The News You May Have Missed: July-August 2026

A Typical Day in Detroit

Rev. Canon Jean-Baptiste Commins was in the parking lot of St. Joseph Shrine in Detroit when he heard tires squeal and a loud crash. He then saw a man running away with only one shoe on. Somebody yelled, “Stop him!” — and, in full clerical attire, the French priest tackled the man and restrained him until police arrived. “He was resisting a lot, trying to run away,” Fr. Commins said, “so I had to, unfortunately, give him a few punches…making sure that there was no threat, since I didn’t know if he had a gun.” Once the suspect was subdued, Commins turned his attention to a woman inside the car, “to make sure, you know, if she needed the Anointing of the Sick or a blessing or something,” he said. “She was not very responsive. But her eyes were twitching a little bit.” The man was arrested, and three other people detained. Police believe the vehicle they crashed was stolen. Afterward, Commins went “to do my prayers as usual and have dinner with the community.” It was, he quipped, “just another day in the D” (Fox News, June 2).

Turkish Delight

Archeologists in Turkey discovered the best-preserved early image of Jesus Christ ever unearthed: a fresco portraying Him as the Good Shepherd inside a well-preserved, oxygen-depleted underground tomb in the city of Iznik. The pigments are in virtually perfect condition — exactly as they were painted some 1,800 years ago. The fresco, which dates to the third century A.D., is among the five oldest images of Christ as an adult found anywhere in the world. It is so complete that His facial features, the individual folds of His tunic, His hands, and the outline of the ram across His shoulders remain clearly visible and sharp. Notably, this Jesus is beardless, has short-cropped hair, and is dressed in upper-class Roman clothes. “Anatolia — what is now Turkey — was in many ways the cradle of early Christianity,” explained Candida Moss, professor of theology at the University of Birmingham. “The region — visited by the apostles Peter and Paul and other very early missionaries — is of huge importance…. When Christianity became the official religion of the empire, the Romans moved their capital from Rome to what is now Istanbul” (The Independent, May 30).

Book Marks

An international team of academics recovered 42 lost pages from one of the most important early New Testament manuscripts: Codex H. This sixth-century copy of the letters of St. Paul was disassembled in the 13th century at the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece, and its pages re-inked and re-used as binding material and flyleaves for other manuscripts. “Researchers used multispectral imaging to process images of the extant pages, in order to recover ‘ghost’ text that no longer physically exists, effectively retrieving multiple pages of information from every single physical page,” explained Garrick Allen, professor of divinity at the University of Glasgow. The discovery offers unique insight into how the New Testament evolved through the centuries. Key findings include ancient chapter lists that differ from modern ones, and fragments that show how scribes corrected and annotated texts. “Given that Codex H is such an important witness to our understanding of Christian scripture, to have discovered any new evidence — let alone this quantity — of what it originally looked like is nothing short of monumental,” Allen said (Zenit News, May 5).

Easter Offensive

Federal employees are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, arguing that Secretary Brooke Rollins’s Christian messaging is “unconstitutionally coercive” (Religion News Service, May 13). Rollins has sent “increasingly proselytizing communications to the entire USDA workforce, promoting her own preferred brand of Christian beliefs and theology to the captive audience of employees that report to her,” the suit says. The complaint, filed by advocacy groups on behalf of the National Federation of Federal Employees, names seven plaintiffs who are Jewish, Buddhist, pagan, and atheist. Rollins’s offensive emails “reached a crescendo” with a message calling Easter “the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind,” and declaring, “Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life.” The suing parties say Rollins’s message “communicates that there is a preferred religious ‘in-group’ at USDA,” as she has not sent messages about the holy days of other religions. Asked for a statement, a USDA spokesman said, “While we do not comment on pending litigation, we will keep the plaintiffs in our prayers during this process.”

