'Horrible and shameful' Portlaoise Parish Priest reacts to Cemetery Mass violence

Portlaoise Parish Priest has condemned violence that marred the Laois county town’s annual Cemetery Mass which was attended by thousands of local people.

Msgr John Byrne also called for leadership from within the Travelling community to bring an end to such violence that in the Laois case, involved a running brawl in which Portlaoise gardaí have confirmed knives were used, causing injuries on Sunday afternoon, May 31.

While he said there will be a need for reflection and consultation with the gardaí and Laois County Council in the wake of what happened, he said he would hate to see the violence causing the cancellation of the annual Mass in future years because of its importance to many in the community.

Speaking hours after the incident, Msgr Byrne said that while what happened only lasted a few minutes, he described the violence as “horrible and shameful”.

He confirmed that he attempted to quell the violence from the altar once he became aware of the fracas during the Mass attended by young and old. 

He said he told those in attendance that everyone is welcome to honour their departed in peace and goodwill. 

However, he said he appealed to those fighting that their actions were “absolutely disgraceful and out of order”.

He said their actions were a “dishonour to all the faithful departed”. 

Pleading with them to stop, he said he told “those who had come with violence in mind were not welcome”.

Msgr Byrne commended Laois gardaí for getting the situation under control so quickly.

He said he understood that violence involving Travellers had become a pattern at Cemetery Masses. 

He believed that leadership is needed in the Travelling Community to acknowledge what happens to prevent further flare-ups in Laois or elsewhere.

“I am always disappointed that they don’t come out and acknowledge that there is a real problem… this is indefensible,” he said.

Msgr Byrne said he knows many Travellers who are “sterling people” but that what happened in Portlaoise “must be acknowledged” by their community.

He also commented on what is one of the biggest public religious gatherings in Laois annually.

“I would absolutely hate to think that 5,000 people who gather in good faith to honour their own departed could not do so because of 30 or 40 individuals. We have to look at other solutions first,” he said.

While he acknowledged there would have to be “reflection” that would involve the relevant authorities, he said he would “hate to have to abandon something that is appreciated by so many”.

Portlaoise Gardaí said a policing plan was in place as gardaí had intelligence that an incident was possible. 

There was a large presence of local uniformed gardaí on the scene, backed by the Garda Public Order Unit. 

They confirmed that several people were injured and that knives were used in the row. Some of those involved were also arrested.

Gardaí appealed to anyone who was at the Mass and who may have video footage of the violence to provide it to Portlaoise Garda Station to help with what is an ongoing investigation.

The Irish priest behind the scenes of the Vatican’s work on artificial intelligence

The Vatican’s response to artificial intelligence (AI) began a decade ago in the private library of a religious order in central Rome, where a group of top Silicon Valley executives gathered with senior Catholic officials below shelves lined with antique books spanning centuries of Christian thought.

The issues raised culminated this week with the publication of a landmark encyclical by Pope Leo XIV that summoned the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics to work towards the ethical governance of a technology with a disruptive potential akin to the industrial revolution.

The meeting grew out of an informal encounter at a Bay Area conference in 2016, when a group of Silicon Valley executives including the LinkedIn co-founder and early Open AI investor Reid Hoffman approached a French priest, Éric Salobir, and asked how they could contact the Vatican.

“They wanted to alert us to something that was coming,” remembers Bishop Paul Tighe, an Irish senior Vatican official who was present at that first gathering in Rome.

“We had some very senior people, and it became very clear that this was genuinely taking off, and they were surprised at the rate of development,” Tighe remembers.

“That’s the thing that struck me at the time – the pace at which it was developing, and also the range of areas where it would be relevant ... You realise that this wasn’t just going to have an impact in the narrow area of AI, but was going to be transformative.”

The tech executives were interested in involving faith traditions in general, not the Catholic Church exclusively. But conveniently, Catholicism had a “corporate headquarters” that they could approach.

That meeting in the Dominican library was the first of what would come to be known as the Minerva Dialogues, annual closed-door meetings between the Vatican and Silicon Valley named after the adjoining church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, built in the 13th century on the ruins of a Roman temple.

It’s a site that is heavy with history of the church’s relationship with science and technological development. Somewhere within the complex in 1633, church inquisitors forced the father of modern astronomy, Galileo Galilei, to renounce his belief that the sun rather than the Earth was at the centre of the universe, following his trial for heresy.

Those attending the Minerva Dialogues quickly came to see AI as a technological development that offered huge promise to humanity, but also something that carried profound risks.

“I remember being at a session where they were showing the potential benefits of AI in terms of diagnostics, in terms of individualised treatment plans,” Tighe says.

“But then it struck me at the time: yes, but if we don’t fix the equality of our healthcare systems, this is going to be great for some, and really just make more pronounced the inequalities,” he continues.

“We gradually came to the realisation that AI has this extraordinary ability to magnify both what is best about humanity, and also our far less good tendencies.”

Held each year since that first meeting in 2016, the discussions brought together figures such as former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and chief technology officer at Microsoft Kevin Scott with senior Vatican officials, Catholic theologians and philosophers.

Tighe – mostly due to his native English, he says – ended up becoming a key interlocutor and co-ordinator between the Vatican and Silicon Valley in the process.

It was a strange, unexpected kind of return for the Meath-born prelate, who grew up partly in Sligo, where his father worked for IDA Ireland at a time when the agency began looking towards Silicon Valley as a potential source of investment into Ireland.

“It was funny, some of the names, even the name of Silicon Valley itself and some of the companies, I’ve been familiar with from home,” he recalls.

Tighe is a former teacher who worked in communications under then archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin. He was called to the Vatican in 2007 at a time when the Holy See was digitalising its public outreach and was involved in setting up the papal Twitter account.

Since 2022, he has been the secretary – second in command – of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Vatican equivalent of a ministry.

Over the years, his incongruous presence has been noted by media reporting from tech conferences such as the Web Summit and South by Southwest.

His work involved frequent travel between the Vatican and Silicon Valley, where a parallel process to the Minerva Dialogues was taking place at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, part of a Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, and home to a research group on the ethics of AI.

“I met Fr Brendan McGuire, who was a parish priest in that area, an Irish priest who had worked in technology,” recalls Tighe. McGuire “had many parishioners who were working in the Silicon Valley companies, who were anxious to harmonise their work and their faith,” he remembers.

The issue soon came to the attention of the man at the top.

“Pope Francis, I remember he called me in for a meeting about 2018,” Tighe says. “He said he’d had a visit from a number of business people who had told him that the church needed to begin to have a more kind of deliberate reflection on AI. He wasn’t a technologist, you know, but he said, ‘Look, try and develop these contacts and keep in touch’. And then, gradually, he began to speak about it.”

The turning point came with the launch of the AI text generator ChatGPT in 2022, when the topic of artificial intelligence became a primary focus of the world’s attention.

“I greatly value this ongoing dialogue,” Pope Francis told participants of the Minerva Dialogues in a meeting in 2023, expressing hopes for “a serious and inclusive global discussion on the responsible use of these technologies”.

In an address to a G7 meeting in Italy a year later, the pope described AI as having the potential to make great advances for humanity but also to worsen injustice, describing the algorithms behind the systems as “neither objective nor neutral”.

A few months later, Tighe’s Dicastery for Culture and Education published a joint document with the Vatican’s doctrinal department, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Antiqua et Nova laid out, in 117 clauses, the culmination of the Vatican’s reflection on AI, its implications, and the ethical concerns it posed in various areas: employment, healthcare, education, misinformation, privacy, surveillance, the environment and warfare.

It stressed that there was no equivalence between human intelligence and its “imitation”, artificial intelligence. “No AI application can genuinely experience empathy,” it read. “AI’s advanced features give it sophisticated abilities to perform tasks, but not the ability to think.”

Within the first hours of the election of the new pope just over a year ago, it was already evident to close observers that artificial intelligence would be a key concern to his papacy. The clue was his choice of name: Leo.

The last pope named Leo was a giant in the modern history of the Catholic Church, remembered for shepherding it through a time of epochal change and for authoring what would come to be known as the church’s “social doctrine”.

The crucial text was Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, which addressed the plight of the class of urban poor created by the industrial revolution.

It defended the right of workers to form trade unions, but also spoke in support of private property, a middle way between unfettered capitalism and then-rising radical socialism that became influential far beyond Catholicism.

The current pope, Leo, symbolically signed his first encyclical on the 135th anniversary of Rerum novarum, and began it by saying he wished to “add my own voice” to the tradition it began.

Its launch this week was highly unusual, featuring addresses by a panel of speakers including the co-founder of AI company Anthropic, Christopher Olah. It was a first for the pope himself to make an address, lending the work additional prominence.

