“I’ll pray for thee from my pistachio tree”
Your 5-minute Catholic briefing for busy faithful. Today's sources are OSV News, EWTN, What We Need Now, Big Pulpit, Aleteia, and The Pillar. Please support their ministries and apostolates. (Catholic Nutshell is a subscription service for faithful, hopeful, & curious Catholics willing to exercise their Catholic News Muscle)
Click here to view this email on the Catholic Nutshell News website. Today’s Catholic Nutshell News audio podcast is also available on the Substack App.
Our Sunday Visitor
Still, the long-awaited reckoning for Father Marko Rupnik case
By Junno Arocho Esteves, August 31, 2026
For over three decades, the allegations of sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse against Slovenian Father Marko Rupnik were met with cover-ups and bureaucratic delays. In October 2025, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the need for safeguarding and transparency within the Catholic Church. “I renew my appeal that there can be no tolerance for any form of abuse in the Church.” The allegations against Father Rupnik were made public in 2022. However, internal warnings and complaints about the Slovenian priest’s alleged abuses date as far back as the early 1990s. Father Rupnik’s mosaics gained prominence. Well-known works he completed between the late 1990s and early 2000s include the mosaics at the Vatican’s Redemptoris Mater Chapel (1999), the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France (2008), and the crypt of the Sanctuary of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. Other works include shrines in Fatima, Washington, and Malta.
Related: Pope Leo XIV personally ordered his Dicastery for Communication to stop using works by the former Jesuit Rupnik, according to the bishop of Lourdes - ZENIT - August 31, 2026, Valentina di Giorgio
Zeale
Voters worried over rising socialism as economic woes dominate
By Politics, August 31, 2026
Inflation is dominating voters’ minds as midterms loom, but the prospect of socialism in the U.S. may be more frightening than affordability issues. Independent voters are far from content with the current trajectory of the U.S. but are not quite ready to embrace the socialist ideals offered by the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, according to new data. A recent Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, found that a majority (60%) of voters worry the country is “on the wrong track,” while only 30% say things are heading in the right direction. Two-thirds (66%) of independent voters said that they are dissatisfied with the current state of the country, but nearly one quarter (24%) said that they are unsure — the highest “unsure” share of any political demographic. “They’ve diagnosed the problem, but they haven’t necessarily picked the solution yet,” said Mike Noble, founder of Noble Predictive Insights.
EWTN News
Carmelite sisters building a monastery to ‘last a thousand years’
By Madalaine Elhabbal, September 1, 2026
A community of Discalced Carmelite sisters is using centuries-old methods to build a monastery, hoping it will serve as “a beacon of light” for generations to come in Fairfield, Pennsylvania. The sisters of the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have outgrown their 1940s monastery in the Diocese of Harrisburg. Their next home, “in a way that is designed to last,” would speak to St. Teresa of Ávila’s vision for their charism, Catherine Bauer, the director of marketing and development for the sisters. “And by that, they mean last a thousand years.” Bucking modern architecture and building conventions, the Fairfield sisters have opted to build their monastery using old-world methods including traditional stonemasonry and timber framing. While the scale of the monastery “will be on the smaller side,” according to Bauer, “it’s more about the stonework, the authenticity of building from the ground up using no nails, no glue, [and] no electricity running through it.”
CBCP News
Cardinal Ambo: ‘Time to go beyond resiliency — to defiance’
By Roy Lagarde, August 31, 2026
Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan is urging Filipinos to move beyond their celebrated resilience and demand accountability for disasters and suffering that could have been prevented. In a social media post Monday, David warned that resilience becomes dangerous when it teaches people to accept recurring floods, failing infrastructure, and preventable deaths as normal. “I think it is time to go beyond resiliency—to defiance. Not defiance of nature. Not defiance of the law. But the collective defiance of citizens who refuse to accept as normal what should never have been allowed to become normal,” David said. David cited the death of 25-year-old Reiner Novero, who disappeared into an open drainage canal hidden beneath floodwaters while walking along a flooded sidewalk in Angeles City. David urged citizens to demand disclosure of flood-control projects and budgets, file complaints with regulators, and pursue legal remedies when negligence causes harm.
National Catholic Register
Why China’s new bishops aren’t excommunicated while the SSPX is
By Andrea Gagliarducci, July 29, 2026
The schism of the Traditionalist Priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), and its aftermath, highlights how the unity in the Church that Leo XIV set as the primary goal of his pontificate remains far from achieved. The debate within the Church is heated — making it difficult to fully understand the scope of what is happening. On July 29, Father Francis Xavier Duan Yongkun was ordained bishop with papal approval, the latest ordination since the 2018 signing of the provisional agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China, which lifted the excommunications of their bishops. This comparison between the traditionalist and Chinese cases is interesting because it contrasts two strikingly different situations. The key point is that the Lefebvrist reject the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council en masse, consider them non-binding, and decided to ordain bishops without papal mandate, in complete autonomy, to maintain a link with tradition. In fact, by ordaining bishops without papal mandate, one excommunicates oneself.
Related: Leo XIV appoints bishop to Chinese diocese vacant 80 years - 09/01/26, I.Media, Aleteia
Zenit
Mexico’s Churches search for the missing reaches 135,000
By Enrique Villegas, August 31, 2026
In Mexico, some Catholic churches are being asked to do something that goes far beyond their traditional pastoral role: help break the silence surrounding thousands of disappearances. A person who knows something about a missing relative — a name, a vehicle, a house, a last known location, or even a possible clandestine grave — can leave that information anonymously in a “Peace Mailbox” at a parish. The Church does not investigate the information itself. Its purpose is to create a trusted channel through which a potentially vital clue can reach those responsible for searching and investigating. The scale of the crisis explains the urgency. Mexico’s National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons recorded 135,048 cases as of June 16, 2026, according to Red Lupa of the Mexican Institute for Human Rights and Democracy. Earlier figures put the total at 134,512 in early August, showing how quickly the registry continues to change.
The Pillar
Haitian priest pleads for international help: Massacre kills 47
By Eduardo Campos Lima, August 31, 2026
Haitians are reeling a week after an armed gang attacked a village near the capital, killing at least 47 people and kidnapping some 50 more, said a local priest. In addition to a pervasive sense of grief and fear, there is also a sense of helplessness, Father Yves Carlos Romulus told The Pillar. “Haitians are not able to deal with this situation on our own. We need the will and help of the international community to get out of such a crisis,” Romulus said. On August 23, around 150 heavily armed gang members stormed the farming village of Kenscoff, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The assailants burned buildings and opened fire on people they encountered as they swept through the area. While some women and children were later released, dozens are still being held hostage a week later. Viv Ansanm, a prominent gang coalition with a powerful presence in Port-au-Prince, claimed responsibility for the attack and threatened to execute hostages if the government’s security forces killed any gang members.
Related: Nigerian bishops decry ‘trail of terror’ after latest attacks - By Ngala Killian Chimtom, Crux, Aug 30, 2026
Crux
Drive for assisted suicide comes from a need to control
By Fionn Shiner, September 1, 2026
The senior archbishop in charge of life issues in England and Wales, Archbishop John Sherrington of Liverpool, says better social and palliative care would go a long way toward helping people recover a sense of life as a gift and defend against the fearful loss of control that end-of-life challenges inevitably bring. “Everybody is fearful of dying, everybody is fearful of pain, and it is very hard to come to terms with living in a severely disabled state, and for that reason I think people are arguing for assisted suicide.” Sherrington said we need to, “reshape conversation to help people understand how living with a disability or in a disabled state is also an important part of life — and probably if we could offer better social and palliative care then many people would choose that.” He added that the word “autonomy is fueling many people’s arguments, because we live in a context where to be one’s self-law, to be in charge of one’s life, is really important.”
Keep informed - 9/1/26 news for Catholics
Snippets: Pulpit, EWTN, & Aleteia
BIG PULPIT
Tito Edwards’ Catholic blogger site: September 1, 2026
The Big Pulpit website is an intelligent news aggregator offering insights and analysis on the Catholic Church worldwide. Here are Chief Editor Tito Edwards’ top recommendations for today.
Marian Apparition & Schismatic Germany: St. Michael Splitting Globe Prophecy – S. Smith, Esq.
Ancient Eastern Bishop Says the True Church is Under the Pope – Eternal Christendom
The Big Contention between Traditionalists & Vatican II Isn’t the Mass, It’s Salvation – Fourth Watch
The Protestants’ Real Problem with Mary – Casey Chalk at Catholic Answers Magazine
EWTN News
EWTN’s top headlines — September 1, 2026
EWTN News provides reliable, free, up-to-the-minute news affecting the Universal Church, emphasizing the words of the Holy Father and the activities of the Holy See, and is available to anyone with internet access.
Polish bishops call surrogacy ‘incompatible’ with faith as Warsaw event looms - By Bohumil Petrík - “Surrogacy is by its nature evil and incompatible with Christian faith and morality,” the bishops’ bioethics committee said. “The desire to have children cannot be interpreted as a right to have children, because a child, in the ontological sense, as a human being, is not the property of its parents.”
U.S. ‘must balance other interests’ in Nigeria, officials say as Christian persecution continues - By Madalaine Elhabbal - “There are solutions out there, but the Nigerians have to solve this at the end of the day,” said Tibor Nagy, a former assistant secretary of the Bureau of African Affairs at the State Department. U.S. troops are set to withdraw from the region at the end of September.
Bishops from Mexico, U.S., Canada see urgent need to speak ‘with one voice’ - By David Ramos - “In the times we are living through, it will become increasingly important — indeed, urgent — for the Catholic Church in the Americas to speak with one voice, defending the honor of Our Lord and the dignity of the human person — especially the poor and immigrants.”
