Category: 2024 News

MALMÖ, Sweden (OSV News) – While many Catholics around the world rejoiced upon hearing the news that Pope Francis had approved a second miracle attributed to Blessed Carlo Acutis, none was happier than his mother, Antonia Salzano.

“We were very happy, of course, as you can imagine,” Salzano said in a telephone interview with OSV News May 24. “It was great news because we were waiting for this declaration — especially for all the devotees he has around the world.”

Yet for her, the approval of the miracle “was a big sign of hope because through (Carlo’s) example, he gave witness to values that are for everybody; not just for (believers), but for nonbelievers, like helping the poor, human respect, the love for nature, love for the environment.”

It’s also the fulfillment of the teen’s lifelong dream of becoming a saint, which he had expressed since he was a boy, she said.

“He always said, ‘I want to please God,'” Salzano told OSV News. “When he did his first holy Communion — when he was 7 years old — he wrote, ‘To be united with God: this is my life program.’ And he maintained this promise all his life until the end, until his death.”

Before his death from leukemia in 2006, Carlo was an average teen with an above-average knack for computers. He used that knowledge to create an online database of Eucharistic miracles around the world.

Although Salzano vividly remembers her son’s devotion to Jesus and the Virgin Mary and his care for the poor, including using his own money to purchase sleeping bags for the homeless, she also remembers him as an average teenager who enjoyed life.

“He loved (soccer), he loved basketball, he liked animals, he liked to play. A lot of friends loved him very much because he was always joking, making films,” she recalled.

“But at the center of his life was Jesus; he had a daily meeting (with Jesus) through the holy Mass, Eucharistic adoration, and the holy rosary. This was characteristic (of Carlo). And when you open the door of your heart to God, your ordinary life becomes extraordinary.”

“This is Carlo’s secret,” she continued. “And this is possible for everybody because Carlo had a simple spirituality. He didn’t have the stigmata, or apparitions, or (experienced) levitation. He had a simple childhood. Everything Carlo did was in Jesus, through Jesus and for Jesus.”

As part of his sainthood cause, the young teen’s body was exhumed and transferred to a place suitable for public veneration, the Shrine of the Renunciation at the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi in 2019.

The first miracle attributed to Carlo’s intercession was approved by Pope Francis in February 2020. It involved a young Brazilian boy who was completely healed from a rare congenital disease of the pancreas. In October of that year, the teen was beatified during a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.

The second miracle, which now paves the way for Carlo’s canonization, was approved by the pope May 23 after a meeting with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

According to the website of the dicastery, Pope Francis recognized the miraculous healing of Valeria Valverde, a young Costa Rican woman living in Florence who suffered a severe head injury.

The same day her mother visited Carlo’s tomb, Valverde “regained the ability to breathe on her own, and the following day, doctors recorded the recovery of upper limb motility and partial speech,” the dicastery said.

Salzano told OSV News that she spoke with Valverde who was “suspended between life and death” before her mother prayed at the tomb of the young teen.

“The mother was a woman of faith. She prayed; she went to Carlo because she had a devotion (to him) and kneeled in front of his grave all day praying for her daughter’s healing and she received the grace,” she said.

But for the future saint’s mother, countless other miracles have been attributed to Carlo since his death.

“Consider that when he died, people started to pray to him spontaneously and the first miracle occurred the day of his funeral,” Salzano told OSV News. “A woman diagnosed with breast cancer and was about to start chemotherapy prayed to Carlo to heal her. And she was healed completely without any chemotherapy instantly. It was incredible; two days (after the funeral), she did all the examinations and there was nothing. (The cancer) had disappeared.”

Pope Francis has praised the young teen as a role model for today’s young people, who are often tempted by the traps of “self-absorption, isolation, and empty pleasure.”

Salzano recalled one of her son’s now most well-known quotes, “All are born originals, but many die as photocopies” and said that everyone is unique and shares “a special call to holiness.”

With all the trials Christians, especially young people, face today, Carlo’s life serves as a reminder that every person has “beautiful things” inside them and to “not be scared” but “be confident.”

“I think that is very important nowadays because young people tend to imitate very much,” Salzano said.

Carlo tells “each one of us that we are special, that we are unique and especially remember that there is an afterlife and that somebody created us, that loves us, that wanted us to be alive,” she told OSV News.

“We are not made to be people in this universe of chaos without a goal. God created us for a goal, and that goal is paradise,” Salzano said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – As young delegates and the coordinators of youth and young adult ministry from the world’s bishops’ conferences gathered near Rome, an archbishop asked them: “How can we be a church that young people come back to, not a church they leave? How can our young people find hope and courage in the church and transform their lives?”

The questions were posed by Archbishop Peter Chung Soon-taick of Seoul, South Korea, host of World Youth Day 2027, during the Vatican-sponsored International Youth Ministry Congress May 23 in Ciampino, just south of Rome.

The Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life convoked the three-day congress to consider answers to the archbishop’s questions as they marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ exhortation to young people, “Christus Vivit,” reviewed World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal, and looked forward to the Holy Year 2025 jubilee of young adults and, more remotely, to WYD in Seoul.

The theme for the gathering was “Synodal Youth Ministry: New Leadership Styles and Strategies.”

Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the dicastery, said that since the 2018 Synod of Bishops on young people, many bishops’ conferences, dioceses and Catholic movements have worked with young adults to uncover new ways of communicating with them, to set up structures to listen to them and encourage their participation and to launch “programs of faith education, accompaniment and evangelization in both the digital and the non-digital spheres.”

“It is precisely young people who can be the main agents of renewal so that the church can ‘unblock’ itself and become young again,” Cardinal Farrell said, adding a quote from “Christus Vivit”: “Let us ask the Lord to free the Church from those who would make it grow old, encase it in the past, hold it back or keep it at a standstill.”

Archbishop Chung told the group, “When the decision was made for Seoul to host WYD, I wondered, ‘Are our young people happy right now?'”

“They are connected to others 24 hours a day through social media and are more materially affluent than ever before,” he said, “but our young people today just don’t seem that happy.”

In many parts of the world, they struggle with “unemployment, low wages, endless competition, polarization and inequality, hatred, war, terrorism, the climate crisis,” he said. “Why do our precious youth, whose only job is to love, be loved and dream of a better world and future have to live in this reality?”

When celebrated as a pilgrimage of faith rather than an event, the archbishop said, World Youth Day can help people find a response. “It’s a pilgrimage, a time to share our stories, work through our concerns together and find answers in our faith,” he said.

Paul Jarzembowski, associate director for laity at the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, was attending the congress and told Catholic News Service, “Listening is a foundation to so much of what we do in ministries with young people as our response and activities build upon what we have heard in the stories of youth and young adults.”

In response to “Christus Vivit,” the U.S. bishops launched “Journeying Together,” a process that brought together young adults, bishops, youth ministers and campus ministers “to engage in respectful yet honest dialogue in matters of faith, culture, racism, inclusion and the issues that affect them as young people,” according to the program’s web pages.

Although it formally concluded in 2023, Jarzembowski said the conversations are ongoing “as the young adults continue to convene together and engage us at the USCCB.”

The 1,500 young adults involved, who came from many cultural and ethnic groups, “included those who were active in their practice (of the faith) and those who are less engaged,” he said. The initiative was not about convincing them to return to church, “but about trying to understand the realities facing younger generations. Through this process, some did reconnect with active practice, but that was not its original goal. It was a pleasant surprise and the result of authentic listening.”

In June, he noted, the U.S. bishops will vote on a new national framework on ministries with youth and young adults. The document, “Listen, Teach, Send,” he said, aims to help the church engage and build up trust with young people by being a church “that truly listens, one that teaches as an act of response and witness, and one that motivates young people to be sent out to transform the world in the company of the Holy Spirit.”

Another key result of listening, he said, has been the church’s efforts to respond to the mental health crisis among teens and young adults, “raising awareness, combating stigmas and promoting a balance of clinical and spiritual support so that those who need help” can get it.

In discussions at the congress, Jarzembowski said, it was clear that “most continents are experiencing this crisis yet in different ways. However, the U.S. experience is certainly amplified by our polarization, digital landscape, consumerism and the struggle many families experience, especially around divorce.”

Cardinal Américo Aguiar of Setúbal, Portugal, one of the chief organizers of World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, told the group that an essential part of planning involved setting up committees in every Portuguese diocese and almost every parish, involving thousands of young adults, many of whom “were not part of or engaged in any other ecclesial reality. They were and are one of the most important fruits for the Portuguese church and society.”

Those planning the Lisbon gathering “did everything and gave everything” to ensure it would promote a true encounter of young people from around the world with their peers, their pastors and with Pope Francis, “but above all an encounter with the living Christ,” the cardinal said. “Did it happen? We do not know, there are no statistics” that can answer that question.

But “personally, I know they did. I know it in my heart of hearts,” he said. And God knows, too; “he knows about each particular person, as only a Father can.”

BALTIMORE (OSV News) – The Archdiocese of Baltimore revealed the final plan May 22 for parish planning in Baltimore City, with 23 parishes at 30 worship sites, about half the current number of churches available for Sunday Mass.

Currently in Baltimore City and some nearby areas of Baltimore County that were part of the project, 61 parishes at 59 worship sites serve approximately 5,000 Catholics. They make up about 1% of the Catholics in the archdiocese, served by 44% of the parishes.

The Seek the City to Come initiative began in fall 2022 with listening sessions, followed by visioning, discernment and decisions. The archdiocese released a proposal in April that would have created 21 parishes at 26 worship sites, so the final map is an expansion of that plan.

“The whole orientation of Seek the City is toward the creation of parishes that are well positioned and well equipped to evangelize neighborhoods and to really gather the people in those neighborhoods, especially the unchurched, around the table of the Lord,” said Archbishop William E. Lori.

He noted that the goal is to create “parishes that have what it takes to have a full range of pastoral services to do outreach, to do social ministry, and, if I may say, to be a light brightly visible in the neighborhoods where they exist.”

The archdiocese sought feedback on the proposal released in April at four public forums, which drew thousands of people, and the archbishop acknowledged that the interest at those events was beyond what most of the venues that were selected could hold. He said that was part of the “bottom-up, synodal process” of listening and responding. The final map makes that evident, since it is different from just five weeks earlier.

“People spoke passionately. People demonstrated their love for their parishes,” the archbishop said. “But also, there were points made in those meetings that were very constructive and helpful in shaping the final map.”

The Seek the City initiative included 20 months of effort by a working group of about 250 clergy and parish leaders from the city, with assistance from several departments at the Catholic Center. Seek the City leadership visited every parish site in the study area for an assessment of facilities and needs, and met with parish leadership for prayer and listening.

Open, prayerful discussions were held at points in the process, before the working group gathered to develop proposals that could be refined. The process also included data about the number of parishioners; the practice of sacraments such as baptisms, weddings and funerals; and other demographics.

Archbishop Lori estimates that the archdiocese has heard some 6,000 voices in the process.

“We recognize that not everyone will be pleased with the outcome. But we truly have striven to listen. And listening has truly affected the outcome,” he said.

Auxiliary Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski, vicar for Baltimore City and co-director of Seek the City, said the initiative provided many and varied ways for people to be heard — in-person visits, parish visits, open public sessions, emails, letters and phone calls.

“The reality of it is, you know, at some point we have to stop and say I think we’ve got a good sense of what people are concerned about, what they’re hoping for, what they might be worried and anxious about, what ideas and other possibilities that they have for the parishes.”

The bishop said that input also will be helpful in the next phase of implementation.

Some worship sites were moved or added in the final plan.

Bishop Lewandowski said the overall plan has more parishes and worship sites than the proposal based on feedback and a closer look at the data. The goal was to have fewer, larger parishes spread out to ensure a presence in many neighborhoods across the city to renew the work of evangelization.

“We mean evangelization in the strict sense: forming missionary disciples and going out into the neighborhoods and bringing the Gospel,” Bishop Lewandowski said. He said the current configuration of parishes in the city spread the church too thin. “We wanted to strike a balance, because too few would not be a solution, either.”

Bishop Lewandowski said implementation of the plan will be phased in, with archdiocesan offices providing support in human resources, clergy personnel, facilities, finance and the Office of Parish Renewal in the Institute for Evangelization. For most parishes, the new configurations and mergers will be done by the First Sunday of Advent 2024, Dec. 1. For others, it could be the first Sunday of Lent 2025, or even longer for some.

“What we’ve learned in other dioceses is it takes maybe three to five years for some people to settle into a new parish configuration. … There’s going to be a great need for patience, flexibility, kindness, gentleness and compassion because it is a jolt to the system,” he said.

The churches in the city that will no longer be worship sites for daily or Sunday Mass will remain available to parishioners for weddings, baptisms or funerals, at least until the newly formed parish decides how best to utilize all the properties.

“We want the new parish to be successful and financially strong, to be well resourced and so if any of the merging properties are sold, those funds go with the people to their new parish — according to canon law, it follows the territory and the people,” Bishop Lewandowski said.

Bishop Lewandowski believes that in a few years, the church will be able to look back on this time and see new life, new growth, renewed mission and energy and a revitalized church. “We live in the hope of a new life to come.”

Archbishop Lori said the initiative “aims to create bonds of cooperation and collaboration among the parishes themselves, to avoid a parochial competition and to foster in its place a sense of shared ministry, shared concern for our city and its environs, shared concern for those who live there and who are in need of the Lord and the faith.”

That includes new forms of partnership with Catholic Charities, Catholic education and Catholic health care organizations, among others, especially those supported by the Annual Appeal for Catholic Ministries.

Geri Royale Bird, co-director of Seek the City, sees the process that got the archdiocese to this point as the keystone to collaboration moving forward. The listening, visioning, discerning and modeling sessions created an opportunity and a platform of working together and gave parish leaders a chance to work with people they had not known before.

“What’s valuable is that all along we have been working together. Now we are going to put that to use even more,” she said. “The excitement of this is that … we get to have a fresh start to have an evangelizing church now.”

She understands some people will be anxious, but she hopes they “will look beyond that and know that there are brighter days because we’re creating a landscape where we will have the resources … to really do the work.”

Archbishop Lori said, “We want to bring to bear upon the city of Baltimore and its environs all the gifts, all the ministries that the Holy Spirit.”

Clergy assignments for the new parishes will be forthcoming.

For now, the new parishes will take on the name of the church where it is sited, but the parishioners of the newly formed entity can eventually petition to change that name. In such cases, usually the parishioners make suggestions, and the pastor can present three or four names to the archbishop for his final choice.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis formally recognized a miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Carlo Acutis, a 15-year-old Italian teenager whose birth in 1991 will make him the first “millennial” to become a saint.

In a meeting May 23 with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for Saints’ Causes, the pope signed decrees advancing the sainthood causes of Blessed Acutis, as well as one woman, and six men.

The Vatican announced May 23 that the pope had signed the decrees and that he would convene a consistory to set a date for the canonization of Acutis and other future saints: Blesseds Giuseppe Allamano; Marie-Léonie Paradis of Québec, Canada; Elena Guerra; and eight Franciscan friars and three Maronite laymen who were martyred in Damascus, Syria, in 1860.

Blessed Acutis was born and baptized in London to Italian parents in 1991, but the family moved back to Milan, Italy, while he was still an infant.

After he started high school, he began to curate, create or design websites, including one for a local parish, for his Jesuit-run high school and for the Pontifical Academy “Cultorum Martyrum,” according to the saints’ dicastery. He also used his computer skills to create an online database of Eucharistic miracles around the world.

He volunteered at a church-run soup kitchen, helped the poor in his neighborhood, assisted children struggling with their homework, played saxophone, soccer and videogames, and loved making videos with his dogs and cats, according to carloacutis.com, the website dedicated to his cause for canonization.

“To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan,” he wrote when he was 7 years old.

He was devoted to Our Lady, praying the rosary every day, and to the Eucharist.

“The Eucharist is the highway to heaven,” he wrote. When people sit in the sun, they become tan, “but when they sit before Eucharistic Jesus, they become saints.”

When he was only 15, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia and died Oct. 12, 2006. He had said, “I’m happy to die because I’ve lived my life without wasting even a minute of it doing things that wouldn’t have pleased God,” according to carloacutis.com.

His mortal remains were moved to the municipal cemetery in Assisi in 2007 to fulfill his wish to be in the city of St. Francis. Then his remains were moved to the Shrine of the Renunciation at the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi in 2019. He was buried wearing Nike sneakers, black jeans and an athletic warmup jacket — clothes he was used to wearing every day.

In February 2020, the pope formally recognized a miracle attributed to Acutis’ intercession and in October that year, the teen was beatified during a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis. An estimated 117,000 pilgrims visited the teen’s tomb in just the first year after his beatification, the Diocese of Assisi said the day before his feast day, Oct. 12, 2021.

The two miracles attributed to the intercession of the teen involved alleged miraculous recoveries for a young boy in Brazil in 2013 and a young woman in Florence in 2022.

The miracle Pope Francis recognized May 23 that paves the way for the blessed’s canonization involved a young woman who was born in Costa Rica in 2001 and moved to Florence in 2018 to study.

The woman fell from her bicycle at 4 a.m. July 2, 2022, and suffered a serious head injury, according to the dicastery website. Even after emergency surgery removing part of her skull to reduce severe intracranial pressure, doctors warned her family she could die at any moment.

An associate of the young woman’s mother began praying to Blessed Acutis the same day, and the mother went to Assisi and prayed at the blessed’s tomb July 8 — the same day the young woman began to breathe on her own again. She slowly recovered basic mobility and a CT scan showed the hemorrhage was gone. After a period of rehabilitation therapy and a complete recovery, she and her mother visited his tomb Sept. 2.

Pope Francis has urged young people to learn about Blessed Acutis, who “did a great deal of good things,” despite his short life.

“Above all, he was impassioned by Jesus; and since he was very good at getting around on the internet, he used it in the service of the Gospel, spreading love for prayer, the witness of faith and charity toward others,” the pope told young Italians Jan. 29.

“Prayer, witness and charity” were the hallmarks of Blessed Acutis’ life and should be a key part of the life of every Christian, he said.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, alongside other Catholic groups, filed suit May 22 against a federal agency for including abortion in regulations implementing a law meant to add workplace protections for pregnant workers.

Final regulations for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April, grant workers protections for time off and other job accommodations for pregnancy-related medical conditions such as miscarriage, stillbirth and lactation — but also for abortion, which was opposed by many of the bill’s supporters, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Chieko Noguchi, USCCB spokeswoman, told OSV News May 23 that the conference “enthusiastically supported passage of this law, because it had nothing to do with abortion.”

The conference, Noguchi said, supported the legislation’s “reasonable accommodations and things like paid time off and modified work schedules.”

“We supported that because we believe it’s important to help protect the well-being of expectant mothers and their preborn children,” she added.

“But the EEOC, which is an unelected federal agency, hijacked the law, which doesn’t mention abortion at all,” she said, adding the EEOC’s regulation is “mandating that employers accommodate employee abortions.”

As such, she said, the regulation would, in effect, force the USCCB to “knowingly support employees as they get abortions, and it forbids us from encouraging them to choose life.”

“It bans us from operating in accordance with church teaching,” Noguchi said. “So that’s why we have filed this lawsuit.”

A spokesperson for the EEOC referred OSV News to the Justice Department for comment. The latter did not immediately respond.

The EEOC regulations govern the implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, bipartisan legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in December 2022. The law went into effect in June 2023 and prohibits employment practices that discriminate against making reasonable accommodations for qualified employees due to their pregnancy, childbirth “or related medical conditions.” The final regulations for the law were published in April 2024.

Many pro-life activists, including the USCCB, supported the legislation. But the EEOC regulation governing the implementation of that law, issued after it was enacted, contained broad language including abortion among “related medical conditions,” and the potential circumstances for which employers may have to grant workplace accommodations, such as time off for medical appointments or additional rest breaks.

In an April 15 statement about the final regulation, EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows said the law “gives pregnant workers clear access to reasonable accommodations that will allow them to keep doing their jobs safely and effectively, free from discrimination and retaliation.”

Becket, a Washington-based religious liberty law firm, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on behalf of the USCCB, as well as The Catholic University of America and the dioceses of Lake Charles and Lafayette in Louisiana.

The complaint, filed in in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, states that “Congress was right and EEOC is wrong.”

“The PWFA is not an abortion accommodation mandate. Rather, it fills a gap in federal employment law by ensuring pregnant women receive workplace accommodations to protect their pregnancies and their preborn children,” it said.

Daniel Blomberg, vice president and senior counsel for Becket, told OSV News that the case is important because the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act itself is a “really good law.”

“It’s about protecting pregnant women and their children in the workplace,” Blomberg said. “The idea is that you want to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy childbirth, and that’s great for a healthy country. That’s why USCCB supported that law. That’s why a lot of folks supported this bipartisan law.”

But the law, he said, “has been hijacked by a partisan EEOC that is trying to use a law about healthy pregnancy to force abortion on employers nationwide, including religious employers, and that’s just not right.”

When asked what EEOC could do to rectify the issue from Becket’s perspective, Blomberg replied, “It’s an easy fix: Do what Congress said.”

“Congress said, ‘We’re here to protect pregnancy and childbirth,'” he said. “So let’s protect pregnancy and childbirth.”

“The core components of this (law) is about protecting moms protecting kids,” Blomberg added. “That’s wonderful. That’s good. We should do that.”

Peter Kilpatrick, Catholic University’s president, said in a May 23 statement regarding the university’s suit against the EEOC that the school has “shown our commitment to supporting the mothers who are a crucial part of our community.” He pointed to Catholic University’s Guadalupe Project, which was created to support expectant mothers on campus, saying, “We will continue this work.”

He added that the EEOC regulation creates the possibility of “substantial liability for employers who express and enforce life-affirming policies and practices in the workplace,” and diminished religious protections.

“The Catholic University of America community remains steadfast in our commitments to upholding the sanctity of life and supporting women and pregnant mothers in the workplace,” Kilpatrick said. “We firmly reject any suggestion of tension between those two core commitments. We can — and we do — support women as they grow their families, and we believe it is possible to do so wholeheartedly while also supporting the dignity of life at all stages. Our mission to cultivate a culture of love, respect, and compassion demands nothing less.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Catholic Church’s synodal path, the church-wide listening and dialogue process currently approaching its second assembly in October, must become a model for all Catholic dioceses and parishes, Pope Francis said.

Opening the general assembly of the Italian bishops’ conference in the Vatican synod hall May 20, the pope spent an hour and a half answering questions posed to him by some 200 bishops on global issues, from migration to rising antisemitism, as well as problems within the church such as falling vocation rates and the merging of dioceses, according to reports by Italian Catholic media.

Bishop Antonio De Luca of Teggiano-Policastro in central Italy told Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, that Pope Francis “asked us to encourage the synodal way so that it may become a paradigm in dioceses and parishes.”

During the closed-door meeting, the pope said pastors must approach the current era of change in society not with sadness but with a renewed energy since the Lord does not abandon his church, Avvenire reported.

The assembly’s primary focus was on the synodal path, particularly its upcoming “prophetic phase” in preparation for the general assembly of the Synod of Bishops in October.

Bishop Mario Toso of Faenza-Modigliana in northern Italy said the recent “ad limina” by Italian bishops offered Pope Francis material for reflection regarding the merging of dioceses, a consideration frequently brought up by the bishops in their meeting with the pope. “It is not necessarily the case that this should be the way forward in the future,” he said.

The pope also addressed the issue of seminary restructuring, advocating for regional or interdiocesan seminaries where the number of seminarians is too low to allow for individual diocesan seminaries and to ensure better formation and community life for future priests. 

Vatican News reported that Pope Francis responded to bishops who asked about the lack of consecrated religious in their communities by highlighting the example of the church in Latin America, where religious sisters and laypeople are deeply engaged in organizing community life.

The bishops said declining vocations and aging clergy were also concerns raised during the meeting. Pope Francis encouraged them not to view these challenges catastrophically but to approach them with hope and creativity, highlighting the importance of supporting and accompanying priests who need encouragement and assistance in navigating contemporary cultural changes.

The pope gave each of the bishops a copy of his book, “Holy, not Worldly,” which collects his reflections on spiritual worldliness and the need for a humble and service-oriented church.

(OSV News) – In the latest comment from the Vatican on “Fiducia Supplicans,” the controversial declaration issued by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in December 2023 that includes guidelines on the blessing of same-sex couples, Pope Francis clarified that he didn’t allow blessings of “the union” but of “each person.”

“What I allowed was not to bless the union,” the pope said, correcting the question of CBS journalist and interviewer Norah O’Donnell, who stated within her question that the pope had “decided to allow Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples.”

“That cannot be done because that is not the sacrament. I cannot. The Lord made it that way,” said Pope Francis, according to the English translation provided in voiceover by CBS. “But to bless each person, yes. The blessing is for everyone. For everyone. To bless a homosexual-type union, however, goes against the given right, against the law of the church. But to bless each person, why not? The blessing is for all. Some people were scandalized by this. But why? Everyone! Everyone!”

The Spanish-language video, however, reveals that instead of “given right,” Pope Francis said “natural law,” which, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life.”

“Fiducia Supplicans,” which sparked international uproar within the church, was just one of the many topics touched on in the wide-ranging interview that covered the pope’s thoughts on war, a “globalization of indifference,” conservativism in the church, antisemitism and U.S. policy toward migrants.

The pope spoke with O’Donnell April 24 at his residence, Casa Santa Marta (Domus Sanctae Marthae). A roughly 13-minute portion of the interview aired May 19 on “60 Minutes,” the long-running newsmagazine of the CBS Television Network, with the balance of the session to be broadcast in a one-hour primetime special May 20 on the network and on the Paramount+ streaming platform.

The pair were seated beneath a large image of Our Lady Undoer of Knots, a Marian devotion from 18th-century Germany that is a favorite of Pope Francis, who learned of it some 40 years ago from a nun he had met while he was completing his doctoral thesis in that nation.

As a follow-up to the topic of same-sex blessings, O’Donnell reminded Pope Francis of his previous remarks that “homosexuality is not a crime,” qualifying of “unjust” laws criminalizing the condition of same-sex attraction, which the church recognizes as “objectively disordered” while calling for such persons to exercise chastity and self-mastery, and to be treated with respect and compassion.

Homosexuality “is a human fact,” Pope Francis told O’Donnell.

She asked him how he would respond to “conservative bishops in the United States that oppose your new efforts to revisit teachings and traditions.”

In his reply, Pope Francis defined a conservative as the “suicidal attitude” of “one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that.”

“One thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box,” he said.

Throughout the interview, Pope Francis underscored his soft-spoken but energetic responses — delivered in his native Spanish through an interpreter — with emphatic gestures, shifting occasionally in his chair and appearing to be in good health, despite a bout with bronchitis earlier this year that saw him taken to the hospital for tests.

Asked by O’Donnell if the Catholic Church had “done enough” to reform and repent of clerical sexual abuse, Pope Francis said “it must continue to do more” since “the tragedy of the abuses is enormous.”

He also stressed the need to “not only … not permit it but to put in place the conditions so that it does not happen.”

“It cannot be tolerated,” Pope Francis said. “When there is a case of a religious man or woman who abuses, the full force of the law falls upon them. In this there has been a great deal of progress.”

O’Donnell, in the May 19 excerpt, did not ask Pope Francis about Father Marko Rupnik, the Slovenian-born priest who was expelled from the Society of Jesus in June 2023, and who has gained international recognition both for his liturgical art and for the numerous accusations of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse leveled against him in the course of his career.

O’Donnell did ask Pope Francis about the children of Gaza ahead of the Catholic Church’s inaugural World Children’s Day May 25-26, an observance instituted by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education.

When O’Donnell, citing the United Nations, said that more than a million in Gaza, mostly children, would face famine on World Children’s Day, Pope Francis replied, “Not just in Gaza. Think of Ukraine.”

He said that many of the Ukrainian children who come to the Vatican “don’t know how to smile … they have forgotten how to smile. And that is very painful.”

As a follow-up question, O’Donnell asked if the pope had a message for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“Please, warring countries, all of them, stop. Stop the war,” replied Pope Francis. “You must find a way of negotiating for peace. Strive for peace. A negotiated peace is always better than an endless war.”

O’Donnell asked the pope how to address international division over the Israel-Hamas war, which has sparked “big protests on college campuses and growing antisemitism.”

“All ideology is bad, and antisemitism is an ideology, and it is bad,” said Pope Francis. “Any ‘anti’ is always bad. You can criticize one government or another, the government of Israel, the Palestinian government. You can criticize all you want, but not ‘anti’ a people. Neither anti-Palestinian, nor antisemitic. No.”

Asked by O’Donnell if he could help negotiate peace, the pope sighed and replied, “What I can do is pray. I pray a lot for peace. And also, to suggest, ‘Please, stop. Negotiate.'”

O’Donnell also asked Pope Francis for his thoughts on the state of Texas’ efforts to shutter Annunciation House, a Catholic nonprofit sheltering migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“That is madness. Sheer madness. To close the border and leave them there, that is madness,” he said. “The migrant has to be received. Thereafter you see how you are going to deal with him. Maybe you have to send him back, I don’t know, but each case ought to be considered humanely.”

Recalling the pope’s July 2013 visit to Lampedusa — the Italian island to which thousands of migrants have fled, with thousands more perishing while crossing the Mediterranean — O’Donnell asked Pope Francis to speak about “the globalization of indifference.”

“People wash their hands!” he answered. “There are so many Pontius Pilates on the loose out there … who see what is happening, the wars, the injustice, the crimes … (They say), ‘That’s OK, that’s OK’ and wash their hands. … That is what happens when the heart hardens … and becomes indifferent.

“Please, we have to get our hearts to feel again,” Pope Francis implored. “We cannot remain indifferent in the face of such human dramas. The globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease. Very ugly.”

No reference was made to another hot button topic: women in the clergy, except in a post-interview narration in which O’Donnell said that although the pope had appointed more women to positions of church power than his predecessors, “he told us he opposes allowing women to be ordained as priests or deacons.”

In a particularly poignant moment in the interview, O’Donnell asked the pope about the church’s rejection of surrogacy, saying she knows women who are cancer survivors for whom the practice has become “the only hope” for having a child.

Pope Francis reaffirmed church teaching on the point, saying that surrogacy has sometimes “become a business, and that is very bad.”

He also said that for infertile women, “the other hope is adoption,” and stressed that “in each case the situation should be carefully and clearly considered, consulting medically and then morally as well.”

The pope commended O’Donnell for her sensitivity toward people that “in some cases (surrogacy) is the only chance,” saying with a warm smile, “It shows that you feel these things very deeply. Thank you.”

O’Donnell, in turn, said the pope has inspired hope among many “because you have been more open and accepting perhaps than any other previous leaders of the church.”

Reiterating a cry he issued at World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, Pope Francis said that the church is open to “everyone, everyone, everyone.”

“The Gospel is for everyone,” he emphasized. “If the church places a customs officer at the door, that is no longer the church of Christ.”

The May 19 segment concluded with O’Donnell asking the pope what gave him hope.

“Everything,” Pope Francis said. “You see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things … heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me a lot of hope. People want to live. People forge ahead. And people are fundamentally good. We are all fundamentally good. Yes, there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good.”

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (OSV News) – Under a cold drizzle, scores of Catholics in New Haven sang and prayed while following the Eucharistic Jesus in procession. This May 18 display of faith marked the first Eucharistic procession of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage’s eastern route.

“It shows our commitment as Christians to our love for Jesus Christ,” Jonathan Santillo, who participated in the solemn procession with the Knights of Columbus, told OSV News.

Similar kickoff celebrations were planned to take place at the pilgrimage’s other three launch points in Brownsville, Texas; San Francisco; and Northern Minnesota. Pilgrims from points north, south, east and west are traveling with the Eucharist for the next eight weeks on their way to the National Eucharistic Congress, scheduled for July 17-21, 2024, in Indianapolis. The eastern route is named after St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint to be canonized by the Catholic Church.

Before the procession, Archbishop Christopher J. Coyne of Hartford, Connecticut, celebrated an extended Pentecost Vigil Mass at St. Mary Church (part of Blessed Michael McGivney’s parish and where the Knights of Columbus founder’s remains are reposed.) Organizers said this extended vigil expressed the church’s plea for the gift of the Holy Spirit — in particular, “for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be given to our nation during the Eucharistic Revival and for the success of the Seton Route pilgrimage.”

During his homily, Archbishop Coyne talked about the gift of the Holy Spirit coming to the apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem and how the five readings of the extended Mass were a pilgrimage in the proclamation of the Word, showing the manifestation of the Holy Spirit throughout salvation history.

So, the archbishop continued, it is fitting that the nationwide Eucharistic pilgrimage starts on Pentecost weekend.

“Our life as Christians is a pilgrimage along the path of salvation. But it is not a solitary one. It is one in which we walk together as the body of Christ,” the archbishop said. “In seeking after what God desires of us, we become pilgrims of no path but the one that he would have us follow.”

More than a journey from one place to another, he added, a pilgrimage is about coming home. “It allows one to turn to God, to tend to what is most important to life.”

The archbishop told the Seton Route’s six perpetual pilgrims that their “pilgrimage to the Eucharist is one with the Holy Spirit as well.”

“It is the Holy Spirit that will raise you on each of your ways so that your feet will not stumble, and your body will stay on the path,” he told the pilgrims. “The first breath of the Holy Spirit given to you in baptism” and strengthened in confirmation will help “in your exertions along the way to persevere to joyous completion.”

The archbishop then prayed for a safe and fruitful pilgrimage as the perpetual pilgrims accompany the Blessed Sacrament over the next eight weeks.

After Communion, the faithful filling the pews of St. Mary — families, religious, people of all ages — lit up candles and invoked the Holy Spirit. Then, Father Roger Landry, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, and Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, conducted the censing of the Blessed Sacrament. Father Landry, the chaplain for the entire Seton Route, carried the Eucharist in a monstrance designed for the entire two-month pilgrimage.

This was followed by the Eucharistic procession around the neighborhood of St. Mary’s. Area young adults participated in a Holy Hour, followed by overnight adoration.

Andrea Puzio, a member of the Knights of Columbus from Council 3733 in North Haven, Connecticut, was one of the men carrying the processional canopy covering the Blessed traveled. He told OSV News that processing with Jesus in the Eucharist through the streets of New Haven “really brings your soul into the heart of Jesus to express to others that our faith is not only internally in a church, but everywhere we go.”

This was echoed by Angelica Bakhos, director of formation for Crossroads 4 Christ, a Catholic apostolate for young adults with seven chapters in Connecticut that meet weekly and organize around 350 Holy Hours a year.

“It was this amazing opportunity not only to walk with our Lord, but to walk with other pilgrims who were all journeying toward him,” she said.

Crossroads 4 Christ – along with Frassati New Haven, a fellowship of young adult Catholics – organized the Young Adult Holy Hour, which included a presentation by Father Landry.

Overnight adoration concluded at 7 a.m. May 19, with a 1.5-mile Eucharistic procession from St. Mary to St. Joseph for Pentecost Mass. Following Mass, the Seton Route’s perpetual pilgrims headed to Long Wharf, New Haven’s waterfront district, to board a boat heading toward the next leg of their journey in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The Seton Route continues through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, the District of Columbia, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana.

On the day of the route’s launch, perpetual pilgrim Natalie Garza, a high school theology teacher in Kansas City, said her heart was burning. At a May 18 presentation at the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center, she shared her excitement and the reasons she is part of this National Eucharistic Pilgrimage.

“The first is to intercede for the American church, to really pray for her and get to walk with Jesus,” said the Texas native. Looking forward to living “a real expression and experience of discipleship,” like the disciples who got to know Jesus, Garza said she and her team of young adults were ready to walk alongside him for eight weeks.

Garza added that she wants to “witness with my body the truth that I have professed with my words many times, that Jesus Christ is really present in the Eucharist.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Pope Francis will send Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as his special envoy to the U.S. Catholic Church’s 10th National Eucharistic Congress July 17-21 in Indianapolis, and the cardinal will celebrate the congress’s closing Mass.

Cardinal Tagle is pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization’s Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches.

The appointment, announced May 18, is “a gift to the Eucharistic Congress,” said Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Cardinal Tagle’s “deep passion for apostolic mission rooted in the Eucharist is sure to have an inspirational impact for everyone attending the Congress,” the archbishop, head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, said in a statement released by the USCCB.

“We are tremendously grateful to the Holy Father in appointing Cardinal Tagle as his delegate to the United States’ 10th National Eucharistic Congress,” said Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, chairman of the National Eucharistic Congress Inc. “The appointment of Cardinal Tagle, with his missionary spirit and connection to the U.S., further unites our own efforts with the universal Church and uniquely evangelistic vision of Pope Francis.”

“In his words to a delegation from the National Eucharistic Congress last June,” Bishop Cozzens said in a statement to OSV News, “Pope Francis challenged us to ensure that the Congress bear lasting fruit as a moment of Encounter and Mission, reminding us all that, ‘We become credible witnesses to the joy and transforming beauty of the Gospel only when we recognize that the love we celebrate in this sacrament cannot be kept to ourselves but demands to be shared with all.'”

During a recent segment of his weekly television broadcast “The Word Exposed,” excerpts of which were posted to his Facebook page, Cardinal Tagle stressed the centrality of Christ and the Eucharist to the Catholic faith.

“The Eucharist is not a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ,” he said. “It is the eternal sacrifice of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary where he ascended, enabling us to celebrate it here on earth. Wow!”

Without Christ’s ascension – the solemnity for which was celebrated May 9 or, in some dioceses, May 12 – “we would not have our sacramental life that nourishes us,” said Cardinal Tagle in a clip posted to his Facebook page May 18.

“We look forward with enthusiasm to welcoming Cardinal Tagle to the Congress, celebrating the closing liturgy with him, and hearing his words for the Church in the United States. Our deepest gratitude, again, goes to the Holy Father for this appointment,” Bishop Cozzens added.

The congress is the culmination of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival launched in 2022 by the U.S. bishops to renew and strengthen Catholics’ understanding of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. It will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium and the adjacent Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis and is expected to draw about 50,000 Catholics from around the U.S.

The event is the first such national congress in the U.S. in 83 years, and in 48 years since the 1976 International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia.

Leading up to the congress is the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, launching Pentecost weekend, May 18-19. The pilgrimage consists of four cross-country routes coming from four directions: the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Route (East), starting in New Haven, Connecticut; the St. Junipero Serra Route (West), starting in San Francisco; the St. Juan Diego Route (South), starting in Brownsville, Texas; and the Marian Route (North), starting in Northern Minnesota.

Among those walking the routes will be perpetual pilgrims, seminarians and priest chaplains, accompanied by the Eucharist, often exposed in a monstrance. Each route has stops along the way for Mass, prayer and Eucharistic adoration at parishes, shrines, charities and other Catholic institutions. The routes will converge in Indianapolis for the July 17 start of the congress.