Month: November 2025

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The study groups Pope Francis had established to provide an in-depth reflection on controversial, complex or “emerging” questions raised during the Synod of Bishops on synodality have published interim reports.

The groups were asked to look at questions including the formation of priests, the selection of bishops, women’s leadership in the church and ministry to LGBTQ Catholics.

The late pope had asked the groups to complete their work by June 2025, but Pope Leo XIV extended the deadlines to the end of the year.

However, Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the synod, said Nov. 17 that the work of some groups – “given the richness and complexity of most of the topics entrusted to them – has required more time than originally anticipated.”

“Some groups are now nearing completion of their work, while others will continue in the months ahead,” he said.

The reports, the cardinal said, also include the initial work of a study group on “the liturgy in a synodal perspective,” which began working in late July.

The interim reports published Nov. 17 vary in their depth and detail, with some groups listing their members and providing concrete proposals and with others giving only a vague description of the methodology they were using.

The study group on priestly formation, which was focused ways to ensure future priests are educated in synodality — listening, discernment and shared responsibility with laypeople — said its members concluded that “a complete overhaul” of the Vatican and national guidelines for priestly formation “does not currently seem appropriate” because the guidelines are so recent.

But the group identified “a series of needs,” which it said “cannot be ignored.” These included: “the need to deepen the identity of ordained ministry in relational terms”; “joint formation moments involving laypeople, consecrated persons, ordained ministers and seminarians”; greater participation of women and families in formation; and a focus on missionary outreach.

One of the shortest reports was from the group convened by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to look at “the participation of women in the life and leadership of the church.”

The group’s final report, it said, would include: “Significant female figures in the history of the church; personal accounts from women currently engaged in church leadership; personal accounts from women serving within the Roman Curia”; the nature and exercise of authority in the church; “critical tensions regarding clericalism and male chauvinism”; and “the contribution of Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV concerning the role of women in the church.”

On the question of the possible ordination of women to the diaconate, the report said that materials from the synod and contributions received more recently have been forwarded to the commission Pope Francis had set up in 2020 to continue studying the issue and which he “revived” during the Synod of Bishops on Synodality.

The study groups on the ministry of the bishop and on the role of nuncios and other papal representatives had a joint meeting to discuss a topic they both were looking at: the choice of bishops, the report said.

The group looking at bishops said its first focus was “the selection of candidates to the episcopacy in the perspective of a synodal and missionary church, highlighting the participation of the bishops of the territory and of the entire people of God in the process coordinated by the apostolic nunciature.”

The work was aided by the fact that Pope Francis gave then-Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, “the faculty to examine the confidential Instructions sent to Pontifical Representatives concerning the procedure for episcopal appointments.” The report gave no further details, however.

The group said its conclusions would include “the need to promote an understanding of the process of selecting candidates to the episcopacy as a spiritual journey, characterized at every stage by the search for the will of God for his church.”

Members of the group, it said, are not hoping just to get more people involved in the process of identifying potential bishops, “which could unduly slow down episcopal appointments, but rather to pursue qualitative improvement, for instance by ensuring balanced participation of clergy and laity, of men and women, and by valuing the role of participatory bodies within the local church.”

Commonly referred to as “Study Group Nine,” another group was focused on “Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal, pastoral and ethical issues,” including ministry to LGBTQ Catholics.

The final report of the synod in October 2024 had called for reflection on “the relationship between love and truth and the repercussions that it has on many controversial issues.”

The study group’s mandate also included a note from Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” that “not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium. Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it.”

The two quotations, the report said, risk suggesting that love and truth as well as moral teaching and pastoral practice are separate issues but in the church’s view they always intersect.

The final report, it said, would deal with three main topics: “homosexuality; conflicts and the nonviolent practice of the Gospel; and violence against women in situations of armed conflict.”

“For these cases, a concise presentation will be offered of the positions upheld by tradition and the magisterium, the new questions that have recently emerged, concluding with some questions to be addressed in the discernment process, mentioning the principal references drawn from Scripture and anthropology, including contributions from the scientific disciplines,” it said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Before joining hundreds of people for lunch, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the Jubilee of the Poor and prayed that all Christians would share “the love of God, which welcomes, binds up wounds, forgives, consoles and heals.”

With thousands of migrants, refugees, unhoused people, the unemployed and members of the trans community present in St. Peter’s Basilica or watching from St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo assured them, “In the midst of persecution, suffering, struggles and oppression in our personal lives and in society, God does not abandon us.”

Rather, “he reveals himself as the one who takes our side,” the pope said in his homily Nov. 16, the church’s celebration of the World Day of the Poor.

Volunteers with Vatican, diocesan and Rome-based Catholic charities joined the people they assist for the Mass. The French charity Fratello organized an international pilgrimage, bringing hundreds of people to Rome for the Mass, visits to the major basilicas of Rome and prayer services.

The Vatican said 6,000 people were at Mass in the basilica and another 20,000 people watched on screens from St. Peter’s Square. By the time Pope Leo led the recitation of the Angelus prayer, some 40,000 people were in the square.

After the Angelus, as part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of their foundation, the Vincentian Fathers sponsored and served lunch for the pope and his guests. Members of the Daughters of Charity and volunteers from Vincentian organizations helped serve the meal and handed out 1,500 backpacks filled with food and hygiene products.

The luncheon featured a first course of vegetable lasagna, followed by chicken cutlets and vegetables and ending with baba, a small Neapolitan cake soaked in syrup. Rolls, fruit, water and soft drinks also were on offer.

Before the Mass, Father Tomaž Mavric, superior general of the Vincentians, symbolically gave Pope Leo house keys from the Vincentians’ “13 Houses Campaign.” The name of the project, which has constructed homes for the poor around the world, is an homage to St. Vincent de Paul and his decision in 1643 to use an endowment from French King Louis XIII to build 13 small houses near the Vincentian headquarters in Paris to care for abandoned children.

In his homily at the Mass, Pope Leo noted how the Bible is “woven with this golden thread that recounts the story of God, who is always on the side of the little ones, orphans, strangers and widows.”

In Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, “God’s closeness reaches the summit of love,” he said. “For this reason, the presence and word of Christ become gladness and jubilee for the poorest, since he came to proclaim the good news to the poor and to preach the year of the Lord’s favor.”

While the pope thanked Catholics who assist the poor, he said he wanted the poor themselves to hear “the irrevocable words of the Lord Jesus himself: ‘Dilexi te,’ I have loved you.”

“Yes, before our smallness and poverty, God looks at us like no one else and loves us with eternal love,” the pope said, “And his church, even today, perhaps especially in our time, still wounded by old and new forms of poverty, hopes to be ‘mother of the poor, a place of welcome and justice,'” he said, quoting his exhortation on love for the poor.

While there are many forms of poverty — material, moral and spiritual — the thing that cuts across all of them and particularly impacts young people is loneliness, he said.

“It challenges us to look at poverty in an integral way, because while it is certainly necessary at times to respond to urgent needs, we also must develop a culture of attention, precisely in order to break down the walls of loneliness,” the pope said. “Let us, then, be attentive to others, to each person, wherever we are, wherever we live.”

Poverty is a challenge not only for those who believe in God, he said, calling on “heads of state and the leaders of nations to listen to the cry of the poorest.”

“There can be no peace without justice,” Pope Leo said, “and the poor remind us of this in many ways: through migration as well as through their cries, which are often stifled by the myth of well-being and progress that does not take everyone into account, and indeed forgets many individuals, leaving them to their fate.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Meeting an international cast of film directors and actors, Pope Leo XIV spoke about the power of cinema to help people “contemplate and understand life, to recount its greatness and fragility and to portray the longing for infinity.”

Sitting in the front row of the Vatican’s frescoed Clementine Hall Nov. 15 were, among others: directors Gus Van Sant and Spike Lee and actors Monica Bellucci, Cate Blanchett, Viggo Mortensen and Sergio Castellitto, who played the traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco in the 2024 film “Conclave.”

In a video released a few days before the meeting, Pope Leo said his four favorite films were: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1946 film directed by Frank Capra; “The Sound of Music,” the 1965 film by Robert Wise; “Ordinary People,” the 1980 film directed by Robert Redford; and “Life Is Beautiful,” Roberto Benigni’s 1997 film.

Pope Leo asked the directors and actors to “defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative.”

“Beauty is not just a means of escape,” he told them; “it is above all an invocation.”

“When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges,” he said. “It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.”

Pope Leo acknowledged the challenges facing cinema with the closing of theaters and the increasing release of films directly to streaming services.

The theaters, like all public cultural spaces, are important to a community, he said.

But even more, the pope said, “entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined.”

At a time where people are almost constantly in front of screens, he said, cinema offers more. “It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet silence. As the plot unfolds, our mind is educated, our imagination broadens and even pain can find new meaning.”

