“My principal challenges, at the present, are regaining certain fundamental physical skills needed for my daily living, and overcoming a general fatigue and difficulty in breathing, which are typical for those who have suffered the contagion of the Covid-19 virus,” said the prelate, who is living at a house near family members.

A decade after beginning of the Syrian civil war, Father Hugo Alaniz, an Argentine missionary, said that many Syrian Christians are living at a subsistence level and that Islamist rebels continue to persecute Christians in parts of northern Syria.

Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, presided at the beatification of Blessed Giovanni Fornasini (1915-1944) in Bologna.

“A parish priest zealous in charity, he did not abandon his flock during the tragic period of the Second World War, but rather he defended it to the point of bloodshed,” Pope Francis said. “May his heroic witness help us to face life’s trials with fortitude.”

The Cumbre Vieja volcano has erupted on La Palma, the westernmost of the Canary Islands.

On September 26, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Pope Francis devoted his Angelus address to the Gospel reading of the day (from Mark 9).

“Jesus’ words reveal a temptation, and offer an exhortation,” the Pope said. “The temptation is that of closedness. . . . And then in the Gospel there is Jesus’ exhortation: instead of judging everything and everyone, let us beware be careful of ourselves! Indeed, the risk is that of being inflexible towards others and indulgent towards ourselves.”

September 26 was the 107th World Day of Migrants and Refugees (background).

“It is necessary to walk together, without prejudice and without fear, beside those who are most vulnerable: migrants, refugees, displaced persons, victims of human trafficking, and the abandoned,” Pope Francis said on September 26. “We are called to build an ever more inclusive world, that excludes no one.”

Swiss voters approved legal recognition of same-sex marriage in a September 26 referendum, with 64% of those voting in favor of the measure.

A Catholic bishops of Switzerland had issued a statement in December opposing the legal recognition of same-sex unions, but some Swiss bishops had pointedly declined to fight the referendum effort. The president of the Swiss Catholic Women’s Association welcomed the vote, saying: “I am really happy that everyone has said yes to marriage for all.”

Cardinal José Freire Falcao, the retired Archbishop of Brasilia, died on September 26, at the of 95. He had been hospitalized a week earlier with complications of Covid.

Ordained in 1949 as a priest of the Diocese of Limoeiro do Norte, he became bishop of that diocese in 1967. He was named Archbishop of Teresina in 1971, then Archbishop of Brasilia in 1984, remaining in the latter post until his retirement in 2004. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II in 1988.

With the death of Cardinal Falcao there are now 218 living cardinals, of whom 121 are elegible to vote in a papal conclave. Remarkably, there are eight living cardinals over the age of 95.

Archbishop Gintara Grusas of Vilnius, Lithuania—who was born in Washington, DC—has been elected president of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE), succeeding the Italian Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco.

The CCEE elected two vice-presidents: Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg and Bishop Ladislav Nemet of Belgrade. Cardinal Hollerich doubles as president of another European bishops’ body: COMECE, the umbrella organization for episcopal conferences of countries in the European Union.

The remains of Father Emil Kapuan, who died in a North Korean prison camp in 1951, were returned to his Kansas home last week, to be buried in the Wichita cathedral.

Father Kapuan, who was known for both his personal holiness and his extraordinary courage as a military chaplain, is a candidate for beatification. He has already been posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.