Father “Kike” Figaredo with one of the disabled children he helps in Cambodia. / Credit: Courtesy of Father Kike Figuredo

Vatican City, Oct 24, 2024 / 11:30 am (CNA).

“Don’t go crazy. If you want to know me, I live with others. My face is that of people. If you look for me, look for me in people.”

This was what Enrique “Kike” Figaredo — known as the “wheelchair bishop” — discerned when, at just 16 years old, he prayed to God to enlighten him and thus discovered his vocation.

Since that “special enlightenment” during a Holy Thursday spent in a Taizé monastery, when he was “looking for Jesus like a madman,” everything changed. Now a Jesuit priest and the apostolic prefect of Battambang, Cambodia, Figaredo, a native of the Asturias region of northwestern Spain, shared with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, the witness of his life dedicated to those most in need.

While not a bishop, Figaredo as apostolic prefect has certain administrative faculties of a bishop. 

“That day I began to ‘see’; I came out of that prayer enlightened — that is, happy. I began to see people differently, I no longer saw them as strangers and I felt that they were going to talk to me about God.”

What Figaredo didn’t yet know was that his missionary soul would take him far from his home in Gijón, Spain, to a country in Southeast Asia that he barely knew how to find on a map: Cambodia.

After being ordained a priest, he arrived at the Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand through the Jesuit Refugee Service and later moved to the Cambodian city of Battambang.

Figaredo dedicated his life to caring for the disabled, especially those maimed by anti-personnel mine explosions, a legacy of the genocide perpetrated in the 1970s by troops of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, better known as the Khmer Rouge, whose aftermath is still felt.

From that first day of his new life more than 40 years ago, FIgaredo clearly remembers having seen “the face of God in the children” and how the fear he felt when he arrived “was transformed into peace” when he saw the joy of the children playing, “happy, smiling, barefoot. There was life there, there was God,” he said.

Father Kike Figaredo and others accompany a disabled child. Credit: Courtesy of Father Kike Figaredo

He also described, as if time had not passed, the person in charge of the place, who was missing an eye and a leg. “He told me that for everything they needed, they would ask me. From that afternoon on, I was never afraid again; the Lord asked me to trust in him through the language of faith.”

Figaredo told ACI Prensa that these people are not “disabled” but people with “different abilities.” However, he pointed out that “they have special needs” and that caring for them is essential.

‘Pray more and think less’

In a predominantly Buddhist country, Catholics are only “insignificant” in number, but they are very present in social and religious life. Regarding the faith of those he evangelizes, he emphasized above all their simplicity and deep spirituality, “influenced by aspects that come from Buddhist culture.”

“We come from a more functional society, where we seek results. They know how to enjoy the presence of God in silence, because they believe that reality is inhabited by God, and that is very beautiful,” he explained.

Although, he noted, “the problem in Cambodia is that they believe in too many spirits, including evil ones that can dominate people. That’s why my motto is ‘pray more and think less.’”

Physical and spiritual help

The missionary noted the importance of helping these people physically, although, he said, “the decisive thing is to touch their hearts … when you touch their hearts with faith, there is a change.”

Regarding the Catholic faith, he highlighted two elements that especially help conversion. On the one hand, the Passion and Resurrection. “We have passion, but it’s not the last word. After the Passion there is resurrection, and that helps them a lot.”

On the other hand, the Spirit of the Lord “is liberating, it makes us free.” For the apostolic prefect, this “has an impressive force. And there are seeds of faith already in the people. When we tell them these things, the Holy Spirit is at work.”

The conversion of Vary

Figaredo could help but be moved as he remembered the conversion of Vary, a Cambodian girl who belonged to a family and an “extremely Buddhist” background but who nevertheless attended catechism classes and prayed with the missionaries.

One day, she went to the Virgin with a special request: that the director of the center for the disabled could get pregnant after a long time trying.

“Within three days, she was pregnant. So then this girl was baptized with the name Catalina and now she’s a catechist. She went to pray with faith, looking for a sign from God, and she committed herself to him,” Figaredo recalled.

The priest added that the new infant was named Karuna, which means “compassion,” since “she was born through an act of compassion from the Virgin.”

Projects for those in need

Over the years, Figaredo has promoted various action projects for the disabled, starting with the NGO Sauce, dealing “with the urgent” and gradually growing with initiatives for development, education, and social integration of the most disadvantaged people.

In 1991, he founded a school for disabled children in Phnom Penh, where they also build wooden wheelchairs known as the Mekong, in reference to the river that crosses Cambodia and five other Asian countries. Here they take in vulnerable street children, orphans, and disabled people.

In Battambang there is also the Arrupe Center, where different projects for children’s education and adult training are carried out.

Father Kike Figaredo with a child on the grounds of the mission. Credit: Courtesy of Father Kike Figaredo

They also have an agricultural and livestock area, a restaurant called the Lonely Tree Café, a cafeteria, a hotel, a textile center where they make Kromas — the traditional Cambodian scarf — and the Mutitaa clothing brand, where they sell garments that can be purchased online from Spain. All of these, according to the Spanish priest, are “small models of social integration.”

Volunteers from different countries come to the mission every year. Many come to help during the summer and the adults usually stay longer, about a year. Then there are others who come only for a few months and end up staying because they say the people have something that “captivates you.”

A call to personal conversion

Since the beginning of October, Figaredo has been in Rome to participate in the Synod on Synodality, where he has had the opportunity to help many people “learn to point to Cambodia on the map.”

He also expressed to ACI Prensa his desire that the synodal process “makes real changes.” According to the Jesuit, the synod “is calling us to pastoral conversion” and, above all, “personal conversion.”

Figaredo explained that this conversion also requires putting the Holy Spirit in the center, “and not oneself,” in order to also be able to “go out on a mission.” He also emphasized that the Church “cannot be defined by institutions” and that “listening” is essential in this process.

“The day when we all know how to put God’s mercy at the center, we will see that what defines the synodal Church is the Trinity, the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Until we have this model embedded in our hearts, there will be no synodal Church.”

He thus pointed out that Jesus “spoke of the kingdom of God and spoke of the mission, and then came the Church.”

“If we have all these conversions, going through personal conversion, conversion in relationships, and conversion to the Trinity, then I think there will be a before and after,” he added.

He also referred to this event as “a paradigm shift,” where we go from “the static to the dynamic.” “The Church is a people that is on a journey and we must accompany her. And this will not change in a day; we need time in order to think more about the churches and less about the institutions, which are a support, but not the identity of the Church. Identity is the mission inspired by the Trinity.”

A special gift for Pope Francis

The missionary has traveled to the Eternal City with a special gift for the Holy Father: a Mekong wheelchair, characterized by having three wheels and made of wood. “The pope already knows that he has a wheelchair waiting for him,” Figaredo said.

Two disabled youth in "Mekong" wheelchairs. Credit: Courtesy of Father Kike Figaredo

However, he pointed out that the gift is full of meaning. “This wheelchair was invented in Cambodia; it is made with local materials and the wheels are made of rubber bicycle wheels, designed especially for the countryside, not for the city.”

“I think it’s very beautiful for Pope Francis to be sitting in a chair made by disabled people who have survived the war and who have made wheelchairs for other disabled people.”

Figaredo confessed to ACI Prensa his desire: “That the pope sit in this chair and preach for peace from there. He is a disabled person, since he has not been able to walk easily for some time, and he is the world’s great leader for peace. The fact that he should sit in the wheelchair for the disabled and preach from there has great meaning.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, on the set of EWTN News live from at the Synod on Synodality, Oct. 22, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 24, 2024 / 10:15 am (CNA).

Jesuit Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, hopes the legacy of the Synod on Synodality launched by Pope Francis will be the renewal of the Catholic Church as the people of God who walks together to “better carry out the mission that Christ entrusted us” in modern-day society.

“The central insight of Vatican II is that we are all enjoying equal dignity as Christians by our baptism,” the Canadian cardinal shared with EWTN News hosts Catherine Hadro and Matthew Bunson.

“It is as the people of God that we walk together — who are ordained, or in authority, or both — are at the service of God’s people,” he elaborated. “This kind of service needs to be refreshed and, in a certain sense, brought up to date.”

Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, talks with Catherine Hadro and Matthew Bunson on the set of EWTN News live from the Synod on Synodality in Rome, Oct. 24, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

To “more effectively, more flexibly, [and] more generously” respond to the “great hunger and thirst” of people, Czerny stated that synodality is intended to confirm the authority and tradition of the Catholic Church.

“If you want to sum up the synod, we are seeking ways and means to assure that kind of authority so that the Church will be able to carry out its mission and not be handicapped or distracted by sins and mistakes which, in fact, consume and eradicate authority,” he told EWTN News.

Focusing on the servant leadership of Jesus Christ, Czerny stated that he and other ordained leaders in the Church — particularly the new cardinals-elect — have to recognize their explicit mission and role to support the Holy Father and of “giving our lives” to serve the Catholic faithful. 

On the topic of the participation of women in the Church, the cardinal said the different ministries of women can be better “integrated” within Church structures so as to provide better “recognition, authority, formation, [and] recompense” for the work they carry out at the service of God and others.

In spite of the “enormous challenges of our times” — such as forced migration or conflict — Czerny said many of the Catholic faithful living on the margins or peripheries are witnesses of a “hopeful Church” and are therefore an example for others. 

“Migrants are not only our deep concern in terms of solidarity and support and evangelization. But they’re also a sign of the mobility and the courage that the Church needs,” Czerny said. 

“They’re not lacking in hope, they’re not lacking in resourcefulness, and they’re not lacking in missionary creativity. So I would say, as much as they win our concern and sympathy, they also win our admiration,” he added.

According to the prelate, the impact and legacy of synodality will go beyond the Catholic Church and reach out to the secular world. 

