Happy Friday! As always, here’s your weekly roundup:
Sister of St. Joseph Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun and anti-death penalty activist whose story came to fame with the 1995 film Dead Man Walking, took the stand on Monday in the penalty phase of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial. She said he is “genuinely sorry for what he did,” and he told her how he felt about the suffering he caused to the bombing’s victims. After hearing the testimony of 63 witnesses, the jury voted on Friday to give Tsarnaev the death penalty.
Several people were killed and dozens more were injured when an Amtrak train carrying 243 people derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
A report released by the Pew Forum finds that Catholicism is losing members faster than any denomination and also that the total number of Catholics in the United States dropped by 3 million since 2007.
The Vatican has agreed to a new treaty with Palestinian representatives that refers to them as the State of Palestine. A Vatican spokesman told the Associated Press, “Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists.”
The pope’s closest adviser on Tuesday slammed climate change skeptics, blaming capitalist motivations from “movements in the United States” for opposing Francis’ upcoming encyclical on the environment. “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” said Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga.
A founding father of Latin America’s liberation theology movement, which seeks to place the Catholic Church on the side of the poor, said there has been no “rehabilitation” under Pope Francis because the movement was never formally rejected in the first place.
The Archdiocese of New York announced it will close seven more churches as part of the biggest reorganization in its history, a process of parish consolidations that will leave the archdiocese 20 percent smaller than it was last year.
Catholic bishops called Monday for the U.S. immigrant detention system to be dismantled, and predicted Pope Francis would address the issue when he visits the United States this fall.
President Obama this week called Pope Francis “transformative,” saying the pope’s “insistence” that fighting poverty be at the heart of the Christian life has made him a global icon.
Also: A priest has translated children’s book Diary of a Wimpy Kid into Latin.
And now for the papal rapid fire roundup
This week, Pope Francis:
- Met Raul Castro.
- Got a hard hat.
- Talked to a sleepy audience.
- Got a tennis racket.