Dioceses Without Borders

The Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, sued to stop the Trump administration from seizing its land through eminent domain to extend the southern border wall (Religion News Service, May 11). The federal government has targeted the base of Mount Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped by a 29-foot-tall limestone statue of Christ erected in 1940. The diocese said the acquisition would obstruct pilgrimage routes, constituting “a significant infringement on religious freedom and the rights of worship.” Eminent domain allows the government to take private property for public use, provided appropriate compensation is issued. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates the value of the 14 acres at $183,071. Each fall, on the feast of Christ the King, up to 40,000 pilgrims climb Mount Cristo Rey and participate in Mass. Some make the journey barefoot, while a few ascend on their knees. In April, members of the Kumeyaay tribe warned that the federal government was blasting Kuchamaa Mountain in California, a Native American ceremonial site that’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sinner or Sainte?

Buffy Sainte-Marie was stripped of an honorary degree amid disputes over whether she fabricated her Native American ancestry (New York Post, May 15). The University of Toronto rescinded the singer-songwriter’s Doctor of Laws degree following a confidential review process. The decision comes two-and-a-half years after a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigation uncovered a birth certificate showing Sainte-Marie was born in Massachusetts to Italian-American parents, contradicting her claim to be of Algonquin, Mi’kmaw, and Cree descent. She has received about 15 honorary doctorates from the University of British Columbia, the University of Regina, Carleton University, and elsewhere. Dalhousie University also stripped her of an honorary degree. Sainte-Marie was a folk-music star in the 1960s and frequently performed music tied to Cree heritage. She later appeared on Sesame Street and won an Oscar in 1983 for cowriting “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman, supposedly becoming the first indigenous person to win the award.

Too Big for Her Britches

A 37-year-old woman was arrested in Brazil after allegedly deceiving a family into adopting her by pretending to be a 12-year-old girl fleeing abusive parents. According to investigators, the suspect first approached a church in Joinville and told the pastor she had escaped mistreatment. A family agreed to bring her into their home and soon became emotionally attached to her, treating her as their daughter for over a year. The suspect allegedly told the family she’d been forced to take hormones after suffering abuse, causing her to have older features. She reportedly adopted childish behavior to maintain the deception, including using baby bottles and a pacifier, speaking in a high-pitched voice, and faking panic attacks. Police say she convinced the family not to send her to school by claiming her abusive father would discover her there. The family organized a 12th birthday party for the suspect, paid for her obesity medication, and was considering formally adopting her. Her scheme came to light after a relative alerted police (Daily Mail, June 3).

Race-Baiting Fraudsters

The U.S. Department of Justice charged the Southern Poverty Law Center, which characterized certain Catholic organizations as hate groups, with fraud for allegedly paying informants to monitor white-supremacist organizations (EWTN News, April 22). According to the indictment, the SPLC used donated funds to pay individuals who were associated with or infiltrated the very extremist groups the SPLC denounces. Between 2014 and 2023 the “anti-racist” organization allegedly funneled more than $3 million to individuals associated with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, National Socialist Party of America, and United Klans of America. To pay informants, the SPLC allegedly opened bank accounts connected to a series of fake entities, such as “Fox Photography” and “Rare Books Warehouse,” and made false statements regarding operation of the accounts. “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked.” The group faces 11 counts of wire fraud, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money-laundering.

Bye-Bye, Birdies

Americans appear to be leaving the United States for good at once-in-a-century levels. In 2025 the outflow caused the first net outward migration of the U.S. population since the Great Depression (The Independent, May 12). The U.S. government doesn’t track the number of citizens who’ve resettled abroad, so estimates vary of how many people have left. According to the Brookings Institute, net outward migration was between 10,000 and 295,000 last year. Others pegged the outflow at 150,000. Nearly all the European Union’s 27 member states have seen record levels of Americans arriving to live and work. Mexico is another popular destination; approximately 1.6 million Americans live there, composing the largest overall concentration of expats in the world. Even more are considering leaving. A November 2025 Gallup poll found that one in five Americans would like to permanently move, double the figure from ten years earlier, citing high living expenses and a sense they are “merely surviving instead of thriving.”