The encyclical describes AI as a development that is still evolving – “any statement regarding AI risks becoming quickly outdated”, it notes – but that clearly marks an “epochal change”.

It flags the risk of the “social calamity” of mass unemployment, worsened economic inequality if the technologies are kept in the hands of the few, the potential for discrimination in algorithms, and AI weaponry that could lower “the moral threshold of conflict”.

But the encyclical urges readers not to become fatalistically resigned, but to realise their own potential. “No one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action,” it reads.

A primary aim appears to be to boost momentum for some kind of binding international agreement – probably through the United Nations, which is name-checked in the document – and legislation to ensure the ethical governance of AI and to ensure that the technology is harnessed for the good of humanity.

The serious challenges in the way of such an agreement are also flagged in the document, which has a section called “the crisis of multilateralism” and states that the era of postwar co-operation has given way to “a disorderly and conflict-ridden multipolarism with a prevailing sense of mistrust”.

For Tighe, the church can point the way, but others have to walk the path.

“The church can say, ‘Look, this is what humanity should be aspiring to’. We can’t on our own bring that about,” says Tighe. “It is an encouragement for people who are working for that to feel empowered.”

Bishop Niall Coll: Who is shaping AI, and in whose interests?

I WELCOME the timely encyclical letter (an extended letter addressed to all people) of Pope Leo XIV – the first of his pontificate – titled Magnifica Humanitas: On the Protection of the Human Person in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, that was published on May 25.

The contemporary debate about AI is marked not only by rapid technological progress, but a deepening sense of public unease, particularly among white-collar workers, especially the younger ones.

Many professionals – once confident that education and expertise would guarantee stability – now face the unsettling possibility that AI systems can replicate or replace core aspects of their work.

This shift has contributed to a broader climate of distrust, reflected in surveys across the globe showing widespread scepticism about whether AI will truly benefit humanity.

Yet this distrust is not simply resistance to innovation. It reflects a more fundamental concern: 

Who is shaping AI, and in whose interests?

When technological development appears to be driven primarily by corporate priorities – efficiency, profit and scale – many people feel excluded from decisions that profoundly affect their lives.

Concerns about job security, social inequality and even environmental sustainability – highlighted by the growing energy demands for AI infrastructure, such as Ireland’s data centres today consuming 22% of national electricity, up from 5% in 2015 – only deepen this unease.

Within this context, Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas offers a way of reorienting the discussion.

A first perusal indicates that rather than focusing on technical details, it proposes a moral framework for evaluating AI – one that speaks directly to the fears, hopes and responsibilities shaping the present moment.

Thus, the Pope writes: “The magnificent humanity created by God stands before a decisive choice: to erect a new Tower of Babel or to build the holy city, where God and humanity dwell together.”

The encyclical’s key principles are as follows:

Human dignity as the non-negotiable criterion

At the heart of this framework is the conviction that human dignity must be the measure of all technological development. 

For Pope Leo XIV, AI is not to be judged by its power or efficiency, but by its impact on the human person. This principle speaks directly to the anxieties of white-collar workers. 

The fear of job displacement is not only about income; it is about losing a sense of purpose and identity. 

Work is a central expression of human dignity, and any technological system that undermines this must be critically examined. 

AI cannot be allowed to reduce individuals to mere functions within a system or to disposable units of productivity.

Orientation and discernment, not rejection of AI

Importantly, the encyclical does not condemn AI outright. 

Like Pope Francis before him, Pope Leo XIV recognises that human creativity – including technological innovation – is a genuine good. AI has the potential to advance healthcare, education and social cooperation in powerful ways. 

However, this potential will not realise itself automatically. It requires orientation and discernment. 

The text rightly warns about an approach to development in which ‘workers are forced to adapt to the speed of machines, rather than machines being designed to help workers’. 

The problem is not that AI exists, but that it can develop without sufficient ethical direction. 

Rather than asking whether AI is good or bad, the encyclical invites a deeper question: how is it being shaped, and to what ends? 

This approach offers an alternative to both uncritical enthusiasm and unbridled fear. 

It acknowledges the legitimacy of public concern while insisting that the future of AI remains open to human guidance.

Ethical principles, not technical solutions

The Church does not claim to design algorithms or regulate markets. Instead, it contributes something different: a set of universal ethical principles that can help guide decision-making across cultures and sectors. 

Building on the tradition of Catholic social teaching inaugurated by the last Pope Leo XIII in his 1891 encyclical letter and masterpiece of social science, Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), these include the primacy of the human person, the pursuit of the common good, solidarity with the vulnerable and a commitment to justice and transparency. 

In a world where technological change often outpaces regulation, these principles provide a stable foundation for reflection and action. 

They also challenge the assumption that technological progress is inherently beneficial. 

Progress must be evaluated, not assumed. 

As Pope Francis has emphasised, innovation without ethics risks becoming detached from human well-being.

Human responsibility and oversight

One of the most important concerns addressed by Pope Leo is the temptation to delegate responsibility to machines. 

As AI systems become more sophisticated, there is a risk that human decision-makers may rely on them uncritically. 

The encyclical firmly rejects this possibility. Human responsibility cannot be outsourced. 

AI can assist, inform and enhance decision-making, but it cannot replace moral judgment. 

Systems that affect people’s lives - whether in employment, healthcare or governance - must remain accountable to human oversight. This insistence directly addresses public distrust. 

People are more likely to accept AI when they know that humans remain responsible for its outcomes, rather than being subject to opaque and unchallengeable systems.

Shared governance, not monopolies

Another major source of concern in the current debate is the concentration of technological power. 

AI development is often dominated by a small number of corporations, raising questions about accountability and fairness. 

Pope Leo calls for shared governance of AI. 

Technologies that shape the future of society should not be controlled by a narrow set of interests. 

Instead, their development and use should involve broader participation, including governments, communities and civil society. 

This principle speaks directly to the widespread feeling of exclusion that fuels distrust. If people are to trust AI, they must have a voice in shaping it. 

Governance must be transparent, inclusive and oriented toward the common good rather than private gain.

The Church speaks from its own experience and an ongoing path of conversion

Finally, the encyclical speaks with a tone of humility. 

The Church does not present itself as possessing all the answers. Instead, it recognises its own history as one of learning, adaptation and ongoing conversion. 

This perspective is important in a rapidly changing technological landscape. 

It acknowledges complexity and uncertainty, while still offering clear moral guidance. 

It invites dialogue rather than imposing solutions, and urges all actors – religious, political and economic – to continual reflection.

Rebuilding trust in the age of AI

The integration of these principles offers a path toward addressing the deepening distrust surrounding AI. 

Public concern – especially among young white-collar workers – is not simply a problem to be managed; it is a signal that something essential is at stake. 

People are asking whether their dignity will be respected, whether their work will remain meaningful, whether their environment will be protected and whether they will have a say in shaping the systems that affect their lives. 

Pope Leo’s contribution suggests that the answer to these questions depends on the moral direction of AI. 

Technology alone cannot determine that direction. It requires human judgement, ethical reflection and shared responsibility.

In the end, the debate is not about whether AI should exist. It is about what kind of future it will create.

If guided by dignity, responsibility and the common good, AI can become a tool for human flourishing. 

If not, it risks deepening the very problems that fuel today’s distrust.

The challenge, then, is clear: to ensure that as AI grows in power, it remains firmly rooted in the values that make a truly human future possible. 

As a first step, I encourage everyone to read Magnifica Humanitas.

Andorra sets a deadline for the decriminalization of abortion

The Government of Andorra already has a closed proposal to decriminalize abortion, but is keeping the project on hold while talks with the Holy See continue. 

After a long period of discreet negotiations with Rome, the Minister of Institutional Relations, Education and Universities, Ladislau Baró, acknowledged this Monday that the legislative text is fully drafted and ready to move forward once the current dialogue process concludes.

According to La Veu Lliure, Baró stated that “there is already a closed regulatory proposal” and that “all the technical and philosophical aspects are written and prepared.” 

However, he made it clear that the Government will not take the next step yet and that the ongoing conversations with the Holy See must first be completed.

The issue gained momentum last April during French President Emmanuel Macron’s official visit to Andorra. 

In his capacity as co-prince, Macron placed the decriminalization of abortion among the priority issues on his agenda and addressed the matter in his meetings with Andorran authorities.

A finished law awaiting the outcome of the negotiations

The minister’s statements confirm that the process has entered a decisive phase. 

After several meetings between Andorran representatives and Vatican officials in recent months, the text to decriminalize abortion is already complete. 

What remains open is the political and institutional negotiation accompanying the reform.

Baró explained that a few more working sessions are still needed before the dialogue can be considered concluded and it can be assessed whether the proposal allows the Andorran Government to achieve its objectives. 

