Cardinal Pietro Parolin speaks at an Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) press conference in Rome, Italy, on Sept 28, 2017. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Vatican City, Oct 16, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
International Catholic nonprofit Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) will release its global religious freedom report in Rome next week with an Oct. 21 conference featuring the Vatican’s secretary of state and victims of religious persecution.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin will introduce the “Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025” with a speech at the Pontifical Patristic Institute Augustinianum conference center near the Vatican.
The report, released every two years since 1999, is a global study of religious freedom and persecution across all countries and faith groups.
“Since the first edition of the RFR, the situation has steadily worsened, and unfortunately, this negative trend is expected to continue,” Marta Petrosillo, the report’s editor-in-chief, said in a press release published ahead of the report’s launch.
According to ACN, this year’s report highlights the continent of Africa, particularly the spread of jihadist violence into the countries of Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The daylong conference will feature the voices of religious freedom experts and persecuted Christians from Nigeria, Syria, India, Sudan, and Pakistan.
The second half of the day will also include a panel of speakers on the increasing restrictions to religious freedom in democratic societies in the West, including legal and cultural pressure, secularist intolerance, and challenges to public witness.
In 2024, ACN spent more than $150 million on thousands of projects in 137 countries.
In an audience with members of the nonprofit at the Vatican on Oct. 10, Pope Leo XIV emphasized the importance of their work, especially in a world that continues to “witness growing hostility and violence against those who hold different beliefs, including many Christians.”
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Bari, Italy, Jul 2, 2018 / 09:48 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis’ visit to Bari this Saturday to pray for peace in the Middle East will have a strong ecumenical focus, the city’s archbishop has said.
Taking place July 7, the day of prayer and reflection will include leaders of Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the Middle East, and will have an “authentically ecumenical breath,” Archbishop Francesco Cacucci of Bari-Bitonto told Vatican News.
He said the day’s events will “combine the ecumenical vision of the Christian Churches and [give] particular attention to the Middle East, to invoke peace, but also to be close to our Christian brothers, who live in suffering.”
Pope Francis announced April 25 he would hold the day primarily for “prayer and reflection on the dramatic situation of the Middle East which afflicts so many brothers and sisters in the faith.”
Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako, the Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon, has confirmed he will be in attendance, as will Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, who leads the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Which other patriarchs will attend has not yet been confirmed.
During his Angelus address July 1, Pope Francis said he and the other Christian leaders in Bari “will implore with one voice: ‘Peace be upon you,’” as it says in Psalm 122. “I ask everyone to accompany with prayer this pilgrimage of peace and unity,” he said.
Bari is often called the “porta d’Oriente” or the “Eastern Gate” because of its connection to both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox through the relics of St. Nicholas, venerated by members of both Churches.
Historically, many Eastern Churches have been present in the city, Archbishop Cacucci said, but an ecumenical culture was imprinted upon it most strongly after the Second Vatican Council, when the archbishop of the time opened the crypt of the Basilica of St. Nicholas to the Orthodox by creating a small chapel dedicated to them.
“It was the first such act in the world,” he said. “And so, the journey continued through a constant dialogue with the other Christian confessions but, above all, with the Eastern world, that continually comes here to St. Nicholas to venerate the relics of the thaumaturge [wonder-worker].”
He said both the Russian Orthodox and other Eastern Christian Churches are present in Bari, as well as
Anglican and evangelical ecclesial communities.
All of these will be present for and participate in the pope’s visit July 7. A bishop for 31 years, Cacucci said he has “always lived in the light of St. Nicholas, who is the saint of unity.”
“The choice of Bari [to host the meeting] was a decision of the pope that I received with gratitude and with anticipation,” he said.
The main program for July 7 will begin at the Basilica of St. Nicholas, where Francis will greet the patriarchs and a local community of Dominican friars.
From there, the pope and patriarchs will go down into the basilica’s crypt to venerate a relic of St. Nicholas and to light a lamp, the flame representing unity.
The main prayer service will take place at Bari’s beachfront. Afterward, Francis and the patriarchs will return to the basilica for a private dialogue and lunch. The trip will conclude around 4:00 p.m.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 6, 2022 / 02:00 am (CNA).
