The elite round line-up is complete with best third-placed teams Greece and Bulgaria joining the top two in each group.

Find out how to watch the 2019 UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship where you are.

Champions France and runners-up Germany dominate the team of the tournament with four players each.

Lyon trio Lucy Bronze, Ada Hegerberg and Amandine Henry are the UEFA Women's Player of the Year nominees.

Lyon and England right-back Lucy Bronze is the first defender to win the poll of coaches and journalists.

The first defender to win the UEFA Women's Player of the Year award: we salute Lyon and England right-back Lucy Bronze.

See which 28 teams are through to the elite round after the 11 qualifying round groups ended.

Arsenal, Glasgow and Paris have joined Atlético, Barcelona, Bayern, holders Lyon and Wolfsburg in the last eight.

The first tickets for the UEFA Women's Champions League final in Vienna on 24 May are now on sale.

Holders Lyon face Bayern, Atlético take on Barcelona, Arsenal meet Paris and Glasgow play Wolfsburg.

See how the groups are unfolding and how the 15 sides to join England in the finals will be decided.

The provisional schedule has England kicking off the tournament on 7 July 2021, with the final at Wembley on 1 August.

Nine stadiums across eight cities will host games at UEFA Women's EURO 2021 in England.

Nine stadiums across eight cities will host games at UEFA Women's EURO 2021 in England.

UEFA's head of women's football Nadine Kessler explains why the 2021/22 switch to a group format is a win-win – for clubs, players and fans.

We pick out ten young players to watch in the coming year – and decade.

Sanaa, Yemen, Mar 24, 2020 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- A Yemeni appeals court run by Houthi rebels on Sunday upheld the death sentence of a member of the Baha'i religion. The court also ordered the dissolution of Baha’i institutions.

Hamed bin Haydara was detained by Houthi rebels in 2013, and was denied access to a March 22 appeal hearing in Sanaa which upheld an earlier death sentence.

“This alarming decision is an egregious violation of religious freedom and the fundamental rights of Yemeni Baha’is,” Gayle Manchin, vice chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, said March 23. “USCIRF has been long concerned with the welfare of Mr. bin Haydara and the Yemeni Baha’i community. We call on Houthi authorities to immediately reverse this verdict and cease their baseless persecution of this peaceful religious minority.”

According to USCIRF, bin Haydara was charged with “with spying for Israel, teaching literacy classes deemed incompatible with Islam, and attempting to convert Muslims.”

The Baha'i International Community said it was "utterly dismayed at this outrageous verdict" and demanded the court reverse the decision, AFP reported.

"At a time when the international community is battling a global health crisis, it is incomprehensible that the authorities in Sanaa have upheld a death sentence against an innocent individual solely because of his beliefs instead of focusing on safeguarding the population, including Baha'is," said Diane Ala'i, a Baha’i representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

According to AFP, the Houthis have sought to ban the Baha’i religion.. The Houthi movement’s courts have started proceedings against 20 members of the religion, six of whom have been detained. The movement controls Sanaa and much of the westernmost part of the country.

In January, Pope Francis told Holy See diplomats that the crisis in Yemen is “one of the most serious humanitarian crises of recent history.”

The civil war between Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and a Saudi Arabian-led coalition has killed over 100,000 people since 2015. According to a Center of Strategic and International Studies report, the war has also caused nearly 24 million people to be in need of humanitarian assistance. 

Restraint on humanitarian organizations and aerial attacks has left 80% of Yemen’s population in need of food, fuel, and medicine, the CSIS Task Force on Humanitarian Access reported.

The Associated Press reported in February that half of the United Nations’ aid delivery programs had been blocked by the Houthi rebels. The rebels had requested that 2% of the humanitarian budget be given directly to them, heightening concerns that the group has been diverting charitable funds to finance the war.

In recent years, the pope has often asked for prayers for the Yemeni people in his public audiences.

“Pray hard, because there are children who are hungry, who are thirsty, who have no medicine, and are in danger of death,” Pope Francis said during an Angelus address in February 2019.

CNA Staff, May 1, 2020 / 12:09 pm (CNA).- The Turkish foreign ministry on Wednesday rejected Turkey's inclusion in a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, charging that the report comes from a “biased mindset”.

“The report contains baseless, unaccredited and vague allegations as in the past years while trying to portray isolated incidents as violations of religious freedoms through far-fetched accusations,” Hami Aksoy, a spokesperson for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said April 29.

