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The Vatican will build a roughly $117 million renewable energy plant that could power the Holy See within two years via a system combining solar power and agriculture, sources involved in discussions on the project said.
The agrivoltaic plant is expected to have a capacity of 80 to 90 megawatts, making it one of Italy’s largest such installations, the sources added. In such plants, solar panels are mounted several meters above the ground so crops can grow beneath them, with the shade helping to reduce evaporation and shielding plants from extreme weather.
A joint Italian-Vatican commission met earlier this month to launch the project at the Vatican-owned Santa Maria di Galeria estate on Rome’s northwestern outskirts, after Italy ratified a 2025 bilateral agreement for development of the site this year.
Months after protestors wouldn’t leave the lobby of the Idaho governor’s office in an attempt to meet with him over anti-transgender bills, a jury on Tuesday found a local minister guilty on a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
The jury found the Rev. Sara LaWall—who wore a clerical collar under a rainbow speckled blazer as she sat in court—guilty of trespassing after prosecutors said she remained in the governor’s office after being warned it was closed for the night during a protest of anti-trans bills this spring.
After the jury delivered the verdict, LaWall, the minister for the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, told reporters that the possible prison sentence she could face would be less time than judges can dole out for violations of Idaho’s new criminal transgender bathroom ban.
“That just feels wholly unfair and outsized and ridiculous,” LaWall told reporters after her trial. “… The jury found me guilty of staying in the governor’s office after being told to leave. I didn’t dispute those facts. But someone going to the bathroom now has a higher sentence, and that just feels so disproportionate and so wrong.”
Wendell Berry, farmer, author, and activist died earlier this week. He was 92 years old.
Berry’s death was first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by a statement sent to Sojourners by The Berry Center where his daughter, Mary Berry, serves as executive director.
“The Berry Center and Berry family are heartbroken to announce the death of Wendell Erdman Berry, writer and farmer of Port Royal, Henry County, Kentucky. He passed suddenly and peacefully at home yesterday afternoon, August 31st,” the statement read. “His work continues, here and in every place where people aim to live according to nature’s measure, on and with and of their beloved home place.”
For the first time, a delegation with the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center was denied entry to Israel earlier this month.
Sabeel, a registered nonprofit based in East Jerusalem, has nearly 40 years of history in the region. In the past three years, the group has welcomed more than 450 people in delegations and pilgrimages to the Holy Land. These trips are “learning experiences” for everyone involved, said Omar Haramy, director of Sabeel. They are inspired by the Bible’s repeated instructions to “come and see,” and “go and tell,” he said.
The delegation of 13 travelers, all American citizens, was coordinated by Rev. Ed Phillips and Rev. Sara Webb Phillips, married United Methodist ministers from Atlanta, Ga. On Aug. 13, the group was entering Israel—nine delegates had been admitted into the country when border agents suddenly ordered them to re-enter the processing area, then detained the whole group in a holding room in the terminal at Sheikh Hussein Bridge.
A new lawsuit hopes to win religious accommodations for millions of American workers who wish to request fossil fuel-free retirement plans from their employers.
Andrew Hartley, a Christian and statistical scientist, is suing his employer Thermo Fisher, arguing that Thermo “unlawfully forced him to compromise his religious values in order to receive the full benefits of his employment.”
Brought by the environmental action group ClientEarth, the lawsuit claims that the Supreme Court’s Groff v. DeJoy ruling in 2023 means Thermo Fisher is violating Hartley’s religious liberty by not offering a retirement plan that doesn’t invest in fossil fuels.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained a “beloved” Springfield, Ohio, pastor Thursday morning, according to a local faith-based organization.
G92, which advocates for their immigrant neighbors, said in a news release that agents detained Gilbert Joubert Adrien at a South Limestone Street gas station Aug. 20.
After the Armed Forces of the Philippines shot and killed 19 people in Toboso, Negros Occidental, Philippines, Christian clergy have been active in efforts to seek truth and justice for the slain, including one they knew intimately as a colleague in social justice.
