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Our Sunday Visitor
Greenland Catholics eye new security agreement with relief
By Gina Christian, October 2, 2026
Catholics in Greenland are regarding a new security agreement with a mixture of relief and concern, while remaining committed to the call of the Gospel, said the island’s only Catholic parish priest. For the island’s 56,000 residents — a majority of whom are Inuit, and about 500 of whom are Catholic — the deal assuages, at least in part, recent anxieties. On Sept. 22, the U.S., Denmark and Greenland signed an agreement amending the 1951 document that authorized the U.S. to create military bases in semiautonomous Greenland, which, along with the Faroe Islands and the European nation of Denmark, forms the Kingdom of Denmark. The deal allows for modernization and expansion of the existing U.S. Pituffik Space base, as well as the creation of two other installations at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig. Other military facilities may also be established, with the U.S. also confirming free overflight, overland and undersea access across Greenland. The agreement additionally restricts foreign investment to NATO, NATO-aligned nations and the EU.
National Catholic Register
Helping every family become a ‘Domestic Church’
By Bishop Earl Boyea, October 4, 2026
The family is the foundation of society. It is the first, best, and cheapest department of health, welfare, and education. It is also where vocations to marriage, the priesthood, and consecrated life most often take root. So we asked: How can we best help our families grow in holiness and, thus, happiness? The prayerful result is a new weekly catechetical series entitled Bishop Boyea’s Year of the Family. Every seven days, subscribers receive a short film, introduced by me, showcasing a family from somewhere across the Diocese of Lansing. Each featured family shares how they are striving to live the Catholic faith more fully in their daily lives. Throughout the year, the series will explore family prayer, education, liturgical living, hospitality, discipline, and works of charity. Already, they have 50,000 subscribers to the Year of the Family. They each receive weekly communication via text or e-mail.
Related: Pedaling for Providence: A Priest’s 350-Mile Family Tradition Is Saving Catholic Education, by Alyssa Murphy, National Catholic Register, October 4, 2026
EWTN News
2027 pro-life award to Dominican sisters under NY lawsuit
By Kate Quiñones, October 25, 2026
The University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture on Oct. 4 announced that its 2027 Evangelium Vitae Medal would be awarded to the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne for what the center described as more than a century of “truth and love” serving poor and dying people. [The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who run Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed facility offering free care to terminally ill cancer patients, filed a complaint on April 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the filing, the sisters argue that state authorities are threatening to close their ministry unless they “violate their Catholic faith.”] Notre Dame President Father Robert Dowd, CSC, said in a press release that the sisters’ work “radiate the very mercy of God.” “Since their founding, they have proclaimed the Gospel of Life through direct service to God’s beloved poor, fulfilling Christʼs command to comfort the sick and give shelter to the homeless,” Dowd said. The sisters’ ministry, he said, “highlights the inherent, God-given dignity of every human person, regardless of worldly success or social status.”
Related: Nuns who care for dying poor face jail time under New York law, Theresa Civantos Barber, Aleteia, 04/08/26|
PIMA Asia News
Bandura Seminary, ‘cradle of the priesthood’ in Bangladesh
By Sumon Corraya, October 3, 2026
In a country where Christians make up less than 1% of the population, the centenary of Bangladesh’s first minor seminary was both a celebration of the past and a call to the future. Church leaders urged Catholic families to help form a new generation of men called to the priestly vocation. More than a thousand faithful—including priests, former seminarians, religious, and lay Catholics—gathered at the Little Flower Minor Seminary in Bandura, 40 km from Dhaka, to celebrate the institution’s centenary. The event highlighted the seminary’s enduring role in the life of the Church in Bangladesh, which over the past century has drawn heavily on local vocations to sustain its growth. Founded in 1926 by the American missionary of the Order of the Holy Cross, Fr John Baptist Delaunay, the Little Flower Minor Seminary was the first Catholic institution in what is now Bangladesh dedicated specifically to forming priestly vocations. Nearly 5,000 young people have studied there.
The Pillar
Norway registers Church membership for national funds
By Denmark’s Catholic Church, October 5, 2026
The Catholic Church has close to 180 000 registered members and is the largest faith community in Norway after the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway. The Church is growing, and with growth comes the need for more, better, and larger churches, as well as more priests to administer the sacraments and safeguard the spiritual life of the faithful. Growth also requires increased efforts in the work for children and young people and in the Norwegian Church’s charitable work. Recently, media attention has focused on member registration in faith and belief communities. The Catholic Church received 114 withdrawals in week 39. Office chief Mats Tande oversees the member system across all three Catholic church districts in the country. When the digital membership register was adopted in 2004, the information about around 30 000 members was transferred to the new system. The church's registrations and registration routines are controlled every year by the Church's auditor.
Zeale
St. Francis as model for repairing the Church & building peace
By Mary Stroka, October 4, 2026
Pope Leo XIV held up St. Francis of Assisi as a model for renewing the Church and building peace during his Sunday Angelus, marking the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death. Reflecting on the Gospel parable of the vineyard in Matthew 21, the Pope said Jesus’ rejection shows that violence and human sin cannot defeat God’s saving plan. God can transform what is rejected into the foundation of something new, he said, pointing to Christ as the stone rejected by the builders that became the cornerstone. Eight centuries after his death, Pope Leo XIV said the Franciscan charism continues to bear fruit throughout the Church, both through the Franciscan orders and the blessings his spiritual legacy imparts. The Pontiff asked the faithful to pray especially for the Holy Land and innocent victims of violence.
Aleteia
What do Catholics mean by being ‘divinized’?
By D. R. Esparza, October 5, 2026
The word sounds extreme. Divinization — or, in the Greek theological tradition, theosis — is the claim that human beings are called not just to obey God, or to know God from a distance, or to be rewarded by God after death, but to participate in God’s own life. To become, in some real sense, divine. It is one of the most ancient and consistent claims in Christian theology, and perhaps one of the least understood in contemporary Catholic life. The question is what this actually means — and, importantly, what it does not mean. God alone is God by nature — uncreated, infinite, self-subsisting, the source of all being. No creature can become that. The Incarnation is the hinge of the whole argument: in Christ, the divine and human natures are united in one person without confusion and without separation. What happens in Christ is the pattern for what grace does in the Christian: not a fusion that destroys the creature, but a union that perfects it.
Zenit
Iceland the most aggressive for abortion and gender ideology
By ZENIT Staff, October 4, 2026
Iceland continues to be, by far, the most aggressive proponent of abortion and gender ideology at the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a mechanism where national governments review each other’s human rights records every couple of years. Iceland alone issued more than 20% of the 124 recommendations pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity. Over sixty percent of the recommendations on abortion came from tiny abortion-crazy Iceland. Namibia received the most pressure on sexual orientation and gender identity, with Malta, Belgium, Finland, Mexico, Iceland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and the Netherlands urging it to adopt explicit legal categories of non-discrimination based on these characteristics. Other recommendations to Namibia included decriminalizing homosexual behavior (which had already been done by a 2024 court ruling) and legalizing same-sex marriage.
Keep informed - 10/5/26 news for Catholics:
Snippets: EWTN News, Aleteia, & Catholic World News
EWTN News
EWTN’s top headlines — October 5, 2026
EWTN News provides reliable, free, up-to-the-minute news affecting the Universal Church, with updates on the Holy Father's words and the Holy See.
Catholics and Public Life Congress extols the faith that unites Spain and the Americas - By Nicolás de Cárdenas - With the aim of "living up to our heritage and fostering its growth,” next month’s Catholics and Public Life Congress in Madrid, Spain, aims to exalt the legacy of “Hispanidad,” a term for the faith-based civilization and union between Spain and the Americas that was first championed by Queen Isabella (1451–1504).
Italian Catholic community establishes new presence in Muslim-majority area of Ethiopia - By Sabrine Amboka - According to a report on Sept. 29 by Agenzia Fides, the Villaregia Missionary Community has been visiting communities in East Bale where they have been raising awareness about femFRICA/ETHIOPIA, including the issues of female genital mutilation and early marriage.
‘Those who seek Christ will find him’: Another philosopher at Princeton converts to Catholicism - By Daniel Payne - Noah McKay is the second Princeton philosophy scholar this year to convert to the Catholic faith; earlier in the summer Joe Schmid announced his own return to the faith after years of having run an agnostic-themed philosophy channel on YouTube.
Aleteia
Aleteia’s free access to Catholic news
Launched in 2013, Aleteia is a free online daily news publication. The site is available in six languages (French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, and Slovenian). Aleteia reaches nearly 50 million people worldwide, making it one of the leading online Catholic media outlets.
125 years of Catholic faith in Malawi, and still growing - The Gospel arrived in 1901 with a handful of Montfort missionaries. Today the Church runs 1,806 schools, 93 hospitals, and keeps growing. The history of the Catholic Church in Malawi traces its roots to 1889, when the Missionaries of Africa — the White Fathers — arrived at Mponda in Mangochi, on the shores of Lake Malawi.
A new Catholic initiative puts autism in the pews - Deacon Mark Paine, the permanent deacon from the Archdiocese of Birmingham, England, wasn't diagnosed with autism until his late 40s. This mid-life diagnosis meant looking back over decades of life, including all those years sitting in church, with a new understanding of why he might have experienced certain things differently from the people around him.
Friar: Annual Rosary pilgrimage says something about Church in USA - “To have so many of the faithful — young people, families, people from all walks of life — gathered days after the beatification of Blessed Fulton Sheen was an extraordinary grace!”