A photo of an unidentified man hugging a life-size crucifix in Ukraine went viral across social media platforms as Russia began its full-scale invasion … […]
This photograph taken on March 18, 2022 shows smoke rising after an explosion in Kyiv. – Authorities in Kyiv said one person was killed early on March 18, 2022 when a downed Russian rocket struck a residential building in the capital’s northern suburbs. They said a school and playground were also hit. / Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 18, 2022 / 12:21 pm (CNA).
While it is logistically feasible for Pope Francis to travel to Kyiv, as the city’s mayor has invited him to do, the danger associated with holding any gatherings with him once he got there makes such a visit unlikely, according to the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas.
“Yesterday, three prime ministers arrived to Kyiv — the prime ministers of Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovenia. So, logistically speaking, yes, it is possible to come to Kyiv,” Kulbokas, the pope’s representative in Ukraine, told Raymond Arroyo, host of EWTN’s “The World Over,” on March 17.
“I know that Pope Francis wants to do all that is possible for him in order to contribute for peace, so I know for sure that he is evaluating, he is thinking about all the possibilities,” he added.
However, Kulbokas explained, the hope is that a papal visit could involve more than simply a discussion, as can happen readily enough through conventional or online means. Catholics and church leaders would want to pray with him, as would members of the Orthodox Church and other faiths.
While it is certainly something to hope for, he said, the situation is “too dangerous in Kyiv.”
KYIV, UKRAINE – MARCH 18: A woman sheltering in a metro station brushes her daughter’s hair on March 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russian forces remain on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, but their advance has stalled in recent days, even while Russian strikes – and pieces of intercepted missiles – have hit residential areas in the north of Kyiv. An estimated half of Kyiv’s population has fled to other parts of the country, or abroad, since Russia invaded on February 24. Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Unable to leave nunciature
Kulbokas, 47, who is from Lithuania, is currently bunkering in the nunciature in a residential area of the Ukraine capital.
He told Arroyo that because of the danger of missiles, the upper levels of the building cannot be used. Authorities have asked residents to reduce their movements to only essential ones, he said.
Sleep, prayer, and the celebration of Mass are all held in the same rooms with no windows, he said, adding that the situation is “dramatic.” The government has ordered some of the local shops to stay open, he said, in order that food and other necessities may be available to the people. He said that he has assistants who make the trip to the shops to buy food and other supplies.
Kulbokas also revealed to Arroyo that he has not left his residence for 21 days, because of the frequent attacks on the city. You can watch the full interview in the video below.
‘I will try to get them out’
In the interview, Kulbokas spoke about the solidarity he feels with the pope and the wider Church during this ordeal.
He shared a conversation he had with Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski about the difficulties authorities were having evacuating children from an orphanage in the city, Kulbokas said. Such an undertaking is extremely complicated and risky because of ongoing Russian missile and artillery attacks and the damage that these have done to the city’s infrastructure.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski and Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk greet children in Lviv, Ukraine. Screenshot from zhyve.tv YouTube channel.
Moved by the dire predicament, Krajewski pledged to take action himself, if necessary.
“Look, Visvalda, if you will see that the situation remains as difficult as it is now for some more hours, then I will come. I will take a car and I will try. I will try to get them out,” the nuncio said the Polish prelate told him. “Even under bombing. Even under shelling. If I die, I die. But at least I will try.”
The exchange made an enormous impression on the nuncio.
Even though he was speaking with a special envoy of Pope Francis, not the pope himself, “I felt his presence,” Kulbokas said.
“He was some 500 or 600 kilometers away from Kyiv, but I was feeling his presence so strongly that it [gave me] courage also.”
Krajewski, who is in charge of the pope’s charitable efforts as papal almoner, will play a prominent role in Pope Francis’ upcoming consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25.
That day, while the pope leads the act of consecration at St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Krajewski will do the same in Fatima, Portugal, where the Blessed Virgin Mary first requested Russia’s consecration during her appearances to three children in 1917.
Asked for his thoughts on the consecration, Kulbokas told Arroyo that the war does not just have political and military aspects, but spiritual ones, as well.
The nuncio said he believes that “God wants to tell us something” by allowing this war to occur.
The Blessed Virgin Mary “is the one able to face these satanic deeds,” he said.
Kulbokas added that it is not enough for the pope to consecrate Russia and Ukraine; “all the believers” should join him in consecrating themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, he said.
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