“The importance attached by Turkey to protect religious freedoms, including those of religious minorities, is expressed at the highest level by our Government officials. Our authorities make it clear that any harm to the religious freedoms of our citizens will not be tolerated,” Aksoy added.

In its 2020 report, USCIRF recommended that the State Department add Turkey, as well as 10 other countries, to a “Special Watch List” of countries where abuses of religious minorities are taking place, but not at a level as severe as in those designated as “countries of particular concern.”

The commission wrote that “religious freedom conditions in Turkey remained worrisome” in 2019, “with the perpetuation of restrictive and intrusive governmental policies on religious practice and a marked increase in incidents of vandalism and societal violence against religious minorities.”

It cited the Turkish government's prevention of the election of board members for non-Muslim religious groups and its limitations on the election of the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople.

The report added that Alevis, a group related to Shia Islam and the country's largest religious minority, “remained unable to gain official recognition for their gathering houses (cemevleri) as places of worship or to exempt their children from compulsory religious classes, despite European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings finding that these policies violated Alevis’ rights.”

According to the US commission, Turkish religious minorities “expressed concerns that governmental rhetoric and policies contributed to an increasingly hostile environment and implicitly encouraged acts of societal aggression and violence.”

The report also drew attention to the permission given for a museum, that was originally a Greek Orthodox church and later a mosque, to be reconverted into a mosque. It noted also that president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for the same thing to happen to the Hagia Sophia, which has the same history.

USCIRF also said the Turkish government has “continued to dismiss, detain, and arrest individuals affiliated with, or accused of affiliation with, the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, for alleged complicity in a July 2016 coup attempt or involvement in terrorist activity.”

Gülen has lived in the US since 1999, and is considered a terrorist by the Turkish government.

The Turkish foreign ministry charged that Gülen's mention in the report “amounts to deliberately turning a blind eye” to the coup attempt, and added: “We invite the US authorities to earnestly examine the evidence we have provided” about the Gülen movement “and to engage in effective cooperation in line with the spirit of alliance in order to reveal the true nature of this terrorist organization.”

Aksoy added that the recommendation of adding Turkey to a “special watch list” for religious freedom “is a clear indication of the biased mindset behind it and the circles under whose influence it was drawn up.”

“In the report that is supposed to include global trends that threaten religious freedoms, the Commission does not mention a single word about xenophobia, Islamophobia and discrimination on religious grounds that is on the rise in the West and the US,” Aksoy stated.

“This clearly reveals that the purpose of the report is not to protect religious rights and freedoms. It is clear that the Commission, which has been accused of being anti-Muslim in the past, has drawn up this report based on its unwarranted agenda and priorities under the influence of circles that are hostile to Turkey, rather than objective criteria. We recommend the authors of this report to look in the mirror and engage in self-criticism.”

Earlier this year, Turkish authorities arrested a Syriac Orthodox priest on terrorism charges after he provided bread and water to members of a Kurdish separatist group that has been deemed illegal.

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

It’s a wonderful phenomenon—yeast.  It permeates lifeless flour and causes it to rise and expand.  The power of yeast effects the brewing of beer and the making of wine.   The yeast plant is a fungus that grows without limits to its borders.  Only if yeast is alive and active will it interact with the dough.

On her TV program, “Martha Bakes,” the talented Ms. Stewart cannot contain her delight when she makes yeast dough: “Look at the sheen—so soft and shiny! The aroma is “bee-you-tee-ful,” and the fragrance gratifies all the senses!” Follow these instructions: proof active yeast, blend it into the flour mixture, and let it rise to double the size.  From yeast dough come baked goods such as breads, sticky buns and sugar buns, and monkey bread.  “Soo pretty, soo delicious,” Ms. Stewart swoons over her culinary works of art.

Yeast as a Metaphor

In the Matthean parable (13:33), the reign of God is like yeast that a woman took and kneaded into three measures of flour.  Eventually the entire mass of dough began to rise.  The image of yeast was a favorite in the Early Church.  Everyone understood the inner power of yeast with its limitless ability to make things grow, even in small beginnings with “three measures of flour.”  They grasped the comparison.  The yeast referred to the Church as an unlimited and growing reality, “destined ultimately to be present everywhere and to affect everything, though by no means to convert everything into itself” (Walter J. Ong, “Yeast: A Parable for Catholic Higher Education,” America Magazine, April 7, 1990).  The Church is catholic because it has always been expanding into new and shiny ‘dough’ without limit. Katholicos, from kata or kath and holos, means “through-the-whole or “throughout-the-whole.”

