Category: 2025 News

(OSV News) – In 2015, Pope Francis shared an urgent message with the world.

Writing in “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” he said the Earth “cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.”

With the 10th anniversary of the release of “Laudato Si'” approaching May 24, experts wonder: Have we been listening?

Several Catholic ecological experts and organizations agree that good – even great – work is being done to address climate issues. But, they say, it is not enough.

Pope Francis said so himself in 2023 when he penned “Laudate Deum,” an apostolic exhortation “to all people of good will on the climate crisis,” released eight years after “Laudato Si’.”

“With the passage of time,” said Pope Francis, “I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”

The pope further forecast a bleak global future, with widespread impacts on human dignity.

“In addition to this possibility, it is indubitable that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons,” Pope Francis wrote. “We will feel its effects in the areas of healthcare, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations, etc.”

Pope Francis’ concern about such outcomes is rooted in integral ecology — a central tenet of “Laudato Si'” that emphasizes the interconnectivity of the many issues facing humanity, while urging a comprehensive outlook to engage global challenges.

Brother Jacek Orzechowski — a Franciscan friar and associate director of the Laudato Si Center for Integral Ecology at Siena College in Loudonville, New York — echoed the pontiff’s warning.

“The speed and the scale of the progress has not been commensurate with the gravity and urgency of the crisis,” Brother Orzechowski said.

“It’s a consequence of not really embracing the message of an integral ecology, and treating the environmental issues, climate issues, social justice issues, as not on par with other moral issues,” he said. “There’s a bit of a disconnect between the papal pronouncements and some of the laudable efforts of individual parishes or institutions to embrace ‘Laudato Si’,’ and the rather anemic response — including from the hierarchy.”

In 2021, Religion News Service examined thousands of columns written by Catholic bishops from 2014 to 2019. “Of the 12,077 columns we studied,” reported RNS, “only 93 (0.8%) mention climate change, global warming or their equivalent at all.”

“Pope Francis, in ‘Laudate Deum,’ has rightly expressed concern about the pace of progress in addressing climate change,” said Dan Misleh, founder and executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, a nonprofit formed with the help of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that — with 20 national partners — guides the church’s response in the U.S. to climate change.

“The Holy Father has called for not just deeper reflection but concrete action, highlighting the need for a radical shift in our lifestyles to align with a sustainable and finite planet,” Misleh added. “The growing urgency around these issues is something we all must heed.”

Misleh is, however, encouraged by the work of his own partners, as well as the Laudato Si’ Action Platform and the Laudato Si’ Movement, among other organizations.

“Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done,” Misleh said. “And I think we can do it — but there has to be commitments at many levels of the church to make that happen.”

The last decade is the warmest on record, and according to NASA, Earth’s average surface temperature in 2024 was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880. The World Meteorological Organization noted in March 2024 that the previous year broke records for ocean heat, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice loss and glacier retreat. Extreme weather events including floods, droughts and fire are becoming more frequent and destructive.

In America, the new Trump administration has retreated from Biden-era climate and clean energy initiatives. It also withdrew U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, also known as COP21, when nearly 200 countries pledged to work together to limit global warming.

“There’s progress — and yet there’s still so much more to do,” said Anna Johnson, North American director for the Laudato Si’ Movement, a global network of over 900 Catholic organizations and over 10,000 trained grassroots leaders.

“Tens of thousands of people, Catholics around the world, have said yes to living out this call to ‘Laudato Si” on personal levels, on community levels — with parishes and dioceses and congregations adopting huge transformations,” she told OSV News.

Nonetheless, Johnson feels efforts are at a crossroads.

“We’re coming to a point of having to really assess whether we stand for the common good and God’s creation in the midst of this economy,” Johnson said, “because these choices are being put in front of us in a very stark way.”

In 2023, the Pew Research Center reported that a 2022 survey found, “Broadly speaking, Catholics are no more likely than Americans overall to view climate change as a serious problem. An identical share in each group say global climate change is either an extremely or very serious problem (57%).”

But the particular dynamics of the American political landscape have seemingly produced a fragmented reception of “Laudato Si’.” The 2022 Pew survey found that among Catholics who were Democrats or leaned Democrat, the view of global climate change as a “extremely/very serious problem” problem climbed to 82%, while among Catholics who were Republican or leaned Republican, that view dropped to 25%.

“There is polarization between political factions that has weakened this response to the call for creation care,” said Sister Damien Marie Savino, a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist who is dean of science and sustainability at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is a visiting fellow at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Sister Damien Marie is encouraged by global efforts to embrace “Laudato Si’,” noting there are an abundance of initiatives large and small — from regenerative agriculture to recycling — that deeply resonate with the pope’s integral ecology emphasis.

“There’s still a lot more that could be done,” she admitted, “but I do think this groundswell is a pretty good testament.”

However, she remains cautious in her outlook.

“It’s up to humans — and their unique creativity — to come up with solutions,” she said. “We wouldn’t have environmental issues if it wasn’t for human action. So we have to recognize that our actions do have a unique effect because of our unique ecological niche.”

At Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, scholars will reflect on “Laudato Si'” in an April 15 panel titled “Ten Years of Laudato Si’: Operationalizing Integral Ecology.”

“I think there are small outcroppings of things that actually wholly align with ‘Laudato Si’,’ but it’s certainly not at any accelerating rate that’ll make a substantive difference,” said Richard Marcantonio, an assistant professor of environment, peace and global affairs at the Kroc Institute.

“There’s been progress that’s been made in some ways,” he said, “but I think one of the big challenges of ‘Laudato Si” that has not been grappled with well, in the United States in particular, is the idea of not needing more.”

It is a tough truth for a consumer-centric society, he noted.

“When you look at the amount of material consumed by any American — regardless of the wild wealth inequality that we have — for most groups of people in the U.S., they’re consuming well above what would be globally sustainable,” Marcantonio said.

“And that’s not just with the stuff in their household, but also all of the metals, minerals and other materials that are used to build the things that they engage with — roads, buildings, other infrastructure. If you look at the amount of material consumed per capita annually, it’s about 42,000 pounds of stuff,” Marcantonio said, citing the U.S. Geological Survey.

While experts see both environmental progress and decline, real change and real stagnation, and much work done with much work still to do, Pope Francis did not want “Laudato Si'” to be a source of despair. Ten years later, he might reiterate the piece of advice with which he concluded ‘Laudato Si”: “May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.”

POZNAN, Poland (OSV News) – As the 20th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s death approached April 2, top world leaders and thinkers gathered in Poznan, Poland, to discuss his legacy.

A common thread of their memories and interventions was that the pope from Poland was a sensation of the times whose steadfast faith brought humanity more freedom and true spiritual leadership — and continues the drive for freedom in today’s world.

Hanna Suchocka, Polish prime minister in early 1990s and ambassador of Poland to the Holy See in the final years of John Paul’s pontificate said in her remarks that speakers at the conference she and her team organized are “the last generation that can point out that papal teaching is not only history” but is rooted in reality.

She said John Paul “became a sign of hope for all of us — those that lived under the communist rule, but also those that lived on ‘a better side’ of the wall.” She pointed out that “we didn’t fight for a free world” under the Iron Curtain of Cold War divisions to become closed “yet again” today, polarized against each other and that all the more now we need to reject “trivializing” John Paul’s teaching and remind the world of “its true meaning.”

If there are two people that immediately come to mind as iconic Poles to anyone in the world, it’s most probably Karol Wojtyla, elected Pope John Paul II, and Lech Walesa.

The leader of the first free trade union in a communist country — Solidarity — a movement that led to first free elections in Poland in June 1989 and eventually the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe, said that the pope was a believer in the cause of freedom from communism. It was the pope’s faith in the peaceful revolution that kept Solidarity leaders going in times of persecution, Walesa said.

“When a Pole became pope — a year after his election he came to Poland and organized us to pray, not to start a revolution. He allowed us to notice how many of us there are. At the same time the pope said: ‘change the face of the earth.’ We stopped being afraid,” Walesa told a packed auditorium at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan March 26 during the conference titled “John Paul II — to Read History, to Form History.”

Elected pope on Oct. 16, 1978, John Paul visited his country only seven months later, in June 1979. Eleven million people in a nation of 36 million at the time came to see the pope in person.

“Up to that point I was organizing the fight against communism. The pope accelerated those processes and made them bloodless,” said Walesa, who was president of Poland from 1990 to 1995.

Norman Davis, professor of history at Oxford, Cambridge and London universities, said that Solidarity, a movement supported spiritually and organizationally by the pope, was a “sensation of the times.”

John Paul “was a master of conveying information not through harsh words. He never condemned the communist system. He always spoke in a gentle language that was much stronger than harsh words. He didn’t offend anyone, but got his point across,” Davis said.

Hans-Gert Pöttering said that when he was about to meet the pope for the first time in 1981, John Paul was an hour late to that meeting.

“He was on the phone with Lech Walesa,” the German lawyer, historian and conservative politician, said in Poznan, testifying to the ongoing commitment of the pope to support the freedom movement.

“If someone told me then, ‘Poland will be free,’ I wouldn’t believe it,” said Pöttering, who served as president of the European Parliament 2007-2009.

He pointed out that “we wouldn’t be in Poznan today” if it were not for John Paul telling the Polish people, “Don’t be afraid, change the world.”

But this message, he said, has an all the more powerful dimension today when “we are challenged by the dictator in the Kremlin,” he said. Pöttering made the comments as he stood next to the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, Ukraine, representing a country that has been fighting a full-scale Russian invasion since Feb. 24, 2022.

Following the teaching of John Paul, “it’s our duty to show solidarity to our friends in Ukraine so that they’re free people,” Pöttering highlighted.

“We in the EU (European Union) — Poland, Germany — we are not just living in an organization, we are living in a EU based on values of the dignity of the human being, the core of the teaching of John Paul II. The person is responsible for himself and for the other,” the European leader said, emphasizing that this task falls on today’s youth, who need to be “engaged” in their societies.

Major Archbishop Shevchuk spoke next, addressing the hundreds of young people in the room, including large groups of Ukrainian students who later stood in the line to take a picture with him.

“For John Paul II,” the prelate said, “young people were more important than meeting with senior political leaders. He knew that it’s the youth that will decide the fate of their countries and of the world.”

Major Archbishop Shevchuk said that John Paul “was not afraid of youth — sometimes bishops are afraid of young people, but it was not a feature of John Paul.”

He said that young people are destined to “build bridges, memory and communion among nations.”

In 2001, he said the Polish pontiff told Ukrainians that “freedom is not only a gift but a challenge” and that young people defending Ukraine today put those words into practice “defending freedom at the price of their own blood,” and that it was the words of John Paul that became for them a “signpost how to build freedom.”

Major Archbishop Shevchuk thanked Walesa, who was on stage, for having a Ukrainian flag pinned to his shirt as a sign of solidarity since the war began.

Papal biographer George Weigel said that the truth about humankind that we meet in Christ is “the truth that we are creatures who long to form authentic community, to live in solidarity with others, creatures made for love, not merely for satisfaction,” and therefore are thinking about freedom “in a distinctive way.”

As a Christian formed by John Paul, “you will think of freedom as tethered to truth and ordered to goodness,” Weigel, distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, told the conference in a pre-recorded video.

The leading American theologian said that John Paul’s teaching shows a visible difference between “freedom of indifference” and “freedom for excellence.”

The first, he said, “can be summed up by thinking about Frank Sinatra and that famous song of his, ‘I did it my way.’ This is a freedom of self-absorption. It’s a freedom untethered to any notion of truth and goodness. It’s freedom as I want it. I want it now. I want it my way.”

“Freedom for excellence” — a term coined by the Belgian Dominican moral theologian Father Servais Pinckaers, who deeply influenced John Paul, Weigel said — “means choosing the right thing, which we can know by reason, aided by supernatural faith … and doing so as a matter of moral habit.”

He added that John Paul taught about “freedom as choosing the right thing for the right reason, as a matter of moral habit, or what an older vocabulary would call virtue, ‘habitus’ being translated from Latin in some respects as ‘virtue.'”

In the encyclical “Centesimus Annus,” Weigel said, “John Paul II taught that freedom untethered to truth becomes self-destructive. Or, if you will, it cannibalizes itself. And I’m afraid that’s the situation we find in much of the Western world today. If there is only your truth and my truth, and nothing that either one of us recognizes as the truth, then how do we settle the dispute?”

Weigel said “it is up to us to help heal the breach between that freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence, between the dictatorship of relativism and a genuine exercise of freedom in the public space.”

Remarks on John Paul’s legacy by top world leaders and thinkers “really made a mark in our conscience,” said Michal Senk, director of the Center for the Thought of John Paul II, a Warsaw-based think tank. “It left us with conviction that freedom is intertwined with truth and aligned with goodness and that we need to carry that legacy of John Paul II ahead,” he told OSV News.

“In the context of a just peace for Ukraine, this vision of freedom becomes a powerful call to act with moral clarity, pursuing not only political peace but a peace grounded in virtue and truth,” he added.

Ambassador Suchocka, who is a lawyer, concluded: “Maybe it’s my professional twist, but John Paul II is like the constitution — he needs to be interpreted. Interpretation is important. The interpretation for today is probably different than it was 30 years ago, but the text and its message remain constant: Don’t close yourselves off, open yourselves up. And dialogue — without dialogue, and the ability to understand each other, we will perish.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis’ condition remains stable, and an X-ray showed there has been a slight improvement regarding his lingering lung infection, the Vatican press office said.

The pope continues to show improvements in his mobility and ability to speak, the press office told reporters April 1. The pope continues to receive supplemental oxygen through a nasal cannula during the day and high-flow oxygen at night when necessary. He can remove the nasal tube for “brief periods” during the day.

A significant portion of his day is spent doing physical therapy to restore the level of movement he had before he was hospitalized Feb. 14 for breathing difficulties. The pope later was diagnosed with double pneumonia, as well as viral and fungal lung infections.

While the pneumonia cleared before his release from the hospital March 23, the 88-year-old pope still has a lingering lung infection, which showed “slight improvement” in a recent X-ray, the press office said.

The pope continues to follow his prescribed drug and respiratory therapies, and, like last week, his voice is showing some improvement after being significantly weakened during his long convalescence. His blood tests this week were also in the normal range.

The pope does not receive any outside visitors, the press office said. He is assisted by his personal secretaries, there are always medical personnel on call, and his doctors visit him regularly.

The pope concelebrates Mass every morning in the small chapel near his rooms on the second floor of his residence, the Domus Sanctae Marthae, and he works during the day at his desk.

The pope is in “a good mood” and welcomes the many signs of affection from the faithful, the press office added.

The Vatican planned to publish the text prepared for the pope’s weekly general audience April 2, the press office said, and the homily he has prepared for a Mass April 6 as part of the Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers will be read by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who already was scheduled to preside at that Mass.

The press office said it was too soon to know if the pope would appear in some way for the Sunday Angelus April 6 or have a message for the 20th anniversary of the death of St. John Paul II April 2, which was to be marked by a memorial Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica with Cardinal Pietro Parolin presiding.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has cleared the way for the canonizations of three blesseds: an Armenian Catholic archbishop martyred during the Armenian genocide, a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea killed during World War II and a Venezuelan religious sister who dedicated her life to education and the poor.

The Vatican announced March 31 that the pope authorized the decrees March 28. Among them were the approval of a miracle attributed to Blessed Carmen Rendíles Martínez and authorization for the canonizations of Blessed Ignatius Maloyan and Blessed Peter To Rot, following a vote by cardinals and bishops.

While the Vatican did not specify whether the decrees were signed during an audience, such decisions are typically formalized during a meeting between the pope and Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Pope Francis, recovering from a respiratory infection, has not been holding meetings since being discharged from the hospital March 23.

Blessed Carmen Rendíles Martínez, born in Caracas in 1903, is poised to become Venezuela’s first female saint. Orphaned by her father’s death at a young age, she grew up helping her mother support the family and became active in her parish apostolate.

She entered religious life in 1927 and eventually founded the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus of Venezuela, serving with humility in parishes and schools, especially among the poor. After a car accident in 1974, she spent her final years in a wheelchair and died in 1977. She was beatified in 2018.

Blessed Ignatius Maloyan was born April 19, 1869, in Mardin, in present-day Turkey. He entered the convent of Bzommar in Lebanon at age 14 and was ordained in 1896. Known for his pastoral care and scholarship, he was appointed archbishop of Mardin in 1911.

During the Armenian genocide, he was arrested with dozens of Christians and brought before a tribunal in 1915. When told his life could be spared in exchange for conversion to Islam, he declared, “We have never been unfaithful to the state… but if you ask us to be unfaithful to our religion, this — never, never, never!” He was tortured and executed shortly afterward. He was beatified by St. John Paul II in 2001.

Blessed Peter To Rot, born in 1912 in Rakunai, Papua New Guinea, was a lay catechist, husband and father known for his deep faith and dedication to the sacraments.

During the Japanese occupation in World War II, he continued his ministry despite growing restrictions and openly opposed polygamy, which had been tolerated by the occupiers. He was arrested in 1945, and later that year was killed by lethal injection while in prison. He was beatified by St. John Paul II during a 1995 visit to Papua New Guinea.

In March 2024, Pope Francis approved a request from the bishops of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to dispense with the requirement of a miracle for Blessed Peter’s canonization, citing cultural and documentation challenges. His canonization will make him the first saint of Papua New Guinea.

A date for the canonizations of the three blesseds had not yet been announced.

Pope Francis also approved decrees recognizing:

— A miracle attributed to Venerable Carmelo De Palma, a diocesan priest from Bari, Italy, born in 1876 and known for his deep prayer life, devotion to the Eucharist and tireless ministry as a confessor and spiritual director. He died in 1961, and the approved miracle clears the way for his beatification.

— The heroic virtues of Father José Antônio Maria Ibiapina, a 19th-century Brazilian priest known for his transition from a career as a lawyer, judge and congressman to a life of priestly service among the poor. Born in 1806, he was ordained in 1853 and became known as a “pilgrim of charity” for founding churches, hospitals, orphanages and schools across northeastern Brazil. He died in 1883.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – God’s forgiveness is the source of hope for the faithful, Pope Francis wrote.

“Indeed, with his mercy, God transforms us inwardly, he changes our heart,” he said in a message to priests celebrating the Jubilee of the Missionaries of Mercy in Rome.

“We can always count on him in any situation. God made himself man to reveal to the world that he never abandons us,” the pope’s message said.

The Vatican released the pope’s message to the priests, which was read by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization’s section for new evangelization and the chief organizer of the Holy Year 2025, during a March 29 meeting and training session.

The Jubilee celebration, March 28-30, had been scheduled to include a meeting with Pope Francis March 29 and Mass the next day. However, the pope was not present at those events since doctors recommended he rest for two months after returning to the Vatican from Gemelli hospital March 23 for double pneumonia.

Pope Francis instituted the “missionaries of mercy” apostolate in 2015 for the special mission of preaching about God’s mercy and, especially, to encourage Catholics to rediscover the grace of the sacrament of reconciliation. More than 1,100 priests were chosen by the Vatican and commissioned during the Holy Year of Mercy, and today there are more than 1,200 missionaries of mercy on all five continents.

In his message, dated March 19, the pope thanked the priests because they “bear witness to the paternal face of God, infinitely great in love, who calls everyone to conversion and renews us always with his forgiveness.”

“Conversion and forgiveness are the two gentle touches with which the Lord dries every tear from our eyes; they are the hands with which the church embraces us sinners; they are the feet on which we walk in our earthly pilgrimage,” the pope wrote.

Pope Francis encouraged the priests in their ministry as confessors to be “attentive in listening, ready to welcome and constant in accompanying those who wish to renew their own lives and return to the Lord.”

About 500 missionaries of mercy registered for the pilgrimage to Rome, which included a penitential liturgy at the Rome Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle March 28 and a Mass celebrated there by Archbishop Fisichella on Sunday.

Msgr. Graham Bell, undersecretary of the dicastery’s section for new evangelization, led the liturgy March 28, which was part of the worldwide Lenten prayer and penance initiative, “24 Hours for the Lord.” Begun by the pope in 2014, it invites at least one Catholic church in every diocese to be open all night — or at least for extended hours — for Eucharistic adoration and confession.

In addition to the few wooden confessionals in the 17th-century basilica, more than a dozen areas in different corners and pews were available for confession in several languages. Priests took turns hearing each other’s confessions before dedicating themselves to hearing confessions from other penitents or to silent prayer.

Among the hundreds attending were some missionaries of mercy from the United States who spoke with Catholic News Service March 28.

Father Eloy Rojas, originally from Venezuela, is a hospital chaplain in the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, where, he said, he brings “hope and love to the sick and dying,” especially those nearing the end of their life on earth.

As a missionary of mercy, he is also bringing hope to those seeking “new life” through confession by communicating and connecting with penitents “with empathy, love and compassion,” he said.

Father Bernard Olszewski said their role is to be mediators between the penitent and the merciful face of God.

Instead of a “duel,” he said, that encounter must be “like a duet, a dance that is learned.” They help others “learn the steps, to dance with God, and to rediscover that relationship with God which may have been lost.”

Their mission is to reassure the repentant that they can leave the confessional “a new person,” transformed with the capacity to do good, to be better and to be the person God calls them to be,” he said. “There is nothing more powerful than that.”

While the pope granted the missionaries the faculties to forgive certain sins in cases otherwise reserved to the Holy See, the priest said, “we’re not super confessors.”

They were commissioned “to exemplify that loving attitude, that warm embrace that God offers to us each and every day, but some of us don’t have the opportunity to recognize or to accept it,” he said.

Pope Francis “wants no obstacle between the penitent and the forgiveness,” Father Olszewski said, because very often it is those grave sins that maintain “that wall, which do not allow the penitents to access immediately and definitively the forgiveness of God.”

Msgr. Ted Bertagni said God’s mercy is the path to hope. “You only have hope if you can experience that mercy.”

When someone “comes to reconciliation, they want to be renewed, they want to be restored, they want to get back into the grace with God” to “build up their faith again,” he said. This is why confession is “a very uplifting thing for the priest as well as for the penitents.”

“I think people don’t go to reconciliation that often simply because … they’re afraid that they’ll be judged,” Msgr. Bertagni said.

When the faithful come for reconciliation, he said, the priest is “there to be open arms,” to unconditionally love them “as the father unconditionally loves and forgives you.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – A coalition of pro-life groups went to the U.S. Capitol March 27 to urge Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, shortly before the Supreme Court is set to consider a case concerning that funding.

The high court is scheduled to hear oral argument in Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic on April 2, regarding South Carolina’s attempt to prevent Planned Parenthood from participating in its Medicaid health program. The case could be a major test of the nation’s largest abortion provider’s ability to use public funds in states that have restricted abortion.

Supporters of allowing Planned Parenthood to receive Medicaid funds point to that group’s involvement in cancer screening and prevention services — such as pap tests and HPV vaccinations — but critics argue the funds are fungible and could be used to facilitate abortion.

Efforts to strip Planned Parenthood of public funds are sometimes referred to as “defunding.”

At the March 27 event near the Capitol Reflecting Pool, pro-life groups urged lawmakers to eliminate Planned Parenthood’s federal funding through the budget reconciliation process.

“There’s been a lot of conversation since Dobbs — since we together did a historic act in building a movement that would overturn Roe v. Wade — a lot of discussion about whether we were unified as a movement or not,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which works to elect pro-life candidates to public office.

“And I can tell you one thing, this movement is completely unified in its first priority, and that is to defund big abortion in this reconciliation bill,” she said.

Reconciliation is a legislative procedure that would allow the Republican majority to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass a budget resolution with a simple majority — instead of needing 60 votes first to end debate — as long as both chambers agree to, or reconcile, their versions of such legislation.

“We have a strong pro-life majority in the Senate; we have a slim, but strong pro-life majority in the House, and we’re ready to do it,” Dannenfelser said.

But a path to doing so was not yet clear. Republicans still face several hurdles on other issues as they aim to pass Trump’s multi-trillion dollar agenda, including still-conflicting versions of the budget framework passed by each chamber.

Multiple members of Congress who spoke at the event argued Trump has frozen federal funding for Planned Parenthood, appearing to reference a report by The Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration plans to freeze $27.5 million in federal family-planning grants to groups including Planned Parenthood as part of its probe into diversity, equity and inclusion programs, sometimes referred to as DEI, within federal agencies.

But those Title X funds would represent just a fraction of the taxpayer funds Planned Parenthood receives annually. The group’s most recent annual report shows it received almost $700 million in taxpayer funds — in the form of government health services reimbursements and grants — for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, told OSV News that the frozen Title X grants are “a good sign.”

“I think, for me, it shows us that our messaging is resonating to the administration,” she said.

“So I think it’s a good sign,” Hawkins added. “But it’s a first step – very much still a very first step – and there’s a lot we need to do.”

At the event, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a Catholic lawmaker and co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, said that reconciliation legislation “offers an important opportunity to stop funding abortion purveyors like Planned Parenthood.”

“This is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss,” he said.

Jennie Bradley Lichter, president of the March for Life, pointed to recent New York Times reporting about botched abortions of unborn children, and inadequately trained staff at some Planned Parenthood clinics. She argued those problems showed the group should not be receiving taxpayer funds.

“It sure seems to me like the gig is finally up,” she said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The number of Catholics and permanent deacons in the world rose in 2023, while the number of seminarians, priests, men and women in religious orders, and baptisms all declined, according to Vatican statistics.

However, the Vatican’s Statistical Yearbook of the Church said, 9.1 million people received their first Communion in 2023, up from 8.68 million people the previous year, and almost 7.7 million people were confirmed, up from 7.4 million people in 2022.

At the end of 2023, the number of Catholics in the world reached 1.405 billion, up 1.15% from 1.389 billion Catholics at the end of 2022, according to the Vatican’s Central Office of Church Statistics, which publishes the yearbook.

This came despite a smaller growth rate in the world’s population, which, for that period was 0.88%. According to the United Nations’ Demographic Yearbook, the estimated mid-year world population for 2023 was approximately 8.045 billion.

The Vatican published its statistical yearbook offering data “on the life and activity of the church in the world in 2023” at the end of March.

The yearbook cautioned that its numbers were based on the information it received back from its surveys and that of 3,188 dioceses and other jurisdictions about 140 did not send information.

The number of Catholics “does not include those in countries that because of their present situation have not been included in the survey,” it said, adding that it estimated that number to be about an additional 5 million Catholics. Mainland China and North Korea, for example, had no data in the yearbook.

The percentage of Catholics as part of the global and continental populations remained about the same as in 2022. Catholics represented about 17.8% of the global population at the end of 2023, it said. The highest proportion is in the Americas with 64.2% of its population being baptized Catholic. Europe follows with 39.6% and Oceania with 25.9%. In Africa, 19.8% of the population is Catholic and the lowest proportion of Catholics by continent is Asia with 3.3%.

While the number of Catholics is increasing, the administration of the sacrament of baptism has continued to decrease worldwide, according to the yearbook. It fell from 17,932,891 baptisms administered in 1998 to 13,327,037 in 2022 and 13,150,780 in 2023. A peak was reported during the Holy Year 2000 when 18,408,076 baptisms were administered worldwide.

The yearbook said the “general downward trend in the relative number of baptisms” has been “following closely the trend in the birthrate in most countries.”

It said the ratio of infant baptisms to the Catholic population is of “great significance” because it notes differences between one country and another. While the world average is 7.4 infant baptisms per 1,000 Catholics, the highest ratios are in American Samoa (71.2), several islands in Oceania (37.7 to 21.8), followed by Burundi (23.6), Cambodia (22.3), Timor Leste (20.3) and Myanmar (20.1). The lowest ratios are in Armenia, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, Tunisia and Algeria (below 1) followed by Russia and Djibouti (1.1).

The total number of adult baptisms registered in 2023 was 2,696,521, which is about 20% of the total number of baptisms. The highest proportion of adult baptisms is in Africa (35.9%) and the lowest is in Europe and the Middle East.

The Catholic Church had 5,430 bishops at the end of 2023, an increase of 77 bishops from 2022. The majority of them are serving in the Americas and Europe.

The total number of diocesan and religious order priests decreased by 734 men to a total of 406,996, the Vatican office said. The only significant increase in the number of diocesan and religious order priests was in Africa and Asia, which was not enough to offset the declines in the Americas and Europe.

While the number of religious-order priests had increased by 297 men in 2022, the number went down to 128,254 in 2023, about what it had been in 2021. The number of diocesan priests continued to decrease globally with 278,742 men at the end of 2023.

The yearbook also offered a chart tracking the overall change to the number of diocesan clergy from 2013 to 2023 by calculating how many of those already serving were newly ordained, minus those who died and those who left the priesthood. It showed there was modest growth from 2013 to 2016 (0.31% to 0.05%) followed by a negative rate starting in 2017 that peaked in 2020 during the pandemic (-0.73%). The rate was recorded at -0.45% in 2021 and -0.12% in 2022.

The number of Catholics per priest increased slightly to 3,453 from 3,408 Catholics per priest in 2022.

The total number of religious brothers continued to decrease in 2023 from 49,414 to 48,748 and the total number of religious women, it said, was down to 589,423 from 599,228 at the end of 2022 — a decrease of 9,805 women or 1.64%.

The number of permanent deacons continued to increase. There were 51,433 permanent deacons at the end of 2023 — a 2.54% increase over the previous year, with the highest numbers being in the Americas.

The number of seminarians continued to decrease globally with a 1.67% average rate of decline from 2018 to 2023. There were 106,495 seminarians at the end of 2023 with the only growth — 383 men — being in Africa.

The number of Catholic weddings celebrated around the world in 2023 was down from 1.97 million in 2022 to 1.85 million; of those, about 10.3% involved a Catholic marrying a non-Catholic.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Those who work to keep children and vulnerable adults safe are serving and honoring Christ, Pope Francis said in a written message.

“Abuse prevention is not a blanket to be spread over emergencies, but one of the foundations on which to build communities faithful to the Gospel,” said the message, released by the Vatican March 25.

The message, which was dated March 20 while Pope Francis was still recovering at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, was addressed to members and guests attending the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors’ plenary assembly in Rome March 24-28.

“I warmly send you my greetings” and gratitude, he said in the message, telling members their “valuable service” is like “oxygen” for local churches and religious communities.

“Because wherever a child or vulnerable person is safe, there you serve and honor Christ,” it said.

The work the commission does in assisting local churches is not just about norms and protocols to be applied and enforced, but about promoting real safeguarding through education, preventative measures and “listening that restores dignity,” it said.

“When you establish prevention policies, even in the remotest communities, you are writing a promise: that every child, every vulnerable person, will find a safe environment in the ecclesial community,” the papal message said.

In his message, the pope asked the commission to commit to three tasks:

— To further develop and expand work with the offices of the Roman Curia.

— To offer hospitality to victims and survivors and care for their “wounds of the soul.” What survivors have to say should be listened to “with the ear of the heart” so that their testimony does not just end up being something to be documented, but encounters “depths of mercy” from which they can be reborn.

— To build alliances with groups and people outside of the Catholic Church, such as civil authorities, experts and associations, to help safeguarding “become a universal language.”

Since its establishment in 2014, the commission has “enabled a safety network to grow within the church,” the pope’s message said.

“May the Holy Spirit, teacher of living memory, preserve us from the temptation” to stick grief in a file and archive it instead of healing it, it said.

ROME (CNS) – For Pope Francis’ medical team at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, Feb. 28 was the worst day.

“For the first time I saw tears in the eyes of some of the people around him,” Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the coordinator of his medical team, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

“We were all aware that the situation had deteriorated further and there was a risk that he might not make it,” Alfieri said in the interview published March 25, two days after the pope was released from the hospital and returned to the Vatican.

The Vatican medical bulletin from Feb. 28 said: “The Holy Father, this afternoon, after a morning spent alternating between respiratory physiotherapy and prayer in the chapel, experienced an isolated episode of bronchospasm. This caused an episode of vomiting, which led to him inhaling some and a sudden worsening of his respiratory condition.”

The doctors aspirated his airways and put him on noninvasive mechanical ventilation, a machine that delivers air with added oxygen through a tightly fitted face mask and using positive pressure to assist breathing.

Alfieri and Vatican officials have said several times that Pope Francis was never intubated and that he always remained “alert and aware.”

The doctor told Corriere, “We had to make a choice between stopping and letting him go or pressing on and trying all the drugs and therapies we could, running the very high risk of damaging other organs. And in the end, we took that path.”

Asked who made the final decision, Alfieri said, “The Holy Father always decides.”

But he added that Pope Francis had “delegated all kinds of health care decisions to Massimiliano Strappetti, his personal health care assistant who knows perfectly well the pontiff’s wishes.”

Strappetti, a nurse who worked in intensive care at the Gemelli, joined the Vatican health service in 2002 and has become Pope Francis’ primary health care provider, working in consultation with the pope’s physicians.

Strappetti advised, “Try everything, don’t give up,” Alfieri said. “That’s what we all thought too. And nobody gave up.”

Corriere also asked Alfieri if Pope Francis was aware of the danger he was in.

“Yes,” he responded, “because he was always alert. Even when his condition worsened, he was fully conscious. That night was terrible; he knew, as we did, that he might not make it through the night. We saw the man in pain. However, from the first day he asked us to tell him the truth and wanted us to be honest about his condition.”

After 38 days in the hospital, Pope Francis returned to the Vatican, but Alfieri and the other members of his medical team have said he will need two months to recuperate.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, spoke to reporters March 24 outside a meeting near the Vatican. He said he had not visited the pope yet because he wanted to allow him to rest.

The Secretariat of State and all Vatican offices keep working as normal, he said.

“I think that for the moment only the most important issues will be submitted to the pope, issues that require a decision on his part also so as not to tire him too much,” Cardinal Parolin said. “Then as he recovers, we will return to the normal rhythm.”

Greeting people gathered outside the Gemelli hospital before leaving March 23, Pope Francis was obviously weak, and his voice was barely audible.

While his doctors have urged him to avoid meetings with large groups, Cardinal Parolin said he hoped the pope would be able to at least briefly greet Britain’s King Charles III, who was scheduled to make a state visit to the Vatican April 8.

The pope’s first days back home had a rhythm of rest, work, prayer and therapy, both respiratory and physical therapy, the Vatican press office said. A nurse was present 24 hours a day, and the pope was alternating between using high-flow oxygen, oxygen mixed with ambient air and not using the nasal cannula at all.

Pope Francis concelebrated Mass March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, in the small chapel near his room on the second floor of the residence, the press office added. It did not say who the other concelebrants were.

EL PASO, Texas (OSV News) – Mass deportations and asylum bans — part of the Trump administration’s rapid changes to U.S. immigration policy — destroy communities and human dignity, while constituting a “war on the poor,” said Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas.

The bishop – who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration – shared his thoughts during a March 24 prayer vigil at Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, which capped a rally and march that began in the city’s downtown San Jacinto Plaza.

“Aquí Estamos: March and Vigil to Stand with Migrants” drew hundreds of participants, including immigration advocates, Catholic and interfaith clergy, religious and lay faithful.

The gathering, spoken in English and Spanish throughout, was attended by Catholic prelates from the U.S., Canada and Mexico, including Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio; Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces, New Mexico; Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky; and Bishop Noël Simard of Valleyfield, Quebec.

Also on hand was Cardinal Fabio Baggio of Bassano del Grappa, Italy, the undersecretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Speaking in Spanish, Cardinal Baggio invited attendees at the vigil to pray for “all the victims of the different migratory routes” in the world, from Africa and Asia to Europe and the U.S.

“Thousands and thousands of brothers and sisters who, simply looking for a better future or refuge, lost their way,” he said in lament.

According to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, 2024 was the deadliest year on record for migrants, with at least 8,938 perishing on migration routes.

The El Paso rally, march and vigil — organized by Bishop Seitz in partnership with Hope Border Institute, an El Paso-based immigrant advocacy nonprofit — took place on the feast of St. Óscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador known for his fierce defense of human rights and the marginalized in El Salvador.

The rally’s timing was “no accident,” especially as such rights have become increasingly endangered amid an “attack on immigrants today,” Bishop Seitz said in his address at the vigil.

The denial of asylum and the threat of mass deportations represent “a fundamental attack on the human community” and on “Jesus’ vision of a fully reconciled humanity,” he said. “Mass deportations are another tool to keep people afraid, to keep a people divided, to extinguish the charity and love that keep a people alive.”

Catholic social teaching on immigration holds that people have the right to migrate to sustain their lives, while nations have the right to regulate their borders and control immigration, although they must do so with both justice and mercy.

But speakers at the rally pointed to recent U.S. immigration policy changes as exceeding those moral parameters, and instead eroding human rights and fostering division.

Ruben Garcia, founder and executive director of Annunciation House — an El Paso shelter that has hosted over 500,000 people fleeing more than 40 countries for nearly five decades — pointed to recent letters sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to organizations receiving shelter grant money. The notices require “a detailed and descriptive list of specific services,” and compel executive officers from the groups to sign sworn statements they have no knowledge or suspicions of staff violating smuggling laws.

Children are not spared in the administration’s crackdown on immigration, said attorney Melissa M. Lopez, executive director of the Diocese of El Paso’s Estrella del Paso (formerly Migrant and Refugee Services), which provides free immigration legal services.

Lopez advised the crowd her office had received notice March 21 the federal government had terminated its contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which provides legal services to unaccompanied migrant minors through a national network of providers, including Lopez’s team.

“The federal government has decided that children should go to court by themselves, that children should be forced to understand asylum law and apply for asylum on their own, and that they don’t deserve … having somebody stand alongside them,” she said. Lopez added that she lost 18 staff at her agency — which served “almost 30,000 children last year” — due to the contract termination.

Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute, described the current immigration climate as “difficult” and a “dark moment.” He told rally attendees that “everything that is beautiful about this community” on the border “is under attack right now.”

But Bishop Seitz also emphasized, “We are here tonight to celebrate our community.”

Participants embraced that spirit through praise and worship music, as well as through religious dance troupes honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Jude and St. Patrick, with choreography, drumming and costumes reflecting the area’s Catholic Indigenous and Mexican-Spanish heritage.

“El Paso is a proud and beautiful border community” that “stands as a testament to how welcoming others fosters a safe, prosperous and vibrant environment for all,” said El Paso Auxiliary Bishop Anthony C. Celino.

At the rally, Bishop Celino invited those present to affirm the six principles of the Compromiso El Paso 2025 (“El Paso Commitment 2025”). Attendees could digitally sign the Compromiso El Paso through a Google Doc link accessed by cards with a QR code and Romero’s image, provided by Hope Border Institute.

The principles include human dignity; family; community safety built on collaboration and trust between residents and law enforcement; prosperity; fairness through “humane … responsible immigration policies”; and “celebration of our heritage,” said Bishop Celino.

Following the rally, participants – some holding signs stating “Jesus was an immigrant” and “Migration is a human right” – walked the half mile from the plaza to the vigil at Sacred Heart Church, led by Bishop Seitz and his fellow prelates and preceded by the drummers and dancers.

“Community is an exchange of gifts, where we gift our lives to one another for the benefit of one another,” Bishop Seitz said at the vigil. “We grow together and we bear one another’s burdens.”

Christ offered himself in sacrifice – one to which Romero, through his own martyrdom, united himself – for “that body” that is divinely created humanity, said Bishop Seitz.

“We belong to one another, brothers and sisters,” he said. “We belong to each other.”

That interrelatedness extends well beyond the borders of the U.S., said Bishop Seitz.

“Migration is connected with the fate of our country,” he said. “Our relationship to this issue as El Paso and as the United States reveals what we truly value, what we truly honor. Hopefully, we put our faith not in money and power and rivalry and dominance and empire. This would be idolatry of the worst sort.”

At the border, “we see that (in) this war on the poor, everything is disposable — land, water, environment, our health, women … marriages, the unborn, the poor, human rights,” said Bishop Seitz.

Jesus “points us in a different direction,” Bishop Seitz said. “True, authentic community is built on self-sacrifice, love, and bearing one another’s burdens. … This is what the church, the beloved community, must be in the world. And we must be a sign to them.”

Bishop Seitz assured all those “who live in fear of deportation and family separation” of “our love and commitment,” stressing that “the church stands with you in this hour of darkness.

“And to those in a position of responsibility for our country who steward the common good, I make this urgent plea,” he said before raising his voice. “Stop the asylum ban. Stop the deportations.”