Jeanie Hannaman

By Thomas D. Williams PH.D., Breitbart - Communist party officials have notified a diocese in China’s southeastern Jiangxi province that they will soon demolish the underground church of the Annunciation because of the failure of its pastor to join the state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association… last August police approached the parish priest of the Annunciation Church and demanded that he register the church with the government and join the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, if he wished to save the church from demolition… Both the priest and his parishioners indicated, however, that they would rather sacrifice the church than join the Patriotic Association.

By Francis Phillips, Catholic Herald - These missionaries of Wall Street and the surrounding streets follow a tried and tested formula. They ask pedestrians whether they are Catholic; offer them rosaries and holy pictures; give them schedules of the Holy Week services and ask if they would like to light a candle in St Patrick’s – where several priests are waiting in the confessionals. Engaging people in conversation is only the start; the aim is to try to get Catholics who have lapsed from the Faith to go to Confession before Easter – and thus re-engage seriously with the sacramental life of the Church.