NATION
SCHRIEVER, La. (OSV News) – Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville of Houma-Thibodaux passed away unexpectedly late Jan. 19 due to complications from recent health problems, according to the diocese. He was 63. He is remembered for his various teaching and pastoral roles in his native Colombia as well as his service as auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Washington. Bishop Dorsonville had headed the Houma-Thibodaux Diocese as its fifth bishop just under a year since his installation on March 29, 2023.

Prior to that, the bishop had served as auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington for eight years since his appointment in 2015. “It is with great sadness and deep shock that I announce to you that our beloved Shepherd, Bishop Mario Dorsonville, passed away at 6:50 pm this evening after he gave in to complications arising from recent health problems,” Father Simon Peter Engurait, the diocese’s vicar general, said in posting the news of the bishop’s death on social media Jan. 19. “My heart is broken.” Washington Auxiliary Bishop Juan Esposito, vicar general and moderator of the curia, remembered Bishop Dorsonville Jan. 20 as “a special soul” and “a good and faithful servant of the Lord he loved so well.” Bishop Dorsonville was a former chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration from 2019 to 2022.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The first U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ annual report, “State of Religious Liberty in the United States,” published Jan. 16 said potential threats to religious liberty in the United States largely come in the form of federal regulations or cultural trends. Five top areas of concern, the 48-page report said, include attacks against houses of worship, especially in the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas conflict; the Section 1557 regulation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which the report said “will likely impose a mandate on doctors to perform gender transition procedures and possibly abortions”; threats to religious charities serving migrants and refugees, “which will likely increase as the issue of immigration gains prominence in the election”; suppression of religious speech “on marriage and sexual difference”; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations, which the report said “aim to require religious employers to be complicit in abortion in an unprecedented way.” The report’s introduction said that due to a divided federal government, “most introduced bills that threatened religious liberty languished,” resulting in threats in the form of “proposed regulations by federal agencies,” or cultural trends like growing partisanship over migration.

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The skills of winegrowers – respect, perseverance and knowing how to prune to produce fruit – are also valuable messages for the soul, Pope Francis said. “Wine, the land, farming skills and entrepreneurial activity are gifts from God,” the pope told winegrowers, winemakers and others taking part in an event organized by Vinitaly – an international wine and spirits exhibition held in Verona, Italy, every year for industry professionals. The event was dedicated to Italian wine and “the economy of Francesco,” an economy inspired by St. Francis of Assisi that respects the earth and promotes peace and justice. “It is good that you find yourselves reflecting together on the ethical aspects and moral responsibilities involved (in wine production) and that you draw inspiration from the ‘Poverello’ of Assisi,” he told the group during an audience at the Vatican Jan. 22. Respect and kindness are important in treating the earth, workers and consumers, he said. “Indeed, ‘genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others,’” he said, quoting from his encyclical, “Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home.” Pope Francis thanked the group for striving to follow the example of St. Francis of Assisi and knowing the importance of harmony, helping the least and respecting creation.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis praised the legacy of an Italian priest who looked for ways the Catholic Church could make sure the poor were not left further behind in the world. “And with wisdom and love,” the late Father Lorenzo Milani found “the answer in education, through his model of schooling, which is putting knowledge at the service of those who are considered the last by others, but first for the Gospel and for him,” the pope said. During an audience at the Vatican Jan. 22, the pope met with members of a national committee in charge of last year’s celebrations and initiatives marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Father Milani. The priest used the schoolroom to help “to restore dignity to the least, respect, entitlement to rights and citizenship, but above all the recognition of the sonship of God, which includes all of us.” He saw education as the answer to the question, “How can the church be meaningful and make an impact with her message so that the poor do not fall further and further behind.” “He invites us not to remain indifferent, to interpret reality, to identify the new poor and the new forms of poverty; he invites us instead to approach all those who are excluded and to take them to heart. Every Christian should play his or her part in this,” the pope said.

