France

Instead of dressing as ghosts or monsters, children appear as saints and angels, joining joyful parades, games and prayer services to highlight All Saints’ Day.

“We were five steps away from the entry to the gallery when people began to exit with terrified faces,” school principal Emily Hernandez said.

The Luminiscence production will feature a 360-degree video projection onto the basilica’s walls as narration provides the church’s history in Minneapolis.

“We must offer young people the ideal of evangelical life through the means of communication that are theirs,” Sister Albertine said.

The northwestern French city of Nantes waited for this moment for five long years and on Sept. 27, reopened its cathedral after the 2020 arson attack.

The two-act musical “Bernadette of Lourdes” will begin an American tour in 2026, and a video of the show in French with subtitles will be in theaters Sept. 28-29, 2025.

French Christians are reeling after the brutal murder of Ashur Sarnaya, a 45-year-old disabled Iraqi Chaldean Catholic, stabbed in the throat outside his Lyon apartment.

Cardinal Aveline said the French bishops heard “sadness, a lot of desolation, a lot of worry, a lot of anguish” from people they met during their visit.

The rector solemnly read the “vow of Louis XIII,” by which the king of France officially consecrated the country to the Virgin Mary in 1638.

Archbishop Verny, 59, may be new to the universal church, yet he is a well-known figure in France, remembered for his firm stand against abusers.