July 21, 2025 // National

News Briefs: July 27, 2025

OSV NEWS

Accountability demanded for Israeli Strike

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (OSV News) – On Thursday, July 17, an Israeli strike hit the Holy Family Parish compound, killing three Christians and wounding 10 others, including its pastor, Father Gabriel Romanelli. Speaking to L’Osservatore Romano, Father Romanelli called the attack “terrible” and urged prayers to “convince the whole world to end this war.” Shrapnel damaged the church roof, narrowly missing its iconic cross, and killed parish janitor Saad Salameh, 60, and two elderly women sheltering in a Caritas tent. The Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, said the strike was unintentional and is under review. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, called the situation in Gaza “unbearable” and demanded accountability. He told Italian public broadcast station RAI that the Israel-Hamas war “is a war without limits, based on what we’ve seen.” He asked, “How can a population like that of Gaza be destroyed and starved like this? Many boundaries have already been crossed.” Father Romanelli said the community offers its suffering in the name of the Lord Jesus and asked for prayers “to convince the whole world to end this war, so we can begin rebuilding peace, justice, and reconciliation, both in Palestine and in Israel.”

Pope Leo Declares Miracle in Baby’s Healing in Rhode Island

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (OSV News) – Rhode Islanders are celebrating Pope Leo XIV’s declaration that the healing of a baby born in their state in 2007 was indeed miraculous, advancing the sainthood cause of a 19th-century Spanish priest. Pope Leo XIV promulgated the acceptance of the miracle for Venerable Salvador Valera Parra on Friday, June 20, with various decrees presented to the pope by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. The dicastery’s website specified that Father Parra’s intercession had been attributed to the miraculous resuscitation of “little Tyquan,” born critically ill on January 14, 2007, at the now-closed Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Local coverage of the miracle was sparked on Friday, July 18, with an article that cited an interview by Vida Nueva, a Madrid-based Catholic news outlet, with Dr. Juan Sánchez-Esteban, the attending physician at the infant’s delivery who invoked the priest’s intercession. Vida Nueva published the child’s full name as Tyquan Hall, noting Hall has since led a normal, healthy life. In a statement, Diocese of Providence chancellor Father Timothy Reilly called the miracle “wonderful news” that would advance the priest’s cause toward beatification and canonization.

Church of England Weighs Public Veneration of St. Thomas More’s Relics

LIVERPOOL, England (OSV News) – The Church of England is weighing plans to exhume and enshrine the head of St. Thomas More, the patron saint of statesmen and politicians, in time for the 500th anniversary of his 1535 martyrdom. St. Thomas More’s head was buried with his daughter, Margaret Roper, in the family vault at St. Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury, after she rescued it from a spike on London Bridge. Parish leaders announced on Sunday, July 6, that, pending approval, they hope to conserve the relic and raise about $67,000 to create a shrine by 2035. More, a celebrated lawyer, author of “Utopia,” and lord chancellor under King Henry VIII, was executed for refusing to endorse the king’s break with Rome. Canonized in 1935, he remains a towering Catholic witness of conscience. St. Dunstan’s is inviting public input on the project, which leaders say could take years to complete. In June, during the Jubilee of Governments, Pope Leo XIV encouraged politicians to take inspiration from St. Thomas More as a perfect example of a public servant, calling him “a martyr for freedom and for the primacy of conscience.”

Illinois Village Buys Pope Leo’s Boyhood Home

DOLTON, Illinois (OSV News) – The Village of Dolton, Illinois, has bought Pope Leo XIV’s former childhood home for $375,000. A village spokesperson confirmed the purchase of the home closed on Tuesday, July 8. “We are currently working to have the property solicited as a historical site,” Nakita Cloud told OSV News. “This can open the door for federal and state funding opportunities tied to historic preservation, tourism development, and community revitalization. It also provides us the opportunity to attract philanthropic and nonprofit partnerships that support cultural and educational initiatives.” Cloud also confirmed the house was not purchased under eminent domain and included all applicable realtor and auction fees. The village, just south of Chicago, was once a suburb where manufacturing jobs were plentiful. Donna Sagna Davis, a resident who had been living next door for more than eight years, told OSV News she welcomed the village’s interest in acquiring it. She said the sight of people continuing to visit and pray before the pope’s boyhood home was an answer to her prayer for the neighborhood to show increased reverence to God.

Court Blocks Mandatory Reporter Law

TACOMA, Washington (OSV News) – A federal court on Friday, July 18, temporarily blocked a new law in Washington state requiring clergy to report child abuse or neglect without exceptions for clergy-penitent privilege. The state’s Catholic bishops previously sued in response to Governor Bob Ferguson’s approval of Senate Bill 5375, which designated members of the clergy as mandatory reporters, or people required by law to report suspected or known instances of child abuse or neglect. The version of that legislation signed into law did not include an exception for sacramental confessions, an exception that most other states with similar requirements for clergy have. The order from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Tacoma said the court concluded the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise Clause challenge and met the requirements to issue the preliminary injunction. Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, a religious liberty law firm representing the state’s bishops, said in a statement, “This ruling confirms what has always been true: In America, government officials have no business prying into the confessional.” The law was originally scheduled to take effect on Sunday, July 27.

West Virginia Ban on Mifepristone’ Upheld by Federal Court

WASHINGTON, D.C. (OSV News) – A federal appeals court in a 2-1 decision on Tuesday, July 15, upheld a West Virginia law that restricts mifepristone and other drugs when the intent is to use them for abortion. West Virginia’s abortion ban, the Unborn Child Protection Act, bans the use of medicine or drugs with the intent of carrying out an abortion. The drug mifepristone, which is used in combination with misoprostol, is commonly used for first trimester abortion. However, the same two-drug combination is also used in some early miscarriage care protocols. In that case, mifepristone does not run afoul of West Virginia’s law, which specifically excludes miscarriage from its definition of abortion. But GenBioPro, mifepristone’s major manufacturer argued that the drug’s approval for abortion by the Food and Drug Administration should preempt West Virginia’s ban. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared that preempting West Virginia’s law in “this instance would upend the federal-state balance by supplanting every state law tangentially touching a federal domain.” Governor Patrick Morrisey called the ruling a “big win” in a statement and said, “West Virginia can continue to enforce our pro-life laws and lead the nation in our efforts to protect life.”

Pope Leo XIV looks through the main telescope of the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, alongside U.S. Jesuit Father David A. Brown, an astronomer, July 20, 2025. The pope visited the observatory to mark the anniversary of the first crewed mission to land on the moon in 1969, following the recitation of the Angelus in the city’s main square. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)