Category: 2025 News

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – As Hurricane Melissa continued its devastating course through the Caribbean, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, urged Catholics to pray for and support the people and communities impacted by one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record.

In the Caribbean region, “families face severe risk of flooding, landslides, displacement, and infrastructure damage with little resources to respond” due to the strongest storm the planet has seen this year, the archbishop said in a statement released late Oct. 29. “Our brothers and sisters in small island nations like Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti are the most vulnerable to the impact of such strong storms, often intensified by a warming climate.”

Melissa has left dozens dead and caused widespread destruction across Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti. With winds ranging from 175-185 mph, it made landfall in southwestern Jamaica near New Hope around 1 p.m. ET Oct. 28 before heading toward Cuba, where it made landfall early in the morning Oct. 29 as a Category 3 storm.

“After lashing Cuba,” Melissa set “its sights” on the Bahamas and Bermuda, The Weather Channel reported.

“The Church accompanies, through prayer and action, all people who are suffering,” said Archbishop Broglio, head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services. “I urge Catholics and all people of good will to join me in praying for the safety and protection of everyone, especially first responders, in these devastated areas.”

“Let us stand in solidarity,” he added, “by supporting the efforts of organizations already on the ground such as Caritas Haiti, Caritas Cuba, and Caritas Antilles, as well as Catholic Relief Services, who are supplying essential, direct services and accompaniment to those in need.”

Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. Catholic Church’s overseas relief and development agency, is accepting donations for hurricane relief via its website: https://www.crs.org/donate/hurricane-melissa.

At the Vatican after his main address at the general audience early Oct. 29, Pope Leo XIV assured storm victims of his “closeness” and his prayers.

“Thousands of people have been displaced, while homes, infrastructure and several hospitals have been damaged,” he said. “I assure everyone of my closeness, praying for those who have lost their lives, for those who are fleeing and for those populations who, awaiting the storm’s developments, are experiencing hours of anxiety and concern.”

“I encourage the civil authorities to do everything possible and I thank the Christian communities, together with voluntary organizations, for the relief they are providing,” the pope added.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The president of the U.S. bishops’ conference has urged lawmakers to fund federal food assistance before a looming deadline risks disrupting benefits for more than 40 million people.

The Trump administration said benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would not be issued starting on Nov. 1 if the federal government shutdown remains in effect.

About 42 million Americans rely on SNAP. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that in fiscal year 2023, 79% of SNAP recipient households included either a child, an elderly individual or a nonelderly individual with a disability.

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement released late Oct. 28 the group is “deeply alarmed that essential programs that support the common good, such as SNAP, may be interrupted.”

“This would be catastrophic for families and individuals who rely on SNAP to put food on the table and places the burdens of this shutdown most heavily on the poor and vulnerable of our nation, who are the least able to move forward,” said the prelate, who heads the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services. “This consequence is unjust and unacceptable.”

On its website, the USDA posted a notice that said, “Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.” The message blamed Senate Democrats for the ongoing stalemate.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told Fox News Oct. 28 that the department “does not have the $9.2 billion that it would require” to fund the program.

“Unless Democrats vote to END their shutdown, food stamp recipients will not receive their benefits beginning on Saturday,” the White House’s rapid response social media account said.

In a post on X, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. said, “Millions of hungry families are about to lose SNAP benefits to buy food.”

“There are $5 billion in emergency funds that could be used right now to ensure parents and kids don’t go hungry when SNAP runs out this Saturday,” he said. “But Donald Trump has ordered them not to use this funding.”

A coalition of 25 states and the District of Columbia states sued the Trump administration in an attempt to keep the program running.

In his statement, Archbishop Broglio added, “The U.S. bishops have consistently advocated for public policies that support those in need.”

“I urgently plead with lawmakers and the Administration to work in a bipartisan way to ensure that these lifesaving programs are funded, and to pass a government funding bill to end the government shutdown as quickly as possible,” he said.

(OSV News) – A landmark Catholic document, credited with igniting a revolution in Catholic-Jewish relations over the decades, has turned 60.

“Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Time”) was promulgated Oct. 28, 1965, by Pope St. Paul VI as part of the Second Vatican Council.

The text was the Catholic Church’s first formal denunciation of “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone,” while affirming the “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews.”

That language marked a seismic shift from centuries of what French historian Jules Isaac had called a “teaching of contempt” toward the Jewish community by Catholic and other Christian theologians.

In 1947, Isaac, a renowned Jewish academic whose wife and daughter were murdered at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland, published “Jésus et Israël,” the first full analysis of Christian anti-Judaism. Later that year, Isaac also helped to develop the International Council of Christians and Jews’ “Ten Points of Seelisburg,” which stressed Christianity’s need to recover a historically and theologically accurate understanding of Judaism.

Scholars have documented a brief but pivotal June 13, 1960, meeting between Isaac and Pope St. John XXIII as the major catalyst behind “Nostra Aetate.” Soon after, the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity — led by Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea — was specifically tasked with addressing Catholic-Jewish relations, a project that ultimately led to Vatican II’s “Nostra Aetate.”

Pope Leo XIV referenced “Nostra Aetate,” which set forth the Catholic Church’s relation to non-Christian religions, in an Oct. 28 interfaith prayer service closing the “International Meeting for Peace: Religions and Cultures in Dialogue” in Rome.

Stressing the need for dialogue and friendship, Pope Leo noted the gathering took place on the 60th anniversary of “Nostra Aetate,” and referenced the text directly, saying, “We cannot truly pray to God as Father of all if we treat any people as other than sisters and brothers, for all are created in God’s image.”

The same day, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews organized an event called “Walking Together in Hope” at the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall to celebrate the document’s 60th anniversary and reaffirm calls for peace and dialogue. Among those attending the event were religious leaders from various faiths, scholars, members of the Roman Curia (the Vatican’s administration), diplomats accredited to the Holy See, and advocates for interreligious dialogue.

Pope Leo, who addressed the attendees and led a silent prayer for peace, was also scheduled to dedicate his Oct. 29 general audience to “Nostra Aetate” and interreligious dialogue.

In December 2024, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Jewish Committee jointly released “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition,” a resource that confronts antisemitism by cataloging anti-Jewish slurs, while providing Catholic teaching that counters such hatred.

The 61-page glossary of antisemitic terms and commentary, available in pdf format on the AJC’s website, builds on the AJC’s “Translate Hate” initiative, which was first released in 2019.

The document uses the working definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA. That summation states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

On Oct. 6, the Anti-Defamation League published a report finding that more than half (55%) of Jewish Americans reported experiencing some form of antisemitism during the previous year, with 79% of survey respondents expressing concern about antisemitism.

Almost one in five (18%) were the victim of an assault, or experienced a threat of physical attack or actual verbal harassment due to their Jewish identity in the past year. More than one third (36%) witnessed actual or threatened violence.

Speaking to OSV News several months ahead of the “Nostra Aetate” anniversary, AJC director of interreligious affairs Rabbi Noam Marans– who in September delivered a keynote at Georgetown University celebrating the occasion —said the document had jumpstarted “a process in which Catholic teaching about Jews and Judaism would be transformed from enmity to amity.”

Released just two decades after the end of the Holocaust (which is called “the Shoah” in the Hebrew) “Nostra Aetate” clearly stated “Jews are not collectively responsible for the death of Jesus,” and “are not to be portrayed as accursed,” said Rabbi Marans.

In addition, he noted, the text introduced “new ideas about the eternity of God’s covenant with the Jewish people,” while locating “the roots of Christianity … in Judaism.”

Rabbi Marans said “Nostra Aetate” is not the end of the church’s transformative relationship with the Jewish people, but “the beginning of an evolution that is ongoing.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Catholic education, which has changed over the centuries, must continue to evolve to help young people face the challenges not only of technology but of confusion about the meaning and purpose of life, Pope Leo XIV said.

“I call upon all educational institutions to inaugurate a new season that speaks to the hearts of the younger generations, reuniting knowledge and meaning, competence and responsibility, faith and life,” he wrote in an apostolic letter.

Titled “Disegnare Nuove Mappe Di Speranza” (“Drawing New Maps of Hope”), the letter was issued only in Italian Oct. 28. It marked the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Catholic Education.

In the letter, Pope Leo formally declared St. John Henry Newman “patron of the church’s educational mission alongside St. Thomas Aquinas.”

The pope was scheduled to formally proclaim St. Newman a “doctor of the church” Nov. 1 in recognition of his contribution to “the renewal of theology and to the understanding of the development of Christian doctrine.” He was born in London Feb. 21, 1801, was ordained an Anglican priest, became Catholic in 1845, was made a cardinal in 1879 by Pope Leo XIII and died in 1890.

Even in the face of the digital revolution and the advent of artificial intelligence, Pope Leo said, Catholic schools and universities show “a surprising resilience.”

When they are “guided by the word of Christ, they do not retreat but press forward; they do not raise walls but build bridges. They respond creatively, opening new possibilities for the transmission of knowledge and meaning,” he wrote.

Pope Leo asked Catholic educators and educational institutions to focus on “three priorities”:

— “The first regards the interior life: Young people seek depth; they need spaces of silence, discernment and dialogue with their consciences and with God.

— “The second concerns a humane digital culture: We must educate in the wise use of technology and AI, placing the person before the algorithm, and harmonizing technical, emotional, social, spiritual and ecological forms of intelligence.

— “The third concerns peace — unarmed and disarming: Let us educate in nonviolent language, reconciliation and bridge-building rather than wall-building; may ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ — (Mt 5:9) — become both the method and the content of learning.”

At the same time, the pope said, it is obvious that Catholic schools cannot ignore technology or avoid it, but they must be discerning about digital platforms, data protection and fair access for all students.

“In any case,” he said, “no algorithm can replace what makes education truly human: poetry, irony, love, art, imagination, the joy of discovery” and even learning from mistakes “as an opportunity for growth.”

In the letter, the pope briefly traced the history of Catholic education from the “desert fathers” teaching with parables, to the monastic study and preservation of classic texts and scholasticism’s highly structured and interdisciplinary curriculum.

But he also noted the huge array of Catholic saints throughout the ages who insisted that learning to read and write and add and subtract were matters of human dignity and so dedicated their lives and their religious orders to educating women and girls, the poor, migrants and refugees and others on the margins of society.

“Wherever access to education remains a privilege,” Pope Leo wrote, “the church must push open doors and invent new pathways because to ‘lose the poor’ is to lose the very meaning of the school.”

“To educate is an act of hope,” he said.

Catholic schools and universities, the pope wrote, must be “places where questions are not silenced and doubt is not banned but accompanied. The ‘heart speaks to heart,'” he said, quoting St. Newman’s motto as a cardinal.

Parents, as the Second Vatican Council affirmed, are the first and primary educators of their children, the pope said, but “Christian education is a choral work: no one educates alone.”

Those who teach in a Catholic institution, he said, “are called to a responsibility that goes beyond the employment contract: their witness is worth as much as their lesson.”

And while the human person is at the center of all educational initiatives, the goal is to help that person learn to see beyond him- or herself and “discover the meaning of life, inalienable dignity and responsibility toward others,” he wrote.

“Education is not merely the transmission of content but an apprenticeship in virtue,” Pope Leo said. “It forms citizens capable of serving and believers capable of bearing witness — men and women who are freer, not more isolated.”

The pope also called on Catholic schools and universities to be models of social and “environmental justice,” promoting simplicity and sustainable lifestyles and helping students recognize their responsibility for caring for the earth.

“Every small gesture — avoiding waste, making responsible choices, defending the common good — is an act of cultural and moral literacy,” he wrote.

(OSV News) – When St. John Henry Newman is proclaimed a doctor of the church on Nov. 1, staff and students at his old university will be counting on a boost of confidence for Oxford’s once-excluded Catholics.

“Newman had a huge influence during his lifetime and drew a lot of people into the church,” explained Alvea Fernandez, from Oxford University’s Catholic chaplaincy.

“Seeing a relatively recent Oxford figure elevated this way now has encouraged people to talk more openly about their faith.”

The lay chaplain spoke with OSV News as members of the ancient university prepared to travel to Rome for the All Saints’ Day ceremony, which will see the one-time Protestant declared the Catholic Church’s 38th doctor.

She said 2025 had seen an upturn in people wishing to become Catholic or renew their faith as Catholics, as well as a keen interest in local sites associated with Newman’s conversion and witness.

Meanwhile, a prominent Catholic student told OSV News St. Newman’s recognition had raised the profile of church members at the university, with a record number of Catholic first-year students admitted this October.

“Oxford University hasn’t been the most accepting of places for Catholics,” said Adam Gardner, president of the university’s Newman Society, founded as a Catholic club in 1878.

“But it feels as if Oxford is becoming more Catholic, and I think this will provide another catalyst for awareness-raising.”

Born in London, St. Newman (1801-1890) studied at Oxford’s Trinity College in 1816-1822, later co-founding the reformist Oxford Movement while serving as vicar of St. Mary the Virgin’s university church.

After quitting his posts to become a Catholic in 1845, he founded a church and community at nearby Littlemore, creating a vast output of works that have made him one of the Christian world’s most studied figures.

Made a cardinal in 1879 by Pope Leo XIII, St. Newman became the first English non-martyr saint for six centuries when canonized in October 2019, and has given his name to numerous schools and colleges, as well as an oratory and university in Birmingham, where he lived in later life.

Lord Neil Mendoza, provost of Oriel College, where the saint served as a fellow and became an Anglican priest, said he had been “reminded many times” of St. Newman’s “profound impact” on university life, while St. Mary the Virgin’s current vicar, Father William Lamb, told OSV News many pilgrims were now coming to see the pulpit from which St. Newman preached his famous sermons.

“While people will want to celebrate Newman’s theological views about conscience, the role of laity and the development of doctrine, he’s also an important figure for the field of education,” Father Lamb told OSV News.

“His writings will stimulate sustained reflection about what a university education can contribute to human flourishing.”

Catholics were excluded from Oxford University after the 16th-century Reformation, and while their access to higher education was made possible under a 1829 Relief Act, restrictions remained in place until recusancy laws were repealed in 1888.

The university numbers 57 beatified Catholic martyrs among alumni, commemorated annually on Dec. 1, while its 15 saints include St. Thomas More (1478-1535), who was university chancellor, and St. Edmund Campion (1540-1581), a Jesuit and a fellow of St. John’s College, who was hanged and dismembered at Tyburn in London alongside a younger Oxford graduate, St. Ralph Sherwin.

A small chapel, built by Jesuit priests, became the city’s first legal Catholic place of worship in 1793, while a discreetly located Oratory Church of St. Aloysius opened in 1875.

However, Catholics were not allowed to enroll at the university until the 1890s with the foundation of a Catholic chaplaincy and two private Catholic study centers.

Father William Pearsall, a priest at the Jesuit-run Campion Hall, said St. Newman had “turned himself into an outcast” with his Catholic conversion, but had later helped Catholicism gain acceptance as “truly English” through his “scholarship and Christian character.”

Later wartime heroism by local Catholics had improved the community’s profile, Father Pearsall told OSV News. The university is now home to many Catholic lecturers and professors, while Masses are celebrated routinely in most college chapels.

Not everyone shares the enthusiasm at Oxford of St. Newman becoming doctor of the church, which was named the world’s No. 1 university for the eighth year running in a recent survey.

The university’s main website makes no mention of St. Newman’s elevation, while Trinity College, which the saint remembered warmly from his undergraduate studies, records that the saint will receive “one of Catholic Church’s highest honors.”

Prominent Oxford Anglicans have also been wary of St. Newman’s new lofty status, aware that the saint, after deep reflection, repudiated their church’s much-vaunted “via media,” or middle way.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, one of Britain’s best known Anglican church historians, now a fellow and archivist at the Catholic Campion Hall, said some colleagues have questioned his historic importance.

