Pope Leo XIV defends a liturgical reform "faithful to authentic Tradition" and calls for avoiding improvisations in the Mass

During the general audience held this Wednesday in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo XIV dedicated his catechesis to the conciliar constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium and called for a liturgical reform in continuity with the Church’s Tradition, warning against improvisations or arbitrary modifications in the celebration of the liturgy.

Continuing the cycle of catechesis on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the Pontiff focused his reflection on the constitution on the sacred liturgy, defending that authentic liturgical renewal can only be understood from the balance between tradition and legitimate development.

“Preserve sound tradition and open the way to legitimate progress”

According to Leo XIV, the Second Vatican Council adopted as its own the principle already expressed by Pius XII in the encyclical Mediator Dei: the Church is a living organism which, while keeping its doctrine intact, can develop and adapt to historical circumstances.

The Pope recalled that Sacrosanctum Concilium proposed “preserving sound tradition and opening the way to legitimate progress,” a formula he defined as the authentic key to the liturgical reform promoted by the Council.

In this context, he also cited Benedict XVI, who spoke of a “program of reform” based on the balance between the great liturgical tradition of the past and the future of the Church.

“Tradition and progress are not opposed,” explained Leo XIV, stressing that liturgical development must spring organically from the living tradition of the Church and not from artificial ruptures.

The liturgy cannot be modified “on one’s own initiative”

The Pontiff insisted that the Church distinguishes between immutable elements of the liturgy—because they are of divine institution—and other aspects that are open to reform throughout history.

However, he warned that any change must be carried out with prudence, after serious theological, historical and pastoral research, and always in continuity with Catholic tradition.

In one of the most significant statements of the catechesis, Leo XIV recalled that the Second Vatican Council expressly discourages anyone from “adding, removing or changing anything on their own initiative” in liturgical matters.

The Pope especially exhorted the priests entrusted with presiding over the liturgy to safeguard “respect for the liturgical texts and norms,” as an expression of humility before God and fidelity to ecclesial communion.

The liturgy as a driving force of evangelization

Leo XIV also defended that the liturgy has historically been “a driving force of evangelization,” precisely because it knew how to incarnate itself in different cultures without losing its profound identity.

For this reason, he stated that today it is necessary to renew that evangelizing force while remaining in continuity with “the authentic and living Catholic tradition.”

The Pope concluded by asking that the liturgical renewal strengthen ecclesial communion and help the faithful to participate more fully in the holy mysteries.

New appeal for Ukraine

At the end of the audience, Leo XIV also expressed his concern over the intensification of the war in Ukraine and conveyed his closeness to those suffering because of the recent attacks on civilians.

“War does not solve problems; it aggravates them; it does not build security, but multiplies suffering and hatred,” the Pontiff affirmed.

The Pope finally entrusted all peoples wounded by war to the protection of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace.

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!

In the encyclical Mediator Dei, the venerable Pius XII writes that “the Church is a living organism, and therefore, also with regard to the sacred liturgy, while keeping its teaching intact, it grows and develops, adapting and conforming itself to the circumstances and needs that arise over time” (I,V).

In full continuity with this principle, the Second Vatican Council, in the prologue of the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), recognizes as “its duty to concern itself in a special way also with the reform and promotion of the liturgy” (n. 1). The conciliar assembly had in fact been convoked with the aim of “making the Christian life of the faithful grow ever more, adapting better to the needs of our time those institutions subject to change, fostering whatever can contribute to the union of all believers in Christ and strengthening what helps to call all to the bosom of the Church” (ibid.).

At that historical moment, the need for a renewal of the ritual forms through which, for centuries, the Church had carried out the glorification of God and the sanctification of the Christian people was strongly felt. Thanks to the Liturgical Movement, the conviction had matured, later expressed by Saint John Paul II, that “there is a very close and organic bond between the renewal of the liturgy and the renewal of the whole life of the Church. The Church not only acts, but also expresses herself in the liturgy and draws from the liturgy the strength for life” (Letter Dominicae Cenae, 13).

To foster the faithful’s access to the richness of the gifts of grace dispensed by the sacred liturgy, the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium indicates, with a very effective formula, the direction to be followed: “preserve sound tradition and open the way to legitimate progress” (SC, 23).

Pope Benedict XVI perceived in this declaration of intent the “program of reform” of the conciliar Fathers, “in balance with the great liturgical tradition of the past and the future,” observing that “too often tradition and progress are clumsily set in opposition,” whereas “in reality, both concepts are integrated: tradition in some way includes progress within itself. As if the river of tradition also carried its source within itself and tended toward its mouth” (Address to participants in the Congress for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Saint Anselm, 6 May 2011).

The Council affirms the legitimacy of this progress rooted in authentic Tradition, distinguishing within the liturgy “a part that is unchangeable, because it is of divine institution,” from “parts open to change, which over time may or even must vary, when elements less in keeping with the intimate nature of the liturgy itself have been introduced into them or have become less opportune” (SC, 21).

Changes of this kind have constantly taken place over the centuries to allow the faithful a fruitful participation, through ritual actions, in the paschal mystery of Christ, the foundation of the Christian faith. The Church’s worship has thus “become incarnate” in the cultural forms of each age and has been able to influence them and even transform them. The liturgy has been, for centuries, a driving force of evangelization.

Today it is necessary to renew this energy in continuity with the authentic and living Catholic tradition, that is, according to a dynamic oriented toward introducing believers into the fullness of the truth.

It is then understandable why the conciliar Fathers recommended that the revision of the rites, when it responds to “a true and proven usefulness for the Church,” always be carried out “with the precaution that the new forms in some way arise organically from those already existing” (SC, 23).

For the good of the whole Church, every reform must always be “preceded by careful theological, historical and pastoral investigation” (ibid.). In this way, the conciliar Magisterium invites us to avoid disorienting the faithful, dissuading anyone from adding, removing or changing anything in liturgical matters on their own initiative (cf. SC, 22).

The progress evoked by the conciliar constitution in no way compromises ecclesial communion; rather, it intends to confirm and foster it.

I therefore exhort all those called to prepare the celebration of the divine mysteries, in particular the priests who exercise the ministry of liturgical presidency, always to safeguard that respect for the texts and norms of the liturgy which springs from an interior attitude of availability and trust in God, manifesting humility before his greatness and sincere fidelity to ecclesial communion.

Doctrine of the Faith leaked a false complaint against Father Omar after he criticized Bertomeu

On April 6, Father Omar Sánchez dared to do something that, in the current Peruvian Vatican ecosystem, has become reckless: publicly criticize the management of Mons. Jordi Bertomeu as Apostolic Commissioner for the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana. 

Twenty-two days later, on April 28, the journalist (personal friend and in pectore spokesperson for Bertomeu) Paola Ugaz published an extensive report on Epicentro TV accusing the priest of sexual abuse against a young man identified in the text as “Rafael,” an alleged vulnerable victim, based on a complaint signed in 2023 and supposedly submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

There is only one problem with that report, and it is one that admits no nuance: the complaint is false, the so-called “Rafael” does not exist, and the person whom the pixelated photographs were meant to identify as the victim has come forward to dismantle the entire dossier in a public interview in which he shows his face, his full name, and both surnames.

The alleged “Rafael” speaks

His name is Nicolás Arosemena Jiménez Pitzer. He is 36 years old, has lived in Spain for nearly six years, is operations manager for a group of restaurants specializing in gluten-free cuisine, is getting married next year, and, according to his statements, expects to become a father soon. He is 1.90 m tall. 

He belongs to a well-known family in Peru: son of an ambassador, grandson of a Minister of Justice, nephew of former Minister of Transport Luis Chang, and a direct descendant of a President of the Republic. 

Hardly the profile of a “vulnerable person” that Ugaz’s report needed to construct.

In an interview with the Peruvian program Gatos por Liebre, Arosemena has confirmed the operation point by point:

First, that he is, indeed, the person appearing in the two photographs with Father Omar reproduced with blurred faces in the report. 

One of them, he says, corresponds to an ordinary moment during the pandemic, when he and three other volunteers took turns sleeping in the room next to the priest’s to manage the household’s health logistics. 

The other, a joke dressed as an acolyte alongside a foreign volunteer. 

