St. Mary's Church

Este sábado 19 de julio una gran cantidad de fieles ecuatorianos participarán de la X peregrinación al Santuario de Santa María Madre de Guayaquil, una querida advocación mariana que no tiene mucho tiempo de haber sido creada.

El Obispo de La Rioja (Argentina), Mons. Dante Braida, presidió este jueves 17 de julio la Misa en memoria de los Mártires Riojanos: Mons. Enrique Angelelli; los sacerdotes Carlos Murias y Gabriel Longueville; y el laico Wenceslao Pedernera.

CNA Staff, Jul 18, 2025 / 15:00 pm (CNA).

Here is a roundup of recent pro-life and abortion-related news.

California couple that had 21 kids via surrogate mothers charged with neglect, endangerment

A California couple that had 21 children via surrogacy has been charged with felony child endangerment and neglect.

Authorities also alleged that their nannies were physically abusing the children. 

Guojun Xuan, 65, and Silvia Zhang, 38, own a mansion in Arcadia and a business called Mark Surrogacy. 

Unbeknownst to the surrogate mothers the couple was working with, the embryos the mothers were carrying belonged to the company owners — and each embryo was one of many. 

Seventeen of the children are toddlers or infants, and the oldest is 13. All 21 children have since been taken in by the state Department of Children and Family Services.

The investigation took place after a 2-month-old child was brought into a hospital with a traumatic brain injury.

Cops alleged that the family nanny, 56-year-old Chunmei Li, had injured the baby and committed other abuses. Surveillance footage allegedly shows Li shaking and hitting the infant. Footage also showed other nannies abusing the children, according to the authorities. 

Federal court upholds West Virginia ban on abortion drugs

The 4th Circuit Court has upheld West Virginia’s ban on chemical abortion, ruling that the law cannot be overridden by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.

Mifepristone manufacturer GenBioPro asked the court to strike down West Virginia’s protections for unborn children against chemical abortion, arguing that the FDA has the final say in whether drugs are legal.

In a 45-page opinion by Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson III, the court found that in approving the drug, the FDA “did not create a right to utilize any particular high-risk drug” simultaneously. Rather, the FDA regulations constitute the “minimum safety rules for administering drugs like mifepristone where they may be legally prescribed.”

March for Life President Jennie Bradley Lichter called the decision “huge,” noting that it meant that a state could ban a federally approved drug.

It was the first time a federal appeals court had said states can restrict mifepristone use.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said the decision was a “big win.”

“West Virginia can continue to enforce our pro-life laws and lead the nation in our efforts to protect life,” Morrisey stated. “We will always be a pro-life state!” 

8 babies born via IVF from DNA of 3 people

Eight healthy babies were born via an in vitro fertilization procedure where doctors created embryos with DNA from three people.

The United Kingdom made the procedure legal in 2015 and granted the first license in 2017 to a fertility clinic at Newcastle University.

The doctors used the third-party DNA to prevent children from inheriting incurable genetic disorders. The mothers were at risk for passing on life-threatening diseases to their babies, but the babies have no signs of the mitochondrial diseases they were at risk of inheriting. Four boys and four girls — including one set of identical twins — were born to the seven women.

Houston, Texas, Jul 18, 2025 / 14:30 pm (CNA).

Catholic Charities Fort Worth (CCFW) announced July 17 that it will continue leading the Texas Office for Refugees until September 2026, reversing an earlier decision to step down later this year due to challenges imposed by the Trump administration’s funding cuts to refugee programs. 

The move follows urgent pleas from approximately 60 refugee service providers across Texas, who warned that CCFW’s withdrawal would jeopardize $200 million in critical federal funding for over 118,000 refugees.

In early June, CCFW announced plans to relinquish its role in October as the state’s replacement designee for the Texas Office for Refugees, a role the nonprofit took on in 2021 after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott withdrew the state from the federal refugee resettlement program in 2016.

This prompted a swift response from providers, who sent letters to the group warning that its abrupt exit would disrupt critical refugee services. 

“To do this in this climate is not moral in a lot of ways,” said Kimberly Haynes, Texas director of Church World Service, who urged CCFW to stay for another year to ensure a stable transition.

Haynes told the Houston Chronicle in June that CCFW’s departure could force her organization to lay off employees and close programs, including the Refugee Cash Assistance, Medical Assistance, Immigration Legal Services, and Social Adjustment programs, affecting 80% of its services in Dallas and Houston.

CCFW President and CEO Michael Iglio said in a statement shared with CNA the reversal came after “deeper reflection” and “thoughtful feedback” from providers. 

“We recognized that an early withdrawal could risk serious disruptions in services,” Iglio stated, adding that stepping down prematurely was a decision the agency “could not in good conscience allow.” 

By continuing through September 2026, when its contract ends, CCFW aims to safeguard services and facilitate a responsible transition.

CCFW sued the Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in March, alleging an unlawful freeze of $36 million in funding. Although payments resumed after a program integrity review, the incident highlighted the precarious funding environment for refugee programs.

The decision comes amid broader challenges for refugee services under the second Trump administration, which froze the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in January, disrupting $100 million in aid for Houston-area refugees alone.

As a result, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in February laid off 120 employees who mostly worked in refugee assistance.

Catholic social teaching on immigration, which is built on Jesus’ call to welcome the stranger (cf. Matthew 25:35), underpins CCFW’s commitment to refugees. The agency’s decision to stay aligns with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ advocacy for humane immigration policies.

El Cardenal chileno Fernando Chomali, nieto de palestinos; los obispos de EEUU y la Comisión Episcopal de Ecumenismo, Relaciones con el Judaísmo, el Islam y las Religiones de la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina (CEA) lamentaron el ataque israelí contra la única parroquia católica de Gaza, que dejó el trágico saldo de tres muertos y varios heridos.

El español Borja Milans del Bosch ha puesto en marcha la plataforma 10talentos.org para ofrecer cursos de formación en liderazgo humanista católico

El Cardenal André Vingt-Trois, quien fue Arzobispo de París y presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal Francesa, falleció este jueves 18 de julio a los 82 años de edad.

CNA Staff, Jul 18, 2025 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

A federal court on July 18 blocked a controversial Washington state reporting law that would require priests to violate the seal of confession, siding with the state’s Catholic bishops who brought suit against the measure earlier this year.

The law, passed by the state Legislature earlier this year and signed by Gov. Robert Ferguson, added clergy to the list of mandatory abuse reporters in the state. But it didn’t include an exemption for information learned in the confessional, explicitly leaving priests out of a “privileged communication” exception afforded to other professionals.

In the ruling, District Judge David Estudillo said there was “no question” that the law burdened the free exercise of religion.

“In situations where [priests] hear confessions related to child abuse or neglect, [the rule] places them in the position of either complying with the requirements of their faith or violating the law,” the judge wrote.

Estudillo noted that the measure as passed “modifies existing law solely to make members of the clergy mandatory reporters with respect to child abuse or neglect.” 

As written, the law is “neither neutral nor generally applicable” insofar as it “treats religious activity less favorably than comparable secular activity,” he said.

The state could have made clergy mandatory reporters while allowing a narrow exception for confession, Estudillo said, as more than two dozen other states already have. 

The order bars the Washington state government from enforcing the law.

The ruling comes after the bishops sued Ferguson, state Attorney General Nicholas Brown, and more than three dozen prosecutors over the controversial reporting law. 

On July 15 those prosecutors filed a motion in the court promising not to appeal the injunction against the law or any final judgment of the court in exchange for largely being excused from the ongoing legal proceedings. Ferguson and Brown are still subject to the suit.

The lawsuit argued that the law violated the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment by infringing on the sacred seal of confession as well as both the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the state constitution.

The Washington bishops’ effort drew support from a broad variety of advocates, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the U.S. Department of Justice, a coalition of Orthodox churches, and Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota.

Barron earlier this month argued to the court that a penitent who is “aware the priest might (let alone must) share with others what was given in the most sacred confidence” of confession
“would be reluctant indeed to ever approach” the sacrament. 

The Department of Justice, meanwhile, said the law “appears to single out clergy as not entitled to assert applicable privileges, as compared to other reporting professionals,” including lawyers, doctors, and social service workers. 

The law even drew international rebuke when the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy — which represents over 500 Roman Catholic priests and deacons from the U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom — last month issued a statement criticizing the passage of laws “which attempt to compel ordained priests to disclose the identity and content of what a penitent has confessed.”

The group criticized governments for specifically targeting priests while at the same time “respect[ing] and uphold[ing] the institutions of attorney/client and doctor/patient privilege.”

Though the Washington bishops had mounted an aggressive challenge to the state law, Church leaders there assured the faithful that the seal of confession would remain inviolate regardless of any legal stipulations one way or the other. 

“[S]hepherds, bishops, and priests” are “committed to keeping the seal of confession — even to the point of going to jail,” Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly said in May. 

Church canon law dictates that a priest who directly violates the seal of confession is automatically excommunicated. Barron earlier this month told the court that “few religious practices are more misunderstood than the sacred seal of confession in the Catholic Church.”

Catholics believe that penitents who seek the sacrament of confession are “speaking to and hearing from the Lord himself” via the priest, the prelate wrote. 

As a result, “absolutely nothing ought to stand in the way of a sinner who seeks this font of grace,” Barron said.

Taiwán fue azotada por un tifón que causó dos muertos, 500 heridos y cortó el suministro eléctrico a 600.000 personas. La pequeña iglesia del país ha estado en primera línea ante la tragedia

Un ataque reportado el 17 de julio contra la única iglesia católica en Gaza dejó tres muertos y nueve heridos, según un comunicado del Patriarca Latino, el cardenal Pierbattista Pizzaballa.