Smuggler Monks

A group of Buddhist monks was arrested for attempting to smuggle over $3 million worth of Thai narcotics into Sri Lanka. The 22 monks were detained at Colombo International Airport with over 110 kilograms of “kush” cannabis and hashish, valued at $3.45 million, concealed in their luggage. The contraband was packed alongside school materials and confectionery. Chief prelates of their Buddhist order will conduct inquiries and expel those found guilty. They also demanded legal action against drug networks and traffickers “who, through deceptive and organized means, lure young monks into such illegal activities.” Sri Lanka launched “A Nation United,” an anti-drug campaign, in 2025. It is well known that traffickers smuggle drugs into the country using children and young women. “They are also using Catholic fishermen, some of whom are already behind bars for ferrying drugs from the seas to the shore,” said a senior priest of the Archdiocese of Colombo, who asked not to be named (UCA News, April 27).

Diary of a Country Thief

A homosexual couple was arrested for a months-long wave of burglaries targeting Catholic churches in rural northern France. Raphaël Hourdeaux, 35, and Tony Paupière, 30, broke into 29 churches during summer 2025, stole valuable liturgical objects, and took consecrated hosts and sacred vessels to use as decorations in their home. In a church of Burelles, they destroyed the donation box and stole communion plates, baptismal vessels, and a monstrance. They sold some items to an antiques dealer, who was convicted of receiving stolen property. Other sacred vessels were melted down and sold as metal. In many of the targeted churches, Mass is celebrated only a few times a year, and days passed before anyone realized what had happened. Police identified the pair through mobile-phone geolocation data. The men received three-year prison sentences, with two years suspended, and will serve one year under electronic home surveillance. The desecration of churches has become an urgent issue in France amid concerns about rising anti-Catholic hostility (Zenit News, May 16).

Man vs. Machine — I

A robot has become so good at table tennis that it has defeated elite human players in what has been hailed as “a longstanding milestone” for artificial intelligence (Sky News, April 22). Ace, a robotic arm built by Japanese electronics giant Sony, has nine camera-eyes positioned around the court and eight joints directing its movements. It learned to play using the AI method known as reinforcement learning. “With this technology, we show that it’s actually possible to train robots to be very adaptive and competitive and fast in uncertain environments that constantly change,” said Sony president Michael Spranger. Ace was trained on an Olympic-size table-tennis court at Sony’s Tokyo headquarters to create a “level playing field” with professional athletes. “It’s very easy to build a superhuman table tennis robot,” Spranger said. “But that’s not the goal here. The goal is to have some level of comparability…at the level of decision-making and tactics and, to some extent, skill.” That means the robot “cannot just win by hitting the ball faster than any human ever could, but it has to win by actually playing the game,” which it has done.

Man vs. Machine — II

Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time, according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defense industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare (New Scientist, June 10). In a one-off test, ten AI-controlled drones killed Russian soldiers on the front line of the Ukraine War. As part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, an unnamed military unit near the cities of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar programmed the quadcopter drones to fly roughly three miles toward the front line and then engage “Terminator mode,” in which an AI model searches for and eliminates targets. “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead — everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” said drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology. With no way to tell what the automated drones had done, human-piloted drones were flown into the area to check results. The casualties included “a couple of soldiers” and one truck, Kokhanovskyy said. The Ukrainian government bans the use of AI at the final stage of eliminating targets but is debating whether to relax the rule.

Prepare for Delivery

A passenger on a Delta Air Lines flight gave birth to a healthy 5½-pound girl just before landing (Associated Press, April 28). Baby Brielle Renee arrived about two weeks ahead of schedule, the plane about 20 minutes. Her mom, Ashley Blair, was flying from Georgia to Oregon to be with her own mother for the birth but didn’t quite make it. She went into labor about half an hour from Portland International Airport. Two paramedics on board, Tina Fritz and Kaarin Powell, who were returning from vacation, realized Ashley had gone into labor. They asked flight attendants for an obstetrical kit, but none was available, so they improvised, borrowing blankets from other passengers and tying off the umbilical cord with a shoelace. Ashley gave three “really good pushes, and the baby came out really quickly,” Fritz said. “Baby pinked up right away. She was gorgeous. Mom was a rock star.” As the plane taxied to the jetway, they handed Brielle to Ashley. Fritz has kept in touch with Ashley since the birth. “I feel like we’re friends now forever,” she said.

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