Both photographs that he himself had posted on his personal Instagram and which the journalist, it appears, simply used to illustrate an accusation.

Second, that he lived at the Casa de las Bienaventuranzas for seventeen months, entirely voluntarily, at the age of 29–30, arriving on his own initiative after hearing a homily by Father Omar while residing in another parish. 

He was not admitted, not institutionalized, not in rehabilitation. 

He was an adult volunteer who handled the adult area and the neighborhood soup kitchens during the pandemic. 

He still has the logo of the Asociación de las Bienaventuranzas and the word family tattooed on his body.

Third, that he never, at any time, signed any complaint against Father Omar. 

He neither filed it, nor withdrew it, nor had any knowledge of its existence until a school friend sent him the link to the report. 

The signature on the document that Paola Ugaz presents as evidence, Arosemena says without hesitation, is his mother’s, affixed in 2023, behind his back, while he was living in Greece managing his own restaurant.

Fourth, that Paola Ugaz never contacted him. 

Never. 

Despite claiming in her report that it was the result of several months of investigation, the journalist did not consider it necessary to verify with the alleged victim whether the facts were true, whether he wished to comment, or even whether he was still alive. 

Arosemena says he had never heard of Ugaz in his life until two weeks ago.

“I never filed any complaint. That signature is not mine. I don’t know Miss Ugaz even from a dogfight. If she does not retract, I will have to face her in court,” he declares in the interview, announcing legal action for defamation.

The phantom dossier and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Epicentro’s report claims that the complaint would have been submitted to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. 

If this is true — and everything suggests it is, because it is the kind of detail that a militant report does not invent for the simple reason that the canonical lever is the real objective of the operation — then we are facing something of considerable gravity: a canonical case against a priest, in the competent Congregation, based on a complaint that the alleged victim does not know about, did not sign, and has publicly dismantled.

It is then that the question arises: Who sent that dossier to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? 

Through what channel? 

Who presented it as credible? 

And what role has Mons. Jordi Bertomeu played in that process, whose operational proximity to Paola Ugaz has been public and constant since the days of the Sodalicio?

The key to the drawer

Here lies the key to the method; without it, nothing of what has been happening in recent months makes sense. 

Mons. Bertomeu does not fabricate complaints out of thin air. 

What everything indicates he does is something more subtle and, in canonical terms, considerably more serious: he has access to the drawer. 

To the archive. 

To the files that sleep in the curias and dicasteries, to the complaints that were once filed and withdrawn, to the pastoral consultations that never became cases, to the rumors that some diligent chancellor put in writing five, eight, or ten years ago and that no one ever opened again.

Every priest with a long ministerial life accumulates in some ecclesiastical drawer papers that can be reread in a twisted key. 

A conversation with an adult that one day turned into a complaint with no follow-up. 

A complaint filed by a family member in a moment of tension and archived for inconsistency. 

A photo, a message, a pastoral visit misinterpreted. 

In the vast majority of cases, those papers remain where they should remain: archived, inert, never becoming a case because there was no case.

The method deployed against Father Omar (coinciding with several previous cases) consists precisely in knowing where those papers are and being able to activate them selectively. 

When an inconvenient canon lawyer — think of Coronado  becomes troublesome, an old file about an encounter with an adult that had been dormant for years suddenly appears. 

When a critical priest raises his voice, a maternal complaint withdrawn three years earlier surfaces out of nowhere. 

The papers are taken out of the drawer at the precise moment, handed to the friendly media outlet, and published as if they were the findings of a journalistic investigation that in reality never existed.

That is the difference between ordinary slander and ecclesiastical camorrismo. 

The latter has access to an archive that no one who is not a judge in the case should have operational access to, controls the timing — twenty-two days between the criticism and the publication — and has the pen of a journalist who for years has functioned as its natural loudspeaker.

Twenty-two days: the perfect symmetry

The time between Father Omar’s criticism of Bertomeu and the publication of Ugaz’s report is twenty-two days. 

For anyone familiar with the real timelines of a serious journalistic investigation into ecclesiastical abuse — cross-checking sources, locating the alleged victim, attempting to contact the accused, documentary verification, legal advice prior to publication — twenty-two days is not the time of an investigation. 

It is the time of an activation.

The dossier, let us remember, dates from 2023. 

It had apparently been dormant in some drawer for three years. Until Father Omar raised his voice against the Apostolic Commissioner. 

Then the drawer opened, the document came out, and the journalist who has acted for years as the habitual media interlocutor of Bertomeu himself published the piece.

The method, exposed

The method consists of three moves. 

In the first, the priest, religious, layperson, or media outlet critical of the Apostolic Commissioner’s management is identified. 

In the second, an old paper susceptible of being reread as a complaint is located in the archive: an archived grievance, a third-party signature, a reinterpreted testimony, a recontextualized photograph, a chat taken out of context. 

In the third, it is published through the friendly media outlet, without verification with the alleged victim, without any real right of reply, with the presumption of canonical gravity as a guarantee of impact. 

The complaint, moreover, escalates: from the media to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where the mere existence of the file is enough to mark the priest for years.

Father Omar has had the good fortune — and it is a statistically exceptional fortune — that the alleged victim is a thirty-six-year-old adult with an influential family, resident in Europe, with his own resources and an elementary sense of decency that has led him to come forward. 

Most priests subjected to this method do not have that fortune. 

Most face alleged victims who cannot be located, files they cannot verify, journalists who do not respond to replies, and a canonical system that, in case of doubt, suspends, transfers, or sanctions.

InfoVaticana, on the horizon

This outlet has its own reasons for knowing the method. 

We know, from information circulating in circles close to the Apostolic Commissioner, that Bertomeu has moved to try to name specific members of InfoVaticana’s editorial board in the pages of El País, not hesitating to do something as serious as instrumentalizing for that purpose real victims of the Sodalicio whose pain would deserve infinitely more respectful treatment than serving as ammunition to be hurled against inconvenient media outlets. 

So far, he has not dared to excommunicate us. 

So far.

But the logic is the same as the one deployed against Father Omar, against the Peruvian priests and laypeople who have dared to disagree with the Commissioner’s management, and against anyone who has had the temerity to demand accountability for a process — the Sodalicio one — whose resolution has left fundamental questions unanswered. 

The logic is: if you go after Bertomeu, he will build a case against you.

The real victims, the big losers

The most painful aspect of all this is what this way of operating does to the real victims of ecclesiastical abuse. 

Every fabricated file, every instrumentalized complaint, every militant report that collapses at the first confrontation with reality, devalues the authentic victims. 

It devalues all the serious work of protecting minors that the Church, with difficulty and with delay, has tried to build over the last twenty years.

When an Apostolic Commissioner and his allied journalist fabricate a case to neutralize a critic, they do not only harm the accused priest. 

They harm every victim who, tomorrow, arrives at a canonical office or a serious newsroom with a genuine file and encounters the weary gaze of someone who has already seen too many fabrications.

Jordi the Excommunicator

There was a time — dark and golden — when the men of the Church, when they wanted to get rid of an enemy, resorted to poison, the dagger or, failing that, a well-drafted bull. 

They were the Borgias, of course. 

They had style. 

They had craft. 

They had, above all, the elegance of not pretending they were acting for the good of the victims.

Mons. Jordi Bertomeu is no Borgia. 

He lacks the Renaissance, he has too much microphone and, above all, he is undone by something no cardinal of five centuries ago would have allowed himself: the face of circumstances. 

A Borgia who poisoned smiled afterwards. 

Bertomeu, when he excommunicates, does so with a contrite expression, like someone lamenting another’s misfortune.

Because we are talking about the priest who in 2024 managed to slip onto the table of an elderly and exhausted Pope a penal precept against two Peruvian laymen, Caccia and Blanco. 

Their crime? 

Having denounced him. 

That the denounced should obtain the excommunication of the denouncer is a literary genre that not even Stendhal would have attempted. 

Too implausible. 

Francis, when he learned what they had made him sign, revoked the decree in his own hand. 

A Borgian detail, this one: the Pope correcting the courtier. 

Pity the courtier.

There is something profoundly commedia dell’arte about this character. 

The liquidator who confesses he does not know what he is liquidating. 

