January 16, 2024

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega on Sunday released and sent to the Vatican two imprisoned Nicaraguan bishops along with 15 priests and seminarians. Nicaraguan media outlets La Prensa and Confidencial first reported on the release, indicating that among those released was Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa and Bishop Isidoro Mora of Siuna. Auxiliary Bishop Silvio José Báez of Managua, exiled due to persecution by the Ortega dictatorship, confirmed the news of the release of the bishops, priests, and seminarians in tears: “Our pastors are free.” The released clerics arrived in Rome on Sunday afternoon and were welcomed as "guests of the Holy See," according to Vatican News. In August 2022, Bishop Álvarez of Matagalpa, a well-known defender of human rights and critic of the Ortega regime, was forced to remain in his official residence along with several priests, seminarians, and a layman. Two weeks later, having almost run out of food, the Nicaraguan police broke into the house, kidnapped Álvarez, and took him to Managua, the country’s capital, where he was placed under house arrest. On February 10, 2023, the dictatorship proceeded to sentence the bishop of Matagalpa to more than 26 years in prison, accusing him of being a “traitor to the homeland.” Since then, he has been held in the prison known as “La Modelo,” where political prisoners of the regime are held. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256540/nicaraguan-dictatorship-releases-bishop-alvarez-brother-bishop-and-priests After a year of renewed attacks on churches and religious centers, the US bishops said in a new report released today that attacks on houses of worship constitute the “largest threat to religious liberty in 2024” and could threaten “the very lives of people of faith.” The report said that while the committee “was founded in response to increasing legal threats to the free exercise of religion,” the bishops felt “compelled to decry foreseeable threats to the very lives of people of faith here in the United States.” According to the bishops’ report, “recent years have seen an alarming rate of vandalism, arson, and other property destruction at Catholic sites.” All this is compounded with, the bishops said, a “general failure” on the part of the “federal government to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators of such attacks.” https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256532/religious-americans-lives-possibly-at-risk-in-2024-new-report-by-us-bishops-says Pope Francis appeared on Italy’s most popular prime-time talk show on Sunday night where the pontiff shared how he hopes that hell is “empty.” Three million people in Italy tuned in to watch the nearly hourlong television interview with Pope Francis on January 14 in which the pope responded to resistance to the recent Vatican declaration on same-sex blessings, previewed prospective papal trips to Polynesia and Argentina, and spoke of his fear of nuclear armageddon. The 87-year-old pope began his appearance on the television show “Che Tempo Che Fa” by joking that he is “still alive” and has no plans to resign. When asked by the interviewer, Fabio Fazio, how he “imagines hell,” Pope Francis gave a short response. “What I am going to say is not a dogma of faith but my own personal view: I like to think of hell as empty; I hope it is,” Pope Francis said. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256542/pope-francis-i-like-to-think-of-hell-as-empty Today, the Church celebrates Pope Saint Marcellus, who became Pope at the end of the persecutions of Diocletian in aound 308-309. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-marcellus-pope-118