World & Vatican

LUSAKA, Zambia - Zambia's bishops have launched a campaign to raise $9 million for food to be distributed in remote parts of the country hit by drought and floods. Many households "have nothing to eat and are surviving on wild fruits or are getting by without any food," Bishop Evans Chinyemba of Mongu told a June 19 media briefing in the capital, Lusaka.

ROME, Italy - In a statement June 25, Cardinal Raymond Burke issued a correction to a now-removed LifeSiteNews article, which claimed that Burke was collaborating with former President Donald Trump advisor Steven Bannon on a film exposing homosexuality in the Vatican.

LONDON, England - Following a decision by the Court of Appeals in England to overturn an order for a forced abortion on a disabled woman, new details have emerged about the case.

VATICAN CITY - Marking the 100th anniversary of the declaration of Our Lady of Loreto as the patron saint of aviation and aviators, Pope Francis has authorized a special jubilee year of celebrations, especially at the Italian shrine of Our Lady of Loreto.

VATICAN CITY - At the conclusion of the International Youth Forum Saturday, Pope Francis announced the theme of World Youth Day 2022 to be held in Lisbon: “Mary arose and went with haste.”

The efforts of European governments to patrol the Mediterranean and prevent desperate people from reaching its northern shores raise questions "about the very concept of 'welcoming the stranger' of which Christianity is the highest expression, according to the teaching our of lord and savior," said Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

"A migration strategy that can go beyond the imposition of tariffs that cause the militarization of borders or the raising of human walls as an immediate response, must be based on human rights and put the migrant at the center of political and social measures and better conditions for an orderly and safe migration," said Bishop José Guadalupe Torres Campos of Ciudad Juarez,

Australia's Catholic bishops stand as witnesses to life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suffering from high rates of suicide. "We need to avoid the trap of trying to ‘resolve’ issues for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people! We must safeguard the principle of self-determination," the bishops say in a pastoral statement.

MELBOURNE, Australia - The four Latin rite ordinaries in Victoria have written a pastoral letter denouncing the state's “new, and deeply troubling chapter of health care,” as voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide became legal Wednesday.

An investigative tribunal has said that forced harvesting of organs for transplant continues in China, with religious minorities especially targeted. “Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” the China Tribunal said in its final judgment, issued June 17 in London.