Catholic News

A priest in Chicago has resigned after the archdiocese found that he misused parish funds for "personal expenses," Cardinal Blase Cupich told parishioners this month.

Cupich told St. John Henry Newman Parish in Evanston that the archdiocese had launched a review of the parish's finances on March 30 amid "serious questions" about the parish's "fiscal administration."

The prelate said in an April 10 letter to the parish that the review found Father Kenneth Anderson "violated a number of core archdiocesan policies pertaining to the proper exercise of good stewardship of parish resources."

Among the reported violations included "the creation and maintenance of a separate bank account into which he deposited substantial parish funds," Cupich said.

Some of those funds "were used to cover costs unrelated to parish needs including his personal expenses."

Anderson resigned after being presented with the findings of the report, Cupich said. The priest also "accepted [Cupich's] instruction that, when the full accounting is complete, he is to make restitution for any funds clearly identified as covering his personal expenses."

The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the total amount of funds reportedly misused at the parish.

Cupich in his letter said Father Wayne Watts, the pastor of Sts. Joseph and Francis Xavier Parish in nearby Wilmette, oversaw the administration of St. John Henry Newman Parish's finances during the review process.

The archbishop further said that he had asked the archdiocesan placement board to recommend a new pastor for the parish by July 1.

Retired priest Father Gerald Gunderson will serve as parish administrator until the new pastor is appointed, Cupich said.

The parish was formed in 2022 after the merging of Sts. Athanasius and Joan of Arc parishes as part of the archdiocesan Renew My Faith campaign.

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ANNABA, Algeria — Pope Leo XIV concluded his visit to the land of St. Augustine by celebrating Mass at the Basilica of St. Augustine in Annaba, where he said the Church is continually reborn when it brings hope to the despairing, dignity to the poor, and reconciliation where there is conflict.

The basilica, dedicated to the bishop of ancient Hippo, was built between 1881 and 1907 at the initiative of Algiers Archbishop Charles-Martial-Allemand Lavigerie and was elevated to the rank of minor basilica on April 24, 1914, by Pope Pius X. Restoration work was completed in 2013, with support that included a personal donation from Pope Benedict XVI.

In his homily, the pope reflected on the Gospel account of Jesus' nighttime encounter with Nicodemus, presenting it as a summons to renewal for the whole Church and especially for Algeria's Christian community.

"Today we listen to the Gospel, the good news for all time, in this basilica in Annaba dedicated to St. Augustine, bishop of the ancient city of Hippo," the pope said. "Over the centuries, the names of the places that welcome us have changed, but the saints continue to serve as our patrons and faithful witnesses of a connection to the land that comes from heaven."

Leo said Jesus' words to Nicodemus — "You must be born from above" — are not a burden but an invitation to freedom and new life in God.

"Such is the invitation for every man and woman who seeks salvation!" he said. "Jesus' invitation gives rise to the mission of the whole Church, and consequently to the Christian community in Algeria: to be born again from above, that is, from God. In this perspective, faith overcomes earthly hardships and the Lord's grace makes the desert blossom."

The pope acknowledged that Christ's command can sound impossible at first but said it reveals God's power to renew human life.

"On the contrary, the obligation expressed by Jesus is a gift of freedom for us, because it reveals an unexpected possibility: We can be born anew from above thanks to God," Leo said. "We should do so, then, according to his loving will, which desires to renew humanity by calling us to a communion of life that begins with faith. While Christ invites us to renew our lives completely, he also gives us the strength to do so."

He then asked whether life can truly begin again and answered with hope rooted in the cross and Resurrection.

"Yes! The Lord's response, so full of love, fills our hearts with hope," the pope said. "No matter how weighed down we are by pain or sin: The crucified One carries all these burdens with us and for us. No matter how discouraged we are by our own weaknesses: It is precisely then that God manifests his strength, the God who has raised Christ from the dead in order to give life to the world."

"Each one of us can experience the freedom of new life that comes from faith in the Redeemer," he added. "Once again, St. Augustine offers us an example of this: We revere him for his conversion even more than for his wisdom."

Turning to the Acts of the Apostles, Leo said the life of the early Church remains the model for genuine ecclesial reform.