WORLD
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (OSV News) – Six nuns from the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Anne were kidnapped Jan. 19 while traveling on a bus in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, according to the Haitian Conference of Religious. Other passengers on the bus also were taken in the abduction, the conference said in a statement. “These many kidnappings fill the consecrated people of Haiti with sadness and fear,” said the statement, signed by conference president P. Morachel Bonhomme. He prayed that “the spirit of strength be given” to the sisters “to find a way out of this terrible situation.” On Jan. 21 in remarks after the Angelus, Pope Francis appealed for the release of all the hostages, while praying for “social harmony” in the country. Bishop Pierre-André Dumas of Anse-à-Veau et Miragoâne prayed “to help us put an end to this bitter nightmare and this tragic ordeal of our people which has lasted too long.” In a statement published Jan. 19, the bishop offered himself in exchange for the hostages and denounced what he called an “odious and barbaric act which does not even respect the dignity of these consecrated women who give themselves wholeheartedly to God to educate and train the young, the poorest and the vulnerable in our society,” Bishop Dumas wrote, according to a translation posted to social media by Father Louis Mérosné.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (OSV News) – The situation in the Gaza Strip is “extremely catastrophic,” and people are dying not only from violence but from preventable illnesses, said the CEO of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. “People are really losing their life because of no treatment, no medical care,” Sami El-Yousef, CEO, told OSV News Jan. 20. He repeatedly described the situation as “catastrophic” throughout the interview. The supplies that are being allowed in are being transported from Egypt into southern Gaza Strip. “There have been no supplies allowed into the northern part of Gaza,” including Gaza City, where most Christians are sheltering in the Catholic and Orthodox parishes, El-Yousef said. He said that during January, a black market has sprung up, and things like medicine and blankets were being sold for 10 times the amount they sold for before Israel declared war on Hamas in retaliation for an Oct. 7 land and air attack launched by the militant Islamic group. At the beginning of the war, a Gaza medical clinic run by the Catholic charitable agency Caritas transferred most of its medicine stock to Holy Family Catholic Parish, but all of those supplies are now depleted, El-Yousef said. El-Yousef said the local Christian community wanted to conduct clothing drives for the Gaza Christian community, but Israel is not allowing goods into Gaza.

By Gina Christian
(OSV News) – Dioceses across the U.S. are asked to hold additional listening sessions in the next few months, following a request from the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops which is preparing for the second session of the global Synod on Synodality in October.
In a Jan. 2 letter (a copy of which OSV News has obtained), Bishop Daniel E. Flores of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas – who chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on doctrine and coordinates the U.S. bishops’ synod process – said his team is requesting “each diocese hold 2-3 listening sessions regarding the guiding questions” posed by the synod secretariat.

Those two guiding questions were phrased by Bishop Flores and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Synod Team as follows: “Where have I seen or experienced successes – and distresses – within the church’s structure(s)/organization/leadership/life that encourage or hinder the mission?” and “How can the structures and organization of the church help all the baptized to respond to the call to proclaim the Gospel and to live as a community of love and mercy in Christ?”
Bishop Flores asked that each diocese summarize responses to those questions in a 3-5 page document and send it to the USCCB by April 8. The diocesan summaries will inform the USCCB’s summary, which is due to the synod secretariat in May.
Bishop Flores noted that in addition to the listening sessions, “we are encouraged to continue ongoing engagement with the People of God in the dynamism of a synodal style.”
To that end, dioceses may also include with their submissions “a two-page testimony of best practices for synodality” they have developed, the bishop explained.
Bishop Flores also wrote that in addition to the diocesan consultations taking place, “the USCCB will be holding additional listening sessions at the national level with a focus on participation, social justice, and vocations.”
Diocesan-level synod leaders “will be invited to participate in a national working group with the permission of the bishop,” he said in his letter.
Bishop Flores said that “we all know time is short, but even modest efforts at the local level can bear much fruit.
“Let us do what we can, as well as we can and trust the Lord to accomplish beyond what we can foresee,” he wrote.
Launched by Pope Francis in October 2021, the first session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, organized on the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission,” took place Oct. 4-29, 2023, in Rome.
The first session of the synod, also known as the “Synod on Synodality,” was summarized in a 41-page report intended to allow the global church to digest, reflect on and give feedback on its contents ahead of the synod’s final session in Rome next October.
Part of that task is figuring out how decisions are made in the church in a way that is faithful to its nature – including discerning how episcopal collegiality is exercised in a synodal church – because the church’s members have “differentiated co-responsibility for the common mission of evangelization.”
The synod’s report also covers topics such as evangelization as a mandate of baptism, formation in “authentic discipleship” rooted in the Eucharist and Scripture, clerical and lay formation, ministries of pastoral accompaniment, the role of the Eastern Catholic churches in the life of the universal church, ecumenism, ordaining married men to the priesthood, the role of women in the church and the ongoing impact of clerical sex abuse scandals among others.
The synod’s next session in Rome will have the task of making decisions about what concrete proposals to present before the pope.

(Gina Christian is a national reporter for OSV News. Peter Jesserer Smith, national news and features editor of OSV News, contributed to this report.)

