A National Eucharistic Congress concluded Sunday with a Mass with tens of thousands of people in an NFL football stadium, where the crowd prayed for “a new Pentecost” in the U.S. Church.

The nearly 60,000 Eucharistic congress attendees were sent out with “a great commissioning” on Sunday morning in which keynote speakers urged participants to proclaim the Gospel in every corner of the country.

More than 1,600 priests, seminarians, bishops and cardinals processed into Mass in the Indianapolis Colts’ stadium in a dramatic opening procession lasting 25 minutes. An additional 1,236 religious sisters and brothers were praying in the stands, according to the event organizers.

Dominican Father Aquinas Guilbeau predicted that the legacy of the National Eucharistic Congress will be like that of the 1993 World Youth Day held in Denver for the Church in the U.S.

“Its grace will shape the Church for the next 50 years,” Father Guilbeau said.

An Indian NGO has called for  the introduction of a strict system of population control that limits couples to two children.

This comes despite India’s fertility rate having already dropped to a little above replacement level.

Some Indian States already have such laws, but none exists at the nationwide level. A bill has been submitted to the National Parliament, but has not yet received Government support.

The proposal by the Jansankya Samadhan Foundation (JSF) recommends the non-issuance of birth certificates for any “surplus children” born and punishments for violators including up to 10 years in jail and/or the termination of government positions. The organisation has already submitted a memorandum to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to accept the proposed legislation.

In response to the proposal, the president of the Population Research Institute, Steven W. Mosher, said “The population controllers never give up”.

“Foreign-funded NGOs have been calling for India to adopt a two-child policy for years. But this latest call is particularly nonsensical. The country’s 2020 National Family Health Survey showed that India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is now below 2.0 children per woman. This is well below the 2.1 children needed to maintain a stable population.”

Many women are leaving it too late to have babies, with the average age of those starting IVF treatment passing 35 for the first time, the UK’s fertility regulator has found. This is a symptom of many women putting off when trying to have children naturally until they are well into their 30s.

IVF results in pregnancy in 42 per cent of cases for women aged 18 to 34, a report by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority found, but this drops to 26 per cent for those in their late thirties, and 5 per cent in the early forties.

The overall average age for women to have their first child — whether or not through fertility treatment — was 29 in 2022, up from 28 in 2012 and 27 in 2002.

The report covers national data from 2022. It highlights how record numbers of single women are trying to have babies on their own using sperm donors. More than 5,000 women without a partner went down this route in 2022, making up nearly one in ten fertility patients. Single women starting IVF tend to be slightly older, 36 on average.

Indian Prime Minister, Narenda Modi, acknowledged concerns about Christian persecution from mainly Hindu militants, but largely denied a government role in causing them, according to a delegation of Catholic leaders who met him last Friday.

The delegation led by Syro-Malabar Archbishop Andrews Thazhath met with Modi to press him on religious freedom and the rights of Christian minorities, including members of the oft-neglected Dalit and Tribal groups.

In particular, the bishops raised concerns about ongoing violence in the northeastern state of Manipur which has pitted a majority Hindu ethnic group against a minority Christian population, with an estimated 70,000 Christians displaced and roughly 400 churches destroyed.

“Our anxieties were heard in a way that he expressed solidarity, but he said every time (that) some fringe groups or somebody else is doing it. (That) it’s not the political party or government,” Thazhath said.

Regarding the violence in Manipur, Thazhath said Modi told the bishops that “it is an ethnic conflict, and it does not have a communal color,” meaning not a matter of Hindu v. Christian. Modi insisted, Thazhath said, that the government is “taking all steps” to restore peace.

Ireland’s fertility rate is projected to decline even further below replacement rate for the foreseeable future, to as low as 1.3, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

This analysis was included in the CSO’s Population and Labour Force Projections which looks at potential population growth scenarios over the time period of 2023 – 2057.

The total fertility rate (TFR) was as high as 4.03 in 1965 but it has fallen steadily thereafter. It reached a low of 1.65 in 2020, increased to 1.73 in 2021, before dropping to 1.55 in 2022.

A figure of 2.1 is required for the population to simply hold steady.

However, based on their analysis, the Expert Group believes that the total fertility rate “will decrease from 1.55 to 1.3 by 2037 and then stabilise at this level until the end of the projection period in 2057”.