The Laity: Worldly and Yet Unworldly    

The laity are catholic, yeast in business and finance, entertainment, nursing and medicine, arts and science, law and law enforcement, politics, and sports.  They are the inner power with its limitless ability to make things grow, even in small ways. The laity find their holiness in the world with its financial concerns and family responsibilities.  Those who marry and have children become not just a family but also the Domestic Church.

In 1987, the Catholic Church held a World Synod on the Laity, one of many, beginning with Vatican II in the 1960s.  According to the synod’s final document, the laity are equal with clergy and consecrated religious in the life and mission of the Church.  

The call to holiness of the laity differs from the vocation of consecrated religious.  The laity are to be in the world in an unworldly way.  They approach life with wisdom that teaches the limited and relative value of material things. This would seem to be a contradiction in terms.  How to be worldly and unworldly at the same time?   It cannot be easy, for at times, the challenges seem insurmountable.  Yet, it remains for the lay vocation to find a theology of being present in the world. It is a practical spirituality of the family and the workplace.  For the laity, this is where holiness resides.*  

Holiness of the Laity

The holiness of the laity began with Jesus himself.  He was a rabbi and teacher, as were his disciples. Peter was a married man, and for all we know, so were the other apostles, the exception being John, the Beloved Disciple.  

St. Paul addresses and refers to those he evangelized as ‘saints,’ meaning that they were on their way to becoming saints.  In the Early Church, there were no consecrated institutes of men and women.  All Christians grasped the importance of living as disciples and ambassadors of the Lord.

As increasing numbers of Christians came to view the world as wicked, they flocked to the desert to live alone. When the desert grew so overcrowded with these solitaries, they came together and formed religious communities.  Thus, the start of monastic orders of men and women.

Prayer

Consecrated men and women, and especially those who live in cloisters, spend several hours a day in prayer.

This is not the way of the laity. Their days focus almost entirely on family and the means of supporting it.  Their prayer is measured not in hours but in minutes—two here, five there, perhaps a Holy Hour or Retreat Day on rare occasions.

The conciliar document on the sacred liturgy encourages Catholic families to pray portions of the Liturgy of the Hours (#102-111).  The Hours are not private or devotional prayer but the prayer of the entire Church, the Church at prayer.  Praying the psalms nourishes Catholic family life whose welfare is daily beset with conflicting external forces. If prayer is the underlying power of strong family life, then parents can find ways to incorporate parts of the Hours into their daily schedule. In prayer, married couples derive the strength of God’s grace to live their married vocation.  

As children mature, they too must learn to travel the road to discipleship in the Lord.  Small children can be taught to pray a psalm or two at bed time. If this is not feasible during the week, then prayer on weekend is an alternate possibility.  

A minimal and external Christianity will not fortify today’s Domestic Church but only a vibrant Christianity in which Christ is a living reality.  It takes a few minutes to pray short sections of the Hours, even on public transit.  It is a consoling thought to recall that “in him, we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  

At Pre-Cana instructions, couples can learn the practice of making the Hours an integral part of their married life.

Can Yeast Corrupt?

The image of yeast is not always positive.  In First Corinthians 5:6-8, St. Paul mentions what all Jews understood.  At the Paschal festival time, they were to destroy all yeasted products because leaven was a metaphor for the corruptive influence of evil, for puffing up the self, leaving no room for God.   

Proofing the yeast in warm water will yield bubbles around the surface, and the yeast will become puffed up if it does not interact with the flour dough.  The puffed up yeast will die.  In this sense, neither the laity, nor any minister in the Church, can afford to be puffed up with pride.

Élisabeth Leseur (1866-1914) and Félix Leseur (1861-1950)

The story of Élisabeth Arrighi Leseur exemplifies the limitless power of marital love.  Élisabeth was born into a wealthy French Catholic family of Corsican descent.  As a child, she had contracted hepatitis, a disease from which she suffered all her life.  At twenty-one, she met Félix Leseur, a medical doctor, who also came from an affluent Catholic family.  Shortly before they were to be married, Élisabeth discovered that Félix was no longer a practicing Catholic.  Soon he became well known as the editor of an anti-clerical, atheistic newspaper.  

Despite the circumstances, the couple married, for Élisabeth was deeply in love with Félix.  They were unable to have children, a fact that made their marriage all the more difficult.  His attack on her religious devotion prompted an even more serious fidelity to the faith. She bore the brunt of his hatred of the Church with patient love.  At thirty-two years of age, Élisabeth experienced the grace to a deeper form of prayer.  She was convinced that her task now was to love her husband and pray for his conversion while remaining steadfast during his taunts against religion, and the Church in particular.

Homebound and Bed-Ridden

Élisabeth’s deteriorating health forced her to lead a sedentary life.  She received visitors and was able to conduct a vibrant apostolate from the confines of her home.  She became a devotee of St. Francis de Sales who wrote for the layperson in the seventeenth century. His Introduction to the Devout Life, perhaps the most famous spiritual guide of all time, is an offshoot of the Ignatian Exercises. During this period, Élisabeth kept a secret spiritual diary.  

When, at the age of forty-five, Élisabeth underwent surgery and radiation for the removal of a malignant tumor, she recovered and continued to receive visitors to her home. Three years later, she succumbed to cancer.  Her life has been recommended for sainthood. Why?  We turn the page to continue the narrative of her husband.

Dr. Félix Leseur

After Élisabeth’s death, Félix found a note addressed to him.  Not only did it predict his conversion, but he would also become a Dominican priest.  His hatred of the Church prompted him to expose her note as a fake, and he decided to do so at Lourdes, the famous Marian shrine in France.  There, something prevented him from carrying out his intended project—call it God’s intervening grace. As Élisabeth had predicted, he experienced a conversion and published her spiritual journal.  In 1919, Félix entered the Dominican Order, was ordained a priest four years later, and spent his remaining years speaking about his wife’s difficult yet remarkable life with him.  

In 1924, the future Archibishop Fulton J. Sheen made a retreat under Fr. Leseur’s direction.  It was at this time that he learned of Élisabeth’s life and her husband’s conversion.  In 1934, Fr. Leseur, O.P. worked to begin the cause for her canonization, and the Archbishop shared the story of this remarkable married couple in many presentations.  Élisabeth is currently a Servant of God, the first step in the cause for sainthood.

Élisabeth Leseur’s suffering was not wasted. On the contrary, her lifelong devotion to Félix was central to his conversion.  She became the yeast that permeated the lifeless soul of her husband.  It forever transformed his life so that he could affect change in the lives of others. Love begets love.

*The Ignatian “Prayer for Finding God in All Things” by Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. can help the busy person find God throughout the day.  Copies are available from the Institute of Jesuit Sources, Boston, MA.

The good news is that AMD has confirmed a third-generation Threadripper chip is also arriving in November. However, it'll land with 24 cores, not 32, as some might have hoped.

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The Big O is two gaming machines in one: either an Xbox One or a PS4, broken down and attached to the same liquid cooling system as a fully customized gaming PC.

The new NUC is taking all sorts of forms at CES 2020, but none is as slick or as snazzy as Razer's early stab at this power-packed mini-PC platform.

The film follows three young men over six years in a rural North Carolina community as they struggle to finish high school.

"Raising Bertie," about three African-American boys in Bertie County, N.C., airs on the PBS documentary series "POV" Monday night.

The Rural School and Community Trust and the AASA, the School Superintendents Association, say the partnership will allow the two groups to expand their reach and play off each other's strengths.

More than 9.3 million U.S. students attended a rural school last year. A new report examines factors that affect them like poverty, academic achievement, and diversity.

Saskia perseveres through language learning and connects with a young Albanian girl who becomes a follower of Jesus.

Noy shares her journey of experiencing God's love for herself and forgiving the community that persecuted her family.

Tinashe disciples and shows Zimbabweans that they, too, are called to serve; everyone can share their own stories with others to show the love of Christ. 

The "jewel of La Masia", Ansu Fati scored his first Barcelona goal aged just 16 on Saturday.

Head of Goldman Sachs Colin Coleman tells Bloomberg TV the stand-off between Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and the Hawks can devastate the country.

Fin24's Matthew le Cordeur spoke with Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba after his maiden mini budget speech in Parliament on Wednesday. Watch.

Fin24 reporter Moeshfieka Botha gives a rundown of the key elements in the finance minister's maiden mini budget, which he earlier presented to Parliament.

Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping events of the year, can be likened to "pushing kids into a candy store wondering what’s going to happen" says a debt expert.

Economic growth prospects are better and Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has made the right choices about where to spend the money, says ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe.

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

In February 1915, only six months after the beginning of World War I, Lancet, a British medical journal, used for the first time the expression “shell shock.” This newly coined expression was used to describe the feeling of helplessness that soldiers felt after exposure to constant bombardment. The term was new, but not the reality. After every war, soldiers return from combat, suffering “shell shock.” 

Watching their comrades mowed down by enemy fire or left maimed and strewn on the battlefield, combatants become immune to feelings of connectedness and concern. Today, this phenomenon is becoming an epidemic. We are constantly being bombarded by bad news. The catastrophic and inhumane events that interrupt our everyday life are causing many people to escape from the brutality by becoming shell shocked. 

Terrorist attacks in Belgium, Syria, Africa, and in England; daily violence on the streets of Chicago, New York, Paterson; the massacre of our children in their schools and of believers in their churches, synagogues and mosques; the interminable disputes and rancor over immigration; allegations of racism and sexism; the incessant reporting of scandals, present and past!  Moment by moment these evils confront us. So fast does news travel that one story stumbles over the other with images of the dead, the wounded, the homeless imprinted on our minds. These problems do not admit of simple solutions. And, since we are more aware of them today than in the past and yet less able to find solutions, many, left numb and disillusioned, drift into apathy.  

In addition, newspapers, blogs and TV commentaries flash before us cause after cause, such as global poverty and climate change. “Every cause seems urgent, but nobody has the time, the energy, or the information necessary to make an impact. Knowing all the ways in which the world is flawed in a very real, raw, up-close kind of way without the ability to make any sort of important change is perhaps the most unwelcome symptom of the digital age” (Jamie Varon, “Generation apathy: How internet outrage is making us all numb and hopeless,” August 20, 2015).

Some Christians have drunk the hemlock of apathy. They are becoming more and more indifferent to evil in the world and, sadly, more and more detached from religion. Unconnected. Not invested. Religion may be good; but, when it comes to God, they have hung up a “Do Not Disturb Sign.” For them, weddings, funerals, First Communions, Confirmations, if even celebrated, are mostly social occasions. 

Apathy within the Church is far more devastating than outside the Church. The Church is the sign and sacrament of salvation for the world. It is an instrument in God’s hands. But if the instrument is dull and listless, it hinders God’s activity. When people become apathetic, something more is needed than telling them to be kind and compassionate. Such preaching falls on deaf ears and hardened hearts. What is needed today is the bold proclamation of the kerygma, that is, the love of God given us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

God is not apathetic. He is intensely passionate about his relationship with us and his world. He is the lover who pursues his beloved. He never gives up on us, despite our sins. He woos us back to himself (cf. Hosea 2:11). He did not turn his back on the evil of our world, but sent his Son to be our Redeemer.

 “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s love is a fact. In Jesus, God has begun the work of forgiving sins and recreating the world. And, he gifts us with the Holy Spirit so that, together with him, we make all things new. We are not helpless. We are not alone. Apathy makes people murmur a half-silent “No” to the world in which we live. But, faith in Jesus Crucified and Risen makes us shout a resounding “Yes” to God’s work of the New Creation. Faith is the antidote to apathy.


 

A searing report and federal oversight over Title IX enforcement in Chicago raises the question: Is it an outlier, or just the first to get caught?

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OM writer Ellyn shares firsthand accounts from those who fled for their lives to Bangladesh and now reside with thousands in camps in Cox’s Bazar.

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The Indianapolis archbishop has ordered Catholic high schools in the city to dismiss teachers who are married to someone of the same sex, or sever ties with the archdiocese.

An executive order signed this week is meant to address concerns of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses. But the legal underpinnings of that order apply to elementary and secondary schools, too.

Saskia perseveres through language learning and connects with a young Albanian girl who becomes a follower of Jesus.

Noy shares her journey of experiencing God's love for herself and forgiving the community that persecuted her family.

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Somerset West stands out as one of the fastest growing property areas – commercial, residential and industrial - in the Western Cape, according to a new report on the state of the property sector in the Western Cape.

These places give new meaning to the term "golden years". And no fewer than four of the five top retirement villages listed in the 2019 Estate Ratings report by New World Wealth are in the Western Cape.

The Cape Town metro scooped the highest prices paid for residential property in South Africa this year, says the MD of Seeff Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl.