August 18, 2023

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 - Pope Francis met Thursday with the Catholic president of Madagascar, Andry Nirina Rajoelina. The president was accompanied by his wife of 23 years and three young adult children. The 49-year-old politician and businessman has led the country of Madagascar in his current term since January 2019. He also led a provisional government in the country from 2009–2014. According to the Vatican, after a 20-minute private conversation, Pope Francis invited Rajoelina and his family to pray a Hail Mary together before a Marian image he had received from the bishops of Madagascar. The pope and delegation were also photographed together next to a miniature of a ship, a gift Francis received on the occasion of his 2019 visit to the island country. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255109/pope-francis-meets-catholic-president-of-madagascar A federal appeals court this week sided with a group of pro-life protesters who claim the city of Washington, DC, discriminated against them by arresting them for anti-abortion messages they had written with chalk in 2020. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in its ruling Tuesday that the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America had “plausibly” demonstrated that Washington police had violated the First Amendment rights of two protesters when they were arrested over a pro-life slogan they wrote in chalk on a city sidewalk that year. The protesters had written “Black Preborn Lives Matter” on the sidewalk at a rally that occurred outside the Planned Parenthood Carol Whitehill Moses Center in Washington, DC. The government “may not play favorites in a public forum — permitting some messages and prohibiting others,” the ruling said. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255113/appeals-court-sides-with-anti-abortion-protesters-in-dc