The repairer who gathers twelve victims to sign a communiqué in his own defense, written in canon-lawyer Spanish and speaking about people absolutely foreign to them. 

The instructor who complains about the media echo he himself provokes with every call to the newsroom. 

The commissioner who if you criticize him he excommunicates you or pulls a false complaint out of the drawer. 

The anti-corruption crusader who, while reading these lines — he will not even have finished the article, will be telephoning Religión Digital or El País (depending on the budget) to urgently commission a laudatory column with flattering photographs. 

Something shameful. 

Something, above all, tacky: because the Borgias were many things, but tacky they were not.

And here is something that needs clarifying, because it disconcerts even the person signing these lines. 

We are not Sodalites. 

We have nothing to do with the Sodalicio, nor with Figari, nor with its false charisma, nor with the network of complicities that for decades protected that disaster. 

In fact, from within the Sodalicio itself we have been asked on more than one occasion to stop pointing at Bertomeu, as if criticizing the commissioner were doing the intervened body a favor. 

It is not. 

That the liquidator is an inept and negligent ecclesiastical official does not turn the liquidated into an innocent victim. 

They are two different things. 

That the Church has chosen for this mission a man whose main proven competence is self-promotion does not exonerate the Sodalicio of anything. 

It only shows that the Holy See, at times, has a very peculiar sense of humor when choosing its instruments.

The Borgias, at least, were sharp instruments. 

Bertomeu is an instrument that looks at itself in the mirror. 

And while it looks, it leaves as precedent a canonical botch that for decades will weaken the Law of the Church. 

That, yes, is a poison. 

Slow, effective, irreversible. 

He has merit: he has found the way to harm the institution from within and get applauded for it.

Borgia would have been too much flattery. Let us settle for what he is: Jordi the Excommunicator. 

A minor character of an age without greatness. 

And, like all minor characters with a vocation for protagonist, profoundly, irredeemably, ridiculous.

From ecology to anthropology: Leo XIV's turn in Magnifica Humanitas

One of the most significant aspects of Magnifica Humanitas lies not only in what it says, but in what it has ceased to place at the center of papal discourse. 

After years in which the ecological question had become almost the overarching interpretive framework for social, economic, cultural, and even spiritual life, the first encyclical of Leo XIV shifts the focus toward a more radical concern: the crisis of the human person.

The ecological question does not disappear. 

Nor does Leo XIV renounce the critique of the technocratic paradigm that was insistently formulated during the pontificate of Francis. 

On the contrary, the encyclical retains that concern for a technology turned into an autonomous power, for an economy detached from any moral limit, and for a globalization capable of standardizing peoples, desires, and behaviors. 

But the symbolic center has changed.

In Magnifica Humanitas we are no longer faced with an encyclical organized around the “common home,” but around the safeguarding of the human. 

And that shift is not minor.

Francis tended to present the contemporary crisis as a socio-environmental crisis with multiple faces: ecological deterioration, economic injustice, the throwaway culture, the exploitation of the poor, the destruction of ecosystems, and the technocratic abuse of creation. 

Ecological concern often functioned as the great integrative category. From it, the economy, politics, consumption, energy, migration, and even spirituality were interpreted.

Leo XIV, by contrast, appears to reverse the order. 

The ultimate root of the problem is no longer situated in humanity’s relationship with the environment, but in humanity’s understanding of itself. 

The ecological, economic, or technological crisis would be the consequence of a prior anthropological crisis: the obscuring of the truth about the human person.

That is the real turning point.

The encyclical does not first ask what humanity is doing with nature, but what humanity is doing with itself. 

It does not dwell primarily on the damage caused to the planet, but on the danger that the person may be reduced to data, function, algorithm, object of manipulation, or material available for technical redesign.

This explains the tone of the document. Instead of the ecological vocabulary that dominated much of recent magisterial teaching - sustainability, common home, climate debt, energy transition, biodiversity, environmental peripheries - Leo XIV recovers a more directly anthropological and theological language: human nature, truth, limit, interior freedom, Incarnation, Babel, grace, vulnerability, technocracy, transhumanism.

The difference is not merely stylistic. It is doctrinal and pastoral.

In recent years, part of ecclesial discourse risked becoming increasingly indistinguishable from the language of major international organizations. 

Catholicism spoke of climate, sustainability, integral development, biodiversity, and ecological transition with an intensity that sometimes relegated more properly Christian categories to the background. 

Sin, grace, truth, human nature, redemption, or eternal life were often displaced by a moral grammar far more recognizable to global elites than to the Church’s doctrinal tradition.

Magnifica Humanitas appears to correct that drift without needing to state it explicitly.

Leo XIV does not abandon concern for creation, but ceases to make it the narrative axis of everything. 

The ecological question is integrated into a broader reflection on the human person, technology, and civilization. 

Creation continues to have value, but the center returns to the human creature, made in the image of God and called not to fabricate itself, but to receive, safeguard, and elevate its own nature.

This recovery of the anthropological center has important consequences. The first is that the Pope identifies as the principal threat not only environmental destruction, but the disfigurement of the human person. 

The great contemporary catastrophe would not be solely a polluted world, but a human being who no longer knows who he or she is. 

A person who interprets himself or herself as a modifiable product, programmable consciousness, optimizable organism, or liquid identity without a received nature.

That is why transhumanism occupies such a prominent place in the encyclical. Leo XIV understands that the current technological challenge does not consist only in more powerful machines, but in an ancient spiritual temptation presented in futuristic language: the will to transcend the human condition without God. 

The dream of eliminating limits, overcoming vulnerability, redesigning nature, and achieving a form of technical self-salvation.

In response to that promise, the Pope’s answer is not ecological, but Christological. The limit is not simply a problem that technology must abolish. Vulnerability is not a shameful anomaly. 

Dependence is not a defeat. Flesh is not a biological residue to be overcome by artificial intelligence or genetic engineering. 

Christianity affirms that God himself has entered history by assuming the human condition, not by despising it.

This point is decisive. The Incarnation thus becomes the great Christian response to transhumanism. 

While technological culture dreams of an augmented, unlimited, and self-sufficient human being, faith presents a God made flesh, born of a woman, subject to time, suffering, and death. 

The greatness of the human person does not lie in escaping one’s nature, but in receiving it, purifying it, and elevating it by grace.

From this perspective, the critique of technocracy also changes. In Francis, the technocratic paradigm appeared closely linked to the exploitation of the earth and the logic of domination over creation. 

In Leo XIV, that critique shifts toward domination over the human person himself. Technology no longer threatens only forests, seas, or ecosystems, but the interior freedom, conscience, memory, attention, and identity of individuals and peoples.

Artificial intelligence then emerges as a spiritual problem of the first order. 

Not because it is demonic in itself, nor because it must be rejected as an instrument, but because it can become an invisible architecture of governance over the soul. 

It can select what we see, anticipate what we desire, modulate what we feel, and condition what we ultimately consider true.

This is perhaps one of the deepest intuitions of Magnifica Humanitas. The danger is not only that the machine will replace human jobs. It is that it will end up mediating the very experience of reality. 

A civilization that delegates its memory, its judgment, and its imagination to algorithmic systems risks losing not only jobs, but interiority.

That is also why the encyclical pays attention to peoples and their right to preserve their own identity. This is not an accessory issue. 

In a technocratic, globalized, and digital civilization, the isolated individual and the uprooted people are easier to administer. 

The loss of historical memory, cultural continuity, and concrete belonging does not necessarily liberate the human person; often it leaves him or her defenseless before impersonal powers far stronger than he or she is.

Here the new framework becomes clear. The defense of creation continues to make sense, but it is no longer enough. 

The underlying problem is a civilization that uproots the human person from everything: from his or her body, nature, history, people, family, tradition, and ultimately from God. 

Ecology, in that context, is assumed into a broader defense of reality against the will to manipulate everything.

That is why Magnifica Humanitas can be read as an encyclical marking an epochal shift. Not because it breaks with previous magisterial teaching, but because it reorders its priorities. 

Ecological concern no longer appears as the great pastoral absolute, but as one dimension of a much deeper crisis. The decisive word is no longer “planet,” but “human person.”

This may prove uncomfortable for those who had turned the ecological agenda into a kind of obligatory common ground in contemporary Catholic discourse. 

For years, certain ecclesial circles seemed more comfortable speaking of emissions, sustainability, and biodiversity than of human nature, sin, truth, or grace. Leo XIV does not deny the importance of those issues, but repositions them.

And in repositioning them, he changes the conversation.

The Church is not called to be an environmental NGO with religious language. Nor a spiritual department of global agendas. 

Its task is not to repeat, with added incense, the consensuses of international institutions. Its mission is to safeguard the truth about God and about the human person. 

And precisely for that reason it can also speak of creation, the economy, technology, and politics, but without ever losing the center.

The impression, after a first reading, is that Leo XIV wished to begin his doctrinal pontificate there. 

Not with ecology, not with governance, not with synodality, not with a new programmatic declaration on internal reforms, but with the fundamental question: what is the human person.

And that, after years of ecological hypertrophy in ecclesial language, already constitutes a relevant novelty.

The Pope does not seem to deny that an environmental crisis exists. 

What he seems to say is that there is a prior and more dangerous crisis: the anthropological crisis of a civilization that no longer recognizes human nature as gift, limit, and vocation. 

A civilization that seeks to redesign the human person while pretending to save the world.

That is the key to Magnifica Humanitas. 

The Church once again reminds us that there is no true defense of creation if the human person is not defended first. 

And there is no true defense of the human person if we forget that his or her greatness does not arise from technology, but from having been created in the image of God and called to the life of grace.

The Four from Écône: (1) : Father Pascal Schreiber

On July 1, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX) plans to celebrate in Écône the episcopal consecration of four priests chosen by its superior general, Father Davide Pagliarani. 

Among them is the Swiss priest Pascal Schreiber, current rector of the Herz Jesu seminary in Zaitzkofen, Germany, and one of the most representative figures of the new generation of superiors formed entirely within the Fraternity founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The decision was officially announced this Tuesday by the General House of the FSSPX, which presents the upcoming episcopal consecrations as a means to ensure the continuity of its ministries and the administration of the sacraments according to the traditional rite. 

Although the Fraternity insists that it does not intend to establish a “parallel authority” within the Church or question the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, the initiative has increased tensions with Rome in recent months.

A priest formed entirely within the Fraternity

Pascal Schreiber was born in 1972 in the Swiss canton of Aargau, into a large Catholic family. He entered the Herz Jesu seminary in Zaitzkofen, Bavaria, in 1992, and later completed his priestly formation at the international seminary in Écône, Switzerland, the nerve center of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.

He was ordained a priest in 1998 by Bishop Bernard Fellay, one of the four bishops consecrated by Lefebvre in 1988.

His subsequent career combines pastoral, educational, and governance experience. 

After several years of ministry in Germany and French-speaking Switzerland, he took on responsibilities in various Fraternity schools in Mels and Wil, where for more than a decade he worked in the formation of young people.

In 2014 he was called to the headquarters of the Swiss district of the FSSPX in Rickenbach to serve as bursar, and two years later he was appointed superior of the Swiss District, a position he held until 2020.

Since August of that same year, he has directed the Zaitzkofen seminary, one of the main centers of priestly formation of the Fraternity in Europe and a reference point for German-speaking candidates from numerous countries.

Silence, liturgy, and interior life

His conferences and homilies reveal a spirituality marked by the importance of silence, interior life, and the traditional liturgy as the axis of priestly formation.

Shortly after assuming the direction of the Zaitzkofen seminary, he explained that a traditional seminary must be at the same time “a house of higher studies and a monastery,” insisting that the intellectual formation of the priest cannot be separated from spiritual life.

For Schreiber, silence occupies an essential place in this formative process. “Silence must reign in the seminary; it is a necessary condition for union with God and intellectual work,” he stated when describing the rhythm of life at the German house of formation.

The liturgy constitutes another of the central axes of his thought. In various homilies and conferences he has insisted that “the liturgy is the center of the future priest’s life,” not only as a ceremonial expression, but as a spiritual and doctrinal school.

This emphasis on the supernatural dimension also runs through his reading of the contemporary crisis in the Church. 

While still superior of the Swiss District, in a 2019 interview with Rhône FM radio, he attributed the growth of the Fraternity not to an adaptation to the modern world, but precisely to the opposite phenomenon.

“What fills the churches is not adaptation to the modern world, but the Truth,” he stated at the time when commenting on the increase of faithful in the FSSPX chapels, especially among young families.

A generation after Lefebvre

Unlike the first historical leaders of the Fraternity, directly marked by the tensions following the Second Vatican Council and by the figure of Marcel Lefebvre, Pascal Schreiber already belongs to a later generation: priests born after the Council and formed entirely within the educational and spiritual structures of the FSSPX itself.

His profile also reflects an internal evolution of the Fraternity in recent decades: less focused on public confrontation with Rome and more oriented toward consolidating seminaries, schools, priories, and stable communities in different countries.

This does not mean, however, an abandonment of the traditional doctrinal positions that have characterized the FSSPX since its origins. 

In his preaching, Schreiber continues to defend the need to preserve intact traditional Catholic doctrine, liturgy, and spirituality in the face of what he considers a profound crisis of faith in the contemporary world.

An appointment of great relevance within the FSSPX

The future episcopal consecration of Father Schreiber also carries strong symbolic value for the traditionalist world in Europe. Not only because of his Swiss nationality — closely linked to the history of Écône — but also because for the past six years he has directed precisely the German seminary where dozens of future priests of the Fraternity are formed.

At 53 years of age, he represents a young profile within the governance structure of the FSSPX and embodies a generation that did not directly experience the great ecclesial ruptures of the late twentieth century, but has grown up in the doctrine and spirituality proper to the 

If the consecrations scheduled for July 1 ultimately take place, Pascal Schreiber will become one of the new bishops of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X in an ecclesial context marked by tensions between the FSSPX and the Holy See.

Madrid responds to the criticism: Churches will remain open for confessions during the Pope's visit

After the controversy generated by the creation of “listening spaces” at the main mass events during the visit of Pope Leo XIV, the Archdiocese of Madrid has rectified its initial approach and has finally strengthened access to the sacrament of reconciliation, thus dispelling the criticism that arose in recent days over the absence of confessionals at the encounters planned during the papal visit.

The decision confirms that numerous churches in the city center will remain open during the night of June 6 with priests available to hear confessions.

The archdiocese reacted and began coordinating a pastoral plan aimed at facilitating the sacrament of forgiveness. Auxiliary Bishop of Madrid, Monsignor Vicente Martín Muñoz, sent a letter to priests and parish leaders requesting that churches and chapels remain open throughout the night.

Churches open and priests available all night

The director of communications for the Archdiocese of Madrid, Sara de la Torre, stated that “no one should think there will be no confessions” during the papal visit, emphasizing that Madrid has hundreds of parishes prepared to provide spiritual care to the faithful.

Madrid’s strategy will involve leveraging the extensive network of churches in the city center, which will remain open with priests hearing confessions throughout the day and especially during the night following the youth vigil.

In addition, Almudena Cathedral will hold a preparatory vigil on June 5, during which the sacrament of reconciliation will also be available.

The archdiocese insists that the so-called “listening spaces” were never intended to replace the sacrament of confession, but rather to complement it pastorally for those young people who wished to talk or receive spiritual accompaniment.

“Nothing compares to the sacrament of confession,” De la Torre affirmed, explaining that these spaces of accompaniment are of a different nature and do not replace the sacramental encounter with the priest.

Barcelona to install 50 confessionals at the Olympic Stadium

Meanwhile, Barcelona will install 50 confessionals inside the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys for the vigil with the Pope on June 9.

The Catalan organizers have planned 25 confessionals in the Tribuna area and another 25 in the Lateral area, explicitly integrating the sacrament of forgiveness into the spiritual program of the youth gathering.

The director of the Diocesan Secretariat for Pastoral Care in Barcelona, Fr. Carlos Bosch, explained that there will be “a time to receive the sacrament of forgiveness” before the great moment of prayer with Leo XIV.

A pastoral visit of great spiritual dimension

Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain will mobilize thousands of faithful and will feature significant organizational and media infrastructure. 

The government has officially declared the trip an event of special public interest, while security and mobility arrangements in Madrid and Barcelona continue to be finalized.

In this context, the strengthening of confessions in Madrid represents a significant shift from the initial reports and seeks to ensure that the Pope’s events also have a clear sacramental and spiritual dimension, especially for the young people who will participate in the vigils and liturgical celebrations.

Israeli incursion in Bethlehem revives concern over Christian exodus in the Holy Land

Israeli forces stormed the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank last Saturday, firing tear gas into various residential neighborhoods and causing scenes of panic among the civilian population, according to a report by the organization Persecuted Church Alerts citing testimonies and local media present on the ground.

Eyewitnesses stated that several gas grenades were launched inside and around inhabited areas, forcing numerous families to abandon streets and homes due to the dense smoke and breathing difficulties. 

Images shared on social media showed large areas of the city covered in smoke.

The operation took place amid an increase in Israeli military incursions into various localities in the West Bank, where raids, detentions, and clashes have intensified in recent months amid growing political tension and rising violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinian communities.

Concern grows over the future of Christians in the Holy Land

Local Christian leaders and church representatives have long warned about the deterioration of living conditions in the region, marked by movement restrictions, economic crisis, insecurity, and frequent military operations.

Various Churches present in the Holy Land have also warned of the progressive exodus of Palestinian Christians, a trend that threatens to further reduce the historic Christian presence in the places linked to the origins of Christianity.

Violence reaches one of the main symbols of Christianity

The expansion of military operations into major Christian centers such as Bethlehem is further evidence that instability in the West Bank no longer affects only isolated areas, but also places of immense spiritual importance for millions of Christians.

As tensions in the region continue, many local Christians fear that political, economic, and social pressure will continue to accelerate the progressive emptying of the historic Christian communities of the Holy Land.

Archbishop Farrell welcomes Pope Leo’s first encyclical

The Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, has today published the first encyclical, major teaching letter, of his papacy. The letter, Magnifica Humanitas (The Grandeur of Humanity) is, as its subtitle explains, aimed at safeguarding humanity at a time of artificial intelligence. 

At its heart is an appeal to all people of good will to work together to ensure that AI will be developed and used in ways that promote ‘human flourishing’ and help us to build a better and more just world. 

At this moment in time, the human family is facing a ‘pivotal choice’ and Pope Leo is calling on the global community in all its manifestations – international organisations, governments, commercial companies, scientists and technology specialists, educators, citizens, parents and consumers – to work together to ensure that those who are driving the development of the technology are truly open about what they are doing and are subject to oversight and accountability. 

Pope Leo observes that “most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best.” 

He insists that crucial questions cannot be avoided: “Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as people and as a human community?” (Par 6).

The Pope is inviting us to think about the values, traditions, social customs and practises that help the human community to flourish. Human flourishing requires us to be attentive to the factors that promote the well-being of individuals, that protect and support the human communities where people live and grow together, that remind us to have an inclusive understanding of the human family where the dignity of the most vulnerable is defended and valued and where we live in peace with one another. 

In recent years, we are also increasingly aware that human flourishing will not be sustainable if we do not live in harmony with our natural ecological environment. 

This reflection becomes even more urgent in the context of AI which it is acknowledged is set to be highly disruptive of our existing political, economic, labour and social dynamics.

In terms of the impact on individuals, Pope Leo highlights the risk that overreliance on AI will weaken and impair our capacity for critical refection, will blind us to many of the biases and interests embodied in data sets that condition the outcomes of Generative AI platforms, and that the seemingly human voice and sensitivity of many chatbots will undermine our capacity or appetite for true human friendships and relationships.

“They may imitate language, behaviour and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.” (Par 99).

The human community is suffering a crisis of trust where the mixture of false news and deep fakes is worsening existing patterns of polarisation and undermining the capacity of people to communicate and build good relationships. 

In a context where AI is already worsening these possibilities, the Holy Father encourages all people to renew their commitment “to transparency in communication and the honest pursuit of facts.” He invites parents, educators and the broader community to be especially vigilant in caring for the young. 

“Today, accompanying children and young people in using technology for developing responsible relationships, helping them to recognise the risks and choose what fosters inner freedom, is a concrete form of charity and will safeguard their dignity.” (Par 238).

In a world where inequality is already embedded in ‘structures of sin’ – unfair economic and political systems which perpetuate poverty and exclusion – the Pope invites us to be alert to the capacity of AI to exacerbate these injustices. The uneven distribution of the wealth generated by technology and the threat it poses to the employment of many workers must be acknowledged.

“To think that new technologies will automatically benefit everyone is to ignore the evidence. Unless transformations at the design stage prioritise the prevention of new and further disparities, technological progress will inevitably produce structural inequalities. Today, justice requires access to the benefits of innovation, including care, knowledge, tools and opportunities.” (Par 161). 

The Pope encourages politicians and economists to be particularly attentive to prepare for a relatively immediate future where many workers across all sectors risk being replaced by machines with huge impacts for their well-being and that of families. 

This is not just a matter of the economic consequences “since work is not merely a source of income but a crucial sphere in which identity is formed, friendships and relationships are forged, practical responsibilities are learned and one’s vocation is discerned.” (Par 167). 

Attention to social sustainability cannot be disassociated from vigilance for our natural environment, the letter specifies the high energy requirements of the technological infrastructure and the environmental and social costs of the materials that it consumes and stresses that “it is essential to develop more sustainable technological solutions that reduce environmental impact and help protect our common home.” (Par 101).

The final chapter of the Encyclical focuses on questions relating war and peace and challenges the human community to build a civilisation of love. The capacity of AI to increase the lethality of the weapons of war and to dictate ever more instant decision making (at times automating the process) is noted with concern and he calls for international regulation of its use in the military arena. 

At the same time the Pope insists that the pursuit of peace is fundamentally a human task and invites us to a process of disarmament starting with words: “Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world.” (Par 214). He extends the concept of disarmament to frame his vision for a future where technology can help us to build a better world: “I would like to employ the expression ‘to disarm,’ which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed,’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. 

To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. 

Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.” (Par 110).

Pope Leo, in calling on the human family to come together to ensure that technology realises its undoubted potential to support integral human flourishing, is also celebrating the grandeur of humanity and the capacity of human beings to overcome our weaknesses, limitations, self-centeredness and divisions to build together in a truly collaborative way a more just society – the call is for each to contribute according to his or her expertise, capacity, influence and wisdom. It is a future that will only be built by patient human dialogue and cooperation. 

“It is this intertwining of just institutions, credible witnesses and daily fidelity that sustains hope and provides clear direction for technological progress without allowing the heart to regress. For this reason, humanity – in all its grandeur and woundedness – must never be replaced or surpassed.” (Par 126). 

Salvation will not come from technology or from those who wish to ‘perfect’ humanity (often by eliminating human weakness or vulnerability) but by a renewed commitment to respecting the intrinsic dignity and rights of every person – a commitment elevated and empowered by the inexhaustible grace of God and God’s unconditional love for each and every human person.

To hear the Holy Father’s own voice, I encourage everyone to read this Encyclical which is a considered account of the existential challenges and great opportunities the AI technology revolution poses. We cannot, however, allow ourselves to be reduced to objective mathematical formulae or algorithms. 

The grandeur of our humanity is grounded in the image and likeness of God, which is far more than the sum total of data, statistical information and predictability.

Bishop of Limerick issues warning over AI development following new Papal encyclical

The Bishop of Limerick, Brendan Leahy, has called for rapid and careful regulation of artificial intelligence, warning that society stands on the cusp of a profound, epoch-making shift.

Welcoming Pope Leo’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Bishop Leahy described the document as a wonderful resource for reflection on how emerging technologies will reshape our lives.

In a statement to Live 95 News, Bishop Leahy emphasised that technological advancements must serve the collective good of wider humanity rather than simply generating wealth and influence for a select few.

He warned that without proper ethical guardrails, the rapid expansion of digitalisation, artificial intelligence, and robotics could escape societal control and cause untold damage to social structures.

The Bishop noted that the impact of these rapidly evolving technologies is no longer a distant concern for future generations.

He highlighted the presence of Christopher Olah, the co-founder of leading AI laboratory Anthropic, at the launch of the Papal encyclical as a clear indicator of the serious ethical challenges ahead.

According to Bishop Leahy, Olah’s involvement underscores an urgent need for independent oversight from governments, civil society, and religious leaders.

The Bishop pointed out that AI's potential to disrupt human labour and transform decision-making processes is already a reality, stating that we are already seeing these shifts happen across Ireland, and undoubtedly here in Limerick as well.

A central theme of Pope Leo's letter is the danger of a "technocratic paradigm" becoming dominant in modern society.

Bishop Leahy explained that this mindset risks reducing the complexities of human reality to merely what can be measured, calculated, or made functionally perfect.

The encyclical serves as a stark reminder that artificial intelligences do not experience life, do not possess a body, and cannot feel joy, pain, love, or responsibility. 

Because AI cannot assume moral responsibility, the Bishop argued that society must never forget the value of human limitation, vulnerability, and relationships, which remain the only authentic expressions of humanity.

The Bishop also raised serious concerns about the digital ecosystem, noting that technological transformation is never neutral. 

In an era where manipulated information, altered images, and polarised narratives can spread effortlessly, he warned that the boundaries between truth and falsehood are becoming dangerously blurred.

Concluding his thoughts, Bishop Leahy referenced the Pope's closing question to humanity: "Pope ​Leo, ​in ​the ​encyclical, ​recalled for ​Christians their vocation ​to build a civilisation ​of ​love."

"Here ​at ​home ​in Limerick, ​in ​Ireland, we must come ​together ​across government, academia, and, indeed, faiths to ensure that we do ​whatever we can to make sure we influence AI ​in ​the ​right ​way ​rather ​than it ​influencing ​us ​as a society in ​the ​wrong way." 

Czech police release Russian bishop after ‘white powder’ found in his car

Czech police have released a Russian Orthodox bishop who was detained on suspicion of drug possession, after Moscow condemned the arrest as a politically motivated setup.

Bishop Hilarion, also known by his secular name, Grigory Alfeyev, was stopped by police on Sunday in Karlovy Vary, a spa town in western Czechia popular with Russian tourists, after officers discovered containers of a white substance in the boot of his car.

In a statement published on Tuesday after his release without charge, Hilarion said forensic tests had confirmed the substance was a banned narcotic, but insisted he had been framed.

“The mere discovery of a prohibited substance does not answer the key question – how these items ended up in the vehicle in the first place,” his post on Telegram said.

Hilarion, 60, heads the Russian Orthodox congregation in Karlovy Vary, which is home to a sizeable Russian diaspora.

The Czech national drug headquarters had said the bishop’s vehicle was stopped after an anonymous tip-off was received alleging the transportation of narcotic and psychotropic substances.

Russia’s foreign ministry called the arrest a “deliberate, orchestrated provocation”.

The Russian Orthodox church described the incident as a “classic setup”, while Russia’s foreign ministry said it had summoned Czechia’s chargé d’affaires in Moscow, Jan Ondřejka, to formally protest against the detention.

Hilarion previously headed the Russian Orthodox church’s department for external church relations, essentially serving as the church’s foreign minister.

Once regarded as a close confidant of Patriarch Kirill, the powerful head of the Russian Orthodox church and close ally of Vladimir Putin, Hilarion fell out of favour with the church leadership in recent years.

Unlike many senior clergymen who openly backed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hilarion neither publicly supported nor condemned the war, and was demoted and posted abroad shortly after the invasion began in February 2022.

In December 2024, the Russian Orthodox church’s synod removed Hilarion from the administration of the Budapest-Hungarian diocese after a younger aide accused him of sexual harassment – allegations he denies. 

He also faced criticism over his allegedly lavish lifestyle, including yachting and skiing holidays, as well as reports about his ownership of an estate near Budapest. 

Hilarion has said he has been able to purchase property and fund his lifestyle from royalties received for his books and films.

Hilarion was later reassigned to the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Karlovy Vary.

Priest forgiven for drunkenly crashing bishop’s car

A priest who drunkenly crashed a bishop’s car and wrote off another vehicle has been let off by a Church disciplinary panel.

The Rev Sion Hughes-Carew was three times over the drink-drive limit following birthday celebrations with the Bishop of Lincoln when he crashed into a car last October.

He crashed into a parked £2,000 Skoda Octavia half a mile from Lincoln Cathedral twice, and rolled into a garden wall and railings.

The parked car, which belonged to Brian Meagher, 78, the partner of actress Heather Bell, who has played Clarrie Grundy on radio soap opera The Archers since 1979, was written off.

Mr Hughes-Carew, 40, was arrested and admitted to driving the bishop’s £50,000 Kia Sportage on Oct 30. He was handed a two-year driving ban and fined £873 at Lincoln magistrates’ court.

It was thought Mr Hughes-Carew faced being defrocked, but it has emerged that he escaped being stripped of his holy orders despite the Lincoln diocese revealing that Bishop Stephen Conway was reportedly unaware that the vicar had driven off in his car.

Let off with ‘rebuke and injunction’

In January, a Church of England panel found Mr Hughes-Carew had engaged in “conduct unbecoming and inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders”.

He was let off with a “rebuke and injunction”, The Daily Mail reported. 

A church spokesman said he remained a vicar.

Mr Hughes-Carew had been vicar of All Saints Church and priest-in-charge at St Mary le Wigford in Lincoln since February last year.

He has since stepped away from both roles, telling parishioners he was “deeply sorry” and adding: “Many of you will know that, in the months leading up to that evening, I had been under a great deal of stress and struggling with depression. 

“While that does not in any way excuse my actions, it does form part of the context within which they occurred.”

Bishop Conway has since been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a man. 

He is suspended while police inquiries continue.

Trial of US priest charged with sexual assault begins with jury selection in Texas

The criminal trial of a Roman Catholic priest who ministered in Texas and south-east Louisiana and was charged with illicitly abusing his status as a clergyman to pursue sex with spiritually vulnerable female congregants began on Tuesday with jury selection.

Anthony Odiong, 57, faces five charges of first-degree sexual assault and two such counts in the second degree in a state courthouse in Waco, Texas, involving three women whom he met while working there.

He could receive life imprisonment if convicted on any of the first-degree charges at the end of a trial that could last a week or more. 

Second-degree sexual assault can carry between two and 20 years in prison as well as a maximum $10,000 fine.

The charges against Odiong were effectively prompted by a February 2024 report from the Guardian about women who accused him of sexual coercion, unwanted touching and abusive financial control after meeting him in his capacity as a priest.

A woman whom the Guardian did not interview subsequently brought a copy of the outlet’s story on Odiong to Waco police and reported that he had sexually assaulted her in 2012. 

Investigators subsequently identified as many as 10 women whom Odiong was suspected of sexually preying on after meeting them over the years while ministering in Texas as well as the New Orleans archdiocese.

Prosecutors eventually managed to charge Odiong with alleged conduct that Texas law classifies as a felony: exploiting three women’s “emotional dependency upon him as a spiritual adviser” to engage in sexual conduct with them.

Those women include the one who reported Odiong to Waco police; another whom the Guardian interviewed in its piece on the clergyman; and a third whom officers identified through messages recovered during the ensuing investigation.

Many of those women’s cases, including ones from Louisiana, did not yield criminal counts. 

But Waco prosecutors contend that his having more than four accusers allows them to legally charge Odiong with some of his alleged crimes no matter how much time had passed from when they purportedly occurred. 

He nevertheless argued on Tuesday that the state waited too long to file charges against him, opening the door for prosecutors to introduce hearsay testimony – inadmissible in most trial settings – about the number of accusers he has.

Court records filed in advance of the trial show prosecutors are ready to call a number of those accusers. 

They also are expected to present evidence establishing that Odiong violated Catholic priests’ promise to practice sexual celibacy by fathering at least one child with a woman who had been a congregant of his.

That woman is not one of the three whom Odiong was charged with clerically abusing. Still, authorities argued that that particular child was living proof that Odiong had a pattern of pursuing female congregants.

Authorities initially arrested Odiong in July 2024 over allegations of possessing illicit digital images of a disrobed child that they found when investigating the complaint against him prompted by the Guardian’s reporting. 

But prosecutors ultimately never filed formal charges against him over those images.

Odiong’s attorney, Gerald Villarial, recently argued in court that a congregant concerned about her sick daughter had sent the images to the clergyman, the local news outlet KWTX reported. 

Villarial maintained that the photos were meant to display the girl’s skin irritations and a possible rash, and the parishioner asked Odiong to pray for the child’s healing, according to the outlet.

Villarial moved for all evidence derived from Odiong’s arrest on those images to be prohibited from being introduced at his trial. Yet the Texas state judge presiding over that case, Thomas West, denied that motion.

West also denied a separate motion to postpone Odiong’s trial, which started late on Tuesday morning with the prosecution and the defense questioning a pool of 100 prospective jurors. 

Questions included whether those prospective jurors could be impartial despite media coverage of the case, if they believed pastors could sexually exploit adults’ emotional dependency on them, and if they could convict someone in the event they are proven to have done that.

Odiong has denied wrongdoing. He has been held in custody in lieu of $5.5m bail since his arrest.

After gaining ordination into the Catholic priesthood in his native Nigeria in 1993, Odiong made a name for himself through holding prayer services after which some attenders reported recovering from significant ailments. 

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

Odiong, among other things, worked in campus ministry at Baylor University in Waco and was the pastor of a church in West, Texas. 

He later evidently spent some time studying in Rome; and in 2015, he began working within the archdiocese of New Orleans, six years after Aymond had become archbishop there.

His main role in the New Orleans area was to be the pastor of St Anthony of Padua church in Luling, Louisiana. He also built a healing chapel next to St Anthony – named Our Lady of Guadalupe – after reportedly raising $600,000.

No later than 2019, church officials in Austin said they suspended Odiong from being able to minister in their area over allegations of misconduct with multiple women. Austin church officials did not publicly announce that but said they notified their counterparts in New Orleans.

Meanwhile, Aymond waited until December 2023 to similarly suspend Odiong from the ministry within the New Orleans archdiocese.

The archdiocese at the time cited misconduct with multiple women without revealing that they had been notified of the alleged behavior by diocesan officials in Austin at least four years earlier. 

Furthermore, Odiong’s New Orleans suspension came around the same time he had publicly made a string of anti-LGBTQ+ community remarks to his congregation as international church leaders were seeking to make the faith more inclusive.

Waco authorities criminally charged Odiong amid a debate within the Catholic church over whether to widen the definition of a vulnerable adult in the context of clergy abuse to encompass those who are under the spiritual authority of priests and then targeted for sexual contact by the clerics.

The church presently only considers a vulnerable adult to be anyone who is older than 18 while having “severe, intellectual, developmental or psychological disabilities”. Sexual misconduct with vulnerable adults or children is clearly defined as clergy abuse under modern Catholic church policies.

Aymond retired in February, a couple of months after the New Orleans 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 enduring clerical molestation scandal.

James Checchio, the former bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, is Aymond’s successor as New Orleans’ archbishop.

Malaga trial against priest accused of sexually assaulting four women starts with ex-partner's testimony

The trial against Father Fran, accused of four counts of sexual assault, disclosure of secrets and bodily harm, began on Monday at the provincial court of Malaga.

His former partner was the first to testify. She appeared before the court behind a screen to avoid eye contact with the defendant. 

She explained how she had discovered the audiovisual files of the alleged abuse.

In addition, she denounced the continuous lack of response from the Church when she tried to report the incidents.

She accidentally discovered the files around Christmas 2022, while at the defendant's home in Melilla, where she practically lived. 

She wanted to watch a film or a series, but when she connected a portable hard drive to the television, a different image appeared. She recognised Father Fran who was sexually abusing a victim she knew. "A picture of a girl I know immediately popped up," she stated.

Sexual abuse

This incident horrified her, so she went home. The next day, she returned to Father Fran's home to examine the device. She took it home to plug it into a computer and see if there were more files.

Through tears, she said: "That's when I saw all the folders, categorised like those of a psychopath's, with the victims' names."

The witness stated that she clearly remembered another victim because she appeared "completely dead" while he "was raping her". 

She then made a backup copy of all the content on her own computer before returning the device to its place so that the defendant wouldn't become suspicious.

After the discovery, she told a mutual acquaintance, who then told a priest he knew. She also told another priest at Father Fran's church.

In early January 2023, when the defendant returned to Melilla, they confronted him and asked him to show them the hard drive, but his computer was broken, so they went to the parish. 

The witness stated that the other priest "turned white" and "couldn't believe" the images.

Prior to this revelation, Father Fran had asked her not to share the contents, threatening to "ruin her" and take his own life.

"He kept asking me what I was accusing him of, that I didn't know what I was doing, that I was going to ruin him, that I either helped him or he would kill himself," she said in the court.

During that meeting at the church, the suspect claimed that "the Church was aware of all this, that they had forgiven him and that the girls (the victims) had too".

He then asked the other priest and his partner to leave him alone for five minutes to pray, a moment which, according to the witness, he used to delete the files from the original hard drive.

The Church chooses silence

According to the witness's testimony, the vicar of the diocese, two days after the incident, transferred Father Fran from Melilla to Malaga, justifying the move on the grounds of "health issues". 

He first sent him to a retreat and later assigned him to the parishes of El Burgo and Yunquera, without any official from the diocese intervening in the process or notifying the police of its details.

Father Fran's former partner tried to formally report the incident to religious authorities, attempting to do so in person, by phone and by mail, without success. After much persistence, she was finally able to meet with the vicar, who reacted with disbelief.

"I told him, he got angry, slammed his fist on the table," she said. The vicar reportedly said that "it was impossible that he had done that".

Her efforts to contact the then Bishop of Malaga were equally unsuccessful, despite her repeated requests for a meeting. "I asked for a meeting and he replied that he was very busy. I felt abandoned by the Church, I felt empty. I even went into the bishop's office, but he refused to see me. They shut the door on me. They completely ignored me," she said.

The lack of response from the Church led her to a state of utter despair. "I wanted to end it all, I didn't want to suffer anymore," she stated.

At one point, a police officer found her in a state of anxiety and distress at the beach and asked about her well-being. Despite her fear, she decided to tell him what she had discovered months earlier.

"I needed to report it," she said. The deputy inspector requested the presence of a plainclothes officer, who arrived at the scene and later went to the witness's home to make an initial copy of the files onto a USB drive. 

Days later, the judicial police proceeded with the final seizure of the computer, initiating the criminal investigation that led to the opening of this trial.

72-year prison sentence

The prosecutor is requesting a 72-year prison sentence and 300,000 euros in compensation for each of the four alleged victims. 

Father Fran has been in pretrial detention since September 2023.

According to the prosecutor, the priest followed the same strategy for years. He took advantage of the trust the victims had in him to drug and assault them.

The public prosecutor names the Diocese of Malaga as a secondary civilly liable party.

FSSPX reveals the names of the four priests who will be consecrated bishops in Écône

The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX) officially announced on May 26 the names of the four priests who will be consecrated bishops on July 1 in Écône, Switzerland.

The announcement was made through a communiqué signed by the Fraternity’s superior general, Father Davide Pagliarani, from the general house in Menzingen.

The priests chosen to receive episcopal consecration are:

* Father Pascal Schreiber, of Swiss nationality;

* Father Michael Goldade, of American nationality;

* Father Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, of French nationality;

and 

* Father Marc Hanappier, also of French nationality.

Consecrations scheduled for July 1 in Écône

The ceremony will take place on July 1 in Écône, the Swiss town historically linked to the Fraternity founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

In the communiqué, the FSSPX states that the files of the four priests were previously submitted to the Holy Father along with various explanations related to “the very particular and exceptional context of these episcopal consecrations.”

The Fraternity further affirms that these consecrations are not intended to establish a parallel authority within the Church or to question the authority of the Roman Pontiff.

“In no way do they constitute a denial, rejection, or challenge to the supreme, full, and immediate power of the Vicar of Christ over the universal Church,” the text states.

Ensuring the continuity of the sacraments

According to the communiqué, the purpose of the future episcopal consecrations is to ensure the continuity of the administration of the sacraments of holy orders and confirmation, as well as other sacramentals reserved to bishops, according to the traditional Roman rite.

The Fraternity describes this decision as a service “to souls and to the Church” amid what it considers an “unprecedented crisis of faith.”

In the final part of the text, Father Pagliarani reaffirms the FSSPX’s determination to transmit the Catholic faith in its entirety and to continue serving the Church.

“Our determination to serve the holy Catholic Church remains unwavering,” the communiqué states.

First encyclical without a Latin version reveals a profound transformation in the Vatican

The publication of Magnifica Humanitas, the first major encyclical of Leo XIV, has been received as an intellectual event of enormous relevance both inside and outside the Church. 

The document addresses in depth decisive issues for the future of the West: artificial intelligence, human dignity, technocratic power, and the identity of peoples.

However, while much of the debate has focused on the content of the encyclical, another seemingly minor detail has gone almost unnoticed: for the first time in modern history, a papal encyclical has been published without an official Latin edition.

The document was released directly in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Polish, but not in Latin. 

The last encyclical published by the Holy See had been Dilexit nos, by Francis, in 2024, and it did include its corresponding official Latin version.

And that fact, far from being anecdotal, reveals a much deeper transformation within the Church.

For centuries, Latin was the official voice of the Church

Latin was not a mere academic formality or an aesthetic concession to tradition. For centuries it was the juridical, doctrinal, and liturgical language of the Catholic Church.

Encyclicals, apostolic constitutions, canons, and major documents of the magisterium were officially promulgated in Latin. 

Translations into other languages derived from that original text, considered the authentic and definitive reference.

For centuries, Latin functioned as the definitive reference text of the pontifical magisterium: if a doubt arose about a specific expression, an ambiguous translation, or the true scope of a formulation, one could always turn to the original Latin as a reliable interpretive criterion.

With Magnifica Humanitas, however, the situation changes radically. 

Having been published simultaneously in different modern languages without a normative Latin edition, it is no longer entirely clear which text should be considered definitive in case of divergences, differing nuances, or translation issues between versions.

The reform of Leo XIV formalizes a trend begun years ago

The absence of an official Latin version of Magnifica Humanitas does not appear in isolation. 

It is part of a broader transformation that Leo XIV decided to consolidate legally at the end of 2025 with the promulgation of the new General Regulations of the Roman Curia.

The regulation, which came into force on January 1, 2026, introduced a historic change in the Vatican’s language policy by establishing that curial documents may be drafted “in Latin or in another language.” 

The formula, seemingly technical, in practice marks the end of the effective primacy of Latin as the normal working and reference language within the Roman Curia.

For centuries, Latin had occupied a singular and clearly superior place in ecclesiastical administration. 

Now, by contrast, it appears legally equated with any other modern language, reflecting a reality that had been imposing itself de facto for years in numerous Vatican bodies.

In reality, the new regulation did not initiate the transformation but rather officially regularized a dynamic that had accelerated especially during the pontificate of Francis: documents drafted directly in Italian or English, synods conducted in modern languages, and a progressive reduction of Latin to symbolic, ceremonial, or purely archival functions.

A paradox of the new pontificate

All of this is especially striking because Magnifica Humanitas is, precisely, an encyclical deeply concerned with the anthropological crisis of the West.

In it, Leo XIV denounces a civilization increasingly uprooted, dominated by technological power, technocratic logic, and the loss of common cultural and moral references.

Yet at the same time, the Church itself seems to be slowly moving toward a loss of linguistic and historical continuity that for centuries was one of the most visible signs of its universality.

Because Latin was not merely a tool of communication. 

It was also a link with the memory of the Church, a concrete expression of continuity between generations, and a defense against the cultural fragmentation of the present.

The problem is not translating. The problem is ceasing to have a common language

No one disputes that the Church must speak the languages of the peoples. It has always done so. Evangelization requires entering into concrete cultures.

The real change occurs when the awareness disappears that there also exists a common language that expresses the unity of the Church beyond borders, eras, and political contexts.

Latin precisely recalled this: that Catholicism was not a federation of national Churches adapted to the spirit of the times, but a spiritual civilization with its own memory.

That is why the question of Magnifica Humanitas is not a simple debate for specialists or lovers of liturgical tradition.

The underlying question is another: Can the Church continue to defend the cultural and anthropological continuity of the West while progressively abandoning the most visible expressions of its own historical continuity?

Pope Leo XIV breaks a taboo: peoples have the right to preserve their identity

Among the most striking passages of Magnifica Humanitas is one that will likely cause discomfort in much of contemporary European ecclesial discourse. 

Leo XIV states that “the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to safeguard their own identity, and to contribute with their own originality to the family of nations.” 

He concludes with an even more forceful phrase: “Any attempt or project to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral.”

This is not a secondary observation within the text. Nor does it appear to be a casual formulation. 

The encyclical introduces here an element of enormous importance at a historical moment marked by the accelerated weakening of European national identities and by a growing political, cultural, and even ecclesial tendency to view any defense of historical or cultural rootedness with suspicion.

For years, much of the dominant discourse in Europe has oscillated between two equally problematic extremes. 

On the one hand, a nationalism reduced to pure identity logic, detached from any transcendent moral reference. 

On the other, an abstract universalism that regards nations, traditions, and historical identities almost as uncomfortable obstacles to the construction of a homogeneous and manageable humanity.

The novelty of Leo XIV lies in his refusal to accept this false alternative.

The encyclical does not fall into ethnic nationalisms nor does it legitimize exclusionary withdrawals. But neither does it accept that the universal common good requires the dissolution of concrete peoples. 

On the contrary, it presupposes that nations possess their own moral legitimacy and that the historical diversity of peoples forms part of the very richness of humanity.

This introduces an evident tension with much of recent ecclesial rhetoric, especially in Western Europe.

In Spain, for example, the episcopal discourse on immigration, multiculturalism, and coexistence has often tended toward exclusively humanitarian categories, while any concern about cultural continuity, social cohesion, or the preservation of historical identity was quickly neutralized under moral suspicion. 

The impression conveyed many times was that Europe had to resignedly accept its own cultural dissolution, as if any will to preserve identity were incompatible with the Gospel.

It is difficult not to think here of certain interventions by Cardinal José Cobo or Luis Argüello, where the language of welcome and diversity is usually formulated from a very abstract perspective, almost detached from the question of the concrete historical rootedness of European peoples and their Christian cultural identity.

It is precisely here that Leo XIV introduces a decisive nuance. Universal fraternity does not require erasing nations. 

Nor does it require turning them into interchangeable realities without memory or historical continuity. 

The encyclical insists, on the contrary, on the right of each people to safeguard its own originality and to contribute from it to the whole of humanity.

The nuance is important because Christianity has never understood universality as the destruction of concrete identities. 

The Church did not eliminate the European peoples. It evangelized them. It did not destroy their cultures. It transformed them from within, preserving what could be integrated into a Christian civilization.

That is why the language used by Leo XIV is so significant. Speaking of peoples with the right to exist, to safeguard their identity, and to preserve their originality means recovering a much more incarnate vision of social and political life. 

In contrast to a certain contemporary tendency to reduce man to an isolated individual or a mere economic unit, the encyclical reminds us that the person also belongs to a history, a tradition, and a concrete cultural community.

Moreover, the overall context of Magnifica Humanitas makes this passage even more interesting. 

The entire encyclical constitutes a critique of the contemporary technocratic paradigm: a civilization increasingly oriented toward impersonal structures of management, control, and cultural homogenization. 

In that framework, the defense of peoples also acquires an anthropological meaning. 

A world composed of completely uprooted individuals is much more vulnerable to political, economic, and technological power.

A man without historical memory is easier to administer.

And the same is true of nations.

Leo XIV’s great intuition seems to be that the contemporary crisis affects not only the individual, but also historical civilizations. 

Peoples can disappear not only through military conquest, but also through cultural exhaustion, demographic fragmentation, loss of historical continuity, or the inability to transmit a recognizable identity to future generations.

That is why the phrase in the encyclical is so relevant. Because it breaks with the idea — increasingly widespread in certain Western circles— that every strong identity automatically constitutes a moral threat. 

Leo XIV does not propose idolatrous identities or absolute nationalisms. 

But neither does he accept an abstract humanity built upon peoples without memory, without roots, and without cultural continuity.

In today’s Europe, saying that already means breaking a taboo.