Catholic World News
CatholicCulture.org from Trinity Communications
Catholic World News (CWN) is an independent Catholic news service staffed by lay Catholic journalists, dedicated to providing accurate global news from a distinctly Catholic perspective.
The Altar: One-On-One - by David G. Bonagura, Jr. - People do not need advanced theological training—or any theological training—to know we should look at the person we are addressing. Every parent teaches his children that. In the same way, Holy Mother Church should remind us that when we call upon God, we should look His way. When we do so together, we will discover an ever-ancient, ever-new way to participate actively at Mass.
The Robber Council - by Lives of the Popes “When I began to appeal to the throne of the Apostolic see of Peter, the prince of the Apostles...at once a crowd of soldiers surrounded me and barred the way when I wished to take refuge at the holy altar, as I desired, and tried to drag me out of the church. Then amid the utmost tumult I barely succeeded in reaching a certain part of the church, and there hid myself with my companions, not without being watched, however, to prevent my reporting to you all the wrongs which have been done me.”
The wild, complex history of the Church in Fiji - by Eamonn Clark, STL - When you think of Fiji, you think of palm trees and coconuts. You think of white sandy beaches. You think of daiquiris by the pool. I think of Tongan Methodists being defeated in battle by Catholics at Taveuni.
October 5, 2026 - USCCB Daily Mass Readings
You can listen HERE — or read HERE:
Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Catholic commentary:
First Things
Creedal Orthodoxy won’t save us
By Ephraim Radner, September 28, 2025
Pundits tell us that we are moving beyond the culture wars. Left and right are merging in their common judgment that liberalism has reached a dead end. Something new is emerging. Maybe. My sense is that we’re seeing simple exhaustion. To be sure, an enervating weariness can lead to its own developments. But when it comes to the long-standing issues of sexuality—the nub of our culture wars—“development” is usually a bad thing. It’s all been a pool of tears. “Enough!” they say. The whole matter of gay marriage is now ingrained in civil law and receives a high level of social acceptance: Maybe that’s a sign. And, they reason, there are many gay Christians who are not advocates of wacky theology. They, like my colleagues, friends, and former students, just want a steady kind of creedal orthodoxy. That common cause should be enough. Is “creedal orthodoxy” enough to establish the Christian faith? I would say, “Absolutely not!” The Creed does not speak of the struggle of faithful living.
Zenit
Gender ideology is excluded from the UN
By Stefano Gennarini, October 4, 2026
World leaders known to be vocal supporters of abortion and gender ideology held back and stayed quiet in their speeches at the General Assembly. Is this part of what abortion radicals are calling the “anti-rights push back?” “It is unacceptable that with all the atrocities in the world, the UN’s top human rights officials spend their time criticizing the United States for protecting our children from transgender mutilation and transgender insanity and enforcing our immigration laws,” President Trump told world leaders in his official speech. President Trump was not alone. A growing chorus of world leaders criticized gender ideology and UN activism on controversial social policies during the General Assembly's high-level debate. The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, also complained of the UN’s “gender agenda” alongside other progressive UN policies. He said the organization risked becoming a “useless organization whose only purpose is to sustain a cast of fatally arrogant parasites …”
Catholic Weekly
How much are you willing to give of yourself?
By Anthony Eltarraf, October 2, 2026
A priest said something in his homily at Mass this past Sunday that has stuck with me. He said the Christian life is about sacrificing yourself for others, rather than sacrificing others for yourself. It is a simple distinction, but one that cuts right against our instinct to put ourselves first. Interestingly, sport gives us a small and very visible picture of what that looks like. It is about asking, “What can I give?” Jesus doesn’t call us simply to give things up for the sake of giving things up. He calls us to give ourselves in love. That is a much harder challenge than simply sacrificing something. Because the question isn’t only about who I am willing to give myself for, though that is obviously paramount. It is whether I am willing to give of myself at all – or whether I expect others to sacrifice themselves so that I can have the glory.
The Catholic Thing
Pope Leo’s unfinished French Revolution
By Robert Royal, October 5, 2026
The large crowds that turned out for Pope Leo everywhere in France surprised everyone – not least, sad to say, the French bishops. Let’s hope that his visit has even greater effects. But just days later, France is gripped by widespread rioting and arson, misreported as “student unrest,” but actually a far-left operation with Islamist collaborators. In the message the pope read at his reception by French President Emmanuel Macron, Leo proposed what can only be called “corrections” to the three terms (liberté, égalité, fraternité) that marked the French Revolution. It was a bold move, but he needs to be even bolder to remedy what’s ailing France and much of the West. The French revolutionaries began using the guillotine and other instruments of mass terror on religious figures, and then — as the night follows the day among those radically crazed by politics — on one another.
Image of Coconut by Celio Nicoli from Pixabay
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