Among these is the desire to decriminalize women regarding abortion without altering the institutional balance of the Principality.

The Government insists that the final decision belongs to Andorra

During his appearance, the minister stressed that the ultimate decision does not rest with the Holy See. 

“It is not that the Holy See has the decision on this matter; rather, the decision lies with the Consell General and the Government must present the initiative,” he said.

Nevertheless, the fact that the project remains stalled despite being fully drafted highlights the importance that the talks with Rome continue to hold regarding one of the most sensitive issues of the current Andorran legislature.

An open negotiation with the Vatican

The dialogue between Andorra and the Holy See on a possible decriminalization of abortion is not new, but the conversations have intensified during the current legislature, especially following the meetings between the Andorran Government and the Vatican Secretariat of State.

One of the most significant moments took place in October 2025, when the head of Government, Xavier Espot, Minister Ladislau Baró and the Andorran ambassador to the Holy See met in the Vatican with Cardinal Pietro Parolin. 

After that meeting, both sides expressed their willingness to continue working to find a formula that would allow progress on the decriminalization of abortion without altering the institutional framework of the Principality.

Since then, the Andorran Government has repeatedly insisted that the process requires discretion and time. 

In fact, Baró publicly acknowledged that the initially planned timelines were overly optimistic and that Rome had requested prudence before any public move.

An issue that must be resolved during this legislature

This Monday, the patient-waiting stance was set aside; although he avoided setting a specific timetable, Baró affirmed that the debate on the decriminalization of abortion must be settled during the current legislature. 

The minister expressed confidence that there is still room to find a satisfactory solution and assured that Andorra is “very far” from any scenario of institutional rupture.

The Andorran official’s words come after years of contacts between the Government of the Principality and the Holy See, in a process marked by discretion and repeated delays. 

With the text already drafted, attention now turns to the outcome of negotiations whose resolution the Holy See has long delayed in Andorra.

Argüello recalls that divorced people who have remarried cannot receive communion

With the solemnity of Corpus Christi approaching, the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Luis Argüello, has recalled some fundamental truths about the Eucharist and the dispositions necessary to receive it worthily. 

In his pastoral letter published by the Archdiocese of Valladolid, the archbishop insists that sacramental communion requires coherence of life and a genuine interior disposition to encounter Christ.

“The Eucharist is sacrifice, banquet, and real presence,” writes Argüello at the beginning of his reflection, inviting the faithful to rediscover the profound meaning of the sacrament that constitutes the center of Christian life. 

For the prelate, it is not enough to attend Mass out of habit or to approach communion in a routine manner. “We cannot go in haste, with the attitude of one who is merely fulfilling a routine,” he warns.

Preparing to receive the Lord

The prelate encourages the faithful to examine their conscience and to ask themselves sincerely about the disposition of their heart before approaching the altar.

“Examining one’s conscience means becoming aware of the state of our heart, of its disposition to welcome the very God who, as a Body given, is offered to us as the Bread of life,” explains the archbishop. This preparation also includes, when necessary, approaching the sacrament of Penance.

“The Lord is merciful; He desires to seat us at His table and to offer Himself as food that heals and restores,” he affirms. 

However, he reminds us that when grave sin exists, “healing, eucharistic healing, must be sealed in the Sacrament of Penance.”

Those who cannot receive communion

The president of the Episcopal Conference points out that there are objective situations incompatible with the reception of sacramental communion until there is a genuine conversion of life.

“If our situation or state of life is incompatible with full communion with the Lord and His Church (…) we cannot approach to receive communion without a firm decision to change our life,” he writes. 

Among these situations, he explicitly mentions sinful relationships, abuses against other persons, and the public defense of positions contrary to Christian morality.

A reminder for the divorced and re-married

The letter also dedicates a specific section to those who, after the breakdown of a sacramental marriage, have entered into a new conjugal union.

“These persons, who continue to be part of the Church, must know that this rupture of the Sacrament of the Covenant prevents eucharistic communion,” the archbishop states. 

Therefore, he adds clearly that “receiving communion is not possible” while that situation persists.

Far from presenting it as an exclusion, Argüello considers that the suffering caused by this situation can become a call to seek a solution in accordance with the truth of both sacraments. 

“The pain of not receiving communion should rekindle the desire to seek a solution that respects the meaning of the two sacraments at stake: Marriage and the Eucharist,” he writes.

“We cannot go in haste or as one who fulfills a routine”

Beyond issues related to sacramental discipline, Argüello’s pastoral letter constitutes a profound reflection on the central place the Eucharist occupies in Christian life. 

The archbishop invites the faithful to rediscover wonder before a sacrament he defines as “sacrifice, banquet, and real presence,” which constitutes the heart of the Church’s life.

For this reason, he insists on the need to prepare adequately for the Sunday celebration. “We cannot go in haste, with the attitude of one who is merely fulfilling a routine,” he warns. 

In his view, participation in Holy Mass requires a preparation that begins long before entering the church, nurturing throughout the week the desire to encounter Christ and meditating on the Word of God.

Argüello also encourages living the liturgy with a spirit of adoration and recollection. 

“How important it is to care for the moment of approaching communion with a spirit of wonder and adoration,” he writes, recalling that the Eucharist is not a social gesture or a religious custom, but the real encounter with Jesus Christ present under the species of bread and wine.

The Eucharist, source of communion and mission

Participation in Holy Mass does not end with the final blessing. The Eucharist is meant to transform the lives of the faithful and to extend into daily life. 

“We are called to incarnate communion in the Christian community,” affirms Argüello, inviting Catholics to prolong throughout the week what was celebrated at the altar through prayer, fraternity, forgiveness, and commitment to the common good.

He also recalls that Corpus Christi is a privileged opportunity to publicly manifest faith in the real presence of Christ and to bring the Lord into all spheres of society. 

“We must prepare ourselves, as on the day of Corpus Christi, to be custodians who bring the Lord into ordinary life,” he states.

The letter concludes with a call to rediscover the greatness of the eucharistic mystery and to live it with renewed intensity. 

“We are permanent apprentices of the Eucharist and of Sunday,” writes Argüello, expressing his desire that the upcoming solemnity of Corpus Christi may move the faithful to proclaim with conviction the mystery of faith: “Every time we eat of this bread and drink from this cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.”

Germany puts the growing polarization within the Church under study

The internal tensions that the Catholic Church in Germany — and Protestants as well — has been experiencing for years will be the subject of a new national investigation. 

Since last Friday, May 29, a survey has been opened that seeks to measure how the faithful perceive polarization within their respective ecclesial communities and what issues generate the greatest division.

The initiative, promoted by the German association futur2, aims to collect data on a phenomenon that has been widely debated in recent years but which, according to its promoters, had not been systematically analyzed until now. 

The survey, titled “To what extent do you perceive a divided Church?”, will remain open until July 31, and members of both the Catholic Church and the Evangelical Church in Germany may participate.

The tensions shaping the German ecclesial debate

According to the organization responsible for the study, issues such as the Synodal Path of the Catholic Church in Germany, the priestly ordination of women, or certain political and social positions have generated intense debates within the country’s Christian communities.

The aim of the research is to determine the extent to which these discussions are perceived by the faithful as factors of division and which matters are considered most contentious in ecclesial life.

The survey seeks to identify not only the topics that generate controversy, but also the mechanisms that influence the development of these debates within the Church.

A survey open to Catholics and Protestants

Participation will be anonymous via the internet and will require between fifteen and twenty minutes. 

The organizers have invited all members of the Catholic and Evangelical Churches in Germany to take part in order to obtain as broad a picture as possible of the current situation.

The results will be incorporated into the Strategic Congress that futur2 organizes annually, a gathering aimed at ecclesial leaders and professionals linked to Church institutions, which will hold its ninth edition this year.

The background of the Synodal Path

It is well known that the debate on the future of the Church in Germany continues to attract attention both inside and outside the country. 

The so-called Synodal Path, launched after the crisis caused by abuse scandals, has promoted reform proposals related to the Church’s governance structure, the role of women, sexual morality, and the participation of the laity.

Some of these initiatives have raised concerns in various ecclesial sectors and have also prompted interventions by the Holy See, which has insisted on the need to preserve ecclesial communion and respect for Catholic doctrine.

The new survey aims to provide data on how the faithful experience these discussions and the extent to which they perceive growing polarization within German Christian communities.

Ayuso meets with Leo XIV at the Vatican

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, is holding a private audience this Monday with Pope Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City, where she will present the Holy Father with the International Medal of the Community of Madrid.

The meeting comes just days before the apostolic visit that Leo XIV will make to Madrid between June 6 and 9. 

