Jesse Kelly of “The First” talked with author Joshua Lisec about the evil tactics of communism.
The post Jesse Kelly and Author Joshua Lisec Discuss Communism’s Evil Tactics – “Communism is An Anti-Christian Set of Tactics for Gaining Power Over Other People” (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Pope Leo XIV says suffering of innocent victims “hurts all of humanity” as he calls for end to hostilities and renewed paths to peace.
Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter was seen driving a battle tank during a military drill, in the latest appearance alongside the North Korean dictator.
The post Kim Jong-Un Showcases Teenage Daughter Driving a Tank in Chilling Succession Signal appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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With action movie legend Chuck Norris unable to fight back, Variety unleashed an attack under the guise of an obituary.
The post Variety Publishes Disgusting Chuck Norris Political Hit-Piece the Day After His Death appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Read More![Ireland sees modest revival in faith, especially among youth and young adults #Catholic An increase in spirituality and religious practice among young adults in Ireland aged 18 to 30 and confirmation that Ireland is in the “middle range” of religious countries in Europe are among the trends identified in a new report published by the Irish Catholic bishops titled “Turning the Tide.”Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, told EWTN News: “There has been a lot of talk recently about the so-called quiet revival in religious practice in recent years. The [report] looks at some of the research studies that have been carried out north and south of the island of Ireland into religious practice, religious awareness and spirituality, and interest in religion, and asks a question by comparing this with European social studies: Is there actually any uptake [in] religious practice and awareness and interest in Ireland?”Drawing on research from the European Social Survey, the Iona Institute’s two recent surveys conducted by Amárach Research, and a variety of relevant academic studies, the report seeks to provide an integrated, relevant, and current look at religious practice in Ireland.“The report very interestingly points to some type of uptick, as they call it, particularly among young people around the ages of 16 to 30 and the fact that they are taking a new interest in religion and in spirituality.”Encouraged by the positive trends emerging across different studies, Martin sounded a note of caution, highlighting the challenges that these findings pose for the Catholic Church in Ireland.“I don’t think we should get ourselves too enthusiastic thinking this is a complete reversal of the very obvious decline and religious practice over the last 10 or 20 years,” he said. “However, it is saying something on the turning tide.”The archbishop pointed to the implications for the Irish Church: “It’s asking us to reflect on this phenomenon in the light of research, and for instance what does this mean for us as Church, as parishes, as dioceses? How are we responding to this growing body of young people who want to know more more about God, about church, and about religion?”The report, co-authored by Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, and Emily Nelson, a doctoral student of sociology at Queen’s University Belfast, examined the overall religious profile of the island of Ireland, including areas of convergence and divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.The authors drew together research studies on patterns in belief, practice, and religious identification between generations, with particular attention to differences within young adult cohorts. The work also provided insight on dimensions of religiosity, religious transmission, and attitudes toward Church teaching and institutions among both men and women.Ireland remains among the more religious countries in Europe, on measures of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and frequency of prayer. Among western European countries, it is one of few outliers with a relatively high level of overall religiosity. It also ranks toward the higher end of (especially western) European countries on measures of weekly Mass attendance and daily prayer.While key measures of Irish religiosity have declined significantly since the European Social Survey began in 2002-2003, the most recent round in 2023-2024 shows a strong uptick in religious affiliation and religious practice.This effect is most strongly evident among those aged 16–29 years, across both Catholics and Protestants.Northern Ireland is both the most religious region of the United Kingdom, by a large margin, and the most religious part of the island of Ireland, in terms of both affiliation and religious practice.Although women in the Republic of Ireland are equally as likely as men to be religious, they continue to play an influential role in transmitting faith, even as they express higher levels of moral dissent and institutional dissatisfaction. The report revealed that 74% of Irish Catholic women were found to believe that the Church did not treat them with “a lot of respect.”According to the report, 51% of Irish adults — and 27% of Irish young adults —pray at least once a week, and 31% say they attend Mass at least once a week, placing them fourth overall, alongside Italy (32%) but well behind Poland (49%) and Slovakia (46%).There is a significant drop-off among young adults, whose reported religious practice is roughly half that of older adults. Irish 16- to 29-year-olds rank sixth overall compared with other countries, at 17%, though that is at least double the rates of the same age group in Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium, at 5%, and in Austria with less than 1%.The Irish report also pointed to a 2023 Barna study that found in certain respects, Irish teens are more religious than their global peers. Just over 3 in 5 (62%) Irish teens identify as Christian with nearly a third identify as atheist, agnostic, or of no faith.On average, 18- to 24-year-olds in the Republic of Ireland aren’t particularly positive about both Christianity and the Catholic Church in Ireland, but they are more positive than those in the 25–34 age range, and fewer have a negative attitude toward priests and nuns.In 2023, EWTN News’ Colm Flynn traveled to Ireland with the question “Is Ireland still Catholic?” He explored the various reasons for the decline of the faith in Ireland and the challenges the Church faces there today. In the three years since, and after many emails and messages pointing to signs of a “quiet revival” of faith in Ireland, Flynn recently returned to the country to explore those signs of renewal. In his report, he refers to the “Turning the Tide” report:](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ireland-sees-modest-revival-in-faith-especially-among-youth-and-young-adults-catholic-an-increase-in-spirituality-and-religious-practice-among-young-adults-in-ireland-aged-18-to-30-and-confirmation-scaled.jpg "Ireland sees modest revival in faith, especially among youth and young adults #Catholic An increase in spirituality and religious practice among young adults in Ireland aged 18 to 30 and confirmation that Ireland is in the “middle range” of religious countries in Europe are among the trends identified in a new report published by the Irish Catholic bishops titled “Turning the Tide.”Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, told EWTN News: “There has been a lot of talk recently about the so-called quiet revival in religious practice in recent years. The [report] looks at some of the research studies that have been carried out north and south of the island of Ireland into religious practice, religious awareness and spirituality, and interest in religion, and asks a question by comparing this with European social studies: Is there actually any uptake [in] religious practice and awareness and interest in Ireland?”Drawing on research from the European Social Survey, the Iona Institute’s two recent surveys conducted by Amárach Research, and a variety of relevant academic studies, the report seeks to provide an integrated, relevant, and current look at religious practice in Ireland.“The report very interestingly points to some type of uptick, as they call it, particularly among young people around the ages of 16 to 30 and the fact that they are taking a new interest in religion and in spirituality.”Encouraged by the positive trends emerging across different studies, Martin sounded a note of caution, highlighting the challenges that these findings pose for the Catholic Church in Ireland.“I don’t think we should get ourselves too enthusiastic thinking this is a complete reversal of the very obvious decline and religious practice over the last 10 or 20 years,” he said. “However, it is saying something on the turning tide.”The archbishop pointed to the implications for the Irish Church: “It’s asking us to reflect on this phenomenon in the light of research, and for instance what does this mean for us as Church, as parishes, as dioceses? How are we responding to this growing body of young people who want to know more more about God, about church, and about religion?”The report, co-authored by Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, and Emily Nelson, a doctoral student of sociology at Queen’s University Belfast, examined the overall religious profile of the island of Ireland, including areas of convergence and divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.The authors drew together research studies on patterns in belief, practice, and religious identification between generations, with particular attention to differences within young adult cohorts. The work also provided insight on dimensions of religiosity, religious transmission, and attitudes toward Church teaching and institutions among both men and women.Ireland remains among the more religious countries in Europe, on measures of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and frequency of prayer. Among western European countries, it is one of few outliers with a relatively high level of overall religiosity. It also ranks toward the higher end of (especially western) European countries on measures of weekly Mass attendance and daily prayer.While key measures of Irish religiosity have declined significantly since the European Social Survey began in 2002-2003, the most recent round in 2023-2024 shows a strong uptick in religious affiliation and religious practice.This effect is most strongly evident among those aged 16–29 years, across both Catholics and Protestants.Northern Ireland is both the most religious region of the United Kingdom, by a large margin, and the most religious part of the island of Ireland, in terms of both affiliation and religious practice.Although women in the Republic of Ireland are equally as likely as men to be religious, they continue to play an influential role in transmitting faith, even as they express higher levels of moral dissent and institutional dissatisfaction. The report revealed that 74% of Irish Catholic women were found to believe that the Church did not treat them with “a lot of respect.”According to the report, 51% of Irish adults — and 27% of Irish young adults —pray at least once a week, and 31% say they attend Mass at least once a week, placing them fourth overall, alongside Italy (32%) but well behind Poland (49%) and Slovakia (46%).There is a significant drop-off among young adults, whose reported religious practice is roughly half that of older adults. Irish 16- to 29-year-olds rank sixth overall compared with other countries, at 17%, though that is at least double the rates of the same age group in Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium, at 5%, and in Austria with less than 1%.The Irish report also pointed to a 2023 Barna study that found in certain respects, Irish teens are more religious than their global peers. Just over 3 in 5 (62%) Irish teens identify as Christian with nearly a third identify as atheist, agnostic, or of no faith.On average, 18- to 24-year-olds in the Republic of Ireland aren’t particularly positive about both Christianity and the Catholic Church in Ireland, but they are more positive than those in the 25–34 age range, and fewer have a negative attitude toward priests and nuns.In 2023, EWTN News’ Colm Flynn traveled to Ireland with the question “Is Ireland still Catholic?” He explored the various reasons for the decline of the faith in Ireland and the challenges the Church faces there today. In the three years since, and after many emails and messages pointing to signs of a “quiet revival” of faith in Ireland, Flynn recently returned to the country to explore those signs of renewal. In his report, he refers to the “Turning the Tide” report:")
A new report examining surveys and research on the practice of the Catholic faith in Ireland shows an uptick in religious practice and spirituality among younger people.
Our Lady of Fatima Parish in the Archdiocese of Luanda is preparing to host Pope Leo XIV’s meeting with bishops, priests, women and men religious, and catechists during his April 18–21 visit.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron explained today that the French Army simply could not help open the Strait of Hormuz as all fifteen of its soldiers have already been deployed to defend Greenland.
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HEAVEN — After several incidents over the course of his first day in paradise, Chuck Norris was pulled aside by Saint Peter and gently asked to please stop roundhouse kicking the cherubim.
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British Drift Championship driver Adam Simmons and his JZ-powered R33 visiting the Norfolk Arena Drift Team at Swaffham Raceway.
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A reading from the Book of Ezekiel
37:12-14
Thus says the Lord GOD:
O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
and I will settle you upon your land;
thus you shall know that I am the LORD.
I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.
A reading from the Letter to the Romans
8:8-11
Brothers and sisters:
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh;
on the contrary, you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
But if Christ is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin,
the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.
From the Gospel according to John
11:1-45
Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil
and dried his feet with her hair;
it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.
So the sisters sent word to him saying,
“Master, the one you love is ill.”
When Jesus heard this he said,
“This illness is not to end in death,
but is for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was ill,
he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to his disciples,
“Let us go back to Judea.”
The disciples said to him,
“Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,
and you want to go back there?”
Jesus answered,
“Are there not twelve hours in a day?
If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,
because he sees the light of this world.
But if one walks at night, he stumbles,
because the light is not in him.”
He said this, and then told them,
“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,
but I am going to awaken him.”
So the disciples said to him,
“Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”
But Jesus was talking about his death,
while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.
So then Jesus said to them clearly,
“Lazarus has died.
And I am glad for you that I was not there,
that you may believe.
Let us go to him.”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,
“Let us also go to die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus
had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away.
And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary
to comfort them about their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,
she went to meet him;
but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.”
Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
When she had said this,
she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,
“The teacher is here and is asking for you.”
As soon as she heard this,
she rose quickly and went to him.
For Jesus had not yet come into the village,
but was still where Martha had met him.
So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her
saw Mary get up quickly and go out,
they followed her,
presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,
she fell at his feet and said to him,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,
he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,
“Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said,
“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man
have done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.
It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,
“Lord, by now there will be a stench;
he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her,
“Did I not tell you that if you believe
you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said,
“Father, I thank you for hearing me.
I know that you always hear me;
but because of the crowd here I have said this,
that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this,
He cried out in a loud voice,
“Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out,
tied hand and foot with burial bands,
and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them,
“Untie him and let him go.”
Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary
and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
The Gospel passage for this fifth Sunday of Lent is the resurrection of Lazarus (…). Jesus could have avoided the death of his friend Lazarus, but he wanted to share in our suffering for the death of people dear to us, and above all, he wished to demonstrate God’s dominion over death. In this Gospel passage we see that the faith of man and the omnipotence of God, of God’s love, seek each other and finally meet. It is like a two lane street: the faith of man and the omnipotence of God’s love seek each other and finally meet. We see this in the cry of Martha and Mary, and of all of us with them: “If you had been here!”. And God’s answer is not a speech, no, God’s answer to the problem of death is Jesus: “I am the resurrection and the life” … have faith. Amid grief, continue to have faith, even when it seems that death has won. Take away the stone from your heart! Let the Word of God restore life where there is death. Today, too, Jesus repeats to us: “Take away the stone”. (…) Christ lives, and those who welcome him and follow him come into contact with life. (Francis, Angelus, 29 March 2020)
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A Jesuit priest had joined other Christian objectors in suing the federal government over being barred from the holding compound.
Sister Anna Maria shares about her late-in-life vocation, some wisdom on living a long life, and how her advanced age has not stopped the elderly nun from keeping active.
“The aggressions against Christians in the West Bank are multiplying,” Auxiliary Bishop William Shomali of Jerusalem told “EWTN News Nightly.”
When people are in crisis, they reach out to their priests and deacons. But who shepherds the shepherds? The answer, for Deacon Ernie Martinez, starts with brother priests and deacons.
Born March 21, 1866, in New York, Antonia Maury was born into a family with an astronomical legacy: Her grandfather, John William Draper, was the second person to photograph the Moon (and the first whose photo survived to be shown publicly). Her uncle and aunt, Henry and Anna Draper, made several landmark astrophotographs themselves andContinue reading “March 21, 1866: The birth of Antonia Maury”
The post March 21, 1866: The birth of Antonia Maury appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.
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U.S. — Following an extensive study that involved gathering information from all internet users, influencers, and podcasters, it has been officially confirmed that, in his final moments, Charlie Kirk affirmed whatever you believe.
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Action hero and martial arts master Chuck Norris has departed from this world to fight supernatural forces in the place beyond space. As we look back upon his life, each of us should honor his memory in the best way we can.
Read More| Picture of the day |
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Delleboersterheide, nature reserve of the It Fryske Gea. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) on an overgrown heathland.
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NASA astronaut and Expedition 74 crew member Chris Williams smiles for the camera during a spacesuit fit verification inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock.
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The city of Chicago is facing a serious financial crisis, and while their budget problems are not a secret, at least one financial expert is trying to sound the alarm.
The post Financial Expert Sounds Alarm on the City of Chicago – Facing Budget Gap of More Than a Billion Dollars appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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California Democrats have revealed their thoughts and feelings about another Kamala Harris run for president.
The post New Polling Reveals California Democrats Are NOT INTERESTED in Another Kamala Harris Run for President appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Former CNN employee Jim Acosta is deeply worried that ‘partisan hacks’ are taking over the news business.
The post Partisan Hack Jim Acosta Warns Partisan Hacks Are Taking Over the News Business (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Read MoreA reading from the Book of Jeremiah
11:18-20
I knew their plot because the LORD informed me;
at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings.
Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter,
had not realized that they were hatching plots against me:
"Let us destroy the tree in its vigor;
let us cut him off from the land of the living,
so that his name will be spoken no more."
But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge,
searcher of mind and heart,
Let me witness the vengeance you take on them,
for to you I have entrusted my cause!
From the Gospel according to John
7:40-53
Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said,
"This is truly the Prophet."
Others said, "This is the Christ."
But others said, "The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?
Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family
and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?"
So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.
Some of them even wanted to arrest him,
but no one laid hands on him.
So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees,
who asked them, "Why did you not bring him?"
The guards answered, "Never before has anyone spoken like this man."
So the Pharisees answered them, "Have you also been deceived?
Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?
But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed."
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them,
"Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him
and finds out what he is doing?"
They answered and said to him,
"You are not from Galilee also, are you?
Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee."
Then each went to his own house.
“Then each went to his own house” (Jn 7:53). After debating everyone returned to their own convictions. There is a division within the people: the people who follow Jesus and who listen to Him – they are not aware of the time spent listening to Him, for the Word of Jesus enters the heart – and the group of the Doctors of the Law who reject Jesus a priori because, in their opinion, He was not observing the Law. The people were divided in two camps: The people who loved Jesus and followed Him, and the group of the intellectuals of the Law, the leaders of Israel, the leaders of the people. This is clear when the guards went to the chief priests who asked them: “Why haven’t you brought him?” And the guards answered: “There has never been anybody who has spoken like him.” But the Pharisees answered them: “So, you have been led astray as well? (…) And this small group of the elite, the Doctors of the Law, despise Jesus. And they also despise the people, “that crowd” which is ignorant and does not know anything. The holy, faithful People of God. (Francis, Santa Marta, 28 March 2020)
Read More![Death of doomsday population ‘prophet’ prompts retrospection by Catholic thought leaders – #Catholic – Paul Ehrlich, the biologist whose 1968 bestseller “The Population Bomb” warned of imminent mass starvation and environmental catastrophe from overpopulation and whose predictions proved spectacularly wrong, died March 13 at age 93. His death has prompted retrospection among Catholic scholars, who condemned his legacy as a “false prophet” whose ideas fueled deadly population control policies and demographic decline worldwide.Several of those scholars, whose work deals directly with the fallout of Ehrlich’s ideas, did not mince words when talking with EWTN News about the immense responsibility Ehrlich bore for his “wrong predictions,” which they say led to the deaths and nonexistence of millions of people around the world.“He was a false prophet of the worst kind,” said Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and a specialist on China. “He is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide, and his wrong predictions prevented millions of souls from coming into existence. There is nothing more diabolical than that.”Ehrlich’s book famously opened with the following statement: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”Later editions of the book, which Ehrlich co-authored with his wife, Anne, sometimes broadened the dates slightly to “the 1970s and 1980s,” but his core prediction, that large-scale famines killing hundreds of millions were inevitable in the immediate future, never came to pass.Ehrlich “never acknowledged how extraordinarily, absolutely wrong he was about every one of his predictions,” Mosher said. “America and many parts of the world are now below replacement birth rate in part because of his false proclamations of doom.”In the book, Ehrlich suggested voluntary, mass contraceptive use, tax penalties on large families, “luxury taxes” on goods such as cribs and diapers, and “responsibility prizes” and other incentives for childlessness or delayed marriage.If these methods failed to change people’s “value systems,” however, he suggested governments force change “by compulsion,” such as adding temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple foods (with government-rationed antidotes to control birth rates).He also called for a powerful federal bureau to enforce population limits and the conditioning of foreign aid on recipient countries’ population-control efforts, which, according to Mosher, to this day remains part of U.S. law.Ehrlich framed these as necessary to avert catastrophe, emphasizing “conscious regulation of human numbers” and that “the cancer [of population growth] itself must be cut out.”Ehrlich’s death “marks the end of the life of one of the great enemies of mankind,” said Catherine Pakaluk, a Harvard-trained economist at The Catholic University of America and author of the 2024 book “Hannah’s Daughters: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth,” in which college-educated women explain why they chose to have large families.“He was unbalanced, and no part of his work was correct,” she said. “The great scandal is that he was welcomed not only by progressives all over the world but even by Christians and Catholics as some kind of prophet.”Mosher agreed: “Many people have regretted that they were deceived by Ehrlich and his false claims. They tell me they were deceived into contracepting or aborting the children they would have had out of existence.”He taught “really nasty, humanity-hating stuff. I will pray for the repose of his soul,” Mosher said.Though Ehrlich later distanced himself from the more coercive policies he urgently suggested in his first book, Mosher told EWTN News that Ehrlich often refused to debate others with ideas that opposed his “because he didn’t like being contradicted and could not admit that he was wrong.”Instead, Ehrlich doubled down, Mosher said: “With each passing decade, he would write a new book, explaining his predictions were merely premature, not wrong. He taught that people were jeopardizing earth’s ability to support life and were a plague on the planet. By killing ourselves, we’d be doing mother earth a favor.”Indeed, in 2018, Ehrlich said civilization’s collapse was “a near certainty in the next few decades.”An obituary in the New York Times last week called Ehrlich’s predictions of ecosystem collapse and mass starvation “premature” rather than wrong.China’s 1-child policy an outcome of Ehrlich’s ideasIn 1979, Mosher, who studied anthropology, oceanography, and East Asian studies at Stanford University, where Ehrlich taught, was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. Invited there by the Chinese government, he personally witnessed women forced to have abortions under the “one-child policy.”Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, he said, but seeing the brutality of the forced abortions, sterilizations, and infanticide led him to change his views and eventually become a pro-life Catholic.Mosher called Ehrlich the “godfather of China’s one-child policy” because the communist regime adopted principles directly from Ehrlich’s book, among other sources.“His proposals, which suggested governments should impose harsh regimens of population controls and resource conservation, using whatever means necessary, led to the forced killing of 400 million unborn and newborn children,” Mosher said.He pointed out that Ehrlich’s ideas were so wrong, China is now having a “population implosion. The government is desperate to raise the birth rate, proposing incentives to young couples to have children.”Ehrlich’s thinking ‘rejects the providence of God’Ehrlich’s thinking “rejects the providence of God,” Pakaluk said, “specifically in the domains which are God’s: Scripture says God is the author of life and death.”Regarding population growth (or decline) and climate change, Pakaluk said people of faith should ask: “How does this thing, which seems difficult or impossible, how does it propose a challenge we as a society have to meet in order to see the plan of God?”“With the hopeful expectation of people of faith, we say with Our Lady … how? How is it going to work out that people aren’t going to be a threat to mankind? That’s always been the question of Our Lady. She doesn’t doubt, she just has a question,” Pakaluk said.“The ‘how’ question is the job of people of goodwill, specifically, men and women of science,” she said.The Green RevolutionEhrlich’s predictions of worldwide starvation did not come to pass in part because of the Green Revolution, which massively transformed agriculture through advances in technology. It was a vast, global, technological initiative to fight hunger by introducing high-yield, disease-resistant seeds (especially wheat and rice). Key elements included synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and intensive irrigation, shifting agriculture toward industrial methods. This dramatically increased food production globally and prevented the predicted scale of famine, though hunger and malnutrition have persisted in parts of the world for political or economic reasons.Ehrlich’s ‘huge cultural impact’Although Ehrlich was one of many scientists claiming the world could not handle its growing population, Ehrlich’s charisma helped popularize his ideas. He appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson“ at least 20 times.“Ehrlich had a huge cultural impact,” Mosher said. “He was a pied piper who misled generations of American young people, forced by their professors to read his screed. They thought it was the socially responsible thing to do to have one child.”Ehrlich wrote more than 50 books and founded Zero Population Growth, now called Population Connection, which blames overpopulation for climate change. He received dozens of awards for his work.Ehrlich was born in Philadelphia in 1932 and earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and received his doctoral degree in entomology from the University of Kansas, specializing in butterflies.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/death-of-doomsday-population-prophet-prompts-retrospection-by-catholic-thought-leaders-catholic-paul-ehrlich-the-biologist-whose-1968-bestseller-the-population-bomb.jpg "Death of doomsday population ‘prophet’ prompts retrospection by Catholic thought leaders – #Catholic – Paul Ehrlich, the biologist whose 1968 bestseller “The Population Bomb” warned of imminent mass starvation and environmental catastrophe from overpopulation and whose predictions proved spectacularly wrong, died March 13 at age 93. His death has prompted retrospection among Catholic scholars, who condemned his legacy as a “false prophet” whose ideas fueled deadly population control policies and demographic decline worldwide.Several of those scholars, whose work deals directly with the fallout of Ehrlich’s ideas, did not mince words when talking with EWTN News about the immense responsibility Ehrlich bore for his “wrong predictions,” which they say led to the deaths and nonexistence of millions of people around the world.“He was a false prophet of the worst kind,” said Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and a specialist on China. “He is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide, and his wrong predictions prevented millions of souls from coming into existence. There is nothing more diabolical than that.”Ehrlich’s book famously opened with the following statement: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”Later editions of the book, which Ehrlich co-authored with his wife, Anne, sometimes broadened the dates slightly to “the 1970s and 1980s,” but his core prediction, that large-scale famines killing hundreds of millions were inevitable in the immediate future, never came to pass.Ehrlich “never acknowledged how extraordinarily, absolutely wrong he was about every one of his predictions,” Mosher said. “America and many parts of the world are now below replacement birth rate in part because of his false proclamations of doom.”In the book, Ehrlich suggested voluntary, mass contraceptive use, tax penalties on large families, “luxury taxes” on goods such as cribs and diapers, and “responsibility prizes” and other incentives for childlessness or delayed marriage.If these methods failed to change people’s “value systems,” however, he suggested governments force change “by compulsion,” such as adding temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple foods (with government-rationed antidotes to control birth rates).He also called for a powerful federal bureau to enforce population limits and the conditioning of foreign aid on recipient countries’ population-control efforts, which, according to Mosher, to this day remains part of U.S. law.Ehrlich framed these as necessary to avert catastrophe, emphasizing “conscious regulation of human numbers” and that “the cancer [of population growth] itself must be cut out.”Ehrlich’s death “marks the end of the life of one of the great enemies of mankind,” said Catherine Pakaluk, a Harvard-trained economist at The Catholic University of America and author of the 2024 book “Hannah’s Daughters: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth,” in which college-educated women explain why they chose to have large families.“He was unbalanced, and no part of his work was correct,” she said. “The great scandal is that he was welcomed not only by progressives all over the world but even by Christians and Catholics as some kind of prophet.”Mosher agreed: “Many people have regretted that they were deceived by Ehrlich and his false claims. They tell me they were deceived into contracepting or aborting the children they would have had out of existence.”He taught “really nasty, humanity-hating stuff. I will pray for the repose of his soul,” Mosher said.Though Ehrlich later distanced himself from the more coercive policies he urgently suggested in his first book, Mosher told EWTN News that Ehrlich often refused to debate others with ideas that opposed his “because he didn’t like being contradicted and could not admit that he was wrong.”Instead, Ehrlich doubled down, Mosher said: “With each passing decade, he would write a new book, explaining his predictions were merely premature, not wrong. He taught that people were jeopardizing earth’s ability to support life and were a plague on the planet. By killing ourselves, we’d be doing mother earth a favor.”Indeed, in 2018, Ehrlich said civilization’s collapse was “a near certainty in the next few decades.”An obituary in the New York Times last week called Ehrlich’s predictions of ecosystem collapse and mass starvation “premature” rather than wrong.China’s 1-child policy an outcome of Ehrlich’s ideasIn 1979, Mosher, who studied anthropology, oceanography, and East Asian studies at Stanford University, where Ehrlich taught, was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. Invited there by the Chinese government, he personally witnessed women forced to have abortions under the “one-child policy.”Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, he said, but seeing the brutality of the forced abortions, sterilizations, and infanticide led him to change his views and eventually become a pro-life Catholic.Mosher called Ehrlich the “godfather of China’s one-child policy” because the communist regime adopted principles directly from Ehrlich’s book, among other sources.“His proposals, which suggested governments should impose harsh regimens of population controls and resource conservation, using whatever means necessary, led to the forced killing of 400 million unborn and newborn children,” Mosher said.He pointed out that Ehrlich’s ideas were so wrong, China is now having a “population implosion. The government is desperate to raise the birth rate, proposing incentives to young couples to have children.”Ehrlich’s thinking ‘rejects the providence of God’Ehrlich’s thinking “rejects the providence of God,” Pakaluk said, “specifically in the domains which are God’s: Scripture says God is the author of life and death.”Regarding population growth (or decline) and climate change, Pakaluk said people of faith should ask: “How does this thing, which seems difficult or impossible, how does it propose a challenge we as a society have to meet in order to see the plan of God?”“With the hopeful expectation of people of faith, we say with Our Lady … how? How is it going to work out that people aren’t going to be a threat to mankind? That’s always been the question of Our Lady. She doesn’t doubt, she just has a question,” Pakaluk said.“The ‘how’ question is the job of people of goodwill, specifically, men and women of science,” she said.The Green RevolutionEhrlich’s predictions of worldwide starvation did not come to pass in part because of the Green Revolution, which massively transformed agriculture through advances in technology. It was a vast, global, technological initiative to fight hunger by introducing high-yield, disease-resistant seeds (especially wheat and rice). Key elements included synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and intensive irrigation, shifting agriculture toward industrial methods. This dramatically increased food production globally and prevented the predicted scale of famine, though hunger and malnutrition have persisted in parts of the world for political or economic reasons.Ehrlich’s ‘huge cultural impact’Although Ehrlich was one of many scientists claiming the world could not handle its growing population, Ehrlich’s charisma helped popularize his ideas. He appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson“ at least 20 times.“Ehrlich had a huge cultural impact,” Mosher said. “He was a pied piper who misled generations of American young people, forced by their professors to read his screed. They thought it was the socially responsible thing to do to have one child.”Ehrlich wrote more than 50 books and founded Zero Population Growth, now called Population Connection, which blames overpopulation for climate change. He received dozens of awards for his work.Ehrlich was born in Philadelphia in 1932 and earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and received his doctoral degree in entomology from the University of Kansas, specializing in butterflies.")
Prominent Catholic scholars say the late Paul Ehrlich’s ideas were “diabolical” and helped lead to millions of deaths through forced population control measures.
Astronomy advocacy groups are ringing alarm bells about two proposed satellite constellations, warning that they threaten to change the sky forever. SpaceX has applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch up to 1 million satellites as orbital data centers for artificial intelligence. California-based startup Reflect Orbital wants to deploy as many asContinue reading “New satellite constellations could ruin the night sky, astronomers warn”
The post New satellite constellations could ruin the night sky, astronomers warn appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.
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News reports have claimed that a Georgia woman was charged with murder for having an illegal abortion. An EWTN News fact check finds the claim misleading.
Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama appealed for U.S. assistance in combatting Islamic terrorism.
“Protocanon” is an honorary title reserved exclusively for the Spanish head of state, recognizing the monarch as a collaborator of the pope.
Five new itineraries offer palace stays, wildlife safaris, and iconic landmarks like the Taj Mahal.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/TAL-header-mayur-mahal-dining-car-maharajas-express-INDIALUXETRAINS0326-10ebf8cd3e6a4745b116c465d6a31d15.jpg)
LOS ANGELES, CA — Podcaster Tucker Carlson appeared as a guest on the popular game show Wheel of Fortune this week and lost badly after guessing "Israel" for every single puzzle.
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California owes a lot to Governor Gavin Newsom. So much, in fact, that it’s hard to narrow down his long list of accomplishments.
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Blast furnace road (at night) Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
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Conservative historian and scholar Victor Davis Hanson just put Operation Epic Fury into historic perspective during an appearance on FOX News and compared Trump to Winston Churchill in the process.
The post Victor Davis Hanson Puts Iran Operation Into Historic Perspective – Compares Trump to Churchill (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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During Trump’s 2025 State of the Union address, he pointed out that when it came to closing the southern border, all we really needed was a new president.
The post SUCCESS: DHS Celebrates Ten Straight Months of Zero Illegal Aliens Released at the Border appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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MSNOW, the left wing network formerly known as MSNBC, is dropping the charade of being a ‘news’ network to focus on their real money maker, which is anti-Trump resistance TV shows.
The post MSNOW Cutting Some ‘News’ Shows to Focus on Anti-Trump Resistance Programming appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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An American bald eagles flies away from its nest and tree at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, March 13, 2026.
Read MoreA reading from the Book of Wisdom
2:1a, 12-22
The wicked said among themselves,
thinking not aright:
"Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us;
he sets himself against our doings,
Reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God
and styles himself a child of the LORD.
To us he is the censure of our thoughts;
merely to see him is a hardship for us,
Because his life is not like that of others,
and different are his ways.
He judges us debased;
he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.
He calls blest the destiny of the just
and boasts that God is his Father.
Let us see whether his words be true;
let us find out what will happen to him.
For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him
and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
With revilement and torture let us put him to the test
that we may have proof of his gentleness
and try his patience.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death;
for according to his own words, God will take care of him."
These were their thoughts, but they erred;
for their wickedness blinded them,
and they knew not the hidden counsels of God;
neither did they count on a recompense of holiness
nor discern the innocent souls’ reward.
From the Gospel according to John
7:1-2, 10, 25-30
Jesus moved about within Galilee;
he did not wish to travel in Judea,
because the Jews were trying to kill him.
But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.
But when his brothers had gone up to the feast,
he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.
Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said,
"Is he not the one they are trying to kill?
And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him.
Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?
But we know where he is from.
When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from."
So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said,
"You know me and also know where I am from.
Yet I did not come on my own,
but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.
I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me."
So they tried to arrest him,
but no one laid a hand upon him,
because his hour had not yet come.
The first Reading is almost like an anticipated news report about what happened to Jesus. (…) It is truly a prophecy of what happened. And the Jews sought to kill Him, the Gospel says. They even go to arrest Him, the Gospel tells us, “but because His time had not yet come no one laid a hand on Him” (Jn 7:30). This is called hounding (…). And what should one do in the moment of being hounded? There are two things to be done: to dialogue with these people is not possible because they have their own ideas, fixed ideas, which the devil has sown in their hearts. We have heard what their plan of action is. What can one do? What Jesus did: remain silent. (…) It is the silence of the just one in the face of dogged fury. This is valid even for – we can say – the little, everyday types of hounding … stay silent. Silence. Endure and tolerate the hounding of gossip. (Francis, Santa Marta, 27 March 2020)
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“The Jewish community is attacked at a far higher rate than any other religious group in the United States,” Archbishop Alexander Sample said. “We must clearly speak out against antisemitism.”
Christians in many Gulf countries are turning to prayer and the sacraments to sustain themselves amid the anxiety and uncertainty the war brings.
As Christians in their country suffer increased persecution, the Nigerian bishops bring the hopes of a nation to Rome.
Are you ready to meet Rocky? Project Hail Mary opens March 20, 2026, sending science teacher (and former molecular biologist) Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, on an adventure light-years from Earth in a last-ditch effort — one might even say a Hail Mary play — to save the Sun. Based on the best-selling novelContinue reading “Ahead of tomorrow’s premiere, rewatch the final trailer for ‘Project Hail Mary’”
The post Ahead of tomorrow’s premiere, rewatch the final trailer for ‘Project Hail Mary’ appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.
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Pope’s Robin Hood wraps almoner’s mission and returns to Polish hometown as archbishop #Catholic – 
(OSV News) — After 13 years of daring acts of charity that made him break the law in the name of the Gospel and elevate Rome’s homeless to the heart of the Church, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the pope’s “Robin Hood” leaves Rome after nearly three decades to become archbishop of Lódz, Poland.
Five months into Pope Francis’ papacy, on Aug. 3, 2013, then-Msgr. Konrad Krajewski was picked by the pontiff to be the charity point-man of the Vatican.
“He told me that I would not have a desk, that I should not stay in the Vatican City, that I should not deal with formal offices … that I should not have my own car, and that I should not have a secretary,” he told OSV News March 12.
“He told me to give up everything,” Cardinal Krajewski said. “And later I realized that I actually received the most when I simply had nothing.”
“It turned my life upside down,” the Polish prelate said. He spoke to OSV News the day the Vatican announced he would leave the post of prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity and return to his hometown.
Longtime archbishop of Lódz, Cardinal Grzegorz Rys, was been appointed archbishop of Kraków Nov. 26, 2025. Since then, the search for the new archbishop of Lódz continued.
“The Holy Father asked me … whether, after so many years, I could see myself there and whether I would want it. It was not that the Holy Father told me that I must go … he simply asked whether I could see myself there. Whether I would be available,” Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News.
“I said, of course, with joy: yes. But it wasn’t only about joy,” he said.
“From the very beginning of my priesthood, I believed that I had promised obedience to the bishop. And it is precisely in moments like these that this promise is fulfilled: One does not think about oneself, but about what one’s superiors propose.”
He told OSV News he is returning home after 28 years spent in Rome, where he arrived first to serve St. John Paul II, then Pope Benedict XVI as master of papal ceremonies and over 12 years as papal almoner for Pope Francis.
“I never really left Lódz. I left Lódz in order to be here, in Rome, with the universal Church, with the pope. But I never left Lódz in my heart; I always remained connected to it.”
He admitted, however, that in Rome he leaves behind a Vatican family.
“Apart from the homeless who were entrusted to me by Pope Francis and whom I served in his name” — and who sent him many of the 800 “heartfelt” farewell messages he received on March 12 — he said he feels “a very deep bond with the workers of Rome.”
“Not so much with the hierarchy as with the ordinary people — carpenters, those who set up the chairs in St. Peter’s Square, plumbers,” he told OSV News.
“In order to create all those shelters and showers for the poor, I worked together with them — my Roman family. They never needed any documents or paperwork. Whenever I called, they were there.”
They were there when in November 2014, showers for the homeless would be built under the sweeping white colonnade of St. Peter’s Square.
Over the years, an outpatient clinic for the poor was built in that same spot, in the touristy center of the Vatican.
In 2019, the plumbers and carpenters of the Vatican were there for him when Cardinal Krajewski hit another milestone of Pope Francis’ revolution of tenderness: The pope had an empty Roman palace to allocate.
After extensive renovation carried out under the supervision of Cardinal Krajewski, and which left historical frescoes on the walls, Palazzo Migliori was opened in November 2019 in time for the third World Day of the Poor.
Recalling his Roman “family,” Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News: “They also drove around Rome with me whenever some intervention was needed — things that were not always fully possible according to the law, such as turning on water or electricity in abandoned houses. All of them helped me, putting themselves at risk.”
In a move that gained him the nickname of the pope’s Robin Hood, Cardinal Krajewski on May 12, 2019, climbed into a manhole in Rome to restore electricity to an abandoned building occupied by about 450 people, including many migrants, and around 100 children.
The power had been cut because of more than $300,000 in unpaid bills. To reconnect electricity, he broke a police seal — technically committing a crime — but was never charged despite criticism from then-Italy’s interior minister.
When questioned about the legality of his actions, Cardinal Krajewski replied, “The Gospel is my law.” A year later, several migrants living in the building — most of them Muslim — sent him a video thanking him for what he had done.
“In a moment like that you don’t think about the consequences, but only about the fact that the help is necessary,” he said.
“I was able to do many things because I had the trust of Pope Francis. He told me to think according to the Gospel, and that challenged me. It was something that kept me awake at night,” he said.
“He only said: ‘You must have a lot of imagination — evangelical imagination. So think about what Jesus would do.’ When someone leaves you that kind of freedom, but at the same time shows you a clear goal, then all your strength becomes, so to speak, focused and united,” Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News.
“I experienced the most beautiful years of my life here as a person,” he said of his three decades in Rome. “But I think I did not waste those years. They were truly for the Church — through people.”
He said he learned the most from the poor of Rome during his mission as an almoner.
“Their needs had to be discovered, so that we would not help someone the way we wanted to help, but in the way they actually needed. It is very easy to force help on someone — for example, to give someone a ham sandwich when he doesn’t even like ham. Instead, you ask the person what he or she really needs.”
“That is true charity,” Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News. “It means sharing yourself and thinking about what each person needs in order to restore their dignity.”
With Cardinal Krajewski in charge, the poor were regularly welcomed inside Casa Santa Marta, where the pope lived, and the Swiss Guards were saluting them as they made their way to the Elemosineria Apostolica — the Apostolic Almsgiving office — for lunch with Cardinal Krajewski in his apartment every Tuesday. Pope Francis made it perfectly clear — they’re one of us, and they deserve the Vatican to be their home, the cardinal pointed out.
“The task of the Apostolic Almsgiving is to empty the account for the charity of the Holy Father for the poor, according to the logic of the Gospel,” reads the main banner on the website for the office — entrusted now to Spanish Augustinian Archbishop Luis Marín de San Martín, new prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity.
A Vatican almsgiving task that elevated Cardinal Krajewski to one of the major — and most colorful — figures in the universal Church, taught him “to wait.”
Earlier on, “I wanted everything immediately, all at once,” having a “choleric temperament.” But with the poor, “it doesn’t work,” he told OSV News.
“They taught me. They calmed me down a bit. They showed me that everyone has their own path, and that making calculations or statistics doesn’t really make sense,” the cardinal told OSV News.
“If someone asked me how many poor people there are in Rome, I would say: I don’t know. Because every person is different. Restoring the dignity of even one person was the most important thing. Numbers or systems never mattered.”
“You have to wait for them,” he said of ministering to the poor. “The door must always remain open. They must always have your phone number. And you shouldn’t be surprised if someone calls at two in the morning saying that the next day he wants to go back home after 10 years. So they taught me this kind of inner calm — for their sake.”
Cardinal Krajewski traveled to Ukraine 10 times under Pope Francis’ pontificate to distribute help, but above all — to “embrace” the Ukrainians, in his own words, and bring them comfort from the Holy Father.
The Ukraine mission that included escaping gunfire in September 2022, came full circle for Cardinal Krajewski as he sent a truckload valued at over 1 million euros ($1.15 million) to the war-torn country on behalf of Pope Leo in February.
“In the bull I received from the pope when I became a bishop, it was written that I should teach by example, and only if that was not enough, then by word. And I think that is how it was. It really was,” he told OSV News.
He said he already met with the new papal almoner, telling Archbishop Marín, “You must become an alms yourself.”
“It is the life of solitude, because during the day the almoner has to function in the office — dealing with documents, papal blessings, financial assistance. But in the afternoon, when everyone goes home, that’s when you take the car and drive around to the places where the shelters are, where the parishes are, where there are soup kitchens or places that offer showers,” the cardinal said.
“You stay with them, you strengthen them, you support them financially — but above all, the pope taught me that presence matters. Presence is what counts.”
One of the poor present in a packed lunch March 10 in the almoner’s apartment, asked the cardinal, “Why do you do all this?”
He replied: “Because I represent Jesus.”
“Only then the works of mercy will last. They’re not linked to a person. They’re linked to the Gospel. Only this way they will last.”
Paulina Guzik is international editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @Guzik_Paulina.
– (OSV News) — After 13 years of daring acts of charity that made him break the law in the name of the Gospel and elevate Rome’s homeless to the heart of the Church, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the pope’s “Robin Hood” leaves Rome after nearly three decades to become archbishop of Lódz, Poland. Five months into Pope Francis’ papacy, on Aug. 3, 2013, then-Msgr. Konrad Krajewski was picked by the pontiff to be the charity point-man of the Vatican. “He told me that I would not have a desk, that I should not stay in the Vatican City, that I should
Pope’s visit to show that Christianity is asset, not danger, for Algeria, bishop says #Catholic – 
(OSV News) — As Pope Leo XIV prepares to visit Algeria as the first stop of his apostolic trip to Africa April 13–23, Bishop Michel Guillaud of Constantine-Hippone told OSV News the Holy Father’s presence will demonstrate that Christianity “is an asset and not a danger” to Algeria.
The birthplace of St. Augustine is the first stop of his trip and “overjoyed” with the fact the pontiff is coming, with the Vatican releasing a detailed itinerary of the first African journey of the pontiff March 16.
“The Holy Father has already visited Algeria twice, in 2003 and 2014, when he was prior general of the Order of St. Augustine,” Bishop Guillard told OSV News. “He is not coming primarily on a personal pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Augustine, but to meet the Algerian people and to support his Church, drawing on the strong bond between them through the figure of Augustine.”
Algeria is 99% Sunni Muslim, and the Catholic Church counts just 8,740 members, about 0.019% of the population, out of more than 45 million people, according to the 2025 edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican’s annual yearbook.
In a conversation with OSV News, the Algerian Church leader discussed the deep connection to St. Augustine that unites the pope with the nation, the daily realities faced by Christians who are “one in a thousand,” and their hopes for a future in a place where Christianity “does not exist primarily through the presence of a priest, but through the presence of Christians.”
Bishop Guillaud, originally from Lyon, France, became a parish priest in Algeria in 2006. He was named administrator of the Diocese of Constantine-Hippone in 2024 and appointed bishop in July 2025.
Reflecting on the May 8, 2025, election of Pope Leo to the Chair of Peter, he said: “When Pope Leo was elected, one of his first statements was: ‘I am the son of Saint Augustine.’ All of Algeria trembled … since then, they have been waiting for him,” the bishop said.
“Algerians know that popes are not only concerned with their flock, but also with peace, justice and reconciliation for all. If the Holy Father is coming to Algeria, it is because he believes that everyone has a part to play in building the Kingdom of God, including the Muslim Algerian people. The hope of the Church in Algeria is that the Algerian people will grow in the conviction that Christians are not a threat, but that their presence and what inspires them can be good news for everyone,” the bishop emphasized.
On April 14, the pope will travel 310 miles from Algiers to celebrate Mass in the Basilica of Hippo, in the city now called Annaba. St. Augustine was the bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, the year of his death. Annaba is a familiar place for local Muslims who travel Annaba every year to visit — be it families, tourists, school groups and university students — to discover the place and the man whose memory it preserves.
“Every year, we organize ‘Augustinian Days’ in Hippo, attended by both Muslims and Christians,” Bishop Guillaud told OSV News. “The three speakers this year were Algerian and expressed how much the bishop of Hippo was a source of inspiration for them. Augustine was, in his life as in his thinking, a seeker of truth, a builder of unity, a person who scrutinized the world with intelligence and faith. He propels us forward by telling us to love in everything we do, to sing the ‘alleluia of the road’ even when we are going through trials, and to walk with perseverance and confidence.”
Asked about the daily realities faced by Christians, and their hopes for a future, the bishop first highlighted the number of Christians a Muslim-majority country: “(of) 47 million inhabitants, Catholics are perhaps one in a thousand,” he said. “Every day we are questioned about not being Muslim. It takes a great deal of effort to join a Christian community in a country of 2.5 million square kilometers (919,595 square miles), and some have to travel several hours by road to do so.”
A diversity of languages spoken — and those include English, Portuguese, Arabic, French, Berber — provides challenges for Christian gathering in the North African country.
“Sunday is a working day, so we have to meet on the weekend, on Friday or Saturday. We do not have a priest in every parish, and Christians must learn that a community does not begin with the presence of a priest, but with Christians. Our communities are not very large. They rarely exceed fifty people, more often gathering 15 to 30, which gives them a character that is both more austere and more familiar.”
The bishop underlined that the main task of Catholic priests in Algeria is “to support Christians and maintain fraternal ties with Muslims.”
“We sometimes welcome people who come knocking on our door because they feel called to follow Christ. For Christians of European origin, it is considered ‘normal’ for them to be Christians,” but for people from sub-Saharan Africa, “it is more surprising.”