Lyle Prijoles was a Filipino American activist who worked alongside many Christian clergy in the U.S. Bay Area. Prijoles was in the Philippines working with sugarcane workers when he was one of the 19 killed—the Armed Forces have claimed that all those slain on April 19 were members of the New People’s Army, a revolutionary, armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. But that account has been disputed. The Communist Party of the Philippines has claimed only 10 were part of the NPA. Grassroots organizations and independent fact-finding missions have found the same; Prijoles was one of at least nine people reported to be civilians. In the months following those deaths, many of those who once organized with Prijoles have joined in the resounding call for justice.
In the months since, 11 members of Congress have called on the Philippine government to conduct an independent, impartial investigation into the killings. One of the groups that sought to perform such an investigation included several Christian clergy from the Philippines and the U.S.
The White Sox beating the Cincinnati Reds this week in Chicago? There isn’t a bigger sure thing in sports, right?
Come on. Is the pope Catholic?
More to the point, is the pope a White Sox fan from Chicago?
As if that kind of divine firepower doesn’t already suggest some kind of winged assist from above for the White Sox’s sudden ascent into playoff contention this year after averaging 108 losses the past three, the White Sox promotions department rubbed it in with the Reds’ arrival to town for a series.
They brought out a nun for the ceremonial first pitch of the series and gave away “pope hats” to fans who shrugged off inclement weather forecasts to produce only the ninth sellout of the season at the Sox ballpark with 38,000 Pope Leo impersonators wearing their new hats for the beer-boosted, fun-loving – if perhaps a tad sacrilegious – promotion.
Progressive religious leaders in Idaho are pushing back against a new state law that would force transgender people to use bathrooms aligned with their sex assigned at birth, a measure that is partially on hold following a preliminary injunction issued in June.
House Bill 752, which was scheduled to go into full effect on July 1, would require people to use bathrooms, locker rooms and other sex-segregated facilities matching their sex at birth, with criminal penalties for those who don’t comply. Six transgender Idahoans challenged the law in federal court, and a federal judge issued a temporary order predicting it would not survive legal scrutiny. The injunction also ruled that transgender people can use restrooms of their choosing if a single stall restroom is not readily available.
The state’s attorney general said he plans to appeal.
Although the law is backed by conservative Christians and was drafted by a legislature that opens most meetings with a Christian prayer, many progressive religious leaders have said it is unrepresentative of their faith and are speaking out against it. Some are also wrestling with separate questions: Does the bill apply to religious institutions, and should it?
Several Catholic nursing homes in New York, including two in Westchester County, won’t have to comply with the state's newly-enacted Medical Aid in Dying Act while their lawsuit against it is underway.
Walking into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Delaney Hall detention facility in New Jersey, Rev. Robin Tanner quickly noticed that the windows were blocked off. Tanner, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Summit, N.J., pointed out one issue for people inside: “For many people in their faith tradition, [prayer] is a daily act,” she said. Muslims are instructed to face the city of Mecca during their five daily prayers, and a Muslim detainee wouldn’t have any way to know which direction to pray.
But for months, Amadou, a father and truck driver from Burkina Faso, whose full name Sojourners is withholding for his safety, struggled to convince guards to let him pray with other detainees at all. In Islam, Friday prayers, or salat al-Jumu’ah, are not only obligatory for every nondisabled man but are required to be performed in congregation. Amadou was detained 16 months ago and transferred to New Jersey last year. In Delaney Hall, it took four months for Amadou and other Muslim detainees to gain access to occasional gatherings for Friday prayer, finally prevailing in time for Ramadan.
ICE has a stated duty to provide spiritual care for those in its custody. According to ICE manuals, detainees must be provided with “regular opportunities to participate in practices of their religious faiths, limited only by a documented threat to the safety of persons involved in such activity itself or disruption of order in the facility.” As ICE continues to fail even its own guidance, a host of faith leaders have emerged to chip away at the agency’s spiritual blockade of those in its custody.
Bee Moorhead was surprised by the turnout at a July 7 press conference in San Antonio, calling for free and fair elections. The event was simple: a group of clergy, standing in front of San Fernando Cathedral on the city’s Main Plaza, announcing their intention to ask individual lawmakers to sign commitments to defend constitutional voting rights. Important work, she knew, but not usually the stuff of headlines. Moorhead has been organizing clergy around the state as executive director of Texas Impact for more than 20 years, and she said she’s accustomed to being all but ignored by the media and everyone else.
