Pope Leo XIV address to media calls for end to abusive communications and promotes journalism for peace

Echo transcript address to the world media by Pope XIV:

Pope Leo XIV asks journalists to use communication as a tool for peace

ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER LEO XIV
TO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MEDIA
Audience Hall
Monday, 12 May 2025

Pope Leo XIV arrives for an audience with thousands of journalists and media workers at Paul VI Audience Hall in Vatican City. The audience with journalists has become a tradition among newly elected popes. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Good morning and thank you for this wonderful reception! They say when they clap at the beginning it does not matter much, if you are still awake at the end and you still want to applaud…thank you very much!

Brothers and sisters,  I welcome you, representatives of the media from around the world. Thank you for the work you have done and continue to do in these days, which is truly a time of grace for the Church.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaimed: “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9). This is a Beatitude that challenges all of us, but it is particularly relevant to you, calling each one of you to strive for a different kind of communication, one that does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it. Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say “no” to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.

Let me, therefore, reiterate today the Church’s solidarity with journalists who are imprisoned for seeking to report the truth, and with these words I also ask for the release of these imprisoned journalists. The Church recognises in these witnesses – I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives – the courage of those who defend dignity, justice and the right of people to be informed, because only informed individuals can make free choices. The suffering of these imprisoned journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press.

Thank you, dear friends, for your service to the truth. You have been in Rome these past few weeks to report on the Church, its diversity and, at the same time, its unity. You were present during the liturgies of Holy Week and then reported on the sorrow felt over the death of Pope Francis, which nevertheless took place in the light of Easter. That same Easter faith drew us into the spirit of the Conclave, during which you worked long and tiring days. Yet, even on this occasion, you managed to recount the beauty of Christ’s love that unites and makes us one people, guided by the Good Shepherd.

We are living in times that are both difficult to navigate and to recount. They present a challenge for all of us but it is one that we should not run away from. On the contrary, they demand that each one of us, in our different roles and services, never give in to mediocrity. The Church must face the challenges posed by the times. In the same way, communication and journalism do not exist outside of time and history. Saint Augustine reminds of this when he said, “Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times” (Discourse 80.8).

Thank you, therefore, for what you have done to move beyond stereotypes and clichés through which we often interpret Christian life and the life of the Church itself. Thank you because you have captured the essence of who we are and conveyed it to the whole world through every form of media possible.

Today, one of the most important challenges is to promote communication that can bring us out of the “Tower of Babel” in which we sometimes find ourselves, out of the confusion of loveless languages that are often ideological or partisan. Therefore, your service, with the words you use and the style you adopt, is crucial. As you know, communication is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and discussion. In looking at how technology is developing, this mission becomes ever more necessary. I am thinking in particular of artificial intelligence, with its immense potential, which nevertheless requires responsibility and discernment in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all, so that it can benefit all of humanity. This responsibility concerns everyone in proportion to his or her age and role in society.

Dear friends, we will get to know each other better over time. We have experienced – we can say together – truly special days. We have shared them through every form of media: TV, radio, internet, and social media. I sincerely hope that each of us can say that these days unveiled a little bit of the mystery of our humanity and left us with a desire for love and peace. For this reason, I repeat to you today the invitation made by Pope Francis in his message for this year’s World Day of Social Communications: let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice. Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world. Disarmed and disarming communication allows us to share a different view of the world and to act in a manner consistent with our human dignity.

You are at the forefront of reporting on conflicts and aspirations for peace, on situations of injustice and poverty, and on the silent work of so many people striving to create a better world. For this reason, I ask you to choose consciously and courageously the path of communication in favour of peace.🕊️

Thank you all and may God bless you! ✝️☦️

Pope Leo XIV conclave elected on May 8th a Roman Catholic Marian day of prayer in honor of Our Lady of Pompeii

An American pope, for a time of American crisis.

Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe newspaper:

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV waved to faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square shortly after his election on May 8, Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV’s first prayer was the Hail Mary in honor of Our Lady of Pompeii. #PopeLeoXIV #HailMary #Pompeii

Nobody should be expecting the pope to lead the resistance to Trump. But hopefully, Leo XIV, as an American, understands the gravity of the moment in his home country.

No sooner had the first American pope been selected Thursday than a modern tradition unfolded: the scrubbing of Robert Francis Prevost’s X feed.

Previously a little-known cardinal from the Chicago area, Prevost was selected by his brother cardinals after several rounds of voting to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. He took the name of Leo XIV (thus forgoing the chance to be history’s first Pope Bob).

His selection in the pomp of a Vatican conclave was a surprise not only because it was unprecedented. 

It had also been widely assumed that due to the global unpopularity of President Trump and the United States in general, no American would be elevated to the papacy to succeed the Argentinian Pope Francis, who died last month.

Leo’s election is an incredible milestone for American Catholics, whose history in this country began as an oppressed minority. And the Catholic Church, which thinks globally and across centuries, probably did not factor the politics of his home country into his appointment.

Still, when the news broke, Americans scrambled for clues as to where this US citizen stood on Trump — and, by implication, how he might use the world’s ultimate bully pulpit to influence his home country and its leadership.

Nobody should be expecting the pope to lead the resistance to Trump. For that matter, we wouldn’t want a religious leader, of any stripe, playing that role in a diverse country like the United States.

Still, it will matter what Leo says. It will matter how and when an American pope talks about America‘s politics, policies, and inevitably important role in the world. It will matter where, when, and how forcefully he deploys the church’s moral authority.

And it will matter how he responds to the Trump administration’s courtship of Catholic voters and attempts to co-opt Catholic doctrine to justify its immigration policies.

When the president harasses or scapegoats immigrants, Leo XIV can push back, as Francis did. 

