Day: August 29, 2025

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Jan. 28, 2024. / Credit: Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 29, 2025 / 18:52 pm (CNA).

News this week of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement sparked positive commentary from a wide cross-section of Catholics on social media, who anticipate a positive cultural shift from the marriage between the beloved pop star and Kansas City Chiefs tight end. 

“Expect a spike in marriage,” wrote marriage and family expert Brad Wilcox in a social media post. “Taylor and Travis put a ring on it.” 

“The Life of a Showgirl” singer announced her engagement to Kelce in an Aug. 26 Instagram post, captioned: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

Wilcox, the author of “Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization,” noted in another post the engagement came on the same day as a new study highlighting the value of marriage for women today.

The study, “In Pursuit: Marriage, Motherhood, and Women’s Well-Being,” found married women with children make up the majority of women ages 25 to 55 who describe themselves as “very happy.”

Swift’s engagement “as a sort of left-leaning pop celebrity could create a space where it’s OK again for center-left Americans, both elite and ordinary Americans, to publicly embrace marriage,” Wilcox also told the Wall Street Journal.

“Marriage is a beautiful thing,” Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins chimed in, reacting to the news on social media. 

She added: “I hope Taylor Swift’s engagement inspires young women to see the joy and purpose in getting married, starting a family, and committing to one person for the rest of their lives.” In another post, Hawkins expressed confidence that “America is heading into its ‘get married and have babies era.’”

Defending the singer against negative reactions on social media to the news of her engagement, CEO and founder of the Classical Learning Test Jeremy Wayne Tate wrote in a post on X: “I’m disappointed with some conservatives today … Boy proposed to girl to enter into the most traditional relationship in human history … marriage.”

“That’s a beautiful thing,” he added. “Just say congratulations.”

LiveAction President Lila Rose also congratulated the happy couple on social media and praised their decision to get married. 

“Marriage is the best and tons of women look up to Taylor,” Rose said. “So happy to see her embracing it.”

Pope Leo XIV on Aug. 29, 2025, appointed Father Andres Ligot as auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of San Jose, California. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Diocese of San Jose

Vatican City, Aug 29, 2025 / 14:06 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Friday appointed Father Andres Ligot as auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of San Jose, California.

The bishop-elect is currently parish priest of St. Elizabeth of Portugal and vicar general of the San Jose Diocese.

Prior to his 2021 appointment to St. Elizabeth of Portugal, Ligot, 59, served as judicial vicar of the diocese from 2008 to 2021. 

Bishop Oscar Cantú expressed his gratitude for Ligot’s elevation to bishop in an Aug. 29 statement published on the diocesan website.

“His priestly heart, pastoral experience, and steady leadership will bless our parishes, schools, and ministries,” Cantú said. “I invite the faithful to keep him in prayer as he prepares for episcopal ordination.”

Ligot said he was “humbled” by the trust and support he has received from Pope Leo and Cantú and asked people to pray that he will continue to be a “faithful servant” within the diocese. 

“I renew my promise to serve Christ and his people with joy — especially those most in need,” he said in a statement published by his diocese. 

Ordained a priest in 1992 by Pope John Paul II in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome for the Diocese of Laoag City, Philippines, Ligot was incardinated into the Diocese of San Jose on March 30, 2004.

Before his incardination to the California diocese, Ligot served as parish vicar for St. John Vianney Parish, San Jose, from 2003 to 2005. He was also a chaplain at the Veterans Medical Center in San Francisco and a visiting priest at the Church of the Nativity in Menlo Park.

From 2005 to 2009, the bishop-elect was parish priest of St. Lawrence the Martyr Catholic Parish in Santa Clara.

Ligot attended San Pablo College Seminary in Baguio City, Philippines, and later continued his priestly studies at the Bidasoa International Seminary in Navarra, Spain, where he obtained a master’s degree in theology. He later obtained a doctorate in canon law from the University of Navarra in Spain.

Ligot, who is fluent in English, Spanish, Tagalog, and Ilocano, will become the second auxiliary bishop appointed to the Diocese of San Jose and the sixth U.S. prelate from the Philippines.

Pharrell Williams (left) and Andrea Bocelli. / Credit: Paras Griffin/Getty Images; Jakub Janecki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Vatican City, Aug 29, 2025 / 11:51 am (CNA).

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and American songwriter Pharrell Williams will direct a concert featuring musicians John Legend, Teddy Swims, Jelly Roll, Karol G, BamBam, and Angélique Kidjo in St. Peter’s Square next month.

The Sept. 13 concert, which is free and open to the public, will also include a drone light show and talks on themes including peace, justice, food, freedom, and humanity.

Called “Grace for the World,” the show will close the third edition of the World Meeting on Human Fraternity, organized by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation and St. Peter’s Basilica, and will be preceded by roundtables on social issues in Rome and Vatican City on Sept. 12–13.

Pope Francis established the Fratelli Tutti Foundation at the end of 2021. It is named after his 2020 encyclical on fraternity and social friendship, which expanded on themes in the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” signed with Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar, in Abu Dhabi in 2019.

The final event of the World Meeting on Human Fraternity 2025 is intended “to communicate to the whole world, with a symbolic embrace, the joy of fraternal love,” Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, president of the Fratelli Tutti Foundation and archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, said at an Aug. 29 press conference at the Vatican.

Gambetti said organizers tried to “broaden our international scope” with the choice of music artists.

In the press conference, the cardinal said Karol G — a Grammy-winning Colombian reggaeton and urban pop artist — was asked to take part because she is Latin American and “because she is involved in important social work” with women and children. “It seemed relevant to the theme we are trying to address,” Gambetti said.

Prominent U.S. artists will also take the stage in front of the Vatican basilica: rapper Jelly Roll and singer-songwriters John Legend, Teddy Swims, and Pharrell Williams.

Thai rapper BamBam, who is also a member of the South Korean boy band Got7, will perform, as well as Angélique Kidjo, a Beninese-French singer, actress, and activist. The concert will also feature the choir of the Diocese of Rome and the Voices of Fire Gospel choir.

Andrea Bocelli, who has performed in St. Peter’s Square on previous occasions, shared in a video message Aug. 29 that his participation in the concert is “a great honor.”

“I sincerely hope that it will truly succeed in spreading, in everyone’s hearts, a sense of brotherhood and great humanity, which is so badly needed,” the world-famous singer added.

The World Meeting on Human Fraternity 2025 will start with a meeting with Pope Leo XIV on Sept. 12. The program will then focus on roundtables on topics including artificial intelligence, education, economics, literature, children, health, and the environment. 

Sept. 13 will include an assembly on the topic of “What It Means to Be a Human Today” and a visit to St. Peter’s Basilica and the Holy Door of the Jubilee of Hope.

“While the world suffers from wars, loneliness, even new poverty, we have decided to stop and ask ourselves what it means to be human today,” Father Francesco Occhetta, SJ, Fratelli Tutti Foundation secretary-general, said Aug. 29.

“It is not an easy question, it even seems a little naive, but it is the only one that can save us if we ask it together,” he added.

Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega (whose image is regularly displayed in public places) has perpetrated more than 1,000 attacks on the Catholic Church and banned more than 16,500 religious processions, according to a report released Aug. 27, 2025. / Credit: Barna Tanco/Shutterstock

ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 29, 2025 / 10:24 am (CNA).

The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, in Nicaragua has banned more than 16,500 religious processions and activities in recent years and has perpetrated 1,010 attacks against the Catholic Church.

The statistics are recorded in the seventh installment of the Spanish-language report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church” by exiled lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina, released on Aug. 27. 

Regarding the ban on processions, Molina explained that it has worsened since 2022 and that the dictatorship has imposed it throughout the country since then. However, the report does not cover all parish churches or chapels, of which there are 400 in Managua alone.

“So the figure presented in the study could be at least three or four times higher than what is being recorded,” she emphasized.

In an interview with the Spanish-language edition of EWTN News, Molina explained that so far this year, only 32 attacks by the dictatorship against the Church have been recorded, a figure that could be much higher.

Reporting attacks against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua

The researcher explained that there are a series of factors that prevent these types of incidents from being reported: “Laypeople are terrified that members of the Citizen Power Council and the paramilitaries, which are organizations affiliated with the dictatorship, will harm them if they decide to report.”

