Catholic Community (English)

Pope Leo sends a message to participants in a Mass marking the 60th anniversary of the Neocatechumenal Way in Madrid. The Pope praises its missionary commitment and encouraged its members to continue serving the Church’s evangelising mission, while Church leaders reflected on the movement’s growth from the shantytowns of Madrid to a presence in 138 countries worldwide.

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President Donald Trump warned against a nuclear‑armed Iran, reacting to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnsonʼs May 28 meeting with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, where the mayor said they discussed U.S. immigration and the Iran conflict.

Trump posted, “Someone should explain to the Pope that the Mayor of Chicago is useless, and that Iran cannot have a Nuclear Weapon.” He also shared screenshots of the mayor’s posts with pictures of him and the Chicago-born pope sharing gifts and praying. Trump made the comments in a May 30 post on Truth Social.

The president has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Leo wants the Middle Eastern country to develop nuclear armaments.

Leo has rejected those allegations. On May 5 at Castel Gandolfo he stated that the Church "has spoken for years against all nuclear weapons." Later, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin stated that the Holy See "has always worked, and will continue to work, on nuclear disarmament."

The White House and Chicago mayor’s office did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Trump sharply criticized Pope Leo XIV in April, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” and saying he is “not a fan” of the pope.

Trump expressed his disapproval of Leoʼs public statements denouncing the U.S.-led war on Iran. The Holy Father has repeatedly called for peace amid the ongoing conflict.

The pope has said he is “not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.”

Pope Leo XIV said Sunday that the mystery of the Holy Trinity teaches Christians to see every creature as made for communion — and warned that division, polarization, and contempt for differences leave the world spiritually barren.

Speaking before the Angelus on May 31, the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the pope reflected on Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, saying the feast reveals that God’s own life is a communion of love into which humanity is invited.

“The Trinity helps us to love everyone and everything: we discover that every creature is made for communion, relationship and encounter,” Pope Leo said from the window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter’s Square. “On the other hand, we understand why division, polarization and contempt for diversity bring destruction, sadness and barrenness to the world.”

The pope said the Church’s Easter journey, which concluded last week with Pentecost, helps believers contemplate the divine life given to humanity in Christ — a communion of love that draws believers in through the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit, he said, “unites the Father and the Son” and “has been poured into our hearts.” In this way, he added, “the Church becomes a sacrament of communion, a place of encounter, love and life where heaven and earth already touch.”

Turning to Nicodemus, whom the Gospel describes as an important figure in Israel who came to Jesus at night, Leo said Christ “welcomed him and took his search for answers seriously.”

Jesus, the pope said, “surprised Nicodemus by suggesting that it was even possible for an adult to be reborn and led him to realize that the life of God could transform his own life.”

Leo noted that Nicodemus later defended Jesus before the Sanhedrin, urging others to listen before condemning him.

“He had received the Spirit of communion from God through Christ himself, which opens the heart to new truths and to true renewal,” the pope said. “Whoever does not welcome this Spirit grows old quickly, in sorrow, feeling all alone and without joy in their hearts.”

By contrast, Leo said, the solemnity of the Trinity is “a day of celebration.”

“God’s feast is also ours,” he said, citing St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians: “Rejoice, strive for perfection, encourage one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

After leading the Angelus, the pope recalled the prayers for peace raised throughout the Church during May, a month traditionally dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

“In this month of May, a united chorus of prayers for peace has resounded throughout the Church,” he said. “Above all, through the prayer of the Holy Rosary — like an unbroken chain — the peoples ravaged by war have been entrusted to the intercession of the Virgin Mary.”

“May Divine Wisdom enlighten the consciences of those in authority and guide their decisions toward a sincere search for a just and lasting peace,” he said.

Leo also marked Italy’s 25th National Day of Relief, expressing closeness to the sick and those who care for them.

“I offer my spiritual closeness to the sick and those who care for them; and I thank and encourage all who promote a culture of solidarity and care,” he said.

This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Pope Leo renews his appeal for peace, praying that God guide world leaders towards a just and lasting peace, while also encouraging a culture of care for the ill and greeting pilgrims gathered at Poland’s Marian shrine of Piekary.

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On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Pope Leo reminds the pilgrims gathered for the Angelus prayer that the life of the Triune God “gives peace to our heart, which is often very restless.”

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“The Church has always accompanied people of the sea,” Bishop Frank Schuster, auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Seattle, told EWTN News ahead of his Washington, D.C., visit for the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Mariners and People of the Sea on May 22.

“We had a couple of seafarers of our own among the apostles — Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fishermen,” said Schuster, who serves as the bishop promoter of Stella Maris in the U.S.

Stella Maris, first known as the Apostleship of the Sea, is the Church’s official ministry for seafarers and mariners. Formal Catholic port ministry began in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1920 but was not officially recognized by the Vatican until 1922, when Pope Pius XI granted his approval. The ministry was renamed “Stella Maris” on its 100th anniversary in 2020, a nod to St. John Paul II’s 1997 motu proprio Stella Maris.

While the main role of port chaplains with Stella Maris is to celebrate Mass and the sacraments aboard ships, their work includes providing counsel and aid to sailors.

“One of the reasons why this ministry is so vitally important is — if you do a quick search of the United Nations, you’ll find this number — it’s fascinating that 80% of all tradable goods have, in some fashion, had to at some point travel by ship,” Schuster said.

“They’re performing a service,” he said, “so when they arrive to our ports, we come on board delivering gifts and different items that they might find helpful such as toothbrushes, bars of soap, shaving cream, and razors.”

‘A ministry of accompaniment’

“It’s a ministry of accompaniment,” Schuster said, explaining that the ministry of port chaplains often includes walking with seafarers struggling with mental health or trauma from their time on board a ship.

“Some of these seafarers often have trauma in their past,” Schuster said. “I’ve talked to several seafarers who have been on the Hormuz route — if you’re a sailor on one of these ships and you’re watching missiles fly over you, you are constantly worried about being attacked.”

“And so, we can also just be a good ear and listen,” he said. “But also, if we see signs of real depression, we can be helpful there in terms of referrals to make sure that these seafarers get the help that they need.”

Stella Maris also often assists crews on abandoned ships, according to Schuster.

“There may be a ship out there where the company abandoned the seafarers, so they’re no longer getting paid and they’re just kind of sitting out there on a boat because the country won’t let them leave the boat abandoned,” he explained, citing the crew of the Dali cargo ship that crashed into Baltimore’s Key Bridge in March 2024.

A port chaplain with Stella Maris in Baltimore regularly checks in on several members of the Dali crew who have remained in the city amid the ongoing investigation of the incident, the bishop noted.

Schuster said his favorite part about his role as bishop promoter of Stella Maris is “just getting on board the ships and being able to do ministry.”

“Before I was a bishop, I was a pastor of a parish, and that meant daily accompaniment of people from a variety of different backgrounds and a variety of different needs, and I missed that one-on-one ministry,” he said.

“So when I get on board a ship and minister to a crew, being able to celebrate Mass, sit down to eat with them and talk about life, it feels like Iʼm a pastor again. And it feels good.”

The Catholic Church teaches that the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith. But how much do we know about this mystery? What is its history? What does it mean? And how can it be proved?

Here are 12 things to know and to share.

1. Where does the word “Trinity” come from?

It comes from the Latin word “trinitas,” which means “three” or “triad.” The Greek equivalent is “triados.”

2. When was the word first used?

The first surviving use of the term (there may have been earlier uses that are now lost) was about 170 A.D. by Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote: “In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries are types of the Trinity [Τριάδος], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man” (“To Autolycus,” 2:15).

3. What is the Trinity?

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way: “The Church expresses her trinitarian faith by professing a belief in the oneness of God in whom there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three divine Persons are only one God because each of them equally possesses the fullness of the one and indivisible divine nature. They are really distinct from each other by reason of the relations which place them in correspondence to each other. The Father generates the Son; the Son is generated by the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son” (No. 48).

4. Is the Trinity the central mystery of the Christian faith?

Yes. The compendium explains: “The central mystery of Christian faith and life is the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity. Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (No. 44).

5. When did the Church infallibly define the Trinity?

The dogma of the Trinity was defined in two stages, at the First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) and the First Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.).

First Nicaea defined the divinity of the Son and wrote the part of the Creed that deals with the Son.

This council was called to deal with the heresy known as Arianism, which claimed that the Son was a supernatural being but not God.

First Constantinople defined the divinity of the Holy Spirit and wrote the part of the Creed that deals with the Spirit.

This council dealt with a heresy known as Macedonianism (because its advocates were from Macedonia), which denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. This heresy was also called Pneumatomachianism (from a Greek phrase meaning “fighting the Spirit”).

6. How can the Trinity be proved?

The Trinity can only be proved through the divine revelation that Jesus brought us. It cannot be proved by natural reason or from the Old Testament alone. The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “God has left some traces of his trinitarian being in creation and in the Old Testament but his inmost being as the Holy Trinity is a mystery which is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the incarnation of the Son of God and the sending of the Holy Spirit. This mystery was revealed by Jesus Christ and it is the source of all the other mysteries” (No. 45).

Although the vocabulary used to express the doctrine of the Trinity took time to develop, we can demonstrate the different aspects of the doctrine from Scripture.

7. How can we show from Scripture that there is only one God?

The fact that there is only one God was already made clear in the Old Testament. For example, the book of Isaiah proclaims: “You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Is 43:10).

It continues: “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Is 44:6).

8. How can we show that the Father is God?

The Father is proclaimed as God numerous times in the New Testament. For example, St. Paul declares: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3).

And: “There is ... one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-6).

9. How can we show that the Son is God?

This is proclaimed in a variety of places in the New Testament, including at the beginning of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (Jn 1:1, 14).

And later: “Then [Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (Jn 20:27-28).

10. How can we show that the Holy Spirit is God?

In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is portrayed as a divine Person who speaks and who can be lied to: “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’” (Acts 13:2).

And: “But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? ... You have not lied to men but to God’” (Acts 5:3-4).

11. How can we show that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct Persons?

The distinction of the persons can be shown, for example, in the fact that Jesus speaks to his Father. This would make no sense if they were one and the same person.

“At that time Jesus declared, ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will’” (Mt 11:25-26).

The fact that Jesus is not the same Person as the Holy Spirit is revealed when Jesus — who has been functioning as the Counselor (Greek, “Parakletos”) of the disciples — says he will pray to the Father and the Father will give them “another Counselor,” who is the Holy Spirit.

This shows the distinction of all three Persons: Jesus who prays; the Father who sends; and the Spirit who comes: “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you” (Jn 14:16-17).

12. How can we show that the Son is generated by the Father and that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son?

The fact that the Son is generated by the Father is indicated by the names of these Persons. Sons are generated by fathers. The second Person of the Trinity would not be a Son if he were not generated by the first Person as his Father.

The fact that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son is reflected in another statement of Jesus:

“But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me” (Jn 15:26).

This depicts the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son (“whom I shall send”). Here the outward operations of the Persons of the Trinity reflect their mutual relations with each other. It may also be said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.

For more on the procession of the Holy Spirit, click here.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, on June 7, 2020, and has been updated and adapted by EWTN News.

You needn’t look far to see increased energy and confidence in the Catholic church in Sydney and beyond.

An example this week is the record 140 adults who received the sacrament of confirmation at St Mary’s Cathedral.

The last few years have seen big numbers of Easter baptisms and receptions, full parish renewal and evangelisation events, huge engagement in public processions and pro-life rallies, rising seminary enrolments and interest, generally, in the Catholic faith.

The world-first Sistine Chapel: Revelations exhibition is drawing thousands of patrons to the cathedral forecourt, while planning is well underway for the hosting of the next International Eucharistic Congress (Eucharist28) in Sydney.

Such confidence is refreshing at a time when many still see the church as defensive or retreating from public life. Something bold is being attempted – the building of a highly visible missionary culture which encourages personal discipleship and good works.

The Sistine Chapel exhibition launched at an interesting cultural moment. In the same week, millions worldwide watched the Eurovision song contest finals, a vast spectacle of technical mastery, performance, emotion, and meaning.

Both point toward transcendence in a way, but sacred art has always occupied an important place within Christianity. It can awaken wonder, contemplation and conversion, and be itself a form of prayer.

Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP was right to encourage exhibition visitors to “let the painted stories reveal themselves to you anew.”

Beyond the impressive technological achievement it represents is real heart and prayerful effort. The exhibition presents an opportunity many people rarely allow themselves: a chance to pause, contemplate, and receive a moment of grace.

And so we go forward believing all of this is Holy Spirit-led, while keeping in mind that moments of growth require ongoing humble attentiveness.

The real test of this current renewal across Sydney and beyond is whether in 10 or 30 years’ time there is evidence of deeper friendship with Christ and holiness in the church. That kind of transformation is a gift received as the answer to our hope.

Magnifica Humanitas

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is about much more than simply artificial intelligence, but is rather a warning about all technological power which is detached from care for human dignity and the common good.

“Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations,” the pope writes.

“All too often, we place our hope in unlimited “upgrades,” in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people’s wounds. As a result, while some pursue the illusion of unlimited self-assertion, many are deprived of basic necessities.

“The church reminds us, with a firm yet humble voice, that true fulfilment is not achieved by eliminating weakness.”

Magnifica Humanitas opens with a striking image – a new Tower of Babel.

In Genesis, the failed construction at Babel represented humanity attempting unity and transcendence through technical mastery and self-sufficiency apart from God. Pope Leo suggests our current tech culture is in danger of repeating the same mistake, although he stresses that technology itself is not the problem.

“For centuries, the Christian tradition has maintained that human beings are not confined by the boundaries of their own nature; rather, they are called to self-transcendence, not through an escape from reality or a contempt for their limitations, but through their fulfillment in love,” he writes.

“Faith recognises an openness toward the ‘beyond,’ which originates as a gift from God. This transformation is a work of the Holy Spirit.”

In line with the church’s tradition, Pope Leo says the answer to our technological age won’t be found in rejecting progress, but in recovering the truth about every human person. The signs of renewal appearing across Sydney suggest many people are already searching for it.

The post Editorial: Transcendence and we beautiful, poor, humans appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

According to a recent news report, during a recent audience with employees of the Vatican Publishing House, Pope Leo XIV emphasised the enduring value of printed books in our digital age, saying, “reading nourishes the mind” and offers Christians a valuable opportunity to proclaim Christ. 

The Holy Father said books provide “an opportunity to think,” defending the physicality of printed books in an increasingly digital culture because, he said, “they remind readers of the importance of thought, reflection and study.” 

“Reading nourishes the mind, it helps to foster a conscious and well-informed critical sense, guarding us against fundamentalism and ideological shortcuts,” he said. 

To further Pope Leo’s endorsement of reading, and in particular reading from printed books, research suggests that comprehension is six to eight times better with physical books rather than digital reading. 

The physicality of using a book, requiring us to turn the pages, helps us absorb and recall content more effectively and creates an “index” in the brain which assists with mapping. 

From a personal perspective, I’d like to share what I look for when buying a Catholic paperback book. Firstly, having a range of spiritual reading means that on any given day, and whatever my circumstances, besides my beloved Bible reading, spiritual reading has been an enormous source of comfort and challenge for my spiritual growth. 

Secondly, as the Holy Father emphasised, printed books are “an opportunity to proclaim Christ.” 

Many times, when friends or people I meet along the way share personally with me, I’ve had the opportunity to gift them a book from my library which has been a source of support and catechesis for them. 

That brings me to my third point, which Pope Leo also highlighted, saying that reading “helps to foster a conscious and well-informed critical sense, guarding against fundamentalism and ideological shortcuts.” 

In a world where relativism and humanism largely control society’s worldview, let’s not pretend that we, as Catholics, are not at risk of being influenced. 

I have myself wrestled at different times over the years with various non-Christian ideologies offered by Catholic peers and, even more surprisingly, colleagues in work and church circles, which have left me feeling confused. 

But I have always been blessed to be able to access reliable quality Catholic resources and literature to help me find more solid ground. 

In a world where, even as Catholics, we are at risk of being influenced by unhelpful or even spiritually and psychologically damaging ideologies, I am grateful to find a place where I can trust that the Catholic literature I am accessing is grounded in sound doctrine and will feed my spirit and soul toward full spiritual health. 

Sydney Archdiocese’s Mustard Seed Bookshop is committed to ensuring that the books it stocks are a source of healthy and sound Catholic doctrine, providing a safety net for those of us who need assistance when choosing reliable theological and philosophical literature. 

I am so grateful to have access to such a place where I don’t only have to rely on my own ability to discern whether the book I’ve chosen is sound Catholic literature, as the bookshop is already committed to this. 

Please don’t hesitate to drop in to St Martha’s, situated at 38 Renwick St, Leichhardt. The shop is located within the building itself. 

We’re a friendly bunch and would love to assist you if needed, or you could simply come for a browse. Otherwise, have a look at our resources online at mustardseed.org.au or phone us on 02 9307 8350. 

The post Why is Pope Leo XIV urging Catholics to read more books? appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

To close the Marian month, Pope Leo XIV prays a Rosary for peace at the Grotto of Lourdes in the Vatican Gardens, urging everyone to make the daily commitment to achieve peace, which is “possible when we choose to listen to the cry of those deprived of it.”

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The U.S. bishops are reiterating their calls for immigrants in the U.S. to be treated with dignity as the Trump administration launches a campaign that likens immigrants living in the country illegally to extraterrestrials.

The White House on May 28 launched a government website “Aliens.gov,” a retro sci-fi-styled site that claims the government has “kept a closely guarded secret” about “aliens” and an “invasion” for decades.

The site mimics sci‑fi aesthetics, with a bold, geometric sans‑serif typeface in neon green and black, like 1950s movie posters used to advertise Cold‑War‑era sci‑fi films featuring monstrous extraterrestrials.

“Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods, and interacting with us in our daily lives,” the site claims, alleging that “aliens” have “shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes as our children, and lived seemingly normal human existences.”

Promoting an “alien arrest map” of immigrant detentions around the country, the site states bluntly that people without legal status “do not belong here.”

The website urges visitors to “report suspicious aliens” to an “ICE tip line.”

In U.S. law, the word alien is a formal legal classification meaning a person who is not a U.S. citizen or national, a definition that appears in the Immigration and Nationality Act and is used in statutes, regulations, and court decisions.

Dignity, national security ‘not in conflict,’ bishops says

Immigrants have long been portrayed through metaphors in U.S. culture, from 19th‑century political cartoons that depicted Irish, Italian, and Chinese newcomers as monsters or subhuman creatures to modern rhetoric framing migrant groups as “invaders,” “infestations,” or something other than fully human.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) lamented “the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants” in a special message in November 2025.

In February, the bishops condemned a plan from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase the capacity of migrant detention centers around the U.S. The government earlier this year indicated it would spend about $38 billion to bolster detention space.

Victoria, Texas Bishop Brendan Cahill, chair of the bishops' immigration committee, called the plans “deeply troubling” at the time.

“The thought of holding thousands of families in massive warehouses should challenge the conscience of every American," the bishop said.

Asked about the governmentʼs new “aliens” campaign on May 29, USCCB spokeswoman Chieko Noguchi told EWTN News that the bishops have “continuously condemned vilification of immigrants and dehumanizing rhetoric and consistently advocated for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures.”

“They’ve also repeatedly asserted that human dignity and national security are not in conflict,” she said, pointing to the bishops' special message.

The bishops at that time said they “oppose[d] the indiscriminate mass deportation of people,” with the prelates praying “for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”

The bishops in February urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the U.S. constitutional policy of “birthright citizenship” wherein any individual born on U.S. soil is counted as an American citizen.

The dispute before the court was launched after Trump in January 2025 signed an order directing that children born to parents in the country illegally were not entitled to U.S. citizenship.

Pope Leo XIV — the first pope in history from the United States — has also weighed in, affirming in November 2025 that while nations have “a right to determine who and how and when people enter,” countries “have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.”

“When people are living good lives — and many of them (in the United States) for 10, 15, 20 years — to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least,” is not acceptable, the pope said on Nov. 18, 2025.

Regarding the bishops' Nov. 12, 2025 message on immigration, the pope remarked: “I appreciate very much what the bishops have said. I think it’s a very important statement. I would invite, especially all Catholics, but people of goodwill to listen carefully to what they said."

In a statement to EWTN News, meanwhile, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on May 29 argued that news reports “too often” ignore “the victims [of illegal immigration] and their stories.”

"These victims and their families are why we work around the clock to arrest and deport illegal aliens from our communities," the department said, describing crimes committed by undocumented immigrants as "completely preventable.”

“What makes someone a target of ICE is if they are in the U.S. illegally,” the statement continued, arguing that “nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or have pending charges.”

ICE data shows most people arrested and booked into ICE custody do not have criminal convictions, and some analyses show the 70% figure comes from redefining “criminal” to include pending charges, foreign allegations untested in a U.S. court, and people who have never been found guilty of a crime.

Roughly 25–30% of people arrested by ICE have a prior conviction, according to analyses of ICE arrest and detention data, including work by the Cato Institute and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse based on ICE data.

As international cooperation faces growing strain, the World Bank's Vice President for Development Finance, Aki Nishio, warns that development progress is becoming increasingly uneven, with some of the world's poorest countries left behind by the combined impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, declining aid, conflict and climate change.

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Pope Leo welcomes the Villa Nzareth community to the Vatican and encourages its members to persevere in offering intellectual, moral, and financial support to young people who “need light and guidance, especially in order to achieve unity between mind and spirit, between faith, study, profession, and life.”

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Pope Leo XIV on May 30 emphasized to Catholic lay leaders that, in a world increasingly divided by war and polarization, shared humanity can help unify it.

During a private audience at the Vatican with the members of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, Leo in his remarks referenced his recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, explaining that current challenges prompt fundamental questions about life.

"Indeed, it is precisely when faced with adverse circumstances that the human person is called to reconsider the fundamental questions that have gently prodded the heart of countless generations to more serious reflection: 'Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?'" Leo said.

These questions, the pope said, clearly indicate humanityʼs common pursuit of truth.

“Such questions are a clear manifestation of humanity’s search for truth, and give rise to a desire for something more, a thirst for God and lasting meaning,” Leo said in his remarks.

“They also bear witness to the essential aspects of our humanity: the God-given gifts of reason and freedom by which we may come to know the truth and adhere to what is good.”

Also referencing his predecessor, St. John Paul II, who founded the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation in 1993 to promote Catholic social teaching, Leo explained that while the modern concept of freedom “is often understood as the capacity to do what one wants,” true freedom is lived “as a “gift of self and openness to others.”

He also referred to Saint Augustine in his address, using Augustineʼs concept of the two cities.

“The City of Man, built on pride and love of oneself, is marked by selfish individualism,” Leo said. “The City of God, built on love of God unto selflessness, and the cultivation of relationships, is what makes it truly possible to build a civilization of love.”

He also reminded those present not to despair at the current state of the world, but engage in “small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization”.

Catholic Charities Boston has seen a surge in the numbers of families who need food pantry assistance, offering nearly 3 million pounds of food over the past year. 

Over the past three months, Catholic Charities Boston has “seen over 2,000 new households register who have never come to our food pantries before,” said Jonathan Tetrault, the vice president of economic empowerment at Catholic Charities Boston.

Tetrault told “EWTN News Nightly” on May 29 that these families “are seeking help with food assistance because of the many pressures that are … colliding to put pressure on their family budgets.”

“So theyʼre reaching out to us for help,” he said.

The organization operates "four food pantries across the cities of Brockton, Dorchester, Lowell, and Lynn. This past year, weʼve served nearly 70,000 people through these four food pantries – almost 3 million pounds of food through these four locations,” Tetrault said.

“We offer fresh fruits and veggies, frozen lean proteins, shelf-stable dry goods,” he said.

“[W]hat weʼre hearing from [families] when theyʼre coming in to get these critical groceries is that itʼs ... a number of factors" that are causing the need, he said.

Following federal cuts to programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Catholic Charities is experiencing an “elevated need in our communities, and weʼre seeing fewer dollars to meet that need with,” he said.

“For some folks, the SNAP work requirements are going into effect. Most of our other clients are being impacted by the high cost of gas” and “utility prices soaring,” he said.

“This is all coming together to strain their family budgets over the past several months,” he said.

“It is becoming harder to stand in the gap, but that is our commitment [to] those families, those individuals who are coming to us for support. And so weʼre figuring out ways to do that,” he said.

The organization is adapting to meet the urgent needs and acquire the necessary food, he said.

“Most recently, we had to double the credit limit on our fuel cards" to ensure delivery trucks and vans could continue to get fueled up, he said.

Call for community involvement

As Catholic Charities Boston’s food pantries operate with small numbers of staff members, they rely on volunteers and are calling for community support.

“We recognize that it takes each one of us to meet the needs of our neighbors in our communities. So we would love for … our community to support us with their time, their talent, their treasure,” Tetrault said.

To help, Tetrault called on the community to “find out where your local food pantry is” and “show up to volunteer.”

“You can bring donations of dry goods there as well. And then supporting us financially ... is critical because oftentimes weʼre able to purchase food at a better scale, better price points, when we pull those funds together," he said.

The “food pantries operate with two staff each,” he said. “So we rely heavily on our volunteer support” which is “critical for us to be able to serve the hundreds and hundreds of families that we see each and every day throughout the week.”

Florida judge rules against Planned Parenthood in false advertisement case

A circuit court judge in Florida said the state can continue legal action against Planned Parenthood over the abortion giantʼs claims that the abortion pill is safer than Tylenol.

In a May 27 ruling, First Circuit Court Judge J. Scott Duncan of Santa Rosa County struck down Planned Parenthood’s attempt to dismiss a Florida lawsuit that accused the company of false advertising.

In November 2025, state Attorney General James Uthmeier sued Planned Parenthood for $350 million, alleging that the abortion provider spread information that was deceptive and misleading by claiming abortion drugs are safer than Tylenol, Viagra, and penicillin.

Planned Parenthood then asked for the suit to be dismissed, but the judge refused, allowing the legal action to continue.

Colorado governor signs bill requiring college health centers to provide abortion pills

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill requiring college student health centers to provide chemical abortion pills on-site.

The law includes exemptions, however. Colleges are exempt from providing abortion pills “if doing so would jeopardize an institutionʼs federal grant participation, require the institution to deviate from generally accepted billing practices, [or] modify the generally accepted standards of medical practice."

Colleges are also allowed to opt out of the mandate if the rule would “conflict with the institutionʼs sincerely held religious beliefs or practices.”

Babies lost to abortion at a record high in Scotland

Scotland saw a record high in the number of babies lost to abortion in 2025, with recent statistics showing that 18,783 babies died from abortion last year.

The count is the highest on record, according to statistics released May 26 by Public Health Scotland.

Scotland currently protects unborn children after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Report details Planned Parenthood transgender ideology and services

A recent report by the organization Biological Integrity, a project of the American College of Pediatricians, details Planned Parenthood’s transgender, or “sex-rejecting,” procedures.

The report notes that Planned Parenthood provides free chest binders for minors and distributes hormones to patients as young as 16 years old.

According to the report, Planned Parenthood provides birth control to halt periods of minor girls without parental consent as a “loophole.”

Planned Parenthood is a “primary distributor” of sexual education, spending more than $70 million on training participants in fiscal year 2025 and providing resources about transgenderism for children as young as three years old.

The report highlights malpractice lawsuits filed against Planned Parenthood by people who detransition after receiving hormones and surgery.

Spanish missionary priest Father Julio Alonso Ampuero dedicates every weekend to evangelizing in the Diocese of Lurín in South Lima, Peru.

He gives retreats, hears confessions, and provides biblical formation and pastoral care to vulnerable individuals, a ministry through which he says he frequently witnesses “many miracles” in the form of conversions and renewed closeness to the faith.

“The truth is that it’s a blessing, because practically every weekend there are groups attending the retreat,” the priest said in an interview with ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, referring to Holy Family Retreat House in Lurín, the place from which he carries out a large part of his missionary work.

“One certainly sees the fruits," he said. "One sees the good it does for people." He told ACI Prensa that priests like him "are privileged” because people open their consciences to them, and consequently, "one sees miracles constantly.”

Ampuero explained that the most requested retreats are those focused on inner healing and those designed for couples, which are open to engaged couples and those living together, with the aim of drawing them closer to the sacrament of matrimony.

“We have also been emphasizing silent retreats, because we see that there is a need to turn inward, a need to put down roots, and a need to strengthen that relationship with the Lord,” he added.

A mission accessible to the poorest

Ampuero highlighted that one of the aims of the retreat house is to enable people of limited financial means to participate.

“If there are people who can’t pay, or who can only pay a portion, we welcome them just the same. Divine Providence has always looked after us, and we have never gone without,” he explained.

For the priest, the impact of these encounters with God is evident. “One need only look at the joy with which people leave at the end of a retreat; the difference in their faces between the day they arrive and the day they depart,” he remarked.

“People come back again. They say, ‘It has done me so much good that I want to do it again.’ So, that is certainly very motivating,” he added.

‘I’ve found great openness to the Gospel here’

Ampuero arrived in Peru in 2011, following years of pastoral service and academic formation in Spain and Italy.

A specialist in Sacred Scripture, he pursued studies in Rome and Jerusalem at the behest of his superiors. He served as a professor of “Introduction to Sacred Scripture and the Epistles of St. Paul” at the San Ildefonso Institute of Higher Theological Studies in Toledo, in addition to serving as a formator at the seminary for several years.

He subsequently channeled this experience toward evangelization and the formation of Godʼs people.

“I didn’t view myself as a biblical researcher, but rather as someone tasked with disseminating, with making known, all that richness,” he explained.

He currently has nearly 30 publications on biblical and spiritual formation to his name.

The presence of priests from Toledo in South Lima dates back several decades to when they first began working in Villa El Salvador, a district still marked by poverty.

Ampuero said that one of the experiences that has impacted him most since his arrival in Peru has been the peopleʼs receptiveness to the Catholic faith.

“In Spain, there has been very strong secularization over the last few decades. My experience upon arriving here is that, generally speaking, that was not the case. I have encountered a great openness to the Gospel, a great openness to the tenets of the faith,” he said.

He also said the people are close to their priests and place a high value on the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

“One can sometimes spend hours hearing confessions, and people seek out the priest; sometimes simply to unburden themselves, to share their problems, and to find a little consolation and hope,” he recounted.

Evangelizing among the most vulnerable

In addition to leading spiritual retreats, Ampuero ministers at the Sowing Hope shelter, which houses 150 men — including the elderly, individuals with mental illnesses, and people rescued from the streets, many of whom are former drug addicts.

“These individuals, who have often lost everything, can come to know the greatest thing of all: the love of God,” he said.

The priest particularly highlighted the transformative power of faith in people struggling with addiction. “We know that in cases of addiction, it’s faith in Christ, the encounter with Christ, that can most radically set you free,” he affirmed.

“That encounter with Christ is what liberates you and heals all wounds.”

‘Prayer is my daily strength’

The priest said that the key to sustaining such an intense apostolate lies in prayer.

“For me, prayer is my daily strength, and I would not give it up for anything. It’s what gives you oxygen; it’s what strengthens you; it’s what enables you to bear the burdens of your brothers and sisters as well,” he explained.

Finally, he shared a message to young people who may be experiencing stirrings to enter the religious or consecrated life.

“Don’t be afraid. When God calls us to something, he will always provide the means to carry it out,” he affirmed.

“God takes nothing away; rather, he gives everything,” he said, recalling a saying of the late Pope Benedict XVI.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Outside the packed school chapel, Benedictine College students continued to gather, kneeling on the ground to pray for Alex Lynch.

On the night of May 8, the news had spread across the campus that Lynch, a Benedictine student suffering from cancer, had died.

A college senior, Lynch had just had his graduation ceremony. He didn’t walk the stage, however; instead, the college president went to him.

On May 7, Benedictine College President Stephen Minnis traveled from the school in Atchison, Kansas, to Lynch’s family home in Indianola, Iowa, along with 30 Benedictine students for Lynch’s personal baccalaureate Mass and graduation ceremony.

“Graduation is a powerful moment for these students,” Minnis told EWTN News. “They have worked so hard for it, including their whole primary and secondary education.”

“I want to make that moment special for every student,” he said. “It’s a moment that is powerful for me too — I pray a Hail Mary for every student by name when they come and when they graduate, but I have prayed especially for Alex.”

“It just took an extra step in his case, but I didn’t want to miss his big moment,” Minnis said.

Father Ryan Richardson, Benedictine Collegeʼs chaplain, told EWTN News he spoke “directly to Alex” in his homily, detailing how Lynch lived out the fruits of the Holy Spirit while at school.

“He radiated the Holy Spirit and the love of Christ,” Richardson said. “Alex often said that his desire was that others see Christ in him. He definitely accomplished that.”

Finnegan Ritchie, a close friend of Lynch’s, was among the 30 students who attended the ceremony.

“We were both worried that it was going to be unreasonably long,” Ritchie said in an interview with EWTN News. “Entertaining people is exhausting. But Alex was able to sit and stand at will; he had a lot of grit.”

“After the ceremony, he had a little graduation party and greeted his family and friends,” Ritchie said. “It was wonderful to see how everyone came together to bring food, drinks, and tables for the occasion. People were catching up with each other and treating it like any other grad party.”

Ritchie said goodbye to Lynch in the evening, “around 5:30 p.m.”

“It was very difficult to leave him,” Ritchie said.

On May 8, less than a day after his home graduation ceremony, Lynch died. It was late in the evening on a Friday night. Off-campus parties stopped. Students gathered in the chapel, again, this time to pray for a friend who had passed away.

“Students left parties and gathered spontaneously in our adoration chapel,” Minnis said. “It was filled until late that night. It was an overwhelming response.”

The following day, Benedictine held a Mass on campus in his memory.

Students traveled from all over the country for Lynch’s funeral at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianola, Iowa, on May 14, nearly filling the pews in the church.

“He made such an impact,” Minnis said. “The way he lived and the way he died will change these students for years.”

Yellow pins and applause

On Saturday, May 16, just over a week after Lynch died, Benedictine’s official graduation took place. The crowd was peppered with students wearing yellow pins, which they wore, Richardson said, “to remember Alex.”

While at Benedictine, Lynch was a resident adviser (RA) on campus. He played intramural sports, was active with FOCUS, and sang in the choir at Mass.

“The best way I can describe Alex is that he was faith-filled,” Richardson said. “Faith in Christ was the foundation of his life and his faith in Christ spilled over into all his relationships."

“[Lynch] had a friendship with the Holy Spirit that was alive and active,” the chaplain continued.

“He loved people sincerely and intensely,” he said. “Even in the midst of his illness he would often look me in the eye and intentionally ask how I was doing and how he could pray for me.”

“We have grieved as a community,” Richardson said.

“Since Alex’s passing, though, I think many of us have transitioned from sadness to peace,” he continued. “In his death Alex showed us what it means to truly live and what it means to live the faith to the end.”

Lynchʼs friend Jack Figge, a recent Benedictine graduate and a Catholic journalist, wrote a tribute to Lynch in Benedictineʼs school publication.

“I spent three days with Alex at the beginning of the week he passed away. It’s a series of days I will never forget because Alex lived out what it meant to be a suffering servant,” Figge told EWTN News.

“He never complained about the pain he was in; he was so generous with his time making sure that everybody who wanted to see him could,” Figge recalled. “Whenever you walked in, the first question he asked was ‘How are you?’”

“Even in the midst of being close to death, he remained joyful, laughing, and cracking jokes,” Figge continued. “On the day of his graduation, so many people wanted to say goodbye and he was clearly tired. But he sat and talked with everybody for hours, making sure he had a moment with everybody.”

In the last week of his life, Lynch visited his parish to pray a Holy Hour.

He died reciting his baptismal promises — promises made by Catholics at baptism and renewed at the Easter Vigil.

Benedictine students and faculty remembered Lynch at the schoolʼs graduation ceremony, where Lynch’s parents walked the stage in his place.

“It was truly fitting to have Alex’s family with us at graduation,” Richardson said. “The resounding applause they received was a tribute to the impact that Alex had on each of us and the legacy he has left at Benedictine College.”

Shaved heads and a walk down the aisle

When Lynch discovered he would lose his hair from chemotherapy, 30 of his friends at Benedictine shaved their heads, Ritchie recalled.

“We did it to be funny, but we also wanted to present ourselves as Alexʼs friends,” Ritchie said. “He and I, along with many others, had spiritual conversations often — we wanted to do college well. We wanted to know what our purpose in life was and how to go about getting it.”

“At the end of the day, we wanted to be virtuous; it was the way to a happier life on earth and an even more perfect one in the next life,” Ritchie said.

“Alex sought to see God in everyone he met in order to love them well. We rarely talked about his disease; I figured he wanted to let go of it while he was with people,” he said.

“He loved the quiet; he enjoyed eating breakfast at the door to St. Joseph Hall and seeing people he loved walk by,” Ritchie continued. “I was always struck by his take on things, since death was a real threat for him; it put my life in perspective. He taught me that I have a lot to be grateful for, and that it is best to take action now than wait until later.”

In one of their last conversations, Lynch told his friend he had learned from him as well. “Iʼm honored to have been taught by him,“ Ritchie said. ”Iʼm even more honored to have taught him something. I think we just wanted to seek God together.”

Earlier this year, Lynch walked down the aisle as a groomsman at the wedding of one of his best friends, Ben Shonka, who recently served as a pallbearer at Lynchʼs funeral.

“Alex was a goofy man; he loved his faith and loved to have fun,” Shonka, also a Benedictine graduate, told EWTN News. “He made every moment count whether he was with friends or whoever.”

“He was one of the groomsmen in my wedding because he was one of the best men in my life,” Shonka said. “He really showed me what masculinity could look like at our age.”

“He was so intentional in everything he did,” Shonka recalled. “He knew everyone’s name and would always greet them accordingly. He would always be down to talk whenever. He lived a life of prayer, often going to Mass and adoration.”

After Lynch’s death, Shonka’s wife observed that Lynch had walked down the aisle as a groomsman at their wedding and now her husband had carried Lynch “down the aisle as a pallbearer to his final resting place.”

The college president noted the impact Lynch had on both students and himself.

“I think the students saw him as a representative of the best of what they are and a model to aspire to,” Minnis said. “I see him that way, too.”

As the 2025-2026 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) term came to a close, Commissioner Stephen Schneck detailed the declining religious freedom abroad and the severe violations against people of faith.

“The problems not only are very, very present, but worsening,” Schneck told EWTN News. “I think the situation for religious freedom in the world today is worse than it was when I came on the commission, and certainly worse than it was a decade ago.”

In its 2026 report, the commission recommended 18 countries to be labeled as "countries of particular concern" (CPCs) — "the label that we give to the governments in the world who are the worst abusers of religious freedom,” Schneck said.

The list includes 12 countries the U.S. Department of State designated as CPCs in December 2023, including Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

It also includes Nigeria, which President Donald Trump designated in 2025, and five additional recommendations: Afghanistan, India, Libya, Syria, and Vietnam.

India “is among the worst countries in the global community in regards to religious freedom from the analysis that has been done by the commission over the last decade or so,” Schneck said.

“Since 2020, maybe 2019, the commission has been calling on the United States government to designate India as a CPC."

The religious freedom status in India is “particularly tragic” because it “is a country that is famous for its democratic traditions and … where many religions have actually emerged historically,” he said.

“The principal driver” of the current problems “is a really powerful religious nationalism,” he said. “Particularly itʼs Hindu nationalism that is being promoted largely for political reasons by the political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of the current prime minister, Narendra Modi.”

“Since the separation from Great Britain and its independence after the Second World War, there have been a number of episodes of communal violence,” he said. 

There is “mob violence against minority religious believers increasingly being allowed, and frankly sometimes being promoted, or at least given legal impunity, under the governmentʼs control by the BJP.”

“The State Department never really explains fully … why they decline to go along with our designation,“ Schneck said. It could be due to “geopolitical reasons of international politics and U.S. foreign policy.”

“India is a particularly important country, for a variety of reasons,” including being “an important country set against China in the geopolitical politics of our day, and itʼs an important country for trade purposes for the United States.”

“Unfortunately, now through several administrations ... we have not seen the United States governments actually support our commissionʼs recommended designation.”

The commission also continues to recommend China as a CPC, which the State Department has listened to. It has continued to list China since it was first categorized a CPC in 1999.

Despite its designation, Schneck noted that the commission is “very concerned about the situation in China.”

