India and Nepal in 2017. Pope Francis appointed him apostolic nuncio to Brazil on August 29; his transfer to the nation with the largest Catholic population suggests that the Pope has strong confidence in his work.