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CNA Newsroom, Jun 8, 2025 / 12:05 pm (CNA).

Follow our live coverage of the pontificate of Pope Leo XIV, first U.S.-born pope in history.

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Rome Newsroom, Jun 8, 2025 / 13:45 pm (CNA).

Traveling more than 10,000 miles to take part in this weekend's Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations, and New Communities, Sister Therese Mills, MGL, spoke to CNA of her great joy as she joined tens of thousands of other pilgrims in Rome.

A leader of the Missionaries of God's Love Sisters, a charismatic Catholic group founded in Australia in 1987, Mills said her pilgrimage to Rome during the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope has been a time of refreshment and renewal.

She described the "amazing" experience of walking through the Jubilee Door of St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday, the first day of the special jubilee dedicated to new Catholic movements and associations.  

Mills recalled "just opening my hands and just praying that the Lord would refresh and renew my heart and refresh and renew my faith."

"The thing that blew me away — and what I loved the most — was we were all on this journey together but everyone was speaking and praying in different languages," she shared with CNA on Pentecost Sunday. 

Mills called her visit to the Blessed Sacrament chapel inside the papal basilica a "God moment" that she will not forget.

"I just sat before Jesus and bawled my eyes out to be honest," she told CNA with a laugh. "I was very overwhelmed with his love … the gift of being with him in this place, and with the universal Church."        

The approximately 70,000 pilgrims participating in the weekend jubilee had the opportunity to explore different churches in Rome and attend music and entertainment events organized by various ecclesial groups.   

A few of the hundreds of new Catholic associations taking part in the June jubilee include the Neocatechumenal Way, Catholic Action, Communion and Liberation, the Catholic Shalom Community, the Community of Sant'Egidio, the Focolare Movement, and CHARIS International.

During his homily at the Vigil Mass, Pope Leo described the new and diverse Church communities gathered around him as "the fruits of the Second Vatican Council" who are "grounded in the one Lord Jesus Christ" entrusted with "a single mission."

Mills attended both Pope Leo's Pentecost Masses — the Vigil on Saturday night and one on Sunday morning. 

"I really love being part of a universal Church, being united as one, and coming together to pray for the Spirit," Mills said.

In the days leading up to the official jubilee festivities, Mills undertook a pilgrimage to holy sites in Rome linked to patron saints of her Australian-based community, including St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Therese of Lisieux, and St. Catherine of Siena.

The first Missionaries of God's Love Sisters household was formed in the Archdiocese of Canberra-Goulburn in 1988. Since then, the religious sisters have lived and ministered in the Australian cities of Adelaide, Darwin, Melbourne, and Sydney, and led outreach missions around the country and in other Asia-Pacific nations, including Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

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Vatican City, Jun 8, 2025 / 08:42 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the Solemnity of Pentecost in St. Peter's Square on Sunday with international pilgrims belonging to new Church movements, associations, and communities celebrating this year's Jubilee Year of Hope in Rome.

Emphasizing the significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian, the Holy Father noted that it is the third person of the Blessed Trinity who anoints, heals, and strengthens followers of Jesus to "open borders" in hearts, in relationships with others, and between nations.   

"Let us invoke the Spirit of love and peace, that he may open borders, break down walls, dispel hatred and help us to live as children of our one Father who is in heaven," the pope said on a hot Sunday morning.

"Brothers and sisters, Pentecost renews the Church and the world!" he said. "May the strong wind of the Spirit come upon us and within us, open the borders of our hearts, grant us the grace of encounter with God, enlarge the horizons of our love and sustain our efforts to build a world in which peace reigns."

Approximately 70,000 people from more than 100 countries registered to take part in this year's special Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations, and New Communities taking place over the June 7–8 weekend in Rome.

Celebrating Sunday Mass alongside cardinals, bishops, and other priests wearing red vestments to represent the fire of the Holy Spirit who descended upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Father invited those gathered in St. Peter's Square and along Via della Conciliazione to also reflect on the words of his papal predecessors. 

"The Spirit opens borders... The Church must always become anew what she already is," the pope said, quoting Benedict XVI. "She must open the borders between peoples and break down the barriers between class and race." 

During his homily, Pope Leo reiterated Pope Francis' pleas for the end of ongoing violence, including femicide, creating "much discord" and "such great division" in the world.

"The Spirit breaks down barriers and tears down the walls of indifference and hatred because he 'teaches us all things' and 'reminds us of Jesus' words," he said, reflecting on the Gospel of St. John. 

"Where there is love, there is no room for prejudice, for 'security' zones separating us from our neighbors, for the exclusionary mindset that, tragically, we now see emerging also in political nationalisms," he added.

The pope also prayed to God for his gift of unity and fraternity in the world.

Before concluding the celebration of the Mass with the Regina Caeli prayer in Latin, the Holy Father thanked his brother cardinals, bishops, and all representatives of ecclesial associations, movements, and new communities in Rome for their presence and witness of faith.

"Dear sisters and brothers, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, set out renewed from this Jubilee of yours. Go and bring to everyone the hope of the Lord Jesus!" he said. "May the Spirit of the Risen Christ open paths of reconciliation wherever there is war; may he enlighten governments and give them the courage to make gestures of de-escalation and dialogue." 

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CNA Newsroom, Jun 7, 2025 / 17:43 pm (CNA).

Follow our live coverage of the pontificate of Pope Leo XIV, first U.S.-born pope in history.

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CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 11:45 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Saturday said the Catholic Church is open to establishing a common date of Easter among all Christian churches, echoing one of the aims of the Council of Nicaea that met 1,700 years ago.

The pope spoke to participants of the symposium "Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity," which took place this week at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

The Holy Father called the 325 Council of Nicaea "foundational for the common journey that Catholics and Orthodox have undertaken together since the Second Vatican Council."

This week's symposium focused on the themes of faith, synodality and "the date of Easter," Leo said. The lattermost issue was "one of the objectives" of the ancient council.

"Sadly, differences in their calendars no longer allow Christians to celebrate together the most important feast of the liturgical year, causing pastoral problems within communities, dividing families and weakening the credibility of our witness to the Gospel," the pope said.

"Several concrete solutions have been proposed that, while respecting the principle of Nicaea, would allow Christians to celebrate together the 'Feast of Feasts'," the Holy Father said.

"In this year, when all Christians have celebrated Easter on the same day, I would reaffirm the openness of the Catholic Church to the pursuit of an ecumenical solution favouring a common celebration of the Lord's resurrection," the pope said.

On April 20 of this year, Easter landed on the same day for both the East and the West. Easter will fall on April 16, 2028, again for both the East and the West, and again on April 13, 2031, and April 9, 2034.

Leo on Saturday said that Christian unity, when it is ultimately achieved, "will not be primarily the fruit of our own efforts, nor will it be realized through any preconceived model or blueprint."

"Rather, unity will be a gift received 'as Christ wills and by the means that he wills'," he said.

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CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Americans could be on the cusp of a religious revival. according to Ross Douthat, an author, Catholic convert, and New York Times columnist. 

Douthat, who often writes on the intersection of faith, culture, and public life in his column, shared his thoughts on all things American and Catholic, from Pope Leo XIV to Vice President JD Vance to the American religious landscape, in an interview with Anchor Catherine Hadro on "EWTN News in Depth" on Friday.

Douthat described the U.S. religious situation as a "a very unsettled but curious landscape," particularly after a years-long decline in religious interest that plateaued during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It's not that America is having a religious revival. It's more that we're considering whether to have a religious revival," he said.

Interest in religion has moved beyond the hardline atheism of the early 2000s characterized by figures like Richard Dawkins, Douthat said. He observed that there has been "a surge of interest in religion," especially among Generation Z. 

Sometimes the interest is traditional, as reflected in rising numbers of converts to Catholicism in some dioceses, from Los Angeles to Dublin. Other times it takes on an alternative tone. 

"You have a surge of interest in religion, and some of that shows up in traditional faith. Some of it shows up in anything from UFOs to psychedelics," Douthat said. 

Atheism, he indicated, has failed to keep its promises. In the early 2000s "there was a sense that once we get rid of these hidebound Bronze Age superstitions, everyone will get along better: Politics will be less polarized, science will be held in higher esteem and sociologically people will be happier. Kids won't be afraid of going to hell, things like that." 

"And obviously none of that has happened."  

Douthat cited rising division, polarization, and "existential angst" in the nation in recent years as setting the groundwork for a resurgence of religion.  

"You have a lot of people, some of whom are coming into the Church, others who are exploring around the edges, who are reacting to that environment," he said. 

First impressions of Pope Leo: a unifying figure  

When asked to describe the new pope, Douthat called him "unifying," "charming," and "mildly inscrutable."  

Douthat says that inscrutability is "part of the reason he was elected pope in the first place." 

"There is still a hint of mystery to who the pope definitively is and what he definitively thinks," he said. "And there may be a long period of time where that mystery gradually unfolds in the life of the Church." 

Douthat noted that Leo was a "dark horse" figure "who's very good at making different groups of people feel heard and understood." 

Leo's episcopal motto is one of unity: "In Illo Uno Unum," meaning "in the One, we are one." Douthat said he hopes Leo will bring about this unity. 

"Obviously there were a lot of conservative and traditionalist Catholics who were frustrated or anxious at various moments in the era of Pope Francis," he said.

"[Leo] hasn't really done all that much — it's been one month — but there's so far this sense of just sort of relief at a feeling of kind of stability and normalcy in the papal office," Douthat said.  

Pope Leo XIV chose his name because the last pope with that name, Pope Leo XIII, "was pope at a time of huge industrial and technological transformation and offered a distinctively Catholic witness for that age," Douthat noted. 

"There is this landscape that people live in online, disconnected or connected in new ways," he said. "That is, I think, clearly perilous to the soul in various ways." 

The digital and AI realms have "deep effects on family and marriage and community," especially for parents raising kids in this environment. 

"There are fundamental questions of morality and spirituality that are bound up in how you relate to your phone," he continued. "And I think it is really important for the Church to figure out what to say about it."

JD Vance interview

Douthat recently interviewed Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, about how faith shaped his politics, among other topics. 

Reflecting back on a part of the interview where he asked Vance about the Church's teachings on immigration, Douthat said that he was "pressing" the vice president because he believed there were "real tensions" in the dispute, citing deportations by the Trump administration.   

Vance and Pope Francis had publicly disagreed on politics earlier in the year. In February, Pope Francis sent a pastoral letter to the U.S. bishops calling for the recognition of the dignity of immigrants after Vance, a Catholic convert, publicly advocated applying "ordo amoris," or "rightly-ordered love," to the immigration debate. 

"[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens," Vance said at the time, while acknowledging that the principle "doesn't mean you hate people from outside of your own borders."

In the letter, Francis tacitly rebuked Vance's remarks, arguing in part that "the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution, or serious deterioration of the environment damages the dignity of many men and women."

Douthat noted that Vance's situation is a "tremendous challenge," especially because he is vice president, not president.   

"There's always a certain kind of tension between being an elected politician in a pluralist, non-Catholic society and trying to be faithful to the teachings of the Church," he said. 

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CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 10:30 am (CNA).

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren this week said the upcoming 2,000th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus highlights the Lord's "unanswered prayer" of unity in the Christian world, a unity which he said will help bring the message of salvation to the world.

Warren, the founder of the Baptist Saddleback Church in California, spoke to EWTN Vatican Bureau Chief Andreas Thonhauser in Rome on attending a gathering of Global 2033, a Catholic evangelization initiative working to spread the Gospel message ahead of the two-thousand-year observance of Christ rising from the dead.

Asked by Thonhauser why he was speaking at a Catholic event, the Protestant minister claimed that "no single denomination can complete the Great Commission on their own."

"There are 2.5 billion people in the world who claim to believe in Jesus Christ," Warren said. Of those, "1.3 billion are Catholic. About half of the Christian Church is Catholic."

Dismissing potential criticisms that his intent is to convert Catholics to Protestantism, Warren pointed to Christ's prayers in John 17, in which he prayed to God: "Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one."

That plea "is still the unanswered prayer of Jesus," Warren said.

"We're never going to have cultural unity. We're never going to have structural unity," Warren pointed out.

"We're never going to have unity in doctrine," he further claimed. "But we can all agree on one thing. Every Christian understands we're called to go [and evangelize]."

On praying alongside Catholics in Rome, Warren said: "I pray with anybody who believes Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life. These are brothers and sisters in Christ."

Looking forward to 2033, Warren said: "What the world needs now is hope."

The Baptist pastor further shared that EWTN has been a "great ministry in [his] life." He pointed to the 2013 death of his son, who took his own life that year after struggling with mental illness.

"It was the worst day of my life," Warren said. "One of the things that helped me through was on EWTN, they were praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. And the Chaplet of Divine Mercy ministered to me and to my wife."

"It was a healing balm in my heart," he said.

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CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 11:00 am (CNA).

Police in Brussels arrested pro-life activist Lois McLatchie Miller and child protection advocate Chris Elston on Wednesday for peacefully displaying signs that advocated for the protection of children against transgender medical treatments. 

The incident occurred when Miller, a Scottish senior legal communications officer with ADF International, and Elston, a Canadian pro-child activist known as "Billboard Chris", were surrounded by an angry mob as they held signs that read: "Children are never born in the wrong body" and "Children cannot consent to puberty blockers." 

The pair were in the EU capital engaging members of the European Parliament about the dangers of puberty blockers for children. 

Belgian police arrested the duo amid the nonviolent demonstration. Officers took them to separate police stations, where they were ordered to remove their clothes and subjected to searches. 

They were released after several hours in custody with no charges filed, though police informed them that their signs would be destroyed.

Elston said police initially told them they needed a permit and were later told they would be charged with "disturbing the peace."

"I just can't believe that we live in a world where we were the bad guys in this situation," Miller said in a video posted to social media after her release.

Speaking of the police, she said: "They saw that we were the minority, that we were being attacked … Instead of standing up for our rights … they took us away, and let the mob go free."

On June 6, Miller's husband and fellow pro-life advocate Calum Miller told EWTN News Nightly that Europe needs to "wake up" and that Americans have a "profound role" in helping Europeans preserve their basic freedoms. 

He also called for the sanction of politicians and authorities involved in the assault on free speech in Europe.

Paul Coleman, the executive director of ADF International, condemned the arrests, stating: "The Belgian authorities not only failed to uphold the fundamental right to speak freely, they turned the power of the state against those who were peacefully exercising their rights at the behest of a mob." 

Coleman described the incident as a disturbing display of authoritarianism in the heart of Europe, emphasizing that ADF International is exploring all legal options to defend free speech rights in Belgium. 

"We are grateful our colleague has been safely released, but we are deeply concerned by her treatment at the hands of the police in Brussels," he added.

After his release, Elston said activists "are not going to stop" talking about the dangers of puberty blockers for children. "We are going to keep having these conversations." 

The arrests come amid tensions over free expression in Belgium. Just a year ago, a Brussels mayor attempted to shut down the National Conservatism Conference, citing ideological disagreements with its speakers. 

ADF International intervened with emergency legal action that allowed the event to take place. The organization is vowing to challenge the recent arrests as well.

"We will not stand by while peaceful citizens are criminalized for speaking out on vital issues – especially when it's the safety and wellbeing of children at stake," Coleman said.

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CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

In a recent interview with the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe), former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback discussed how Christian organizations are increasingly being deplatformed and debanked when engaging in public debate and offered ways to address these challenges and uphold religious freedom. 

"The typical technique in the West is a suffocation technique on religion," Brownback told OIDAC Europe Executive Director Anja Hoffmann in an interview released June 4. OIDAC Europe is a nongovernmental organization that researches, analyzes, documents, and reports on cases of intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe. 

According to Brownback, examples of this technique include pro-life pregnancy centers being dropped by their insurance companies and organizations being taken off of social media platforms. 

Brownback's own National Committee for Religious Freedom had its bank account canceled without explanation by Chase Bank in 2022 after 45 days of it being opened. 

"You see these techniques and it's all a suffocation effort. We're not going to throw you in jail — we can't throw you in jail — but we can try to strangle you as much as possible so that you can't operate as a group. And that's why we've got to push back against it in the West more and more," he said.

In 2018, Brownback — who previously served as a U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1996–2011 and as the 46th governor of Kansas from 2011–2018 —  was sworn in as the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom during President Donald Trump's first term in office. He became the first Catholic to serve in the role.

During his tenure, he promoted religious freedom as a means of promoting individual and economic flourishing and reducing religion-related violence. He also highlighted China's persecution of Uyghurs and strongly condemned the Xinjiang internment camps. At the 2020 Ministerial to Advance Freedom of Religion or Belief in Poland, Brownback also spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on religious freedom.

In the interview, Brownback pointed out that now with the use of social media, issues of religious persecution happening around the world have become more visible and need to continue to be brought to light.

"We're not powerless now … we used to be just dependent upon the media to surface and to get these things out and for us in the United States; if it didn't get on CBS, NBC, or ABC it didn't happen, we didn't know about it," he explained. "That's not the case now. You've got all these social media outlets that are out there … and you can put it out there and you need to get it out there."

Brownback also encouraged individuals to not only share content about the issues taking place but also to include ways that individuals can help. He said he thinks many might be surprised to see how much people actually care about these issues once they find out they're happening.

"You're seeing more support for religious freedom in the United States and other places and a lot of it has been a long-term awareness building. These things are going on and then as people look at them and say, 'Is that really happening?' you say, 'Yes, that's really happening.'"

He added: "Changes rarely happen until people actually have to smell and feel something and see that something actually is going on here that's wrong." 

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Washington has announced plans to "cut spending, reduce its workforce, and restructure departments" to combat "crippling economic challenges."

In a June 5 letter sent to archdiocesan staff members, Cardinal Robert McElroy indicated that the archdiocese has had an annual operating deficit of $10 million for the past five years, leading the archdiocese "to draw from financial reserves to cover shortfalls."

The cardinal archbishop of Washington said "our situation has only been exacerbated by the present economic uncertainty that is impacting so many, both locally and globally." 

"I have come to the painful realization that the only way forward is to take drastic measures to achieve a balanced budget by July 1 of this year," McElroy wrote. "This means that the archdiocese will need to cut spending, reduce its workforce, and restructure departments to accommodate a more streamlined pastoral center."

McElroy explained that "the financial impacts of the pandemic and the fallout of the [former cardinal and leader of the archdiocese Theodore] McCarrick scandal, coupled with an extended period of inflation and volatile financial markets" are among the causes of the "crippling economic challenges" facing the archdiocese.

"The most difficult decision that I have had to make in order to achieve a balanced budget was to authorize a reduction in force to eliminate approximately 30 positions of pastoral center staff. Several vacant positions will be left unfilled, and a number of dedicated, hardworking employees will lose their jobs," McElroy wrote. 

"I apologize profoundly to those who will be losing their jobs," McElroy wrote. "This process is not a reflection on the quality or importance of your work." 

The majority of layoffs will be from the archdiocese' pastoral center in Hyattsville, Maryland. Prior to the layoffs approximately 120 people worked in the building, but the restructuring plans will reduce the staff by about one-fourth.

"I am sensitive to the reality that there are many people and families who will be impacted by this process — whether it be a devoted employee who loses his or her job, a remaining co-worker who must take on additional responsibilities, or the ripple effect on the many who are served by an important ministry that can no longer be funded at past levels."

McElroy said the archdiocese will be "offering severance, extended benefits, and outplacement services" to the eliminated employees. 

"I pray the Lord will accompany all of you in these days, understanding that it is God's service that unites all of us who work for the archdiocese, and your commitment to God's service that makes our current situation all the more difficult," McElroy said.

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