“Faith leaders all over the country, and certainly in Texas, keep speaking up and what comes back is, ‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’” she said. But suddenly, there were microphones and cameras. People were listening to what the group of interfaith pastors, imams, rabbis, and priests were saying about the need to protect voting rights. Something was changing.
Moorhead had launched the policy initiative and called the press conference in coordination with national interfaith organizing group Faith In Us, which formed after clergy from multiple faiths in Minneapolis and St. Paul took a visible role in the resistance movement during Operation Metro Surge. In January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement was overwhelming the Twin Cities, clergy there began to call for sustained national mobilization of their peers. Faith leaders invited colleagues from around the country to come and train with community organizers and unions in Minneapolis.
Matt Long stood before the Granbury City Council at an April zoning meeting to oppose the influx of proposed data centers in Hood County, likening them to a spiritual abomination.
While each of the nearly 2 million incarcerated people in the U.S. has their own story, they all share one experience: losing access to their neighbors on the outside.
The majority will be released after their sentences are served, but an atrophied social life and the stigma of incarceration mean they face a long uphill battle to take care of themselves, much less fully rejoin society. Christians have long stepped into this gap, many seeking to live out Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25 and visit those in prison. In the era of mass incarceration, religious volunteers visit incarcerated people to bridge the gap between them and life outside.
In March, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit devoted to fighting unjust prison policies, launched its “Visit a Prison” campaign, urging lawmakers and faith groups to visit their local prisons, including a guide for people interested in getting involved with incarceration ministry.
Jesus Christ was spotted in Kirkland, Washington, Friday night among about 100 protesters outside the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event at The Pursuit Northwest megachurch, where Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, was the headliner.
The South Texas nun who was detained by immigration officers last month spoke publicly for the first time since the incident and as her future in the country remains in limbo.
In the spring, on a day when the weather was just right, the conservation team at the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood, N.Y., set part of their meadow on fire. The “prescribed burn” is a land management technique that helps control invasive species and reduce the risk of wildfires.
Citing dangers to LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities, the Oregon-Idaho Conference of the United Methodist Church voted last month to move next year's annual conference out of Idaho.
At this year’s annual conference — a meeting where representatives from Oregon and southern Idaho United Methodist churches gather to vote on and make decisions — held at the Cathedral of the Rockies in Boise, Idaho, the Rev. Heather Riggs of Montavilla United Methodist in Portland brought a motion to the floor to change the location of next year’s conference.
Dozens of clergy and laity gave public comment, arguing why they believed the event should remain in Idaho or move to Oregon in 2027. The vote was close, but the end result was that the conference would either move to Oregon or be held virtually.
Editor’s note: This story includes reference to suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org
Ryan “R.L.” Stollar, a theologian and advocate whose work focused on children, abuse survivors, and homeschooling, died by suicide this week, leaving behind a legacy of tenacious and occasionally combustive activism. He was 41.
Stollar co-founded the blog “Homeschoolers Anonymous,” which garnered scores of media attention in the 2010s as more homeschool alumni began sharing stories of their experiences. He later helped found the organizations Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out and the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, both dedicated to resources and advocacy around safer homeschooling in the U.S. In 2023, Stollar published The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology with Eerdmans.
“We [adults] need to give children the freedom to be their own theologians — to discover and love who God is and what God values on their own terms,” Stollar wrote.
Despite preparing for the possibility, advocates still felt the grim reality set in when the Supreme Court decided to allow the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants whose home countries were previously deemed too dangerous to force their return.
Christopher Kerr, executive director of the Ignatian Solidarity Network, said in a statement that the ruling “strips vital humanitarian protections from our migrant neighbors and leaves families in a dangerous place.
“This ruling separates families and uproots students in our schools, leaders in our parishes, and friends in our communities. Catholic teaching reminds us that every person has a right to life and the conditions necessary for human flourishing,” Kerr said. “To force individuals back to nations gripped by violence and instability is a moral failure of our obligation to our neighbors.”