Furthermore, Catholic priests “are prohibited from making any complaints, and if by chance any attack is reported in the media, [the dictatorship] simply denies it.”

“Another negative aspect we find, and which makes it possible for these attacks to continue to go unreported, is that there is no independent media presence in the country,” the expert stated.

An example of this, she said, was the recent confiscation of St. Joseph School run by the Josephine Sisters in Jinotepe: “When people reported it [to the outside free press] several authorities, including Catholic ones, said it was false. But two days later when dictator Rosario Murillo announced the confiscation, it was already known that what was being reported was actually true.”

The researcher also noted that her study “has documented the arbitrary closure of 13 universities and educational or training centers” and added that “what the dictatorship is doing is first prohibiting the students who remained at the confiscated school from withdrawing their enrollment,” since if they do so, “they will face some kind of retaliation.”

Molina also told EWTN News that these schools or educational centers are then used to “indoctrinate young people, children, so they see Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo as the saviors of Nicaragua.”

So far in 2025, she continued, “24 media outlets and 75 nonprofit organizations have been arbitrarily closed simultaneously,” and the dictatorship has confiscated 36 properties, despite the fact that Nicaragua’s Political Constitution, “even the one recently reformed in 2025, prohibits this type of action.”

“Priests and bishops are constantly under surveillance. Some of them are even followed 24 hours a day,” she continued.

“The clergy meetings held by bishops and priests are constantly monitored by the police [who] come to take photographs and videos of the religious who attend, and [the Ortega regime’s security forces] must be fully informed of everything discussed at these meetings.”

Nicaragua and the Vatican

After noting that the dictatorship has not returned the bank accounts confiscated from the Catholic Church and that “heavy fines and high fees are being imposed on religious buildings,” the lawyer addressed the relationship with the Holy See.

The latest constitutional reform, she said, “is creating a rift between the Nicaraguan Catholic Church and the Vatican because the dictatorship included in this reform that no interference in these religious activities is permitted. So what this means is that the [Nicaraguan] Catholic Church should not have any contact with the Vatican.”

“The relationship between the Vatican City State and the Sandinista dictatorship is nonexistent. It is known that there is no dialogue of any kind, at least not openly,” she commented.

Pope Leo XIV’s meeting with Nicaraguan bishops

Regarding the meeting that Pope Leo XIV held on Aug. 23 with three exiled bishops from Nicaragua, Molina expressed her joy and emphasized: “Who better than these bishops, who have been exiled and stripped of their citizenship, to attest to the persecution that is unfolding in Nicaragua”

The Holy Father received at the Vatican Bishop Silvio Báez, whom he confirmed as auxiliary bishop of Managua; Bishop Isidoro Mora of Siuna; and Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera, bishop of Jinotega and president of the Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference.

Báez wrote on X on Aug. 26: “The Holy Father, Leo XIV, received me in a private audience on Saturday, Aug. 23, together with Bishop Herrera and Bishop Mora. We spoke at length about Nicaragua and the situation of the Church in particular. He encouraged me to continue my episcopal ministry … I am sincerely grateful for his fraternal welcome and his encouraging words.”

“The pope needs true, objective information,” Molina pointed out, “and I believe that these three bishops who attended this private audience with Pope Leo were very intent on reporting on what is being suffered in Nicaragua and also what we, the migrant community, whether Catholic or not, are going through in other countries as a result of the damage the Sandinista dictatorship is causing in the country.”

‘There are attacks that cannot be published’

Molina told EWTN News that she also keeps a separate record of “attacks that cannot be published in the media or in studies because of the fear felt by the people who leaked the information.”

She said she does send these reports to “the authorities of some countries that monitor freedom, attacks on religious freedom, and also to human rights organizations at the Organization of American States and the U.N., so that they can truly hear from the victims what is happening.”

Molina also reported that recently “the seminary that was confiscated from the Diocese of Matagalpa [in January of this year] is being destroyed, dismantled, a place where future priests who would serve the Diocese of Matagalpa were being formed.” 

She called on the international community to closely monitor events in Nicaragua so that the people can finally “be free from this criminal dictatorship, because I don’t see how the people in Nicaragua can mount any kind of protest because the dictatorship only prescribes jail, exile, or the cemetery for people who demand human rights.”

The report can be accessed here.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.