"Even today, we must embrace this apostolic rule and put it into practice, meditating on it as an authentic criterion for ecclesial reform: a reform that must begin in the heart, if it is to be genuine, and must encompass everyone if it is to be effective," he said.

The pope said the first Christian community was not founded on a merely human agreement but on communion in Christ.

"The early Church, therefore, was not based on a social contract but rather on the harmony of faith, affections, ideas, and life decisions centered on the love of God who became man to save all the peoples of the earth," he said.

That unity, he said, must bear fruit in charity, especially amid poverty and oppression.

"Therefore, in the face of poverty and oppression, the guiding principle above all for Christians is charity: Let us do to those around us, as we would have them do to us," Leo said. "Inspired by this law, inscribed in our hearts by God, the Church is continually reborn, for where there is despair she kindles hope, where there is misery she brings dignity, and where there is conflict she brings reconciliation."

Addressing bishops and priests, the pope said pastors are called above all to bear witness to God without fear or compromise.

"The primary task of pastors as ministers of the Gospel is therefore to bear witness to God before the world with one heart and one soul, not permitting our concerns to lead us astray through fear, nor trends to undermine us through compromise," he said.

"Together with you, brothers in the episcopate and the priesthood, let us constantly renew this mission for the sake of those entrusted to us, so that through her service, the whole Church may be a message of new life for those we encounter," he added.

In his closing appeal, Leo addressed Algeria's Christians directly, praising their fidelity and urging them to continue witnessing to the Gospel in ordinary life.

"Dearest Christians of Algeria, you remain a humble and faithful sign of Christ's love in this land," he said. "Bear witness to the Gospel through simple gestures, genuine relationships, and a dialogue lived out day by day: In this way, you bring flavor and light to the places where you live."

He also praised their perseverance through hardship and invoked the example of the martyrs and of St. Augustine.

"Your history is one of generous hospitality and resilience in times of trial," the pope said. "Here the martyrs prayed; here St. Augustine loved his flock, fervently seeking the truth and serving Christ with ardent faith. Be heirs to this tradition, bearing witness through fraternal charity to the freedom of those born from above as a hope of salvation for the world."

Several cardinals concelebrated the Mass with the pope, including Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, archbishop of Algiers; Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, archbishop of Rabat; and curial cardinals Pietro Parolin, George Koovakad, Luis Antonio Tagle, Peter Turkson, and Robert Sarah. Also among the concelebrants were Archbishop Paul Gallagher and Father Joseph Farrell, prior general of the Augustinians.

Before the Mass, the pope visited the Augustinian community house and later had lunch with his confreres.

At the end of the celebration, Bishop Michel Jean-Paul Guillaud of Constantine offered words of thanks to the pope.

"Holy Father, your visit to this place, a source of your Augustinian roots, was brief, but it was an encouragement for us," Guillaud said. "First of all, it strengthened our Christian community in its faith and in its trust in the goodwill and respect of the Algerian people. We could not have welcomed you without the support and active collaboration of the authorities and the joyful hospitality of our Algerian brothers and sisters."

The exchange of gifts followed: The pope received a ceramic work made by an Algerian artist, and he in turn gave a chalice.

Leo then offered brief words of thanks of his own.

"This journey has been for me a particular gift of God's providence, a gift that the Lord has wished to make to the whole Church," the pope said. "And it seems to me that I can sum it up this way: God is love; he is the Father of all men and women. Let us return to God with humility…"

He continued: "We acknowledge that the current situation of the world is caught in a negative spiral that ultimately depends on our pride. We need him, we need his mercy, because only in him is the peace of the human heart found, and with him we will all be able to live together."

This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

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The Spanish-language editor of the Italian writer and apologist Vittorio Messori, who passed away this past Good Friday, revealed the keys to the Italian writer's literary success and the secret behind a heroic life lived out of love for the Church.

The relationship between editor Álex del Rosal and Messori, one of the most successful Catholic writers of the last half-century, began in 1993, when the publishing house Planeta embraced del Rosal's idea to launch "Planeta Testimonio."

The idea was to collect Catholic books that offered "engaging themes and authors that would consistently appeal to everyone from the student to the shopkeeper to the taxi driver," del Rosal said in an interview with ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.

With this goal in mind, del Rosal contacted Messori and proposed compiling his articles from the "Vivaio" column in the newspaper Avvenire into a book. In that column, Messori often defended the Catholic Church. The result was the bestseller "Black Legends of the Church."

Other titles followed, and in 1984, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was still prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Messori conducted a lengthy and candid interview with the future Pope Benedict XVI. Published in 1985 as "The Ratzinger Report," the book became an international bestseller. The two men remained friends over the years.

Messori achieved another historic milestone in 1994 with "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," a book-length interview with St. John Paul II. He was the only journalist ever commissioned to prepare questions for such a project with the pontiff. John Paul II personally wrote detailed written responses to Messori's questions, and the resulting volume became one of the most successful papal bestsellers in history.

Del Rosal, who described Messori as "extraordinary and deeply human,"  maintained a friendship with the Italian writer that spanned more than three decades and lasted till his death on April 3.

The Spanish editor shared in an interview with ACI Prensa some key insights into Messori's work and life.

The secret behind his heroic life

Beyond Messori's public image as a friend of popes and a world-renowned author, del Rosal revealed a little-known aspect of the writer's life that, in many ways, defined him even more profoundly as a son of the Church. "It was the great cross that Vittorio bore in profound silence," the editor remarked.

While he was still an agnostic, Messori entered into a canonical marriage with a young woman. Shortly thereafter, they separated, and he initiated the process to have the marriage declared null — a process that lasted two decades.

In that time, the writer met the woman who would remain his wife until his death: Rosanna Brichetti. The two met within the circles of Pro Civitate Christiana, a group founded in Assisi in 1939 by Father Giovanni Rossi, characterized by a great openness toward the secular world.

Messori disclosed his canonical situation to Brichetti with complete candor. "For 20 years," del Rosal said, "he lived with Rosanna in chastity — together, like brother and sister — in a truly heroic manner, precisely because he was so serious about living out his faith."

The annulment process lasted from 1975 to 1995. The first ruling, which affirmed the validity of the marriage, came in Turin; the second, in Milan. It was only after his appeal to Rome that he finally received the response he had been hoping for from the Church: His first marriage was declared null.

During one of his visits to Messori, del Rosal discussed this matter with the writer: "He would say to me with great pain: 'I am convinced. First, my conscience tells me that that first marriage is null and void. Second, I am almost certain that my success has slowed down this proceeding and made things more difficult for me.'"

"Thirdly — I, who am friends with Cardinal Ratzinger, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who oversees these matters, and with the pope [St. John Paul II], who is ultimately the one who can also make the decision — nevertheless, I do not wish to use my friendship for a matter of this nature," the editor recalled.

"Vittorio's greatest attribute is not his literary success, nor his apologetic work, nor even how formidable he was in his defense of the Church; rather, it is the immense heroism he displayed in loving the Church despite — one might say — having been mistreated," del Rosal said.

'A writer's master is his readers'

Messori was one of the most successful Catholic authors in recent decades, selling "somewhere between 30 and 40 million copies of his various works worldwide," del Rosal noted.

Part of this success was based on a maxim he upheld not merely in theory, but through great personal effort: "He was the writer who most earnestly lived out his own words: 'A writer's master is his readers. Therefore, one must always answer them,'" del Rosal recalled.

With the help of his wife, Rosanna, Messori replied to every one of the more than 100 letters that arrived in his mailbox each week, until the use of email became widespread.

Speak to the seeker, not the convinced

Another of Messori's strengths was that he addressed himself "not to the convinced Catholic, but to the seeker, to the one asking questions, even if they were at the opposite ends of ideological or doctrinal positions." Messori himself was raised in a communist and deeply anticlerical family. It is not without reason that his mother, upon learning of his conversion, "wanted to send him to a psychiatrist," the editor added.

This approach was evident in the publication of his first book, "Hypothesis About Jesus," for which he asked prominent Italian Communist Party member Lucio Lombardo Radice, an agnostic, to write the prologue.

"He didn't write or speak for a closed circle within the Catholic Church; rather, he sought to address every type of audience," del Rosal emphasized.

Every morning in the small Italian town on the shores of Lake Garda, Desenzano del Garda, Messori's work routine involved visiting what he called the "center of the town's opinion," a bar where "the television was on and people chatted about this and that. While having breakfast and reading the newspaper, he would listen to the people's conversations. This gave him a great deal of inspiration for taking the pulse of public opinion," del Rosal said.

The balance between reason and the Holy Spirit

Messori's manner of expression "maintained a balance between the two lungs of the Church: the Spirit and reason," according to the editor.

Messori really disliked "the terminology of the Vaticanologist" and rejected that label, despite having interviewed two pontiffs. To him, the Vaticanologist "is incapable of moving beyond merely gazing at the exterior of the vessel containing the deposit of faith" and concerns himself solely "with superficial or flashy matters."

"He always approached apologetics from the standpoint of reasoned faith, not morality. He argued that when morality is proclaimed without first having presented the faith, the result is not acceptance, but rejection," del Rosal explained.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

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Nearly four years after the home of Catholic father of seven and pro-life activist Mark Houck was arrested at gunpoint, he and his wife won a settlement of more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

The Houck home, located in rural eastern Pennsylvania, was raided by 20 armed federal agents in the early hours of the morning on Sept. 23, 2022. Houck was arrested in front of his family and interrogated for six hours.

Houck and his wife, Ryan-Marie, sued the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in November 2023 after Houck was acquitted in January of that same year of the incident that prompted the raid.

While praying at a Planned Parenthood facility in October 2021, Houck had defended his 12-year-old son during an altercation with an aggressive, elderly Planned Parenthood volunteer.

Upon his arrest, Houck was charged with alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 federal law that protects access to abortion services and places of worship. If convicted, Houck faced up to 11 years in federal prison and up to $350,000 in fines. Under the Biden administration, many pro-life activists were charged with violating the FACE Act in what the Justice Department now claims was a weaponization of the law.

In the lawsuit, the Houcks alleged that they and their children suffered post-traumatic stress, economic loss, and loss of reputation after the event. They also said their children suffered from intense anxiety, constant fear of losing their parents, and inability to sleep, and that the stress from the trial led Ryan-Marie to have three miscarriages and receive an infertility diagnosis.

'Huge victory for free speech'

Two organizations involved in the case are celebrating the victory as a win for the pro-life movement and for freedom of speech.

40 Days for Life President Shawn Carney called the win a "huge legal victory for free speech, not just for pro-life Americans," in a video statement.

"It's a huge victory for all Americans who want our right to speak our minds peacefully in a law-abiding way without fear of our own government," Carney said.

Peter Breen, Thomas More Society executive vice president and head of litigation, said the organization was "thrilled with the outcome."

"The Biden Department of Justice's intimidation against pro-life people and people of faith has been put in its place," Breen said.

"We took on Goliath — the full might of the United States government — and won," Breen said. "The jury saw through and rejected the prosecution's discriminatory case, which was harassment from Day 1. This is a win for Mark and the entire pro-life movement."

Carney said the victory was a "long shot."

"They have a 98% conviction rate at the DOJ, so he's part of the 2% that got acquitted," Carney said. "And then to go on offense and to say, we're not going to stand for this from our government, and to sue them, and for them to settle and win is a huge, huge victory."

Carney said that, as pro-lifers, "we got so much persecution from the DOJ under Biden, and President Trump has corrected that."

"It has been absolutely night and day. Under Biden, at one point, we were getting one to two inquiries from the FBI per week at different 40 Days for Life locations," Carney said. "This is absolutely ridiculous, and that has stopped, and we have been victorious in our lawsuit against the DOJ."

"So, be not afraid, go out, peacefully pray to end abortion," Carney concluded.

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Pope Leo XIV toured several major religious sites in Algeria on April 13 and 14, visiting with the local Catholic community and meeting with Islamic dignitaries during the first leg of his papal trip to Africa.

The Holy Father is scheduled to continue his visit with trips to Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon on his first apostolic journey to the continent lasting April 13–23.

Here is a look at the pope's time in Algeria in photos:

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"Endowed by Their Creator: Catholicism, the Declaration of Independence, and the American Experiment at 250" was the subject of a conference this month at The Catholic University of America (CUA) featuring a bevy of Catholic academics, jurists, and public intellectuals.

Co-hosted by CUA's Center for the Constitution and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Carroll Forum for Citizenship and Public Life, along with the University of Notre Dame's Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, the conference included a video address by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighting Catholics' presence and influence on the nation.

"It has been 250 years since a new people declared themselves to the world. At the time, less than 2% were Catholic, but the nation they built would come to serve as one of the proudest and most enduring testaments to the eternal truth of our faith," Rubio, himself a Catholic, stated.

Rubio recalled a 1790 letter from the nation's first president, George Washington, to the country's first Catholic bishop, John Carroll, in which he spoke of the "patriotic part" American Catholics played in the accomplishment of the American Revolution.

In that same letter, Washington also anticipated that "America, under the smiles of a Divine Providence, the protection of a good government, and the cultivation of manners, morals, and piety, cannot fail of attaining an uncommon degree of eminence, in literature, commerce, agriculture, improvements at home, and respectability abroad."

Summing it up, Rubio said: "To look upon the history of this golden land is to see the face of God."

'Catholic Social Thought and the American Experiment'

One of the symposium's central panels was titled "Catholic Social Thought and the American Experiment" and featured Russell Hittinger, executive director of the Institute for Human Ecology at CUA; Kenneth Grasso, professor and department chair of political science at Texas State University; Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC); and CUA professor Sarah Gustafson.

Grasso focused his presentation on the late Father John Courtney Murray, SJ, an American Jesuit priest and theologian known for his work on the reconciliation of Catholicism with American democratic pluralism and religious freedom.

"Murray in some sense was a celebrant of the American experiment, admired the Founding Fathers, somebody who celebrated America's success; he also thought that America was in deep trouble."

The moral tradition "provided the justification and substance of the American experiment and had been the source of its success," Grasso said. However, Murray also saw that "the very moral tradition which made American democracy compatible with Catholicism no longer lives in the minds and hearts of Americans."

"And as a result, he worried that America was on the verge of becoming a mass democracy," he said. "Murray approaches this crisis from three different dimensions."

Murray's first approach was how "the Church and Catholic thought played a critical role in creating a new tradition in political thought," Grasso said. Murray referred to the tradition as "the Western liberal tradition."

"The Western liberal tradition is committed to a government that's limited in scope, subject in its operations to a rule of law, and which acknowledges the sovereignty of God and its duty to conform its actions with the universal moral law, which includes protecting the rights of the person."

Murray's second approach was "political or sociopolitical," Grasso said. Murray argued "there is a limit to how much, and what kinds of, pluralism a pluralist society can stand while remaining a functioning body politic."

"If you have different religious groups holding different convictions about the nature of man, about the precepts of morality, it's going to be hard to form that underlying consensus that the body politic needs," he said.

Lastly, Murray's approach was "theological in nature," he said. "'Is America an example of the modern political experiment?' Yes and no."

"As America evolved more and more we retheorized our public life along the dimensions of modern political experiment. At the heart of the American experiment, or rather the modern political experiment, is secularity."

"Absent Christian revelation" and "modern culture's rejection of the Christian mode of existence" have created a spiritual vacuum "that will be filled by an explicitly non-Christian mode of existence. This mode of existence will manifest itself in violence ... a violence that threatens to destroy freedom, order, and justice," Grasso said.

"The American experiment will not long survive the revelation that was its ultimate inspiration. Where does this leave us? Murray says it leaves the body politic in a grave crisis," Grasso said.

'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'

The EPPC's Ryan Anderson focused his remarks on the contemporary application in America of Catholic social teaching (CST).

"There are four fundamental basic principles of Catholic social thought," Anderson said. "Human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, solidarity."

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church "talks about the 'imago Dei' ... so there's a transcendent source of our dignity, but it also talks about a transcendent orientation. We're all created for friendship with God. And so it's both the origin and the end of the human person that explains the nature of humanity."

"There is a Catholic account for this that is distinct from the secularist or the Enlightenment. This should easily, whether working from within the Catholic social thought perspective or the Declaration perspective, speak directly to the abortion issue."

Recognition of the right to life

"Public opinion has gone really, really badly for the pro-life side in the past decade after having been stable for relatively 30 or 40 years. In the past decade, we've seen wide divergences," he said. "I think it's too quick to say that American political culture has nothing to do with this."

When it comes to social thought and the Declaration regarding "the account of liberty and religious liberty in particular," there are "tensions" between the two, Anderson said.

"But there's also surprising overlap and harmonization between the account that [James] Madison gives us in ['Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments'], in which he says 'the reason that we have rights to religious liberty is because we have duties to the Creator.'"

"Then he says, 'before any man can be considered a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the universe.' Nice rejection of any secularism,'" Anderson noted.

Today, the matter of religious liberty has become a major issue. While on the president's Religious Liberty Commission for the past year, Anderson said he has heard "horror story after horror story during our hearings for the past 12 months," Anderson said.

"The most heated religious liberty issues" often affect Catholics and Christian values. Anderson specifically mentioned the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who "have pursued the state of New York because they are forcing them to engage in transgender nursing homes for the elderly who are dying."

Lastly, Anderson discussed the pursuit of happiness in regard to the family unit. Marriage and the family, "from a Catholic social perspective, is the basic cell of civilization and is the source of some of the deepest happiness and contentment for most people," he said.

"When you read through some of the scholars of the founding of what they thought about marriage and the family, there's virtually no daylight between the founder's vision for marriage and the family and contemporary Catholic social body's vision for marriage and the family."

"It's a man, woman, husband and wife, mother and father, a nuclear family, extended family. Yes, there are going to be disagreements about contraception, but that's much later," Anderson said. "There's a huge agreement on the nature of the human person, nature of human family."

Today there are now developments that have altered this understanding of the family. Anderson highlighted the effects of Obergefell and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Next steps

In addressing these issues impacting human dignity, Anderson laid out several next possible steps for the nation.

He referenced the Craddock article, which outlines a federal legislative strategy for banning abortion and argues that in "the original public meeting of the 14th Amendment, the word 'person' would apply to every human being and that would include the unborn child in the womb."

"From a … proper understanding of the 14th Amendment, this would empower Congress to pass legislation under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to protect the unborn. I don't see Congress doing that," he said.

Therefore, "more immediately, the Trump administration could simply reinstate the safety provisions for the abortion pill that were in existence throughout the entirety of the first Trump administration that Biden got rid of," he said.

Lawmakers are "afraid that if they do anything bold on life right now, it will hurt them in the upcoming midterms," Anderson said. But, he explained, "there's not a single pro-life elected official who has lost reelection."

He also explained the need for marriage, because "the root cause of abortion is not the cost of diapers, nor is it the cost of childbirth," but rather it is premarital pregnancies.

"If you're the child and you're conceived outside of marriage, 40% of the time you're going to die of an abortion. If you're conceived inside of marriage, 4% of the time," Anderson said. "Marriage is the best protector of the unborn."

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ANNABA, Algeria — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday said that "God's heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant, or the proud" as he visited the Ma Maison care home for the elderly in Annaba during his apostolic journey to Algeria.

After leaving the archaeological site of Hippo, the pope traveled to the home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, where he visited residents and greeted those gathered there.

"I am pleased to make this visit because God dwells here," Leo said. "Indeed, wherever there is love and service, God is there."

The pope thanked the Little Sisters of the Poor, the home's staff, Mother Philomena, and Archbishop Emeritus Paul Desfarges of Algiers.

"Having listened to you, and seeing your presence here amongst our elderly brothers and sisters, it is natural to praise God and give thanks to him," the pope said to Desfarges. "Just as Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said: 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.'"

Leo also thanked Salah Bouchemel, an elderly Algerian Muslim, for what he called a "beautiful and comforting" testimony.

"I think that the Lord, looking down from heaven upon a house like this, where people strive to live together in fraternity, would say, 'There is hope!'" the pope said.

"Yes, because God's heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice, and lies. But our Father's heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant or the proud. God's heart is with the little ones, with the humble, and with them he builds up his kingdom of love and peace day by day, just as you are striving to do here in your daily service, in your friendship and life together."

The pope concluded by thanking those present for the gathering.

"I will keep you in my prayers and I gladly impart my blessing," he said.

Later Tuesday afternoon, Leo was scheduled to conclude his visit to Hippo by celebrating Mass at the Basilica of St. Augustine before returning to Algiers.

This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

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Pope Leo XIV has confirmed that he will hold a consistory with cardinals from around the world on June 26–27, saying their previous discussions produced contributions that are "a resource of lasting value" for the Church.

In a letter to the members of the College of Cardinals dated April 12 and made public Tuesday, the Holy Father looked back on the first consistory of his pontificate, held Jan. 7–8, and highlighted the importance of the cardinals' exchanges there.

"I greatly appreciate the work carried out in the groups, which facilitated free, concrete, and spiritually fruitful exchanges as well as the notable quality of the interventions made during the plenary," Pope Leo wrote.

At that January meeting, the cardinals chose two of four topics proposed by the pope to guide their work. Setting aside the liturgical question — specifically the rite used before the Second Vatican Council — and the issue of relations between the Holy See and episcopal conferences, they opted to focus on "the mission of the Church in the world today" and on "synod and synodality as an instrument and style of collaboration."

The pope also placed special emphasis on Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis' first apostolic exhortation, published Nov. 24, 2013, and centered on proclaiming the kerygma — the Gospel with Christ at the center.

Referring to the cardinals' contributions, Pope Leo said: "This exhortation continues to be a significant point of reference. In addition to introducing new content, it refocuses everything on the kerygma as the heart of our Christian and ecclesial identity."

He added that it was recognized as "a 'breath of fresh air,' capable of initiating processes of pastoral and missionary conversion — rather than producing immediate structural reforms — and thus profoundly guiding the Church's journey."

The pope said this perspective challenges the Church at every level.

"On a personal level, it calls every baptized person to renew their encounter with Christ, moving from a faith merely received to a faith truly lived and experienced," he wrote. "This journey affects the very quality of spiritual life, expressed in the primacy of prayer, in the witness that precedes words, and in the coherence between faith and life."

At the community level, he said, the Church must move "from a pastoral approach of maintenance to one of mission."

"This requires communities to be living agents of the proclamation — welcoming communities that use accessible language, attentive to the quality of relationships, and capable of offering places for listening, accompaniment, and healing," he wrote.

At the diocesan level, Pope Leo stressed the duty of bishops and priests to foster missionary zeal.

"The responsibility of pastors to resolutely support missionary boldness emerges clearly, ensuring that such boldness is not weighed down or stifled by organizational excesses but is guided by a discernment that helps us to recognize what is essential," he said.

The pope also underlined a Christ-centered understanding of mission, one that spreads "through attraction rather than conquest."

"It is an integral mission, holding in balance explicit proclamation, witness, commitment, and dialogue, and yielding neither to the temptation of proselytism nor to a merely institutional mentality of preservation or expansion," he wrote. "Even when the Church finds herself in a minority, she is called to live with confident courage, as a small flock bringing hope to all, mindful that the aim of mission is not its own survival but the communication of the love with which God loves the world."

Among the proposals that emerged from the January consistory, the pope said several deserve further reflection. These include "the need to relaunch Evangelii Gaudium through an honest assessment of what has actually been embraced over the years and what, by contrast, remains unfamiliar or unimplemented," with particular attention to "the necessary reforms of the processes of Christian initiation."

He also pointed to "the importance of valuing apostolic and pastoral visits as authentic opportunities for kerygmatic proclamation and for a growth in the quality of relationships" and called for a reassessment of Church communications — including at the level of the Holy See — "from a more explicitly missionary perspective."

The letter concludes with the formal announcement of the next consistory, to be held June 26–27, with further details to come later to help cardinals prepare.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

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After traveling approximately 695,000 miles over its 10-day trip around the moon, the Artemis II crew — made up of astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Victor Glover — made their splash landing into the Pacific Ocean, arriving safely back on Earth, on April 10.

A day after the end of their historic journey, the four astronauts gave brief yet powerful reflections of their experience during an event at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

During her remarks, Koch — Artemis II's mission specialist — shared that she has learned what the true meaning of a crew is.

"A crew is a group that is in it, all the time, no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable," she said. "A crew has the same cares and the same needs and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked."

With this in mind and looking down at Earth from space, Koch shared that what struck her wasn't necessarily just looking down at Earth, but "it was all the blackness around it — Earth was just this lifeboat, hanging undisturbingly in the universe."

She added: "I know I haven't learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there's one new thing I know and that is, planet Earth, you are a crew."

Reflecting on his experience, Wiseman — who served as the Artemis II mission commander — highlighted the important role the astronauts' families played in supporting them.

"No one knows what the families went through. This was not easy being 200,000-plus miles away from home," he said. "Before you launch it feels like it's the greatest dream on earth and when you're out there you just want to get back to your families and your friends."

He added: "It's a special thing to be a human and it's a special thing to be on planet Earth."

During his remarks, Glover — who served as the pilot on the mission — said: "When this started on April 3, I wanted to thank God in public and I want to thank God again, because even bigger than my challenge trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with, it's too big to just be in one body."

Glover shared another powerful message outside of his home in Houston to a group of neighbors who gathered to welcome him back. The video was shared on social media.

"Some of us have never met before, and you know whose fault that is? Ours," he said. "So let's choose to do this. Let's be this more; let's be neighbors. I don't know if you heard me say it, but God told us to love him with all that we are, and love our neighbors as ourselves."

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Hansen also touched on three human experiences that left a lasting impact on him — gratitude, joy, and love.

The Canadian astronaut thanked his family, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the many teams that were involved throughout the entire process of the Artemis II mission. He also highlighted the crew's commitment to always remain joyful — even during the difficult moments — and the love they each carried for the mission and one another.

"You haven't heard us talk a lot about the science, the things we've learned, and that's because they're there and they're incredible but it's the human experience that is extraordinary for us," he said.

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In a message to members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Pope Leo XIV urged them to overcome "fear of illness and death" through faith in Christ, noting that facing these two realities can help individuals "discern in their own lives what is not essential, in order to turn toward, or return to, the Lord."

"In the light of faith, we know, conversely, that pain and illness can make a person wiser and more mature, helping him to discern in his own life what is not essential, in order to turn toward, or return to, the Lord," Leo observed in a letter signed March 27 and published April 13 as he began his 11-day tour of Africa.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission, which is meeting April 13–17 in Vatican City, operates under the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and is based in Rome. Its annual plenary assemblies consistently take place in the Vatican.

The pope cited several passages from the Gospel in which Jesus' compassion toward those in need and the sick is made manifest, such as when the Lord takes pity on a leper who asks to be healed, or on the two blind men he heals after they implore him to restore their sight.

"Christ's compassion toward all who suffer is so profound that he himself identifies with them," noted the pope, adding that Jesus "commanded his disciples to care for the sick, to lay hands upon them, and to bless them in his name."

"Through the experience of fragility and illness, we too can and must learn to walk together, in human and Christian solidarity, in accordance with the way God does, which is [through] compassion, closeness, tenderness, and solidarity," the pontiff said.

In his letter, he noted that human nature "bears inscribed within itself the reality of limitations and finitude."

"Why illness? Why suffering? Why death? Faced with these questions, even believers sometimes falter, coming to experience bewilderment and even despair and rebellion against God," he wrote to the assembled experts, whom he exhorted to shed light on life's most difficult aspects in the light of sacred Scripture.

The commission consists of about 20-30 leading Catholic biblical scholars from around the world, appointed by the pope, who serve in scholarly and advisory capacities, helping the Church interpret and apply Scripture faithfully to contemporary questions.

The pope invited the experts to consider in their exegetical work — in addition to illness, physical pain, and death — "also the sufferings of the poor, of migrants, and of the marginalized in society, which are present in so many pages of sacred Scripture."

Finally, he endorsed the initiative of the Pontifical Biblical Commission to study various biblical figures who suffered. "Taken together, they will certainly become a beautiful symbol of hope for every person who unites their sufferings to the crucified Christ, renewing the manifestation of his face of love," the Holy Father wrote.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

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