September 2, 2025 // National

News Briefs: September 7, 2025

OSV NEWS

Bishops Say Katrina Anniversary a Call to Racial Equity, Justice

WASHINGTON, D.C. (OSV News) – The 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina marks a call to “renew our commitment to racial equity and justice in every sector of public life,” said two U.S. Catholic bishops. Auxiliary Bishop Roy E. Campbell Jr. of Washington, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on African American Affairs, and retired Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry of Chicago, chairman of the USCCB’s Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, issued a joint statement on Tuesday, August 26, reflecting on the tragedy. The hurricane, one of the five deadliest in U.S. history, struck the nation’s Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, as a Category 3 storm. It made multiple landfalls, inflicting staggering damage and killing 1,833 people. In hard-hit New Orleans, “disparities, rooted in historical and structural racism, intensified the suffering of many Black residents,” said the two bishops. The hurricane and governmental response missteps “revealed the fragility of our cities to natural disasters and the reality of poverty among the most vulnerable in our country,” they said. “Let us join together, as one community, responding to the call to be leaven for the world,” Bishop Campbell and Bishop Perry said. “As a Church, let us be a lifeboat in the flood waters of injustice.”

Pope Pleads with Israel and Hamas to End Violence

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Leo XIV appealed to Israel and Hamas to stop the violence that has caused “so much terror, destruction, and death.” At the end of his general audience on Wednesday, August 27, the pope said, “I plead for all hostages to be freed, a permanent ceasefire to be reached, the safe entry of humanitarian aid to be facilitated and humanitarian law to be fully respected.” Without naming Israel, Pope Leo specified that he was calling for full observance of “the duty to protect civilians and the prohibitions against collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.”

Time Magazine Calls Pope Leo a ‘Spiritual Counterweight’ to Silicon Valley

VATICAN CITY (OSV News) – Pope Leo XIV has been named to Time magazine’s “Time 100 AI” list for 2025, where he is recognized as one of the world’s top “thinkers” shaping how humanity is confronting artificial intelligence. Time praised the pope’s decision to take the name Leo as a nod to Pope Leo XIII, who guided the Church through the Industrial Revolution. In May, Leo XIV warned that AI represents a “new industrial revolution” that demands the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor. Speaking at a Vatican gathering on AI this summer, he hailed its potential in health care and science but cautioned against its misuse for profit, conflict, or exploitation. The Catholic Church’s 1.4 billion members give the pontiff a unique influence in global debates on technology. Bishop Paul Tighe, a top official at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, has said that AI is now “at the top of the agenda” in Rome, with dialogue between the Vatican and Silicon Valley intensifying under Pope Leo’s leadership.

Archbishop Warns Legalizing Assisted Suicide Could Close Hospices in England

LIVERPOOL, England (OSV News)
– An English archbishop is urging Catholics to lobby against a proposed assisted suicide law moving through Parliament. Archbishop John Sherrington of Liverpool, the bishops’ lead on life issues, is calling on the faithful to write to members of the House of Lords before a September 12 vote on the “Terminally Ill Adults Bill.” The measure would allow adults with fewer than six months to live to seek help ending their lives with medical assistance. But Archbishop Sherrington warns the legislation threatens the survival of Catholic hospices and care homes, weakens palliative care, and risks pressuring vulnerable people to choose death. Officials with the Catholic Medical Association echoed those concerns, warning the bill could drive doctors and nurses out of the profession. “This bill is inadequate in its conscience provisions for doctors and other health care professionals who wish to have no part in assisting their patients to end their own lives through the means this bill proposes,” the officials said in a September 1 statement posted on the bishops’ conference website.

USCCB Synod Tackles Dignity of Work, Role of Unions

WASHINGTON, D.C. (OSV News) – At the headquarters of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., a July 28-29 gathering brought together Church leaders, labor organizers, and international partners from North, Central, and South America for a major synodal dialogue focused on work, justice, and the environment. Titled “Third Synodal Meeting Fratelli Tutti: North-South Socio-Environmental Dialogue,” the event was co-hosted by the USCCB, the Latin American Episcopal Council, or CELAM, and the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Latin America. More than 40 labor groups joined bishops and Church leaders to strengthen cooperation between the global North and South – offering proposals to promote dignified work and build a more just, sustainable economy rooted in Catholic social teaching. “Synodality, at the heart of the matter, is an openness to actually keeping it real,” said Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, who represented the North. “Keeping it real is you really do have to listen to people, and you really do have to talk to people,” he said. “You can’t sit somewhere in an office and sort of plan the global economy.” Representing the Global South was Bishop José Reginaldo Andrietta of Brazil. The Vatican was represented by Msgr. Juan Antonio Cruz Serrano, permanent observer of the Holy See to the Organization of American States.

Ukraine’s Religious Leaders Plead for Pope’s Help

KYIV (OSV News) – Ukraine’s religious leaders have appealed to Pope Leo XIV for his continued help in returning thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war, hostages, and deported children as deadly Russian attacks on Kyiv and other cities in that nation continue to claim civilian lives amid stalled global peace negotiations. The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations issued an August 26 letter to the pope, thanking him for his “consistent stance in defense of a just peace, his support for ending the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and his efforts to address the humanitarian problems in Ukraine caused by the war,” according to the group’s website. The letter came just a day ahead of massive August 27-28 Russian attacks throughout Ukraine, in which 23 people, among them four children, were killed in Kyiv alone, with at least 53 injured and eight others missing.

People take refuge in a field after a deadly 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan around midnight, in Dara Mazar, in Kunar province, Afghanistan, Sept. 1, 2025. (OSV News/Reuters)