And there is nobody with more authority to object when JD Vance attempts to use Catholic teachings as a justification for anti-immigrant posturing.

An early sampling of his X posts suggests he would do just that.

Just a few weeks ago, then Archbishop Prevost called Vance “wrong” in an X post after the vice president suggest that a theological concept called “ordo amoris” (suggests that love should not be given indiscriminately) justified the mass deportation campaign threatened by the Trump administration.

He also made or circulated posts in favor of immigration reform, gun control, and COVID-19 vaccines, and called on the church “to reject racism” after the 2020, murder of George Floyd.

Those digital breadcrumbs might seem to place him on the American left, but that would almost certainly be wrong. Leo is very unlikely to be a progressive, in the modern American political sense of the word. He can be expected to maintain the church’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage, for instance. In a 2012 speech, he decried the “homosexual lifestyle.”

But hopefully, as an American, he understands the gravity of the moment in his home country and won’t allow areas where the church agrees with Trump to become excuses to ignore the rest. And simply by sticking to its own principles — the ones conservatives hate, and the ones liberals hate — the pope can demonstrate to other Americans how to remain independent at a time when so much of politics has descended into tribalism.

Sistine Chapel The Last Judgement by Michalangelo

Although we’ll never know what happened inside the Sistine Chapel before the white smoke billowed out of the chimney, perhaps the cardinals chose Leo because he was an American, not despite it.

Maybe the logic behind his selection was that no one was better poised to handle the church’s response to an off-the-rails American administration than a fellow American.

If so, it’s another reason to wish (and to fervently pray for) for Pope Leo’s success.

Catholic convert JD Vance did not learn anything about how to be faithful to the core belief of all Christianity

Pope Informs J.D. Vance He’s Wrong About Migrants, Christianity

An echo essay published in the Intelligencer by Ed Kilgore

Not that long ago, Catholic “traditionalists” were known for their intense commitment to papal authority. 

But, that was when conservative popes like John Paul II and especially Benedict XVI reigned over the Vatican; today, “traditionalists” like the convert J.D. Vance probably relish a squabble with the Holy Father. 

If so, the vice-president sure got one, as Pope Francis has released an encyclical to U.S. bishops that insists on assistance to migrants as an obligation as old as the church itself and seems to take a pretty firm whack at Vance’s theological defense of an “America First” approach to immigration matters.

Vance started this fight with his recently acquired (convert) faith, blasting those same U.S. bishops (many of them conservatives on other matters) for resisting ICE raids on Catholic churches and schools that provide services and shelter to undocumented immigrants. He even suggested on Face the Nation last month that the bishops were acting out of concern not for migrants but for “their bottom line,” the government money they have received for helping refugees resettle. Vance went on to explain to Sean Hannity that his relative lack of charity for immigrants was rooted in the early church concept of ordo amoris (rightly ordered love):

There’s this old-school [concept] — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” he said.

He continued: “A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.”

Vance’s efforts to be more Catholic than the pope have now elicited a definitive rebuke. Francis’s encyclical calls the Trump administration’s program of mass deportation a “major crisis” and an effort to apply brute force to a global migration trend that calls for sensitivity and compassion: “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.” Francis noted that Christ himself “did not live apart from the difficult experience of being expelled from his own land because of an imminent risk to his life, and from the experience of having to take refuge in a society and a culture foreign to his own. The Son of God, in becoming man, also chose to live the drama of immigration.”

Having presented basic church teachings on immigration, Francis briskly turned to Vance’s ordo amoris defense of nativism:

Christian love ✝️is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups … The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.

But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.

Catholic writer Elizabeth Bruenig put it more plainly in a recent meditation on Vance’s version of the faith:

The decision to love and serve the stranger, the refugee, and the foreigner with charity is a hallmark of the Christian faith, such that a government crackdown on this work seems to be a threat to Christian practice itself, or an attempt to reshape it into something else altogether.

Perhaps Vance is preparing an erudite response to Francis’s encyclical that will put the pontiff in his place and cheer MAGA Catholics who regard migrants as cat-eating criminal scum rather than replicas of the baby Jesus in his flight into Egypt. But Vance may not be as smart as he thinks he is. Evaluating a recent speech by the vice-president claiming religious liberty as a legacy of the early church, the National Catholic Reporter’s Michael Sean Winters demolishes Vance’s “lousy attempt at historiography” and concludes he is “an ingenu [i.e., immature] or a demagogue. Or both.”

In the words of the headline of Winters’s piece, Vance is “in over his head” when he tries to pose as a wise doctor of the church equipped to instruct Catholic bishops and presumably even the Pope. America’s two Catholic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden, never did that. 

Perhaps he should ground his politics not in the Bible or the writings of the early church fathers but in sacred MAGA texts like The Art of the Deal.😡😢

Right wing Roman Catholics mourn the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

As a practicing Roman Catholic, my opinion (for what it is worth)  about Pope Benedict  XVI, is that he was a human being who exemplified tremendous integrity.  He knew the Catholic Church desperately needed sweeping changes for multiples of reasons.  Unfortunately, Pope Benedict XVI,  was just not strong enough to be a leader for the moment.

Instead of leading, Pope Benedict XVI became another kind of spiritual leader. Pope Benedict was not a reformer, but he led a spiritually conservative cause for traditional Roman Catholics that desperately yearn to protect the faith from the influences of  moral relativism. 

Echo essay from The Guardian, published in the Effingham Daily News, an Illinois newspaper.

Pope Benedict XVI (b.1927- d. 2022)  

Although the Catholic Church is contemplating its future direction, it would be a mistake to view (Pope Benedict XVI’s) death at the age of 95 as anything other than a significant moment. (Read Pope Benedict XVI's obituary at this link here.) 

