CatholicCulture.org - Catholic World News

• Portugal's leading prelates meet with Pope (Agência ECCLESIA)
  The president, vice president, and secretary of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference met with Pope Leo on August 27 for 35 minutes.

  “We expressed to the Holy Father our communion with the Church in all the dioceses of Portugal, our desire to stand with him and accompany him, and we also renewed the invitation we had previously extended to him to visit Portugal when it is opportune, as soon as possible,” said Bishop Virgilio do Nascimento Antunes of Coimbra, the president of the episcopal conference. “It was a very friendly, very fraternal, very brotherly dialogue.”

• Pontiff, leading Argentine prelates discuss upcoming papal visit (Conferencia Episcopal Argentina)
  The president and secretary-general of the Argentine Episcopal Conference met with Pope Leo XIV on August 27.

  “The meeting took place in a cordial and affable atmosphere and provided an opportunity to discuss various aspects of the life of the Church in Argentina, as well as to converse about preparations for the Holy Father’s visit to the country,” the bishops’ conference said in a statement.

  “During the audience, the Pope expressed his enthusiasm for the trip and demonstrated that he was well-informed about the various options currently under consideration for its organization,” the statement continued. “In this context, particular emphasis was placed on the desire for the visit to have an eminently pastoral character and to have an impact that extends beyond the days of the trip itself, bearing fruit for the life of the Church and also for Argentine society.”

  The Pontiff is scheduled to visit Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru in November; visits to Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Luján are planned in Argentina.

• USCCB responds to proposed regulations on sponsors for unaccompanied immigrant minors (USCCB)
  The general counsel of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops warned that the Trump administration’s proposed regulations on sponsors for unaccompanied immigrant minors could harm the good of reunifying families, particularly the reunification of minors with parents who are not present in the United States legally.

  “We fear, without guaranteeing adequate flexibility, that the Agency’s newly proposed sponsor requirements for proof of identity and proof of income could exclude otherwise eligible parents and relatives from sponsoring children, creating excessive barriers to reunification and unnecessarily prolonging children’s stays in government custody,” William J. Quinn wrote in an August 21 letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Quinn added:

  Under federal law, prospective sponsors may be noncitizens, including those without lawful immigration status—and this is as it should be, since “unaccompanied alien children,” by definition, are themselves noncitizens who lack lawful immigration status.
  
  Nevertheless, one’s immigration status can limit access to certain forms of identification, including many of the forms of identification enumerated in the proposed changes... For instance, a driver’s license is one of the most common forms of identification, but only select states allow persons without lawful status to be issued licenses.