During the audience, Ayuso will update the Pontiff on the preparations that Madrid authorities are finalizing to welcome the thousands of pilgrims and journalists who will come to the capital for this historic trip.

The Pope’s agenda in Spain will officially begin next Saturday with his arrival at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport, where he will be received by the King and Queen of Spain before taking part in the official welcome ceremony at the Royal Palace.

Pope Leo XIV to visit the Republic of San Marino on Aug. 22

The Holy Father will spend half a day in the microstate in north-central Italy before traveling around 14 miles northeast to the city of Rimini, Italy.

Pope Leo XIV will travel to the Republic of San Marino, an independent sovereign state within the Italian peninsula, on Aug. 22 as part of his trip to the Italian province of Rimini.

The Vatican announced the visit in a statement from the Prefecture of the Papal Household, noting that the trip is part of his pastoral agenda in Italy.

The visit follows an invitation extended some time ago by the then-captains regent Matteo Rossi and Lorenzo Bugli — whose terms ended in April of this year — who had invited the pontiff to visit the small European state.

The pope’s presence in San Marino — the world’s oldest constitutional republic, founded in A.D. 301 — will take place in the morning on Aug. 22. 

In the afternoon, the Holy Father will take part in various activities in the Diocese of Rimini and in the traditional Rimini Meeting, one of Italy’s most important cultural and religious events, promoted by the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.

Vatican Expert Explains Magnifica Humanitas

When Pope Leo XIV presented his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, he did something highly unusual. 

Rather than leaving the document’s presentation to cardinals, theologians, and expert — as is customary in the Vatican — the pope personally attended and addressed the gathering himself.

For veteran Vatican journalist Frank Rocca, who was present at the event, the pope’s participation underscored the significance of the document and the urgency of its message.

“Well, certainly the presence of the Pope always adds a lot of weight to any occasion in the Vatican or anywhere else,” Rocca observed. “And we can’t think of any precedent for this, that the Pope would appear at the presentation of his own document. Usually this is left to cardinals and experts and so forth.”

Explaining Magnifica Humanitas

The choice of language was equally notable. Pope Leo delivered his remarks in English, reflecting the international character of both the technology sector and the conversation surrounding artificial intelligence.

“It was impressive,” Rocca said. “And also, I think another notable thing was that the Pope spoke in English, and most of the people spoke in English, which is appropriate because we’re dealing with an industry not only that is very strong in the US, but the global language of information technology and so many other industries is in fact English.”

Published 135 years after Pope Leo XIII’s landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum, Magnifica Humanitas seeks to address what Pope Leo XIV sees as the defining social challenge of the present age: artificial intelligence.

Human Wisdom Cannot Be Replaced

As the first papal encyclical devoted specifically to artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas covers a wide range of topics, from economics and labor to governance and ethics. Yet according to Rocca, several themes emerge repeatedly throughout the text.

“Well, I mean, it’s a long document. It’s more than 40,000 words long and it’s wide ranging,” he explained. “But I think one main point that he comes back to again and again and again is that we can’t allow a small group of monopolists to control this.”

For Pope Leo XIV, artificial intelligence presents not only technological challenges but also political and social ones. 

The concentration of power in the hands of a few corporations, the lack of transparency surrounding AI systems, and the absence of meaningful accountability are among his chief concerns.

“There has to be transparency. There has to be accountability. There has to be regulation,” Rocca summarized.

At the same time, the pope warns against equating machine-generated outputs with genuine human thought. 

While artificial intelligence can process enormous amounts of information and produce increasingly sophisticated responses, it cannot replicate the uniquely human capacities that arise from lived experience.

“We can’t mistake what AI does with human thinking,” Rocca said. “Humans have a kind of judgment and a kind of wisdom that comes out of their very vulnerability, out of their very limitations.”

Throughout the encyclical, Pope Leo repeatedly emphasizes that wisdom, moral discernment, and responsibility remain distinctly human tasks. Technological innovation may assist human beings, but it cannot replace the moral agency at the heart of human dignity.

A New Form of Colonialism?

Among the most striking sections of Magnifica Humanitas is the pope’s warning that artificial intelligence could create new forms of domination and exploitation.

In the document, Pope Leo writes that if AI develops without adequate safeguards, “the digital age will not be post-colonial but colonial in another form.”

The phrase has attracted considerable attention, particularly because the pope connects contemporary technological concerns with the Church’s historical reflections on slavery and exploitation.

According to Rocca, Pope Leo uses the concept of “digital colonialism” to describe situations in which individuals lose control over valuable personal information or become subject to systems designed without regard for their rights and dignity.

“For example, he says that health data has become a very valuable good that is being exploited and that people should have control of their own health data,” Rocca explained. “And if not, they’re victims of a new colonialism.”

The pope also points to workers involved in the extraction of raw materials necessary for modern technology, as well as victims of human trafficking whose exploitation is facilitated through digital tools.

“He talks about all the workers who work in the literal extraction industries to produce the materials that are needed to produce the devices,” Rocca noted. “And also human trafficking victims, whose traffickers use it to move people around. And he says these people are victims of a new slavery.”

These reflections lead Pope Leo XIV to a broader examination of the Church’s own history. In a striking passage, he acknowledges that the Catholic Church took centuries to fully condemn slavery and argues that this history carries important lessons for the present.

“He says that in order to be credible on this point now the Church has to understand that it took a long time to condemn slavery,” Rocca explained. “He’s saying if we don’t want to lose our moral authority, we have to make sure we don’t do something like that again.”

For the pope, confronting the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence today requires the same moral clarity that previous generations eventually brought to questions of slavery and human exploitation.

Building a Civilization of Love

Despite its warnings, Magnifica Humanitas is ultimately a hopeful document.

Rather than presenting technology as an inevitable threat, Pope Leo XIV calls for the construction of what he describes as a “civilization of love in the digital age”— a society in which technological innovation is directed toward the service of humanity rather than its domination.

For some observers, such a vision may seem unrealistic amid ongoing wars, social divisions, and political instability. Yet Rocca argues that the pope grounds his hope in concrete historical examples.

“He points to all these great saints, some of them actually canonized saints of the Catholic Church, some of them are just heroic figures in society who are not necessarily Catholic,” Rocca said.

Among those examples are Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela—individuals who demonstrated that moral courage and selfless service can transform societies.

“He comes back and he says, we see that people have been able to do great things for their fellow human beings,” Rocca explained. “So that’s where he draws hope is from the example of people from the past.”

In many ways, Magnifica Humanitas follows the path first charted by Rerum Novarum more than a century ago. Just as Pope Leo XIII sought to guide society through the upheavals of industrialization, Pope Leo XIV is attempting to offer a moral framework for the age of artificial intelligence.

His message is neither anti-technology nor nostalgic. Rather, it is a call to ensure that innovation remains ordered toward the common good, human freedom, and the dignity of every person.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape economies, institutions, and daily life, Magnifica Humanitas asks a simple but profound question: Will technology serve humanity, or will humanity become subject to technology?

For Pope Leo XIV, the answer depends on the choices society makes today.

The Pope has moral power but won't set the global agenda on AI (Opinion)

Pope Leo XIV has now weighed in on the most pressing issue of our time: The advent of AI and the recognition that humanity’s technological capability is advancing faster than the institutions designed to govern it. 

In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Leo warns that AI without guardrails risks subjugating humankind; with safety measures, it can ensure that humanity thrives.

But as morally powerful as Leo’s words are, it seems doubtful that the Catholic Church will set the global technology agenda. The lever of government looks unpromising as well.

AI is the embodiment of a transnational issue that demands a multilateral governance framework. 

This is unlikely at a time when the US is abandoning global leadership, the US and China are competing to dominate frontier technologies, India is pursuing strategic autonomy, and most of the developing world is focused on growth not constraint.

The political conditions for an “AI Bretton Woods” simply do not exist.

There is, however, one powerful lever left to pull, and it does not depend on the co-operation of rivals or the bandwidth of struggling governments. The lever of capital, and the institutions that control it at scale, may be our era’s most important and least understood governance actors.

Sovereign wealth funds, public pension systems, and large endowments collectively manage more than $75tn, or around 70%, of world GDP. They have a fiduciary obligation to seek long-term returns, which requires a stable economic system from which those returns can be generated.

For individual technology companies, increased risk can be rational if it yields a competitive advantage.

For nation states, accelerating technological capability at all costs can be rational if it shifts the balance of power (think of America’s Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb).

However, for the investment institutions that own a majority share of the world economy, a calamitous failure anywhere leads to loss everywhere — a direct threat to their mandate.

