Jan 10, 2026 / 07:00 am (CNA).

A financial crisis has halted the Catholic Church’s efforts to reclaim the site of Bangladesh’s first church, leaving the 426-year-old foundation in Satkhira occupied and unpreserved.

Two Portuguese Jesuit priests — Father Francesco Fernandes and Father Domingo de Sousa — built the country’s first church at Iswaripur in the Sundarbans Forest area in the present-day southern Satkhira district. They dedicated it on Jan. 1, 1600, as the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus.

The priests built the church with the permission and funding of the then-Raja (King) Pratapaditya. At the time, many Portuguese soldiers worked under Pratapaditya and worshipped at the church.

The church no longer exists, and a Muslim family has since settled on the land. However, the district’s official website still preserves its history online.

According to the Bangladesh government’s website, many Portuguese soldiers serving in Pratapaditya’s army contributed funds for the church’s construction. Additionally, Pratapaditya assisted in building the place of worship for Christians in his capital, with construction completed in December 1599.

“The bishop took the initiative to take over the site on behalf of the Catholic Church and offered to pay for it, but those living there did not agree. The then-bishop did not pursue it further for some reason,” said Father Philip Mondal, who oversees the Khulna Diocese’s land in the area.

The late Bishop Michael D’Rozario, who led the Khulna Diocese from 1970 to 2005, was the first to attempt to save the church site. Mondal noted he is unsure if the bishop sought administrative assistance at that time.

“But now, to take over this place, we need the support of the administration and a lot of money, which the Khulna Diocese cannot provide,” Mondal told CNA.

However, the priest believes that with government backing and external financial support, the Church in Bangladesh could reclaim this historically unique site.

Christians make up less than 1% of Bangladesh’s 170 million people, a tiny minority in the predominantly Muslim country. The Catholic community, with approximately 400,000 members, is the single-largest Christian group.

Members of the Muslim and Hindu majority often regard Christians highly for their significant contributions to education, health, and social development. Christian missionaries also contributed historically to the Bengali language, promoting its colloquial and simplified form.

Lay Catholics are urging the Church to establish at least a small chapel on the site to preserve its history.

“We have only read in books that the first church in Bangladesh was in Iswaripur, but now when we go there, we do not find any trace of it. It cannot be that the history of a religion has been erased,” Praveen Mondal, 34, a Catholic, told CNA.

He believes that Christianity and its first church are inextricably linked, making the preservation of this memory a major responsibility for the Church.

CNA spoke to Rashed Hossain, a top government land officer in the area, about the site.

“It is true that the first church was established here, but now that church does not exist. However, we need to see how the people who live there now came to own the land,” Hossain told CNA.

He added that if the Church makes a formal request to the government, officials will “look into the matter seriously.”

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Jan 10, 2026 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Catholics in the U.S. were witness to a rare Church decision in 2023 when Pope Francis elevated the Diocese of Las Vegas to a metropolitan archdiocese. Las Vegas had previously been a suffragan diocese of San Francisco, having been created by Pope John Paul II in 1995.

A suffragan diocese operates within an ecclesiastical province subordinate to a larger archdiocese and is led by a suffragan bishop who has the authority to lead his own diocese but works under the metropolitan archbishop.

In September 2025, Pope Leo XIV created a new Catholic diocese in northern China; though it goes by the same name as one established decades ago by Beijing without Vatican approval — a product of ongoing tensions between China and the Holy See — the move demonstrated the Holy See’s authority in creating local Church jurisdictions.

Outside of one’s own parish, a diocese or archdiocese is arguably the average Catholic’s most common point of interaction with the Church. These jurisdictions manage local Church life and administration, with bishops and archbishops offering both spiritual and temporal guidance and authority to Catholics under their care.

But how does the Catholic Church decide what becomes a diocese or an archdiocese? What are the roots of this ancient practice, and how does it function today?

Exclusively a papal right

Monsignor William King, JCD, KCHS, an assistant professor at the school of canon law at The Catholic University of America, told CNA that the right to erect (or suppress) a diocese “belongs exclusively to the successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome,” that is, the pope.

“Historically, secular rulers have intruded into the process and the autonomy of the Church in this action has been hard-won,” he said, pointing out that “even today in certain parts of the world, secular or civil rulers wish to have input into matters such as this.”

The pope never makes decisions regarding dioceses and archdioceses “without considerable study and consultation,” King said.