Though the notion of “two popes” worked better as the title of a film than as a true description of Vatican reality, the politics of Benedict’s retirement have undoubtedly been fraught and faced with challenges.

As Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI became a rallying point for opposition to attempts by his successor, Pope Francis, to move beyond his traditionalist legacy. 

Frankly, Benedict’s failure to properly address the sex abuse scandals that continue to overwhelm the church during and after his pontificate are well chronicled. But the context of that reluctance to engage was a kind of siege mentality which he embodied – first as Pope John Paul II’s ideological enforcer (earning him the nickname “God’s rottweiler”), and then as Pope. 

Benedict’s defensive response to western secularization viewed battening down the hatches of orthodoxy – and closing ranks within the church hierarchy – as the best antidote to the perceived relativism of the age.

Amid corruption scandals, outrage over clerical sexual abuse, and a gulf between church doctrine and the everyday experience of many ordinary Catholics, this approach served neither the church nor the world well. But it remains entrenched in parts of the Vatican. 

As Pope Francis – who himself intends to stand down if his health deteriorates significantly – seeks to implement a very different vision, the coming year will be crucial.

Pope Francis presides during the funeral for Pope Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022)

In 2021, the pope launched the awkwardly named “synod on synodality” – the biggest consultation of global Catholic opinion ever undertaken by the church. This is Francis’s flagship attempt to return to the open, participative spirit of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which concluded that church stances could and should be open to change in light of “the signs of the times”. In October, the first summary of the synodal process’s findings suggested that congregations around the world long to revive that ethos.

Collated responses from millions of Catholics record a widespread desire for an agenda of “radical inclusion”. This encompasses equality for women within the church, greater focus on the plight of poor and marginalized groups such as migrants, a welcoming approach to LGBTQ Catholics, and an overhaul on church governance in relation to sexual abuse. It is an outline of a progressive Catholicism that can build bridges with secular society, instead of taking pride in keeping a distance in the name of doctrinal purity.

The Catholic church is not a democracy, and the final outcome of the synod is likely to be less radical than many participants would hope. But in an era in which Christian identity – and Benedict’s traditionalism – have been weaponized by the radical right, a reform program with its roots in the laity would have welcome ramifications beyond the pews. Pope Francis’s listening exercise can let the winds of change finally blow through the Catholic Church, a global institution in need of renewal.

Published in The Guardian

Religions united: Ukrainian people are uniting the world religions

Religion News Service (RNS) echo report (Deborah Caldwell):

St Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral @Ukrainian Village, Chicago

Much of the world looks on in horror and disbelief as Russia, led by evil Vladimir Putin, continues its invasion into Ukraine. 

The war has highlighted the role of Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, and Judaism (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish) in Eastern Europe. 

The Atlantic reports: "As the Ukrainian president captivates the world with his bravery, he offers a reminder of the inroads Eastern and Central European Jews have made in overcoming their status as perpetual outsiders."  (By Gal Beckerman)

Across US, worshippers seek solidarity at Ukrainian churches and pray for peace.

The world is responding powerfully. 

Orthodox Christian communities have squared off on different sides of the fight, and the Vatican offered to mediate between the two countries. Across the U.S., in cities with large Ukrainian populations, both Christian and Jewish congregations pray while anxiously awaiting news from abroad. Religious leaders have spoken out, condemning the war and calling for peace — even pagans sent their energy in support as they focused on a statue in Kyiv of a mythic icon.

Humanitarian aid organizations jumped into action, setting up field hospitals, field kitchens, and shelters. The evangelical aid group Samaritan’s Purse sent disaster relief teams to nearby countries as its president, Franklin Graham, attempted to clarify his years-long support of Vladimir Putin. 

Pope Francis, meanwhile, made the unprecedented move to visit the Russian embassy to voice his concern.

Roman Catholics must look to the human condition and avoid culture wars

Echo letter to the editor published in the Tulsa World newspaper, in Oklahoma!

Maine Writer- As a registered nurse and a practicing Roman
Catholic woman, I support this echo opinion letter written by Deryl Pais, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop.

So, Deryl Pais writes, "I was baptized a Catholic on fifth day after I was born. My three uncles were priests, and two aunts were nuns. 

I was the altar boy of the diocese of Mangalore in the year 1955.

"I am appealing to the good Catholics of Oklahoma, if you want to reduce the abortions, then we need to reduce unwanted pregnancies.

"One way is through promoting abstinence from sex. But even the Catholic clergy have found this not working. Other one is through promoting birth control. Catholic doctrine forbids that.

"During the Zika outbreak in Brazil, Pope Francis suggested women to delay pregnancies, for which the Catholic Bishops of America accused him of promoting birth control.

"One more item I want appeal to my Catholic family, is that of gays and lesbians. They have a right for some happiness.

"Again, I recall a meeting the Pope had with a man from Portugal when he confessed of being gay. You were born that way; pray and be good to others. These are human issues, not political. Politicians are using these issues with no concern for human suffering."

Maine Writer post script:  Amen!

Americans united by aspirations: "opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honor, and, yes, the truth"

Echo report published in Religion News Service. 

President Joe Biden: An Inauguration filled with faith
Quoting the Bible, President Joe Biden declared: Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning. 

"We will get through this together!"

President Joe R. Biden's family Bible is now a historic American religious relic!

WASHINGTON (RNS) — President Joe Biden began Inauguration Day the same way he did Election Day and most Sundays in between: he went to church.

But this time, he took America with him.

It was shortly before 9:00am when Biden and Vice-president Kamala Harris filed into the pews of Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, also known as St. Matthews.

The group sat and listened to performances from violinist Patricia Treacy and the gospel choir of St. Augustine, a historic Black Catholic Church in Washington. Also among the musical numbers: Renée Fleming singing “On Eagle’s Wings,” the same hymn Biden mentioned in his campaign victory speech.

It was an appropriately spiritual beginning to a faith-infused day and what is shaping up to be an unapologetically religious presidential term for Biden, the second Catholic president in U.S. history. And unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, who spoke often of Christianity being under fire, Biden spent Wednesday invoking faith as a tool for healing and unity.

President Joe Biden speaks at America's 59th Inauguration Jan. 20, 2021

Indeed, unity was literally the theme of the day, with Biden baking it into virtually every aspect of his inauguration, including the church visit: At the president’s invitation, lawmakers from both parties — Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer as well as members of Congress such as Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Roy Blunt and Steny Hoyer — sat in the pews with him.

Unity came up again hours later at the U.S. Capitol, when Fr. Leo O’Donovan, a Jesuit priest and former president of Georgetown University, delivered the invocation for Biden’s formal inauguration ceremony.
“As you have done so often in your public and private life and during the campaign, Joe and Jill, you ground this day in your faith and in the familiar readings and prayers of these sacred rituals,” the Rev. Kevin O’Brien, a Jesuit priest and president of Santa Clara University, said during his homily.

“My deepest prayer for you today, as a priest, citizen and friend, is that you always remember that the Lord is near and no matter the sound and fury around you, that God wants to give you peace, a deep-seated peace that will sustain you.”

“My deepest prayer for you today, as a priest, citizen and friend, is that you always remember that the Lord is near and no matter the sound and fury around you, that God wants to give you peace, a deep-seated peace that will sustain you.”

The group sat and listened to performances from violinist Patricia Treacy and the gospel choir of St. Augustine, a historic Black Catholic Church in Washington. Also among the musical numbers: Renée Fleming singing “On Eagle’s Wings,” the same hymn Biden mentioned in his campaign victory speech.

It was an appropriately spiritual beginning to a faith-infused day and what is shaping up to be an unapologetically religious presidential term for Biden, the second Catholic president in U.S. history. And unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, who spoke often of Christianity being under fire, Biden spent Wednesday invoking faith as a tool for healing and unity.

Indeed, unity was literally the theme of the day, with Biden baking it into virtually every aspect of his inauguration, including the church visit: At the president’s invitation, lawmakers from both parties — Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer as well as members of Congress such as Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Roy Blunt and Steny Hoyer — sat in the pews with him.

Unity came up again hours later at the U.S. Capitol, when Fr. Leo O’Donovan, a Jesuit priest and former president of Georgetown University, delivered the invocation for Biden’s formal inauguration ceremony.

“We come (to God) still more with hope and with our eyes raised anew to the vision of a more perfect union in our land,” O’Donovan said. “A union of all our citizens to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We have people of many races, creeds, national backgrounds, cultures, and styles.”

After referencing Solomon and the Book of James, he cited Pope Francis’s recent Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, in which he wrote about the need to dream together: “By ourselves we risk seeing mirages. Things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand are built together.”

After Biden placed his hand on his family’s 127-year-old Bible a few minutes later and took the oath of office, it was the newly minted president’s turn to speak — or, perhaps more accurately, preach: he launched into a speech that was characteristically filled with religious references and appeals to the divine.

Biden said his “whole soul” is invested in the project of “bringing America together, uniting our nation.” He insisted “history, faith and reason” will show “the way of unity.” He invoked St. Augustine, who said “a people are a multitude defined by a common object of their love.”

“What are the common objects we as Americans love, that define us as Americans?” Biden asked. “I think we know: opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honor, and, yes, the truth.”

Biden encouraged the American people to overcome future challenges, speaking of “better angels” and insisting his fellow citizens will be “sustained by faith, driven by conviction, devoted to one another and the country we love with all our hearts.”

Finally, he deferred to scripture as he acknowledged America’s collective mourning over the more than 400,000 deaths caused by the novel coronavirus.

“As the Bible says: ‘Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.’ We will get through this together!” Biden declared.

But Biden, who has long referenced faith as a guide through his own grieving process, also led the country in a moment of silent prayer to remember “400,000 fellow Americans: moms, dads, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, friends, neighbors and coworkers.”

Despite the country grappling with what he called a “time of testing,” Biden remained defiant that Americans can prevail, asking those listening to “add our own work and prayers to the unfolding stories of our great nation.”

Country singer Garth Brooks also offered a performance of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” asking those in attendance and at home to sing along.

The God-talk continued after he finished. Amanda Gorman, the United States’ first youth poet laureate, delivered a poem in which she referenced Micah 4:4 — “everyone will sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.”

She was followed by the Rev. Silvester S. Beaman, pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Delaware, who offered a soaring benediction in which he called on America to “befriend the lonely, the least and the left out” and “love the unlovable.”

“This is our benediction,” he said. “That from these hallowed grounds, where slave labor built this shrine and and citadel to Liberty of democracy; let us all acknowledge from the indigenous native American; to those who recently received their citizenship; from the African-American to those whose foreparents came from Europe, and every corner of the globe; from the wealthy to those struggling to make it; for every human being, regardless of their choices, that this is our country, (and) as such teach us, oh God, … to live in it, love in it, be healed in it and reconciled to one another in it.”

And just in case anyone thought Biden’s public Catholicism was a one-off, the president closed out his day with a subtle signal there is more to come. As he sat down in the Oval Office and spoke with reporters for the first time, eagle-eyed journalists noted an array of photographs behind him.

Most are of his family, but at least one depicts him shaking hands with someone else: Pope Francis.

Roman Catholics in Africa - an essay about religious history

In my opinion, as a Roman Catholic, the religious demographic changes described in this essay are correlated with the paralyzing impact of Roman Catholic clergy being unable to evangelize.  When Africans are now filling vacancies in American Roman Catholic parishes, a vacuum of religious leadership is created in African countries, where it is most needed.

Pope Francis at the Monument Mary Queen of Peace, in Port Louis, Mauritius on Sept. 9, 2019. AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

Echo history essay published in The Conversation by Joseph Hellweg, an Associate Professor of Religion, Affiliated Associate Professor of Anthropology, Florida State University.

Africa’s Catholic churches face competition and a troubled legacy, as they grow.

Pope Francis completed his seven-day tour of three East African countries: Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius. It was a significant trip for a number of reasons.

During his visit, the pope spoke about issues of peace and ecological sustainability that these countries are facing. 

Mozambique recently signed a peace accord with longtime rebels, and the country is still recovering from the cyclone earlier this year that killed over 1,000 people. Madagascar faces severe deforestation, and Mauritius too faces risks from climate change.

Africa has the world’s third largest Catholic population, after the Americas and Europe. Nearly 1 out of every 5 Africans – 19.2% – is Catholic. The Pew Research Center expects the number of African Christians south of the Sahara, including Catholics, to double by 2050.

From my perspective as a scholar of African religions, however, the pope’s visit needs to be understood against the background of the church’s longer history in Africa and the current challenges Catholicism faces in the continent.

Early Catholic history in Africa

Although Catholicism in Africa expanded dramatically under European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, the church’s roots in Africa go back to its earliest days.

Christianity emerged in Africa among first-century Jewish communities in Alexandria, Egypt. 

Many early, influential church figures were North African. (St. Augustine, is one important early Christian leader.)

After the Islamic conquest of North Africa – from 634 to 711 A.D. – however, Islam grew faster than Christianity, making it the region’s dominant religion.

Muslim traders then took Islam across the Sahara Desert to West Africa and over the Indian Ocean to East Africa.

Spread of Christianity
The later arrival of Catholic missionaries on the western, central, southern and eastern coasts of Africa spread Christianity across the continent.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Portuguese came to Africa by ship and began winning converts in the Central African kingdom of Kongo.

On the other side of the continent, in today’s Mozambique, missionaries established Catholic communities that would eventually become the contemporary Mozambican Church.

French missionaries arrived in Madagascar in 1640. With the help of early converts, they produced a Catholic catechism, or teaching manual, in Malagash, the island’s indigenous language.

Because Catholic Portugal, and later France, expanded the trans-Atlantic slave trade, both priests and slave merchants followed in their wake.

African Catholics and European missionaries nonetheless protested against the slave trade. Even the Vatican condemned slavery in the 1680s. But many bishops and priests already possessed slaves, and the Vatican enslaved Africans to man its ships.

The church’s complicity in Africa’s subjugation only intensified in the colonial era in the 19th and 20th centuries as the church founded parishes, schools and hospitals across the continent, often with the encouragement of colonial authorities.
Reforms and end of colonialism

Catholic missionaries worked mostly in European languages, contributing to the continent’s linguistic and cultural colonization.

In fact, colonization and evangelization occurred in lockstep. The Portuguese colonized Mozambique; the French, Madagascar; and Britain, after initial French occupation, Mauritius.

But Catholic missionaries also criticized colonialism. In 1971, for example, authorities in Mozambique, still under Portuguese rule, expelled a Catholic order for criticizing the colonial regime for preventing missionaries from properly serving Mozambicans.

Elsewhere on the continent, during Africa’s transition from colonial rule to independence, from the late 1950s to 1980, many priests supported emerging ethnic and nationalist movements.

The long-term outcomes of these Catholic-backed independence movements have been mixed.

In what was to become Zimbabwe, for example, bishops supported resistance against white-led Rhodesia from the 1960s to 1980 but unwittingly brought dictator Robert Mugabe, who died recently, to power.

But in Malawi, Catholics in 1994 helped unseat the repressive president, Hastings Banda, and establish multiparty democracy.

And in many French-speaking African countries, bishops served as neutral mediators who led national conversations between autocratic rulers and civilians throughout the 1990s, often achieving democratic reforms.

Rise of Pentacostalism, Islam

To many Africans today, in the wake of independence and the church’s support for it, the Catholic Church has distanced itself from its colonial past to become an institution associated with sociopolitical reform, education and health care.

This accounts in part for its substantial growth in the three countries visited by the pope.

In Mozambique, Catholics are 30.3% of the population, the country’s largest religious group, surpassing indigenous religious practitioners and Muslims. In Mauritius, at 27.2%, Catholics take second place to Hindus but outnumber Muslims. And in Madagascar, they come in third at 21.7%.

But the church faces new challenges.

In 1970, Pentecostals represented less than 5% of all Africans. They now stand at 12%, a significant shift. In Mozambique alone, Pentecostals are the second largest Christian community.

And Islam is growing faster in Africa than Christianity. 

By 2050, African Muslims south of the Sahara are expected to increase from 30% to 35% of Africa’s population.

The pope’s visit, then, reflects a strategic commitment to the continent, for good reason.

The battle for souls is a struggle for statistics, enmeshed in the changing loyalties of the world’s largest Christian church.

Flint Michigan water crises still unresolved

Water has the power to unlock education, create economic potential, and improve health. Access to safe water empowers women in Peru with time to work, kids in Ethiopia with time for school and families in India and around the world with bright days.

Friday March 22, was International Water Day.

Water is a simple creation consisting of two parts hydrogen molecules and one part oxygen = H2O.  Miraculously, those two elements create the essential life sustaining compound. 

Yet, humans pollute water, even though, without it, we would all die.  Water has the power to change lives by providing all living beings with access to hydration. Humans have the power to clean up the water we pollute. Unfortunately, in Flint Michigan, the water pollution caused by a municipal decision to save money, is still unresolved.

Pope Francis is a former chemistry teacher.  This is what he posted on Twitter @Pontifex  "Let us thank God for 'sister water', such a simple and precious element, and let us strive to make it accessible to all. #WorldWaterDay
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha published this opinion in the Flint newspaper MichiganLive

Mona Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician, scientist and professor in Flint, Michigan. She is the founder and director of the Pediatric Public Health Initiative. She is the author of “What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City."

From Oscoda to Benton Harbor, residents of Michigan deserve clean water when they turn on their taps. They also deserve to know the leaders they elect will make sure their drinking water is clean and safe. A generation ago, Michigan’s leadership in environmental protection was a bipartisan tradition -- and exemplified by Republican Governor Bill Milliken’s stewardship. But the ideology of extreme austerity prevailed. Government became too small and pitifully inadequate, starved of resources and talent, factors that led directly to the Flint water crisis. In 2019, Michigan is now returning to its rightful place as a leader in environmental protection. And that doesn’t mean big government or small government. It means smart government --- moored in science and intent on public health.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer has proven that she has learned some valuable lessons from Flint. Her first executive directive was to require state civil servants to immediately report imminent threats to public health and safety, like contaminated drinking water, to their department directors.

It has been almost five years since the Flint water crisis began. In a gross corrosion of democracy, the State of Michigan switched the source of the city’s water from pretreated Great Lakes water to untreated water from the Flint River. This led to the most emblematic environmental disaster of our times, one that continues. And one that could easily happen again -- in Flint or elsewhere in Michigan, be it lead levels in the water or PFAS contamination.

On Feb. 4, Governor Whitmer signed another executive order that will address some key factors that led to the Flint Water Crisis -- and prevent another such tragedy from occurring. The order will reorganize the Department of Environmental Quality and dissolve industry-led environmental rule review panels.

The executive order Whitmer signed also calls for the creation of the Office of the Clean Water Public Advocate and the Office of the Environmental Justice Public Advocate. These offices fill a gap in state oversight. While Flint was under emergency management, residents were disenfranchised and democracy usurped. When the citizens of the majority African-American city rose up against the filthy drinking water, their concerns were ignored by an apathetic state government. Each investigation into the crisis, including former Governor Rick Snyder’s own task force and the one done by the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, pointed to race as a leading factor in the perfect storm of neglect that caused failure on all fronts -- to act, to protect, to fix, to be responsible and accountable -- even after officials clearly saw the scope of the problem.

The new offices proposed by Whitmer will help build a more responsive state government. They should ensure Michiganders have a place to go when there are problems with their drinking water. Safe drinking water is not optional. It is a human right -- a public health and medical necessity that we cannot survive without. Lead exposure has no safe level and can potentially impact the entire life trajectory of an exposed child. That is the tragedy of the Flint Water Crisis, and the reason why so many of us are working day in and day out to mitigate the impact of the population-wide exposure.

So I’m grateful to Gov. Whitmer for beginning to address these issues in her first steps in office. Yes there is much more work to do. The public health culture of these agencies will take many years to revive. But these are necessary first steps that will address problems that have been neglected for too long. The newly fashioned Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy must be responsive to Michigan’s water problems. Dumping the bureaucratic industry review panels that second guess decisions made by regulators and scientists is an important move that gets us a lot closer to a smart government all Michiganders strive for.

Public trust in leadership is pitifully low. Right now, residents of Flint and citizens across the state have given up on the idea that state government will fix their drinking water. We can’t expect that to change with a few executive orders. And why should we? Some members of the state legislature -- either unable to absorb the lessons of Flint, or overeager to please their industry friends and donors -- have already launched a push to roll-back Whitmer’s new executive orders. 

Sadly, the State House voted to override the executive order two days after it was announced. The profiteering polluters of Michigan are especially excited about making sure their industry review panels are kept in place, public health be damned. (Irresponsible!)

The Synder administration often recycled the line that government should be “run like a business.” This failed ideology must be trashed. The only recycling left is the millions of plastic water bottles the residents of Flint, and now in cities all over our state, have been forced to drink from.

We must be smarter. This is the moment for an impassioned call for common-sense bipartisanship. Who doesn’t want their kids to drink clean water? Who doesn’t believe that it is government’s job to protect public safety? It is incumbent on citizens - from all political sides to voice support for the critical steps Whitmer has taken to protect Michigan’s environment, and in turn, to protect our most precious Michigan resource, our children.

Roman Catholic predicament ~ 16 years without confessing the clergy abuse sins

Catholic Church must confess its sins. All of them.

Echo opinion published in The Week, by Edward Morrissey

In the 16 years since The Boston Globe conducted an award-winning investigation into child abuse in the local Catholic diocese, the church has found itself in a constant and recurring crisis over sexual abuse of children and seminarians. 

Cardinal Donald Wuerl

In fact, the crisis has stretched across three pontificates, numerous countries, and has involved an ever-expanding number of priests, bishops, and even cardinals. And it's only getting worse.

Over the last two weeks, we have seen why. Three responses from the church's leadership, in the U.S. and in the Vatican, paint the 2,000-year-old organization as still blind to its predicament — more caught up in politics than in resolution, and its ordained and laity more interested in fighting an ideological war than in demanding accountability at every level of the church.

The latest episode of this crisis started with a grand jury report in Pennsylvania that identified hundreds of alleged abusers within the Catholic Church, and the failings of leadership to put an end to it. The report itself is damning but complex, with outright villains and others who failed to confront evil forcefully enough. Cardinal Donald Wuerl came under particular criticism for failing to act, a charge that Wuerl decided to rebut at his current assignment in the archdiocese of Washington — by publishing a website called "The Wuerl Record." The website extolled Wuerl's efforts to curtail child abuse while serving as the bishop in Pittsburgh and his "work as a longtime advocate and voice on this issue."

Nevertheless, that effort didn't last long; a chorus of criticism over Wuerl's public-relations efforts forced the archdiocese to withdraw it. While not inaccurate, it failed to respond to specific allegations involving priests that were allowed to remain in public ministry despite credible accusations of abuse, even as the grand jury noted other occasions where Wuerl responded more assertively. 

Wuerl's name comes up more than 150 times in the grand jury report, and few of those references are positive.

Then, over the weekend, the former Vatican nuncio to the United States accused Pope Francis of knowingly reinstating Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to his ministry despite evidence that he had corrupted seminarians during his career. Archbishop Carlo Vigano, who has found himself at odds with the pontiff over his career track, openly called for Francis to resign. 

Rather than respond directly to the accusation, Pope Francis told reporters that the "statement speaks for itself," and that journalists should "read the statement attentively, and you make your own judgment. I will not say a single word about this."

And why not? Cardinal Blaise Cupich of Chicago explained that Pope Francis has a "bigger agenda" to handle than the sexual abuse scandal. "He's got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church," Cupich told NBC News. 

"We're not going to go down a rabbit hole on this." Furthermore, Cupich claimed that Francis was being persecuted "because he's a Latino." (Francis, it should be noted, is the son of two Italian immigrants to Argentina ...)

In the wake of all these statements, fights erupted between different factions of the Catholic Church, and of the media as well. Conservatives lined up behind Vigano and declared this to be an indictment of Francis' leadership. Liberals accused conservatives of attempting a coup.

It's hard to imagine so many people missing the point at the same time, but here we are. The issue isn't one of conservatives against liberals, either within the church or outside of it. It's not about Francis' agenda, or even strictly about Francis at all. It's not about pursuing political goals about immigration or the environment. It's about the credibility of the Catholic Church and of all Catholics within it, a problem that few people seem to want to discuss.

This crisis keeps getting deeper because the Catholic Church refuses so far to deal honestly with it. 

If the Vatican and the bishops wanted to confront this crisis, all of the dioceses around the world would have been ordered to release all their documentation on abuse cases to the public, or at least to law enforcement. Instead, 16 years after the Boston Globe series of reports first exposed the crisis and the reach of its cover-up, we need grand juries to conduct investigations to get around the silence of church leadership. We hear from people like Cardinal Wuerl that new procedures have been put in place to deal with abuse, and then find out later that known abusers remain in public ministry — and in cases like Cardinal McCarrick, continue to occupy positions of power.

That didn't start with Francis. It started with St. John Paul II, extends all the way through the pontificate of Benedict XVI, and the five-plus years in which Francis has been in charge. It involves liberal and conservative bishops, liberal and conservative priests, and liberal and conservative dioceses. This scandal infects every corner of the church, and will until it gets fully exposed.

This is why Cardinal Cupich's statement gets the problem exactly backward. Sixteen years of dithering and half-hearted reforms following decades of abuses and moral depravity have sapped the church's credibility on all of the issues Cupich mentions, and more. It's no accident that Ireland, once considered the most Catholic of nations in Europe, overwhelmingly voted for legalized abortion this year over the objections of the church. Argentina, the pope's native country, may yet pass its own bill legalizing abortion. This follows decades in which the church has lost ground on any number of moral issues especially in the West — euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and others.
The Vatican does not have massive armies, nor does the Catholic Church command a massive economy. The only influence it has comes from its credibility as a church serving as a pillar of morality and reliable rectitude. 

In essence, the Catholic Church has disarmed itself.

The church needs to rearm itself by following its own teachings. It starts with a full confession of all transgressions in order to finally pull the inadequate bandages that the Catholic Church keeps applying to this scandal, full repentance, and a new commitment to sin no more. We Catholics understand how difficult that can be. However, it is the only path to redemption — and thus far, it has the novelty of having not yet been tried over the last 16 years.

"shocking and horrifying, and I have felt myself close to weeping at times" - Sister Simone Campbell

NPR's Scott Simon spoke with Sister Simone Campbell* about the Catholic Church's reaction to this latest sex abuse scandal. 

Sister Simone Campbell

She leads NETWORK, a "progressive voice within the Catholic community."

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Pope Francis is in Ireland this weekend as part of the Meeting of Families, a Vatican-sponsored gathering of Catholics. Today in Dublin, the pope addressed the crisis of sexual abuse among clergy around the world. In prepared remarks of his speech, the pope said the failure of ecclesiastical authorities - bishops, religious superiors, priests and others - adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments.

Nuns are also speaking out. We're joined in our studio now by Sister Simone Campbell, who was part of the ministry of the Sisters of Social Service and executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice group. Sister Simone, thanks so much for being with us.

SIMONE CAMPBELL: Great to be with you.

SIMON: I have to ask - how do you feel this week about the church to which you've devoted your life?

CAMPBELL: Well, I have to say over the last few weeks, it's been really shocking and horrifying, and I have felt myself close to weeping at times. This week, I took a little solace in the letter from Pope Francis to the world saying - acknowledging the extent of the horror that has existed and a commitment to change. And I take heart in these remarks in Ireland as his very first statements that it is included because there was a worry he would not include this in his very first statements. So what this says to me is that the Vatican is beginning to get it in all its departments that this is not just those concerned with clergy, but the whole church needs to be changed. And I think that's what we're beginning to see.

SIMON: I note you said close to weeping but not leaving. What keeps you in the church and what kind of changes do you think are mandated?