Global compact required

If states cannot co-ordinate effectively, and firms cannot self-regulate under competitive pressure, what is needed is a global compact whereby a critical mass of major asset owners treats existential risk as a binding category in investment governance. Access to their capital would be contingent on adherence to defined oversight standards in AI. These requirements would apply not only to their portfolio investments but to the asset managers they use and through which their capital is deployed.

This idea has precedent. The Sullivan Principles, articulated by Reverend Leon Sullivan in 1977 and embraced by major institutional investors, used capital allocation to influence labour and civil rights standards on US firms operating in apartheid South Africa.

(Sullivan renounced the principles in 1987, and called for a total boycott and corporate divestment, though he later worked with UN secretary general Kofi A Annan on an expanded Global Sullivan Principles to advance corporate social responsibility around the world.)

The Carbon Disclosure Project, today a reporting standard for thousands of companies, originated from a coalition of institutional investors looking for comparable climate data.

In both cases, enough investors joined to drive market-wide conditions

The capital compact would begin with a founding group of sovereign funds, public pensions, and foundation endowments. While these institutions differ politically, they all face a unique combination of long-duration liabilities, system-wide exposure, and governance frameworks that have already begun considering factors beyond pure return maximization.

Operationally, the compact would focus on standardised disclosure, benchmarking, and enforcement. The members would agree on a core set of metrics to be tracked, establishing reporting requirements for every asset manager receiving their capital.

Compact members would then aggregate that data across their full portfolio and submit results to a neutral, independent non-profit that they establish.

The non-profit would anonymise and aggregate submissions, publishing benchmarks that allow each member to assess its exposure relative to peers.

Independent safety audits

Members would publicly disclose their own benchmark results and how their exposures have changed over time. Above certain thresholds, disclosure would require independent verification. Firms in high-risk domains would undergo independent safety audits, needing to demonstrate compliance with established risk-management protocols as a condition of capital access. The data infrastructure to support this also has a precedent.

In 1971, a group of US insurance companies created the non-profit Insurance Services Office (ISO) by combining state, regional, and national ratings bureaus for property and casualty insurance. This established a neutral intermediary for anonymised, contributed-loss data that later became Verisk Analytics.

ISO enabled competitors to benchmark their own exposure against industry-wide patterns and identify systemic risks that no individual vantage point could discern. 

Governance rested on impartial aggregation by a mutually established non-profit, shared standards, and peer benchmarking, a model the capital compact would replicate for existential technological risk.

This proposal will inevitably invite comparison to environmental, social, and governance investing, which deserves credit for the insight that investment decisions have externalities, and that firms have a financial interest in managing them.

But this tackled too broad a range of objectives, suffering from insufficient standardisation, extraneous metrics, and the vulnerability of being perceived as values-driven advocacy cloaked in fiduciary language — “woke” capitalism to critics.

The proposed capital compact asks institutions to manage a specific, quantifiable category of financial risk that threatens the long-term value of every asset.

An institution that refuses to measure its exposure to the technologies most likely to undermine its core objectives is not avoiding ideology; it is avoiding its job.

Unlike failed climate-focused investor coalitions, where pledges appeared to be at the expense of financial returns, the capital compact’s fiduciary logic is grounded in risk management. 

Moreover, there is no antitrust risk: The compact’s structure of standardised disclosure and benchmarking through a neutral nonprofit is analogous to the ISO model not a cartel.

AI may be humanity’s greatest opportunity and risk. Where states cannot align, actors with system-wide exposure and cross-border reach become the only entities capable of imposing needed constraints.

In today’s global economy, they are large, diversified asset owners. It falls to them to do what religion and governments cannot.

Detroit archdiocese plans parish overhaul

The Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit is preparing for major changes — including potentially ending weekend Masses at some parishes — as part of a two-year effort to "right-size" the archdiocese.

Why it matters: The restructuring comes as Mass attendance has fallen 40% since 2011, the archdiocese faces $94 million in unfunded building repairs, and the number of priests is projected to shrink sharply over the next decade.

Zoom in: Draft restructuring models released so far show at least 22 parishes across southeast Michigan potentially losing weekend Masses, though archdiocesan leaders say the proposals could still change significantly before final decisions are made next year.

"It would mean, at some of our sites, the elimination of Sunday mass," Rev. Mario Amore, the archdiocese's director of parish renewal, told Axios.

By the numbers: The archdiocese has 209 parishes across Detroit and six surrounding counties. Of those, 138 have fewer than 600 regular Mass attendees, according to archdiocese data.

Mass attendance dropped from 231,076 in 2011 to 139,088 in 2024.

What they're saying: "We know that we cannot maintain the same number of parish buildings that we have today," Archbishop Edward Weisenburger wrote in an open letter explaining the restructuring.

What's next: Listening sessions are underway through mid-June to gather parishioner feedback and explain potential changes.

Each parish has been grouped into one of 15 planning areas evaluating possible restructuring outcomes, and the archdiocese has posted parish workbooks online with local attendance and financial data.

The intrigue: The current plan would expand a "pastorate model" in which multiple churches share one pastor overseeing operations and ministry.

Some churches could be repurposed for weddings, baptisms or religious education classes, Amore said.

Zoom out: The archdiocese also faces a looming priest shortage — part of a broader decline in the number of people entering the priesthood.

Between the lines: The restructuring has stirred anxiety among some congregants, while others see the changes as understandable.

"The old people can't keep it going," one parishioner told the Free Press. "We're eventually going to be gone, but we need that youth."

Foley to appeal ruling that paves way for more people to seek mother and baby home redress

The Children’s Minister is to appeal a High Court ruling that opened the door to many more people becoming eligible for compensation under the State’s €800m redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes.

Norma Foley’s department defended the move, saying an appeal was advised by Attorney General Rossa Fanning on the basis the ruling had caused uncertainty and could make the scheme unworkable.

The scheme, which has been in operation since March 2024, has faced sustained criticism as it is limited to just 14 mother and baby homes and 30 county homes, while survivors are only eligible if they spent at least 180 days in the institution.

In February, Mr Justice Alexander Owens found that Ms Foley’s predecessor as minister, Roderic O’Gorman, erred in law when evaluating whether St Joseph’s Baby Home in Stamullen, Co Meath, and Temple Hill Hospital in Blackrock, Co Dublin, could be added to the list of institutions.

Neither institution was included in a list of homes covered. Ms Foley had contested the case, brought by survivors John Kiernan, also known as John Duncan Morris, and Marie Thornton.

Mr Justice Owens’ ruling essentially signalled that the minister had to now consider adding both institutions to the scheme. 

However, Ms Foley has instead sought to have it overturned by the Court of Appeal, which has scheduled a directions hearing for July 31.

In response to a parliamentary question this month, she said the High Court’s guidance in interpreting the criteria for the addition of institutions to the scheme was “broad and unclear”.

In a statement, the Department of Children said an appeal was being taken on the advice of the Attorney General.

“This was on the grounds that the High Court judgment has generated a grave degree of uncertainty in relation to the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act, including potentially rendering the payment scheme so unclear in scope as to become unworkable,” the statement said.

The department said it could not provide an estimate of how many additional survivors could become eligible for redress if the High Court’s findings are followed up on. 

As of last February, around 7,000 people had applied for redress out of the 34,000 thought to be eligible and €78m had been paid out.

Mr Duncan-Morris, who now lives in Scotland, spent the early years of his life in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork and later in St Joseph’s Baby Home in Stamullen, Co Meath, before being transferred to St Mary’s House in Baldoyle and later being placed with foster parents.

He found himself excluded from the scheme for two reasons.

Firstly, St Joseph’s, an adoption society and not a residential unit for babies, was not one of the institutions covered.

Secondly, while Bessborough was included, he spent just three months there.

Temple Hill, where Ms Thornton was placed as a baby, was excluded because mothers were not there and it did not provide ante- or post-natal care.

Bishop accused of gaslighting victims of defrocked priest

VICTIMS of a defrocked priest have accused a bishop of ‘gaslighting’ survivors and of giving a ‘distasteful’ and ‘condescending’ response to revelations about the abuse they allegedly suffered.

It comes after the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Alphonsus Cullinan, broke his silence last weekend following a joint Irish Mail on Sunday/WLR (Waterford Local Radio) investigation revealing how former priest Michael O’Connor is living in a Churchowned property on the grounds of St John’s College in Waterford.

This is despite the fact O’Connor was removed from the priesthood in 2024 following an internal Church inquiry.

The now 84-year-old – a former president of St John’s College seminary and a former captain of Waterford Golf Club – has denied abusing children but admits drying the naked bodies of some children he took swimming in 1972.

Following repeated requests for comment, Bishop Cullinan finally issued a statement last Saturday evening in which he claimed the diocese ‘did not engage publicly in detail at an earlier stage’ due to ‘safeguarding sensitivities’. 

He also criticised what he described as inaccurate reporting, without providing specifics.

In his statement, the bishop said: ‘The diocese encourages any person with a safeguarding concern to report it without delay to the appropriate statutory and Church authorities.

‘The diocese has always sought to treat complainants and survivors with respect, dignity and credibility.

‘The voice of the survivor must always be heard and safeguarding matters must be approached with the utmost care, sensitivity and responsibility.’

Bishop Cullinan added the diocese ‘does not intend to enter into further public commentary on this matter’.

However, alleged victims of O’Connor reacted angrily to the bishop’s response this week.

One woman who claims she e was abused as a child by O’Connor described the statement as ‘distasteful’ and a form of ‘gaslighting’.

She said: ‘It appears to be e self-preservation for the Church over everything else. The bishop criticised “public commentary” – as a victim I fully encourage public commentary, the more the better. Too much has been buried over the last decades.

‘And for the bishop to use the phrase “retraumatising” is condescending, to say the least. As if the abuse at the hands of a person ever leaves you… it’s always there.’

O’Connor has admitted he was interviewed by gardaí in two separate investigations in the past but the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) ultimately decided not to pursue the criminal case against him.

The alleged victim asked if ‘information used in initially justifying his dismissal’ as part of the internal Church investigation that resulted in his removal from the priesthood was passed on to gardaí, ‘and if not, why?’ 

She added: ‘Surely if it was serious enough to dismiss a priest, it should be in the hands of gardaí? And if it was passed on to the gardaí, why has nothing been done?’

The statement by Waterford and Lismore diocese last weekend noted: ‘O’Connor was removed from ministry in 1995 following allegations relating to historical events alleged to have occurred in the 1970s.’

It added that, ‘while no criminal prosecution arose in these matters, the diocese nevertheless removed Mr O’Connor from ministry and continued to apply rigorous canonical safeguarding processes over many years thereafter’.

The statement went on to say that ‘an earlier decision to dismiss Mr O’Connor from the priesthood was successfully appealed to the Vatican at that time, restrictions and conditions were imposed upon him under a canonical precept’. And it added: ‘More recent breaches of those restrictions ultimately resulted in his dismissal from the priesthood.’

Another woman who claims she was molested by O’Connor as a child said she ‘would like to know what the recent breaches of restrictions were’ that resulted in his dismissal. She also asked: ‘Did his “rigorous canonical safeguarding” involve him having no access to minors?’

Bishop Cullinan did not respond to these and other queries relating to O’Connor and his living arrangements this week.

The property O’Connor is living in is administered by the Ecclesiastical Benevolent Society of the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore. It is a registered charity, whose stated aim is ‘to benefit the community’. The society is listed on the diocesan website.

The chair of the Benevolent Society, Clonmel-based priest Fr John Treacy, previously said the house O’Connor is living in had not been transferred over to the charity.

Asked if the property was still owned by the diocese, he replied: ‘Yes, as far as I know it is.’

The Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Alphonsus Cullinan, is not listed as a trustee on the charity regulator’s website.

But Fr Treacy said the bishop ‘is a trustee in a way as things have to go through him… but he’s on the unofficial list’.

Despite this, Bishop Cullinan last week denied the former priest is ‘residing in a diocesan-owned property’.

He said: ‘The property in question is owned by the Benevolent Society, a separate registered charity established historically by priests to assist priests who may experience financial hardship.’

Despite Fr Treacy’s comments, Bishop Cullinan insisted the diocese ‘has no control over the Benevolent Society whatsoever’.

‘It appears to be self-preservation’

‘Surely it should be in the hands of gardaí?’

How the Russian Orthodox Church targets anti-war priests

For more than 20 years, Father Aleksei Uminsky served as the rector of a church in a quiet corner of central Moscow. His dismissal and defrocking took about 10 days.

On January 4, 2024, three days before Russian Orthodox Christmas, the archpriest responsible for the area phoned Uminsky and told him to appear before him the following day. 

When he did so, the archpriest handed him a decree suspending him from the ministry – revoking his authority to preach to his flock.

Less than an hour later, Uminsky stood before a disciplinary committee whose four members did not identify themselves but asked him several questions about why he was not reading a prayer in support of Russia’s war on Ukraine in his services, then confirmed his suspension and ordered him to remove the cross from around his neck immediately.

In the days after Christmas, Uminsky was repeatedly summoned by email and phone to appear before a church court for a hearing on his potential defrocking. He did not show up instead leaving Russia after a fellow priest told him he was to be arrested after the ecclesiastical trial.

He soon received an email notification that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarch Kirill, had approved the January 13 diocese court decision to defrock him for “refusing [...] to read the prayer for Holy Rus during the Divine Liturgy,” Uminsky told Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit.

Uminsky, 65, is one of about 50 Russian Orthodox priests who have been persecuted by the church for opposition to Russia’s war against Ukraine or support for Ukraine in its defence against the invasion, according to Christians Against War, an international monitoring group.

Several of them, like Uminsky, were punished for declining to read the Prayer for Holy Rus, which the Moscow Patriarchate has used to make explicit support for the war against Ukraine part of services nationwide.

Kirill, a vocal backer of President Vladimir Putin and the full-scale invasion he launched in February 2022, invented the prayer and read it in a service that September. Now mandatory, it says that “those who wish to wage war have risen up against Holy Rus” and asks God to “grant us victory by Your power”.

When the disciplinary committee asked him why he wasn’t reading the prayer, Uminsky replied, “I don't know what Holy Rus is," he told Systema. He said he frequently receives letters from former colleagues struggling with a dilemma: they find it impossible to pray for the war, but fear denunciations and ecclesiastical judgment.

The church crackdown on critics of the war has affected clerics and parishioners from Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East to Vilnius, where several clerics from the Lithuanian diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church have been punished for opposing the war.

'This is a closed hearing'

They include Vladimir Selyavko, who was defrocked in 2022 along with a handful of colleagues at the main Russian Orthodox cathedral in the capital of the NATO and EU nation – including its senior cleric – who made no secret of their anti-war stance.

Selyavko suspects that the church’s prosecution of him and the others was initiated by the same cleric who then decided their fate as the judge in their church trials, a newly installed bishop who saw printouts of their antiwar statements on his desk when he took up the post.

The Russian state has ramped up its persistent clampdown on dissent since the start of the full-scale invasion, seeking to silence all criticism of the war against Ukraine – like Russia, a mostly Orthodox Christian country.

In some ways, defrocked priests say, the disciplinary system in the Russian Orthodox Church echoes the temporal Russian justice system – particularly in politically motivated cases, the outcome is often predetermined and acquittals are vanishingly rare.

But some aspects of the church system seem even less transparent than Russia’s temporal courts, where the judicial branch is formally separate from the executive and a show of playing by rules is part of the pantomime.

Accounts from clerics like Uminsky and Selyavko point to an opaque series of developments in which a priest facing discipline or defrocking has little recourse to lawyers or other forms of protection.

“There is no procedural code at all. The requirements for the court are not described anywhere,” Andrei Kurayev, a priest who was fined in 2022 for criticising the war and fled Russia the following year, told Systema. Patriarch Kirill had barred Kurayev from conducting services in 2020, and a church court ordered him defrocked the same year.

“If, for example, witnesses may be called in a case, no one knows how to call them, who will pay for their travel, and so on. The prosecutor and the judge are one and the same. The indictment is brought by the same person who delivers the verdict,” he said. “A person summoned to court is not informed of the subject of the charge.”

Diocesan court judges are appointed by the bishop, receive no salary, and continue to serve in ordinary parishes, meaning they are entirely dependent on the bishop, he said.

“When you ask, ‘Can I bring a lawyer?’ they answer, ‘No, this is a closed hearing.’ This is contrary to tradition; in the Byzantine Empire, such lawyers were provided, and an entire staff was supported by the Patriarchate,” said Kurayev, the author of an 800-page book about church courts.

"Before the 1917 Revolution, Russia had ecclesiastical courts, and there were very serious ecclesiastical lawyers. [...] Nothing like this existed in Soviet Russia, nor does it exist in post-Soviet Russia,” Sergei Chapnin, director of communications at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University in New York, told Systema.

Russian Orthodox Church courts “functioned normally” before the Bolshevik Revolution, Kurayev said, but “the Soviet regime destroyed this tradition.” 

It was restored in 2004, he said, but “only began to function” under Kirill, who “drafted church court rules on the fly because he doesn't always find it convenient to deal with undesirable priests himself.”

Sadness but no regret

Formally, defrocked priests can appeal rulings handed down by a diocesan court to the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court, Chapnin said.

But with little hope of a successful appeal inside the system, defrocked priests have shunned that option. Some have turned instead turned an approach that “had not been used for centuries in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church,” Chapnin said: appealing to the Ecumenical Court under Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

Moscow’s war against Ukraine has badly damaged already tense ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and Bartholomew, the spiritual head of all Orthodox Christians.

Kurayev, Uminsky, and Selyavko have had their ecclesiastical ranks reinstated by Bartholomew, following lengthy and painstaking efforts. All three speak with sadness over the separation from their flocks at the hands of a church whose support for Russia’s war against Ukraine they could not accept.

The Constantinople Patriarchate assigned Uminsky to a small church in Paris and provided him with a small apartment above the church but no salary; he makes a living by giving lectures and sermons on social media. He likened his separation from the parishioners at his former church in Moscow to separation from his family.

Selyavko remains in Lithuania, where he now serves at a church that was converted into a concert hall in the Soviet era. It has a stage but no iconostasis, and his services are attended by two dozen people instead of thousands.

Every Sunday morning, Selyavko takes a folding lectern, a couple of icon stands, and candle holders from a storeroom, conducts a service – and puts it all back in the storeroom afterwards.

He does not regret opposing the war, but laments what he has lost.

“My conscience forced me to do it,” he said. “But it feels like you’re walking, on your own two feet, into an operating room where they’re going to amputate something. [...] I dreamed of being a priest since I was six. There are hundreds of people I baptised, married, and performed funeral services for their parents, and now they don’t greet me, they cross to the other side of the street. [...] My uncle, a priest, no longer speaks to me, [and neither do] one of my brothers and my father-in-law, who’s a priest. I can’t calmly visit my father’s grave, because I’ll end up on the grounds of a community that no longer accepts me.”

Defending marriage ‘is not against anyone’s dignity,’ Polish bishops say

Polandʼs bishops have defended the constitutional meaning of marriage, saying that upholding it is not acting “against anyone or taking away anyoneʼs dignity,” as Polish cities begin registering same-sex couples following an EU court ruling.

“Respect for each person does not mean giving up the truth about marriage that the Church has been preaching from the beginning,” the Family Council of the Polish Bishops' Conference (KEP) said in a May 22 statement signed by its chairman, Archbishop Wiesław Śmigiel.

Warsaw and Wrocław have begun transcribing same-sex “marriage” certificates into Polandʼs civil registry after Prime Minister Donald Tusk pledged to implement a November 2025 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union requiring member states to recognize such unions contracted elsewhere in the bloc.

In their reaction, the bishops recall that Article 18 of the Polish Constitution states that “marriage, being a union of a man and a woman, as well as the family, motherhood, and parenthood, shall be placed under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland.”

This is not a formality, the bishops say, warning that “expansive interpretations of law may lead to the weakening of the constitutional understanding of marriage.” 

They contend that “such fundamental issues should not be resolved through interpretations that raise serious social and constitutional concerns,” pointing instead to a deeply rooted reality in “the Polish legal system, cultural tradition, and the Christian understanding of marriage and family, which for centuries have co-shaped European understanding of humanity.”

The episcopate stressed that the debate on marriage “should be conducted with responsibility, calm, and genuine concern for the common good.”

Meanwhile, Slovak lawmaker Michal Šabo “married” his male partner in Hainburg, Austria, just across the Slovak border, where same-sex marriage is legal. 

He wants Slovakia to recognize the marriage, but the countryʼs constitution has defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman since 2014, and a September 2025 amendment recognized only two sexes, male and female.

Šabo knows Slovakia cannot register the union and would eventually sue the country over it, former minister Milan Krajniak warned. The progressives “do not want tolerance” but want others “to have to accept their idea of the world,” the former minister claimed.

In April, after elections in Hungary, the EUʼs top court ruled that the countryʼs 2021 law limiting the promotion of LGBT and gender-related issues to minors, passed under outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, breached the EUʼs founding values.

Vatican cardinal returns to native city for beatification of priests killed by communists

A Vatican cardinal born in the Czech city of Brno will return there on June 6 to preside at the beatification of two priests executed by the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia.

“To go and be there, near where I was born and where my family is from, is of course a very moving experience, and I am looking forward very much to it,” Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told EWTN News.

Czerny was born 80 years ago, but due to a communist threat his family soon emigrated to Canada. Though he remembers the 1950s in Montreal, he said, “I never imagined what was happening behind the Iron Curtain.”

Getting to know Jan Bula and Václav Drbola

The Diocese of Brno, which will mark its 250th anniversary next year, will celebrate the first beatifications in its history. 

The diocese expects thousands of visitors at the cityʼs exhibition center, where a spiritual and cultural program will run all day, and it prepared a novena for the nine days leading up to the beatification.

“The coming days should help us get to know Jan Bula and Václav Drbola personally better, so that they will be close to us and become our spiritual friends,” Bishop Pavel Konzbul explained, stressing that he does not want “the beatification to be a one-time event.”

Jan Bula (1920–1952) and Václav Drbola (1912–1951) faced increasing pressure from the communist regime that took power in 1948 in Czechoslovakia. 

The regime imprisoned them without cause and accused them of complicity in a shooting that killed three communists, although both were already in prison at the time. They were condemned to death in staged trials in the early 1950s.

To prepare the faithful, the diocese has published educational, prayer, and catechetical materials. A six-minute animated film about the martyrs' lives was produced using AI, along with a documentary. Around 40 catechists also went on a pilgrimage this year to places linked with the two priests.

The organizer said the catechists were given “firsthand experience to get to know the churches, parishes, and other places where both martyrs worked” to “spread the story and legacy of Jan Bula and Václav Drbola among children and youth.”

Life as a hymn of praise

The two priests' witness was also recounted at a May 20 conference in Rome, “The Blessed Martyrs of Communism,” organized by the Embassy of the Czech Republic to the Holy See at the Czech Pontifical College Nepomucenum, where Czerny reflected on their martyrdom. The date marked the anniversary of Bulaʼs execution in 1952.

“Their life was a hymn of praise that burst out of the depths of promise and rose up above the tumult of the world,” Czerny said at the opening, adding that the two priests “turned the courtroom into a pulpit and the prison into an altar.”

When the bishops in Czechoslovakia decided to inform the faithful about the worsening situation in 1949 through pastoral and circular letters, many priests did not read them out. 

“They were afraid of the consequences,” said Father Karel Orlita, head of the diocesan phase of the beatification process. Bula and Drbola, however, read the pastoral letter in church, which testified to their courage, Orlita underscored.

The postulator of the Roman phase of the process, Maria Bresciani, said “the profound reason for their persecution was their Christian identity, influence on the faithful, loyalty to the pope and the Church, and their ability to shape peopleʼs consciences, mainly of the young.”

Both speakers agreed that Bula and Drbola were not stubborn or fanatics but simply decided to remain faithful to Christ, in peace and without hatred. Communists even singled out Bulaʼs influence on peopleʼs consciences as problematic, claiming he “abused the trust among people that he had as a priest.”

“They were popular with their parishioners and active in community life, and the reverence for them has a long tradition after their death,” said Eva Vybíralová of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes.

She noted that Bishop Felix Davídek, who was secretly ordained in Czechoslovakia and had known Bula from the seminary, considered him a “candidate for canonization and one of the protectors of the secret Church.”

Bula and Drbola were rehabilitated in 1990 and will become the first beatified victims of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century on the territory of todayʼs Czech Republic.

Arlington catholic priest on leave after allegation of sexual misconduct with minors

A priest serving as rector at the Cathedral of Saint Thomas More in Virginia has been placed on administrative leave while an allegation of sexual misconduct with minors is investigated.

The Catholic Diocese of Arlington identified the priest as The Very Reverend Patrick L. Posey.

According to the diocese, the alleged incidents happened between 1992 and 1993 outside the Diocese of Arlington.

The diocese said Posey denies the accusation and that no determination has been made regarding the allegation.

Officials said the allegation was promptly reported to law enforcement in accordance with diocesan policy.

“The diocese is fully cooperating with law enforcement and will continue to do so,” officials said in a statement.

Posey’s current assignment was rector at the Cathedral of Saint Thomas More in Arlington.

The Reverend Nicholas Barnes has been appointed as parochial administrator at the cathedral, the diocese said.

Anyone with information specifically related to the allegation should contact law enforcement.

Officials also encouraged anyone who knows of misconduct or abuse involving any cleric or diocesan employee to notify civil authorities and contact the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator at 703-841-2530.

Priest on trial for sexual assault in Texas had child with Louisiana congregant, prosecutors say

Texas prosecutors on Thursday established that a Roman Catholic priest being tried there on charges that he illegally exploited his status as a cleric to pursue sex with three spiritually vulnerable congregants had a child with a separate congregant in approximately 2023 – while working outside New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts of one of those three women was unknown on Thursday ahead of her expected appearance on the witness stand, forcing prosecutors to dismiss charges in the case that were associated with her.

That left Anthony Odiong, 57, faced with one charge of sexual assault in the first degree and two such counts in the second degree involving two women. He could receive life imprisonment if convicted of first-degree sexual assault.

Those explosive developments unfolded on the third day of Odiong’s trial at a state courthouse in Waco, Texas, where he worked before being transferred to Luling, Louisiana.

While building the case being tried against Odiong, then Waco police department employee Melissa Beseda traveled to the metro New Orleans area to obtain a DNA sample from a girl whose mother investigators had probable cause to believe had been in a sexual relationship with Odiong – while he provided spiritual direction to her in his role as a clergyman in Luling.

The woman, assigned the pseudonym Presley Jones, also provided a DNA sample – and one was obtained from Odiong, 57. 

Under direct examination from the McLennan county first assistant district attorney Ryan Calvert, Beseda testified that the testing of those samples determined that Odiong was the father of Jones’s daughter, who as of Thursday was about three years old.

Odiong is not charged in connection with a crime against Jones, whose existence had already been reported in the media – but who was revealed for the first time on Thursday to have met the priest while he ministered in New Orleans in recent years.

Nonetheless, authorities maintain that the daughter of Jones and Odiong is living, breathing proof of his pattern of pursuing sex with female parishioners whom he met through his clerical work, which in Texas is considered felony assault.

Monitors in the courtroom of Judge Thomas West showed a picture of Odiong holding his daughter next to her mother as Calvert questioned Beseda. 

Odiong was in a white priestly vestment that matched the color of the outfits worn by the mother and infant daughter. 

All three stood inside a church in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie – a relatively short drive from Luling – where records reviewed by the Guardian show the girl was baptized into the Catholic faith.

‘Felt like my life was over’

Also on Thursday, the woman who initiated the criminal case pending against Odiong publicly told her story for the first time. 

She told jurors how she was working at Waco’s Baylor University and going through a tumultuous divorce with the father of her seven children when she met Odiong on campus in about 2008.

Odiong was a priest at a Catholic church where Baylor employees and students attended, and he approached her while she was crying there over her circumstances one day, said the woman, who chose the pseudonym Mary Doe. 

He hugged her, invited her into his office to talk about what was distressing her and successfully suggested that she enter into what is known as spiritual direction with him after she detailed the end of her abusive marriage – and her primary custody of seven children under the age of 12 at the time, the woman said.

In the ensuing few weeks, she said, Odiong kissed her on her mouth and fondled her while dropping her off at her house and in various places around the church. She said they eventually had sexual intercourse, mostly at her home while her children were visiting their father – and continued to do so for years.

He assuaged her feelings of guilt that she communicated to him by telling her that the conduct was natural and that their connection was “spiritual”, she explained. As their physical relationship escalated, she testified, he purportedly joked, “Oh baby – if you don’t slow things down, we’re going to fuck.”

The woman recounted how their sexual relationship ended when her son, about 14 at the time, caught them in the act in her bedroom after a small house party in 2011. 

Echoing testimony from her son on Wednesday, she said her boy ran to the house of a Baylor administrator who lived nearby and reported what he saw.

It “felt like my life was over” at that point, the woman told Calvert, the first assistant district attorney. “It just kept getting worse every single time.”

She said that her son’s report quickly made its way to Catholic church officials supervising Odiong, and they arranged to speak to her son, she said. 

But after her ex-husband threatened her custody of their children and she was admonished that she might lose her job if she embarrassed Baylor, her son lied to church officials that he possibly misunderstood what he saw with Odiong and his mother.

Eventually, the woman said, she remarried. She said she read an investigative news story published by the Guardian in February 2024 about a group of women who accused Odiong of sexual coercion, unwanted touching and abusive financial control in his capacity as a priest, including in Texas.

The story ran after the archdiocese of New Orleans in December 2023 announced that – years after learning about the complaints – it had removed Odiong from his ministry at Luling’s St Anthony of Padua. 

He had been pastor there since 2015, after previously spending several years in and around Waco as well as studying overseas in Rome.

The Guardian piece noted that Texas considers such conduct by a religious clergyman in particular a felony sexual assault. 

She said she initially believed the Guardian article was about her and that her story had somehow been leaked. 

She then realized that was implausible, deduced the story was about other women and – at her husband’s encouragement – went to Waco police with a copy of the article to report Odiong.

The woman said she had no expectation that investigators would move on her complaint. Yet going to the police “felt like the tiniest bit of justice [I] would get even if no one except [my husband] knew about it”.

In reality, her report prompted an investigation that culminated in the identification of two more women Odiong was alleged to have assaulted by exploiting his clerical status. That resulted in criminal charges against him and the trial in Waco.

One of those two additional women – whom the Guardian had previously interviewed in its coverage of the defendant – testified on Wednesday afternoon that she had also submitted to spiritual direction from Odiong while in the throes of an abusive, ultimately failed marriage with a Baylor instructor. 

Having chosen the pseudonym Jane Doe, she said Odiong eventually kissed her against her will. 

And she said he compelled her to allow her then husband to engage in a form of sexual intercourse which she found uncomfortably painful as a last-ditch effort to save their marriage – and to then convey details about the encounter to Odiong.

Prosecutors now maintain that qualifies as assault by Odiong.

On cross-examination, Odiong’s attorney, Gerald Villarrial, asked her if she began spiritual direction with his client because of problems with another priest. She said no. 

Villarial also had her acknowledge that she kept in touch with Odiong for several years after their son walked in on them,before her reporting him to Waco police.

Whereabouts unknown

Beside Jane and Mary Doe, the third woman with whom Odiong was charged in connection was expected to testify. 

But before court started on Thursday, Calvert said the woman had fled her home with her cellphone, and it was not clear where she was.

Calvert said the woman was in an “extremely emotional and fragile” state as the trial had progressed and at one point nearly collapsed. 

He said prosecutors had decided against issuing what would effectively be a warrant for her arrest to secure her appearance in court, citing her “extremely tenuous” condition, and would continue the case without involving her charges.

Odiong has pleaded not guilty to all counts against him.

He has also argued that prosecutors charged him past a deadline for which they could legally do so. 

But prosecutors charged Odiong under a law which eliminates such statutes of limitation from consideration if there is probable cause to suspect an alleged sex offender had at least five victims.

Calvert on Thursday suggested that Waco police had identified at least four such victims other than the ones Odiong was charged with assaulting. 

Three were from the New Orleans area, Calvert said. A fourth had since resided in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the state where she met Odiong at Steubenville’s Franciscan University at some point.

The Guardian is not naming the women because the outlet generally does not identify people who are alleged to be victims of sexual assault.

The jury heard from one of those three women from the New Orleans area on Thursday. She described how he approached her in Luling while she grieved over her father’s grave site, grappled with medical issues that he learned about from her relative, and invited her to speak with him when she needed.

He later complimented her devout faith and beauty, kissed her and groped her occasionally, and made it clear he desired her, regardless of her being married, she testified. 

But, despite staying in touch until at least shortly before his criminal charges, they never had intercourse, according to that witness, who mentioned that her medical issues affected her ability to be physically intimate.

Prosecutors rested their case after eliciting expert testimony from Scripps Research Institute neuroscientist Hermina Nedelescu, who has studied the effects of clergy abuse on the brain. 

Nedelescu, who is a clergy sexual abuse survivor herself, testified that it is common for victims of such a crime to have formed a potent dependence on their perpetrators that causes them to stay in touch with them for years after the offense.

The trial was adjourned until Friday morning, and officials said it was possible closing arguments could be later in the day.

Villarial said after court on Thursday that Odiong did not intend to testify in his own defense.

Odiong was ordained into the Catholic priesthood in 1993 in his native Nigeria.

The naturalized US citizen transferred to a region encompassing Waco in 2006 under the watch of the then Austin, Texas, bishop, Gregory Aymond. 

Odiong later arrived in Luling several years after Aymond had become the archbishop of New Orleans, though he continued fostering a presence in the Waco area.

No later than 2019, church officials in Austin said they suspended Odiong from ever being able to act as a priest in that area over allegations of misconduct with multiple women. 

Austin officials did not publicly announce that move but said they notified their New Orleans counterparts, though Aymond waited a minimum of four years to similarly suspend Odiong from ministering there.

Aymond retired as New Orleans’ archbishop in February, a couple of months after the city’s archdiocese and its insurers agreed to pay $305m to abuse survivors to settle a bankruptcy protection case that the organization filed amid the financial fallout of the global church’s decades-old clerical molestation scandal. 

His successor is James Checchio, the former bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey.