December 15, 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 - The Jesuit Superior General, Father Arturo Sosa, has confirmed that Jesuit artist Father Marko Rupnik incurred an automatic excommunication in 2019 for abusing the sacrament of confession, a fact his religious order was aware of but did not disclose until now. Rupnik is a world-renowned artist whose works include projects in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, the Knights of Columbus' National Shrine to John Paul II in Washington, DC, the Cathedral of Santa María la Real de Almudena in Madrid, and the Fatima Shrine. Abusing the sacrament of confession in the manner that Rupnik did is one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic Church. Rupnik, 68, is also alleged to have sexually abused members of a women’s institute of religious life in Ljubljana, Slovenia, while serving as the chaplain there in the early 1990s https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253079/jesuit-superior-says-that-fr-marko-rupnik-was-excommunicated-in-2019 Four statues at Saint Joseph Parish in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, were vandalized overnight between December 10 and December 11, and police are asking for help identifying a suspect caught on camera. Father Stephen Leva, the pastor of the church, said in an online post December 11 that the four statues affected were of Saint Anthony, Saint Joseph, Our Lady of Lourdes, and the Holy Family. The Downingtown Police Department asked for the public’s assistance Tuesday in identifying the perpetrator who was caught on camera. Those photos of the perpetrator can be seen on the department's Facebook page. The church is the second largest parish in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia with more than 5,000 families, according to the parish’s website. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253080/suspect-caught-on-camera-vandalizing-pa-catholic-church Cardinal Joseph Zen has filed an app