By Theresa Cisneros
LOS ANGELES (OSV News) – Five years ago, Rosy Oros lay comatose in a hospital bed in Mexico – some 1,500 miles away from home – after experiencing complications from a medical procedure that had taken a drastic toll on her body and mind.
She was suffering internal and external bleeding, her organs were damaged, and doctors gave her only a 2% chance of surviving.
As she lay there on the brink of death, she finally opened her eyes and – in a haze – saw a familiar set of brown eyes gazing back at her, lovingly, that were very much still alive.
Those eyes belonged to an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe hanging just a few feet away, at once filling her heart with love and hope that the Virgin Mary she’d held dear since childhood would intercede with Jesus to help her make it out of the clinic alive.
Oros’ healing journey came full circle this December as she and other musicians sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving to Our Lady of Guadalupe during the annual “Las Mañanitas” celebration at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in honor of her feast day.
“I am so humbled and blessed to be able to stand there and in my own simple way give thanks to the Virgin,” Oros told Angelus, the online news outlet of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “It may seem insignificant but I know that she is receiving it with a lot of love and that it makes her happy, because she knows my heart.”
At the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the festivities ran from the evening of Dec. 11 into the early hours of Guadalupe’s feast day, Dec. 12.

As in years past, the celebration featured Aztec and Ballet Folklorico dancers, veneration of the only relic of St. Juan Diego’s “tilma” in the U.S., the rosary, a musical tribute that included “Las Mañanitas,” and ended with midnight Mass, where Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles said the Guadalupe story is a reminder that “Jesus Christ loves us so much that he came to share our hopes and dreams and to offer his life for us.”
“Just as she did with Juan Diego, the most holy Mary entrusts each of us with a task. She has a message that she needs us to spread and she is sending us to tell the whole world about Jesus.” he said.
Oros aimed to do just that as she and six other guest singers delivered individual serenades to the Virgin backed by Mariachi Garibaldi de Jaime Cuellar.
Oros carefully made her way onto the altar, set down a bouquet of red roses near two giant images of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego bedecked with hundreds of flowers, and sang two songs to the Virgin while looking deep into the compassionate eyes that she’s come to know so well.
It was a moment that she had trained for all her life.
Oros was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, into a family of nine that is both musically inclined and devoutly Catholic; one of her brothers spent six years in the seminary, while another is currently a Jesuit novice. She immigrated to Santa Maria in California as a preteen, and studied music theory and vocalization, singing to God and to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
At 12, she discovered a love for Mexican “ranchera” music when her father bought her a copy of Linda Ronstadt’s 1987 album “Canciones De Mi Padre” – in which the American singer recorded traditional mariachi songs that were of special significance to her family.
“I would lock myself in my room and listen to the cassette over and over and over again until I learned all the songs,” she said.
Since then, Oros has remained close to the singing world. She’s enjoyed a long career working in TV, radio, the recording industry and now in publishing as editor-in-chief of Iconos, her own magazine highlighting music and entertainment news.
While she’s remained mostly behind the scenes, she has recorded jingles, produced her own albums and sings when the occasion arises. While living in New York, she had the chance to sing on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” for fashion designer Oscar de la Renta and open for Mexican “ranchera” icon Vicente Fernández at Madison Square Garden.
Oros accepted the chance to sing during this year’s “Mañanitas” celebration at the cathedral, out of gratitude for the role she said Our Lady played in saving her life just five years ago.
In 2018, Oros went into septic shock, and then fell into a coma, after undergoing a medical procedure in Aguascalientes. After awakening, she suffered a cerebral thrombosis and other complications that worsened her prognosis.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, she spent the early days of her recovery in a clinic named, aptly, for Our Lady of Guadalupe, where she said she experienced the love of Jesus for her through Mary.
A pivotal point in her healing, she said, came when she and her husband received messages from Mary through a prayer group.
“She said, ‘I am with you, do not be afraid,’” Oros said. “’You will heal from this but we will do this together …’ In other words, she wanted me to get closer to her Son while holding her by the hand.”
Today, Oros’ body and faith have grown continually stronger.
“She interceded for me to live,” she said. “We always look for the opportunity to thank her and to be in communion with her.”
Surviving the near-fatal incident has shown Oros that Our Lady of Guadalupe is very much alive and is there to help all of her children, she said.
“We may not be perfect, we may be sinners, we may fall, but in the end this is proof of the love and mercy of Christ through his mother. She is the key to the door that opens to Christ and to our salvation.”

(Theresa Cisneros writes for Angelus, the online news outlet of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.)