The group considered three scenarios for population growth, depending on whether there is high, medium or low net inward migration.

While the population by 2057 will grow to 7.005 million, 6.446 million or 5.734 million persons respectively, for each of the three scenarios “there appears to be a change from natural increase (i.e. more births than deaths within the population) in the population to a natural decrease (i.e. more deaths than births) in the population by the 2040’s”.

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has welcomed the recent decision by the United States Congress to deepen its commitment to religious freedom in places where people suffer for their faith.

On Friday, 28 June, legislators on Capitol Hill adopted the full text of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill for a total of USD 51.7 billion. The Bill includes several paragraphs related to funding of actions and projects for the promotion and protection of religious freedom, as well as directing financial support to faith-based organisations active in Nigeria.

“This is a concrete manifestation of how US legislators acknowledge the painful consequences of religiously motivated violence,” said Regina Lynch, Executive President of ACN International.

“Because this is a decision on taxpayers’ money, the acknowledgement includes the fact that faith-based organisations such as the Church are reliable partners for US humanitarian and development projects.”

Heather Humphreys has overruled Green Party leader Roderic ­O’Gorman to ensure there will be no law change before the general election to allow those aged under 16 to legally change gender.

The Department of Social Protection, where Ms Humphreys is minister, and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, where Mr O’Gorman is minister, jointly commissioned a report in November 2022 examining whether a radical gender-change law from 2015 could be extended to under-16s.

While Mr O’Gorman favoured the introduction of a process for children to legally change gender, there has been growing resistance from Fine Gael politicians following the Dr Hilary Cass report published in the UK in April.

Dr Cass found there was “remarkably weak evidence” supporting the case for medical transitioning of children and warned that there was no clear evidence of whether the social transitioning of children had positive or negative mental health outcomes.

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted MPs will be allowed vote their conscience if ‘assisted dying’ legislation comes before Parliament, but such a bill is not high on the agenda.

The prime minister said he would provide parliamentary time for a vote if a backbench MPs proposed changing the law, but stressed the government had other “priorities for the first year or so”.

Sir Keir supported a change in the law the last time the issue was voted on in the Commons nine years ago.

Speaking on a trip to the NATO summit in the US, the new prime minister indicated his support for taking up a bill eventually:

“That remains my position for the reasons I’ve set out, having probably got more experience on this than most people, having personally looked at tens of cases in my time as director of public prosecutions.”

Promised legislation to ban so-called ‘conversion therapy’ is unlikely to be enacted within the Government’s lifetime, which can only last until next spring at the outside, Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O’Gorman has said.

Last September, the Scottish government postponed a ban amid fears it could criminalise parents who question their child’s attempts to make their ‘gender’ different than their biological sex.

In Ireland, psychiatrist Dr Paul Moran of the HSE’s National Gender Service (NGS) said the proposed bill was unnecessary and could be weaponised against doctors working with patients suffering with gender dysphoria.

Likewise, Dr Karl Neff, also at the NGS said the research justifying the bill was weak, limited, and biased.

Speaking on Friday, Mr O’Gorman said he had hoped legislation outlawing the practice would be “more advanced” by now.

The Minister said aspects of it had proven to be “extremely complex” and he was continuing to engage with Attorney General Rossa Fanning on the matter.

The programme for government contains a commitment to legislate to end the practice of ‘conversion therapy’. But with an election having to happen by March, and many expecting one later this year, the law is unlikely to progress at this stage.

The UK’s new health secretary has said he will make permanent an emergency ban on the supply of puberty blockers to children.

The previous Conservative Government had rushed through the temporary ban just a day before parliament was dissolved, putting a stop to private clinics prescribing the drugs to under-18s.

Now, Labour’s Wes Streeting will keep the ban, as campaigners challenged the initial decision in the courts.

Government lawyers said that, subject to the outcome of the case, it was “minded to renew the emergency banning order with a view to converting it to a permanent ban, subject to appropriate consultation”.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy for the charity Sex Matters, said: “Wes Streeting’s announcement that he plans to make his predecessor’s ban on puberty blockers permanent is an excellent sign that Labour intends to take an evidence-based approach to child gender medicine, and to prioritise child safeguarding.”