January 31, 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 visited the Basilica of Saint Mary Major on Monday to entrust his upcoming trip to Africa to the Blessed Virgin Mary. And before departing on his flight to Africa on Tuesday morning, the pope met with a group of refugees and migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan at the Vatican. Pope Francis landed Tuesday morning in the capital city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country home to more than 52 million Catholics. It will be the first papal trip to Congo in 37 years, since John Paul II visited Kinshasa in 1985 when it was the capital of Zaire. Pope Francis will visit Kinshasa Jan 31-February 3 before traveling to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, February 3-5. Francis has called his visit to South Sudan “an ecumenical pilgrimage of peace.” The pope will travel together with the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the moderator of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.Pope Francis will be the first pope to visit South Sudan, the world’s newest country, which declared independence from the Republic of the Sudan in 2011. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253503/pope-francis-meets-with-refugees-from-congo-and-south-sudan-before-flight-to-africa https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253498/pope-francis-entrusts-trip-to-congo-and-south-sudan-to-blessed-virgin-mary Pro-life activist Mark Houck was found not guilty Monday on federal assault charges stemming from a shoving incident outside a Philadelphia abortion clinic. Supporters of the Catholic father of seven children cried and hugged one another after the verdict was read in US District Court in Philadelphia. The fourty-eight year old Houck acknowledged that he twice pushed a volunteer escort outside a Planned Parenthood facility on October 13, 2021, though Houck maintained he d