St. Mary's Church

CNA Staff, Nov 7, 2025 / 11:56 am (CNA).

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Thursday that the Trump administration could require passports to display an applicant’s biological sex, granting the White House a victory in its efforts to roll back transgender ideology in federal policy.

The court said in an unsigned Nov. 6 order that requiring biological sex on a passport “no more offends equal protection principles than displaying [a] country of birth.”

In either case, “the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the court said.

The White House is “likely to succeed” in its effort to defend the law, the high court said in the order.

The decision overturns a lower court order that paused the policy while the lawsuit in question plays out in court. The suit was brought by a woman who identifies as a man and who challenged the rule on 14th Amendment grounds.

In a dissent, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan referred to the passport policy as “questionably legal” and argued that individuals who identify as the opposite sex will suffer “concrete injury” if required to display their sex on their passport.

Citing the government’s decades-old policy allowing for opposite-sex identification on passports, the justices argued that Americans who want to be identified as the opposite sex would experience “significant anxiety and fear for their safety” if required to correctly identify the biological marker on their passports. 

In a post on X on Nov. 6, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the order was the administration’s “24th victory” at the Supreme Court so far. 

“Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,” Bondi wrote. “In other words: There are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”

The policy comes after several months of effort by the Trump administration to reverse transgender-related rules and policies at the federal level. 

In January President Donald Trump signed an executive order removing gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms from governmental agencies. That order also affirmed that the word “woman” means “adult human female.” 

That same order required government identification like passports and personnel records to reflect biological reality and “not self-assessed gender identity.” 

The White House has also investigated hospitals for performing irreversible and experimental transgender procedures on children. Multiple U.S. children’s hospitals have ended their child gender programs in response to federal pressure. 

Church leaders, including bishops around the world, have spoken out against transgenderism and gender ideology. In April 2024, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said in its declaration Dignitas Infinita that gender ideology “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”

The Holy See said at the time that “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected” and that “only by acknowledging and accepting this difference in reciprocity can each person fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity.”

En vísperas de las elecciones presidenciales en Chile, que se celebrarán el próximo 16 de noviembre, el Arzobispo de Santiago, Cardenal Fernando Chomali, se reunió con los candidatos a la presidencia y a la Cámara de Diputados de la Región Metropolitana. 

El Papa subraya que “es necesario evitar que, en el exceso de información y el vacío de sabiduría, crezcan nuevas formas de deshumanización y manipulación, que disfrazadas presenten la explotación como cuidado y la mentira como verdad”.

Los obispos católicos de Texas expresaron su solidaridad a los inmigrantes del programa de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA), ante la inminente implementación de una orden judicial federal que afectará su estatus legal en Texas.

El Papa León XIV alertó sobre las nuevas adicciones de los últimos tiempos, como el juego compulsivo, las apuestas y la pornografía, consecuencias del uso excesivo de internet.

CNA Staff, Nov 7, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

A Wisconsin religious community says it has completed the first known instance of a Catholic group returning land to a Native American tribe, hailing it as a move made in the “spirit of relationship and healing.”

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration announced the transfer in an Oct. 31 news release on its website. The community is located in La Crosse, Wisconsin, near the state’s border with Minnesota.

The sisters had purchased the land from the Lac du Flambeau Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa tribe in 1966 and used the property for its Marywood Franciscan Spirituality Center.

The sisters said they sold the property to the tribe for $30,000, the exact amount for which they paid for the land six decades ago. The modern sale price represented “just over 1% of [the land’s] current market value,” the sisters said.

The bargain sale represents “the first known return of Catholic-owned land to a tribal nation as an act of repair for colonization and residential boarding schools,” the sisters said.

“Today, the tribe’s reservation represents only a fraction of [its] traditional territories,” the news release said. “Rebuilding and protecting tribal land bases is vital to sustaining sovereignty — it restores the ability for self-determination, cultural preservation, and community development.” 

“A strong land base supports essential services, creates employment opportunities, and provides a foundation for long-term economic and social resilience,” the sisters said. 

Tribal President John Johnson hailed the sale as “an example of what true healing and partnership can look like.” 

“We are proud to welcome Marywood home, to ensure it continues to serve future generations of the Lac du Flambeau people,” Johnson said. 

The sisters said the retreat center was “facing challenges to its viability,” leading the community to “discern a future for the land” in line with its institutional priorities. 

In their press release, the sisters said they have also been in “a process of reckoning” with the history of St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School. The sisters administered the school in Odanah, Wisconsin, from 1883 to 1969.

Critics in recent years have claimed that such boarding schools participated in the erasure of Native American culture. Others have alleged that significant clergy sex abuse took place at such institutions.

The sisters on Oct. 31 said such schools were guilty of “separating children from their families, suppressing Native identity, and paving the way for the large-scale seizure of Native homelands.”

“It was painful to address our complicity, but we knew it had to be done,” former community president Sister Eileen McKenzie said in the press release.

Diocese of Superior Bishop James Powers, meanwhile, praised the transfer, describing it as “a tangible act of justice and reconciliation that flows directly from the heart of our Catholic faith.”

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration traces its roots to a group of Bavarian immigrants who traveled to Milwaukee in 1849 “intent upon founding a religious community to spread the Gospel among German immigrants.”

The community has run hospitals and schools in Wisconsin and has also sponsored medical clinics and mission schools abroad.

El Papa León XIV ensalzó la obra misionera de la Iglesia en México a lo largo de la historia, impulsado por el mensaje de la Virgen de Guadalupe y el ejemplo del Beato Juan de Palafox y Mendoza.

La justicia española da el respaldo definitivo a las actuaciones del Comisario Pontificio Mons. Mario Iceta frente a la actitud cismática de las exclarisas de Belorado. 

Cada 7 de noviembre la Iglesia recuerda al Beato Francisco Palau y Quer, sacerdote y fraile carmelita descalzo, nacido en Aitona, Lérida (España), el 29 de diciembre de 1811.

Luego de haber sufrido un “infarto masivo fulminante”, Mons. Javier Román Arias, Obispo de Limón y presidente de la Conferencia Nacional Episcopal de Costa Rica, se encuentra recuperado y expresó su gratitud por las oraciones, la atención médica y, en especial a “Dios por permitirme el don de la vida”.