As Trump recently traveled to China and discussed political prisoners with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Schneck noted the commission has “called for Jimmy Laiʼs release and [has] made not only his case, but the case of millions of others within China.”

The situation “gets worse and worse” and “itʼs not just limited to individuals,” Schneck said. “Weʼre talking about whole populations here — the Uyghur Muslims, the Tibetan Buddhists, Christians.”

“Even our own Catholic Church is under the watchful eye of China … The repression of religion by China is a real deal and something that we should all be concerned about,” he said.

Catholics should be ‘on the front lines’ of defending religious freedom

May marked the end of seven commissioners' terms, including Schneckʼs. He said: “Iʼm very concerned about leaving this work at this particular moment … that I see religious freedom really under a great deal of stress around the world.”

Schneck was appointed to the commission in June 2022 by President Joe Biden. He was later reappointed to the commission and served as its chair for the 2024-2025 term.

Schneck joined the commission after having worked as a political philosopher, a professor, department chair, and dean at The Catholic University of America for more than 30 years. There, he founded and directed the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.

Schneck served as a national co-chair of Catholics for Biden, part of Biden’s presidential campaign. The group worked to rally Catholics to vote for Biden, despite the then-nominee’s support for legislation and policies that did not align with Church teaching. Prior to that, Schneck was appointed by President Obama to the White House Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Prior to that, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the White House Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Schneck was also the executive director of Franciscan Action Network, a national organization promoting environmental, economic, and social justice for the Franciscan communities of the United States.

Following his multiple positions, Schneck said serving on USCIRF was the “capstone” of his career.

The work “is so meaningful,” he said. “But sometimes itʼs incredibly hard. You talk to people whose relatives have been killed. You talk to people … who have just come out of prison. You go to refugee camps and you see how refugees are living in absolutely dire situations.”

“So, emotionally it can be tremendously hard,” he said. “But at the same time…you really do feel that bearing witness to what has happened to these people is important work and makes a difference.”

“It was a privilege … to be a representative of my own faith on the commission,” Schneck said. “I do feel that my own faith really was strengthened as a result of my participation on the commission."

“The famous document from the end of Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae, really laid down for our Church what religious freedom should be about, how we as Catholics should be on the front lines in trying to defend religious freedom around the world.”

“I feel like I was called in a way by that teaching of our Church to do this work. I mean, truly, even though itʼs only four years, it did feel like a vocation,” he said.

While Schneck is no longer a USCIRF commissioner, he said he plans to continue his advocacy work through other organizations.

Schneck serves on the governing board of Catholic Climate Covenant, a U.S. organization that advocates for care for creation and climate action. He also is on the board of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, an organization working to end the death penalty.

“Both of these two organizations … spun out of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,” he said. 

“Iʼm pleased to continue my work for the Church with both of these fine organizations, by working on behalf of care for creation ... and working on the Churchʼs pro-life mission in working against the death penalty here in the United States,” he said.

Meeting with members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal for the first time since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV reflects on the movement's spiritual foundations and encourages its members to place their gifts at the service of the whole Church.

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Professor Léocadie Wabo Lushombo, a Congolese theologian based at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, United States, has emphasised that the civilization of love highlighted by Pope Leo XIV in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanita, invites active participation and discussion grounded in love, with the goal of reducing inequalities in society.

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Meeting with the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, Pope Leo XIV highlights the importance of the Church’s Social Doctrine in a divided world, saying freedom must be lived as self-giving and dialogue grounded in truth.

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Pope Leo XIV tells participants in a Vatican conference on mental health, education, and digital technology that young people need help rediscovering silence, relationships, and openness to transcendence.

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As the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Fr. Marion Nguyen, OSB, offers his thoughts on the day’s liturgical readings under the theme: “The Light we resist, the Love we seek”.

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The Washington Nationals have fired a spokesman after video surfaced in which he appeared to admit that the team discriminates against one of its outspoken Catholic pitchers.

EWTN News confirmed on May 29 that the Nationals had dismissed its former community relations director Sean Hudson amid media coverage and criticism from religious groups over the video.

Hudson was at the center of controversy earlier in the week when footage posted to X by “guerrilla journalist” James OʼKeefe apparently showed him claiming that the baseball team “[doesnʼt] use” Williams in certain team activities due to his having criticized an LGBT group that mocks Catholic religious imagery.

Williams had spoken out in 2023 against the Los Angeles Dodgers' decision to honor the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” with a “Community Hero Award.” Members of the group of drag performers dress up in attire resembling Catholic nuns and engage in sexualized performances.

The group also uses imagery of Jesus and the Blessed Mother in its performances. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has referred to the displays as "blasphemy."

A source confirmed to EWTN News that Hudson had been dismissed following the video controversy. An email to Hudsonʼs Nationals address earlier in the day had been returned with the notification that the address was “no longer a system account,” while Hudsonʼs LinkedIn account had been taken down at some point prior to May 29.

Prior to a May 29 game against the San Diego Padres, team business president Jason Sinnarajah said in an interview on the Nationals broadcast channel that the team is “not anti-Catholic” and does “not hide players from social media.”

“We were horrified by the comments that were made on the video,“ he said. ”The comments don’t reflect us as an organization, our values and who we are. We took action right away, and that individual is no longer employed by the team.”

The recent OʼKeefe video, posted to X on May 26, features a man identified as Hudson describing Williams as a “super Catholic” and referencing his criticism of the drag group.

“Because of that, [the team doesnʼt] use him on social [media],” Hudson claims in the video.

Williams told “EWTN News in Depth” in 2023 that his criticism of the Dodgers “had to be said.”

“We cannot stand idly by while Our Lord gets mocked," he said at the time.

The port of Arguineguín with its pier located on the southern end of the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, where Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to visit on June 11, is at first glance just another port in a fishing town. But itʼs a seemingly nondescript place that in 2020 became the setting for one of the most dramatic episodes of Europe’s migration crisis.

A port transformed into a symbol

For four months, more than 2,600 people — six times the capacity of the pier, which spans a mere 656 ft. — remained crowded together there in inhumane conditions. There were as many people jammed together on the concrete as there were inhabitants in the town that hosted them.

“It was already a very turbulent time, on many levels. Locally, we were right in the middle of the [Covid 19] pandemic, and due to a lack of resources, the food bank had just closed,” recalled Father Adrián Sosa Nuez, who arrived in September 2020 at Our Lady of Sorrows and St. Agatha Parish. Located just a few feet from the port, the parish was where he began to witness the mass arrival of hundreds of “cayucos” — the narrow flat bottom boats that migrants use.

That year, 23,000 migrants and refugees arrived in the Canary Islands, mostly hailing from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. Fleeing poverty, war, and drought in search of hope, the desperate people of the worldʼs poorest continent cast off into the Atlantic for an extremely perilous voyage.

The island of Gran Canaria lies approximately 95 miles off the northwest coast of Morocco, a distance that in the unseaworthy, open-topped wooden vessels the migrants use, can stretch into voyages lasting up to a week.

The collapse nobody knew how to handle

Although the 2020 figure is lower than the historic record of 46,843 arrivals recorded in 2024, the surge six years ago caught institutions off guard. There were no adequate facilities to receive them, no beds, and no defined strategy to address a situation that, though foreseeable, spiraled into a humanitarian crisis.

“The impact came as a shock to us not only as a parish, but as the Canarian people. We were unaccustomed to witnessing scenes of this kind, and it caught all the authorities off guard. No one knew how to handle it,” Sosa told ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.

He is currently a judge on a diocesan tribunal, a professor of canon law, and the parochial vicar in the Siete Palmas neighborhood of Las Palmas, where the pope will celebrate Mass in Gran Canaria Stadium.

Trying to survive in overcrowded conditions

The migrants themselves improvised makeshift shelters using tarps and cardboard. The pier became a place where people slept, ate, and prayed. In real terms, each person had little more than one square yard of space.

Arguineguín thus came to symbolize a triple failure: that of the migrant reception system, that of respect for human rights, and, ultimately, that of human dignity. Added to this were restrictions imposed because of the pandemic.

“We were unable to be at the pier due to Covid protocols, so we could only provide help at a later stage,” explained the priest. Around twenty hotels on the island then opened their doors to accommodate the migrants. “That was when we began to put a human face to their suffering and to accompany them,” he said.

The response of the Church and society

Volunteers from the parish and from Caritas mobilized to offer Spanish classes. Some even welcomed migrants into their own homes. Sosa himself gave shelter to a young man in the rectory after the young man was left out of the reception system.

“Pope Francis had recently published Fratelli Tutti, and it was truly providential. It helped us greatly in raising awareness across all social strata that, as Christians, not everything is negotiable and that we had a duty to help these people,” he explained.

The crisis also fostered collaboration among various ecclesial organizations. Among others, Sosa received calls from Father Ángel, founder and president of the NGO Messengers of Peace, inquiring about their needs, as well as from the evangelical church Misión Moderna.

“Despite the difficulties, it was a time of great joy, a time of feeling in communion with the entire Church,” he recalled.

Along the edges of the pier in those days, family members also gathered in search of news regarding their loved ones. They arrived bearing photographs, asking survivors if they had seen them. “Many arrived traumatized. If someone fell ill during the crossing, in many cases they were thrown into the sea,” Sosa recounted.

In the words of the priest, it was “a major traumatic experience." Since 2020, more than 19,000 people have died attempting to reach the Canary Islands, victims of the cold, the currents, and a journey spanning hundreds of miles, depending on the point of departure.

In 2025 alone, of the more than 3,000 people who perished on maritime routes, 1,906 lost their lives on the Atlantic route to Europe as documented in the 2025 Monitoring the Right to Life report by the NGO Caminando Fronteras (Walking the Borders).

Pope coming to the ‘pier of shame’

Six years later, the pope will visit this site, now known as the “pier of shame.” Nearly 2,000 people will await him there, the very place where many first set foot in European territory under extreme conditions. Moreover, this visit fulfills a wish that his predecessor, Pope Francis, was unable to realize.

“Many of those who will be with the pope have experienced the grueling Atlantic route. A great many have left friends or acquaintances behind at the bottom of the sea,” explained Caya Suárez, a social worker, secretary general of Caritas in the Diocese of the Canary Islands, and coordinator of the event.

One of the most moving moments will be the casting of a floral wreath into the sea in memory of the victims, echoing the gesture performed by Pope Francis in the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. Alongside Pope Leo, a human chain will be formed by people who “wish to remember those they have seen die.”

The pope will listen to the testimonies of four migrants, who will recount not only the hardships of their journey and the stigmatization they endured, but also how Caritas and other ecclesial organizations have become a new family to them.

In Las Palmas province alone, Caritas has assisted more than 22,000 migrants of African and Latin American origin since 2020. Since 2024, the Caritas Española confederated network has launched 47 diocesan projects dedicated to welcoming and supporting undocumented individuals.

“Caritas steps in when people, regrettably, find themselves outside the system, when government assistance fails to reach them,” Suárez explained.

A cross made from cayuco wood

Another significant moment will be the blessing of an image of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, the patroness of sailors. A small altar dedicated to her image, which is deeply rooted in local fishing traditions, is kept on the pier. On numerous occasions, sailors have been the first to go out to rescue incoming vessels.

Alongside this altar will be a cross crafted from the wood of a migrant boat, a cross that has already become a symbol of the local Church. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the pope will bless both the cross and the image of the Virgin, which will remain on the pier.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Over the past century, the church has gone through periods of decline and confusion.

Throughout the church’s history in such times, movements have sprung up claiming to renew her life and mission.  

In the 12th century, the Cathars and the Waldensians arose in response to corruption in the church, yet it was St Francis of Assisi and St Dominic who became genuine instruments of renewal. 

Their orders endured because authentic charisms come from God. A merely human project may succeed for a time, but it cannot sustain true spiritual life.  

A charism given by God may lose visible expression, but it does not die.  

In our own time, as many once-strong religious orders have weakened, new self-proclaimed founders, foundresses, and reformers have again appeared.  

The church has a duty to test their claims and discern whether their origins are human or divine. 

Most people associate canon law with marriage annulments, church property, and questions of governance.  

Less visible, however, is its role in discerning new groups that claim a supernatural origin.  

Because young men and women may entrust their lives to such groups, those claims must be examined carefully and according to the strict criteria of canon law.  

Canon law provides a necessary framework for protecting the faithful from deception.  

In its updated Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena of 17 May 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith warned that believers can be misled by events presented as divine initiatives when they are in fact the result of imagination, novelty-seeking, fabrication, or deceit.  

Although the document was updated in response to the need to assess the authenticity of alleged apparitions, the same concern applies when individuals claim divine inspiration for a work of renewal or reform. 

As the document states, “God is always present in human history and never stops bestowing his gifts of grace upon us through the workings of the Holy Spirit, daily renewing our faith in Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.  

“It is the responsibility of the pastors of the Church to keep their faithful always attentive to this loving presence of the Most Holy Trinity in our midst, as it is also their duty to protect the faithful from all deception” (ibid.). 

Public attention often focuses on the more dramatic abuses found in groups that claim inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Yet quieter forms of suffering can also exist in groups whose origin is merely human.  

To hand over one’s life to another person’s private whims, however inadvertently, is a grave mistake. Living under a vow of obedience to something that is not truly of God can expose a person to deep psychological and spiritual harm. 

A Vatican decree issued in June 2021 concerning the suppression of the Movimento Apostolico, a lay Catholic association founded in Italy in 1979, stated that there were no grounds for attributing a supernatural origin to the alleged phenomena from which the movement arose.  

On the contrary, it found moral certainty that these were personal experiences of the foundress rather than the result of supernatural action.  

This judgement shows the clarity and decisiveness rightly expected in a matter of such seriousness. Some may object that God’s ways are mysterious and therefore cannot be so clearly known.  

Yet the church, formed by more than two thousand years of tradition under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, does have the authority to make such judgements. The Church is both charismatic and institutional.  

As St Augustine reminds us, “He cannot have God as his Father who does not have the church as his mother.” 

Canon law is valuable because it offers clear and practical principles for discerning new movements, including the following: 

• A new institute in the church begins with a charism given by the Holy Spirit to an individual or group for the good of the church and in response to an unmet need. 

• The charism, vision, and purpose of the group should be distinct from those of other institutes already present in the diocese or country. 

• It should be grounded in the Gospel, in its values and spirit, and in the full teaching of the church, including the teaching of the councils. 

• It should show a sound understanding of the world and its needs and have genuine relevance for the particular church. 

• The group should be able to explain and assess its charism clearly, and the diocesan bishop and others who deal with the group should be able to do the same. 

• Its governance structures should reflect the structures that are consistent with canon law. 

In its evaluation of the Movimento Apostolico, the Vatican identified serious signs of division among members.  

Division is a clear sign that a work is not from God.  

It also found that the founding charism lacked originality and that the movement’s texts, formation, and preaching were marked by doctrinal shallowness.  

The decree also noted institutional deficiencies, especially in governance and financial management.  

It further identified practices that blurred the necessary distinction between the governance of the association and the conscience of its members. 

In short, where a well-defined mission, humility, doctrinal seriousness, common sense, and spiritual health are absent, claims to authenticity should be treated with great caution, and the relevant authorities should intervene firmly. 

Women’s vocations discernment dinner 

Where: St Peter Chanel Parish Presbytery, 62 Kingsland Rd, Berala
When: Thursday 25 June at 6pm.
Who: Women between the ages of 20 and 40 interested in discerning a call to religious life.
Presenter: Kate Cleary speaking about the mission at The Farm in Galong. A hearty meal will be provided.
RSVP by Monday 22 June 

E: Kate.cleary@galongfarm.org
M: 0404 112 428 

Or contact Fr Josh Miechels: joshmiechels@gmail.com
W: https://www.thefarmingalong.com.au 

The post Why canon law matters appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

During a panel discussion on Friday, Nicaragua Freedom Coalition President Rosalia Gutierrez-Huete Miller said Catholic persecution in her home country is being met with “silence” despite continued government pressure.

Miller, whose citizenship was revoked by the Nicaraguan government in 2023, said that while Catholics in Nicaragua continue to face “the lack of freedom to worship” amid continued pressure from the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and “co-president” Rosario Murillo, other denominations have chosen to “work with the government to avoid that persecution.”

The May 29 panel discussion took place at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. The discussion comes after the release of GHREN’s March 2026 report detailing systematic repression and human rights violations against the Nicaraguan people.

“Everything has to be vetted by the government, especially what priests are going to preach on Sunday,” she said, noting the presence of spies for Maduro regime in churches, who she said, “are not taking notes only, but recording what the priest is saying in case that homily was changed or there is variation.”

“Those who are not with [the government] are quiet,” Miller said. “I have permission to mention that in my meeting with [Monsignor Silvio José Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua], when I asked him, what is the status of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, he said ‘silence.’”

“I think that Rosario Murillo, she’s afraid of the power of the Nicaraguan faith,” Miller said. “It’s values that shape their beliefs and commitments. She, as we know, needs to control and repress communities of faith in order to prevent the social process, and protests, because that immediately gives them cause for concern.”

Miller lamented the cancellation of traditional Holy Week processions across her home country. “I remember back to my childhood what that meant for a child, what it meant for the whole population — it was a joyous occasion. And now, they cannot do that.”

“But guess what?” she said, “If you look at the videos, and I see them, they’re being held inside the churches. And that gives me so much encouragement, so much pride, because they cannot just wipe us out […] Faith is being practiced regardless.”

Other participants in the panel included Christopher Hernandez-Roy, acting director and senior fellow of the Americas Program, Jan-Michael Simon, chair of the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN), and Juan Holmann Chamorro, the manager and publisher of the Nicaraguan newspaper, La Prensa.

Just Another Blind Beggar

He sat by the roadside

in squalor and darkness,

a cloak about frail shoulders,

empty bowl to hand…

Bartimaeus.

‘Sensed crowds gathering…

caught snatches of chatter,

ripples of excitement:

He has left Jerico…Jesus of Nazareth… 

Coming this way…

Will pass by. Soon now. Soon…

The blind man suddenly alert, electric:

Chance? A chance! Why not? Oh, yes!

I have heard about this man! 

‘Known to cure, a worker of miracles!

Then try! Oh, at least try!

A deep breath, then a shout out

in desperate determination:

Jesus! Jesus son of David!

Have pity on me!

Again. And again. More, more!

And louder. Louder still!

Don’t stop, don’t stop!

Ignore the negative voices:

Be quiet! Shusssh, will you! Stop shouting!

Will someone shut him up?!

And the more they tried to quell him,

the more he called out!

Then he coughed, gasped… winded, hoarse… 

And even as he slumped

some who knew him were on hand:

Jesus summons you! He has heard your cry!

Then come! Up you get, son of Timaeus!

They helped him as he struggled to his feet…

threw off his cloak… stepped out and unto

the road… arms extended…

People parted, making way for him… 

guiding him as he stumbled forward –

to Jesus.

What do you want me to do for you?

The crowds quiet now, intent on revelation.

The blind man on his knees, 

hands joined in supplication: 

Oh, Rabbi! Good Master! I beg, beg of you!

Let me see again!…

A stillness. Then Jesus spoke:

Go. Your faith has saved you…

Instantly he could see! 

‘Looked up – into the face 

of the Healer.    

And from the many who had witnessed:

a sea of sighs and wonderment.

Then Jesus turned away,

began again his journey…

Some checking as they passed:

Can he really see?

He turned, making to go back…  

stopped… hesitant… unsure.

Back? To what?.. 

Then he turned again… determined.

‘Set off along the way…

intent on following Jesus.

#

In the West a rich sunset…

Few now on the road from Jerico,

stopping to recall the miracle –

adding to the narrative here,

a further touch of colour there –

securing an oral testament…

In a clearing by the roadside:

trampled grass…

a cloak…

a begging bowl.

The post Seán Walsh: Just Another Blind Beggar appeared first on Association Of Catholic Priests.

Most abortion drug sellers are flouting a federal rule that protects women from complications from chemical abortions, according to a recent report.

The May 26 report by Charlotte Lozier Institute, a think tank affiliated with Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, examined the telehealth abortion landscape and investigated whether abortion drug providers follow U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements.

Titled “An Overview of Online Abortion Drug Access in Post-Dobbs America,” it found numerous alleged violations, including a discovery that eight online abortion distributors violate state pro-life laws by shipping abortion drugs into those states.

