Catholic News Service

A triumphant independence euphoria worldwide 10 years ago welcomed the birth of the Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation.

Bishop Douglas J. Lucia, whose downtown Syracuse office sits on the ancestral lands of the Onondaga Nation, hopes to meet with Pope Francis “to re-examine” 15th-century Vatican documents that justified colonization, land takeovers and oppression of Indigenous peoples.

Father Juan Sosa, pastor of the Catholic church that is close to the now-demolished condominium building in Surfside, held up a photo of 11-year-old Lucia Guara’s first Communion in 2019. He placed it on the casket holding her and her sister, Emma, 4, during the funeral Mass July 6 for the girls and their parents.

Bishop Alphonse Quesnel of Fort Liberté, Haiti, said the Haitian church was “stunned” by the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

As the nation’ celebrates its independence on the Fourth of July, Americans should recall the country’s “other founding” by the missionaries who, beginning in the 1500s, came to proclaim “the love of Jesus Christ to Indigenous peoples,” said Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez.