‘How many more paedophiles will be dead before this commission begins?’: abuse survivor criticises state investigation

A sur­vivor of sexual abuse at Dub­lin’s Black­rock Col­lege said he feels “des­pair” that a stat­utory invest­ig­a­tion into sexual abuse at reli­gious-run schools has yet to con­tact vic­tims.

Over 18 months ago, a scop­ing inquiry into alleg­a­tions of abuse at schools run by reli­gious orders was pub­lished.

The inquiry was launched in 2022 after an RTÉ doc­u­ment­ary high­lighted the abuse broth­ers Mark and David Ryan suffered at the fee-pay­ing Black­rock Col­lege in south Dub­lin.

A report later found there were 2,395 alleg­a­tions of sexual abuse across 308 schools run by reli­gious orders. The alleg­a­tions were made against 884 alleged abusers.

After this report was pub­lished in Septem­ber 2024, the Gov­ern­ment announced a com­mis­sion of invest­ig­a­tion, to fur­ther exam­ine what emerged from the pre­lim­in­ary invest­ig­a­tion.

Justice Michael Mac­Grath has been appoin­ted by the Gov­ern­ment to chair the com­mis­sion. However, sur­viv­ors say they have yet to be con­tac­ted and have “no idea” how the stat­utory invest­ig­a­tion will oper­ate, one told the Sunday Inde­pend­ent.

Michael Mans­field (60) was among 137 people who gave evid­ence of sexual abuse to the scop­ing inquiry.

Mr Mans­field, who grew up two doors down from the Ryan broth­ers in Black­rock, said he was abused between the ages of 12 and 14 by the same priest as the broth­ers.

He praised the pre­lim­in­ary invest­ig­a­tion, led by bar­ris­ter Mary O’Toole, say­ing it did a “won­der­ful” job. However, he expressed sur­prise and dis­may that the com­mis­sion of invest­ig­a­tion has yet to con­tact sur­viv­ors.

“It’s over 18 months since the scop­ing inquiry was pub­lished. I’m left with feel­ings of des­pair that I haven’t been con­tac­ted by the com­mis­sion yet,” Mr Mans­field said.

“I’m los­ing con­fid­ence that things are not mov­ing. I’ve looked at the com­mis­sion of invest­ig­a­tion’s web­site, I can­not even con­tact them dir­ectly. I find that very strange and dis­heart­en­ing.”

Mr Mans­field, an account­ant who now lives in the Neth­er­lands, said he is seek­ing clar­ity on how the com­mis­sion will oper­ate.

“I’m unsure of their powers,” he said. “Will the schools be required to give evid­ence? Will the sur­viv­ors give evid­ence in pub­lic? Is it to be a truth and recon­cili­ation com­mis­sion? Will it address com­pens­a­tion? Will abusers be named and shamed? Its powers have not been fully out­lined. Will it exam­ine if there was a pae­do­phile ring, for example, which I have always believed there was?”

A spokes­per­son for the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion said the Com­mis­sion of Invest­ig­a­tion into the Hand­ling of His­tor­ical Child Sexual Abuse in Day and Board­ing Schools is fully inde­pend­ent and “will determ­ine its own rules and pro­ced­ures and will com­mu­nic­ate widely when it is ready to begin gath­er­ing inform­a­tion from those who may wish to con­trib­ute to its work”.

The spokes­per­son said the com­mis­sion is at a pre­par­at­ory stage, and that sur­viv­ors will be con­tac­ted in due course.

“It also has powers to com­pel people to attend and give evid­ence before the com­mis­sion.

“These include the power to dir­ect any per­son to attend before the com­mis­sion and to give evid­ence and pro­duce any doc­u­ment that is in the per­son’s pos­ses­sion. The com­mis­sion does not have a role in rela­tion to redress or com­pens­a­tion,” the spokes­per­son added.

“The com­mis­sion is now in its estab­lish­ment phase and is cur­rently under­tak­ing essen­tial tech­nical and pre­par­at­ory work on the neces­sary secure sys­tems and pro­cesses required to sup­port its highly sens­it­ive work.

“This includes crit­ical work relat­ing to the secur­ity and pri­vacy of data and inform­a­tion that will be sought by the com­mis­sion, in par­tic­u­lar from those who exper­i­enced child sexual abuse in schools.

“This is a mat­ter of pri­or­ity, as data pri­vacy and secur­ity are key con­cerns for those provid­ing deeply per­sonal and sens­it­ive inform­a­tion, many of whom may be shar­ing these details for the first time.”

The spokes­per­son added that inform­a­tion from sur­viv­ors will be “an import­ant part of the work of the com­mis­sion”, and that it will “carry out a national sur­vey later this year in which people can provide ini­tial inform­a­tion”.

It also said the com­mis­sion will appoint a “sur­vivor engage­ment pro­gramme”, in which those who exper­i­enced child­hood sexual abuse in schools will have the oppor­tun­ity to tell their story.

“When the com­mis­sion is ready to begin its engage­ment with sur­viv­ors of child sexual abuse in schools, this will be widely advert­ised once the neces­sary sys­tems and struc­tures are in place.”

Mr Mans­field said he suffered sexual abuse by the now-deceased Black­rock Col­lege priest Fr Tom O’Byrne, ori­gin­ally from Lim­er­ick. Mark and David Ryan were in their 30s when they dis­cussed their abuse by O’Byrne for the first time, and decided to go to gardaí.

The DPP later ruled there was enough evid­ence to charge the cleric with rape and sexual abuse of the three men.

O’Byrne denied the charges and launched a legal case seek­ing to halt crim­inal pro­ceed­ings. In 2007, the Supreme Court decided the crim­inal case should be hal­ted due to his age. O’Byrne died in 2010, hav­ing never faced trial.

Mr Mans­field said: “My abuser is already dead. How many more pae­do­philes will be dead before this com­mis­sion gets up and run­ning? I would think time should be of the essence.”

Women and the Catholic Church (Opinion)

AFTER A LONG period of stagnation, even retrenchment, in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis was a reformer.

Through a movement which he called Synodality, he attempted to change the structure of the Church, in particular in its decision-making processes.

The idea reflects the need to shift from a system where traditionally all the power and authority were in the hands of the clergy to a system where all the believers had a voice and accepted that, at a basic fundamental level, all the baptised were equal. It was a radical concept.

His successor, Leo, was a surprise choice, especially because he was an American – it was generally assumed in the church that an American would never become pope – but he immediately lined himself up as being of a similar mind to Francis in the area of synodality.

However, Leo’s first year has been distinguished for a different reason. As a native of the US, he has gradually emerged as one of the leading critics of US President Donald Trump and his administration, recently describing his behaviour as ‘truly unacceptable’. 

It is refreshing to see that our Pope is unafraid of those in power and making a clear stand for the dignity of every human person. His criticism is in contrast to the attitude of many European leaders.

Issues closer to home

But Pope Leo needs to deal with internal church issues in order to bring the Church more truly into the modern world. 

Back in 1974, probably the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Rahner, wrote, “If we are honest, we must admit that we are to a terrifying extent a spiritually lifeless Church’. 

That is still, I believe, largely true.

The synodality movement would now appear to be running into a roadblock around the issue of equality for women. Women are still second-class citizens in the Church. They cannot be priests or deacons. 

(Deacons are the next layer of the clerical church after priests; they can administer some of the sacraments and preach at Mass, but they cannot celebrate Mass or hear confessions.

Married men can be deacons, but no woman can, even though it is clear that there were women deacons in the early Church.) 

That means that women have no say in decision-making at any level of the Church, unless they are invited to do so by their priest or bishop.

The present Church authorities, at all levels, seem to be unable to face up to that issue. Women are relegated to reading the scripture at Mass – but not allowed to read the Gospel, which is reserved for the priest – and distributing Holy Communion. 

And of course, it is largely women who do the menial tasks, like cleaning the church and washing the altar linen.

Stuck in the past

But there is a bigger challenge facing the Pope and the whole Church, and it touches on the credibility of some of the basic Church teachings. 

In 1992 the then Pope, John Paul II, published a new Catechism of the Catholic Church which asserted, among many other things, that the story of creation, and of the sin of our first parents, as recounted in the Book of Genesis, was, though told in figurative language, an actual historical account of an event that took place at the beginning of the history of humanity.

Two years earlier, in 1990, the Hubble telescope was launched. We learned that our earth is only a tiny speck in the enormity of a universe that originated many billions of years ago, that grew, and continues to grow, through the process of evolution, and that human beings first walked on this earth about one hundred and 20 thousand years ago. 

So the creation of the earth as told in the Book of Genesis is not, despite what the Catechism asserts, an historical account. There was no Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve did not eat the apple. All of this is mythology.

There is nothing wrong with mythology; we here in Ireland have our own mythological stories. But the problem started when the Church began to frame dogmas as if the Genesis account was historical, dogmas around Original Sin, the dwelling place and the nature of God, and the purpose of the life of Jesus. 

These dogmas asserted that God, dwelling in the skies, closed the gates of Heaven until such time as his son, Jesus, came down and died a horrible death on a cross to appease the anger of God and open those gates.

With the Hubble images beaming into homes around the world, many believers, theologians or otherwise, could not fail to see their implications. Questions began to be asked about God dwelling in a heavenly abode, about where we fit into this wonderful universe, about evolution, and about where Jesus fits into the Christian story.

The authorities got worried.

A quote from the 1998 Catechism now became prominent, indeed was used as a weapon by some bishops who wanted to silence people:

“The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows full well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.”

And, to add to this assertion of Church authority, in 2000, the then Cardinal Ratzinger promulgated a theological document, called a Declaration, Dominus Iesus, asserting traditional teachings: It stated:

“Jesus, and Jesus alone, bestows revelation and divine life to humanity.”

Also:

“No one can enter into communion with God except through Christ.”

In other words, we were back to the old belief that ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ – only Catholics could be saved, and only by believing what the Church teaches. No allowance is made for people’s own intelligence and conscience, or for loving people who follow the Prophet Mohammed, the Buddha, or other faiths.

Now we had two documents, the Catechism of 1992 and the Declaration of 2000, affirming traditional teaching, and both were sent around to all the bishops of the world. The instructions were clear; anyone who deviated from these teachings, no matter how sincerely their views were held and expressed, was to be silenced.

We were ordered to accept, despite incontestable knowledge to the contrary, that humanity emerged into a state of paradise. It didn’t. Humanity developed over billions of years through the evolutionary process, until beings with self-awareness emerged, and humans, as we know ourselves, began to walk the earth.

But as long as the Vatican and bishops around the world have the authority to silence any questioning of such dogmas as infidelity to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Rahner’s description of a spiritually lifeless Church will persist.

Flickers of a modern Church

New hope came with Pope Francis. He largely put a stop to the ‘silencing’ and began the process of open discussion. It was greeted with great enthusiasm in many quarters of the Church, and in the past number of years it has achieved a fair amount, mainly in just allowing and creating the forum for free and open discussion, for the acceptance of the mysterious, for faith in the Divine, despite life’s uncertainties.

But now I am fearful, when I see the great difficulty we are having in accepting a simple change of allowing women to be ordained deacons in the Church, and the continued unwillingness to have even a suggestion of openness to the priesthood for women, or for people who choose to marry.

When we cannot manage these changes, how are we going to face the need to revise ancient teachings and dogmas on the basis of our new understandings? As the Czech theologian, Tomas Halik, said, all views, opinions and statements are time-bound, based on current knowledge and understanding, so each new era with its new learnings and developments, needs to revise and restate the ancient truths in a way that makes sense to modern times.

That is not to suggest that ancient truths do not contain basic truths about the human condition, but they need to be revised and restated in a way that makes sense to our modern understanding.

That is the biggest challenge facing the Catholic Church, and indeed all religious institutions.

Olympic and Paralympic athletes call meeting pope a ‘dream,’ ‘supercool,’ an inspiration

When Pope Leo XIV met a group of Olympic and Paralympic athletes who competed in the 2026 Milan Cortina Games, the protocol rule of not wearing white next to the pontiff was not in force as the Italian Olympic team wore white head to toe as part of their official outfits.

For Daniel Grassl, the Olympic bronze medalist in the figure skating team event, meeting Pope Leo was the realization of a “really nice dream” of which he spoke to OSV News in February during the Olympic Games.

Meeting the pope ‘beautiful,’ ‘moving’

“I’m very happy, it was an honor for me to meet the pope, especially this season when I used the soundtrack of the ‘Conclave’ and performed as pope in a free skating program,” he told OSV News after leaving the Apostolic Palace’s Clementine Hall.

“It was so moving and beautiful to shake his hand,” he said. To Grassl, the Church “means a lot,” he said, visibly happy with the papal encounter. “I am very Catholic, so it was really an honor to meet him today.”

Grassl heard before that Pope Leo saw his performance and liked it. The choice of the soundtrack, as he explained, was “very coincidental.”

He was surprised, however, that the actual conclave “was that short,” adding: “I was not expecting an American to be elected either.”

Faith is an important part of Grassl’s life, he said, pointing out that the pope’s words resonated with him after the April 9 audience.

“The pope told us that when you lose, you should never lose yourself, and when you win, you should always remain humble. This was a beautiful sentence,” Grassl recalled.

No one wins alone

“No one wins alone,” Pope Leo told the sports crowd, emphasizing that “behind every victory there are many people involved — from family to teams — as well as many days of training, pressure and solitude.”

Sport, Pope Leo told Italian athletes, “when lived authentically, is not merely a performance: it is a form of language, a narrative made up of gestures, of effort, of anticipation, of falls and of new beginnings.”

“During the Games we saw not only bodies in motion, but stories: stories of sacrifice, of discipline, of tenacity,” the pope said. “In particular, in Paralympic competitions we have seen how a limitation can become a source of revelation: not something that holds a person back, but something that can be transformed, even transfigured into newfound qualities.”

Super mom Lollobrigida among the athletes

Among the athletes present for the papal audience was also “super mom” Francesca Lollobrigida, who made history in speed skating by winning two gold medals during the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics — all after returning from maternity leave. She went viral in social media not only for her sports achievements but also for her famous TV interview as a winner, in which her toddler Tommaso stole the show.

While he impatiently fidgeted in her arms, eventually ripping off her “Italia” headband, she replied, with patience: “Wait one second, love.”

For her, meeting Pope Leo was a “truly unique and rare occasion.”

For Lollobrigida, a great-grandniece of Italian cinema star Luigia “Gina” Lollobrigida, faith is something very natural. She did not shy away from making the sign of the cross after winning the game.

Lollobrigida grew up in a Catholic family and was close to her parish. She married in a Catholic church, baptized her son Tommaso and always asks a priest friend to bless the house when she moves to a new place.

She tried skating when she was only 14 months old and started her career at the parish championships when she was a young child.

“The great thing was that we spent every day in the parish and on Sundays we went to Mass and had catechism class. The pastor also encouraged us to join activities like the choir, we were the first ‘altar boys.’ So, in the end it wasn’t just about sports. It was really nice to combine my sports life with my parish life. I remember it as a very beautiful time,” she told reporters at a March 17 forum organized by the Vatican.

Faith blended into Paralympic effort

Faith and parish community were very important also for Gianluigi Rosa, para ice hockey player who — as a 17-year-old teenager — lost his leg in an accident.

“I found myself starting again. I had a lot of doubts, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anger also for what had happened. But then the boys from the ‘oratorio’ community, who used to go out with me, convinced me to go out again, to be in contact with other people, to come back to the oratory, to the church,” he told OSV News after the papal audience.

“I found a group that we could now call ‘inclusive,’ which despite the disability, helped me to do many things. I went to World Youth Day in Germany when I got just my first prosthesis, it was a very beautiful experience.”

Among the Italian athletes present at the audience was another para ice hockey player, Italian-American Nikko Landeros, who — after initially representing the United States — decided to play in the Italian team to pay a tribute to his late grandfather, who was born in Milan.

“My mom’s side of the family is Milanese, I have zios, zias and cugini from Milano,” he said of his uncles, aunts and cousins, mixing Italian and English. “When my grandfather passed away, I wanted to do something in his spirit, so I said why not come play in Milano Cortina. I’d played and won three gold medals with the U.S. prior to that, so it was a pretty big decision, but for me it was all about heart and coming and helping the team out and being here in Italy and now I want to stay.”

Meeting Pope Leo in the Vatican was for him “a super cool experience.” “I’ve met a lot of cool people, but I think that was probably the top of my experiences,” he told OSV News.

Faith for Landeros is “number one.”

“I pray every day. I’m thankful to be here, if it weren’t for God I wouldn’t be alive, so, you know, I’m super thankful!” Landeros lost his legs in an accident when he was 17.

The Holy Father shook the hand of each of 300 athletes present. Some of the athletes brought their medals and showed them to the pope. Some did it in a way that Pope Leo thought it was a gift to him.

Giuseppe Romele, 34, Paralympic cross country skier and bronze medalist in 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, sit-skiing. Talking about presenting his medal to the pontiff, he said, “I didn’t have it around my neck, so I gave it to the pope directly in my hand and he wanted to keep it.”

“I said to him, sorry Holy Father, but I have to put the medal in the safe at home. This medal was blessed, unlike the other one won in Beijing in 2022, so this will surely have an added value,” Romele, who suffers from bilateral femoral hypoplasia, said smiling.

He confessed that meeting Pope Leo “was an incredible experience, especially when he told me that this medal represents me a lot, and no one had told me this yet. So, for me it was a unique emotion.”

Pope Leo told the Italian athletes that today, when the world is “so marked by polarization, rivalry and conflicts that escalate into devastating wars,” their commitment to sports “takes on an even greater value: Sport can and must truly become a space for encounter!”

The pope said sports are “not a show of strength, but an exercise in relationship.”

“I wanted to recall, on the occasion of these Games,” he continued, “the value of the Olympic truce. With your presence, you have made visible this possibility of peace as a prophecy that is by no means rhetorical: breaking the logic of violence to promote that of encounter.”

Ukraine honors Pope Leo XIV with special stamp

Out of gratitude for Pope Leo XVI's commitment to young victims of the Russian war of aggression, the Ukrainian Post Office has issued a special stamp. 

It shows the head of the Catholic Church how it blesses a Ukrainian toddler in Rome in July 2025, holding ribbons in the Ukrainian national colors. 

In Italian and Ukrainian, Leo XVI is quoted on the stamp as saying: "War will not prevail. And children have a right to true, just and lasting peace.

The Pope’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, together with the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Grand Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, and the Vice-President of the Ukrainian Parliament, Olena Kondratjuk, presented the special postage stamp in Kiev in Kiev.

Few world leaders speak as clearly for peace as Leo

With the stamp, Ukraine would like to thank Leo XIV for the active participation of the Vatican in the repatriation of kidnapped Ukrainian children, Kondratjuk explained. 

"For us, any Ukrainian child who is in fact in Russian captivity is important," she added. Only a few world leaders speak out as clearly as Leo XIV for a truly just and lasting peace in Ukraine and the repatriation of all kidnapped Ukrainian children and all prisoners.

According to Ukrainian data, Russia deported 20,570 children and youth from the Ukrainian territories occupied by its army to Russia. Moscow firmly rejects the accusations of a systematic abduction and instead portrays the events as a humanitarian aid operation.