The history of diocesan administration stretches back to the earliest years of the Church, he said. In those days a diocese consisted of “a city larger than the surrounding cities and towns,” often a place of commerce or a center of government.

Throughout the centuries, including after the imperial legalization of the Church by Constantine, Church leaders refined the diocesan structure of “pastoral ministry and governance” in order to facilitate “communication and decision-making” throughout Christendom.

“This became increasingly important as the Church grew and encountered different systems of law, philosophy, and religious practice,” King said. Roman models of government structure proved useful and sufficient for Church governance; King noted that the Church structure even today more closely resembles a government than a corporation.

The process by determining which jurisdictions counted as archdioceses likely arose in earlier centuries organically, King said, with Church leaders identifying major centers of “culture, education, commerce, government, and transportation” as particularly significant jurisdictions.

The procedure for elevating a diocese to an archdiocese, meanwhile — as Pope Francis did to Las Vegas in 2023 — requires “significant study, discussion, and decision-making,” King said.

The Holy See conducts such reviews in part through a diocese’s “quinquennial report,” a detailed rundown of the diocese’s activities and administration. Such a report may indicate to the Holy See that a particular region is growing and could benefit from elevation to an archdiocese.

Local suffragan bishops will participate in discussions to that effect, King said, and the Roman Curia will work with bishops’ conferences as well as the local apostolic nuncio.

“The ultimate decision is that of the Roman pontiff, the bishop of Rome,” King said, “but is always done with his awareness of the conversations and consultations already conducted at every level.”

The priest pointed out that not every local jurisdiction of the Church is a diocese or archdiocese. At times, he said, the pope may establish a less common ecclesiastical administration “for a variety of reasons that relate to culture, legal acceptance or opposition, small numbers, and the like.”

Such jurisdictions include apostolic prefectures, apostolic vicariates, ordinariates, and other designations. Such areas may be governed by a bishop or a priest named by the pope, King said.

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Jan 9, 2026 / 17:38 pm (CNA).

Here’s a roundup of recent pro-life and abortion-related news:

Colorado will pay out $5.4 million after attempting to ban abortion pill reversal

The state of Colorado will have to pay out a massive $5.4 million sum after it lost in its attempt to ban abortion pill reversal.

The state suffered a decisive loss in federal court in August 2025 when U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico said that Colorado’s abortion pill reversal ban interfered with the religious rights of nurses Dede Chism and Abby Sinnett.

The Catholic mother-daughter team runs the Denver-area Bella Health and Wellness clinic. Part of their services include administering the hormone progesterone that can counteract the effects of chemical abortions.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the two nurses in their suit, said on Jan. 6 that federal law now requires the state to pay attorneys’ fees and court costs, totaling about $5.4 million.

Attorney Rebekah Ricketts said at least 18 mothers have given birth during the course of the lawsuit after receiving abortion pill reversal care at Bella Health.

Abortion pill advocate countersues South Dakota over false advertising threat

A pro-abortion pill company is suing the South Dakota attorney general after the prosecutor threatened to sue the organization over abortion advertising.

State Attorney General Marty Jackley sent a cease and desist letter in December 2025 to Mayday Health alleging the company was instructing women to not seek medical care after taking abortion pills while also implying that the pills were legal in South Dakota. Abortion pills are illegal in that state with limited exceptions.

In an Instagram post on Jan. 8, the pro-abortion company announced that it had sued Jackley in turn, alleging that Jackley was engaging in “government censorship, plain and simple.”

The group claimed its pro-abortion pill speech is protected by the First Amendment. Mayday vowed to “continue [its] mission” in advocating for abortion pills.

Wyoming Supreme Court strikes down state abortion ban

Abortions will continue in the state of Wyoming after the state Supreme Court struck down a ban on the practice there.

In a Jan. 6 decision, the court ruled 4-1 that the state’s ban on abortion did not constitute “reasonable and necessary restrictions on a pregnant woman’s right to make her own health care decisions.”

“A woman has a fundamental right to make her own health care decisions, including the decision to have an abortion,” the court said.

In a dissent, Justice Kari Jo Gray said the state government’s ban on abortion “falls well within the discretion the people expressly granted it.”

The ban allowed the procedure in cases necessary to save the mother’s life, among other extreme circumstances, Gray noted.

“These exceptions respect a pregnant woman’s health care choices while allowing the regulation of nonessential procedures,” she argued.