May 31, 2022

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 - A tabernacle was stolen, and the Eucharist desecrated, over the weekend at Saint Augustine Catholic Church in the Park Slope neighborhood of New York City’s Brooklyn borough. The Diocese of Brooklyn said May 29 that “the Holy Eucharist housed inside the Tabernacle was thrown all over the altar.” The burglary was discovered by Father Frank Tumino, the parish pastor, on the afternoon of May 28, and is suspected to have taken place the previous day. Police have estimated the 19th-century tabernacle’s value at $2 million. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251406/tabernacle-stolen-from-brooklyn-parish-church Pope Francis on Tuesday attended the funeral Mass of the former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, presided at the ceremony in Saint Peter’s Basilica on May 31. Photographs showed the 85-year-old pope seated in a wheelchair as the Mass was celebrated at the Altar of the Chair. Sodano, an influential Vatican diplomat who served as dean of the College of Cardinals until 2019, died on May 27 at the age of 94. Cardinal Re praised Cardinal Sodano’s “gifts of intellect and heart, his sensitivity to the pastoral aims of the Church’s action in the world, his wisdom in assessing events, and situations and his readiness to help, seeking appropriate solutions in every case.”The cardinal’s final years were overshadowed by allegations that he covered up sexual abuse by Legionaries of Christ founder Marcial Maciel, former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and others. Sodano’s name was mentioned 30 times in the McCarrick Report, published in 2020. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251411/pope-francis-attends-funeral-of-cardinal-sodano Archbishops José Gomez of Los Angeles and Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco bo