In this weekly round up we cover the news stories we missed from the 22nd to the 28th August 2021

• The Vatican has reportedly suppressed the Regina Pacis Community, a society of apostolic life based in Verona, Italy, citing “institutional shortcomings” and a lack of “charismatic-institutional maturity”. ”According to the news agency L’Arena di Verona, the Vatican’s consecrated life office issued a decree suppressing the community on July 24. The bishop of Verona, Giuseppe Zenti, sent a letter informing the diocese of the decision on Aug. 17.The Regina Pacis Community was founded in 1986 by married couple Alessandro Nottegar and Luisa Scipionato Nottegar as a Catholic community devoted to prayer, evangelization, and service to the poor. Alessandro Nottegar, a doctor who died from a heart attack just a month after the community’s founding at the age of 42, was declared “venerable” by Pope Francis in 2017 — one of the steps on the path to beatification and canonisation.
• A Philippines bishop has announced 40 days of fasting and penitence as a way to share in the sufferings of others and heal from the spiritual damage of the coronavirus pandemic. Such penitence and self-reflection, he said, will help the faithful “encounter Christ in the fullness of his generosity and love especially amidst this ongoing pandemic crisis.”“The pandemic has revealed that we are not only vulnerable to this biological threat of COVID-19, but also to the contagion of hopelessness, depression, selfishness, the abuse of power, the lack of transparency and accountability, and the preoccupation to personal privileges to the detriment of those who continuously suffer,” Auxiliary Bishop Moises M. Cuevas of Zamboanga said in an Aug. 24 pastoral letter “Not by Bread Alone.”

• Pope Francis named Italian economist and Catholic religious sister Alessandra Smerilli as secretary of the Vatican’s social development office on an interim basis. Smerilli was appointed “ad interim” secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development following the departure of secretary Msgr. Bruno Marie Duffé and deputy secretary Fr. Augusto Zampini, who have returned to their home dioceses, the Vatican announced Aug. 26. The 46-year-old Salesian sister is an economist and professor. She has been an undersecretary at the human development dicastery since March 24 and was one of the principal organizers of the 2020 Economy of Francesco event. Since 2019, Smerilli has also served as a councilor of the Vatican City State and a consultant to the secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. In spring 2020, she was asked to coordinate the economic taskforce of the Vatican COVID-19 Commission.

  On Aug. 26, Pope Francis also named Smerilli delegate of the COVID-19 commission of the Vatican, meaning that the commission is now under the exclusive leadership of Smerilli, Fr. Fabio Baggio of the Migrant and Refugees section, and human development prefect Cardinal Peter Turkson.
  
• 28 August 2021 – Raymond Cardinal Burke issued a personal statement via Twitter Saturday night, thanking his doctors, all those who have offered prayers on his behalf, and especially God “who has brought me to this point of healing and recovery.”
  “I have been transferred out of the Medical Intensive Care Unit and settled in a hospital room where the doctors, nurses, and numerous hospital staff have provided vigilant, superb, and steadfast medical care,” the 73-year-old American cardinal tweeted.