"They are forcibly deprived of their identity, have no access to the Ukrainian language, to education and to the church, and are militarized," Kondratjuk said of those affected. Only 2,083 minors have been returned so far. 

At the presentation of the stamp, Grand Archbishop Shevchuk expressed the hope that the call for the protection of Ukrainian children will be heard worldwide.

Relationship between Zelensky and Francis was considered difficult at times

The special stamp for the Pope also stands in the majority Orthodox Ukraine for an improvement in relations with the Holy See under the new pontiff. 

The relationship between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Pope Francis was at times considered difficult. 

In addition, Francis was sharply criticized in the country attacked by Russia for his statement that Ukraine should have "courage to the white flag".

In Ukraine, according to a recent survey, six percent of adults are committed to the Greek Catholic Church associated with Rome. 

One percent is Roman Catholic. 63 percent call themselves Orthodox Christians.

Concordat with Vatican halted in Czech Republic over seal of confession

The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic on April 1 found that parts of a treaty between the Czech Republic and the Holy See are inconsistent with the Czech constitution and therefore cannot be ratified.

“We disagree with the decision of the majority of judges at the Constitutional Court but accept it,” the Czech Bishops' Conference wrote in a press release. 

The episcopate finds it “positive that the court did not reject the idea of the existence of a treaty with the Holy See but only limited itself to partial passages.”

The agreement on certain legal issues was signed in 2024 by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and then-Prime Minister Petr Fiala. It was later approved by both chambers of the countryʼs Parliament and was submitted to the president of the country for ratification.

However, a group of senators filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court, which on April 1 stated that two parts of the accord are problematic.

The ruling says that the concordat would “give Catholic Church legal entities a powerful tool to prevent their documents (archive materials) from being made available.” Church archives are important sources of cultural wealth and history, but the accord would “exempt Catholic churches from the obligation to respect the Archives Act, which would, however, continue to apply to all other churches,” the court explained.

The second objection deals with the seal of confession, which would be enacted without any exceptions and would be “a clear violation of the neutrality of the state and the principle of equal treatment of different churches.”

Bishop Stanislav Přibyl of Litoměřice has declared a Year of Reconciliation marking 80 years since the expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia.

Each side of the treaty understood it differently, the ruling observed, adding that the seal of confession would be more protected than professional secrecy.

Dissenting opinions

Three out of 15 judges of the Constitutional Court presented a different position, arguing the court did not deal with an important part of the legal file presented by senators, such as objections to “the alleged privilege of the Catholic Church in the provision of pastoral care in various types of institutions and facilities.”

However, they admitted that “the Holy See is a subject of international law, which the Czech Republic has recognized,” and so it is “undoubtedly an objective reason for the different treatment of the Catholic Church in various issues.” They further argued that the two problematic passages in the majority decision are not in conflict with the constitution.

Another two judges presented a different position each. One of them, Judge Tomáš Langášek, argued that “the dissenting opinions show that it was possible to adopt a rational interpretation of the concordat in good faith that would not in any way conflict with the constitutional order.”

He said he considers the decision “a paradigmatic change in the role and function of the constitutional judiciary.” The Constitutional Court opposed the intention of the Parliament “to take on an international legal obligation to maintain” the already existing and “legally guaranteed standard of protection of fundamental religious rights and freedoms in [the] future,” Langášek opined.

“The courtʼs concern for equal treatment among churches and religious communities is only a proxy problem,” the constitutional judge added.

‘A legal defeat for people who consider religious freedom an important value’

“It is a political victory for some, and a legal defeat for people, believers and nonbelievers, who consider religious freedom an important value,” commented Jakub Kříž, a lawyer who teaches at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague.

At the same time, he said he believes “the absence of a concordat is not a tragedy” either for religious freedom or “for Catholics who, after all, always benefit the most when the state does not get along with them.”

The proposal “would have had no chance of success if” Czech President Petr Pavel “had not intervened and introduced new arguments,” for example suggesting that “the agreement contradicts the sovereignty of the state and its secular and republican character,” the scholar underscored.

The negotiated agreement was “poor in content, innocent, almost devoid of substance,” and the Czech side did not try to “negotiate anything beyond what is already in force today,” Kříž said, adding that it had “more a symbolic” value.

‘A big disappointment’

The decision was a “big disappointment” and “a very unfortunate event,” lamented Father Jiří Rajmund Tretera, a Dominican and professor of canon law at the Faculty of Law of Charles University.

On the seal of confession, there would be “no change to the current situation,” as all believers “were guaranteed that the current legal provisions” regarding “confessional secrecy could not be so easily eliminated” if a religion-averse group “came to power in our democratic state,” the priest said.

Tretera also said he believes the Constitutional Court committed “an unintentional attack against the ecumenical movement.” It argued that the proposed agreement “was not in accordance with the principle of equality of all churches,” yet “this is in conflict with the reality commonly recognized in non-Catholic churches.”

Kříž clarified that “non-Catholic churches did not” oppose the treaty, and “many even welcomed it, seeing its role as a stabilizer of guarantees of religious freedom.”

The only way to proceed is “to start negotiations from the beginning,” as this is not “a bill where a sentence can be deleted,” the lawyer warned.

Yet he said he is skeptical that the Holy See would risk another “embarrassment,” as “the Czech Republic showed to be a rather unreliable international partner.”

Popemobile Arrives in Yaoundé as Cameroon Gears Up for Pope Leo XIV’s Planned Apostolic Visit

The official vehicle of Pope Leo XIV has arrived in Cameroon, marking a key milestone in preparations for the Holy Father's planned Apostolic visit scheduled for April 15–18.

The vehicle, widely known as the “Popemobile” and bearing the registration SCV 1, landed on Wednesday, April 8, in the afternoon via a special cargo flight at Yaoundé Nsimalen International Airport. 

A Boeing 777F operated by MSC Air Cargo transported the vehicle from abroad.

The Popemobile,short for Status Civitatis Vaticanae (State of Vatican City), will be used by the Holy Father during the various stages of his visit, including stops in Yaoundé, Bamenda, and Douala. 

Selected Archbishops from these cities may have the privilege of accompanying the Pope in the vehicle.

The vehicle was officially received at the airport by the Apostolic Nuncio to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt, alongside the Local Ordinary of Yaoundé, Archbishop Jean Mbarga.

This marks the fourth time the Popemobile has been brought to Yaoundé, following previous papal visits in 1985, 1995, and 2009.