“I think many of us are recognizing, experiencing that synodality would go a long way to helping make this world more peaceful, more human, more just, and finally more Christian,” he said.

“That encourages us. We’re not just doing intra-Church housekeeping. We are actually preparing effective and important proposals for the world community.”

Pope Francis speaks at the general audience in St. Peter's Square on Oct. 23, 2024. An altar painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Francesco de Rhoden inside the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rome, Italy. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA [L] CNA file photo [R]

Rome Newsroom, Oct 24, 2024 / 06:01 am (CNA).

Pope Francis released a new encyclical Dilexit Nos  (“He Loved Us”) on Thursday, calling for a renewed understanding of devotion to the Sacred Heart in the modern era and its many pressing challenges.

In the document, the pope argues that the spirituality of the Sacred Heart offers a vital response to what he calls a “liquid society” dominated by technology and consumerism.

Pope Francis writes: “Living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart.”

Subtitled “Letter on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ,” the document is the first papal encyclical dedicated entirely to the Sacred Heart since Pope Pius XII’s Haurietis Aquas in 1956.

Throughout the document, Francis weaves together traditional elements of Sacred Heart devotion with contemporary concerns, presenting Christ’s heart as the principle unifying reality in a fragmented world.

The document’s release fulfills an announcement made by the pope in June, when he noted that meditating on the Lord’s love can “illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal and say something meaningful to a world that seems to have lost its heart.”

At a press conference presenting the document on Thursday, Italian Archbishop Bruno Forte said the encyclical expresses “in a profound way the heart and the inspiring motive of the whole ministry and magisterium of Pope Francis.”

Archbishop Bruno Forte speaks to journalists at the presentation of the encyclical Dilexit Nos, Oct. 24, 2024. Credit: Julia Cassell/EWTN News

The theologian added that in his opinion, the text is “the key to understanding this pope’s magisterium.”

Forte, who is a member of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented the encyclical together with Sister Antonella Fraccaro, superior general of the Disciples of the Gospel (Discepole del Vangelo).

From Scripture to AI: inside the pope’s vision

The approximately 30,000-word encyclical draws extensively from Scripture and tradition, featuring insights from St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Charles de Foucauld.

Released as the Synod on Synodality is concluding its monthlong deliberations in Rome, the document emphasizes both personal spirituality and communal missionary commitment.

Francis develops his vision across five chapters, beginning with a philosophical and theological exploration of “the importance of the heart” before moving through reflections on Christ’s actions and words of love, the theological meaning of Sacred Heart devotion, its spiritual dynamics and social implications.

Algorithms in the digital world

“The algorithms operating in the digital world show that our thoughts and will are much more ‘uniform’ than we had previously thought,” Francis writes, arguing that technological solutions alone cannot address the deeper needs of the human heart.

He emphasizes that the meaning of the word “heart” is not sufficiently captured by biology, psychology, anthropology, or any other science.

“In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity. No algorithm will ever be able to capture, for example, the nostalgia that all of us feel, whatever our age, and wherever we live,” Francis writes.

The pope emphasizes that devotion to the Sacred Heart is not merely a private spiritual practice but has profound implications for social life and human relationships.

“The world can change, beginning with the heart,” he writes, connecting individual transformation with broader social renewal.

Sacred Heart teaching from Pius XII to Francis

The encyclical builds on centuries of Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart while offering fresh insights for modern challenges. Francis cites extensively from previous papal teachings, particularly from St. John Paul II.

“Devotion to the Sacred Heart, as it developed in Europe two centuries ago, under the impulse of the mystical experiences of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, was a response to Jansenist rigor, which ended up disregarding God’s infinite mercy,” the late pope writes.

“The men and women of the third millennium need the heart of Christ in order to know God and to know themselves; they need it to build the civilization of love.”

Heidegger, goosebumps, and the heart

In a significant theological and philosophical development, the encyclical engages deeply with modern thought, particularly through its discussion of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s understanding of human emotion and understanding.

The pope cites Heidegger’s insight that “philosophy does not begin with a pure concept or certainty but with a shock,” as “without deep emotion, thought cannot begin. The first mental image would thus be goosebumps.”

For Francis, this is where the heart comes in as it “listens in a non-metaphoric way to ‘the silent voice’ of being, allowing itself to be tempered and determined by it.”

‘A new civilization of love’: the path forward

“The heart is also capable of unifying and harmonizing our personal history, which may seem hopelessly fragmented,” the pope writes, “yet is the place where everything can make sense.”

“The Gospel tells us this in speaking of Our Lady, who saw things with the heart.”

The document calls for a renewal of traditional Sacred Heart practices on this understanding while emphasizing their contemporary relevance.

“Our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling differing minds and wills, so that the Spirit can guide us in unity as brothers and sisters. Reconciliation and peace are also born of the heart. The heart of Christ is ‘ecstasy,’ openness, gift, and encounter.”

The pope concludes by connecting this spiritual vision to the Church’s broader mission in the modern world, calling for what he — following St. John Paul II — terms a “civilization of love” built on the foundation of Christ’s love.

This vision also connects directly to previous social encyclicals by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, presenting Christ’s love as the foundation for addressing and solving contemporary challenges.

Hanna Brockhaus contributed to this report.

Bishop Dominique Rey (left), and Coadjutor Bishop François Touvet of Fréjus-Toulon, France. / Credit: Claude Truong-Ngoc via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) and G.Garitan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Vatican City, Oct 23, 2024 / 11:10 am (CNA).

The Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon in the south of France will ordain six men to the transitional diaconate on Dec. 1, ending a Vatican suspension on diocesan ordinations to the priesthood or diaconate that has lasted over two years.

Ordinations were halted by the Vatican in June 2022 following a fraternal visit to the diocese by Archbishop (now Cardinal) Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille.

The ordinations of six seminarians from the traditionalist community Missionaries of Divine Mercy will take place in the Collegiate Church of Saint-Martin in Lorgues, according to an Oct. 21 announcement from Bishop François Touvet.

Pope Francis appointed Touvet a coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon in November 2023, putting him in charge of religious communities and of the training of priests and seminarians.

As coadjutor, Touvet is serving alongside Bishop Dominique Rey, who has led the French diocese since 2000. Touvet will succeed Rey upon Rey’s 75th birthday.

Touvet said this week the Dec. 1 ordinations “are the fruit of a trusting and peaceful dialogue maintained with the superior of the community [of the Missionaries of Divine Mercy] and the Dicastery for Divine Worship.”

While the Missionaries of Divine Mercy recognize the validity of the post-Vatican II liturgy, one of its three charisms is the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

The group, which was founded under diocesan law, is also dedicated to the missions of mercy and evangelization, especially among Muslims.

Touvet wrote that while the statutes of the community, founded in 2005, indicate that priests and deacons should use the liturgical books from prior to the reform of the Second Vatican Council, the community’s members “recognize the validity of the current missal and have sought, since their foundation almost 20 years ago, a true insertion in diocesan life under the authority of the bishop.”

The diaconate ordinations scheduled for later this year are a “favorable outcome” of exchanges with the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Touvet said, since permission to offer the Traditional Latin Mass “can only be granted to a recently ordained priest by the Holy See” since the 2021 promulgation of Traditiones Custodes.

The bishop invited prayers for the soon-to-be deacons and “so that the liturgy is not a place of combat but of communion in Jesus Christ the savior.”

Suspension of ordinations

The Vatican requested the suspension of ordinations in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon in summer 2022 due to “questions that certain Roman dicasteries were asking about the restructuring of the seminary and the policy of welcoming people to the diocese,” according to an announcement by Bishop Dominique Rey at the time.

The diocese had seen a record number of ordinations to the priesthood under Rey’s leadership, which began in 2000, but questions were raised about his approach to evaluating candidates for the priesthood. He was also under scrutiny for having welcomed to the diocese a large number of religious orders and lay groups across a wide spiritual spectrum that included both charismatic and traditionalist communities.

Known for his support of the Traditional Latin Mass, Rey had also ordained diocesan clerics using the 1962 Roman Pontifical and had used the same book for the ordinations of religious communities, including the Institute of the Good Shepherd. 

After Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis Custodes, the 2021 motu proprio restricting the celebration of Mass in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, the bishop had highlighted the concerns of some priests and communities present in his diocese who offered Mass according to the old rite. 

Aveline’s fraternal visit to Rey’s diocese took place in early 2022 at the request of the Vatican.

Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Cameroon, and Cardinal Edouard Sinayobye of Rwanda talk with journalists at Synod on Synodality press briefings in October 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 22, 2024 / 15:15 pm (CNA).

As the Vatican draws closer to the end of the global four-year discernment phase of the Synod on Synodality, high-ranking African delegates participating in this year’s meetings shared their perspectives on the journey of “walking together as the people of God” and its impact on the life of the Church in Africa.

Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) told journalists on Tuesday of his satisfaction with this year’s global synodal talks taking place in the Vatican.

“I must say that I am happy with the synod, which had been convened to develop a new way of being Church and not to solve specific issues which exist in the Church,” Besungu said during the Oct. 22 press briefing.

But how has the Synod on Synodality actually impacted the Catholic Church in Africa? And, in turn, how has the Church in Africa impacted the global synodal process, when proportionately few Africans are participating in the Oct. 2–27 session at the Vatican?

Small Christian communities: a grassroots Church 

Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya from Cameroon told journalists at the press briefing that synodality is an “eschatological sign” in the Church today and stressed the importance of small Christian communities as “a very big treasure for Africa.”

“We are going through a moment of a boom of Catholicism in Africa,” the Cameroonian prelate said. “Synodality comes very alive in the small Christian communities because you don’t live in anonymity as a Catholic.”

Father Don Bosco Onyalla, editor-in-chief of ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, told CNA in an interview that the theological concept of synodality “where people come together” is a reality and tradition that is already lived among Catholics across the continent.

