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Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines is sworn in during a House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesCNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 14:45 pm (CNA).Riley Gaines and more than a dozen other female athletes filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) on Thursday alleging that allowing men to compete in women's competitions denies women protections promised under Title IX. In a post on X, Gaines, a former swimmer with the University of Kentucky, announced the suit."It's official. I'm suing the NCAA along with 15 other collegiate athletes who have lost out on titles, records, and roster spots to men posing as women. The NCAA continues to explicitly violate the federal civil rights law of Title IX. About time someone did something about it," Gaines posted.The athletes' lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, alleges t...
Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire, which announced on March 13, 2024, that its institute will partner with the University of St. Thomas, Houston, to launch a master's program in evangelization and culture this summer. / Credit: Word on FireCNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).Word on Fire and the University of St. Thomas, Houston, announced on Wednesday that they are launching a master's program in evangelization and culture this summer. Set to begin in June, the program will be an "accredited and academically rigorous" master of arts degree in evangelization and culture, said Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute.Founded by Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Word on Fire is a nonprofit global media apostolate founded to evangelize and educate with an emphasis on contemporary media. The master's program is a natural outgrowth of the Word on Fire Institute, which offers live seminars,...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A Christian's awareness of being sinful should be directly proportional to their "perception of the infinite love of God," Pope Francis said."The more we sense God's tenderness, the more we desire to be in full communion with him and the more evident the ugliness of evil in our lives becomes," the pope said in a speech written for priests and seminarians attending a course on confession offered by the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican tribunal that deals with matters of conscience.Priests whose main ministry is hearing confessions in the major basilicas of Rome also attended the audience March 8. The pope's text, which he did not read but was distributed to participants, focused on the Act of Contrition, the prayer that penitents recite during the sacrament of reconciliation.The awareness of God's love and mercy, the pope wrote, "pushes us to reflect on ourselves and our actions, and to convert.""Let's remember that God never tires of forgiving us and that we...
ROME (CNS) -- Catholics should not be afraid to bear their sins before God whose mercy is a model for the church's ministers, Pope Francis said. "Put this in your mind and heart: God never tires of forgiving," the pope said during a Lenten penance service March 8. He then asked the approximately 600 people gathered at the parish of St. Pius V in Rome to repeat his words with him: "God never tires of forgiving!"Before putting on a stole to personally hear confessions in the church, Pope Francis asked priests to "forgive always, like God who never tires of forgiving.""Don't ask too much" during confessions, he told the priests, instructing them to "forgive everything." Pope Francis attends a Lenten penance service March 8, 2024, at the parish of St. Pius V in Rome. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)"Let us always grant forgiveness to those who ask for it and help those who feel fear to confidently approach the sacrament of healing and joy," he said. "Let us put God's forgiveness back at the cent...
WASHINGTON - Each person's life is a unique gift and has immeasurable value from the moment of conception, said Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, and it is for that precise reason that the Catholic Church cannot condone procedures such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) that result in a loss of life at a massive scale. In response to the growing attention to assisted reproductive technologies, Bishop Burbidge, as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, spoke about the gift of life. Recognizing the desire to have children is good and given the challenges many couples face, Bishop Burbidge called for greater focus on ethical treatments addressing the root causes of infertility. Additionally, other approaches that may be sought by some couples seeking to expand their families, such as foster care and adoption, should be offered more support. The chairman's full statement follows: "The national conversation in the news about laws relat...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Encouraging negotiations to end Russia's war on Ukraine, Pope Francis called for the warring sides to have the "courage of the white flag," a term usually associated with surrender.Asked in an interview whether Ukraine should surrender and if doing so would legitimize the actions of the stronger power, the pope said that "the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates."The interview, with Italian-language Swiss broadcaster RSI, was recorded Feb. 2, but segments were released March 9 ahead of its full release scheduled for March 20.Several Italian media outlets quickly began circulating stories on the interview March 9 that incorrectly quoted the pope as saying that "Ukraine should have the courage to raise the white flag."Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, told reporters March 9 that the image of the white flag -- a term used by the interviewer in posing the...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Christians should pray for the grace to look at others with the same mercy and care with which Jesus looks at them, Pope Francis said."No one is perfect. We are all sinners, we all make mistakes, and if the Lord were to use his knowledge of our weaknesses to condemn us, no one could be saved," the pope said March 10 before reciting the Angelus prayer with visitors gathered in St. Peter's Square.Commenting on the day's Gospel reading, Jn 3:14-21, Pope Francis focused on the line: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him."When Jesus encounters people in the Gospel, the pope said, he sees all that they are. "There are no secrets before him. He reads their hearts."Then and now, Jesus sees the whole person, not "to point the finger at us, but to embrace our life, to free us from sins and to save us," he said. "Jesus is not interested in putting us on trial or subjecting us to judgment. He wants ...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis was not asking Ukraine to consider surrendering to Russia when he called for negotiations to end the war, but he was calling for both Russia and Ukraine to cease hostilities and engage in peace talks, the Vatican's top diplomat said.It's "obvious" that creating the conditions for a diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine "is not only up to one side, but to both sides," Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published March 12. The first step toward reaching peace, he added, is "to put an end to the aggression."The responsibility for ceasing hostilities in Ukraine falls "first and foremost to the aggressor," he said without explicitly naming Russia. Only then, he said, can negotiations begin."The Holy Father explains that to negotiate is not weakness, but strength. It is not surrender, but courage," he said.The cardinal's comments came after the release March 9 of port...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The saints are not unreachable "exceptions of humanity" but ordinary people who worked diligently to grow in virtue, Pope Francis said.It is wrong to think of the saints as "a kind of small circle of champions who live beyond the limits of our species," the pope wrote in the catechesis for his general audience March 13 in St. Peter's Square. Instead, they are "those who fully become themselves, who realize the vocation of every person." Pope Francis rides in the popemobile after his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican March 13, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)"How happy would be a world in which justice, respect, mutual respect, the breadth of the spirit (and) hope were the shared norm and not a rare anomaly," he wrote.Just like at his general audience March 6, Pope Francis told visitors in the square that due to a mild cold an aide, Msgr. Pierluigi Giroli, would read his speech. However the pope had seemed recovered when he read the entir...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis has advanced the sainthood cause of U.S. Sister Rose Hawthorne, the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and he recognized the martyrdom of a German priest executed by the Nazis and a German nun and her 14 companions who were raped and murdered by Russian soldiers during World War II.After Pope Francis met March 14 with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican published the list of decrees the pope approved in 12 sainthood causes.The pope recognized the heroic virtues of Sister Hawthorne, who, born in 1851 in Lenox, Massachusetts, was the third and last child of novelist and short-story writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. She and her husband, George Lathrop, converted to Catholicism, but they eventually separated after his alcoholism led to extremely violent behavior. Rose Hawthorne is shown in this file photo taken before her work with cancer patients began. (CNS photo/courtesy Dominican Sisters of Hawthorn...
