OSV News

After a major diplomatic incident that prevented him from entering the holy site on March 29 to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass, access was granted for Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Church leaders in Jerusalem expressed sorrow over the news of the passage by the Israeli Knesset of a death penalty law — by hanging — for Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks on Israelis, noting that Easter, which celebrates life, represents the opposite.

The messages come as some Catholic and Christian influencers broadly peddle antisemitic tropes — including the charge of deicide, or the alleged collective Jewish responsibility for the death of Christ — repudiated by the Church in the wake of the Council of Trent and even more explicitly at the Second Vatican Council.

Trump's presence for oral arguments in the case, Trump v. Barbara, marked the first time a sitting president has attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court, according to records from the high court and the nonprofit Supreme Court Historical Society.

Just over three years to the date after filing for Chapter 11 protection under the crush of nearly 440 Child Victims Act claims, the Diocese of Albany reached a $148 million settlement agreement with the survivors of sexual abuse by diocesan priests and others on March 27.

It will be the first time that a pope has carried the cross for every station in the Via Crucis since the tradition was revived at the site more than six decades ago.

A Catholic university in Qatar has closed its building as war in the Middle East continues — with the Iranian regime now explicitly naming American universities as "legitimate targets" in retaliation for strikes on two schools in Iran.

Catholics in Chicago have expressed sympathy and sorrow over the death of a Loyola University Chicago student who was shot and killed March 19 near the school campus.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said an agreement has been reached with Israeli authorities to allow Holy Week and Easter celebrations to take place at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher after they were initially barred from celebrating Palm Sunday.

"As Jesus walks the Way of the Cross, we place ourselves behind him, following in his footsteps," Pope Leo XIV said.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, and Fr. Francesco Ielpo, the custos of the Holy Land, were prevented from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher by Israeli police on Palm Sunday, the Latin patriarchate said.

"The joy and the strength of our witness come from redemption, in every place and at every time," he said. 

On March 25 the Archdiocese of Denver welcomed its ninth bishop and sixth archbishop, Archbishop James R. Golka, amid the devoted prayers and ecstatic applause of thousands gathered at the CoBank Arena at the National Western Complex in Denver.

Pope Leo XIV offered prayers and encouragement as Archbishop Sarah Mullally began her ministry as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury and the first woman to lead the Anglican Communion. 

The Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has released a new document describing the "Anglican heritage" of the Catholic Church's personal ordinariates as a permanent reality that makes a "distinctive contribution" to the Church's evangelizing mission.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments March 24 in a case concerning reimplementing a policy that would block asylum-seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, where federal law would then allow them to seek asylum.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen will be beatified on Sept. 24 in St. Louis, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints announced March 25.

Those and other insights on the nation's adult Catholics were shared by researcher Mark Gray in a March 23 analysis posted to Nineteen Sixty-four, the blog of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

In a pastoral letter published March 19, Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp wrote that the question is "no longer whether" married men can be ordained, but "when" and "who will do it."

In 2023, following a major television documentary claiming that St. John Paul II had covered up clerical sexual abuse when he was leading the Archdiocese of Kraków, Polish experts rejected the claim and urged that archdiocesan records be opened to allow the full context.