Aleteia
Aleteia’s global network reports for September 1, 2026
Aleteia (aleteia.org) is an online publication distributed in six languages (English, French, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, and Slovenian). Launched in 2013, it is one of the world’s leading news websites with content free from ideological influences.
The sweet gift Dolly Parton once sent Pope Francis - 9/1/26 - It was a personally autographed vinyl box set of Rockstar, the album she’d released just weeks earlier. And on the front, Dolly had written a message for its rather unusual recipient: “To Pope Francis — With love to you, Dolly Parton, 2023.”
Eastern Catholics celebrate a feast of creation today - 9/1/26 - The Eastern Church established a feast that would honor the creation of the world every September 1. It is also the first day of their liturgical year, similar to how Roman Catholics celebrate the beginning of Advent as the start of the liturgical year.
Yale’s most popular history course is not what you might expect - 8/31/26 - “The Catholic Intellectual Tradition” course beat out other established popular courses at Yale, such as “The Birth of Europe” and “The Roman Empire.” The course has long been offered at Yale, listed in earlier catalogs as an introductory survey of Catholicism's interaction with Western culture.
September 1, 2026 - USCCB Daily Mass Readings
You can listen HERE - or read HERE:
Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Catholic commentary:
Dominica
Our intimate encounter with the transcendent Lord
By Bishop James Conley, September 1, 2026
All of us, whether religious or not, long for transcendence because the human heart was made for it. By transcendence I mean the awareness of something greater than ourselves; something bigger than us. It’s that experience of something so beautiful, so powerful that words fail and our hearts are stirred. So much is reduced to the entertaining, the pleasurable, the useful. We run into problems when that is all we experience, and the only things our lives are focused on. In contrast, the Catholic Faith is centered on the liturgy, which takes us out of the mundane and into the courts of heaven, into the splendor of the eternal! Every Mass is an encounter through God’s invitation into heavenly worship, through communion with Christ, and through our being sent forth into the world as missionary disciples to help others encounter God as we have.
Missio Dei Catholic
The demon’s knowledge of Jesus is real and yet useless
By Deacon Michael Halbrook, September 1, 2026
Jesus is teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. The crowd is astonished; they already sense something different in how he speaks — and then a man with an unclean spirit interrupts. The demon cries out: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” The demon is not lying. Jesus is the Holy One of God, and the demon knows it with a clarity that none of the astonished people in the synagogue yet possess. The unclean spirit has correct information, has identified the right person, and named him rightly. And Jesus silences it. “Be quiet! Come out of him!” He will not accept this testimony. The recognition offered by the wrong voice, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, is noise, not witness. The demon’s knowledge is real and yet useless, because it has no relationship to the one it names.
The Obscure, Forgotten, and Undiscovered
The Saint of Auschwitz: Maximilian Kolbe
By James K. Hanna, August 14, 2026
Maximilian Kolbe died on August 14, 1941, at the German death camp of Auschwitz. The Polish priest, a Conventual Franciscan, prisoner number 16670, volunteered to die in place of Franciszek Gajowniczek. When Gajowniczek, 41, learned he was facing death at the hands of his captors, he cried out, “My wife! My children!” Kolbe, 47, immediately stepped forward, argued that he was a Catholic priest and older than Gajowniczek, and convinced the guards to allow him to replace the family man. Gajowniczek survived and lived to age 93. Kolbe was canonized a saint and martyr by Pope John Paul II in 1982. Gajowniczek attended the canonization ceremony in Rome. A short biographical sketch of Maximilian’s life is available here. In 1984, Gajowniczek, then 83, attended the dedication of the first Shrine to Saint Maximilian Kolbe built in the United States. I have visited the shrine several times and produced a three-minute video on its history. You can find it on YouTube here.
Catholic Stand
Grief is a journey into God
By Dennis Dillon, September 1, 2026
Grief is not a detour from faith. Sometimes it becomes the very road that draws us more deeply into God. When someone we love dies, life can suddenly seem unfamiliar. The landmarks are still there – the house, the church, the familiar chair, the morning cup of coffee – but the landscape has changed. It is like sailing waters we have known for years and discovering that a storm has moved the buoys. We know we are somewhere familiar, yet we are unsure of our direction. More than 700 years ago, St. Bonaventure described the spiritual life as a journey to God. In his “Journey of the Mind to God” (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), he pictured the human soul traveling toward God through creation, through the depths of the human heart, and finally into a loving union with God. Bonaventure was not writing specifically about bereavement. Yet his vision offers a beautiful way of understanding grief. Grief also takes us on a journey – often one we never wanted to make.
Nutshell Pistachio Image by JetalProduções from Pixabay
Catholic Nutshell News is a subscription service hosted by SubStack. Get up to a dozen recent articles from Monday to Saturday to review newsworthy issues. An easy way to browse top Catholic news and information services on the net. Edited by John Pearring.
Listen to an audio podcast of today’s Catholic Nutshell News on the Substack App!
At the top of your phone, while in the Substack app to read our post, you can press the ▶️ play button and have Catholic Nutshell News read to you daily …