“Newman was a remarkably accomplished writer, with a beautiful literary style, who cleverly developed an idea of development which justified Roman Catholic doctrines not immediately obvious from early church history,” MacCulloch, who was Oxford’s church history professor in 1997-2019, told OSV News.

“While his conversion to Rome was a sensation at the time, however, I’ve never felt he said anything of particular interest or originality.”

Back among the cobbled alleyways and cloisters where the church’s latest doctor once taught and ministered, the upcoming St. Peter’s Square ceremony, to be led by Pope Leo XIV, remains a topic of conversation.

Adam Gardner, the Newman Society president, said attendance at Mass and Catholic events in Oxford has grown steadily over the past decade, in an officially Protestant country where practicing Catholics are now thought to outnumber Anglicans by a ratio of 2-to-1.

He’s enthusiastic about the increasing Catholic presence in the university’s teaching and administrative structures, and hopes many more people will be brought to the faith by St. Newman’s example.

For all his scepticism, MacCulloch concedes the new prominence given to Catholicism by St. Newman’s elevation underlines an “essential aspect of Oxford past and present.”

“Newman made a genuine career sacrifice by moving to Rome, which was remedied by his canonization — it’s appropriate and good that Oxford’s Catholic traditions are being evoked this way,” the veteran historian told OSV News.

“Newman himself would no doubt have professed himself overwhelmed and humbled — but I’m sure a bit of him would have been rather pleased.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The supreme rule in the Catholic Church is love, which compels all of the faithful to serve, not to judge, exclude or dominate others, Pope Leo XIV said.

“No one should impose his or her own ideas; we must all listen to one another. No one is excluded; we are all called to participate,” he said in his homily during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Oct. 26.

“No one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it and seek it together,” he said.

The Mass marked the closing of the Oct. 24-26 Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies. About 2,000 members of synodal teams and bodies such as presbyteral councils, pastoral councils and finance councils at the diocesan, eparchial, national and regional levels were registered for the Jubilee events.

The Jubilee included workshops and other gatherings to further strengthen the implementation phase of the final document of the 2021-2024 Synod of Bishops on synodality.

“We must dream of and build a more humble church,” Pope Leo said in his homily.

It must be a church that does not stand “triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity,” he said.

It must be a church that does not judge, he said, “but becomes a welcoming place for all; a church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone.”

By “clothing ourselves with the sentiments of Christ, we expand the ecclesial space so that it becomes collegial and welcoming,” he said. This will “enable us to live with confidence and a new spirit amid the tensions that run through the life of the church.”

“We must allow the Spirit to transform” the current tensions in the church “between unity and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation,” he said.

“It is not a question of resolving them by reducing one to the other, but of allowing them to be purified by the Spirit, so that they may be harmonized and oriented toward a common discernment,” he said.

“Being a synodal church means recognizing that truth is not possessed, but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with love,” he said.

Synodal teams and participatory bodies, he said, should “express what occurs within the church, where relationships do not respond to the logic of power but to that of love.”

Rather than follow a “worldly” logic, the Christian community focuses on “the spiritual life, which reveals to us that we are all children of God, brothers and sisters, called to serve one another,” he said.

“The supreme rule in the church is love. No one is called to dominate; all are called to serve,” he said.

He said Jesus showed how he belongs “to those who are humble” and condemns the self-righteous in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, which was the day’s Gospel reading (Lk 18:9-14).

The Pharisee and the tax collector both enter the temple area to pray, the pope said, but they are divided mostly because of the attitude of the Pharisee, who is “obsessed with his own ego and, in this way, ends up focused on himself without having a relationship with either God or others.”

“This can also happen in the Christian community,” he said. “It happens when the ego prevails over the collective, causing an individualism that prevents authentic and fraternal relationships.”

“It also occurs when the claim to be better than others … creates division and turns the community into a judgmental and exclusionary place; and when one leverages one’s role to exert power, rather than to serve,” the pope said.

