CNA Staff, Sep 7, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- Catholic and Anglican leaders in Birmingham, England, said they were praying for peace Monday after an attack that left one person dead and seven others injured.
In a joint statement Sept. 7, Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham and his Anglican counterpart, the Rt. Rev. David Urquhart, said their thoughts were with those who were stabbed in the city in the early hours of Sunday morning.
“We pray also for their families and friends — and for the emergency services and for all that they are called to do in response to these shocking events,” they said.
West Midlands Police announced Sept. 7 that they had arrested a man, 27, on suspicion of murder and seven counts of attempted murder in connection with the stabbings.
The police declared a major incident after the attacks, which took place at four locations in the city over a period of 90 minutes. They launched a manhunt, but said there was no indication that the attacks were terror-related, motivated by hate crime or connected to gangs.
A 23-year-old man died, and a 19-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman suffered critical injuries. Five others, aged 23 to 33, were treated in hospital. Two of them were later discharged.
“At this time when the health and well-being of the people of our city is already uppermost in our minds, we pray that all who live and work in Birmingham and those who visit can be reassured about the safety of our popular city,” the Catholic archbishop and the Anglican bishop of Birmingham said in their joint statement.
“Birmingham is a great city and it is shaped by many diverse communities working together and overcoming challenges and differences. We cherish and pray for its peace today.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
A scene from St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer’s trip to Jaltepec, Mexico, in June 1970. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei/Flickr
Madrid, Spain, Mar 24, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
On March 28, the centennial of the priestly ordination of St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, will be celebrated with liturgical and academic events in Zaragoza, Spain, and in Rome.
The Spanish saint was ordained a priest in Zaragoza in the chapel of the current St. Charles Borromeo seminary.
Escrivá entered the seminary in September 1920, transferring from the seminary in Logroño. In addition to studying theology at the Pontifical University of Zaragoza, he also studied law at the state university.
The newly ordained priest celebrated his first Mass on March 30, 1925, the Monday of Holy Week, in the chapel of Our Lady of the Pillar Cathedral. The new priest offered the Mass for the repose of the soul of his father, José Escrivá, who had died in November 1924.
Various activities have been planned in Zaragoza to mark the anniversary. On March 27, an academic event will be held with the participation of the archbishop of Zaragoza, Carlos Escribano; priest and historian José Luis González Gullón; the prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy, Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung-sik; and the prelate of Opus Dei, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz.
To celebrate the centennial of the priestly ordination of St. Josemaría Escrivá, a commemorative holy card has been designed, available in 13 languages, with a photo of the saint during his years as a seminarian, requesting his intercession so that “holy and abundant vocations” may come to the seminaries. Credit: Opus Dei
In the afternoon, a Mass will be celebrated at Our Lady of the Pillar Basilica to be followed by a prayer vigil for priestly vocations at St. Charles Borromeo Royal Seminary.
The following day, a solemn Mass will be celebrated in St. Charles Borromeo Church, and Ocáriz will hold various meetings with priests, families, and young people.
On Sunday, March 30, at the town of Perdiguera where the founder of Opus Dei served as parish priest, his first apostolic assignments after his ordination will be commemorated.
To celebrate the centennial, a commemorative holy card has been designed, available in 13 languages, with a photo of the saint during his years as a seminarian, requesting his intercession so that “holy and abundant vocations” may come to the seminaries.
In Rome, the auxiliary vicar of Opus Dei, Monsignor Mariano Fazio, will celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving in the St. Apollinare Basilica on March 28. In the afternoon, Luis Cano, a member of the St. Josemaría Escrivá Historical Institute, will give a lecture for priests.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Pope Francis speaks to bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, seminarians, and pastoral workers in St. Stephen’s Co-Cathedral in Budapest, Hungary, April 28, 2023. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Pope Francis on Friday encouraged clergy and others discouraged by a shortage of priests and ebbing faith in the West to pray for God’s help, saying the solutions will “come from the tabernacle and not the computer.”
“I want to assure you that good pastoral ministry is possible if we are able to live as the Lord has commanded us, in the love that is the gift of his Spirit,” the pope said, speaking to an audience of approximately 1,000 Hungarian priests, seminarians, and pastoral workers gathered in St. Stephen’s Co-Cathedral in Budapest.
The crowd listens to a speech by Pope Francis to bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, seminarians, and pastoral workers in St. Stephen’s Co-Cathedral in Budapest, Hungary, April 28, 2023. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
“If we grow distant from one another, or divided, if we become hardened in our ways of thinking and our different groups, then we will not bear fruit,” he warned. “It is sad when we become divided, because, instead of playing as a team, we start playing the game of the enemy: bishops not communicating with each other, the old versus the young, diocesan priests versus religious, priests versus laity, Latins versus Greeks.”
Such divisions lead to polarization along entrenched ideological lines, the Holy Father said. “No! Always remember that our first pastoral priority is to bear witness to communion, for God is communion and he is present wherever there is fraternal charity,” he said.
Speaking on Friday afternoon on the first day of his three-day visit to Hungary’s historic capital, Pope Francis acknowledged the many reasons for Christians to feel disheartened today, including the rise of secularism and a corresponding decline of faith in the West.
But the pope stressed that Christians “must always be on guard” not to yield to the temptation to become defeatists “who insist that all is lost, that we have lost the values of bygone days and have no idea where we are headed.”
There is another, equally dangerous temptation, he said: “a comfortable conformism that would have us think that everything is basically fine, the world has changed and we must simply adapt.”
To combat “bleak defeatism and a worldly conformism,” Pope Francis said, “the Gospel gives us new eyes to see” as well as discernment that enables us to “approach our own time with openness, but also with a prophetic spirit.” He added that we are called to “prophetic receptivity.”
The crowd listens to a speech by Pope Francis to bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, seminarians, and pastoral workers in St. Stephen’s Co-Cathedral in Budapest, Hungary, April 28, 2023. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
“Prophetic receptivity is about learning how to recognize the signs of God in the world around us, including places and situations that, while not explicitly Christian, challenge us and call for a response,” the Holy Father said. “At the same time, it is about seeing all things in the light of the Gospel without yielding to worldliness, as heralds and witnesses of the Christian faith.”
Pope Francis said people can accomplish this by “bringing the Lord’s consolation to situations of pain and poverty in our world, being close to persecuted Christians, to migrants seeking hospitality, to people of other ethnic groups and to anyone in need.”
The Church must aspire to be “capable of mutual listening, dialogue, and care for the most vulnerable” and “welcoming to all and courageous in bringing the prophetic message of the Gospel to everyone,” the Holy Father said.
“Christ is our future, for he is the one who guides all history. Your confessors of the faith were firmly convinced of this: the many bishops, priests, religious women and men martyred during the communist persecution. They testify to the unwavering faith of Hungarians,” Pope Francis said.
“Our lives, for all their frailty, are held firmly in his hands. If ever we forget this, we, clergy and laity alike, will end up seeking human ways and means to defend ourselves from the world, either withdrawing into our comfortable and tranquil religious oases, or else running after the shifting winds of worldliness. In both cases, our Christianity will lose its vigor, and we will cease to be the salt of the earth.”
Leave a Reply