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An Orthodox Christian group sued Phoenix over a new law restricting free food distribution and medical care to people in need at parks, continuing a regional battle over how cities should respond to homelessness in public spaces.
Lance Brace, founder of St. Herman’s Table, a ministry of Exaltation of the Holy Cross Orthodox Church, said a Phoenix ordinance passed in early May and set to take effect June 5 criminalizes his evangelism and makes it impossible for him to provide food, water, Bibles and small hygiene products to unhoused people in city parks.
The ministry provides those items with the ultimate goal “to introduce Jesus Christ to the people it serves,” the complaint says.
Pope Leo had a brief private meeting with Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny at Madrid’s Bernabeu stadium on Monday evening as both were touring Spain, the Vatican said on Tuesday, adding that it did not expect to release any photos of the meeting.
As Catholics from all over the world observed Corpus Christi by processing through the streets to celebrate the Eucharist, about 300 parishioners in Washington, D.C., did the same—with a specific focus on honoring the dignity of immigrants.
Going back to the 13th century, Corpus Christi is the Catholic Church’s celebration of Jesus Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. For Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, who led the immigrant-focused procession in Washington and serves as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia, the day is a reminder to stand in solidarity with those who are suffering, especially immigrants who live in fear of deportation.
“The mystery we celebrate today is a mystery of unity,” he told Sojourners on Sunday. “We share one bread, one cup, and then we become the body of Christ … But the Eucharist has to go beyond just receiving Jesus at Mass or adoring Jesus in the blessed sacrament.”
Across Latin America, faith-based organizations have a long history of accompanying and serving migrants traveling northward. But as the U.S. grows increasingly aggressive in its immigration enforcement, these ministries find themselves serving migrants flowing south, away from the U.S.
Pope Leo XIV named an executive with U.S. Catholic media conglomerate EWTN as the new head of the Vatican’s communications department on Tuesday, in the first appointment of a woman to the senior Church role.
Zondervan will put Alan Chambers’s book My Exodus: From Fear to Grace out of print following the news of Chambers’ arrest for solicitation of a minor.
Chambers, a leader and later renouncer of ex-gay ministry Exodus International, was arrested by the Orlando Police Department on May 19. According to case details first reported by ABC affiliate Channel 9 Orlando News, Chambers is charged with three felonies he messaged a detective posing as a 14-year-old boy. The Advocate reported that he “frequently discussed meeting up and engaging in sexual activity during that time, as well as concerns about their age difference and if he would get in trouble.”
Chambers joined Exodus International in 2001, leading the ministry until 2013 when Chambers gave a public apology for the organization’s efforts to promote sexual orientation change. He later supported bans on “conversion therapy” for minors and spoke at Pride events. In 2015, he told Religion News Service that he believed same-sex relationships could be holy.
Two teenage gunmen opened fire on Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, killing a security guard and two other men outside the mosque before the suspects were found dead, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said local law enforcement and the FBI were investigating the attack on the largest mosque in San Diego County as a hate crime.
Pope Leo will address the rise of artificial intelligence in his first in-depth text outlining his concerns, the Vatican said on Monday, adding that it would be unveiled on May 25 by the pontiff himself.
The document, known as an encyclical, is likely to decry the use of AI in warfare and address how the technology is challenging workers’ rights, according to sources.
This Saturday, Black leaders are inviting Americans of all races and faith traditions to rally across the nation to protect minority voting rights in the aftermath of a recent Supreme Court decision weakening the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“We believe that the gutting of the Voting Rights Act is the latest of many red flags and alarms that the state of our country is not well,” California pastor Rev. Michael McBride told Sojourners this week.
McBride, one of the key organizers for Saturday’s National Day of Action for Voting Rights, said churchgoers in particular “have a moral responsibility … to lift up our voice, that this injustice not be unmet by the faithful among us.”
When the U.S. Department of Justice released its report on “eradicating anti-Christian bias” last week, the argument it sought to settle had long hardened along familiar fault lines. For some, the document confirmed what they see as a years-long sidelining of Christian voices in public life. For others, it read less like a civil rights diagnosis and more like a reframing of political grievances as religious persecution.
Faith leaders joined civic leaders in raising alarm over a recent Supreme Court ruling that experts say could significantly reshape how states apply one of the country’s core protections for minority voting rights. The Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais to block Louisiana from using a racially contested congressional map did not formally overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but in her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the ruling has rendered it “all but a dead letter.”
Civil rights organizations and faith leaders immediately shared the sentiment that the conservative court was continuing to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 one section at a time.
“The Supreme Court’s decision falsely claims fidelity to the law while stripping it of its power,” said the National Council of Churches in a written statement. “By invalidating a district created to reflect Louisiana's racial and political diversity, and comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court decision silences voices that the Voting Rights Act was designed to uplift. Such an action does not restore our democracy; it wounds it. At a time when the nation should be working to strengthen representation and public trust, this decision moves us backward.”
The Supreme Court has sided with a coalition of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers in its fight against the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, finding a subpoena that state investigators issued for donor information unconstitutionally chilled the centers’ free speech and association rights.
In a unanimous decision issued Wednesday, Justice Neil Gorsuch reversed an appellate court’s ruling that had prevented First Choice Women’s Resource Centers Inc., from airing their constitutional objections to the state’s probe and investigative practices in federal court. Gorsuch’s ruling returns the case to U.S. District Court.
When Jim Hall and Bob Bruce, who have been best friends for over 50 years, heard about the Buddhist monks who walked for peace earlier this year, they had an idea: What if they did a walk of their own, one that focused on building bridges across faith and politics?
The plan quickly took shape, leading to the kindness walk that the duo have planned Aug. 12-20.
The nine-day walk will cross nearly 90 miles and several faith communities between Shoreline and Olympia, Wa.
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a bid by the Archdiocese of Denver and other Catholic entities to be exempted from a Colorado preschool funding program’s nondiscrimination requirement.
The justices took up an appeal of a lower court’s decision that found that Colorado’s program did not violate the religious rights of the Catholic plaintiffs under the Constitution’s First Amendment.
The program provides state funds for preschools. The Catholic plaintiffs objected to the state’s requirement that schools receiving funding under the program give all children “equal opportunity” to enroll in preschool regardless of certain characteristics, including the sexual orientation or gender identity of students or their family members.
Police on Thursday were investigating a bomb threat made to the Chicago-area home of Pope Leo’s brother John Prevost after a search found no explosives or hazardous materials.
A bomb threat was reported Wednesday evening at the home of John Prevost in New Lenox, Illinois, according to media outlets that cited police. Prevost lives on the same street cited as the location of the attack by police. New Lenox police did not return a call for comment on the report.
The Justice Department accused the Biden administration of unfairly prosecuting anti-abortion activists the day after it fired at least four attorneys who were involved in prosecuting those cases.
The accusations come in the first report from the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group,” which has been tasked with going after law enforcement officials who have investigated President Donald Trump, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former special counsel Jack Smith.
The report defends Trump’s mass pardoning of 23 people who were convicted under the Biden administration for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act. The law prohibits obstructing people from entering medical centers and was passed in 1994 after a spate of violence against abortion providers, including the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn.
On Monday, Pope Leo XIV responded to ranting criticisms from President Donald Trump, saying in part that he had no interest in being perceived as a politician.
“The message of the church, my message, the message of the gospel: Blessed are the peacemakers,” Leo told journalists as he arrived in Algeria. “I do not look at my role as being political, a politician.”
Trump attacked Leo late Sunday night as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” at the beginning of a lengthy post on Truth Social.
“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States,” he wrote. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” The president also posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, though he later deleted the post and claimed he thought it was him as a “doctor … a Red Cross worker.”
President Donald Trump issued an attack on Pope Leo late on Sunday, calling him “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible” for foreign policy after the religious leader criticized Trump’s foreign and immigration policies.
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social.
When Elly Cohen chose to terminate her pregnancy in 2022, it aligned with her understanding of Jewish law that life begins at birth, not conception.
Cohen and her husband were eager to give their then 4-year-old daughter a sibling. But her fetus had been diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a severe chromosomal disorder that, in most cases, leads to death before birth or within the first year of life. She decided to end the pregnancy.
Had she gotten pregnant just a few months later, she might not have had that choice. She lives in Indiana, one of 13 states that enacted near-total bans on abortion following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Iran showed no sign of accepting Donald Trump’s ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz by the end of Tuesday, while the U.S. president threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” unless Tehran reached a last-minute deal.
Trump has given Iran until 8 p.m. in Washington—3:30 a.m. in Tehran—to end its blockade of Gulf oil, or he will destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran. Iran says it would retaliate against U.S. allies in the Gulf, whose desert cities would be uninhabitable without power or water.