“When Christians are of Algerian origin, it comes as a shock. The authorities tolerate it, respecting the conscience of the country’s citizens, but society struggles to accept it. These new Christians often have to remain very discreet in their family, social and professional environments. And evangelical communities composed solely of Algerians struggle to be recognized. Our presence in society, when it manifests itself in cultural or charitable institutions, must remain modest, proportionate to our numbers,” Bishop Guillaud said.
The pope’s visit, he highlighted, is “To show that difference is not a danger, that unity can coexist with differences, whereas too much emphasis on unanimity stifles freedom. If society becomes more accepting of difference, this will benefit everyone.”
“The Catholic Church is the custodian of a treasure in the Eucharist and the apostolic ministry,” Bishop Guillaud stressed. “But the latter has been exercised for too long in a way that gives it excessive importance. When there are fewer priests, the challenge for the community is to realize that it does not exist primarily through the presence of a priest, but through the presence of Christians, and to rethink itself accordingly. The future depends in part on the emergence of a new way of being Church. It also depends on the place that society will accept to give it. Everything is still possible.”
The bishop stressed that Algerian Christians await the pope “with both great joy and a certain expectation: when St. Peter travels in the Acts of the Apostles, it is anything but ordinary. With his successor, we try to open our hearts to the grace proper to this visit.”
Ngala Killian Chimtom writes for OSV News from Yaounde, Cameroon.
– (OSV News) — As Pope Leo XIV prepares to visit Algeria as the first stop of his apostolic trip to Africa April 13–23, Bishop Michel Guillaud of Constantine-Hippone told OSV News the Holy Father’s presence will demonstrate that Christianity “is an asset and not a danger” to Algeria. The birthplace of St. Augustine is the first stop of his trip and “overjoyed” with the fact the pontiff is coming, with the Vatican releasing a detailed itinerary of the first African journey of the pontiff March 16. “The Holy Father has already visited Algeria twice, in 2003 and 2014, when he
Catholic hoops at the highest level take over this year’s March Madness #Catholic – 
PHILADELPHIA (OSV News) — Catholic universities have quietly taken over March Madness, blending history, talent, and the kind of coaching that shapes every game into an unpredictable contest.
The 2026 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments showcase Catholic hoops at the highest level. Twelve programs — seven men’s, five women’s — bring tradition, depth, and star power to the brackets, creating thrilling matchups from the first tip-off.
Women’s Tournament Highlights
In the women’s bracket, experience meets sharpshooting as the University of Notre Dame faces a Fairfield University team that could surprise anyone.
Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish step onto the court with a 22-10 record and a six-seed, riding a 9-2 surge in their last 11 games. Junior standout Hannah Hidalgo, finalist for the Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year award, anchors a team with a storied NCAA history: two national championships (2001, 2018), nine Final Four appearances, and 21 Sweet 16 showings. Balanced scoring and steady leadership provide the Irish an edge as they prepare for Fairfield.
The Stags, the three-time reigning Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion, arrive with the highest seed in Fairfield’s history (No. 11) and a 28-4 record.
Under Stags coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis, the squad ranks first nationally in three-pointers per game (11.4) and top-10 in three-point percentage (.370). MAAC Player of the Year Kaety L’Amoreaux averages 17.6 points, and the team sets a program record with 2,416 points this season. Defensively, Fairfield allows just 55.8 points per game, ranking 13th nationally. Hot shooting and disciplined defense position The Stags as a genuine upset threat, ensuring a matchup against The Fighting Irish that captivates from the opening tip.
Beyond Notre Dame and Fairfield, other Catholic programs join the hunt to make an impact in the tournament.
The College of the Holy Cross claimed the Patriot League championship with a 23-9 record and nine straight wins. The Crusaders excel at defense and forcing turnovers.
Gonzaga University (24-9) spotlights freshman Lauren Whittaker, who has scored 641 points, second nationally among freshmen, while sophomore Allie Turner leads the West Coast Conference with 84 made three-pointers. The Bulldogs rank second nationally in three-point percentage (.390) and thrive in fast-paced games.
Villanova University (25-7) relies on sophomore Jasmine Bascoe, who averages 18.8 points per game and has 1,154 career points, anchoring a team that finishes second in the competitive Big East.
Villanova graduate student Kylee Watson offered a unique perspective, having played at Notre Dame before transferring this year.
Watson’s experience at Pope Leo XIV’s alma mater underscores what sets Catholic colleges apart.
“Something I’ve noticed at both schools is that we say the Lord’s Prayer before every game as a team,” Watson told OSV News. “It’s a really special moment where we take the time to connect with God pregame, and it’s cool that it’s a tradition at both schools.”
Men’s Tournament Highlights
The men’s bracket mixes seasoned champions with rising stars, promising upsets and deep runs.
Villanova (24-8) brings seven Final Four appearances and three national championships into the tournament. Freshman guard Acaden Lewis, junior guard Tyler Perkins, and senior center Duke Brennan combine scoring, leadership, and inside strength.
Gonzaga (30-3) depends on WCC Player of the Year Graham Ike to guide a team dominating in rebounds, points in the paint, and scoring margin (+19.1). Balanced attack and disciplined defense position Gonzaga as a favorite for a deep run.
Santa Clara University (26-8) makes its first NCAA appearance since 1996 after finishing third in the WCC (15-3). Strong perimeter defense and balanced scoring offer the Broncos upset potential.
St. John’s University (28-6) returns as back-to-back Big East regular-season and tournament champions. Coach Rick Pitino appears in his 25th NCAA Tournament across six schools. Veteran leadership and explosive scoring make the Red Storm a dangerous contender.
St. Louis University (28-5) highlights Atlantic 10 Player of the Year Robbie Avila. The Billikens rank second nationally in three-point percentage (.401) and fourth in effective field goal percentage (.600).
Siena University (23-11) celebrated its seventh MAAC championship and returns to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2010. The Saints’ veteran guards and methodical offense challenge opponents.
St. Mary’s College (27-5) earned a program-record fifth consecutive NCAA appearance. Balanced scoring, experience, and defense provide the Gaels a solid chance to advance.
John Knebels is an OSV News sports correspondent. He writes from Philadelphia.
– PHILADELPHIA (OSV News) — Catholic universities have quietly taken over March Madness, blending history, talent, and the kind of coaching that shapes every game into an unpredictable contest. The 2026 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments showcase Catholic hoops at the highest level. Twelve programs — seven men’s, five women’s — bring tradition, depth, and star power to the brackets, creating thrilling matchups from the first tip-off. Click here to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Women’s Tournament Highlights In the women’s bracket, experience meets sharpshooting as the University of Notre Dame faces a Fairfield University team that could surprise anyone.
Former astrologer rediscovers Catholic roots, will enter full communion with Church at Easter #Catholic – 
LAKE ORION, Mich. (OSV News) — For most of her life, Molly Curtis was looking everywhere for answers, but the truth seemed to be just out of grasp.
She was baptized in the Catholic Church, but as her family grew away from the faith when she was around 8 years old, she too fell away.
“It wasn’t until I was 19 that my mom returned, but my dad didn’t,” Curtis told Detroit Catholic, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Detroit. “My dad definitely took a more Protestant bent at first, but then we explored New Age spirituality and practices. I actually made a career out of it, studying different religions and then opening an astrology business.”
Curtis would do her own astrology consulting sessions for clients, relying on the movement of the planets and stars to give people direction and help them answer the same type of questions she had: Who were we? Why are we here? What is the purpose of life?
“With astrology, you’re constantly looking at planetary movements in the sky,” Curtis said. “There’s a lot of geometry and math to it, and you’re basically interpreting the stars based on planetary orbits. It dates back to the Hellenistic era; a lot of the texts I would use came from 500 B.C.
“You’re always looking to the future to interpret the next movement and what that means for the world or your client,” Curtis added. “You’re constantly looking for how these signs out there affect you, but you never necessarily get resolution; you don’t get a sense of peace. It’s just interpreting the signs, but then OK, now what?”
Curtis was always a spiritual person, reading the Bible, studying other religious texts, finding wisdom in Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies. But while she found wisdom, she didn’t find peace.
“I felt like I was on this hamster wheel where I was always projecting into the future, whether it was for me, or for a blog I was writing, or for a client who was coming in,” Curtis said. “It was like I was projecting. And there’s something calming when you drop all of that and say, ‘I don’t have control of all this, and I don’t need to know all the answers.’”
Last year, it all came to a head. With national news stories of political violence, social unrest and a constant bombardment of social media, Curtis was being overwhelmed with what she called a “darkness” in society.
She added that the fallout from the assassination of political commentator Charlie Kirk was a particular pressure breaker.
“So much was going on in the world, and my heart just really broke open,” Curtis said. “It was on one hand the violence and madness of it all, but on a different level, it was the reaction to the violence. I saw so many people who reacted to it with indifference and cruelty, and it made me stop for a second and really think about where we are heading collectively.”
Curtis wanted to find a way to get beyond the darkness she was seeing in the world, and she found it in the Christians who were in her life.
“When I would tune into those who were walking in a faith, specifically the Christian faith, I saw a different perspective,” Curtis said. “And that to me really stood out as an answer to all I was looking for. What I saw was a community that stayed connected, while the rest of us were indifferent. I saw people who were living for one another, while everything else was more divisive and indifferent.
“I then just felt this call to stop focusing all on myself and putting myself as the center and to put God in the center of my life,” Curtis added.
Curtis called the nearby St. Joseph Parish in Lake Orion, where providence would have it, the parish was about to start OCIA classes. OCIA stands for Order of Christian Initiation of Adults.
“Within a week of them forming classes, I think I had missed the first week, but Kelly (Ponce, pastoral associate and co-director of engagement at St. Joseph) was like, ‘Yep, come on in,’” Curtis said. “It happened very quickly, but it felt so right. The moment that I got there and started consuming everything, I was thinking, this is something I finally understood. This has been what I was looking for in my life.”
Curtis recalled her prior attempts at reading the Bible by herself and struggling, but under the direction of Deacon John Manera, director of OCIA at St. Joseph Parish, she grasped the faith in a more complete, mature way than what she previously encountered.
“The OCIA classes are very organized and really break things down to digestible material,” Curtis said. “Whether he uses videos or he uses his own slides, he has a sense of humor about things where he can just bring it down into layman’s terms, but at the same time, still holding the sacredness of the material. He’s just very relatable being a man in the world but still guiding us through this sacred space.”
Since starting her OCIA journey, Curtis has learned to shift from an inward, self-focused worldview to one oriented toward Christ.
“A lot of things that I was practicing before and studying were all about putting the individual at the center,” Curtis said. “With astrology, you look at the stars and ask how it impacts you. You can practice Buddhism without Buddha. But with Christianity, you put Christ at the center of your life. Having a relationship with Christ, it draws you to a person. And when you have Christ at the center, it gives you a better outlook on the world.”
Curtis selected St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French Visitation nun and mystic credited with spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as her confirmation saint. Devotion to the Sacred Heart has allowed Curtis to draw closer to the Lord, and in turn, to others.
“In allowing myself to expand outward in following Christ versus falling inward to myself, I draw closer to others,” Curtis said. “I think that is what brought me back to the faith. I could just feel the reactions of those who are close to the Lord, the Lord living in their lives, and they weren’t calling for violence. They weren’t calling for indifference. And that is what I wanted. I wanted to have that love of God to draw upon.”
Curtis is looking forward to receiving her first Communion this Easter. Her daughter, Elwood, 14, is set to be baptized this May and is in confirmation class. Her husband is “not quite ready” to take the next step, Curtis said, but as a family they have brought up God more in conversations, and Molly and Elwood regularly pray the rosary together.
“I’m very happy that she wants to be baptized,” Curtis said. “She’s been asking for it for a couple of years now, and it’s weighed very heavily on me, especially in the last year. There’s nothing sweeter than when she comes in and says, ‘I want to do a decade of the rosary with you.’ That makes my heart smile, and I feel like it’s my role to let her know how much God loves her.
“It all goes back to putting God at the center and Christ in your heart,” Curtis continued. “I was doing all this research, all this reading about the stars, and when I accepted Christ, his Sacred Heart — the Sacred Heart imagery has played a big part in my conversion — I think that fire has burned off the indifference and allowed me to open my heart up to God and the people around me. It’s expelled the darkness.”
Daniel Meloy is a reporter at Detroit Catholic, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Detroit. This story was originally published by Detroit Catholic and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.
– LAKE ORION, Mich. (OSV News) — For most of her life, Molly Curtis was looking everywhere for answers, but the truth seemed to be just out of grasp. She was baptized in the Catholic Church, but as her family grew away from the faith when she was around 8 years old, she too fell away. “It wasn’t until I was 19 that my mom returned, but my dad didn’t,” Curtis told Detroit Catholic, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Detroit. “My dad definitely took a more Protestant bent at first, but then we explored New Age spirituality and practices.
Pope Leo XIV calls bishops to Rome to discuss marriage and family in October #Catholic – 
VATICAN CITY (OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV announced March 19 that he is asking the presidents of all bishops’ conferences around the world to convene in Rome in October to renew and deepen the Church’s discussion on marriage and family in light of “Amoris Laetitia.”
The pope issued the invitation at the end of a message marking the 10th anniversary of the signing of “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the pastoral care of families published after the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family.
“In light of the changes that continue to impact families, I have decided to convene the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences from around the world in October 2026, in an effort to proceed, in mutual listening, to a synodal discernment on the steps to be taken in order to proclaim the Gospel to families today, in light of Amoris Laetitia and taking into account what is currently being done in the local Churches,” Pope Leo said.
“I entrust this journey to the intercession of Saint Joseph, guardian of the Holy Family of Nazareth,” he added.
“Amoris Laetitia,” Latin for “The Joy of Love,” was signed by Pope Francis on March 19, 2016, and released publicly the following April. The document, which runs more than 50,000 words, addressed married life and love, children, extended family, education and related pastoral challenges, with special attention to integrating wounded or marginalized families into the life of the Church.
“Our era is marked by rapid changes which make it necessary, even more than ten years ago, to give particular pastoral attention to families, to whom the Lord entrusts the task of participating in the Church’s mission of proclaiming and witnessing to the Gospel,” Pope Leo explained in the message.
He added that there are “places and circumstances in which the Church ‘can become the salt of the earth’ only through the lay faithful and, in particular, through families.”
“For this reason, the Church’s commitment in this area must be renewed and deepened, so that those whom the Lord calls to marriage and family life can, in Christ, fully live out their conjugal love, and that young people may feel attracted, within the Church, to the beauty of the vocation to marriage.”
At the time of its publication, “Amoris Laetitia” garnered an uneven reception. While Church leaders generally praised the exhortation’s aim of improving pastoral care for families, it met swift and sharp criticism for some ambiguities that appeared difficult to reconcile with Church teaching, especially pertaining to divorced Catholics in new civil unions, without a prior declaration of nullity, and their reception of the Eucharist. Disagreement among theologians and Church leaders persists over these elements.
Pope Leo called the document “a luminous message of hope regarding conjugal love and family life” adding that both “Amoris Laetitia” and St. John Paul II’s 1981 exhortation, “Familiaris Consortio,” “strengthened the Church’s doctrinal and pastoral commitment to the service of young people, married couples and families.”
“On this 10th anniversary, we give thanks to the Lord for the stimulus that has encouraged reflection and pastoral conversion in the Church, and ask God for the courage to persevere on this path, always welcoming the Gospel anew in the joy of being able to proclaim it to all,” Pope Leo said.
Courtney Mares is Vatican Editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
– VATICAN CITY (OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV announced March 19 that he is asking the presidents of all bishops’ conferences around the world to convene in Rome in October to renew and deepen the Church’s discussion on marriage and family in light of “Amoris Laetitia.” The pope issued the invitation at the end of a message marking the 10th anniversary of the signing of “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the pastoral care of families published after the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family. “In light of the changes that continue to impact families, I have
El Papa León XIV convoca a los obispos a Roma para hablar sobre el matrimonio y la familia en octubre #Catholic – 
CIUDAD DEL VATICANO (OSV News) — El Papa León XIV anunció el 19 de marzo que ha pedido a los presidentes de todas las conferencias episcopales del mundo que se reúnan en Roma en octubre para renovar y profundizar el debate de la Iglesia sobre el matrimonio y la familia a la luz de “Amoris Laetitia”.
El Papa hizo esta invitación al final de un mensaje con motivo del décimo aniversario de la firma de “Amoris Laetitia”, la exhortación apostólica postsinodal del Papa Francisco sobre la pastoral de la familia, publicada tras los Sínodos sobre la Familia de 2014 y 2015.
“Reconociendo los cambios que siguen afectando a las familias, he decidido convocar en octubre de 2026 a los Presidentes de las Conferencias Episcopales de todo el mundo, con el fin de proceder, en un clima de escucha recíproca, a un discernimiento sinodal sobre los pasos a dar para anunciar el Evangelio a las familias de hoy, a la luz de Amoris laetitia y teniendo en cuenta lo que se está realizando en las Iglesias locales”, dijo el Papa.
“Encomiendo este camino a la intercesión de san José, Custodio de la Sagrada Familia de Nazaret”, añadió.
“Amoris Laetitia”, que en latín significa “La alegría del amor”, fue firmada por el Papa Francisco el 19 de marzo de 2016 y publicada el siguiente mes de abril. El documento, que cuenta con más de 50.000 palabras, aborda la vida matrimonial y el amor, los hijos, la familia extensa, la educación y los desafíos pastorales relacionados, con especial atención a la integración de las familias heridas o marginadas en la vida de la Iglesia.
“Nuestra época está marcada por rápidas transformaciones que, incluso hoy más que hace diez años, hacen necesaria una especial atención pastoral a las familias, a las que el Señor confía la tarea de participar en la misión de la Iglesia de anunciar y dar testimonio del Evangelio”, explicó el Papa León en el mensaje.
Añadió que hay “lugares y circunstancias en los que la Iglesia ‘sólo puede llegar a ser sal de la tierra’ a través de los fieles laicos y, en particular, de las familias”.
“Por eso, el compromiso de la Iglesia en este ámbito debe renovarse y profundizarse, para que aquellos a quienes el Señor llama al matrimonio y a la familia puedan vivir su amor conyugal en Cristo y los jóvenes se sientan atraídos por la intensidad de la vocación matrimonial en la Iglesia”, dijo.
En el momento de su publicación, “Amoris Laetitia” tuvo una acogida desigual. Si bien los líderes de la Iglesia elogiaron en general el objetivo de la exhortación de mejorar la atención pastoral a las familias, esta fue objeto de críticas rápidas y contundentes por algunas ambigüedades que parecían difíciles de conciliar con la doctrina de la Iglesia, especialmente en lo que respecta a los católicos divorciados que han contraído nuevas uniones civiles sin una declaración previa de nulidad, y a su recepción de la Eucaristía. Persiste el desacuerdo entre teólogos y líderes de la Iglesia sobre estos elementos.