“In Africa, the Church has been conceived as a group of families — the small Christian communities,” Onyalla explained. “The structure of the Church in Africa is from grassroots families coming together.”

Onyalla added that “the institution of the family” — which extends beyond the Western concept of the nuclear family — could “be a source of inspiration for other parts of the world.”

Communion, unity, and reconciliation  

According to Cardinal Edouard Sinayobye of Rwanda, the synodal process launched by Pope Francis for the universal Church in 2021 provides the “biblical and theological foundations” for growing in communion and reconciliation with God and others.

Rwanda is on a journey of healing following the genocide 30 years ago that killed approximately 800,000 people belonging to the minority Tutsi ethnic group.

“For us in Rwanda to talk about fraternity and unity is truly a message which is very well received by people — it helps people walk together and journey together — because after everything that’s happened we are learning to be brothers and sisters,” the cardinal told journalists at the Oct. 14 Vatican press briefing. 

“We must accompany the victims and the perpetrators — this is something that we do in all parishes and this synod has helped us considerably,” he added. “It was a space in which we were truly capable of deepening the way in which we can address reconciliation.” 

Care for the poor and vulnerable

Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla from South Sudan shared his plea for the Catholic Church worldwide to live in solidarity with the world’s poor and vulnerable living in different countries.

Mulla hopes the Synod on Synodality will promote active dialogue and collaboration among Catholics and help promote the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, including the principles of solidarity, the promotion of peace, and the preferential option for the poor. 

Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla from South Sudan talks with journalists during a Synod on Synodality press briefing on Oct. 18, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

“Synodality — going together — should be the way for us to resolve our own problems. And I hope that all of us together can resolve these problems,” the cardinal told journalists at an Oct. 18 Vatican press briefing. 

“The problems that affect Sudan, or South Sudan, or Colombia, or other parts of Mediterranean countries are our problems,” he added. “We are related — interrelated — and dialogue has to happen. We must feel [compassion] about these situations.” 

Aid to the Church in Need International reported that Africa is the priority region for its projects. In 2023, 31.4% of its activities were dedicated to supporting priests and local communities suffering persecution or persistent poverty throughout the continent.

In 1984, Pope John Paul II met in Rome with 300,000 young people from all over the world in a meeting that laid the foundations for today’s World Youth Day. / Credit: Gregorini Demetrio, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Vatican City, Oct 22, 2024 / 05:00 am (CNA).

You probably know that St. John Paul II was the second-longest-serving pope in modern history with 27 years of pontificate, and he was the first non-Italian pontiff since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI in 1523.

But did you know that he also changed the Catholic Church forever during those 27 years? Here are five ways he did that:

1. He helped bring about the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

The pope’s official biographer, George Weigel, who for decades chronicled the pope’s engagement with civic leaders, noted that the way Pope John Paul II influenced the political landscape was enormous. His political influence is seen best in the way his engagement with world leaders assisted the downfall of the U.S.S.R.

Just days before President Ronald Reagan called on Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, he met with the pope. According to historian and author Paul Kengor, Reagan went so far as to call Pope John Paul II his “best friend,” opining that no one knew his soul better than the Polish pontiff who had also suffered an assassination attempt and carried the burden of world leadership.

In the course of 38 official visits and 738 audiences and meetings held with heads of state, John Paul II influenced civic leaders around the world in this epic battle with a regime that would ultimately be responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million people. 

“He thought of himself as the universal pastor of the Catholic Church, dealing with sovereign political actors who were as subject to the universal moral law as anybody else,” Weigel said. 

“He was willing to be a risk-taker, but he also appreciated that prudence is the greatest of political virtues. And I think he was quite respected by world political leaders because of his transparent integrity. His essential attitude toward these men and women was: How can I help you? What can I do to help?”

More than anything, John Paul II understood his role primarily as a spiritual leader.

According to Weigel, the pope’s primary impact on the world of affairs was his central role in creating the revolution of conscience that began in Poland and swept across Eastern Europe. This revolution of conscience inspired the nonviolent revolution of 1989 and the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, an astounding political achievement. 

2. He beatified and canonized more saints than any predecessor, making holiness more accessible to ordinary people.

One of John Paul II’s most enduring legacies is the huge number of saints he recognized. He celebrated 147 beatification ceremonies, during which he proclaimed 1,338 blesseds, and celebrated 51 canonizations for a total of 482 saints. That is more than the combined tally of his predecessors over the five centuries before.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta is perhaps the best-known contemporary of John Paul II who is now officially a saint, but the first saint of the new millennium and one especially dear to John Paul II was St. Faustina Kowalska, the fellow Polish native who received the message of divine mercy. 

“Sister Faustina’s canonization has a particular eloquence: By this act I intend today to pass this message on to the new millennium,” he said in the homily of her canonization. “I pass it on to all people, so that they will learn to know ever better the true face of God and the true face of their brethren.”

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, whom Pope John Paul II beatified in 1990 and nicknamed the “man of the beatitudes,” is another popular saint elevated by the Polish pope who loved to recognize the holiness of simple persons living the call to holiness with extraordinary fidelity. At the time of his death, the 24-year-old Italian was simply a student with no extraordinary accomplishments. But his love for Christ in the Eucharist and in the poor was elevated by John Paul II as heroic and worthy of imitation.

It bears noting that Pope Francis would later surpass John Paul II when he proclaimed 800 Italian martyrs saints in a single day.

3. He transformed the papal travel schedule.

John Paul II visited some 129 countries during his pontificate — more countries than any other pope had visited up to that point.

He also created World Youth Days in 1985 and presided over 19 of them as pope.

Weigel said John Paul II understood that the pope must be present to the people of the Church, wherever they are.

“He chose to do it by these extensive travels, which he insisted were not travels, they were pilgrimages,” Weigel said.

“This was the successor of Peter, on pilgrimage to various parts of the world, of the Church. And that’s why these pilgrimages were always built around liturgical events, prayer, adoration of the holy Eucharist, ecumenical and interreligious gatherings — all of this was part of a pilgrimage experience.”

In the latter half of the 20th century — a time of enormous social change and upheaval— John Paul II’s extensive travels and proclamation of the Gospel to the ends of the earth were just what the world needed, Weigel said.

4. He made extraordinary contributions to Church teaching.

John Paul II was a scholar who promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992, reformed the Eastern and Western Codes of Canon Law during his pontificate, and authored 14 encyclicals, 15 apostolic exhortations, 11 apostolic constitutions, and 45 apostolic letters.

This is why Weigel said the Church has only begun to unpack what he calls the “magisterium” of John Paul II, in the form of his writings and his intellectual influence.

For example, John Paul’s theology of the body remains enormously influential in the United States and throughout the world, though Weigel said even this has yet to be unpacked.

5. He gave new life to the Catholic Church in Africa.

John Paul II’s legendary evangelical fervor took fire in Africa. 

He had a particular friendship with Beninese Cardinal Bernadin Gantin and visited Africa many times. His visits would inspire a generation of JPII Catholics in Africa as well as other parts of the globe.

“John Paul II was fascinated by Africa; he saw African Christianity as living, a kind of New Testament experience of the freshness of the Gospel, and he was very eager to support that, and lift it up,” Gantin said.

“It was very interesting that during the two synods on marriage and the family in 2014 and 2015, some of the strongest defenses of the Church’s classic understanding of marriage and family came from African bishops. Some of whom are first-, second-generation Christians, deeply formed in the image of John Paul II, whom they regard as a model bishop,” Gantin said.

“I think wherever you look around the world Church, the living parts of the Church are those that have accepted the magisterium ... as the authentic interpretation of Vatican II. And the dying parts of the Church, the moribund parts of the Church are those parts that have ignored that magisterium.”

John Paul II’s influence in Africa and around the globe transformed the world. It also forever transformed the Church.

This story was first published on Oct. 22, 2021, and has been updated.

“Rushing to ask for the ordination of deaconesses is not today the most important response to promote women,” Cardinal Víctor Fernández, the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, said Oct. 21, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News

Vatican City, Oct 21, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Víctor Fernández on Monday reaffirmed Pope Francis’ position against women’s access to the diaconate, an issue that will continue to be evaluated by a specialized commission while the Synod on Synodality continues to reflect on the role of women in the Church outside of ordained ministry.

During his speech at the general congregation on Oct. 21, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith recalled that for the Holy Father the question of the female diaconate “is not ripe,” and for this reason he specifically asked the members of the synod not to get sidetracked on this possibility now.

However, the cardinal indicated that those who “are convinced that it is necessary to go deeper” into this question can send their considerations to the commission established by the Holy Father in 2020 to further study the subject. The commission is chaired by Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi.

In a similar way to what he said at the beginning of the synod, Fernández emphasized that “rushing to ask for the ordination of deaconesses is not today the most important response to promote women.”

However, he underscored that the pontiff “is very concerned” about the role of women in the Church and therefore called for further reflection “without concentrating on holy orders.”

Other forms of women’s participation in the Church

Fernández referred once again to the reflections led by group 5, charged during the synod with exploring, among other things, “the question of the necessary participation of women in the life and leadership of the Church.”

He pointed out that this group has analyzed different forms such as the lay ministry of catechists in communities without priests, an option that emerged after Querida Amazonia and was not widely accepted.

The prelate recalled that Pope Francis has pointed out that priestly power, linked to the sacraments, “is not necessarily expressed as power or authority, and that there are forms of authority that do not require holy orders.”

Continuing his reflection, he renewed his invitation to send to the dicastery “testimonies of women who are truly community leaders or who perform important functions of authority.”

“I ask especially the women members of this synod to help collect, explain, and send to the dicastery various proposals, which we can hear in their context, on possible paths for the participation of women in the leadership of the Church,” he added.

Likewise, after the “misunderstanding” that was caused by his absence from a meeting of synod delegates in which they interacted with the Vatican study group on this issue, the cardinal confirmed that there will be a new meeting on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 4:30 p.m. local time where he will listen to ideas and proposals.

He also expressed his hope that concrete steps can be taken to understand that “there is nothing in the nature of women that prevents them from occupying very important positions in the guidance of the Churches. What truly comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”

Draft of final document already in hands of synod members

Paolo Ruffini, secretary-general of the General Secretariat of the Synod, reported during today’s press conference that the draft of the final document was delivered this morning to the members of the synod.

The document, which will be presented to Pope Francis, is being prepared by a commission made up of a president, three secretaries, seven members representing each continent, and three members appointed by the pope.

Present at the briefing at the Holy See Press Office, cardinal-designate Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP, urged against seeking “headlines” in this document, as he “this would be a mistake.” He also noted that “the synod is a profound renewal of the Church” and a “new way” of imagining it.

For her part, Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod, stated that the synod also represents a “new way of articulating the primacy” of the Petrine ministry.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Pope Francis prays during his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Oct. 9, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 21, 2024 / 07:49 am (CNA).

Pope Francis will publish the fourth encyclical of his pontificate on Thursday on “the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.”

The encyclical, titled, Dilexit Nos, meaning “he has loved us,” will be published Oct. 24.

The pope had announced in June that he was preparing a document on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, noting that meditating on the Lord’s love can “illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal and say something meaningful to a world that seems to have lost its heart.”

Pope Francis then described the document as something that “brings together the precious reflections of previous magisterial texts and a long history that goes back to the sacred Scriptures, in order to re-propose today to the whole Church this devotion imbued with spiritual beauty.”

“I believe it will do us great good to meditate on various aspects of the Lord’s love, which can illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal and say something meaningful to a world that seems to have lost its heart,” Francis said at the end of his general audience on June 5. 

The encyclical is being published amid the celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, which began on Dec. 27, 2023, and will conclude on June 27, 2025.

The Vatican will hold a livestreamed press conference on Thursday Oct. 24 on the encyclical, “Dilexit Nos: Encyclical Letter on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.” 

Archbishop Bruno Forte, an Italian theologian and a new member of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, will present the encyclical to the press together with Sister Antonella Fraaccaro, the head of the Italian religious order Discepole del Vangelo (“Disciples of the Gospel”).

Dilexit Nos, will be Pope Francis’ fourth encyclical after Fratelli Tutti published in 2020, Laudato Si’ published in 2015, and Lumen Fidei, published in 2013.

Statuary sits before imagery of the recently canonized saints in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 20, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).

Pope Francis canonized 14 new saints on Sunday, including a father of eight and Franciscan friars killed in Syria for refusing to renounce their faith and convert to Islam.

In a Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 20, the pope declared three nineteenth-century founders of religious orders and the eleven “Martyrs of Damascus” as saints to be venerated by the global Catholic Church, commending their lives of sacrifice, missionary zeal, and service to the Church.

“These new saints lived Jesus’ way: service,” Pope Francis said. “They made themselves servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in doing good, steadfast in difficulties, and generous to the end.”

Pope Francis speaks at a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

The newly canonized include St. Giuseppe Allamano, a diocesan priest from Italy who founded the Consolata missionary orders, and St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, a Canadian nun from Montreal known for founding an order dedicated to the service of priests.

Also among the saints are St. Elena Guerra, hailed as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit,” and St. Manuel Ruiz López and his seven Franciscan companions, all martyred in Damascus in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith. 

The final three canonized are siblings, Sts. Francis, Mooti, and Raphael Massabki, lay Maronite Catholics martyred in Syria along with the Franciscans.

Thousands of pilgrims prayed the Litany of the Saints together in St. Peter’s Square before Pope Francis declared the 14 as enrolled among the saints “for the honor of the Blessed Trinity,  the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.”

“We confidently ask for their intercession so that we too can follow Christ, follow him in service  and become witnesses of hope for the world,” the pope said.

In his homily, Pope Francis highlighted how service embodied the lives of each of the new saints. “When we learn to serve,” he said, “our every gesture of attention and care, every expression of tenderness, every work of mercy becomes a reflection of God’s love. And so we continue Jesus’ work in the world.”

The Gospel for the Mass was chanted in Greek in addition to Latin in honor of the 11 Martyrs of Damascus. 

Pilgrims gather in St. Peter's Square for a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

Father Marwan Dadas, a Franciscan friar from Jerusalem, was among those who attended the canonization. He said that the testimony of the martyrs from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land is especially meaningful to people who are suffering due to the ongoing war and violence in the region today.

“This is a good message to say that even though we have challenges — and it seems we have death continuously —  we still have the light of God that is helping us and guiding us through these difficult periods,” Dadas told CNA.

“It's an important message for me, and I hope it will be the message for all the people of the Holy Land, not only the Holy Land, but for everybody. It is a message from God saying that He is always with us.”

St. Giuseppe Allamano: A missionary heart 

One of the most celebrated figures among the new saints is St. Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926), an Italian diocesan priest who founded the Consolata Missionaries and the Consolata Missionary Sisters. Allamano, though he spent his entire life in Italy, left a global legacy by training missionaries who carried the Gospel to remote corners of Africa, Asia, and South America.

Allamano told the missionaries in the order he founded in northern Italy in 1901 that they needed to be “first saints, then missionaries.”

The medical miracle that led to Allamano’s canonization involved the healing of a man who was attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest. In 1996, a man named Sorino Yanomami, a member of the indigenous Yanomami tribe in the Amazon, was mauled by a jaguar and left with life-threatening injuries. 

As doctors treated his skull fractures, Consolata missionaries prayed in the hospital with a relic of Allamano, seeking his intercession. Miraculously, Yanomami recovered without any long-term damage, according to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

Allamano, whose spiritual director was St. John Bosco, emphasized the importance of holiness in priestly life, telling his priests, “You must not only be holy, but extraordinarily holy.” His influence has endured through the orders he founded, present today in 30 countries across the globe.

St. Marie-Léonie Paradis: “Humble among the humble”

St. Marie-Léonie Paradis (1840–1912), a Canadian religious sister, also took her place among the new saints. She founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, an order whose spirituality and charism is the support of priests through both prayer and by taking care of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry in rectories in “humble and joyful service” in imitation of “Christ the Servant.”

During his homily, Pope Francis praised Paradis’ faith and underlined that “those who follow Christ, if they wish to be great, must serve by learning from Him” who made himself “a servant to reach everyone with his love.”

Born in the Acadian region of Quebec, Paradis also spent eight years in New York serving in the St. Vincent de Paul Orphanage in the 1860s and taught French at St. Mary’s Academy in Indiana, before founding her religious order in New Brunswick, Canada.

Paradis’ canonization was supported by the miraculous healing of a newborn in Canada, attributed to her intercession.

St. Elena Guerra: An “apostle of the Holy Spirit”

Among the canonized was St. Elena Guerra (1835–1914), known for her ardent devotion to the Holy Spirit. Guerra, who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, was instrumental in promoting the first-ever novena to the Holy Spirit under Pope Leo XIII in 1895. Her writings and spiritual leadership inspired many, including St. Gemma Galgani, a mystic and saint who was her student. 

For much of her 20s, Guerra was bedridden with a serious illness, a challenge that turned out to be transformational for her as she dedicated herself to meditating on Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. She felt the call to consecrate herself to God during a pilgrimage to Rome with her father after her recovery and went on to form the religious community dedicated to education.

During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, Guerra composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your spirit and renew the world.

“Pentecost is not over,” Guerra wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and he will come to us as he did to them.”

The Martyrs of Damascus: Courageous witnesses of faith

The solemnity of the ceremony was heightened as Pope Francis canonized the Martyrs of Damascus, a group of 11 men killed in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam. The martyrs, including eight Franciscan friars and three laymen, were attacked in a church in the Christian quarter of Damascus during a wave of religious violence.

The canonized Franciscan friars include six priests and two professed religious — all missionaries from Spain except for Father Engelbert Kolland, who was from Salzburg, Austria. 

Franciscan Father Manuel Ruiz, Father Carmelo Bolta, Father Nicanor Ascanio, Father Nicolás M. Alberca y Torres, Father Pedro Soler, Kolland, Brother Francisco Pinazo Peñalver, and Brother Juan S. Fernández were all declared saints. 

The three laymen were brothers — Francis, Abdel Mooti, and Raphael Massabki — known for their deep piety and devotion to the Christian faith. Francis Massabki, the oldest of the brothers, was a father of eight children. Mooti was a father of five who visited the Church of St. Paul daily for prayer and to teach catechism lessons. The youngest brother, Raphael, was single and was known to spend long periods of time praying in the church and helping the friars.

According to witnesses, the brothers were offered the chance to live if they renounced their faith, but they refused. “We are Christians, and we want to live and die as Christians,” Francis Massabki reportedly said. All 11 were brutally killed that night, some beheaded, others stabbed to death.

“They remained faithful servants,” Pope Francis said. “[They] served in martyrdom and in joy.” 

A global celebration 

The canonization ceremony was attended by pilgrims from around the world, including Catholics from Kenya, Canada, Uganda, Spain, Italy, and the Middle East. More than 1,000 members of the Consolata order traveled to Rome to witness the canonization of their founder.

And bagpipers from Galicia in northern Spain played traditional music at the end of the Mass to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs.

Bagpipers play to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs at the Vatican on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Courtney Mares

“I thank all of you who have come to honor the new saints,” Pope Francis said. “I greet the cardinals, the bishops, the consecrated men and women, especially the Friars Minor and the Maronite faithful, the Consolata Missionaries, the Little Sisters of the Holy Family and the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, as well as the other groups of pilgrims who have come from various places.”

Pope Francis led the crowd in the Angelus prayer at the end of the Mass and asked people to pray in particular for the gift of peace for “populations who are suffering as a result of war – tormented Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, tormented Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and all the others.”

The pope also greeted a group of Ugandan pilgrims who traveled from Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the canonization of the Ugandan Martyrs and urged people to pray for missionaries on World Mission Sunday. 

“Let us support, with our prayer and our aid, all the missionaries who, often at great sacrifice, bring the shining proclamation of the Gospel to every part of the world,” he said.

“May the Virgin Mary help us to be like her and like the Saints courageous and joyful witnesses of the Gospel.”

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, speaks during a press conference about a new Vatican document on human dignity on April 8, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 20, 2024 / 08:30 am (CNA).

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), has reportedly apologized for what he called a “misunderstanding” regarding his absence from an Oct. 18 meeting of synod delegates about a Vatican study group on women’s roles in the Church.

Attendees confirmed to CNA over the weekend that there was significant frustration among synod delegates over both the cardinal’s absence from the meeting and how the meeting itself was conducted.

More than 90 synod delegates attended the encounter expecting to engage with Cardinal Fernández and members of study group five, one of ten announced in February to examine theological questions that emerged out of the first session of the Synod on Synodality last year. 

This group is charged with exploring “some theological and canonical issues around specific ministerial forms,” in particular “the question of the necessary participation of women in the life and leadership of the Church.” This includes the questions surrounding the possibility of female deacons.

Instead, attendees on Friday were greeted by two officials from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith who were not members of the study group, according to sources. The officials reportedly distributed slips of paper with an email address for submitting feedback and could not answer most questions posed by delegates.

The Pillar reported that in a statement to synod participants late on Oct. 18, Cardinal Fernández said he was “sorry for the misunderstanding” and that his absence was “due not to any unwillingness, but to my objective inability to attend on the scheduled day and time.”

The cardinal added that he had previously indicated two dicastery officials would attend the meeting in his place. He offered to meet with interested synod members on Oct. 21 “to listen to their reflections and receive any written documents from them.”

Earlier this month, Cardinal Fernández announced that study group five had shifted its focus away from the question of women deacons as an ordained group.

On Oct. 2, the cardinal said: “Based on the analysis so far...there is still no room for a positive decision” on ordaining women deacons “understood as a degree of the sacrament of holy orders.”

Fernández said the group was instead examining historical ways women have exercised authority in the Church apart from ordained ministry.

The question of women deacons has been studied and debated in recent years.

In July 2024, Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, said the DDF was studying “the women’s diaconate” within the context of its in-depth study of ministries.

However, Pope Francis has repeatedly reaffirmed that holy orders remain reserved for men.

In an interview published in October 2023, the pope said: “The question of whether some women in the early Church were ‘deaconesses’ or another kind of collaborator with the bishops is not irrelevant, because holy orders is reserved for men.”

Meanwhile, Pope Francis held two private audiences over the weekend, including participating women and the synod’s lay members. No details have been released about the content of these meetings.

He also received Cardinal Mario Grech and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator-general, and Special Secretary Riccardo Battocchio.

The Catholic Church of the Saviour also called Xishiku Church or Beitang in Xicheng District, Beijing, China. / Credit: Fotokon/Shutterstock

Vatican City, Oct 19, 2024 / 11:05 am (CNA).

Two prominent Catholics — Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and American author George Weigel — have leveled sharp criticisms at the Synod on Synodality, focusing particularly on the Vatican’s approach to China.

In a blog post published on Oct. 18, Zen, the 92-year-old bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, issued an urgent appeal for prayer as the synod enters its third week.

“We must pray for the successful (decent) ending of this synod,” Zen wrote, outlining three fundamental concerns.

The cardinal questioned the gathering’s legitimacy as a Synod of Bishops, given the inclusion of non-bishop voting members.

“With the ‘non-bishops’ voting together, it is no longer a Synod of Bishops,” Zen argued.

About the controversial declaration Fiducia Supplicans and LGBTQ issues, Zen wrote: “I think endless debate should be avoided at least on the issue of blessing same-sex couples“ and urged synod delegates: “If this issue is not resolved in the synod, the future of the Church will be very unclear, because some clergy and friends of the pope insist on changing the Church tradition in this regard.“

The archbishop emeritus of Hong Kong also warned against granting individual bishops’ conferences independent authority over doctrinal matters. “If this idea succeeds, we will no longer be the Catholic Church,” Zen cautioned.

This is not the first time the cardinal has voiced concerns about the synod.

In a critique published on Feb. 15, he argued that the synod presents “two opposing visions” of the Church’s nature and organization.

Meanwhile, Weigel, a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 17 criticizing the presence of two Chinese bishops at the synod.

Weigel argued that Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu of Funing/Mindong and Bishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang of Hangzhou are “bent on ‘sinicizing’ the Catholic Church.”

The biographer of St. John Paul II also pointed out that Zhan Silu was previously excommunicated for accepting consecration without papal approval. Weigel noted that Yang Yongqiang is vice president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which Weigel describes as “a tool of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.”

Controversial deal expected to be renewed

The synod takes place against the backdrop of the ongoing debate over the diplomatic relationship between the Holy See and Beijing, particularly the Sino-Vatican on bishop appointments.

The provisional agreement was first signed in 2018 and renewed in 2020 and 2022 and is likely due for another renewal this October.

As of this report, the Vatican has not yet announced whether the agreement has been extended, though observers widely expect it to be renewed.

While critics have raised serious concerns over the Vatican’s diplomatic approach to Beijing and the Chinese policy of sinicization, the Holy See has publicly doubled down on the diplomatic strategy of supporting Beijing.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign of “sinicization” of religion and culture in the country, saying it relates to the Catholic concept of inculturation “without confusion and without opposition.”

Weigel strongly rejected this interpretation in a commentary for the National Catholic Register.

More recently, Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of Vatican News, wrote on Oct. 17 that the Chinese bishops at the synod emphasized their communion with the universal Church.

Tornielli quoted Yang as saying: “The Church in China is the same as the Catholic Church in other countries of the world: We belong to the same faith, share the same baptism, and we are all faithful to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.”

The Vatican News director also reported Yang stating: “We follow the evangelical spirit of ‘becoming all things to all people.’ We effectively adapt to society, serve it, adhere to the direction of the sinicization of Catholicism, and preach the good news.”

More than 30 students — most of whom were from the U.S. — from over 10 universities attended “The University Students in Dialogue with Synod Leaders,” an Oct. 18, 2024, event organized by the General Secretariat of the Synod held in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. / Credit: Synod-va YouTube screenshot

Vatican City, Oct 19, 2024 / 10:00 am (CNA).

More than 30 students — most of whom were from the U.S. — from over 10 universities attended “The University Students in Dialogue with Synod Leaders,” an Oct. 18 event organized by the General Secretariat of the Synod held in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. 

The event was moderated by four young staff members of the Synod on Synodality’s communications team who presented questions to four guest panelists participating in the second global synodal session at the Vatican: Secretary-General of the Synod Cardinal Mario Grech; Relator General of the Synod Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich; Sister Leticia Salazar, chancellor of the Diocese of San Bernardino, California; and Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas.

An additional 360 people worldwide watched the event live via the synod’s YouTube channel.

Before a predominantly American audience, Hollerich drew attention to the upcoming Nov. 5 U.S. elections and stressed the importance of seeing the person behind the opinion. 

“When I see on television about the elections in the States, there are two worlds that seem to be opposed, and you have to be an enemy of the others — that thinking is very far from synodal thinking,” the cardinal said.

“The person with the different opinion is not an enemy. We are together part of humanity. We live in the same world and we have to find common solutions,” he added. 

Further commenting on the sharp political and ideological divide within the U.S., panelist Salazar encouraged young Catholics in the country to not be afraid of sharing the faith with others. 

“Living in a reality of polarization, synodality really has a gentle way of announcing the good news in a very respectful way,” she said.

“I’m very happy and very hopeful for the United States to see you [young Catholics] here [in the Vatican],” she added. “We have a lot of work to do, we have a journey to walk, but the beauty of this is that we are not by ourselves.”

During the event, synod delegate Flores said students must be “real” to be credible witnesses of the Church in a culture “that has forgotten how to talk to each other.”   

“You can’t keep announcing the Gospel if you don’t have a sense of the reality people are living, and that’s part of what the listening thing is about,” he said. “Open the ears and listen on a deeper level just to hear the reality.”

“I repeat, the hardest part of synodality is listening patiently with someone you have decided is already wrong,” he said. “If somebody tells you about their life it is a gift that you should appreciate as something rather sacred.”

Delegates at the 2024 Synod on Synodality participate in roundtable meetings on Oct. 10, 2024, in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 19, 2024 / 08:30 am (CNA).

After two and a half weeks, the last of two assemblies for the Synod on Synodality is about to enter its final stretch before officially concluding on Oct. 27.

As conversations on the agenda set by the Instrumentum Laboris, or working document, wrapped up this week, the focus going forward will be the writing and editing of the Synod on Synodality’s final document.

Schedule

After having the afternoon off on Saturday, Oct. 18, the synod’s lay and female participants, a minority among the mostly bishop delegates, had special meetings with Pope Francis.

Though the two categories have some crossover, the pope met separately with women — both religious sisters and non-religious sisters — and with non-cleric, non-religious lay men and women in the Apostolic Palace on Oct. 19.

The audiences followed three and a half days of debates on the last part of the 2024 Instrumentum laboris, which finished Friday morning with summaries of small group discussions due for submission by 12:30 p.m.

On Sunday, Oct. 20, the synod will attend a Mass of canonization for 14 saints in St. Peter’s Square. The commission elected to oversee the creation of the final document will also meet.

The first day of the last full week of the Synod on Synodality, Oct. 21, will be mostly dedicated to prayer, including Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, and a presentation of the first draft of the final document.

Oct. 22 and 23 will be devoted to small group discussions and speeches in the full assembly about the final document, as well as the submission of requests for changes.

The text will contain the synod’s ideas, thoughts, and recommendations — the product of the group discernment undertaken over the last couple of weeks and the culmination of a synodal process first begun by Pope Francis in October 2021.

The synod, an advisory body of the Church, will then deliver the final document to the pope, who can either adopt and publish it as an official papal text or use it as a guide for writing his own post-synodal document.

Those tasked with incorporating the requested changes to the final document will work for two days while the rest of synod members have a break Oct. 24-Oct. 25.

The final draft of the document will be presented to synod delegates on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 26, and then after lunch, voted on paragraph-by-paragraph for inclusion in the final text.

The final document is expected to be published by the Vatican the evening after the vote.

The formal closing of the Synod on Synodality will be a Mass with Pope Francis on Oct. 27 inside St. Peter’s Basilica, where the baldacchino designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is slated to be unveiled after eight months of restorations.

Pope Francis meets with other delegates of the Synod on Synodality at a roundtable discussion in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Oct. 17, 2024. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Oct 18, 2024 / 15:15 pm (CNA).

Is there more than meets the eye in the framing of discussions about ecclesiastical governance and the relationship between the local Churches and the universal Church — the main topic of conversation at the Synod on Synodality for the past week?

One gets the impression that many synod participants view the subject as a kind of Trojan horse, a theme that may seem innocuous on the surface but one that can be deployed to sneak sidelined issues such as married priests and women deacons back on the main agenda.

The mere possibility that this is what’s really going on has put those who want to hold the line on the Church’s governance structure and moral teaching on high alert.

The theme in question relates to Part 3 of the synod assembly’s Instrumentum laboris, or working document, which “invites” the people of God “to overcome a static vision of places that orders them by successive levels or degrees according to a pyramidal model (i.e. parish, deanery, diocese, or eparchy; ecclesiastical province; episcopal conference or Eastern hierarchical structure; and universal Church).”

“This has never been our vision,” the document goes on to say. “The network of relationships and the exchange of gifts between the Churches have always been interwoven as a web of relations rather than conceived as linear in form. They are gathered in the bond of unity of which the Roman Pontiff is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation.”

As Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, archbishop of Luxembourg and the synod assembly’s relator general, emphasized during the week: “The Church from the beginning has referred to the city, to the places in which it lived, guided by the bishop in a close relationship with the territory.”

It was in this context that Cardinal Leonardo Steiner of Manaus, Brazil, said during a daily press briefing that “many of our women are true ‘deaconesses’” while arguing that Pope Francis “has not closed the question” of the ordination of married men in places like the Amazon. He advocated for the Church to be be open “to listening to cultures and religions” so that the Gospel can be “inculturated.”

What does this mean, exactly? In Steiner’s view, it allows for the possibility that some episcopal conferences might say yes to women deacons and married priests, based on cultural considerations, while others may say no. By that reasoning, even the synodal path of the Church of Germany could make sense, even though Pope Francis has not missed an opportunity to criticize and even to mock it, having made the quip to a German bishop in Belgium: “Is there a Catholic Church in Germany?”

At a pastoral-theological forum on Oct. 16 titled “The Mutual Relationship of the Local Church and the Universal Church,” Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, emphasized that local Churches are not merely parts of a larger structure but embody the true presence of the Church of Christ, achieving unity through diverse local expressions.

Echoing that theme, another forum participant, Miguel de Salis Amaral, a Portuguese priest and theology professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, said the local Churches are formed “in the image” of the universal one. Citing Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, he emphasized that “the power, the richness of all the sacramental and spiritual gifts” resides “in every local Church.”

Another speaker, Antonio Autiero, a priest of the Diocese of Naples, Italy, and a professor emeritus of moral theology at the University of Münster, highlighted how the experience of the Church is “purely local.” He expressed support for a “ministry of listening” at the local community level, which through their “elements of discernment” could make suggestions to the local Church.

An example of local bodies shaping Church policy highlighted during the form was Australia’s Plenary Council, convened to respond to the country’s sexual abuse crisis. Comprised of 44 bishops and 275 other members, the council is authorized by an indult from the Holy See to dialogue and make decisions.

Meanwhile, within the assembly hall, there was agreement of the need to highlight “the importance of preserving the unity of the Church,” according to Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery of Communications.

How the delegates choose to articulate that consensus in the assembly’s final document at the end of the month, however, remains to be seen.

Cardinal-elect Roberto Repole, archbishop of Turin in Italy, for one, signaled that the document won’t express the views of the majority and the opposition but rather a consensus.

“We are not a parliament; we are searching for the voice of the Spirit also through listening to the voice of our brothers. Here, I see the catholicity of the Church,” he said.

“Synodality is an experience,” he added, “but requires an in-depth analysis of theological questions that cannot remain on the sidelines.” 

The Vatican held four different public conferences from Oct. 9 and 16, 2024, in Rome to explain the “theological undertone of the synodal process,” according to a conference moderator and expert at this month’s Synod on Synodality.  / Credit: Hannah Brockhaus/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 18, 2024 / 10:55 am (CNA).

Four different theology conferences, held publicly Oct. 9 and 16 in Rome, explain the “theological undertone of the synodal process,” according to a conference moderator and expert at this month’s Synod on Synodality.

The evening forums gave a platform to 17 handpicked theologians and canonists who spoke for about 10 minutes each on the topics of papal primacy, the people of God, the bishop’s authority, and the relationship between the local Churches and the universal Church — all in the context of how to make the Church more synodal.

One of the few novelties of the second session of the Synod on Synodality, the forums revealed some of the theological underpinnings of synodality — according to the experts who were writing about the concept years before Pope Francis launched the three-year synodal process — and the concrete proposals for the future of the Catholic Church.

Klara A. Csiszar, a moderator of two of these forums, an expert at the Synod on Synodality, and a Romanian-Hungarian-Austrian theologian, said at an Oct. 16 briefing for journalists that the conferences “help to better understand the theological undertone of the entire synodality process, especially the theology of the people of God, which is seen as the subject of the mission.”

“This is a fundamental theme that, in my opinion, should be translated into practical application with all its implications,” she continued, adding that “theology helps with this by learning not only to teach, so to speak, but also by listening a lot, sitting in the hall, and trying to understand what is really at stake” during the Oct. 2–27 Vatican assembly.

Other participants agreed that the goal of the forms was to examine some of the issues and concrete proposals being debated inside the Vatican synod hall in a deeper theological way.

Archbishop Roberto Repole of Turin and Susa, Italy, told CNA at a briefing earlier this week that while the forums were a way to make some of the synod debates more open to the public, they were also a good opportunity “to grasp the stakes of some possible changes” to the Catholic Church and to see the journey the Church has made to arrive at synodality since the Second Vatican Council.

“Synodality,” Repole said, “has to do with a way of living together, being Church, of deciding as Christians on the basic issues. But it also asks for some deepening on theological issues that cannot remain on the sidelines of the journey that is being made.”

At the forums, Repole and many of the meetings’ speakers drew heavily on the Church’s dogmatic constitution from Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, in their defenses of synodality, insisting that the theological concept has its roots in the council.

Cardinal Leonardo Ulrich Steiner, speaking at the same Oct. 15 briefing as Repole, explained the impetus for organizing the theological-pastoral forums.

The Brazilian cardinal said that at the end of the first session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2023, theologians expressed a desire to have a more integral and prominent part in the synodal discussions.

It was important for theologians to “participate more in the synod,” Steiner said. “And in this sense, the synod has identified a new path, a new way to consider what has been proposed.”

“Last year it was said that theology was not granted sufficient attention,” Csiszar said. “The theological and pastoral forums provide an answer and open a space in which theology, on the one hand, is learning to articulate its role in a synodal Church, and on the other, is making a substantial contribution to the development of a new synodal style, a new synodal culture.”

The four topics of the forums, she continued, “help provide orientation where there are blockages, motivate where possibilities are perhaps no longer seen, and address exhaustion when it sets in as well as offer criticism where many responses indicate that a certain path might be the wrong one.”

A group of 15 theological experts is participating in the Synod on Synodality as advisers, but they are not delegates and do not take part in voting during the Oct. 2–27 assembly.

Some of the forums’ panelists were chosen from among these over two dozen theologians and canonists. Others were chosen by synod organizers “mainly from among those who participated in the various phases of the synodal process,” Father Riccardo Battocchio, the synod’s special secretary, told the National Catholic Register in an email interview.

“Some [of the speakers] are members of the theological commission established in 2021, others were added during the preparation of the first and second Instrumentum Laboris, others were involved for their specific expertise and experience,” Battocchio explained.

He said the presenters “were asked not to privilege, in their presentation, a particular theological school but to convey, even in the short time available, the scope of the individual questions, the possible different answers offered by Catholic theology, helping the participants in the forums to grasp the different aspects of each theme and to ask questions.”

Elena Guerra, Marie-Léonie Paradis, and Giuseppe Allamano are among the Blesseds whom Pope Francis will canonize on Oct. 20, 2024.  / Credit: Oblates of the Holy Spirit; centremarie-leonieparadis.com; and Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Vatican City, Oct 17, 2024 / 18:10 pm (CNA).

Among the 14 people who will become the Catholic Church’s newest saints on Sunday is a priest whose intercession led to the miraculous healing of a man mauled by a jaguar, a woman who convinced a pope to call for a worldwide novena to the Holy Spirit, and 11 men killed in Syria for refusing to renounce their faith and convert to Islam.

While not household names, the 14 soon-to-be saints each exemplified heroic virtue and witnessed to holiness within their unique vocations, including two married men — a father of eight and a father of five, respectively — and three founders of religious orders who have generations of spiritual children who have continued their spiritual legacy throughout the world.

Pope Francis invited all Catholics this week to get to “learn about these new saints and ask for their intercession” in anticipation of the canonization in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 20.

“They are a clear testimony of the Holy Spirit’s action in the life of the Church,” the pope said.

Mother Elena Guerra (1835–1914)

Known as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit,” Blessed Elena Guerra helped to convince Pope Leo XIII to exhort all Catholics to pray a novena to the Holy Spirit leading up to Pentecost in 1895.

Guerra is the foundress of the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, a congregation of religious sisters recognized by the Church in 1882 that continues today in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.

A friend of Pope Leo XIII and the teacher of St. Gemma Galgani, Guerra is remembered for her spiritual writings and her passionate devotion to the Holy Spirit.

“Pentecost is not over,” Guerra wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and he will come to us as he did to them.”

For much of her 20s, Guerra was bedridden with a serious illness, a challenge that turned out to be transformational for her as she dedicated herself to meditating on Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. She felt the call to consecrate herself to God during a pilgrimage to Rome with her father after her recovery and went on to form the religious community dedicated to education.

During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, Guerra composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your spirit and renew the world.”

St. Elena Guerra. Credit: Oblates of the Holy SpiritFather Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926)

Blessed Giuseppe Allamano remained a diocesan priest in Italy his entire life yet left a global legacy by founding two missionary religious orders — the Consolata Missionaries and the Consolata Missionary Sisters — that went on to spread the Gospel in Kenya, Ethiopia, Brazil, Taiwan, Mongolia, and more than two dozen other countries.

Allamano told the priests in the order he founded in northern Italy in 1901 that they needed to be “first saints, then missionaries.”

“As missionaries then, you must not only be holy, but extraordinarily holy. All the other gifts are not enough to make a missionary! It takes holiness, great holiness,” he said.

Allamano set the example by “combining the commitment to holiness with attention to the spiritual and social needs of his time,” Pope John Paul II said at his beatification. “He had a deep conviction that ‘the priest is first and foremost a man of charity,’ ‘destined to do the greatest possible good,’ to sanctify others ‘with example and word,’ with holiness and knowledge.”

He was deeply influenced by the spirituality of the Salesians and St. John Bosco, who served as his spiritual director, as well as the witness of his saintly uncle, St. Joseph Cafasso.

Allamano is being canonized after the Vatican recognized a unique medical miracle attributed to his intercession — the healing of a man who was attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest.

Sorino Yanomami, an Indigenous man who lived in the Amazon rainforest, was mauled by a jaguar in 1996, fracturing his skull. Due to his remote location, it took eight hours before he could be airlifted to a hospital. While he was being treated in the ICU, six Consolata missionary sisters, as well as a Consolata priest and brother, waited with the man’s wife, praying with a relic of Blessed Allamano for his intercession. The sisters also prayed a novena to Allamano asking for the man’s healing, and 10 days after his operation he woke up without any neurological damage and suffered no long-term consequences of the attack, according to the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

Fifteen Consolata missionaries are bishops today, mostly in Africa and South America, including Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, the apostolic prefect of Ulaanbataar, Mongolia.

More than 1,000 members of the Consolata orders are traveling to Rome for their founder’s canonization, Father James Lengarin, the order’s superior general, told CNA.

Mother Marie-Léonie Paradis (1840–1912)

Canadian sister Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family. 

Born Virginie Alodie in the Acadian region of Quebec, the blessed founded her institute, whose purpose was to collaborate with and support the religious of Holy Cross in educational work, in 1880 in New Brunswick.

Before founding her religious order, Paradis also spent eight years in New York serving in the St. Vincent de Paul Orphanage in the 1860s before moving to Indiana in 1870 to teach French and needlework at St. Mary’s Academy.

Canadian sister St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family. Credit: centremarie-leonieparadis

At the request of the bishop of Montreal, Paradis founded the Little Sisters in 1880. An important part of the the spirituality and charism of the order is support for priests through both intense and constant prayer, but also through taking care of the cooking at laundry in seminaries and rectories in “humble and joyful service” in imitation of “Christ the Servant” who washed the feet of his disciples.

Today her sisters work in over 200 institutions of education and evangelization in Canada, the United States, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, Chile, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Pope John Paul II called Paradis the “humble among the humble” as he beatified her during his visit to Montreal in 1984, the first beatification to take place on Canadian soil.

“She was not afraid of the different forms of manual work, which are the burden that falls to so many people today, while it was held in honor in the Holy Family, in the very life of Jesus in Nazareth. There she saw the will of God for her life. With the sacrifices inherent in this work, but offered out of love, she knew a profound joy and peace,” John Paul II said.

“She knew she was referring to the fundamental attitude of Christ, ‘who came not to be served, but to serve.’ She was completely pervaded by the greatness of the Eucharist: This is one of the secrets of her spiritual motivations,” he added.

The miracle attributed to Paradis’ intercession involved the healing of a newborn baby girl who suffered from “prolonged perinatal asphyxia with multi-organ failure and encephalopathy” during her birth in 1986 at a hospital in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Canada, according to the Vatican.

Martyrs of Damascus, Syria (m. 1860)

The Church will also gain 11 new martyr saints who were killed for refusing to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam. The “Martyrs of Damascus” were murdered “out of hatred for the faith” in the Franciscan Church of St. Paul in Damascus, Syria, on July 10, 1860.

The urn containing the bones of the "Martyrs of Damascus" — eight Franciscan friars from the Order of Friars Minor and three laypeople, the brothers Francis, Abdel Mohti, and Raphaël Massabki. The urn is located beneath the altar in a chapel dedicated to the Franciscan martyrs inside the Catholic church in the Christian quarter of Bab-Touma (St. Paul) in the Old City of Damascus. The martyrdoom took place on the night between July 9 and 10, 1860. Credit: Courtesy of HS/Custody of the Holy Land

Eight of the martyrs are Franciscan friars — six priests and two professed religious — all missionaries from Spain except for Father Engelbert Kolland, who was from Salzburg, Austria.

The three others are laymen who were also killed in the raid on the Franciscan church that night:  Francis, Mooti, and Raphael Massabki, who were all brothers from a Maronite Catholic family.

Francis Massabki, the oldest of the brothers, was a father of eight children. Mooti was a father of five who visited the Church of St. Paul daily for prayer and to teach catechism lessons. The youngest brother, Raphael, was single and was known to spend long periods of time praying in the church and helping the friars.

Their martyrdom took place during the persecution of Christians by Muslims and Shia Druze in Lebanon to Syria in 1860, which resulted in thousands of victims.

Late at night extremists entered the Franciscan convent, located in the Christian quarter of Bab-Touma (St. Paul) in the Old City of Damascus, and massacred the friars: Father Manuel Ruiz, Father Carmelo Bolta, Father Nicanor Ascanio, Father Nicolás M. Alberca y Torres, Father Pedro Soler, Kolland, Brother Francisco Pinazo Peñalver, and Brother Juan S. Fernández.

ACI Mena, CNA’s Arabic-language news partner, provided an account of the martyrdom of the three Massabki brothers who were also in the church that night: The assailants told Francis Massabki that his life and the lives of his brothers would be spared on the condition that he denied his Christian faith and embraced Islam, to which Francis replied: “We are Christians, and in the faith of Christ, we will die. As Christians, we do not fear those who kill the body, as the Lord Jesus said.” 

He then looked at his two brothers and said: “Be courageous and stand firm in the faith, for the crown of victory is prepared in heaven for those who endure to the end.” Immediately, they proclaimed their faith in Christ with these words: “We are Christians, and we want to live and die as Christians.”

Upon refusing to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam, the 11 martyrs of Damascus were brutally killed, some beheaded with sabers and axes, others stabbed or clubbed to death.

Every year on July 10, the liturgical calendar of the Custody of the Holy Land commemorates these martyrs. In the Syrian capital, the Latin and Maronite communities often celebrate this day together.

Cardinal Charles Bo speaks with journalists at a Synod on Synodality press briefing on Oct. 17, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 17, 2024 / 17:10 pm (CNA).

The head of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conference (FABC), Cardinal Charles Bo of the Archdiocese of Yangon, Myanmar, said diocesan synods are an effective means to “build a vision and mission” for local Churches.

The high-ranking prelate from Myanmar told journalists on Thursday that synodality on a diocesan level is not a new concept for the Catholic Church.

“When I was made a bishop in 1990, one thing that attracted me in canon law is that about the diocesan synod,” Bo stated at a Vatican press briefing.

“All these years as a bishop — I have been in seven dioceses — I have conducted diocesan synods four times: in ‘92, ‘96, 2004, and 2014.”

Speaking from more than two decades of experience with diocesan synods, the 75-year-old cardinal said collecting feedback “from the farmers, from the villages, from parishes, and from workers, religious, and prisoners” has proven to be a worthwhile process.

According to Bo, the reports generated from synodal consultations with Catholic faithful in dioceses have provided solid foundations for the growth of local Churches in his home country of Myanmar.

The Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar is one of 22 active members of the FABC led by Bo. Earlier this year, the FABC held its synodality workshop — which was attended by 38 delegates from local Churches spread across 17 countries — in Bangkok, Thailand, from Aug. 5–8. 

During the regional meeting, the need for unity and harmony were identified as key for the growth of the Catholic Church in a largely non-Christian region. 

In spite of the challenges the Church faces in Asia, including the region’s geographical vastness and “deep-rooted cultures and traditions” that are resistant to change or view Christianity as foreign, Bo believes this month’s global synodal talks will be a “valuable opportunity” to bring “renewal” in local parishes.

The FABC aims to play a critical role in “guiding the Church in Asia toward a synodal mission” by placing greater attention on the participation of women, youth engagement, the poor and marginalized, and migrants at the parish level.

“It [FABC] serves as a platform for collaboration among local Churches and promotes shared pastoral priorities,” Bo said on Thursday. 

“The [synodal] process has brought renewed energy and hope for the future, and the Church in Asia is committed to building a Church that includes everyone and listens to everyone,” he added.      

With the final global session of the Synod on Synodality coming to a close on Oct. 27, Bo hopes the 272 bishops participating in this year’s discussions will open diocesan synods in their own dioceses.

“I wish also to encourage all bishops and all the dioceses that — based on the fruits that we gather in this Synod on Synodality — we don’t start and stop with this meeting [in the Vatican] but is a continuous effort that we try in all Churches,” Bo said during the Oct. 17 press briefing.

Cardinal Leonardo Steiner is archbishop of Manaus, Brazil. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News

Vatican City, Oct 17, 2024 / 11:55 am (CNA).

Cardinal Leonardo Steiner, the archbishop of Manaus in Brazil who is participating in the Synod on Synodality, said during a daily press briefing at the synod on Tuesday that “many of our women are true ‘deaconesses’” and pointed out that Pope Francis “has not closed the question” of the ordination of married men.

The cardinal is known for being a defender of the poor, Indigenous people and is also considered “pro-LGBTQ.” In the past he has stated that “there will be a way” to end mandatory priestly celibacy.

At the 2019 Synod on the Amazon, the Brazilian cardinal also emerged as a staunch defender of the ordination of married men, an issue on which Pope Francis has not given a definitive word, according to what the prelate said Oct. 15. 

During the briefing held at the Holy See Press Office, the 74-year-old cardinal said that during that day’s session, corresponding to the third module of the Instrumentum Laboris (working document), the participants of the synod reflected on “the places of the Church.”

The cardinal also commented that the Church must be open “to listening to cultures and religions” so that the Gospel can be “inculturated.”

In Manaus there are nearly 2.3 million people, of which 71,713 (3%) are Indigenous. In total there are 753,357 Indigenous people in the whole Amazon, according to official data from Brazil.

Taking these figures as an example to highlight the cultural differences between the West and the inhabitants of his diocese, the cardinal said that despite the fact that for “more than a hundred years there has been no priests” in the communities, they have organized themselves and continued to pray “with different ways of praying.”

Steiner emphasized that “women participate a lot” and that they are in turn “leaders of our communities.”

‘Why not restore the ordained female diaconate?’

The Brazilian cardinal emphasized that he wishes “that some more distant communities could celebrate some sacraments, for example baptism, without the presence of a priest.”

He continued by saying that “many of our women are true ‘deaconesses’ without this being official.” He also stressed that they would like to call them “deaconesses,” since they are “for all purposes,” although he preferred not to use this term “so as not to create confusion with the ordained ministry.”

For the cardinal, “unfortunately we do not have an adequate word” for their role, but “what they do and their responsibility within our Church is admirable.”

“There are many women who lead the community, who make the word of God known, who gather the community in a moment of prayer and who are active, for example, in prison ministry, in catechesis, in Caritas activities. They are the ones who carry out this activity, they are active alongside street people, they are the ones who represent our Church in many places,” he said.

Steiner emphasized his position in favor of the ordination of women to the diaconate and pointed out the existence of a commission that is “charged with studying this issue.” 

“Why not restore the ordained female diaconate? We have already had a Church like this, with this face,” he said, referring to deacons.

“The permanent diaconate for men can go forward with that of women. I think we must reflect a lot on these questions, we must go deeper and we must remember the essential and fundamental role of women in the Church.”

He also stated that “the door should not be opened to a question of gender” but rather that it is “a question of vocations in the Church. The vocation of women within the Church and within our community.”

Responding to one of the journalists present at the press conference, the cardinal pointed out that the Synod on the Amazon “opened the possibility” of holding the Synod on Synodality.

Regarding this “process,” he commented that “a path has been opened from which there is no turning back” since “there is no point of return.”

“It is essential that we all enter into the interior of a movement that is the Church” and to feel the responsibility of the mission through baptism and the grace of God, he said.

The Holy Father ‘has not closed the question’ of ordaining married men

Asked about the ordination of married men, an issue that has “disappeared” from the study groups of this second and last session, the cardinal emphasized that after the Synod on the Amazon “there was disappointment on this subject.”

He nevertheless emphasized that “the Holy Father has not closed the issue” and assured that “in some circumstances it would not be a difficulty.”

He also expressed his hope that Pope Francis “has the capacity to move forward” while indicating that he has not wanted to do so yet due to “his great sensitivity.”

Steiner reiterated that “we must continue to talk” about this issue and that “we must go deeper into the ministerial role,” since “sufficient steps” have not yet been taken.

“In some cultures celibacy is a great difficulty. That’s what I feel,” he explained.

Speaking last Saturday at Fátima, Steiner said he “lays hands” on all those women who exercise the ministry of baptism or other sacraments.

“These are very tense issues in the Church. We must not stop discussing and reflecting. And if at some time we come to the conclusion that in the past there was a female diaconate, why not reintroduce it as the permanent diaconate was reintroduced?” the cardinal reiterated.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

The Apollo Belvedere is displayed at the Pio-Clementine Museum on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. / Credit: Julia Cassell/EWTN News

Vatican City, Oct 16, 2024 / 14:15 pm (CNA).

The Vatican Museums this week unveiled one of its most celebrated acquisitions, the “Apollo Belvedere,” after years of intensive restoration work by Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums (PAVM) on the ancient marble statue.

Following the discovery of the statue in Rome in 1489, Pope Julius II requested the Apollo Belvedere to be brought to the Vatican in the early 16th century to be part of a papal collection known as the Courtyard of Statues in Belvedere, which highlighted the mythical origins of ancient Rome.

The Apollo Belvedere is displayed at the Pio-Clementine Museum on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. Credit: Julia Cassell/EWTN News

Monsignor Terence Hogan, PAVM coordinator and a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami, said the restoration of Apollo Belvedere is “significant because it gives us an insight into the early history of Rome” before the rise of Christianity. 

“It gives us an insight into culture and also faith and history,” Hogan said in an interview with EWTN News. “We [the Vatican Museums] are the oldest museum in the world and so people from all around the world now can appreciate the faith, the art, the history, the culture of so many centuries.” 

The restoration of Apollo Belvedere, directed by the Vatican Museums’ Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, faced several challenges before its official unveiling on Oct. 15, including the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2019, which delayed the project.

“We closed on Christmas Eve 2019; however the actual work on the sculpture — between the research project and the actual study and restoration — has been just over two years,” said Claudia Valeri, curator of the Greek and Roman antiquities department.

“The preciousness of this sculpture is infinite because it is an iconic statue among classical sculptures,” she added.

According to Valeri, a significant archaeological discovery in northern Naples in the 1950s recovered the original plaster casts of the missing left hand of the Apollo Belvedere.

Details of the Apollo Belvedere's feet are seen at the Pio-Clementine Museum on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. Credit: Julia Cassell/EWTN News

The cast was used by the Vatican’s restoration teams to create the marble copy of the hand now seen on the newly unveiled statue.

Valeri also said further study analysis of the statue of the ancient Roman god indicates that the all-white marble statue once had golden hair.

“Analysis detected traces of gold. We imagine that Apollo’s hair was golden, and by the way the Greek poets describe him to us as ‘radiant Apollo,’” Valeri told EWTN News.

Almost 500 years have passed since the last restorative works were carried out by Italian sculptor and architect Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli between 1532 and 1533.

EWTN Vatican Bureau intern Angelina Martsisheuskaya contributed to this report.

Cardinal Willem Eijk. / Credit: Bohumil Petrik/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 16, 2024 / 12:20 pm (CNA).

A Dutch cardinal has cautioned against misguided reform efforts within the Catholic Church, warning that regional solutions to contentious issues could undermine the Church’s credibility.

Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht, emphasized the importance of maintaining unity with the universal Church.

“We must walk a common path and not deviate from the world Church,” he said, reflecting Pope Francis’ 2019 letter to German Catholics.

“If unity in proclamation is lost, the Church loses its credibility,” Eijk told the magazine.

Offering a sobering perspective from a heavily secularized nation, the Dutch prelate drew parallels between the current Synod on Synodality in Rome and the Dutch Pastoral Council of the late 1960s in an interview with the German-language magazine Communio.

The 71-year-old archbishop warned that regional solutions to contentious issues could undermine the Church’s credibility.

“If unity in proclamation is lost, the Church loses its credibility,” he asserted, highlighting the Netherlands’ negative experience with ambiguity over the past 50 years.

He added: “People had the impression that the Church itself didn’t really know where it stood.”

Less traction for alleged reform ‘backlog’

Reflecting on the ongoing Synod on Synodality, Eijk said controversial topics, such as gender and women’s ordination, have gained less traction than some anticipated.

“The votes at last year’s assembly showed that the majority of participants were not enthusiastic about topics like gender or women’s ordination,” he remarked.

The Dutch prelate also challenged the idea that addressing a “reform backlog” would bring people back to the Church.

“You can learn from the Church in the Netherlands that this is a mistake,” Eijk stated. “Those who create confusion alienate people from the Church. You won’t bring anyone back this way.”

Instead, Eijk advocated for a Christ-centered approach and sound catechesis.

“In parishes where the faith is well proclaimed and the liturgy is celebrated with dignity, the churches are full,” he observed. “It’s about putting Christ at the center.”

Eijk also addressed lay participation in Church decision-making, recognizing its importance but acknowledging limits.

“Of course, people are involved in decisions,” he said, citing examples of parish-level input. However, he cautioned that this approach “doesn’t always work,” particularly with major structural changes.

Earlier, an influential canon lawyer speaking at an official Synod on Synodality event argued that the Catholic Church should be governed by synods that are balanced according to gender, among other factors, and empowered to make decisions, not merely recommendations.