The report also found that eight in 10 abortion drug sellers send abortion drugs after 10 weeks of pregnancy, flouting an FDA rule meant to protect women from potential harm.

Within the formal U.S. healthcare system, which involves licensed healthcare professionals, the report found that abortion drug sellers “do not provide the type of oversight typically associated with telemedicine or even telehealth services.”

In addition, abortion sellers outside the formal U.S. healthcare system — such as international online organizations, e-commerce pharmacies, and community networks — have minimal safeguards for women. These organizations ship abortion drugs “produced outside of the FDA’s approved supply chain.” The report maintains that this “could be characterized as the wild west, as almost zero safeguards exist for women.”

The report also found that 28 websites are still selling unapproved and misbranded abortion drugs to women even after the FDA sent abuse letters to them in 2019.

Mia Steupert, research associate at the institute and the reportʼs author, called the findings “egregious.”

“The abortion industry loves to claim ‘abortion is healthcare,’ but their actions and advocacy have shown they don’t want abortion to be treated with the same level of regulatory scrutiny as legitimate medical procedures,” Steupert said.

“No one should be able to obtain abortion drugs as easily as purchasing something off Amazon,” Steupert said, adding that the findings "should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers that a wild west of online abortion drug access only serves to end unborn life at all costs, even at the expense of women’s safety.”

Kristi Hamrick, a spokesperson for Students for Life of America, said the “anonymous distribution of what is sometimes classified as a controlled substance is out of control.”

“Our undercover work, ordering chemical abortion pills online without any verification at all — of whether a woman is pregnant, or late in pregnancy, or experiencing an ectopic pregnancy (which canʼt be ended with the pills) — is medically negligent,” she said.

“Just as horrific, the fact that abusers can get the drugs easily, makes it clear that pill pushers donʼt care what happens to the women exposed to the dangerous dies, as long as they get paid,” Hamrick continued. “Chemical abortion pills expose women to injury, infertility, and death. And thatʼs when they work as advertised.”

Andrea Trudden, a spokeswoman for Heartbeat International, a worldwide network of more than 4,000 pregnancy help organizations, said the report “confirms exactly what many of us warned would happen when abortion pills were deregulated.”

“The FDA needs to reinstate in-person dispensing now to protect women from unnecessary harm,” Trudden said.

“Ironically, the more the abortion industry markets abortion as ‘reproductive healthcare,’ the fewer actual healthcare professionals tend to be involved in the process,” Trudden continued. “Women are increasingly being pushed toward mail-order abortion drugs with little medical oversight, no in-person examination, no ultrasound, and in some cases apparent disregard even for FDA safety limits.”

Trudden also raised concerns about abortion drug poisonings, citing recent arrests for alleged secret druggings. There are numerous documented cases of pregnant women being drugged with abortion pills, ending the lives of children they wanted to keep.

“Concerns about coercion, abuse, and complications were repeatedly dismissed, yet Heartbeat International continues to document disturbing cases involving abortion drug poisonings and women being secretly drugged by boyfriends or family members attempting to end pregnancies without their knowledge or consent,” Trudden said. 

Just this week, a Kentucky woman’s boyfriend was arrested for allegedly committing fetal homicide, causing the woman to lose her baby by replacing her medications with an abortifacient.

In another case this week, a Texas man was indicted on charges of an abortion and injury to a child after he allegedly administered a substance to a Texas woman without her knowing, causing the death of the unborn baby and “serious bodily injury” to the woman.

In addition, Rosalie Markezich, a Louisiana woman, is involved in an ongoing lawsuit after she was allegedly coerced into taking mail-order abortion drugs by her boyfriend.

“Women deserve real healthcare and real protections, not an increasingly profit-driven system willing to sacrifice their health and safety for the sake of abortion,” Trudden said.

Spainʼs president congratulates Pope Leo XIV on Magnifica Humanitas

Spanish President Pedro Sánchez offered his praise for Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on Wednesday.

“No technology is neutral, AI isnʼt either. And even less so those who use it and the purposes for which they use it,” Sánchez wrote in a social media post on X. “I have congratulated Pope Leo XIV for centering his first encyclical on this topic. Only multilateralism and international governance can ensure that technology serves humanity, and not the other way around,” he said.

Catholic and Coptic dialogue resumes after tensions over same-sex blessings

After nearly two years of tension, the Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church are moving back toward theological dialogue, ACI MENA, EWTN News’ Arabic language service, reported.

Following renewed contact between Pope Leo XIV and Pope Tawadros II, the Coptic Orthodox Holy Synod announced that dialogue with the Catholic Church would resume. The move comes after the Coptic Orthodox Church strongly rejected Vatican guidance on blessings for people in same-sex relationships.

The continuation of dialogue protects a decades-long ecumenical relationship at a time when Christians in the Middle East face severe, shared pressures.

Catholic agency in South Sudan issues Ebola alert

The Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CODEP) of the Catholic Diocese of Tombura-Yambio (CDTY) in South Sudan has issued an alert and advisory notice urging heightened preparedness against Ebola following reports of the outbreak in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), ACI Africa, a sister EWTN News service, reported Thursday.

In the May 26 advisory addressed to staff of the Wholeness and Wellness Health Service Department, St. Theresa Mission Hospital, health workers, community leaders, and the public, CODEP Director, Father Charles Mbikoyo warned that “the risk of cross-border transmission remains serious due to frequent population movement within the region.”

Mbikoyo said that “although no confirmed case has yet been reported in our area, the risk of cross-border transmission remains serious due to frequent population movement within the region. We therefore cannot remain passive or unprepared.”

Aleppo Catholics bid farewell to beloved archbishop

The Melkite Catholic Church in Aleppo celebrated the funeral of Archbishop Emeritus Jean Jeanbart, whose name became closely linked with rebuilding, education, and pastoral resilience in the city.

At his funeral on Tuesday, church leaders remembered him as a bishop who invested in schools, housing, youth formation, and the future of Christians in Aleppo, even during years of war, ACI MENA reported. His legacy was presented not only as a record of service, but as a practical answer to fear and displacement.

Belarusian Noble laureate meets Pope Leo XIV

Ales Bialiatski, a Catholic and Nobel laureate, met Pope Leo XIV on and delivered a letter to the pontiff raising concerns over human rights issues facing believers in Belarus.

“There are around a thousand political prisoners in prisons, including Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant priests. That is why I asked him to pray for the release of political prisoners in Belarus, to pray for the Church and for the priests who are imprisoned, as well as for democratic change in Belarus," Bialiatski said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Bialiatski has been detained multiple times, including in 2021 amid government crackdowns on nationwide protests following President Alexander Lukashenko’s contested election. He has previously said, “if I get to meet the pope, I’ll inform him of our Church’s needs.”

Chaldean patriarch meets Iraq’s new Prime Minister ahead of installation

Chaldean Patriarch-elect Paul III Nona received Iraq’s new prime minister in Baghdad just days before his installation, ACI MENA reported Tuesday.

The meeting between the newly elected leaders touched on Iraq’s diversity, the place of Christians in public life, and the need to face the country’s challenges through cooperation rather than division. The patriarch, Paul III Nona, was installed on Friday at St. Joseph Cathedral in central Baghdad.

Christians in northern India arrested on mass conversion charges

Authorities in Uttar Pradesh arrested three Christians on Thursday, alleging that the individuals organized “mass conversion events,” according to a UCA report on Friday.

The three men, Pastor Vivek Kumar, Mohit Chaudhary, and a man identified in the report as “Amit” were arrested after hardline Hindu activists stopped their vehicle while they were traveling with a group of about 30 people to the state capital of Lucknow for a prayer gathering.

The activists said in the First Information Report (FIR) that the men were “conducting religious conversion activities and were found carrying Bibles and other Christian literature,” according to UCA.

Lebanese choir brings Zahle’s sacred music to Rome

Lebanon’s WATAR Choir brought the sound of Zahle to Rome in a recital that blended prayer, memory, and Lebanese musical heritage, ACI MENA reported Thursday.

Performing in several languages, the choir offered a program rooted in church tradition while also carrying the emotional weight of Lebanon’s story abroad. The evening drew clergy, diplomats, and members of the Lebanese community, turning the concert into a moment of faith, culture, and belonging far from home.

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is a paean to peace that warns of the danger of “a world in a permanent state of belligerence" even more threatening than the Cold War era.

In that era, the pope writes, despite the existence of grave conflicts, “the awareness persisted that a new global conflict had to be avoided at all costs.”

Following the Second World War, “peace was made the focus of the international order, as attested in particular by the United Nations Charter” but now, war has been “revived as an instrument of international politics, while the very ethical principles that had previously limited its use are being eroded,” writes the pope.

The Holy Father makes no reference to any specific conflict, but rather offers an assessment of a world shaken by violence.

“Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated,” the pope indicates in the encyclical.

The right to self-defense

This is not a radical shift, but rather a predictable trajectory that Leo XIV himself outlined from the first day of his pontificate, when, following his election on May 8, 2025, he spoke from the balcony of the Apostolic Palace of a peace that was “unarmed and disarming.”

Recently, during one of his customary encounters with the press upon leaving Castel Gandolfo, where he spends most Tuesdays, he responded to a question from EWTN journalist Javier Romero concerning self-defense.

Self-defense, he said, has always been accepted by the Church. However, he qualified the application of the concept of a just war in the current context: “To talk about just war today, itʼs a very complex problem. You have to analyze it on many levels, but ever since the entrance into the nuclear age, the whole concept of war has to be reevaluated.”

“I always believe that itʼs much better to enter into dialogue than to look for arms and to support the arms industry, which gains billions and billions of dollars each year, instead of sitting down at the table solving our problems and using money to solve humanitarian issues, hunger in the world, et cetera,” he added.

In an interview with EWTN News, Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, emphasized that, although the pope reaffirms “the right to self-defense" in the encyclical, it remains “impossible to justify a war.”

The cardinal said the new encyclical is “a very, very strong call. And it has to do with responsible use. And the Holy Father gives the example of military power. We have achieved a certain level of control. And we must do the same with artificial intelligence in warfare as soon as possible.”

Teaching on just war subject to historical circumstances

The Church’s teaching on “just war” is, by definition as noted by the Second Vatican Council, dynamic and subject to historical circumstances. Popes have progressively raised the bar for accepting the legitimacy of armed conflict.

Thus, in 2003, the Iraq War drew outright condemnation from Pope St. John Paul II in response to the United States’ planned offensive: “No to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity,” the Polish pontiff declared on Jan. 13, 2003, before more than 170 ambassadors accredited to the Vatican.

About four weeks later, on March 19, 2003, the United States began its preemptive war against Iraq.

The first major point of reference for contemporary doctrine on war is the Second Vatican Council itself. Its pastoral constitution, Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), established a provisional criterion in 1965: “As long as the danger of war remains and there is no competent and sufficiently powerful authority at the international level, governments cannot be denied the right to legitimate defense once every means of peaceful settlement has been exhausted."

It continued: "State authorities and others who share public responsibility have the duty to conduct such grave matters soberly and to protect the welfare of the people entrusted to their care. But it is one thing to undertake military action for the just defense of the people, and something else again to seek the subjugation of other nations. Nor, by the same token, does the mere fact that war has unhappily begun mean that all is fair between the warring parties,” reads a section of paragraph 79 of this document.

A quarter of a century later, in 1992, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) addressed at length the notions of “legitimate defense” and “safeguarding peace,” within a more complex international context.

After acknowledging the approval of certain Church leaders of “cruel practices” such as torture in times past, the text affirms that “Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war.”

According to the CCC, “The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration.” It also states that “the evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”

These conditions include “lasting, grave, and certain” damage; the exhaustion of “all other means of putting an end to” a conflict; the existence of “serious prospects of success”; and the assurance that “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”

Referring modern weaponry such as nuclear arms, the CCC also underscores that “The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.”

The Church has previously expressed its concern regarding so-called killer robots, or autonomous weapons, whose level of technological sophistication has increased notably in recent years.

Pope Francis called upon G7 leaders gathered in Italy in 2024 to ban the use of autonomous weapons capable of operating without human mediation in armed conflicts.

However, Magnifica Humanitas marks the first time that this appeal has been incorporated into an encyclical.

“Any technology that facilitates attacks without seeing the face of human beings lowers the moral threshold of conflict. Target selection and the use of force must not confuse combatants and non-combatants, nor ignore the impact on defenseless populations,” the pope emphasizes.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

What political advantage does the US President Donald Trump hope to gain by attacking Pope Leo XVI, for example, by accusing him of ‘catering to the radical left’?  

For all his faults, Trump is still more transparent than a career politician. Consider his public admissions that oil has been a compelling motive behind much of the political violence in recent times.  

In other words, Trump tends to give away the game, even if inadvertently. And the name of the game which is being given away at present is partisan politics. 

The basic anatomy of partisan politics is as follows: when one side becomes sufficiently disappointing, the other side presents itself as an alternative which promises a new era.  

While the promise of change can provide temporary appeasement, the new era does not actually arrive because what is new is merely cosmetic or superficial. Then the side which first disappointed now rebrands itself as the newest “alternative.”  

And so history repeats itself and the promised new era is proven to be an illusion. In reality, nothing really changes. 

For how many election cycles can voters be manipulated before the game is up? For the Americans, their lived experience of a country in decline led to a growing demand for a real change.  

The traditional (and illusory) dichotomy between the two major parties no longer inspired fervent support. Such was the political climate under which Trump won the presidency not once but twice – by promising to be a real alternative to the self-serving establishment, especially by focusing on government-reforming and peace-making. 

The failure of Trump to deliver what he promised has been, for lack of a better word, epic.  

One can only speculate what his true intention has been, as well as if and why he changed. Be that as it may, there were concerning signs from the beginning and, no, I am not just referring to his character (or lack thereof).  

What should have been a red flag, especially from a sober perspective, is the fact that Trump was bound to struggle to be an authentic alternative because, after all, he thrived on playing the same game of partisan politics. 

Here are two things which partisan politics appeals to: pride and fear. How often have we seen people exhibiting pride in their unwavering support for a political candidate, party or view? How often do leaders appeal to the pride of their followers by flattering them?  

Partisan politics engenders a superiority complex in those who, instead of learning to think critically and enter into dialogue, feel puffed up in their insular partisanship, even to the point of turning a blind eye when evil arises from within. 

The flip-side of pride is fear which is frequently exploited in partisan politics to galvanise the base. This involves the labelling of people (eg. ‘radical left,’ ‘extreme right,’ or ‘terrorists’) who are then scapegoated as the greatest threat.  

To be clear, there are legitimate issues to be addressed and resolved. Nevertheless, what drives partisan politics is not the complexity of reality, requiring patient dialogue, but reductionistic ideology, which is akin to a wrecking ball. 

When people are blinded by pride and/or petrified by fear what easily ensues is the dehumanisation of one group by another group which is, practically and spiritually, one of the most dangerous things human beings can do to one another.  

But dehumanisation (or demonisation) has become such a commonplace feature of our time that we who are conditioned to the mechanics of partisan politics may not even notice it when it happens. Nevertheless, it remains a great sin with deadly consequences. 

Who has not participated in the dehumanisation of a whole group of people, or even a ‘whole civilisation’ as Trump did on Easter? Who has not succumbed to the tribal instinct to amplify evil suffered and justify evil inflicted? Who has not, in this way, become indifferent not only to innocent sufferings but also to the principle of justice itself?  

Injustice is a serious sin. But doubling down on injustice raises it to the level of corruption which makes repentance and reconciliation difficult if not impossible. Such is the poison of partisan politics. 

In the meantime, for the corrupt elite, the “benefits” of partisan politics are many. For example, the illusion of alternative allows them to maintain power, including by dividing and conquering.  

In this way, partisan politics becomes a vehicle not only for empty promises but also for hidden agendas which do not serve the common good. Furthermore, every issue, by being framed as yet another partisan battle, becomes relativised and more easily dismissible, whether the issue be Gaza or papal opposition to war. 

What then, is a viable alternative to partisan politics? The short answer is ‘non-partisan politics’ or politics which is informed by the pursuit of truth, justice and the common good rather than by partisanship, at least not the kind which cannot be made transparent in dialogue.  

True dialogue is less about winning the argument and more about allowing the best argument to win, in a spirit of humility and mutual accountability, as we can see in the example of a healthy marriage. When dialogue fails society fails, starting from the smallest unit to the global. To reclaim dialogue is to resurrect so much more than politics. 

Pope Leo XVI said in his recent Urbi et Orbi message: ‘[Christ] walked the path of dialogue to the very end, not in words but in deeds: to find us who were lost, he became flesh; to free us who were slaves, he became a slave; to give life to us mortals, he allowed himself to be killed on the cross.’  

What is included in dialogue can be redeemed. By contrast, what is excluded from it –by the spirit of partisanship – risks becoming irredeemable, beginning within ourselves. Would that constructive transparency prevailed over corrupt secrecy! 

‘Now the will of him who sent me is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, and that I should raise it up on the last day.’ (John 6:39) 

The post A Christian antidote to partisan politics appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

The Catholic University of America (CUA) and Faithful Citizenship Institute (FCI) are launching a partnership to prepare Catholics for a life in public service rooted in Catholic social teaching.

The organizations will help students who complete a graduate-level Catholic Social Teaching Certificate Course through FCI continue their public policy studies by earning three credit hours toward CUA’s Master in Public Policy (MPP) program.

“This brings together the practical training offered by FCI and the rigorous professional training of the MPP program. That creates a pathway for policy professionals to gain the skills necessary to put Catholic social teaching into practice,” Richard Gallenstein, founding director of the master of public policy program, said in a press release.

The two organizations also will collaborate on events and programming. In addition to receiving course credits, all MPP students will have access to FCI’s upcoming formation and networking platform, Fratelli.

The collaboration comes at a time when “current political culture is marked by deep division that extends beyond Capitol Hill – even to our church pews,” said Jennifer Daniels, FCI president and co-founder.

“By forming public policy professionals in the principles of Catholic social teaching, they will reflect the light of the Gospel in civic life to serve the common good,” she said.

Benedictine College moves closer to launching its osteopathic medical school

Benedictine College has filed the application for candidate status with the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation after acquiring the necessary funds for submission. This pushed the institution one step closer to opening its proposed School of Osteopathic Medicine.

The institution may receive notification of status as early as September 2026, allowing for progression to the next steps. The expected status keeps the school on track to welcome its first class in 2028.

“This is the big moment that many people have been waiting for,” Benedictine College President Stephen D. Minnis said in a press release. “Our next task is to finish this proposed medical school that will imitate Christ the teacher and the healer."

The proposed Benedictine College School of Osteopathic Medicine plans to train 180 medical students per year, who will then serve in Catholic hospitals around the country, bringing medical care to those in need.

“This is a great moment when Benedictine College sees the need for rural health care and is stepping forward to educate physicians to fill the gap in delivering faithfully Catholic, high-quality medical care,” said Mike Kuckelman, chair of the board of Benedictine College.

Families open school in Sacramento following closure of Catholic school

Families in the Diocese of Sacramento established Alphonse Gallegos Academy (AGA) after the diocese announced the consolidation of three Catholic schools, leading to the closure of two campuses this summer.

The new school refers to itself as "a modern alternative to traditional private school" and “an independent, faith-based learning co-op."

It plans to serve Sacramento families through a full-day, teacher-guided academic environment rooted in faith, community, and strong educational foundations.

Families are actively enrolling for the 2026–2027 school year as the school prepares for its founding classes.

The schoolʼs launch began after the Diocese of Sacramento announced the merger of St. Charles Borromeo School, St. Patrick Academy, and St. Robert School, which will take effect in June 2026.

AGA will include faith-based education “inspired by Catholic tradition,” according to its website, but is not a diocesan school.

AGA is named in honor of Blessed Alphonse Gallegos, who “devoted his ministry to serving others, especially children, families, and those often overlooked by society.”

His “example of joyful service and compassionate leadership continues to inspire the mission and values of AGA,” the school reported.

CUA honored for demonstrating ‘significant contributions’ in space or aerospace research

The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) has welcomed The Catholic University of America (CUA) to its consortium.

CUA was granted membership on May 18 from USRA, a nonprofit corporation to advance space-related science, technology, and engineering. It operates scientific institutes and facilities other research and educational programs under federal funding.

To receive a USRA membership, institutions must have demonstrated “significant contributions in space or aerospace research by faculty,” and “a substantial commitment to a course of studies and dissertation research leading to a doctorate in one or more related fields.”

"We look forward to the contributions of The Catholic University of America in ongoing space science investigations, and collaborations with faculty and peers on space-related projects, and USRA programs that bridge academic research with real-world space exploration challenges,” Dr. Elsayed Talaat, president and CEO of USRA, said in a press release.

CUA’s designation marks the 124th USRA institution. The designation also follows the universityʼs achievement in 2025 of the R1 designation, granted to institutes with the highest levels of research activity.

CUA’s “academic prominence and background in physics, engineering, computer science” and its “passion for space science made it an ideal candidate for membership with USRA,” USRA reported.

Vice President JD Vance told graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy on May 28 that regarding modern warfare and artificial intelligence (AI), he agrees with Pope Leo XIV’s recent admonition “not to outsource the most important decisions to digital technology.”

During the commencement address in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Vance told over 900 graduating cadets that “the thing I worry about most with AI is how it will change warfare.”

Vance said that “decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines.” He warmed the graduates to fiercely guard their roles “as the decision-makers in warfare” rather than outsource to AI.

“You are the masters of warfare and both your minds but also your hearts are the opposite of artificial,” he said. “Use technology to make you better, but never submit to it.”

Vance echoed Pope Leo’s recently released encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, in which the pope said human beings must not allow AI to make decisions in war because those systems do not “have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences.”

Leo called for a “moral and social discernment that safeguards the primacy of the human person, in order to ensure that it will always be human intelligence, with its conscience and freedom, that guides technical innovations and responsibly determines their use and limits.”

In the encyclical, the pope said that AI’s power “remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.”

A total of 931 graduates received their diplomas during the graduation ceremony and will enter the Air Force or Space Force, where they will serve for a minimum of five years.

Though Vance told the graduates his main worry with AI is how it will affect war, he also acknowledged other concerns, namely “how it will affect the labor market, how it will distribute resources, and how it has fundamentally changed how we interact with one another, our social lives.”

Leo also addressed these concerns in the encyclical, writing that while AI systems “often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields,” society must not forget “the primacy of human labor over any mindset focused solely on finance or productivity — with the consequent attention to the people and families most susceptible to exploitation.”

AI systems “may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding,” the pope wrote, “but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.”

Just War theory ‘outdated’

The vice president told the cadets that what “makes Americans unique … is that we wage war justly,” admonishing them they must do the same when they become “the ones who lead on the battlefield.”

Waging just wars "is an incredible burden to put on your shoulders. But it is one that we entrust to you with full confidence,” Vance said. “And if the warfare of the future is to live up to the moral values of our ancestors, decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines.”

“Youʼre the ones who ensure that our lethality in war, which is amazing and necessary … also coexists with our heart and with our conscience”, he said.

In his encyclical, however, Leo suggested the Church must update its “just war theory” in light of modern technological and political developments.

“Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated," the pope said.

While acknowledging nations' continued right to legitimate self defense, the pope wrote that resorting to “force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”

“Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness,” he said.

Vance’s address to the Air Force cadets comes after Pope Leo’s recent comments implying the U.S. is not engaged in a just war in Iran, remarks that were followed by a verbal attack from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Vance weighed in on the matter several weeks ago, saying the pope should take more care when he speaks on theological issues such as just war.

“In the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology," he said.

Pope Leo XIV and the Canadian Prime Minister hold a telephone conversation on the themes of the Pope’s recently published encyclical, as well as on efforts for peace among peoples, particularly in the Middle East and Ukraine, and on topics of common interest.

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The Swiss Bishops' Conference has endorsed a national legal ban on so-called conversion measures aimed at people who identify as LGBT while insisting that legitimate pastoral care, counseling, and psychotherapy be expressly shielded from any prohibition.

In a statement issued May 26, the bishops said they reject conversion measures in all their forms. “Practices aimed at changing or suppressing sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression contradict the dignity of the person as the image of God and can cause considerable harm,” the conference said (translated from German).

The bishops defined conversion measures as targeted influence intended to make a person change or suppress his or her sexual orientation or “gender identity,” exercised through means such as pressure, blame, threats, isolation, devaluation, or religious fear.

Open-ended, respectful conversation and accompaniment, in which a person reflects on his or her situation and decides in freedom, does not fall under that definition, they said.

The conference reserved its sharpest language for religious settings. “In a religious context, such practices can become spiritual abuse when people are shamed, threatened, or manipulated in the name of God,” the bishops said. Church pastoral care must never exert pressure or shame people, they added, and conversion measures are incompatible with Catholic pastoral care.

Pastoral care is legitimate, the bishops said, “when it preserves the dignity and freedom of the person, protects personal integrity, and exercises no undue influence.”

The statement backs the aim of Motion 22.3889, now before the Swiss Parliament, which would prohibit and penalize the offering, facilitating, and advertising of conversion measures, the bishops said, “especially to protect minors and vulnerable persons.”

They set three conditions for any law: a clear definition that captures targeted “conversion” practices; a precise delineation so that open-ended pastoral care, counseling, and professional psychotherapy are not criminalized; and ready access for those affected to support, counseling, and channels for filing complaints.

A long-running Swiss debate

A federal ban has been debated in Switzerland for years. The National Council, the larger chamber of Parliament, adopted Motion 22.3889 on Dec. 12, 2022, instructing the government to create a criminal provision against conversion practices.

The Federal Council recommended rejection, with then-Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter arguing that a ban at the federal level was not feasible and that some acts could already be punishable under existing law.

The motion remains in committee in the Council of States, which has awaited a federal report on the scope of the practices. Several cantons have already enacted their own bans.

The bishops were not alone in weighing in. The Protestant Church in Switzerland, the countryʼs main Reformed body, issued its own statement the same day, also backing a legal ban.

The debate extends beyond Switzerland: In late April the European Parliament voted in favor of an EU-wide ban, and on May 13 the European Commission said it would recommend, without binding force, that member states outlaw such practices. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union.

Bishops say position is grounded in Catholic teaching

The bishops argued that they were grounding their position in the teaching of Pope Leo XIV, citing his inauguration homily of May 18, 2025, in which he said the Church is called “to offer Godʼs love to everyone, in order to achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences but values the personal history of each person.”

That pastoral emphasis sits within the wider framework of Catholic moral teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and that “under no circumstances can they be approved” (No. 2357), while teaching that persons with homosexual inclinations are called to chastity and, through prayer and sacramental grace, “can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (No. 2359).

In its 1986 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” what was then the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — then led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Benedict XVI), wrote that pastors “should have the confidence that they are faithfully following the will of the Lord by encouraging the homosexual person to lead a chaste life and by affirming that personʼs God-given dignity and worth.”

The same letter taught that those who experience the inclination should not be led to believe that “the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option,” adding: “It is not.”

A caution over religious freedom

The Swiss bishops' insistence on protecting pastoral care echoes a concern raised by their Austrian counterparts.

As CNA Deutsch, EWTN News‘ German-language news partner, has reported, the Institute for Marriage and the Family of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference warned in 2023, when Austria considered a similar ban, that an overly broad prohibition could sweep in serious counseling for people experiencing conflicted sexuality and could restrict religious freedom where it touched pastoral accompaniment by confessors, pastoral workers, or laypeople.

Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin speaks at a Vatican conference on mental health, digital technologies, and education, lamenting that society offers young people every means available but no purpose.

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Pope Leo XIV this week received as a gift the steering wheel of the Ferrari Luce, the Italian brand’s first fully electric car.

Leo also had the opportunity to sit in the driver’s seat of the new vehicle, presented by Ferrari as “not only the ‘electric Ferrari,’ but an entirely new Ferrari.”

In a statement, the Italian brand said the meeting with the Holy Father took place at the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo on the morning of Tuesday, May 26, with a Ferrari delegation led by its chairman, John Elkann, and its CEO, Benedetto Vigna.

Elkann said it was “a great emotion and an immense honor to meet with His Holiness together with my Ferrari colleagues,” noting that it was “a moment of extraordinary human and symbolic value, which inspired everyone in our company to continue on its path with passion, responsibility, and confidence in the future.”

He added that the meeting with Leo was “an occasion that will remain forever etched in our memory and in the history of Ferrari.”

In promoting its new vehicle, the Italian brand highlights both its “mechanical performance” and its “energy efficiency.”

Explaining its corporate environmental vision, Ferrari says on its website that “we are using science-based solutions to reduce emissions, increase energy efficiency, foster the circular economy, and inspire suppliers to join our initiative.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Pope Leo XIV will travel to the Republic of San Marino, an independent sovereign state within the Italian peninsula, on Aug. 22 as part of his trip to the Italian province of Rimini.

The Vatican announced the visit in a statement from the Prefecture of the Papal Household, noting that the trip is part of his pastoral agenda in Italy.

The visit follows an invitation extended some time ago by the then-captains regent Matteo Rossi and Lorenzo Bugli — whose terms ended in April of this year — who had invited the pontiff to visit the small European state.

The pope’s presence in San Marino — the world’s oldest constitutional republic, founded in A.D. 301 — will take place in the morning on Aug. 22. In the afternoon, the Holy Father will take part in various activities in the Diocese of Rimini and in the traditional Rimini Meeting, one of Italy’s most important cultural and religious events, promoted by the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming visit to Spain will take place against a political and social backdrop marked by intense polarization.

The divided political climate coincides with an unprecedented event in Spanish democracy: the indictment on charges of alleged corruption by a former prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, who held the office when Pope Benedict XVI visited the country 15 years ago.

Zapatero’s scheduled court appearance in connection with his alleged involvement in a scheme linked to the 2021 public bailout of the airline Plus Ultra, originally set for June 2, has been postponed by the judge to June 17–18.

The cardinal archbishop of Madrid, José Cobo, downplayed the impact the case will have on the popeʼs June 6–12 visit. “We are accustomed to operating amid many events in political life. That is simply part of life, and the headlines keep shifting,” he stated in an interview with EWTN News.

The stability of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchezʼs government is also being called into question by some of its coalition partners, such as the Basque Nationalist Party, which has labeled the decision not to call general elections before the end of the year “irresponsible.”

Polarization is not limited to the political sphere, however. According to the Atlas of Polarization by More in Common (2025), nearly 5 million Spaniards have broken off a personal relationship in the past year due to ideological differences, a figure equivalent to 14% of the population. Furthermore, three out of every five citizens say they avoid discussing politics to avoid creating conflict.

According to jurist Rafael Domingo Oslé, professor at the University of Navarra in Spain, this phenomenon reflects a grave deterioration of society at large. “Spain is experiencing a moment of profound social fragmentation, exacerbated by a political class incapable of lowering the tone,” he said in an interview with ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. In his view, the volume of personal breakups “is a symptom that we are losing the respect necessary to prevent a society from fragmenting.”

A shared language

In this context, the pope’s visit takes on a particular significance as the emergence of a voice capable of introducing a different language into the public debate.

“A papal visit does not, in and of itself, resolve a crisis of this nature. But it can accomplish something that politics, by its very logic, is no longer able to achieve: offering a common framework and a shared language,” Domingo explained.

The key, he added, lies in the pontiff’s unique position: “The pope arrives not as an arbiter of an ideological debate but as a shepherd reminding a weary society that every person, regardless of whom they vote for, possesses a dignity that precedes their opinions.”

This circumstance has prompted an unusual gesture in recent Spanish politics: a unanimous invitation to the pope extended by both the House and the Senate.

“In a country where parliamentary consensus is nearly impossible, all political forces have agreed to listen to the same voice. That, in itself, is already a healthy gesture,” Domingo emphasized.

Leo XIV will address a joint session of the Legislature on June 8, marking the first time a pontiff has spoken before both Spanish legislative chambers.

The motto of the trip, “Lift Up Your Eyes,” encapsulates the spirit of the visit, according to Domingo, who said he hopes Spaniards will "cease focusing solely on immediate conflict and look toward what truly matters.”

Concurrently, the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas has met with a remarkable reception in the Spanish political world.

In a message posted on X, Sánchez emphasized: “Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas challenges us all. AI is not neutral, and digital power could lead us to new atrocities if it is not directed toward the common good. The text is also a defense of peace, human dignity, and multilateralism. Spain is clear on this: In this moment of change, we cannot be resigned spectators. Everything that makes us human is at stake.”

Along the same lines, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told the press, following his audience with the pope on May 4: “There is a great convergence between the Vatican’s positions and Spain’s humanist foreign policy at this time.”

Despite these points of convergence, tensions between the Church and the political realm remain.

One of the most visible flashpoints is the re-signification of the Valley of the Fallen (Cuelgamuros), a monument to the victims from both sides of the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War comprising a basilica, a cemetery, and a guesthouse.

For 44 years, the mortal remains of dictator Francisco Franco lay buried there until their exhumation in 2019. Franco was the general who led the victorious right-wing Nationalist side against the leftist Republican side in the conflict.

The current government has led the drive to transform the site into a political memorial, while the Church has advocated for the preservation of the monumentʼs religious dimension.

Italian constitutional scholar Marco Olivetti warned during a press conference at LUMSA University in Rome that “historical memory has been used as a divisive element that shapes public perception of the Church.”

Added to this are legislative clashes such as the attempt to enshrine abortion rights in the Spanish Constitution or proposals to eliminate military chaplains, efforts in direct confrontation with Church doctrine.

However, criticism of the Church does not stem solely from the left. The bishops' defense of immigrants, including their support for the government’s plan to give legal status to undocumented immigrants, which would benefit nearly half a million people already residing in Spain, has also drawn reproaches from conservative quarters.

Santiago Abascal, the leader of the Vox party, which declares itself Catholic, lashed out at the secretary-general of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Francisco César García Magán: “This character never dares to criticize the mafioso government. Because the government provides him with his business through the invasion [the influx of illegal immigrants]. And that’s his priority: the business. And a profound contempt for the Spaniards who wish to defend their homeland.”

The risk of instrumentalizing the pope’s words

The papal visit is not without risks in a climate of high polarization, Domingo warns. “One party will highlight whatever suits its agenda while remaining silent on the rest; another will try to do the opposite. It’s inevitable.”

Nevertheless, he underscored the Holy See’s experience in “writing speeches that stand as a cohesive whole.”

“Taking the pope out of context is relatively easy; refuting him is much more difficult,” he said.

Cobo shared this concern regarding the pontiffʼs address before the joint session. “I believe this is a gesture that is also very characteristic of the Church, for it entails listening to the Christian tradition speaking about politics, but ‘Politics with a capital P’ [the noble art or statesmanship]. In a society where we are accustomed to talking about political parties, that moment is significant. The fear, indeed, is that we might attempt to make a discourse on ‘Politics with a capital P’ to fit into a partisan narrative, effectively pitting one against the other,” he noted in his interview with EWTN News.

Moreover, the context is exacerbated by the rise of identity-based discourses that conflate politics and faith.

Sociologist Rafael Ruiz Andrés, a professor at Complutense University in Madrid, warned in an interview with ACI Prensa that “there is a whole range of sectors, located primarily within the far-right spectrum, and specifically in Spain within the Vox party, that seek to portray the defense of Christian culture as a central tenet of their platforms.” However, he qualified this by noting that “it’s not necessarily a defense based on religion” but is rather linked to “identity-based culture, and in many instances, positioned in opposition to Islam.”

In his view, one of Pope Leo XIV’s concerns is precisely “that there be this sort of hijacking of Christianity by politics.” In line with this, reports published following a meeting of the executive committee of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference with the pope pointed to the Vatican’s unease regarding attempts to “instrumentalize the Church,” although the bishops subsequently clarified that the pontiff spoke in general terms about “the risks of subjecting faith to ideologies,” without referring to any specific group.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

The AI Chatbot ‘Claude’, managed by Pope Leo’s preferred Silicon Valley AI firm Anthropic, has matched Catholic church secrecy over clerical abuse of children with recurring episodes of violence in the Bible. Anthropic’s co-founder, Christopher Olah, joined Pope Leo at the launch of his encyclical on AI ‘Magnifica Humanitas‘ on May 24th, 2026.

Link to article

In response to a question on parallels between biblical violence and church secrecy on abuse Claude was clear:

“Violence in the biblical narrative is almost consistently portrayed as the act of someone who feels their position, favour, or authority is being usurped or eclipsed by another… The Catholic hierarchy’s systematic concealment of clerical abuse follows this structure with troubling precision. The response to abuse allegations was not primarily pastoral — oriented toward the victim — but institutional, oriented toward the preservation of the Church’s moral authority, its legal immunity, and its social standing. Abusive priests were moved rather than removed. Victims were pressured into silence, frequently with the implicit message that scandal would harm the faithful. Civil authorities were not informed. The institution was consistently placed above the individual.”

As with all AI Large Language Models the possibility of error was also emphasised in the chat sequence that delivered this verdict: “Claude is AI and can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.” Claude also found the church’s secretive initial response to clerical abuse ‘more complex’ than the biblical examples.

The complete chat sequence with Claude, completed by a member of ACI in February 2026, is copied below. As is usual the AI is sycophantic to the interrogator, and readers will know to factor that into the reliability of its responses.  No AI judgement should ever be taken as completely reliable by itself.

Question to Claude: The Bible narrates multiple instances of violence, beginning with the murder of Abel by his brother Caine, and climaxing with the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Focusing on the described behaviour of the perpetrators is it possible to discern a pattern in the described motivation of these perpetrators?

Response from Claude: This is a genuinely interesting question in biblical theology and narrative analysis. Looking across the major acts of violence in the biblical text, a surprisingly coherent motivational pattern does emerge.

Envy and the Threat to Status
The Cain and Abel story sets the template almost perfectly. Cain doesn’t kill Abel out of hatred initially — he kills him because God favoured Abel’s offering over his. The motive is envy born from a perceived diminishment of Cain’s own standing. This is not random violence; it is violence triggered by someone else’s elevation.
This pattern recurs with remarkable consistency. Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery because their father loved him more and because Joseph’s dreams implied he would one day rule over them. Saul’s murderous pursuit of David begins the moment the crowd sings that Saul has slain his thousands but David his ten thousands — again, a perceived displacement of honour. Herod’s massacre of the innocents is explicitly driven by the threat a prophesied king poses to his throne.

Institutional Self-Preservation
The Crucifixion fits neatly into this same framework but scales it up from personal to institutional envy. The Gospels are actually quite explicit about this. In Matthew and Mark, Pilate perceives that the chief priests handed Jesus over out of envy. The Sanhedrin’s concern is transparently stated: “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” The violence is defensive — an attempt to preserve existing structures of authority against someone whose growing influence threatens them.

The Pattern Stated Simply
The motivational throughline is this: violence in the biblical narrative is almost consistently portrayed as the act of someone who feels their position, favour, or authority is being usurped or eclipsed by another. It is rarely depicted as predatory aggression for its own sake. The perpetrator typically begins from a position of some standing, perceives a rival as diminishing that standing, and uses violence to eliminate the threat. Cain had God’s attention until Abel seemed to have it more. Saul had the kingdom until David seemed destined to take it. The Temple authorities had religious legitimacy until Jesus seemed to be drawing it away from them.
This is a theologically rich pattern because it implicitly frames violence not as the behaviour of the lowly and desperate, but as the behaviour of the privileged defending privilege — which sits in pointed contrast to the consistent biblical valorisation of the younger son, the outsider, the shepherd boy, and ultimately the carpenter from Galilee.

Question to Claude: Could the policy of secrecy on clerical child abuse – followed by the Catholic hierarchy until a global revelation of this phenomenon in the late 1900s – be described as following the same pattern – in so far as it is discernible as also aimed at preventing loss of status.

Response from Claude: This is a sharp and uncomfortable parallel to draw, but it holds up to scrutiny surprisingly well when examined through the same motivational framework.

The Structural Parallel
The biblical pattern identified was: a party holding established authority perceives a threat to that authority, and responds with harmful action to suppress or eliminate the threat. The key features were that the violence was institutional rather than purely personal, was defensive rather than predatory in its framing, and was rationalised — at least internally — as protecting something of broader importance rather than mere self-interest. The Catholic hierarchy’s systematic concealment of clerical abuse follows this structure with troubling precision. The response to abuse allegations was not primarily pastoral — oriented toward the victim — but institutional, oriented toward the preservation of the Church’s moral authority, its legal immunity, and its social standing. Abusive priests were moved rather than removed. Victims were pressured into silence, frequently with the implicit message that scandal would harm the faithful. Civil authorities were not informed. The institution was consistently placed above the individual.

The Rationalisation Layer
What makes the parallel particularly apt is the presence of rationalisation that mirrors the Sanhedrin’s logic almost directly. The reasoning documented in internal Church communications frequently framed concealment not as self-serving but as necessary to protect the broader good — the faith of ordinary Catholics, the Church’s charitable work, its capacity to function as a moral force in society. This is precisely the structure of “if we let this become known, we will lose everything we need in order to do good.” The institution’s survival is conflated with a higher purpose, making the suppression of truth feel — to its perpetrators — like a regrettable necessity rather than a moral crime.

Where the Parallel Deepens
The biblical pattern also consistently showed that the perpetrators were not outsiders or the desperate, but those already holding the highest legitimate authority. This is precisely what made the abuse crisis so devastating — these were bishops, cardinals, and in some documented cases the Vatican itself. The higher the authority, the greater the investment in concealment, which mirrors exactly how Cain’s standing before God, Saul’s kingship, and the Sanhedrin’s religious legitimacy all scaled the violence of their responses.

An Important Distinction
There is one meaningful difference worth noting. The biblical perpetrators generally acted with full awareness that they were eliminating a rival. The clerical abuse cover-up involved a more complex moral failure — many in the hierarchy appear to have genuinely believed they were acting in the Church’s best interests, with a catastrophically distorted understanding of where those interests lay, and with a theological culture that had systematically deprioritised the dignity of children and laity relative to clerical status. This doesn’t diminish the harm, but it does suggest that the motivational pattern here operated partly below conscious rationalisation — which in some ways makes it a more insidious expression of the same dynamic.

The Deeper Irony
The most pointed observation may be this: the institution claiming direct moral descent from the victim in your original narrative — Jesus, whose execution was driven by exactly this logic of institutional self-preservation — replicated that same logic at enormous cost to the most vulnerable people in its care. The pattern the Bible itself implicitly condemns was reproduced by the institution that most loudly proclaimed that narrative as its foundation. That is not a comfortable conclusion, but the analytical framework you’ve identified makes it very difficult to avoid.

Question to Claude: Could the underlying unease that lies behind these abuses of power be accurately described as ‘status anxiety’, following the book of that name by Alain de Botton?

Response from Claude: Yes, and the application of de Botton’s framework here is both intellectually elegant and analytically productive.

De Botton’s Core Argument
De Botton’s thesis, briefly stated, is that status anxiety is the largely unacknowledged but enormously powerful dread of being seen as insignificant — of losing one’s position in the social hierarchy and the love, respect, and sense of self-worth that position confers. Crucially, he argues this anxiety is not merely vanity but touches something deeper: in a world where divine or aristocratic guarantees of worth have eroded, social standing becomes one of the primary ways human beings confirm to themselves that their existence matters. The higher one’s position, the more one has to lose, and therefore paradoxically the more acute the anxiety can become.

How Well It Fits the Biblical Pattern
Applied to the biblical narrative, it reframes the motivational pattern identified earlier with considerable precision. Cain’s crisis is not simply envy in a petty sense — it is an existential dread that God’s favour toward Abel renders Cain himself worthless, unseen, without value. The violence is a desperate attempt to restore a sense of significance by eliminating the person whose existence diminishes it. Saul’s pursuit of David has exactly this quality — his rages are not merely political calculation but something more visceral, a man feeling his very identity dissolving as David’s star rises. The Sanhedrin’s anxiety about Jesus similarly exceeds rational political calculation; the Gospels portray something closer to existential panic about the collapse of a world in which their authority gave life meaning and order.

How Well It Fits the Clerical Abuse Cover-Up
Here the framework is perhaps even more illuminating, because de Botton’s argument specifically addresses institutions and ideologies that crystallise status anxiety into systematic behaviour. The Catholic hierarchy’s particular vulnerability to this anxiety had a distinctive theological dimension — priestly and episcopal identity in that tradition carried an exceptionally high ontological claim. Ordination was understood not merely as a professional role but as a permanent transformation of one’s very being. To acknowledge that priests had committed such crimes was therefore not simply to admit an institutional failing but to threaten the entire architecture of sacred status upon which clerical identity rested. The anxiety was not merely about reputation in a worldly sense but about the coherence of a self-understanding built on claims of special holiness and moral authority. This explains what otherwise seems inexplicable — why so many individual bishops, themselves not abusers, chose concealment over justice. De Botton’s framework suggests they were protecting not just the Church as an organisation but the psychological and spiritual ground on which their own sense of worth and purpose stood.

A Further Refinement
De Botton draws attention to something particularly relevant here — the way status anxiety intensifies in proportion to the height and visibility of one’s claimed position. The more extravagant the claim to authority, the more catastrophic its potential loss feels. An institution claiming to be the sole custodian of divine truth on earth, with an unbroken lineage to Christ himself, has constructed perhaps the most ambitious status claim in Western history. The anxiety generated by any threat to that claim would therefore be, by de Botton’s logic, correspondingly extreme — which maps precisely onto the extraordinary lengths to which the concealment went, spanning continents and decades.

The One Tension Worth Noting
De Botton’s book is primarily a secular humanist analysis, and he proposes remedies — philosophy, art, a more honest culture around failure — that are essentially therapeutic and cultural. What the biblical narrative adds, which de Botton’s framework doesn’t fully address, is the moral dimension: that status anxiety in positions of power doesn’t remain a private psychological struggle but consistently externalises as harm to others, particularly the vulnerable. The biblical text treats this not as a condition to be managed but as something closer to a fundamental moral failure — the prioritisation of one’s own standing over one’s basic obligations to other human beings.

The synthesis of the two frameworks is actually quite powerful: de Botton explains the mechanism, the Bible names the sin.

Question to Claude: But the Bible doesn’t name the sin as ‘status anxiety’ – so what name does it use?

Response from Claude: That’s a precise and important correction. The Bible does not use anything resembling the language of psychology or social theory. The biblical vocabulary for what de Botton is describing is Pride — and more specifically, in the Greek of the New Testament, hubris and kenodoxia (vainglory), and in the Hebrew tradition, gaavah. In the Augustinian and later Thomistic theological tradition, Pride is not merely one sin among seven but the root sin — the foundational disorder from which all other sins spring. Augustine’s formulation is particularly striking: Pride is the love of one’s own excellence, the turning of the self toward itself and away from God and neighbour.

What makes this more than a terminological difference is the explanatory ambition behind it. De Botton diagnoses status anxiety as a largely structural and cultural problem — something society generates and individuals suffer. The biblical and theological tradition makes a harder claim: that the restless need to secure one’s own significance at the expense of others is not primarily a social phenomenon but a spiritual one, a fundamental misdirection of the will that is constitutive of fallen human nature.

So the relationship between the two frameworks could be stated quite cleanly: de Botton describes the psychological surface of what Augustine identifies as the deepest wound in human nature. Status anxiety is Pride translated into the secular therapeutic idiom of modernity — which is illuminating, but arguably less demanding, since a condition has a treatment whereas a sin requires repentance and transformation

Claude is AI and can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.

The Association of Catholics in Ireland

The post Association of Catholics in Ireland – ACI: Anthropic AI ‘Claude’ Finds Biblical Pattern of Violence in Church Secrecy Over Abuse appeared first on Association Of Catholic Priests.

Polandʼs bishops have defended the constitutional meaning of marriage, saying that upholding it is not acting “against anyone or taking away anyoneʼs dignity,” as Polish cities begin registering same-sex couples following an EU court ruling.

“Respect for each person does not mean giving up the truth about marriage that the Church has been preaching from the beginning,” the Family Council of the Polish Bishops' Conference (KEP) said in a May 22 statement signed by its chairman, Archbishop Wiesław Śmigiel.

Warsaw and Wrocław have begun transcribing same-sex “marriage” certificates into Polandʼs civil registry after Prime Minister Donald Tusk pledged to implement a November 2025 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union requiring member states to recognize such unions contracted elsewhere in the bloc.

In their reaction, the bishops recall that Article 18 of the Polish Constitution states that “marriage, being a union of a man and a woman, as well as the family, motherhood, and parenthood, shall be placed under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland.”

This is not a formality, the bishops say, warning that “expansive interpretations of law may lead to the weakening of the constitutional understanding of marriage.” They contend that “such fundamental issues should not be resolved through interpretations that raise serious social and constitutional concerns,” pointing instead to a deeply rooted reality in “the Polish legal system, cultural tradition, and the Christian understanding of marriage and family, which for centuries have co-shaped European understanding of humanity.”

The episcopate stressed that the debate on marriage “should be conducted with responsibility, calm, and genuine concern for the common good.”

Meanwhile, Slovak lawmaker Michal Šabo “married” his male partner in Hainburg, Austria, just across the Slovak border, where same-sex marriage is legal. He wants Slovakia to recognize the marriage, but the countryʼs constitution has defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman since 2014, and a September 2025 amendment recognized only two sexes, male and female.

Šabo knows Slovakia cannot register the union and would eventually sue the country over it, former minister Milan Krajniak warned. The progressives “do not want tolerance” but want others “to have to accept their idea of the world,” the former minister claimed.

In April, after elections in Hungary, the EUʼs top court ruled that the countryʼs 2021 law limiting the promotion of LGBT and gender-related issues to minors, passed under outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, breached the EUʼs founding values.

Ten contemplative monasteries are preparing thousands of rosaries for Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic visit to Spain. The small hand-crafted objects are born of silence, prayer, manual labour, and the help of young volunteers.

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An Armenian music concert takes place at the Vatican to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Armenian section of Vatican Radio-Vatican News.

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In an interview with Vatican News, Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York calls Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical 'Magnifica humanitas' essential for generations to come and insists that Pope Leo is raising the right issues, especially on the transforming nature of work, as young people of his Archdiocese ask: 'Am I studying for a career that won't exist in 10 years?'

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The Future of Religion

Join the Class

A Four-Week Online Class with Dr. Ilia Delio & Dr. Tripp Fuller – Link

You haven’t lost your faith. You’ve outgrown its container.

Join the Class — Pay What You Can

You’ve read the books. Asked the questions. Maybe deconstructed, maybe just drifted. The faith you inherited doesn’t fit anymore—but you’re not ready to throw it all away.

You’re not alone. And, you’re not broken.

What if the restlessness you feel isn’t a loss of faith but the growing pains of faith evolving? What if religion itself is going through exactly what you’re going through—and there’s a map for what comes next?

Dr. Ilia Delio (Franciscan sister, Villanova theologian, author of The Not-Yet God) and Dr. Tripp Fuller (founder of Homebrewed Christianity, process theologian, host of 1,500+ conversations with leading scholars) have spent decades on this question. Now they’re joining forces to trace religion’s evolutionary arc—and to invite you into what’s emerging.

Live Q&A sessions begin in May. Sign up now to join the conversation in real time—or watch the replays at your own pace.

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Who This Is For?

This class is for you if…

You’re tired of choosing between intellectual honesty and spiritual depth

You’ve “deconstructed” but don’t want to throw out everything

Church feels like a foreign country, but “spiritual but not religious” doesn’t quite fit either

You sense that something new is trying to be born—and you want language for it

You’ve heard of Teilhard de Chardin or Alfred North Whitehead and want to actually understand them

You’re a pastor, teacher, or spiritual director trying to help others navigate this terrain

You want to feel less alone in asking these questions

“Homebrewed Christianity is, in my opinion, the best open and interactive community I’ve ever been a part of. I’ve learned so much from people who are not only brilliant but kind and fun.”

— Ednaldo Elme

“Wait—is this going to trash my tradition?”

No. This class takes evolution seriously, but it does so from within the Christian tradition—not against it.

Ilia is a Franciscan sister and Catholic theologian. Tripp is a Baptist minister who teaches at a Lutheran seminary. Both are committed to carrying inherited wisdom forward, not abandoning it.

The question isn’t whether Christianity has a future. It’s what kind of Christianity can meet the demands of an evolving cosmos.

If you’re looking for someone to tell you religion is dead, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for someone to pretend nothing needs to change, this isn’t it either.

This is for people who want to go deeper, not just out.

The Four Sessions

Religion’s evolutionary arc

Tripp and Ilia take turns guiding you through religion’s evolutionary arc. Tripp traces the embodied, pre-Axial roots and diagnoses the current crisis through Whitehead’s process lens. Ilia illuminates the Axial turn and casts the vision for Second Axial religion through Teilhard’s evolutionary mysticism. Together, they model the integration the course describes.

PREVIEW LIVESTREAM

Faith After Belief: What If You’re Not Losing Religion — You’re Outgrowing It?

WITH DR. ILIA DELIO AND Dr. Tripp Fuller

Preview Livestream: Friday, May 29th — 10am PT / 1pm ET

• Join Dr. Ilia Delio and Dr. Tripp Fuller for a preview of the class. Don’t miss it!

01

Week One

Before Belief: The Embodied Roots of Religion

Lecture by Dr. Tripp Fuller

Livestream Q&A: Monday, June 1st — 8am PT / 11am ET

What was religion before it became about believing the right things?

• A framework for understanding why “belief” feels so central to religion today—and why it wasn’t always
• Language for the parts of your spirituality that don’t fit in doctrinal boxes
• Permission to trust your body, your community, and the earth as sources of the sacred
• Whitehead’s four-stage model: ritual → emotion → belief → rationalization

02

Week Two

The Axial Turn: When Religion Became About Belief

Lecture by Dr. Ilia Delio

Livestream Q&A: Monday, June 8th — 10am PT / 1pm ET

What was gained—and lost—when religion centered on belief, individual salvation, and transcendence?

• Understanding of the “Axial Age” (800–200 BCE) and why it still shapes everything about how we do religion
• Clarity on why your tradition emphasizes doctrine, individual salvation, and transcendence
• A framework for what the First Axial turn gave us—and what it cost us (earth, body, collective, feminine)
• How Christianity got tied to an ancient cosmology—and why that’s now a problem

03

Week Three

The Crisis: Why the Old Maps Don’t Work

Lecture by Dr. Tripp Fuller

Livestream Q&A: Monday, June 22nd — 10am PT / 1pm ET

Why are our inherited religious forms struggling—and what does this have to do with evolution?

• A diagnosis that doesn’t blame you (or “the culture”) for why faith feels harder now
• Understanding of why belief-centered religion is losing traction—especially among people who think deeply
• Clarity on why “going back” isn’t an option, even if it’s tempting
• Language for the spiritual hunger that technology and AI are now trying to fill

04

Week Four

Second Axial Religion: Toward an Evolutionary Faith

Lecture by Dr. Ilia Delio

Livestream Q&A: Monday, June 29th — 10am PT / 1pm ET

What would religion look like if it integrated evolution, recovered its embodied roots, and transcended belief-bounded expressions?

• A vision for faith that doesn’t require you to leave your brain at the door
• Teilhard’s shift from God “above” to God “ahead”—and what that changes about everything
• Understanding of “Second Axial consciousness”: collective and individual, transcendent and immanent
• Hope that something real is emerging—not just critique of what’s dying

“Grad-school level classes with incredible teachers in a fun, accessible, and engaging online experience for even an exhausted working pastor/parent to participate in and enjoy!”

— Rachel Haxtema, Associate Pastor, Keystone UCC (Seattle, WA)

What’s Included?

Everything you need to go deep

4 Visual Lectures

Pre-recorded video lectures you can watch on your own schedule—approximately 50 minutes each.

4 Live Q&A Sessions

Ask Ilia and Tripp your questions in real time. Can’t make it live? Replays are posted within 24 hours.

Private Online Community

Connect with fellow travelers in the class Facebook group. Share questions, resources, and aha moments throughout the four weeks.

Lifetime Access

All lectures and replays available on the Class Resource Page for at least one year. Learn at your own pace, revisit anytime.

Join the Class — Pay What You Can

The Instructors

Two decades of questions,
one conversation

Dr. Ilia Delio, OSF

Franciscan Sister & Villanova Theologian

Ilia holds doctorates in both pharmacology and historical theology—a rare combination that lets her bridge science and faith with unusual rigor. Author of over twenty books including The Unbearable Wholeness of Being and The Not-Yet God, and founder of the Center for Christogenesis. She wants to do theology “with people in the malls, in the parks, and on Facebook”—not just in the academy.

Dr. Tripp Fuller

Theologian, Podcaster & Luther Seminary Faculty

Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, postdoc at the University of Edinburgh. Founder of Homebrewed Christianity, host of one of the world’s most popular theology podcasts (2 million+ downloads last year), and author of Divine Self-Investment. His Process This newsletter has 75,000+ subscribers. He takes the Lakers and Lord of the Rings way too seriously.

Pricing

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You Can

$0If that’s what you have

$50Most common

$250Full value

A course like this is typically offered for $250 or more. But we believe this conversation is too important to put behind a paywall.

Your contribution helps make this possible for everyone—including pastors on tight budgets, students, and people in parts of the world where $250 is a month’s salary.

Not sure if this is for you? Sign up and watch the first lecture.

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All are equally welcome. Contribute what feels right.

“HBC classes have been an absolute lifeline for allowing me to have continuing education outside of the adult Sunday School setting. Many people have limited exposure to the entire spectrum of Christianity as well as other world religions in the church setting, and these classes are a wonderful resource in that regard.”

— John Pohl, MD, Pediatric Surgeon (University of Utah)

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the class meet?

The class is asynchronous—you can participate fully without being present at any specific time. Watch the lectures and Q&A replays whenever it works for you.

What if I can’t make the live sessions?

No problem. All lectures and Q&A replays are available on the password-protected Class Resource Page within 24 hours. You can watch on your own schedule.

How do I get access?

After you sign up, you’ll receive an email with access to the Class Resource Page, details on joining the Facebook group, and everything you need to get started.

Do I need Facebook?

No. Facebook is optional—just an additional way to connect with other participants. All the core content is on the Class Resource Page.

What if I’m “spiritual but not religious”?

Welcome. One of the things we’ll explore is why that category has grown—and what it might suggest about the Second Axial emergence. Whether you’re deconstructing, reconstructing, or constructing for the first time, this class offers resources for the journey.

What if I’m still pretty traditional in my faith?

Also welcome. This class isn’t about tearing down tradition—it’s about understanding where tradition came from and how it might evolve. Many participants are pastors and church leaders trying to help their communities navigate this terrain. You don’t have to agree with everything to get something valuable from the conversation.

Can our church or small group use this?

Yes! You’re welcome to use this class for Sunday School or small groups. If watching together, we encourage each person to sign up for access to the Resource Page and Facebook group. Each person can contribute individually, or the church can designate someone to make a donation on behalf of the group. Questions? Email classinfo@homebrewedchristianity.com.

Who produces this course?

Homebrewed Christianity — making academic theology accessible since 2008.

Join the Class — Pay What You Can

“I’ve taken several Homebrewed classes over the years, from Black theology to Kierkegaard to Bonhoeffer to Tolkien. From the episodes and the readings I’ve learned things I wouldn’t have otherwise had access to, from some of my favorite scholars or about some of my favorite topics. It’s been a treasure to be part of them.”

— Jonathan Stegall, faith-rooted organizer, abolitionist, designer, and coder

Ready?

Live Q&A sessions
begin May 29th!

Yes — I’m Ready to Explore This

P.S. — If you’ve ever felt like you’re “too much” for church but not ready to give up on faith, this class is for you. Ilia and Tripp have been where you are. So have thousands of others in this community. You don’t have to figure this out alone. And you don’t have to choose between your mind and your soul.

Something new is being born. Come find out what it is.

“The path forward requires nothing less than a complete reimagining of Christianity—not as a rescue operation from the world but as conscious participation in the world’s transformation.”— Ilia Delio

“God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands.”— Alfred North Whitehead

The post The Future of Religion: A Four-Week Online Class with Dr. Ilia Delio & Dr. Tripp Fuller appeared first on Association Of Catholic Priests.

A couple of weeks ago, on 10 May, the church celebrated the feast day of St Damien of Molokai.  

Even before he died of leprosy in 1889, the Belgian missionary was famed around the world for the courage and compassion he showed as the chaplain of an isolated settlement for Hawaiian lepers.  

He had volunteered, knowing that Molokai would be, in all likelihood, a death sentence. And it was.  

He was the sort of priest whom Pope Francis loved – a shepherd with the smell of the sheep, a rough diamond, perhaps, but generous to a fault.  

Surprisingly, through one of those stray sheep, one he never met, Fr Damien had an Australian connection, the great 19th century novelist Robert Louis Stevenson.  

RLS is best known for adventures like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, novels about swashbuckling heroes from the British Isles.  

But he ended his days far, far away, on a Pacific isle, Samoa. His travels in this part of the world took him to Sydney four times. He is featured in the brass plaques in Writer’s Walk at Circular Quay. 

RLS published only one piece of work in Sydney, but it is a remarkable one – a blistering defence of the reputation of Fr Damien.  

He was an improbable defender of a Catholic priest. As a proud Scot, he was deep dyed in Presbyterianism.  

As a bohemian rebel, he was an unbeliever. He had a complicated marriage with a divorced woman 10 years his senior.  

But he was big-hearted, passionate, and idealistic. And when he read in the 26 October 1889 issue of a Sydney newspaper called The Presbyterian a letter disparaging Fr Damien by a minister in Honolulu, the Rev C.M. Hyde, he erupted in volcanic fury.  

Rev Hyde had informed his Sydney readers that Fr Damien was “a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted”.  

Furthermore, “He was not a pure man in his relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and carelessness.”  

And finally, the work of this disreputable Papist cleric was useless anyway: “Other (sic) have done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal life.”  

In response, in 1890, RLS published an open letter which was – as often happens when writers are inhaling brimstone and warming their hands over the flames of righteous indignation – some 30 times longer than the minister’s casual slander.  

Unfortunately for Rev Hyde, RLS was a literary genius, one of the great prose stylists of the English language. It was a rebuke which would have touched the heart of Pope Francis.  

“Life in the lazaretto,” he wrote, “is an ordeal from which the nerves of a man’s spirit shrink, even as his eye quails under the brightness of the sun; you would have felt it was (even today) a pitiful place to visit and a hell to dwell in.  

“It is not the fear of possible infection. That seems a little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, and the disgust of the visitor’s surroundings, and the atmosphere of affliction, disease, and physical disgrace in which he breathes.” 

And yet, Fr Damien chose to minister there – he “shut-to with his own hand the doors of his own sepulchre.”  

How about the Rev Hyde’s sneers? 

“Damien was coarse,” he had written. “It is very possible,” roared RLS.  

“You make us sorry for the lepers, who had only a coarse old peasant for their friend and father. But you, who were so refined, why were you not there, to cheer them with the lights of culture?” 

“Damien was dirty,” said Hyde. “He was,” said RLS. “Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this dirty comrade! But the clean Dr Hyde was at his food in a fine house.” 

“Damien was headstrong – I believe you are right again; and I thank God for his strong head and heart.” 

As for the final accusation, RLS tunes his violin to a high C. “Damien was not a pure man in his relations with women, etc.” 

RLS had been in a pub in Samoa when a drunk said the same thing. A man sprang to his feet – another of Pope Francis’s stray sheep – and said “‘You miserable little —-’ (here is a word I dare not print). “You miserable little —-,’ he cried, ‘if the story were a thousand times true, can’t you see you are a million times a lower —- for daring to repeat it?’”  

And what if it were true, RLS asked. “The least tender should be moved to tears; the most incredulous to prayer. And all that you could do was to pen your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage!”  

And he concludes with these scathing words: 

“You had a father: suppose this tale were about him, and some informant brought it to you, proof in hand: I am not making too high an estimate of your emotional nature when I suppose you would regret the circumstance?  

“That you would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly since it shamed the author of your days? And that the last thing you would do would be to publish it in the religious press?  

“Well, the man who tried to do what Damien did, is my father, and the father of the man in the Apia bar, and the father of all who love goodness; and he was your father too, if God had given you grace to see it.” 

More than a hundred years later, when all the figures in this spat are nearly forgotten, RLS’s words still smoulder.  

They have particular relevance for today’s epidemic of detraction, slander and back-biting in social media. As both RLS and Pope Francis would advise us in the words of the Gospel, “judge not, lest you be judged.” 

The post A tale of righteous wrath appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

The In Lumine Fidei Gala Dinner delivered a landmark result for the restoration of Sydney’s mother church.

Sydney’s Catholic community gathered in force at the Sofitel Wentworth on 9 May for the In Lumine Fidei Gala Dinner, raising $1.2 million toward the restoration of St Mary’s Cathedral in what Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP described as “a once in a generation effort” to secure the future of the city’s mother church. 

“We’re here because of St Mary’s Cathedral,” said the evenings MC, Ben Fordham.  

“We are raising vital funds to enable its restoration and enhancements in order to welcome a million people a year.”  

And when the final tally came in, $1.2 million raised, the room erupted. 

“The gala dinner in support of St Mary’s Cathedral was a resounding success,” said Lisa Bartak, Director, Business Operations from the Archdiocese of Sydney. 

“The Catholic community came together in a powerful expression of love and support for the preservation of St Mary’s and all that it represents: a spiritual home for Catholics across Australia.  

“These conservation works will ensure every guest can experience the beauty, prayer, and sense of belonging that our Mother Church offers,” she said.  

Every dollar raised will go directly toward the restoration and renewal of St Mary’s Cathedral, securing it for the generations to come, and preparing it to welcome the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV in 2028 for the International Eucharistic Congress, Eucharist28. 

Among the featured projects is a universal access upgrade, ensuring the cathedral is genuinely accessible to all the elderly, young mothers with prams, and everyone in between. 

“St Mary’s stands to this day at the heart of our city and in many ways, as its soul,” said Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP, in his welcome address. 

“For generations, its spires and walls have stood as a quiet but constant witness to faith, to beauty and to hope.” 

The evening saw Archbishop Fisher launch the St Marys Cathedral Capital Campaign. 

Its aim, he said was “a once-in-a-generation effort to raise $50 million to preserve and enhance this great cathedral, so that it remains a living cathedral, not a museum.” 

If the cause was sacred, the guest list was nothing short of stellar.  

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended, joined by the Governor of New South Wales, Margaret Beazley AC KC, the Deputy Premier, Prue Car, the Opposition Leader, Kellie Sloane and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary, Susan Carter MLC. Former Governor-General Peter Cosgrove was also in the room. 

Diego Torre performed magnificently, alongside the luminous Silvia Colloca and the St Mary’s Cathedral Choir.  

The performances were described as some of the highlights of an already extraordinary evening. 

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised from the auction prizes throughout the evening. 

The centrepiece was a stunning original artwork by celebrated Australian artist Charles Billich, depicting St Mary’s Cathedral.  

A set of pearls found an enthusiastic new owner, snapped up by someone who wanted to bring them home that very night as a Mother’s Day gift.  

The opportunity of a dinner with the archbishop drew spirited bidding from across the room. 

“We need to look after this wonderful place that is such an important part of our Catholic tradition,” said one attendee.  

“I think it’s important we maintain it for the future, for our children,” said another.  

“I extend my sincere gratitude to everyone who attended and supported the evening through the raffle, silent and live auctions, and simply by being part of this historic night for our cathedral,” said Bartak.  

Donations to the St Marys Cathedral Capital Campaign can be made at https://www.stmaryscathedral.org/capital-campaign 

The post Sydney rises for St Mary’s: $1.2 million night to remember appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

Repetition, it’s said, can be the mother of learning. So, in light of recent Catholic debates about the pursuit of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, permit me to reprise, with slight adjustments, parts of a column from 24 years ago.  

The points I made then seem to me as salient today as when I first made them:  

In his [2002] World Day of Peace message, John Paul II taught a truth many Catholics have seemingly forgotten: that “peace,” in the classic Catholic sense of the term, is a matter of order, the order that is built through law and politics. 

After citing Vatican II’s teaching that peace is “the fruit of the right ordering of things with which the divine founder has invested human society,” John Paul reminded us that the “peace of order” has been the normative Catholic concept of peace for a very long time.  

As the pope put it, more than fifteen hundred years ago St Augustine argued that “the peace that can and must be built in this world is the peace of right order — tranquillitas ordinis, the tranquillity of order.”  

From Augustine’s City of God down to the modern papal magisterium, the Second Vatican Council, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, when the Catholic Church says “peace” it means “order” — the order that is built through politics and law on the foundations of justice (informed by charity) and freedom. 

“Peace” has many meanings. 

There is the “peace” that comes from a right relationship with God: the peace of inner serenity, which is a gift of grace.  

There is the “peace” of Isaiah’s vision of the “mountain … of the Lord,” where “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4): this is the peace of the Kingdom of God, a peace of God’s making, not ours. 

And then there is the “peace” of order. It is a humbler sort of peace. It coexists with bruised souls and broken hearts. 

It is a peace in which swords remain, sheathed or used to defend order, but are not yet beaten into plowshares. 

This is real-world peace, the Catholic Church teaches, and it can be built within and among nations. 

We know this by experience, for this is the peace we enjoy within democratic political communities. No one would suggest that all Americans live serenely within a right relationship with God, or that our country is a conflict-free zone.  

Yet the United States is at peace: the peace of a just political order, which is no small achievement for a society of [350] million human beings of dramatic religious, racial, ethnic, and philosophical diversity. 

Why are we at peace? Because we have ways other than mass violence to resolve our conflicts: law and politics, legislatures and courts, the open debate of a civil society. 

The same kind of “peace” obtains in those parts of the world that have decided to make diplomacy and law, not weapons, the instruments for resolving the inevitable conflicts that arise between nations. A war between France and Germany today is inconceivable. Why? Because the French and Germans have become saints? Please. Because there are no conflicts between them? Hardly. No, there is real-world peace in one historic cockpit of European conflict because a thick network of international political, legal, and economic institutions has given the French and the Germans other ways to settle their differences.  

It’s the peace of order. 

The peace of order is the peace that the just-war tradition of moral reasoning has sought to restore or build since Augustine first formulated just-war principles in the early fifth century.  

It is a serious mistake, therefore, to think that the just-war tradition and the pursuit of peace are somehow in opposition to each other.  

The peace of order is the end; the just-war tradition asks: When and how can that peace of order be restored or built by means of the proportionate and discriminate use of armed force? It is the end of peace that justifies the means of military action. 

That is why defining the morally defensible goal being sought by use of armed force is a primary component of what the just-war way of thinking asks from statesmen.  

That definition is what has been missing from the Administration’s Iranian adventure, in which the goal seems to change with dizzying rapidity.  

What would the peace of order look like in the Persian Gulf? That is the crucial just-war question that remains to be answered.       

George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.

The post George Weigel: The peace we can make appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

Affluent countries are focussed on housing shortages; and many poorer countries have always had that focus. Many Australians can’t buy a house; and many overseas want to make Australia their home. 

What’s the deal with homes and houses? 

Claiming exclusive use over part of the earth’s surface for your people, and subdividing that up into homes for our families, communities, and now singles, is an ancient drive within us. We are bodily and so we need a place to be. We cultivate that space, care for it, and claim at least some occupancy rights over it. We then tell ourselves’ there’s no place like home’, ‘home is where the heart is’, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ and other phrases that mark our sense of special connection. 

A great sadness for many is being separated from home (land, town, village, street, building…). A great joy is inviting others into your home (land, town…). And one of the great fears is home invasion, whether of your territory as in Ukraine or your apartment as happens across Sydney daily. 

Part of living in the consumer economy is being tempted to see everything as possessions and then becoming over-possessive. So we might think of home as the house we live in and focus on its property value. We’re taught home-ownership is a dream (though renting often makes for a happy home, and is normal even for very wealthy people overseas). But home-making is an even higher dream, and reminds us that the grandest private house may not be much of a home. 

How we live as individuals might help explain how the whole country sees itself: either as a home that welcomes strangers, or a possession that represents national wealth. So, we should all take an interest in how people think of their homes and houses, for it affects how we regard the rest of the world. 

A test for house-or-home is how we regard something like the ocean. Many people aspire to live close by the sea. This could be for beauty, tranquillity, leisure, curiosity, exercise. But there’s a risk that it’s just for ‘ocean view’, ie an extra feature adding another half mill to the asking price. 

Nature’s great monuments are the oceans and mountains, and many of us do want to live close by these, in safe valleys or secure bays. Christians recall God the Father met his servants on mountain tops, and his Son gathered up the first Christians by the water. And neither hills nor beaches are ever completely quiet – there’s always a breeze, the natural element we associate with the Holy Spirit. 

Still today, during our secular holy-days we divide between mountain people and ocean people. There’s a deep human inclination to find God, and often to seek him in natural environments. People don’t usually build on the tops of mountains or edges of the surf and so we can be alone there with our thoughts and without distraction. I’ve often felt at home on Scottish mountains and Aussie beaches. They’re not a house, they’ve no walls, I’ve no exclusive rights – but I don’t want to leave them! I’m at home. 

Home is more than house, and though we should support the dream of home ownership, it’s best if the inner dream of a home guides the outer dream of the grand possession. A real home never goes down in value. 

But what about the homeless person I see every day – really. He is as far from a bed as Jesus and his disciples were. Where there is homelessness there’s loneliness, and the vast task of housing the homeless often begins with noticing and then offering to ease the loneliness. The almost unimaginable journey from homelessness to a house begins with showing people we share a common home. The homeless person I see every day lives on our beautiful beach, and that’s as much his home as mine.

The post First principles: Houses and Homes appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

In his new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV reflects on the profound cultural and spiritual challenges emerging within a digital age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, algorithms, and mediated forms of communication. While acknowledging the extraordinary possibilities of these technologies, he cautions that the human person must never be reduced to data, attention, or consumption. Instead, communication must remain ordered toward truth, communion, and authentic encounter. 

As the Holy Father suggests, the challenge before us is whether our technological culture will resemble Babel, marked by fragmentation, control, and self-interest, or Jerusalem, a place of communion, meaning, and shared human dignity. 

Pope Leo’s reflections are especially relevant for the church today. Increasingly, people encounter ideas, form perceptions, and search for meaning within digital environments long before they enter a parish, meet a priest, or experience Christian community firsthand. 

This raises an important pastoral question for the church: how do we communicate the Gospel faithfully within a culture shaped by attention, media, and technology, without reducing the Gospel itself to a product or strategy? 

A personal path into communication 

Before working in the church, my path was quite different. After studying marketing and economics at university, I began my career in media buying, working for the formidable Harold Mitchell at a time when he was establishing a new ‘e-company’, as it was called back then. It was a formative and eye-opening experience for a young and naïve graduate, offering insight into how organisations seek to communicate, reach people, and connect their message in a way that resonates. 

As AI surges, Pope Leo offers only viable humane critique

At that stage, as someone who would have described himself as agnostic, I could not have imagined that my path would one day lead me to serve in the church. Looking back, however, I can see that what I learned in those early years was not without value. 

It has helped me to appreciate, through both the strengths and shortcomings of what I encountered in those early years, that communication at its best is not a matter of manipulation or persuasion, but of authenticity, meaning, and drawing attention to what is enduring and true. Its purpose is not to manufacture interest, but to allow something genuine and meaningful to be seen, recognised, and received. There is a clear resonance here with St Paul’s words to the Corinthians, where he speaks of renouncing “the shameful things one hides” and instead commending the Gospel “by the open statement of the truth” (2 Cor 4:2). 

Beyond reputation management 

This also highlights an important distinction in the life of the church. Communications, as it is often practiced, can become largely reactive, focused on managing issues, responding to crises, and safeguarding reputation. These are necessary responsibilities, though they do not exhaust the church’s task. The missionary challenge is not simply to manage perception, but to invite encounter; not merely to maintain institutional presence, but to help people move toward Christ. 

What is needed a more outward, missionary attentiveness. In a modest way, reflection on how people encounter messages, form perceptions, and respond to invitation can be valuable here, not as a way of commercialising the Gospel, but as a way of engaging people with greater care and intentionality. It invites us to consider who we are seeking to reach, what they are searching for, and how we might accompany them toward an encounter with Christ. In this sense, it is less about promotion and more about pastoral intentionality, ensuring that the Gospel is not only faithfully proclaimed, but also heard, received, and lived. 

In a small way, that is what digital evangelisation is about. It is not marketing in a commercial sense. It is attentiveness to how the Gospel is shared in a way that people today can receive. 

The search for meaning in digital spaces 

We find ourselves at a significant moment in the life of the church. Increasingly, people are searching for meaning, identity, and faith not by walking through the doors of a parish but by turning to their phones. As affirmed at the recent Synod of Sydney, the growth of search activity, podcasts, and faith-based content on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube points to a quiet but real spiritual curiosity, particularly among young adults. Before people encounter a priest, a parishioner, or a community, they often encounter a screen. This presents an invitation for the Church to respond. 

As affirmed by that synod, if the church is not present in that space, the story of Jesus is either unheard or told by others without its fullness. Digital evangelisation, therefore, is not manipulation but articulation. It is the task of communicating in whom we are known and loved, why we exist, and why His Gospel matters. It is the church learning to express her mission within the culture of our time. 

Pope Leo XIV and human dignity 

In this context, Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas offers us an important framework for the church’s engagement with technology and AI. The Holy Father cautions against forms of digital culture that diminish the human person or replace authentic relationship with simulation and control. His emphasis on protecting human dignity within rapidly changing technological systems is especially relevant for those seeking to evangelise in digital spaces today. 

For parishes and local communities, I would suggest that the goal in embracing this mission is not to be everywhere but to be intentional. The question is no longer whether we should be online but how we meet people meaningfully in the spaces they inhabit. 

The journey from curiosity to belonging 

Australian bishops welcome Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical ‘Magnifica humanitas’

One way to approach this is to consider the journey of someone new to the parish. It often begins with a simple moment of awareness, perhaps a passing encounter online or an invitation from a friend, which leads them to explore further. As interest grows, this can develop into engagement, where a person takes an initial step such as attending an enquiry night, an Alpha course, or a parish gathering. From there, formation provides a more intentional space for learning and reflection, through RCIA, small groups, or faith formation programs. 

This can lead into participation, as the person begins to attend Sunday Mass regularly, builds relationships, and becomes involved in parish ministries or community life. Over time, this journey matures into a desire to share the faith with others, whether through inviting a friend, offering their own testimony, or serving in the life of the parish. This reflects the lived experience of many who come to faith today, gradual, relational, and shaped through a series of meaningful encounters. 

For parishes, this invites honest reflection. Where are we strongest along this journey, and where do people tend to fall away? Many communities offer rich opportunities for participation, particularly through the sacraments and ministries, though they may struggle to create awareness beyond those already connected. Others generate attention through digital activity or events, yet without a clear invitation into deeper formation or parish life, people can drift away, sometimes even soon after initiation. 

Evangelisation begins with encounter 

One of the church’s enduring insights into evangelisation is that the work of the Gospel begins not with outcomes, but with engagement or encounter. Christ does not begin by instructing from a distance. He draws near, asks, listens, and engages the hearts of those He meets. “What are you looking for?” He asks the first disciples, inviting not compliance but a response born of desire (John 1:38). 

This pattern is reflected in the church’s teaching. Evangelisation is not simply the communication of ideas but the sharing of a living reality, one that first attracts before it is fully understood. As the late Pope Francis reminded us, the church grows by “attraction”, not proselytism. 

In this light, engagement is not a technique but a participation in Christ’s own way of relating. If people are not first drawn, if their curiosity is not awakened or their hearts stirred, they are unlikely to take a further step. Digital evangelisation, then, cannot be reduced to the broadcasting of information. It seeks to open a space for encounter, to foster connection, and to invite a response to the Gospel. 

Understanding the digital ecology 

As we have continued to learn in this space, it is clear that different groups require different approaches. Young adults often encounter the church through short-form video, podcasts, or personal testimonies shared online. They are drawn to authenticity and lived experience. Couples and families frequently seek practical support, parenting guidance, or a sense of community, often during quieter moments late in the evening. Parish leaders are looking for clarity, tools, and encouragement as they seek to renew their communities. 

A basic understanding of the digital ‘ecology’ can assist here. Distribution channels such as social media, YouTube, and search platforms create visibility and initial contact. These platforms often serve as the front door of evangelisation. Increasingly, short-form video plays a significant role in discovery. 

Alongside these are ‘owned’ channels, including parish websites, email newsletters, registration systems, and in-person events. These are platforms and touchpoints that the parish or organisation directly manages and shapes, allowing for deeper relationships, clearer communication, and a more intentional invitation into the life of the community. It is here that interest can develop into commitment. 

From content to journey 

Pope Leo XIV tells Vatican press conference AI must be disarmed for humanity’s sake

Many parishes are already active online, often with a genuine desire to serve their communities. Common efforts include sharing Mass times, feast day reflections, and parish notices, which are important in supporting those who are already connected. Alongside this, there is an opportunity to gently expand that presence to include content that also reaches those who may be searching or exploring faith. A simple testimony, a clear explanation of the Mass, or a thoughtful response to a common question can provide a welcoming point of entry for those taking an initial step. 

In this way, attention to digital evangelisation invites a shift from content to journey. The focus becomes how our communications can support a stage of discipleship and gently invite a next step. This reflects how many people come to faith today, in a gradual and relational way, shaped through a series of meaningful encounters. 

In a crowded digital environment, what stands out is not complexity but authenticity, a witness that is recognisably real, arising from within a Christian life being lived and therefore capable of being received as true. A simple and honest story of conversion often carries more weight than a highly produced message. A parish that shares real stories of faith and encounter is far more likely to resonate than one that communicates only announcements. 

Simple but intentional steps 

The church has always adapted her methods while remaining faithful to her mission. Today, that adaptation includes the digital space. In good news and in practical terms, this does not require large budgets or specialised expertise. Many effective initiatives are simple. A short weekly reflection from the parish priest. A welcoming, clear and up-to-date website. A follow-up message to visitors. A small team supporting communication with purpose. Over time, these steps can significantly expand a parish’s reach. 

Of course, the rubber hits the road in the carparks, pews and halls of parish life. If a parish is not welcoming, responsive and mission-focused, digital efforts will have limited effect. Those who make contact online will, in time we hope, encounter the parish in person and so the experience must hold together with integrity. 

Faithfulness in a digital age 

Ultimately, the challenge before us is not technological complexity but missionary intentionality. As Pope Leo XIV reminds us in Magnifica Humanitas, technology must remain at the service of human dignity and authentic relationship. We must resist becoming merely “user tools of an algorithmic order” and ensure that our digital spaces foster communion rather than isolation. 

The real question, then, is what concrete step a parish, ministry, or apostolate might take to help move someone from curiosity to encounter. Digital evangelisation can be a valuable instrument in this mission, and the church has an important responsibility to witness to the prudent and genuinely human use of emerging technologies. In this sense, digital evangelisation is not ultimately about mastering platforms or keeping pace with innovation, but about faithfulness to the church’s mission within the digital culture of our time – and faithfulness to the truth of the human person in Christ. 

We can have confidence that the same Lord who called the first disciples continues to call people today, often through the digital spaces that now shape so much of contemporary life. Our task is not simply to occupy those spaces, but to inhabit them with attentiveness, authenticity, and a willingness to accompany others patiently toward Christ. In this way, even the smallest digital gesture, a personal story shared online, a thoughtful reply, a welcoming message, a short invitation to prayer or community, can become the beginning of genuine encounter, opening a path from screen to relationship, from curiosity to belonging, and ultimately toward Christ. 

The post From Babel to Jerusalem: Digital evangelisation in light of Magnifica Humanitas appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

I spent my Easter Sunday with the Indonesian Catholic Community, rejoicing with their exemplary choir during Mass and feasting upon their delicious Ikan and Ayam afterwards. 

During Mass, my 18-month-old daughter engaged in her usual Sunday routine: using every available pew and kneeler as just another piece of gymnastic equipment.  

As I chased her up and down the nave of the church each time she managed to escape our pew, I was afforded a great view: a sea of Batik and other elements of traditional Indonesian dress crowding the church that Sunday. 

And I was able to reflect on how wonderful it will be to see each of Sydney’s many Catholic communities – from around the world – attired in their traditional dress, singing hymns in their language, during the epic Eucharistic Procession led by Pope Leo XIV through the streets of the CBD in 2028. 

As we all process to the altar on that day, I am convinced that it will be a sight of truly biblical proportions and imagery: “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (Rev 7:9) 

There will also be opportunities throughout the course of the week for each of our different ritual and migrant communities – the Maronites, Melkites, Syriacs, Chaldeans, Samoans, Tongans, Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Italians, etc. – to showcase the best of their liturgical prowess and culinary hospitality.  

Each group will be offered the opportunity to receive pilgrims on a given day in their local communities, and welcome them as fellow members of the Body of Christ. 

Sydney during that week will hum to the sound of a hundred Catholic Choirs, trained and prepared for this event; our churches will be beautified to showcase the very best that we have to offer; our people will be well-formed to appreciate our celebration of the Mass as a pledge of the heavenly liturgy at the end of time. 

But the preparation for that spectacular cannot wait until 2028. 

It must start now. 

Working in the Chancery is an object lesson in one truth universally acknowledged: the mills of God grind slowly (but they grind exceedingly small). 

We will get there in the end, and Eucharist28 will be marvellous. 

But we are under no illusions as to how much time we have to build grand visions in the sky: we must rapidly begin preparing people and places for this extraordinary encounter with Christ in the Eucharist. 

Case in point, it is essential that we order the hundreds of chasubles for the bishops and thousands of stoles for concelebrating priests that will visit in 2028. 

And we must do it – tomorrow.  

They are not created by an army of religious sisters overnight.  

We have already started inviting speakers, presenters and performers – diaries fill up quickly and 2028 is not so far away in the minds of our famous international invitees. 

All of this is by means of segue: how are you helping to prepare yourself and your community for Eucharist28?  

2026 is designated as the “Year of Prayer” – we need your spiritual support to make the biblically epic vision outlined earlier a reality.  

And if you are wondering what to pray for, the answer is contained in the mission statement for Eucharist28: “That our Lord Jesus Christ in his Eucharistic Mystery be ever better known, loved and served.” 

If you think people don’t yet know Jesus, you should see the looks on their faces when I mention Eucharist28! 

We need your help: to spread the word about Eucharist28 and what an encounter with Christ will do to transform our people and our nation. 

We need your support: to pray for eucharistic renewal and revival in our country. 

We need your presence: whatever your background, language, or ethnicity, we want you to be part of the festival of faith that will be Eucharist28. 

The theme of Eucharist28 is “This is My Body, Given for You.” 

How do those words of Christ apply to you, in your context and your community, and how will they change what you pray, do and say over the next three years?  

If you would like more information on Eucharist28, or to be added to the mailing list for fortnightly updates, please visit our website and register your interest: eucharist28.org  

The post Preparing now for Eucharist28 appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated the Ascension, which was Jesus’ great homecoming after a long exile. This Sunday is also about coming home, but this time it’s our great homecoming.  

Writing about the Trinity is daunting, especially for someone like me who is not a theologian. My only consolation is that smarter people than me have also fallen at this hurdle – even St Augustine, who wrote an entire treatise about the Trinity. And it’s meant to be daunting, because it’s like looking at your own creation story and your own destination all at once. 

You realise that the funny, happy, foolish sort of life you’ve been bumbling along in is just a tiny blip in a vast eternity. And yet your blip-ness is infinitely precious and valuable to the God who made you out of nothing.  

You and everything around you were created out of nothing. Just take a moment to think about that.  

You’ve also been created as an immortal being. However, due to circumstances beyond your control, you are currently stuck in a fallen body. Never mind. This is only temporary, and it’s a good training ground to prepare the sort of immortal being you’re going to be for the rest of eternity.  

You have been given the gift of free will, plus a sleepless adversary who hates you and will do anything to destroy you. But you’ve also been given powerful weapons and protectors against him if you choose to use them. 

There’s a reason quest stories – and these days, video games – are so compelling. It’s because they reflect to us in a shallow way the dreadful and challenging real quest that we’re all on right now. But in this real-life quest, we aren’t spectators. We are active participants, and we don’t have a choice about that. 

We only have a choice about how we tackle the quest each day. Are we smart about it, or very stupid? 

Your real-life quest will end one day in your death and judgement. That’s when we – and you – find out who you really are. Hopefully you have used your weapons wisely and exercised your free will like a racehorse in the pursuit of goodness.  

If you have, then you won’t be withered into a twig by the sight of what’s waiting for you on the other side.  

Reality check: I hope you’re not clinging to the idea of having wings and standing around on clouds. Human beings don’t have wings in this life, so we won’t have them in the next life. We don’t become angels (despite what well-meaning people say at funerals). 

You’re designed to live forever in a renewed, re-created Earth in a resurrected human body. Your final destination is to live in the light of the three-way relationship of perfect love and equality that is the Holy Trinity.  

This divine relationship will be so close to you that you won’t need churches or sacraments.  

So if things like love, relationship, and equality make you feel uncomfortable in this life, how will you ever enjoy them for eternity? 

Everything that you do in this life is preparing you for eternity. There is no standing still in the spiritual life, so you should always be moving in the right direction. To live in the Trinity for eternity, you must start whetting your appetite for it now and emptying out your soul to receive an eternity of love. 

Once there, your little human heart will pour out endless torrents of love into the Trinity, who will pour their love back into you. You will be caught up into that torrent of love, which paradoxically also includes all the other people caught up in that torrent, in their beautiful individuality.  

We don’t lose our individuality in the Trinity; we just have it perfected, so that we will literally be our best selves in body and soul. Every good act you do in this life is making it easier for you to receive this outpouring of perfect happiness. Every evil act you do is making it harder.  

There’s no room in the Trinity for your pride, snobbery, greed, selfishness, control-freakery, and malice. People who think the idea of heaven is a facile children’s story could not be further from the truth. Heaven is painfully real – more real than anything you see around you.  

Gaining it is a joy you will never regret. Losing it will be an eternity of regret.  

And I hope to see you there, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

The post Philippa Martyr: Your quest has already begun appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

‘Flowing Outward’ Holy Trinity – 31 May 2026

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The Sistine Chapel: Revelations immersive exhibition now standing outside St Mary’s Cathedral is an ambitious cultural undertaking which will hopefully also be a blessing for the city. It also poses a challenge: how well can we moderns still truly contemplate something? 

Launching the exhibition a couple of weeks ago, Archbishop Fisher invited visitors to “let the painted stories reveal themselves to you anew.” In an age of endless scrolling and shrinking attention spans, that may require more discipline than we think. 

The Roman chapel’s frescoes by Michelangelo and other Renaissance masters were never intended to be glanced at on the way to doing something else. The scenes of creation, sin, judgement and redemption unfolding across the ceiling were surely meant to impress viewers, but also to draw them into contemplation. Sacred art seeks our patience. It can teach us and lead us to pray. 

Christian tradition has long understood that beauty can pierce the soul and awaken wonder, longing and transcendence. St Bonaventure, St Thomas Aquinas and St John of the Cross each taught that created beauty can point beyond itself to God. 

So the church has always cared about beauty as essential in proclaiming the Gospel. A fresco, a piece of sacred music, or the way sunlight is permitted to fall into a cathedral or quiet chapel can often reach people more deeply than discourse alone. 

The Sistine Chapel installation is an incredible technological feat and will attract tourists, parishioners, art and history lovers, school groups and curious passers-by. But its greatest value is in the opportunity offers to slow down, look, and allow its beauty to tell us something of God’s love for us.

The post The Sistine Chapel: Revelations reminds us of beauty and God’s love appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

Pope Leo XIV will preside over a worldwide rosary for peace 30 May, uniting Marian shrines across continents in simultaneous prayer to close the Catholic Church’s month of devotion to the Virgin Mary.

The pope will lead the prayer from the Lourdes grotto in the Vatican Gardens at 7pm local time on Saturday, with participating shrines joining via livestream. In the United States, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington will take part at 1pm Eastern time.

The livestream will be available at vaticannews.va and via the Washington basilica at nationalshrine.org/mass, where those gathered in person will pray from the Great Upper Church.

Coordinated by the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelisation, the rosary initiative brings together some of the most visited Marian pilgrimage sites in the world, including the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fatima, Portugal, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France and the Sanctuary of Our Lady Queen of Peace in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In war-torn Ukraine, the Sanctuary of the Mother of God in Zarvanytsia will take part, as will the Shrine of St Charbel Annaya in Byblos, Lebanon.

Other participating sites include the International Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in Antipolo, Philippines, and the Pontifical Shrine of the Holy House in Loreto, Italy.

Pope Leo will pray the joyful mysteries, with each of the five decades dedicated to those suffering the effects of war and violence, and entrusted to the intercession of Mary, Queen of Peace.

The first decade is offered for victims of war, with particular attention to the most vulnerable. The second is for those who bring words of hope and the comfort of faith to populations living under conflict. The third decade honors medical personnel, paramedics and volunteers providing humanitarian aid in war zones.

The fourth mystery is dedicated to prisoners, those enduring violence and all who suffer humiliations that violate human dignity. The fifth and final joyful mystery is for an end to war and the establishment of lasting peace throughout the world.

All people and all shrines around the world are invited to join the pope in praying the rosary for peace. Parishes who participate are asked to inform the Vatican’s Dicastery of Evangelization after the event via an online form.

Limited free tickets are also available to join the pope in prayer in the Vatican Gardens. People are also welcome to participate from St. Peter’s Square, where large screens will broadcast the pope’s rosary.

The post Pope Leo asks Catholics worldwide to pray rosary for peace May 30 appeared first on The Catholic Weekly.

Pope Leo met with the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, at the Vatican on May 28.

Johnson, who has served as mayor since 2023, met with the pontiff for the first time since his election. He also used the occasion to formally invite the pontiff to visit his native city, Chicago.

In a press briefing to journalists after the audience, Johnson explained that the two discussed the policies of the United States government under President Donald Trump, including immigration and the Iran conflict.

Johnson: Trumpʼs actions in Iran are tyrannical

The Democratic mayor sharply criticized Trump in remarks to journalists, calling him a “tyrant” as well as a “disgrace” for involving the U.S. in the Israel-Iran conflict. He also said he discussed his concerns about the administration with Pope Leo and described his recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, as a “call to action” to work to avoid wars.

“I think the popeʼs encyclical is a call to action for the entire planet,” Johnson told journalists at the briefing. “Illegal wars do not leave just a trail of tears and trauma, but it also harms and brutalize our humanity. The economic drive with which [Trump] is moving is selfish.”

Leo XIV has regularly criticized the U.S.-Israel war in Iran as unjust.

Johnson, reflecting on his discussions with the pope, stated that “his position around Trump was more about disagreement with his approach.”

“In the midst of a brutal, horrific, and ignorant tyrant that is currently occupying the White House, it is imperative that we really walk in the true essence of our faith. The impact of his failures on our global economy is quite severe. It is a disgrace to the sensibility of our humanity,” Johnson said.

The Chicago mayor also said the two spoke about the Trump administrationʼs immigration enforcement, specifically raids by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We did discuss ICE. The pope wanted to know how ICE impacted our city and whether there were still examples of ICE raids happening in our city. I talked about how our rapid response team came together to support families. And then I talked about my executive orders, for which he was very gracious and encouraging, especially those I signed to protect the people of Chicago.”

Praise for Leoʼs apology for slavery

Leo XIV presented his first encyclical on May 25 at the Vatican, offering moral guidance amid widespread concern about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence.

In the text, Leo issued an apology for the Churchʼs role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Johnson praised the pope for his courage and explained that he had discussed the legacy of slavery with him.

“We talked about the conditions that the long legacy of slavery and disinvestment has had on Black Americans and Black people around the world,” Johnson said. “I engaged in a conversation with him around reparations and why it is important to work to repair the harm caused by the brutal legacy of slavery.”

Yusef Jackson, the son of renowned civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., was also part of the mayorʼs delegation that visited the pope. He praised Leo for his apology on behalf of the Church for slavery.

“The pope is a powerful man. The color of his title commands respect around the world. For him to use the color of that title, coming from Chicago, a very segregated and class-divided city, with the bona fides to be a freedom fighter, meant a lot to me. He is a pope that I agree with,” Jackson said.

An invitation to come to Chicago

Johnson also presented the pope with an official letter inviting him to visit Chicago and offer Mass at Grant Park. He wrote the letter after being advised by the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Speaking about the possibility of a future visit by Leo, he described his feelings and those of the city as hopeful.

“We are going to remain hopeful. We have an open invitation for the pope to come to the city of Chicago. Ultimately, it will be his decision whether his schedule allows him to come. Some of the greatest voices for justice come from the city of Chicago. And that beloved city, of course, birthed Pope Leo XIV.”

Along with the official invitation letter, the pontiff was presented with a ceremonial key to the city of Chicago.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the first name of Cardinal Blase Cupich. (Published May 29, 2026)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has raised the cap for Afrikaner refugees but kept capacity restrictions on refugees from other countries, which sparked disapproval from Bishop Brendan J. Cahill of the Diocese of Victoria, Texas.

Cahill, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, welcomed the decision to admit 10,000 more Afrikaners as refugees but said in a statement that resettlement opportunities should be more broadly available.

Afrikaners are a white minority descendent of Dutch settlers. In February, the White House issued a statement that accused the South African government of racial discrimination against Afrikaners through land seizures permitted under the Expropriation Act 13 of 2024. The South African government denies racial discrimination.

On May 28, the administration updated the federal register to change the cap on Afrikaner refugees from 7,500 to 17,500, citing an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation.”

Cahill, in a May 28 statement, said the U.S. has a long-standing moral and historical commitment to offering refuge to people fleeing persecution but stressed that the U.S. refugee program should not be limited to “favoring one particular group.”

“For decades, the United States was known for offering this opportunity, not favoring one particular group but granting relief in accordance with our laws, our shared values, and the national interest,” he said. “Today, however, that is sadly not the case.”

He urged the government to restore broader refugee admissions and ensure that vulnerable people of all backgrounds have access to safety.

“We appreciate the administration’s acknowledgement that our country can continue to resettle refugees, and we renew our call for resettlement to be extended further to others in need, including those persecuted on the basis of their faith, the likes of whom have no access to refuge in our country at this time,” Cahill said.

Fulani militants caused the highest number of deaths among all religious communities in Nigeria in the past year, according to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

“Conflicting media narratives and reported government censorship have hindered accurate analysis of the identities and motivations of the alarming number of armed nonstate actors that violate religious freedom in Nigeria,” USCIRF said in a recent issue update examining how Fulani militant groups have contributed to “deteriorating religious freedom conditions” in Nigeria.

Though some cite economic and environmental factors or genocidal intent against non-Muslims as driving Fulani-led violence, USCIRF said, “in fact, multiple and overlapping factors, including religion in many cases, likely spur Fulani militants to attack communities or individuals.”

The Fulani are a Muslim-majority ethnic group that originates from northern Nigeria and represents around 6% of Nigeria’s total population of about 242.4 million people. Among the Fulani population, an estimated 30,000 operate as militant groups of 10 to 1,000 members across the country and are concentrated mostly in the northwest and Middle Belt region, according to USCIRF.

“Regardless of these complex motivating factors, the escalation of Fulani-led land invasions and other violent assaults has yielded the same outcomes: severely disrupting the lives, livelihoods, and ability to worship of many Christian and Muslim farmers while triggering their mass displacement and depriving them of their lands,” USCIRF said.

The commission cited instances of Fulani militants targeting both non-Fulani Muslim communities and Christian communities in the Middle Belt region, burning homes and churches, killing hundreds, and using sexual violence and kidnapping as tools of intimidation or extortion.

USCIRF estimated that Fulani attacks have resulted in the displacement of at least 1.3 million people in the Middle Belt region, leading them into “unsanitary and unsafe conditions in displacement camps.”

The response of federal and state authorities to Fulani attacks has been described as “unsatisfactory at best and complicit at worst,” USCIRF said, noting that victims have reported consistent failure of security forces to respond promptly to attacks on their communities and that “some Christian advocates have continued to suggest that security forces responding to or investigating attacks routinely show favoritism toward Muslim communities.”

USCIRF said Fulani militants “have continued to carry out large-scale incursions onto Christian farmers’ agricultural lands, violent raids on Christian and Muslim religious sites, and kidnappings of laity and leaders from both religions” despite the Trump administration’s designation of Nigeria as a country of particular concern (CPC) in October 2025 and ongoing bilateral security discussions.

“As a result, central Nigeria remains entrenched in an intense, daily, and seemingly perpetual crisis of insecurity — a crisis that is likely to persist until the federal and several state governments create broader underlying conditions that are more conducive to the safe practice of religious freedom,” the commission said.