The tax collector, on the other hand, recognized his sinfulness, prayed for God’s mercy and “went home justified,” that is, forgiven and renewed by his encounter with God, according to the reading.

Everyone in the church must show the same humility, he said, recognizing that “we are all in need of God and of one another, which leads us to practice reciprocal love, listen to each other and enjoy walking together.”

This is the nature and praxis of the synodal teams and participatory bodies, he said, calling them “an image of this church that lives in communion.”

“Let us commit ourselves to building a church that is entirely synodal, ministerial and attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world,” he said.

Pope Leo cited the words of the late Italian Bishop Antonio Bello, who prayed for Mary’s intercession to help the church “overcome internal divisions. Intervene when the demon of discord creeps into their midst. Extinguish the fires of factionalism. Reconcile mutual disputes. Defuse their rivalries. Stop them when they decide to go their own way, neglecting convergence on common projects.”

The Catholic Church, he said, “is the visible sign of the union between God and humanity, where God intends to bring us all together into one family of brothers and sisters and make us his people: a people made up of beloved children, all united in the one embrace of his love.”

Later in the day, before praying the Angelus at noon with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo continued his reflection on the day’s Gospel reading, saying, “it is not by flaunting our merits that we are saved, nor by hiding our mistakes, but by presenting ourselves honestly, just as we are, before God, ourselves and others, asking for forgiveness and entrusting ourselves to the Lord’s grace.”

Just as a person who is ill does not try to hide — out of shame or pride — their wounds from a doctor, the Christian also should not try to hide their pain if they are to be healed, he said.

“Let us not be afraid to acknowledge our mistakes, lay them bare, take responsibility for them and entrust them to God’s mercy,” he said. “That way, his kingdom — which belongs not to the proud but to the humble and is built through prayer and action, by practicing honesty, forgiveness and gratitude — can grow in us and around us.”

MINNEAPOLIS (OSV News) – Sophia Forchas, who was critically injured in an Aug. 27 shooting during an all-school Mass at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis, has been discharged from the hospital and was greeted with signs and cheers Oct. 23 in Minneapolis.

Sophia, 12, was in critical condition for two weeks after suffering a gunshot wound to the head. Then, Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis reported on Sept. 11 that she had moved into serious condition – defined as having “a chance for improved prognosis.”

On her way home from Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul Oct. 23, where she was receiving inpatient rehabilitation, Sophia was escorted to Hennepin Healthcare.

She was greeted by staff who clapped and cheered. Some staff cried and hugged each other. They held signs that included birthday messages and sang the “Happy Birthday” song to her. Sophia, a seventh grader, turns 13 on Oct. 25. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara was part of the escort.

Sophia’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Walt Galicich, credited staff at Hennepin Healthcare for assisting in the girl’s recovery. In September, while Galicich gave an optimistic diagnosis of Sophia he said there was a possibility that she might be the third fatality as a result of the shooting.

Outside the white limo in which Sophia was escorted, Galicich was one of many people to hug her.

In September, the Forchas family, who are members of St. Mary Greek Orthodox Church in Minneapolis, thanked all those who have been praying for Sophia.

“We are humbled by the countless individuals across the globe who have lifted her up in prayer,” the family wrote, in part, in a statement published Sept. 22 by Hennepin Healthcare.

The family stated Sophia’s healing progress was “nothing short of miraculous; an undeniable testament to the mercy and intervention of our Lord Jesus Christ. … God has heard our prayers and wrapped Sophia in His healing embrace.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – A society cannot pretend to be pro-family if it does not adopt policies that allow parents and children to spend time together rather than always being worried about work, Pope Leo XIV said.

“In a society that often exalts productivity and speed at the expense of relationships, it becomes urgent to restore time and space to the love that is learned within the family, where the first experiences of trust, gift and forgiveness are woven – forming the very fabric of social life,” he said Oct. 24.

Pope Leo made the comments during a meeting with faculty, staff, students and alumni of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences.

Praising the intuition of St. John Paul II for launching the graduate school and Pope Francis for insisting its curriculum be multidisciplinary, Pope Leo asked for particular attention to drawing from and strengthening reflections on the role of the family in Catholic social teaching.

The institute, he said, is called to contribute to “the ongoing renewal of dialogue between family life, the world of work and social justice — addressing issues of pressing relevance such as peace, the care of life and health, integral human development, youth employment, economic sustainability and equal opportunities between men and women, all of which influence the decision to marry and to bring children into the world.”

The church and its ministers cannot be “content merely to speak about the truth” concerning marriage and family life, Pope Leo said, but it must “promote concrete and coordinated actions in support of the family,” including through government policies.

“In fact, the quality of a country’s social and political life is measured above all by how it enables families to live well — to have time for themselves and to cultivate the bonds that unite them,” the pope said.

In “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis’ 2016 post-synodal exhortation on marriage, love and family life, Pope Leo said, the late pope wrote with tenderness to pregnant women, “urging them to cherish the joy of bringing a new life into the world.”

“His words express a simple yet profound truth: human life is a gift and must always be welcomed with respect, care and gratitude,” Pope Leo said. “Therefore, in the face of so many mothers who experience pregnancy in conditions of loneliness or marginalization, I feel the duty to remind everyone that both the civil and ecclesial communities must remain constantly committed to restoring full dignity to motherhood.”

The pope also spoke about what he called “the growing tendency in many parts of the world to undervalue or even reject marriage.”

The church’s first response, he said, must be “to be attentive to the action of God’s grace in the heart of every man and woman. Even when young people make choices that do not correspond to the ways proposed by the church according to the teaching of Jesus, the Lord continues to knock at the door of their hearts, preparing them to receive a new inner call.”

The church’s pastoral workers must recognize that “our time is marked not only by tensions and ideologies that confuse hearts, but also by a growing quest for spirituality, truth and justice — especially among the young,” he said. “To welcome and care for this longing is one of the most beautiful and urgent tasks before us all.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The current abuse of vulnerable migrants is not the legitimate exercise of national sovereignty, Pope Leo XIV said, but rather it represents a serious crime being committed or tolerated by the government.

“Ever more inhuman measures are being adopted – even celebrated politically – that treat these ‘undesirables’ as if they were garbage and not human beings,” he said without mentioning any specific country during an address to so-called popular movements meeting at the Vatican Oct. 23.

“States have the right and the duty to protect their borders, but this should be balanced by the moral obligation to provide refuge,” he said.

For Christians, the pope said, God is love, and he “creates us and calls us to live as brothers and sisters.”

The theme of protecting the rights and dignity of the world’s immigrants was just one issue the pope addressed in a major speech that laid out some of the “new” social ills the church must focus on, such as: the deadly opioid crisis in the United States; online gambling; consumeristic lifestyles fueled by social media; so-called “conflict minerals”; and the poor being given easy access to new technologies while their fundamental needs of food, shelter and work are cut off or ignored.

The gathering in the Paul VI Audience Hall was part of the Jubilee of Popular Movements and the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements taking place in Rome Oct. 21-24. The popular movements include those that organize informal workers who collect and recycle trash, gather people who live in the informal settlements on the outskirts of cities, rally citizens to promote care of the environment, assist subsistence farmers and rescue migrants at sea.

Pope Leo greeted the participants and assured them that, like his predecessor Pope Francis, he believed “housing, work and land are sacred rights, it is worthwhile to fight for them, and I would like you to hear me say ‘I am here,’ ‘I am with you!'”

He reiterated that he chose the name Leo because of Pope Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical, “Rerum Novarum.” Latin for “Of New Things,” the 1891 document addressed the new social and economic challenges posed by the Industrial Revolution, particularly its impact on labor and workers’ rights.

Too often, Pope Leo XIV said, when society looks at the “new things” of the day, it looks at “what’s new” for the privileged, the powerful and the financially secure, like “autonomous vehicles, high-end mobile phones, cryptocurrencies and other such things.”

“From the peripheries, however, things appear differently,” he said.

“Is asking for housing, work and land, including food for the excluded, a ‘new thing’?” he asked. These basic, fundamental needs are “so current” that they merit “an entire chapter in Christian social thought on the excluded in today’s world.”

In fact, he said, Pope Leo XIII “did not concentrate on industrial technology or on new sources of energy, but rather on the situation of workers,” the poor and the oppressed.

“For the first time and with absolute clarity, a pope said that the daily struggle for survival and for social justice were of fundamental importance for the church,” he said.

In his five-page speech, the pope sought to look at the “new things” happening on “the periphery,” that is, “the problems that strike the excluded” and marginalized of today.

Notably, in today’s world, many old injustices continue, he said.

Progress must always be “managed through an ethic of responsibility, overcoming the risk of idolizing profit, and putting the human person and their integral development at the center,” he said, especially by including marginalized communities “in a collective and united effort to invert the dehumanizing tendencies of social injustices.”

“We should ensure that the ‘what’s new’ be managed in an appropriate way,” he said. “The question should not remain only in the hands of the political, scientific or academic elites, but rather should involve all of us.”

“Reversing the course that continues dramatically excluding millions of people who remain on the margins,” he said, is “a central point in the debate on the ‘new things.'”

Today, he said, “exclusion is the new face of social injustice.”

However, there is a surprising paradox, he said. “The lack of land, food, housing and decent work coexists with access to the new technologies.”

“Cell phones, social networks and even artificial intelligence are in the pockets of millions of persons, including the poor,” he said, but more fundamental needs must not be neglected.

Pope Leo blamed this “systemic arbitrariness” on “bad management” that “generates and increases inequalities with the pretext of progress.” When promoting human dignity is not the focus, then “the system fails also in justice.”

Some “new things” today, such as climate change, have a more devastating impact on the poor, the pope said.

But there is also “the new thing” of the pharmaceutical industry, he said.

While advances in medicine represent “great progress for some,” he said, “a cult of physical well-being is being promoted, almost an idolatry of the body.”

Any mentality that reduces “the mystery of pain” to something totally inhuman can lead to a dependence on pain medications, he said, “the sale of which obviously goes to increasing the earnings of the same pharmaceutical companies.”

“This also leads to dependence on opioids, as has been devastating, particularly in the United States. For example, fentanyl, the drug of death, is the second most common cause of death among the poor in that country,” he said.

“The spread of new synthetic drugs, ever more lethal, is not only a crime involving the trafficking of drugs but really has to do with the production of pharmaceuticals and their profit, lacking a global ethic,” he added.

Another aspect of the “new things” that hurts the marginalized, he said, is the lifestyle of “unbridled consumerism and a totally unrealizable level of economic success” being constantly promoted, especially on social media.

Dependency on digital gambling, whose “platforms are designed to create compulsive dependence and generate addictive habits,” is another new problem, he said.

The development of new technologies for computing and telecommunication also has a disproportionate effect on the poor because it depends on minerals — like coltan and lithium — often found in poor countries, he said.

The extraction of these minerals “depends on paramilitary violence, child labor and the displacement of populations,” he said.

Nations and corporations competing to extract the “white gold” of lithium, for example, threaten the sovereignty and stability of poor states, he said, “to the point that some contractors and politicians boast of promoting coups and other forms of political destabilization.”

“And, finally, I would like to accent the theme of security,” the pope said. “With the abuse of vulnerable migrants, we are witnessing, not the legitimate exercise of national sovereignty, but rather grave crimes committed or tolerated by the state.”

“At the same time, I am encouraged to see how the popular movements, the organizations of civil society and the church are addressing these new forms of dehumanization, constantly testifying that whoever is in need is our neighbor, our brother and our sister,” he said. “This makes you champions of humanity, witnesses to justice, poets of solidarity.”

The services that popular movements provide must be animated by love, he said. “In fact, when cooperatives and projects are formed to feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless, rescue the shipwrecked, provide daycare, create jobs, access land and build houses, remember that we are not serving an ideology but truly living the Gospel.”

“The church must be with you: a poor church for the poor, a church that reaches out, a church that runs risks, a church that is courageous, prophetic and joyful!” Pope Leo said.