While the Popemobile used during this visit appears to be an American-made model—possibly a Chevrolet, GMC, or Cadillac—it differs from the Pope’s primary vehicle at the Vatican, a fully electric Mercedes-Benz G-Class Electric (G580). 

That model, originally offered to Pope Francis in 2024, reflects the Vatican’s commitment to environmental sustainability and has been used in several recent public appearances, including a visit to Monaco.

Although the exact cost of a modern Popemobile is not publicly disclosed, base models like the electric G-Class are estimated to exceed 115 million FCFA (US$204,871.24). These customized vehicles are typically donated and built on high-end SUV platforms.

Pope Leo XIV is expected to arrive in Cameroon on April 15 on the second stage of his four-nation African trip. After a welcome ceremony at the Yaoundé Nsimalen International Airport, he is to meet the country’s President and address authorities, civil society leaders, and diplomats. 

The Holy Father is also to visit the Ngul Zamba Orphanage and meet privately with members of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC).

During his time in Cameroon, the Holy Father is expected to place particular emphasis on reconciliation and social healing. On Thursday, April 16, he is to travel to Bamenda, where he is scheduled to hold a “Meeting for Peace” with the local community at Saint Joseph’s Cathedral and celebrate Mass at Bamenda International Airport. 

The Papal visit to Bamenda carries symbolic significance given the region’s experience of political and social tensions in recent years.

On Friday, April 17, the Pontiff is to visit Douala, where he is scheduled to preside over a large Eucharistic celebration at Japoma Stadium. 

The program also includes a private visit to Saint Paul Catholic Hospital and a dialogue with university students and professors at the Catholic University of Central Africa (UCAC).

He is expected to leave Cameroon on April 18 for the third leg of his trip, which is to take him to Angola.

The Iran War Showed a New Side of Pope Leo (Opinion)

Catholics didn’t take long to conclude that Pope Leo XIV would be an unassuming leader. In contrast with the voluble Pope Francis, who clearly delighted in provoking controversy with off-the-cuff statements, Leo tended to speak in qualifiers—it seems; I suppose; at the moment—when he spoke at all. 

Nearly a year into his pontificate, he’s given just one extended on-the-record interview.

Leo’s reserve frustrated those who wanted to enlist the first American pope as the primary antagonist to the American president. He avoided such confrontation, perhaps recognizing that it could aggravate divisions in the politically diverse Catholic Church. 

The new pope prioritized unity, a principle he cited half a dozen times during his inaugural Mass, in implicit response to the discord that marked much of Francis’s time as pope. By all evidence, Leo was something entirely different from both Francis and Donald Trump: a quiet American, as I called him last summer.

That description is now obsolete.

As soon as the Iran war began, Leo was calling for its end. Advocating peace is hardly unusual for Leo, or any modern pope. But he has condemned the conflict with a fervor reminiscent of Francis, and has criticized President Trump with greater frequency and force than on any other issue, abandoning his earlier caution. Despite his continued emphasis on unity, Leo has not toned down his language, even as he’s drawn the ire of some on the Christian right.

The pope has ruled out the idea—asserted repeatedly by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—that America’s campaign in Iran enjoys divine favor. “Some even go so far as to invoke God’s name in these choices of death,” Leo said last month. “But God cannot be enlisted by darkness.”

Two weeks later, Leo elicited complaints from MAGA Christian leaders when he said that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” Franklin Graham disagreed, contending that “God does take sides in history.” 

Graham continued, “I don’t support war, but I do believe, at times, there is justification when you’re fighting evil.” The evangelical leader Tony Perkins was more blunt: “The Pope needs a history lesson.”

Leo’s latest rebuke of Trump came earlier this week, after the president warned Iran that its “whole civilization will die tonight.” In a statement to reporters, the pope said: “This truly is not acceptable.” 

He lauded the subsequent announcement of a two-week cease-fire, but reiterated his earlier appeal for a prayer vigil for peace at the Vatican, which recalled a similar gesture by Pope Francis in 2013 to oppose U.S. plans for military intervention in Syria.

So far, the Trump administration has not pushed back publicly on Leo’s comments about the war. But one can imagine what it might be saying in private based on a story this week from The Free Press. Elbridge Colby, a high-ranking Defense Department official, reportedly called the Vatican’s U.S. envoy to the Pentagon in January to discuss a speech the pope had recently given to foreign diplomats. 

Leo had warned that “a zeal for war is spreading” and that the norm prohibiting “nations from using force to violate the borders of others has been completely undermined.” 

The address came less than a week after the United States invaded Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro, and while Trump was insisting that he wanted to acquire Greenland.

According to The Free Press, Pentagon officials criticized Leo’s speech as a challenge to Trump’s foreign policy. At one point, the article states, a U.S. official mentioned the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century when the popes were subject to French royal influence. 

(The Pentagon has said this characterization of the meeting is “highly exaggerated and distorted,” instead calling it a “respectful and reasonable discussion.” The Vatican’s spokesperson issued a statement today saying that “the narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting does not correspond to the truth in any way.”)

Although Leo wasn’t as outspoken before the war, he had been criticizing the administration’s policies for months, particularly on the issue of immigration. In the fall, he deplored the “inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States.” 

The pope later lamented that immigrants who had been living peacefully in the U.S. for decades were being treated “in a way that is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful, and with instances of violence.” 

His comments evidently irked the White House border czar, Tom Homan, who is Catholic. 

Homan said he wanted to tell the pope that, instead of criticizing Trump’s policies, “you ought to be fixing the Catholic Church, ’cause they’ve got their own issues.”

Then, in December, the day after Trump told Politico that European leaders were weak, Leo rebuked Trump’s attempt “to break apart what I think needs to be a very important alliance.” 

The following month, after the military operation in Venezuela, Leo issued a call to respect the country’s sovereignty and “the rule of law enshrined in its constitution.”

Compared with these earlier remarks, though, the pope’s statements on the Iran war have found a wider audience, particularly in the U.S., where a growing number of liberals are commending him. 

Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed the pope’s Easter message, in which Leo warned: “We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent.” 

Two days later, Senator Cory Booker praised the pope’s “moral clarity,” and posted a video of Leo asking the world to “remember especially the innocent: children, the elderly, sick, so many people who have already become or will become victims of this continued warfare.”

Leo may not be Trump’s greatest opponent, as some of the president’s critics had hoped. 

But neither is he the quiet bystander that the president’s supporters might have wished him to be.

Baltimore Archdiocese insurer offers $100 million to survivors of abuse

After years of mediation in the Baltimore Catholic Archdiocese bankruptcy case stemming from the abuse of children over nearly a century, the church’s largest insurer offered $100 million in settlement funds.

The offer, from The Hartford, is the first of its kind in the case, which has drawn scrutiny from survivors as some fear they may die before the case comes to a conclusion.

The offer is only one piece of the puzzle, as the archdiocese, its parishes and a handful of other insurance companies that hold accounts with the church still have not come to any agreement with the committee that represents the survivors.

Jonathan Schochor, founding partner and chairman of Schochor, Staton, Goldberg and Cardea, P.A., who represents survivors, said the funds cannot be paid out piecemeal and that the survivors still need to wait until all parties come to an agreement.

However, the offer may get the ball rolling for further negotiations.

“Is it an excellent good faith start? Yes,” Schochor said. “Will it generate some momentum for us as counsel for the committee? Yes.”

Counsel for the committee that represent the survivors have stated that the insurance companies have dragged their feet in shelling out claims to the archdiocese.

The church itself has also held up the litigation, taking multiple routes to delay or avoid paying the nearly 1,000 survivors that filed suits.

The committee is currently in the process of collecting financial data on all 31 parishes under the umbrella of the archdiocese.

The archdiocese says it is worth about a quarter of a billion dollars.

The church filed for bankruptcy in fall of 2023, just days before Maryland’s Child Victims Act, which allowed people to sue the church without a time limit, went into effect.

New York Archdiocese Pitched Up to $2 Billion Abuse Deal

The Archdiocese of New York late last year sought authority from its insurer to discuss settling as many as 1,700 child sex abuse claims for up to $2 billion as part of high-stakes negotiations.

The Manhattan-based Catholic institution pitched the figure to Chubb Ltd. following a proposal from lead plaintiffs’ counsel representing more than 80% of claimants who sued under the state’s Child Victims Act, according to court records filed Tuesday by the insurer’s attorneys in the New York Supreme Court, New York County.

The archdiocese didn’t think a settlement demand made by claimant lawyers in November was reasonable, its attorney Jim Murray of Blank Rome LLP said in a Dec. 1 email. But he told a Chubb attorney that a global resolution was achievable at a “substantially lower dollar amount” after the church did its own analysis.

The claimants’ proposal wasn’t disclosed in court documents.

“The analysis has convinced the Archdiocese that its effort to manage its exposure through continued litigation and one off settlements is not a cost-effective way to mitigate its liability and, if current inflationary settlement and verdict trends continue, may not be sustainable,” Murray told the insurer’s lawyers in December.

The filings are part of an escalating fight between the New York archdiocese and Chubb over who must foot the bill for childhood sexual abuse claims against the church, which has become unusually vicious with accusations of secret public influence campaigns.

If a settlement approached $2 billion, it could be one of the largest single deals struck by a Catholic institution in the US stemming from allegations of child sex abuse. No deal has been reached, and the figure from December could change.

In a Dec. 23 letter, Chubb counsel Allen Burton of O’Melveny & Myers LLP said he didn’t understand the basis for the archdiocese’s request for consent to discuss “up to $2 billion.” The archdiocese only provided “severity-level categorical totals” instead of individual valuations for the more than 1,700 pending cases, and couldn’t match the church’s totals to other numbers provided during financial presentations, he said in the communication.

Attorneys for the archdiocese didn’t immediately comment Wednesday.

The court document containing discussions of the $2 billion figure was restricted from public view Wednesday after Bloomberg Law reached out to Chubb’s lawyers for comment. A Chubb spokesperson in a statement called the figure “outdated” and said it was meant to remain confidential.

“It does not accurately represent the current state of the legal proceedings or settlement discussions,” the insurer said. “We have no basis for knowing whether it reflects an accurate value of the underlying claims.”

Abuse Coverage Calculations

Insurers have accused the church of refusing to provide mediation records used to calculate claim valuations, saying they can’t consent to a settlement without the information.

The church has pushed back, citing mediation confidentiality. Insurers say they’ve already paid $60 million in legal defense costs for the archdiocese in abuse suits, while the New York institution has paid out more than $67 million to about 340 claimants.

Burton also said he was confused about how many claimants were included in some multi-plaintiff lawsuits, and that there were discrepancies over Boy Scouts of America abuse claims, for which archdiocese was seeking coverage.

“Insurers do not object to ADNY compensating deserving victims,” Burton wrote on Dec. 23 to Murray. “Of course, whether there is coverage for those claims is the subject of our declaratory relief action.”

O’Melveny attorney Daniel L. Cantor in a court filing Tuesday opposed the archdiocese’s motion to review a discovery order issued by a special master to produce mediation records, arguing the church is trying to “run out the clock” on settlement negotiations.

He accused the church of trying to keep a litigation pause in place “long enough for it to complete its ongoing mediation with CVA Plaintiffs, thereby negating the Certain Insurers’ cooperation and consent rights under the policies.”

A flood of claims against Catholic churches followed New York’s 2019 Child Victims Act, which temporarily opened a statute of limitations window that let accusers sue over decades-old abuse.

Six of the eight Catholic dioceses in New York have filed for Chapter 11 and together have been named in at least 2,800 abuse claims. Half have secured court approval of their bankruptcy plans, agreeing so far to pay at least $1 billion to victims.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn has entered mediation to resolve 1,100 clergy abuse claims and has set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to try to avoid bankruptcy.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2024 agreed to pay $880 million for to settle more than 1,300 child sexual abuse allegations, after having already paid victims more than $740 million.

The archdiocese is also represented by Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney LLP. Chubb is also represented by Baughman Kroup Bosse PLLC.

The case is Archdiocese of New York v. Century Indem. Co., N.Y. Sup. Ct., No. 652825/2023, letter 4/7/26.

Pope Leo XIV Accepts Resignation of 67-Year-Old Archbishop in Mozambique

The Holy Father has accepted the resignation of Archbishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna, who has been at the helm of Mozambique’s Catholic Archdiocese of Beira since October 2012.

The resignation of the 67-year-old Catholic Church leader was made public by the Holy See Press Office on Friday, April 10.

Catholic Bishops are expected to present their resignation upon reaching the age of 75, although they may also do so earlier for other compelling reasons, including “ill-health or other grave problems.”

The Holy See’s April 10 bulletin did not make public the reasons behind the resignation of the Argentine member of the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart (SCI) who succeeded the late Archbishop emeritus Jaime Pedro Gonçalves. 

Born on 7 November 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Italian parents, Archbishop Zuanna entered the novitiate of the SCI in 1978 and made his perpetual profession in 1982. 

He was ordained a Priest on 24 August 1984 and sent as a missionary to Mozambique in 1985, where he served for many years, including in the Catholic Diocese of Gurué and the Catholic Archdiocese of Maputo.

In June 2012, the late Pope Benedict XVI appointed him the Archbishop of the  Beira Metropolitan. He was ordained Bishop in October 2012.

The late Pope Francis conferred the Pallium on Archbishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna on 29 June 2013, symbolizing his role as Metropolitan Archbishop in communion with the Holy See. 

Bishop of Waterford granted conditional planning permission for three new primary school buildings

Waterford City and County Council have granted conditional planning permission for the construction of three new single-storey school buildings at Holy Family Junior School and Our Lady of Mercy Senior Primary School.

The proposed development in Holy Family includes three mainstream classes, a special classroom, and a soft play area.

Our Lady of Mercy will see the introduction of a new special classroom and a soft play area, as well as a new fence and gates around the school’s playground.

Construction activity shall be limited to 8 am-7 pm from Monday-Friday and 8 am-2 pm on Saturday. Construction is prohibited on Sundays and bank holidays.

Other conditions laid out by the Council provide for the proper disposal and collection of waste material, and information on details of materials, textures and colours intended to be used on the building.

Writing on behalf of the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore Alphonsus Cullinan, Horizon Technical Services said the development would help cater to the increasing demand for special classrooms.

The development attracted one submission from a resident who lives in the close vicinity of the school, Breda Shanahan.

Ms Shanahan raised concerns that the development could lead to an invasion of privacy via a new pedestrian entrance, and called for timeframes to regulate the use of the new buildings outside of school hours.

Ms Shanahan said the development should also prompt the Council to seek a permanent solution to “a seagull colony” that lives on the schools' roofs.  =

“The population now peaks at 25-30 birds and chicks in July and August, when the school is closed, and neighbours are subject to the awful situation of living under a colony of aggressive seagulls,” Ms Shanahan wrote.

“Limited measures- banning foods in playgrounds and a roof power wash with partial nest removal on 20th February this year (after a six-year wait)- have not resolved the issue as the birds still inhabit the roofs.” 

No conditions on dealing with the seagull issue were included in the Council’s decision.

Vatican concludes visitation of Heiligenkreuz Abbey

The Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life concluded its apostolic visitation of  Heiligenkreuz Abbey, an Austrian Cistercian abbey known for its Latin liturgy and Gregorian chant.

The visitors, Benedictine Abbot Primate Jeremias Schröder and Sister Christine Rod, were given the task of assess Abbot Maximilian Heim’s leadership and the handling of abuse allegations.

The visitors’ proposals included “optimized communication skills of the community internally and externally, strategic considerations for the future of the abbey and prioritization of tasks, reflection on the theological and spiritual orientation, deepening the introduction of young people to monastic life and the priesthood, and a sharpening of the identity and self-image of Heiligenkreuz Abbey.”

“We thank the Dicastery and the two visitors for the valuable discussions during the visitation and the helpful guidance for the future,” Abbot Heim said. 

The dicastery, in turn, thanked Abbot Heim for his “outstanding personal commitment to Heiligenkreuz Abbey, which has contributed to a remarkable flourishing of the community.”

Relief as nuns released after new Indian railway incident

An Indian bishop has expressed relief after 10 members of a religious congregation were released after being briefly detained at a railway station in response to an allegation of human trafficking.

Bishop Thomas Mathew said he was grateful that the incident was quickly defused.

“It could have turned out to be much worse, but we are grateful to God that it was resolved,” the Bishop of Indore told the Indian Catholic website Catholic Connect, which first reported the group’s release.

The detentions occurred April 7, when a group from the Sisters of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary entered Indore Junction railway station in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

The party consisted of two sisters and eight candidates, who are discerning their vocation within the Syro-Malabar religious congregation. 

The candidates were scheduled to take a train from Indore to the eastern Indian state of Odisha, to spend a vacation with their families.

Mathew said the police detained the party as soon as it arrived at the station, having received an allegation of human trafficking — a non-bailable offense in India that can lead to up to 10 years imprisonment.

The group was able to alert the Church authorities and their families during the incident.

“Some of the Fathers in the diocese, including the procurator, were contacted and they, in turn, reached out to higher railway police officials,” the bishop explained.

Although the candidates missed their scheduled train to Odisha, Mathew said the prompt intervention meant that “a potential ‘DURG’ was averted.”

The bishop was referring to a July 2025 incident in which two nuns were arrested at Durg railway station in Chhattisgarh state, which borders Madhya Pradesh. 

The nuns, who belonged to the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate, another Syro-Malabar religious congregation, had traveled to the station to meet with three young women, who were reportedly due to be employed by the sisters in Agra. 

The young women were believed to be members of the Protestant Church of South India and had parental consent letters.

But a mob that included Hindu nationalist activists confronted the nuns at the station, accusing them of seeking to take the young women away for the purpose of religious conversion.

The nuns were charged with human trafficking and forced religious conversion. But their arrests prompted a national outcry and they were released on bail in August 2025.

In the wake of the Durg incident, nuns were reportedly given informal advice to wear everyday clothing, rather than their habits, when using the railway system in states led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, where they are considered most vulnerable to false allegations.

The detention of nuns is potentially sensitive for the BJP given its efforts to make electoral inroads in areas of the southern Indian state of Kerala that are heavily populated by Syro-Malabar Catholics.

Opposition parties seized on the Durg arrests to present the BJP as a threat to India’s religious minorities, because the party is in power in Chhattisgarh state. The BJP in Chhattisgarh state defended the arrests, while the BJP’s Kerala branch sought to distance itself from the incident.

Bishop Mathew told Catholic Connect that even when cases are ultimately resolved, the incidents take a toll on those involved.

“We may be proved innocent later, but the loss of time, money, and peace of mind remains,” he commented.

In a message to members of the diocese, seen by The Pillar, the bishop advised Catholics to be prudent when traveling and aware that their movements may be monitored.

The Syro-Malabar Church, which has around five million members worldwide is the largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome after the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Its members are concentrated in the state of Kerala, but its religious congregations operate throughout India. In Madhya Pradesh, the state where the latest incident took place, more than 90% of the population is Hindu and only around 0.3% Christian.

Bishop steps down while finances are inspected

The Bishop of Salisbury has stepped down from his role while allegations of "potential financial irregularities" are looked into.

The Diocese of Salisbury said the Right Reverend Stephen Lake had stepped back voluntarily and the Bishop of Sherborne - the Right Reverend Karen Gorham - would cover his role while an audit took place.

Lake took on the role of bishop in 2022, making him the most senior figure in the Church of England in the Diocese of Salisbury, which covers most of Dorset, Wiltshire and the Channel Islands.

The Church of England confirmed an audit was taking place following allegations relating to two separate funds.

A spokesperson for the Diocese of Salisbury said the two funds being audited related to the office of the Bishop of Salisbury but were "separate from parish share and other funds controlled by the Diocesan Board of Finance".

Lake has also stepped down from his role as a trustee of the Church Commissioners, a body which manages the Church of England's investment assets - valued at £11.1bn at the end of 2024.

The 62-year-old, who grew up in Poole in Dorset, became a priest in 1989 and took on the role of Dean of Gloucester Cathedral before his position as bishop.

'The Catholic Church Had Better Take Its Side': How the Pope got Threatened by the Pentagon

In January 2026, a few days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World address, a top Vatican diplomat was summoned to the Pentagon. 

What happened in that room is now, according to reporting by The Free Press confirmed by multiple independent sources, one of the most extraordinary episodes in the modern history of relations between the United States and the Catholic Church.

The story begins with words. In his January address, Pope Leo XIV observed that a diplomacy promoting dialogue and consensus was being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, and that war had returned to fashion. 

The speech was widely read as a commentary on the Trump administration: the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities, the threats to allies, the claims over Canada and Greenland, the kidnapping of a foreign head of state. Washington read it the same way.

Behind closed doors, according to Vatican officials briefed on the meeting who spoke to The Free Press on condition of anonymity, senior US defense officials delivered what those present described as a bitter lecture: the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world, and the Catholic Church had better take its side.

The official who delivered the lecture was Elbridge Colby, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. The man sitting across from him was Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican's ambassador to the United States. 

According to the reporting, Colby's team picked apart the Pope's address line by line. What enraged them most was Leo's declaration that "a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force." 

The Pentagon read that sentence as a direct challenge to what the administration calls the Donroe Doctrine, Trump's assertion of unchallenged American dominion over the Western Hemisphere. 

The cardinal sat through the lecture in silence. The Holy See has not, since that day, given an inch. 

The Avignon Threat

The meeting might have remained a tense but manageable diplomatic confrontation. Then one of the American officials reached into history for a weapon.

As tensions escalated inside the room, one US official invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period in the 14th century when the French Crown leveraged its military power to dominate papal authority, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death, and forcing the relocation of the papacy to France for decades. 

The reference was not lost on those present. Many in the Vatican saw it as a threat to use military force against the Holy See itself. 

There are no public records of any previous meeting between Vatican and US officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which a world power suggested it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity. 

The Vatican was alarmed. Plans for Pope Leo to visit the United States were quietly shelved.

The Visit That Never Happened

JD Vance had personally extended an invitation to Pope Leo just two weeks after his election at the conclave in May 2025. 

The White House wanted the first American-born pope to return to his home country and celebrate America's 250th anniversary at the White House on July 4, 2026. 

The administration tried every possible way to make the visit happen, according to one Vatican official who spoke to The Free Press. 

It did not happen. The Holy See considered the request, then declined over a mix of foreign policy disagreements, the increasingly vocal opposition of American bishops to Trump's mass deportation policy, and a refusal to become a partisan trophy in the 2026 midterms. 

One Vatican official told The Free Press: "The Pope may well never visit the United States under this administration."

Instead of July 4 at the White House, Pope Leo XIV will travel on that date to Lampedusa, the small Italian island between Tunisia and Sicily where North African migrants wash ashore by the thousands. 

As journalist Christopher Hale observed, Robert Francis Prevost is too deliberate a man to have chosen that date by accident.

After the Lecture, Leo Pressed Harder

The Pentagon meeting did not achieve its apparent goal. Rather than retreating into cautious Vatican diplomacy, Pope Leo XIV grew more outspoken as the months passed and the Iran war intensified.

Over Holy Week, he condemned what he called the imperialist occupation of the world and warned that God rejects the prayers of those who wage war. 

On Easter Sunday, he urged world leaders to lay down their weapons and choose peace, to abandon the desire to dominate others. 

Then came 7 April and Trump's Truth Social post threatening that an entire civilisation would die that night. 

The Pope, speaking to journalists at Castel Gandolfo, called it truly unacceptable and asked everyone to think of so many innocent children, so many totally innocent elderly people who would also be victims of this escalation. 

He called on all people to reject war, especially, he said, a war which many people have said is an unjust war. 

His call for citizens to contact their elected representatives to advocate for peace was described by Vatican observers as extremely rare, representing a step from moral commentary into explicitly political territory that popes almost never take. 

The contrast with how the administration frames the same conflict could not be sharper. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly invoked God in connection with the US military campaign, likening the rescue of a downed American pilot to the resurrection and asking Americans to pray every day, on bended knee, for military victory in Iran in the name of Jesus Christ. 

Washington's Denial

The White House and the Pentagon have not accepted The Free Press account. A Defense Department spokesperson said the characterisation of the meeting was highly exaggerated and distorted, describing it instead as a respectful and reasonable discussion, adding: "We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See."

The denial has not dampened the story. 

The Free Press report by Rome-based journalist Mattia Ferraresi was independently confirmed by multiple outlets using their own Vatican and US government sources. 

The broad outline of the confrontation, and the Avignon reference in particular, has not been substantively contested.

Why It Matters

The answer to why the world's most powerful military would bother courting or threatening the Vatican lies in something easy to overlook: the Catholic Church is perhaps the only remaining global institution perceived to carry genuine moral authority. 

The Holy See remains a body whose credibility the American superpower seeks. Leo's blessing, or at least his silence, would confer a kind of moral legitimacy that no amount of military power can manufacture on its own.

Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, the son of a family of French, Italian and Spanish descent, is the first American in history to lead the Catholic Church. He was elected hoping, by all accounts, to tend his flock quietly. 

The world has not allowed it. 

The administration that expected a hometown pope to provide moral cover for its foreign policy got instead a pontiff standing at Castel Gandolfo calling its threats against Iran unacceptable, and planning to spend his nation's 250th birthday on a Mediterranean island watching boats arrive from Africa.

He was lectured in a room at the Pentagon about what happened to a pope who chose the wrong side. He appears to have taken the lesson differently than intended.