CAMPBELL: Well, the thing is for me church is not about the institution. It's about the Gospel and Jesus, and that's much more powerful - 2,000 years of history of the contemplative life. And we've had all kinds of scandals and all kinds of horror in the structure, but it's the faith that's deeper than that. But it's the community that makes the difference. And this was the hard part in Pope Francis' letter is he acknowledged clericalism and clericalism as being the righteousness on the part of the ordained clergy, that they were always right, that protected them as opposed to caring for kids or for the others who were abused by the clerics. And so Pope Francis attacked clericalism and said that had to change. I totally agree. It's part of the problem with - as men have approached women in the church. It's the lack of access to everybody to power. That's true. But then in the end of it, he said, well, we all need to do prayer and fasting. Well, that part kind of made me mad, quite frankly, and - because I thought that was tone deaf for the fact that I think our leadership has some special responsibility. But in the end, for me, it's about Jesus and the Gospel. It's the way I find the fullness of life in community together, that we're not individualistic, we're not isolates. I can't do this without you, without everyone else. And so it's the place where I find people who nourish me.

SIMON: Should there be a greater role for women, religious sisters, in the church? Should nuns be made bishops and cardinals, for example?

CAMPBELL: (Laughter) Well, I actually am kind of worried about that. I mean, unless we change the system - if you just made us cardinals or bishops in the same system, we'd probably get as arrogant as they are. This is what we have to change - the culture of arrogance.

SIMON: And I'm sorry we only have half a minute left, but when you say talking about changing the culture of arrogance, you mean letting - not making clergy the moral arbiters that they seem to be right now.

CAMPBELL: Well, I don't know that they seem to be that right now. But yes, it's changing who are the deciders? Where do we share that insight into the depth and the meaning of the Gospel now? How do we make community together? It's up to us together.

SIMON: Sister Simone Campbell, thanks so much.

CAMPBELL: Thank you.

*Simone Campbell, SSS (born October 22, 1945), is an American Roman Catholic Religious Sister, lawyer, lobbyist and executive director of NETWORK. She belongs to the Sisters of Social Service.

Roman Catholic priests and the Bishops who covered up

An echo opinion by Marc A. Thiessen, published in the Texas newspaper the Abilene Reporter

Pope Francis in Ireland expected to respond to priest abuse scandals

WASHINGTON, DC – Pope Francis’s letter to Roman Catholics was remarkable in that the Holy Father apologized not only for the sexual abuses carried out by many Roman Catholic priests, but also for the coverup of that abuse carried out by the (irresponsible) Roman Catholic bishops.

“The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced,” Francis wrote.

“To acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough” he added, promising to make “all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable” and expressing deep regret that “we have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary.”

Of course, these long overdue words are welcome. 

But, unless the words are backed up by action, they will be meaningless. The episcopacy as an institution has been corrupted. A culture of silence allowed a culture of abuse to flourish. Bishops consumed with what the pope called “the thirst for power” have through both action and inaction allowed evil to spread through the church. That evil must be rooted out.

It is time for the Catholic Church to experience its own #MeToo moment. And it should start here in Washington – the modern symbol of earthly power.

Theodore McCarrick, the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, faces credible allegations that he abused not only a 16-year-old altar boy and an 11-year-old boy whose family McCarrick knew but also countless seminarians and young priests who were under his authority. (He has denied abusing the boys and refused to comment on the other allegations.)

McCarrick is the Harvey Weinstein of the Catholic Church. Who knew these allegations against him and failed to act? San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, for one. A few years ago, McElroy was approached by Richard Sipe, an expert on clergy abuse, who said McCarrick and nearly a dozen other priests and bishops abused children and seminarians.

Sipe was so disturbed by what he perceived as McElroy’s lack of interest during their meetings that in 2016 he sent a 13-page letter – delivered by a process server - in which he told McElroy that “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been reported by numerous seminarians and priests of sexual advances and activity. … I have interviewed twelve seminarians and priests who attest to propositions, harassment, or sex with McCarrick, who has stated, ‘I do not like to sleep alone.’ One priest incardinated in McCarrick’s Archdiocese of Newark was taken to bed for sex and was told, ‘this is how priests do it in the U.S.’”

A spokesman for McElroy says he asked Sipe for more information and that he “was given essentially gossip, not evidence.” But Sipe explained to McElroy that the victims were afraid to come forward. “None so far has found the ability to speak openly at the risk of reputation and retaliation” he wrote, adding, “One priest was told by the chancery office, ‘if you speak with the press we will crush you.’” McElroy did nothing.

Sipe shared his letter with the papal nuncio and the pontifical commission for the protection of minors, led by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who also failed to act. A New York priest, Father Boniface Ramsey, says he wrote a similar letter in June 2015 to O’Malley, who says he never saw it but should have. Who buried that letter? And who else failed to act?

According to a Pennsylvania grand jury report, the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, moved predator priests around the Diocese of Pittsburgh when he was the bishop there and silenced victims with settlements that included confidentiality agreements. His resignation letter is on Francis’s desk, as all bishops must submit their resignations at 75. The Holy Father simply needs to accept it.

The same day Francis issued his letter, Wuerl’s successor in Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik, appeared on Fox News’ “Special Report,” where he told Brett Baier, “There was no coverup.” Did Zubik not read the pope’s letter, which refers to “cover[ing] up,” “silenc[ing],” “ignor[ing]” and “deception” by bishops a total of eight times? Even if he somehow failed to, Zubik knows there was a coverup because he was at the epicenter of it as director of clergy personnel under Wuerl.

The bishops were responsible for protecting priests and parishioners but were more concerned with protecting their own positions and power. The bishops should have trembled Wednesday when they heard the first reading for that day’s Mass in every Catholic Church throughout the world: “Thus says the Lord God: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves! … My sheep have been given over to pillage, and … have become food for every wild beast … because my shepherds did not look after my sheep. … I swear I am coming against these shepherds. I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding. … I will save my sheep.”

Holy Father, put a stop to their shepherding. Save your sheep.

Marc A. Thiessen is a member of The Washington Post Writers Group.