El Papa León calificó el documento como “un luminoso mensaje de esperanza sobre el amor conyugal y familiar”, y añadió que tanto “Amoris Laetitia” como la exhortación de San Juan Pablo II de 1981, “Familiaris Consortio”, “han estimulado el compromiso doctrinal y pastoral de la Iglesia al servicio de los jóvenes, los cónyuges y de las familias”.
“En este décimo aniversario, queremos dar gracias al Señor por el impulso dado al estudio y a la conversión pastoral de la Iglesia, y pedirle el valor para continuar el camino, acogiendo siempre de nuevo el Evangelio, con la alegría de poder anunciarlo a todos”, dijo el Papa León.
Courtney Mares es editora del Vaticano para OSV News. Sígala en X en @catholicourtney.
– CIUDAD DEL VATICANO (OSV News) — El Papa León XIV anunció el 19 de marzo que ha pedido a los presidentes de todas las conferencias episcopales del mundo que se reúnan en Roma en octubre para renovar y profundizar el debate de la Iglesia sobre el matrimonio y la familia a la luz de “Amoris Laetitia”. El Papa hizo esta invitación al final de un mensaje con motivo del décimo aniversario de la firma de “Amoris Laetitia”, la exhortación apostólica postsinodal del Papa Francisco sobre la pastoral de la familia, publicada tras los Sínodos sobre la Familia de 2014 y
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![Pope Francis broke with predecessors on policy, appointments, and papal trips, sociologist says – #Catholic – ROME — A political science professor from the U.S. has used data analysis to show how Pope Francis differed from predecessors regarding policy, appointments, and papal trips, while notably omitting discussion of the deceased pontiff’s doctrinal differences.The University of Notre Dame in Rome hosted the lecture “Francis and His Predecessors: Quantifying Continuity and Change in the Modern Papacy,” by Sean Theriault, on March 19.Avoiding theological debate?Theriault, a self-described sociologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told EWTN News that he became interested in studying Pope Francis’ legacy two years ago after discussing the papacy with his students and fellow Catholics.“I had heard people suggest that Pope Francis was different, and I thought I could bring data to help assess how different he was. In other words, as a social scientist, I could actually supply some facts to the question at hand.”He noted that his study avoids theological debate entirely, observing that while many theologians emphasize Francis’ doctrinal shifts, his study focuses on quantifiable patterns in the data.What do the numbers say about Francis?Examining the data reveals that Pope Francis was vastly different from his predecessors. The first metric used in the study was papal policy.To quantify policy, Theriault analyzed papal addresses to the diplomatic corps — the so-called “State of the World address” — dating back to St. John XXIII. By parsing the words of each speech, he found that Francis had the lowest statistical correlation to any of his predecessors, focusing more on issues like immigration and refugees than traditional diplomatic concerns.“I parsed out these speeches going back to the early 1960s by sentence or quasi-sentence, categorizing them,” Theriault said in his lecture. “If we separate international relations, Francis had the lowest correlation among his recent predecessors. For instance, in his 2025 address, though he did discuss the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, Francis touched on issues like artificial intelligence, respect for migrants, and the elimination of the death penalty.”Increased diversity in cardinals and saintsThe next metric analyzed was personnel, chiefly the makeup of the College of Cardinals and the canonization of new saints.Theriault noted that while St. Paul VI was the first to diversify the demographics of the cardinals significantly, Francis had accelerated this trend toward a less Eurocentric cardinalate.“The conclave that elected Paul VI was dominated by Europe (55 out of 80 cardinals), but he spread the reach of the college to other parts of the world. John Paul II continued this, Benedict, a bit less so, but Francis did it by far the most by 55%. He brought in cardinals from places like Laos, Sweden, and Brunei, and passed over traditional sees like Paris and Milan.”Theriault also pointed out anomalies in Francis’ selection of cardinals from suffragan dioceses — rather than major archdioceses as done before — and his approach to canonization. “When Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles retired, we all expected the red hat to be given to the new archbishop, José Gómez. Instead, he gave the red hat to Bishop [Robert] McElroy, the bishop of San Diego, a suffragan diocese of Los Angeles.”He added regarding canonizations: “Francis shortened the average time to canonization to 151 years. He canonized a vastly higher percentage of laypeople (18%) than his predecessors. He paired John XXIII with John Paul II for canonization, effectively blocking the canonization paths for Pius IX and Pius XII.”Pilgrimages to the marginsPapal travel was the third metric Theriault analyzed. He observed that while previous popes spent their time abroad ministering primarily to Catholic audiences, Francis preferred to spend time with the marginalized.“John Paul II loved meeting with everyday Catholics during his travels, especially the Polish and Hispanic communities. Benedict XVI focused on meeting with the Church hierarchy. Francis chose rather to visit prisons and homeless centers, focusing on the marginalized rather than exclusively Catholic audiences,” he said.Looking ahead to Pope Leo XIVTheriault concluded the lecture by predicting that Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate would reveal far more about Pope Francis’ time as pope than when he was still alive.“Pope Leo is more of an institutionalist than Pope Francis, and significantly more reserved. In the long run, Pope Francis’ legacy is going to be far more pronounced precisely because he was succeeded by Leo, who is bringing along the whole Church and institutionalizing that vision in a way Francis just did not know how to do,” he said.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/pope-francis-broke-with-predecessors-on-policy-appointments-and-papal-trips-sociologist-says-catholic-rome-a-political-science-professor-from-the-u-s-has-used-data-analysis-to-show-scaled.jpg "Pope Francis broke with predecessors on policy, appointments, and papal trips, sociologist says – #Catholic – ROME — A political science professor from the U.S. has used data analysis to show how Pope Francis differed from predecessors regarding policy, appointments, and papal trips, while notably omitting discussion of the deceased pontiff’s doctrinal differences.The University of Notre Dame in Rome hosted the lecture “Francis and His Predecessors: Quantifying Continuity and Change in the Modern Papacy,” by Sean Theriault, on March 19.Avoiding theological debate?Theriault, a self-described sociologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told EWTN News that he became interested in studying Pope Francis’ legacy two years ago after discussing the papacy with his students and fellow Catholics.“I had heard people suggest that Pope Francis was different, and I thought I could bring data to help assess how different he was. In other words, as a social scientist, I could actually supply some facts to the question at hand.”He noted that his study avoids theological debate entirely, observing that while many theologians emphasize Francis’ doctrinal shifts, his study focuses on quantifiable patterns in the data.What do the numbers say about Francis?Examining the data reveals that Pope Francis was vastly different from his predecessors. The first metric used in the study was papal policy.To quantify policy, Theriault analyzed papal addresses to the diplomatic corps — the so-called “State of the World address” — dating back to St. John XXIII. By parsing the words of each speech, he found that Francis had the lowest statistical correlation to any of his predecessors, focusing more on issues like immigration and refugees than traditional diplomatic concerns.“I parsed out these speeches going back to the early 1960s by sentence or quasi-sentence, categorizing them,” Theriault said in his lecture. “If we separate international relations, Francis had the lowest correlation among his recent predecessors. For instance, in his 2025 address, though he did discuss the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, Francis touched on issues like artificial intelligence, respect for migrants, and the elimination of the death penalty.”Increased diversity in cardinals and saintsThe next metric analyzed was personnel, chiefly the makeup of the College of Cardinals and the canonization of new saints.Theriault noted that while St. Paul VI was the first to diversify the demographics of the cardinals significantly, Francis had accelerated this trend toward a less Eurocentric cardinalate.“The conclave that elected Paul VI was dominated by Europe (55 out of 80 cardinals), but he spread the reach of the college to other parts of the world. John Paul II continued this, Benedict, a bit less so, but Francis did it by far the most by 55%. He brought in cardinals from places like Laos, Sweden, and Brunei, and passed over traditional sees like Paris and Milan.”Theriault also pointed out anomalies in Francis’ selection of cardinals from suffragan dioceses — rather than major archdioceses as done before — and his approach to canonization. “When Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles retired, we all expected the red hat to be given to the new archbishop, José Gómez. Instead, he gave the red hat to Bishop [Robert] McElroy, the bishop of San Diego, a suffragan diocese of Los Angeles.”He added regarding canonizations: “Francis shortened the average time to canonization to 151 years. He canonized a vastly higher percentage of laypeople (18%) than his predecessors. He paired John XXIII with John Paul II for canonization, effectively blocking the canonization paths for Pius IX and Pius XII.”Pilgrimages to the marginsPapal travel was the third metric Theriault analyzed. He observed that while previous popes spent their time abroad ministering primarily to Catholic audiences, Francis preferred to spend time with the marginalized.“John Paul II loved meeting with everyday Catholics during his travels, especially the Polish and Hispanic communities. Benedict XVI focused on meeting with the Church hierarchy. Francis chose rather to visit prisons and homeless centers, focusing on the marginalized rather than exclusively Catholic audiences,” he said.Looking ahead to Pope Leo XIVTheriault concluded the lecture by predicting that Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate would reveal far more about Pope Francis’ time as pope than when he was still alive.“Pope Leo is more of an institutionalist than Pope Francis, and significantly more reserved. In the long run, Pope Francis’ legacy is going to be far more pronounced precisely because he was succeeded by Leo, who is bringing along the whole Church and institutionalizing that vision in a way Francis just did not know how to do,” he said.")
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