People need “witnesses of hope, beauty and truth,” Pope Leo said, telling the directors and actors that they can be those witnesses.

“Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity,” he said.

Being authentic, the pope said, means not being afraid “to confront the world’s wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated.”

“Good cinema does not exploit pain,” Pope Leo said. “It recognizes and explores it.”

“Giving voice to the complex, contradictory and sometimes dark feelings that dwell in the human heart is an act of love,” he told them. “Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it.”

Coming to the Vatican during the Jubilee of hope, he said, the directors and actors join millions of pilgrims who have made the journey over the past year.

“Your journey is not measured in kilometers but in images, words, emotions, shared memories and collective desires,” the pope told them. “You navigate this pilgrimage into the mystery of human experience with a penetrating gaze that is capable of recognizing beauty even in the depths of pain, and of discerning hope in the tragedy of violence and war.”

The pope prayed that their work would “never lose its capacity to amaze and even continue to offer us a glimpse, however small, of the mystery of God.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence online and in schools demands stronger government-enforced safeguards, education in the critical use of media and more consistent monitoring by parents and teachers, Pope Leo XIV said.

“Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to manipulation through AI algorithms that can influence their decisions and preferences,” the pope told academics, AI experts and professionals involved in child protection programs Nov. 13.

The group was participating in a conference, “The Dignity of Children and Adolescents in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” which was sponsored by Telefono Azzurro, an Italian hotline for children, and its foundation for research on the mental and physical health of children and teens.

Pope Leo told the group that as AI grows so must the tools needed “to monitor and guide young people’s interactions with technology.”

But that monitoring, he said, will not accomplish much if parents and teachers are not educated about the potential dangers of AI for young people.

And, the pope said, “governments and international organizations have a responsibility to design and implement policies that protect the dignity of minors in the AI era,” including by “updating existing data protection laws to address new challenges posed by emerging technologies and promoting ethical standards for the development and use of AI.”

Guidelines and restrictions will not work, however, without “daily, ongoing educational efforts carried out by adults who themselves are trained and supported by networks of collaboration,” the pope said.

The adults’ role, he said, includes understanding the risks that “premature, unlimited and unsupervised digital access may pose to the relationships and development of young people.”

“Only by taking part in the discovery of such risks and the effects on their personal and social life, can minors be supported in approaching the digital world as a means of strengthening their ability to make responsible choices for themselves and for others,” Pope Leo said.

The church is not opposed to the use of technology, including artificial intelligence, he said, but people must ensure that it “serves as an ally, not a threat, in the growth and development of children and adolescents.”

BALTIMORE (OSV News) – The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a “special pastoral message on immigration” Nov. 12, voicing “our concern here for immigrants” at their annual fall plenary assembly in Baltimore.

The statement came as a growing number of bishops have acknowledged that some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies risk presenting the church with both practical challenges in administering pastoral support and charitable endeavors, as well as religious liberty challenges.

Archbishop Richard G. Henning of Boston told OSV News in an interview that the feeling “we have to say something” on the subject of showing solidarity with immigrants has been “kind of bubbling up from the bishops.”

“Obviously, the beliefs of the church have political consequences, but they’re not political in the usual sense of the word,” he said. “And so there was a real effort to make sure that this would be a pastoral address to our people rather than an attempt to lobby.”

Despite differences in age, geography or other viewpoints, Archbishop Henning said, the U.S. bishops have almost universally heard from parishioners or pastors about “suffering the effects of this.”

“We’re pastors,” he said. “We care about the people we serve, and what we’re hearing from them is fear and suffering. So it’s hard not to want to respond to that.”

The statement, released in the late afternoon, said, “As pastors, we the bishops of the United States are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement,” it said. “We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status.

“We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” it continued. “We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation.

“We as Catholic bishops love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity. For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.”

The statement also refers to Catholic social teaching on immigration, which seeks to balance three interrelated principles: the right of persons to migrate in order to sustain themselves and their families; the right of a country to regulate its borders and immigration; and a nation’s duty to conduct that regulation with justice and mercy.

For example, Archbishop Henning told OSV News that “Catholic teaching doesn’t like chaos, because chaos often produces great injustice for the most vulnerable.”

“But it’s possible to go too far the other way too,” he said.

Catholic teaching “exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants,” the statement said. “We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures. Human dignity and national security are not in conflict.

“Both are possible if people of good will work together. We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks.”

The church’s teaching, it noted, “rests on the foundational concern for the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27).”

“As pastors, we look to Sacred Scripture and the example of the Lord Himself, where we find the wisdom of God’s compassion,” it continued. “The priority of the Lord, as the Prophets remind us, is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zachariah 7:10). In the Lord Jesus, we see the One who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9), we see the Good Samaritan who lifts us from the dust (Luke 10:30–37), and we see the One who is found in the least of these (Matthew 25).

“The Church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants is a response to the Lord’s command to love as he has loved us (John 13:34),” it said.

The message was approved by the vast majority of voting bishops and was met with a standing ovation. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, newly elected president of the USCCB, spoke in favor of the statement from the floor, saying, “I’m strongly in support of it for the good of our immigrant brothers and sisters,” adding that the statement sought “balance” in “protecting the rights of immigrants, but also securing and calling upon our lawmakers and our administration to offer us a meaningful path of reform for our immigration system.”

According to a USCCB news release issued with the text of the statement, this “marked the first time” in 12 years the bishops’ conference “invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops. The last one issued in 2013 was in response to the federal government’s contraceptive mandate.”

Details of the statement were a matter of some debate at the public session Nov. 12, with Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago suggesting the addition of language opposing “indiscriminate mass deportation.”

Others voiced concurrence but raised qualifications, like also adding “without due process,” or questioned the conference’s procedures for making an amendment at the assembly.

The added phrase was ultimately approved, and is found in the final paragraph of the message: “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. We pray that the Lord may guide the leaders of our nation, and we are grateful for past and present opportunities to dialogue with public and elected officials. In this dialogue, we will continue to advocate for meaningful immigration reform.”

The bishops’ concern has a reference point in existing magisterial teaching. St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” (“Splendor of Truth”) and 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”) both quote the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes,” that names “deportation” among various specific acts “offensive to human dignity” that “are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator.”

St. John Paul underscored that these acts were examples of “intrinsic evil” incapable of being ordered to God or the good of the human person.

When the U.S. bishops ultimately approved the language after some debate, Archbishop Henning quipped, “The amended amendment passes.”

In his interview with OSV News after the vote, Archbishop Henning said, “It’s not an easy thing to kind of get us all moving completely in the same direction.” But he said the overwhelming support for the message showed “a fundamental unity among us.”

“I think there was a pretty powerful sense among all the bishops that what we’re experiencing on the ground in our dioceses is that there’s a great deal of suffering and confusion, and I would say even chaos,” he said. “There’s kind of arbitrariness right now, in the experience of the people, that generates pretty significant fear.”

BALTIMORE (OSV News) – The U.S. bishops have approved an updated version of their guiding document on Catholic health care, with substantial revisions that include explicit prohibitions against so-called “gender-affirming care.”.

Proposed updates to the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” or ERDs, were overwhelmingly accepted during the Nov. 12 session of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ fall 2025 plenary assembly.

The ERDs – developed in consultation with medical professionals and theologians, and regularly reviewed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – articulate ethical standards for health care in light of church teaching, and provide authoritative guidance on moral issues encountered by Catholic health care.

Now, the seventh edition of the ERDs — endorsed by 206 bishops, with eight abstaining and seven opposing — incorporates guidance issued in 2023 by the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine, which prohibited surgical or chemical interventions seeking to exchange or simulate the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex.

During a Nov. 11 presentation on the proposed revisions, Auxiliary Bishop James Massa of Brooklyn, New York, chair of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine, explained to the assembly that the sixth edition did not include such guidance, a “lacuna” the committee sought to address.

The USCCB’s 2023 doctrinal document and the ERDs revisions were the fruit of extensive reflection and discernment, with feedback from Catholic physicians, bioethicists and health care organizations, said Bishop Massa during the Nov. 11 presentation.

“Every phrase, every word of the ERDs received scrutiny by multiple experts from different perspectives,” he said. “We incorporated insights from all the consulting parties.”

In addition, the proposed revisions of the ERD build on “Dignitas Infinita,” the 2024 declaration on human dignity published by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

That document recounts the biblical and magisterial basis for the Catholic Church’s understanding of human dignity as inherent, since it ultimately flows from the human person’s creation “in the image and likeness of God” and redemption in Christ.

The declaration addressed “some grave violations of human dignity that are particularly relevant,” specifically poverty, war, threats to migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women, abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia and assisted suicide, the marginalization of people with disabilities, gender theory, sex change interventions and digital violence — a list that was not “exhaustive,” said the text.

While deploring violence and discrimination against those struggling with their gender and sexual identity, “Dignitas Infinita” reaffirmed church teaching on gender, describing sexual difference as “the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings,” which in humans “becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world.”

In his Nov. 11 presentation, Bishop Massa said he also had “informal consultation” with the Vatican – which had formally reviewed the 2023 doctrinal note – on the ERDs revisions.

“They did make a couple of recommendations that we include references to some of the more recent papal documents,” he said. “We have a longer quote from ‘Dignitas Infinita,’ and also something on artificial intelligence.”

Bishop Massa also said that upon USCCB approval of the ERDs revisions, individual bishops would then decide to make the ERDs document a particular law in their dioceses, or at least treat it as such without formally promulgating the text.

Speaking to OSV News ahead of the USCCB plenary, Bishop Massa observed that the directives are an “important resource” for developing pastoral letters and guidelines — one that is “very helpful to those who continue the essential work of making our anthropology and our Catholic moral teaching accessible to our people, to the faithful.”

BALTIMORE (OSV News) – Pope Leo XIV is eager and excited to enter into a dialogue with young people in America in a unique digital encounter, according to those facilitating the Nov. 21 event taking place at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis.

On Nov. 12, the upcoming encounter was highlighted during the U.S. bishops’ fall plenary assembly by Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia alongside others involved in organizing the event. Archbishop Pérez told reporters that the encounter “reflects the Holy Father’s desire to connect with young people” and it “represents a virtual visit of the Holy Father to them.”

“The Holy Father’s choice to encounter the American youth, as he will do next week, is an expression of his closeness to the youth of the world,” he added. “This historic moment will mark a powerful opportunity for young people to witness the beauty of the universal church with our Holy Father.”

During the gathering, the pope will address an expected crowd of about 15,000 young people ages 14-18. He will engage in a 45-minute dialogue with the attendees at Lucas Oil Stadium, marking the first time in history a pope has been a part of a digital encounter with American young people.

In response to a question from The Pillar regarding the degree to which the event will be an organic encounter between the young people and the pope, Archbishop Pérez noted that “the questions were discerned and then sent by the young people, and then sent to the Holy Father directly.”

“He will choose (from) those questions and maybe modify them,” the archbishop said, but “they came from a dialogue and a certain process with the young people.”

Montse Alvarado, president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, which is the event’s exclusive multicast provider, emphasized the importance of “an authentic experience” for Pope Leo and the young people “so that the Holy Father can see the young person asking him the question, and the young people can see the Holy Father in this kind of a reaction.”

NCYC is hosted by the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry. The Washington-based NFCYM, launched in 1981 with the support of the U.S. bishops, fosters collaboration among the country’s Catholic youth ministry leaders. Archbishop Pérez serves as an episcopal adviser and board member for the NFCYM.

Christina Lamas, the federation’s executive director, said the moment “shows that the church is listening, not just speaking. This encounter is not a media event, it’s a synodal moment where one universal church walks with a young church in the United States.”

In response to a question from OSV News about the event’s unique virtual Q&A format, Kenneth Gavin, communications director for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said the event is “not virtual,” although Archbishop Pérez had referred to the event as a “virtual visit.”

Rather, Gavin said, “it is a real-time digital encounter because I think when we use the word virtual, we lose authenticity.” He added that the Holy Father is “meeting young people in a space where they spend a lot of time as digital natives, but it’s not virtual, it’s an encounter.”

In response to an OSV News question about how the idea for the format of the event came about, Christina Lamas referenced that Pope Francis had previously sent a letter to NCYC and a video message.

“This time around,” she said, “young people are digital natives. They are online, they’re on social media. And so to have our Holy Father come to them in the same space in which they are, that is very meaningful. And we talk about authenticity and we talk about in terms of being able to have that relationship, how do you convert something digital to something personal? So that idea of being able to bring our Holy Father and the young people together in a space where that could happen, that was part of the dream.”

Alvarado told OSV News that in the Sept. 6 meeting in which she and Archbishop Pérez discussed the encounter, Pope Leo “was wonderful and really encouraging.” She said it was clear that the pope “wanted to spend time” with the American youth and it was “a priority for him.”

BALTIMORE (OSV News) – The U.S. bishops have given the green light to hold the 11th National Eucharistic Congress in the summer of 2029, in a Nov. 12 vote on the final public day of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Fall Plenary Assembly.

The location of the event has not yet been made public. However, the possible cities have been narrowed down to three, according to Bishop Cozzens, and OSV News has learned that site visits have been completed and that the city announcement likely will come next spring.

The 2029 congress follows the successful 10th National Eucharistic Congress that took place July 2024 in Indianapolis, as part of the larger three-year National Eucharistic Revival.

In a presentation to the body of bishops, Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, chairman of the National Eucharistic Congress Inc., which will organize the event, said the USCCB’s Committee on Evangelization Catechesis in conjunction with Vinea Research conducted a “Revival Impact Study” looking at the fruit of the earlier effort.

He said those findings will be released later this year.

“The results of this national survey are still being finalized,” but they found “lasting fruit from the revival,” Bishop Cozzens said. Areas of impact include increased reverence for the Eucharist, an increase in youth and family engagement, and a “noticeable increase” in Eucharistic adoration, he said.

The 2029 date works around the 2027 World Youth Day in South Korea and the 2028 International Eucharistic Congress in Sydney in 2028. Bishop Cozzens said it would also help the church “build on the momentum” ahead of the 500th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego Cuauhtloatoatzin in Mexico in 2031.

“Brothers, I believe that the Eucharistic Revival was a great gift to our country from the Holy Spirit, and I believe that continuing the transformative, unitive events every four years can continue to stoke the fires of revival and support the incredible work that you’re already doing in your dioceses in evangelization,” Bishop Cozzens said.

No questions were asked from the floor.

Following the presentation and vote, Bishop Cozzens told OSV News that he was grateful to the bishops for their approval.

“Based on the feedback I was getting earlier, I thought that this is the way it would go. But it’s great to actually have it on the calendar so that we can go forward,” he said.

Bishop Cozzens said one of the gifts of the National Eucharistic Congress is the unity it brings the church — something he saw with the 2024 congress.

“I think we’ll experience that again in 2029,” he said. “I think it’s actually one of the gifts that the congress gives. It’s like the whole church gets together as one, and people get to see us united. And especially united around the source of our unity, which is Jesus and the Eucharist.

A theme is in progress, Bishop Cozzens said.

“I know that it will be a beautiful experience of the power of the Holy Spirit, and especially the power of evangelization when we honor Jesus and the Eucharist,” he said.

“I hope everybody comes,” Bishop Cozzens said.

Speaking of everybody, the U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV might be at the top of that invitation list. But Bishop Cozzens would not confirm whether or not the USCCB has formally issued an invitation.

“Let’s just put it this way: If the pope wants to come, we would welcome him,” Bishop Cozzens said.

The National Eucharistic Congress Inc., a nonprofit formed in 2022 to support the bishops’ vision for the congress and accompanying National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, has been a key collaborator for the revival as a whole.

Revival efforts included the development of catechetical resources and the training of both lay leaders and clergy to articulate the truth of the Eucharist and how that impacts Catholics’ lives.

April 2022 saw the commissioning of 58 Eucharistic preachers — priests formed during a retreat to give missions at parishes around the United States. It also included five National Eucharistic Pilgrimage routes, four in 2024 and an additional one in 2025.

The 2024 National Eucharistic Congress included nationally known Catholic speakers and musicians alongside opportunities for service, fellowship and varied forms of Catholic liturgies at the Indiana Convention Center and adjacent Lucas Oil Stadium. Each evening culminated in Eucharistic adoration in the stadium.

While more than 50,000 people are estimated to have attended the congress, thousands more joined for a Eucharistic procession through the streets of downtown Indianapolis — the largest of its kind in decades.

Jason Shanks, president of the National Eucharistic Congress, told OSV News the bishops’ overwhelming approval for a 2029 National Eucharistic Congress “really is a recognition of all the work the Lord has done over this revival.”

He noted there has been extensive discernment on the part of the bishops over the past year, between their conversations and examination of the impact study.

“I took it as a real positive affirmation of the fruits that we’re seeing and starting to see in the impact study,” he said.

Shanks said he’s going for “bigger and better” as they look toward 2029.

“I think there’s a lot of people that have said, ‘I wish I was there. I wish I was a part of it,'” he said. “We’re excited about it. We’re already planning for growth, not only growth in terms of numbers, but programming space and things.”

He said, “I can’t tell you the city yet, but I’m excited by where I think this is going.”

BALTIMORE (OSV News) – The faithful can expect a new edition of the Liturgy of the Hours by Easter 2027, according to Bishop Steven J. Lopes, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship who made the announcement Nov. 11, during the bishops’ fall meeting.

To loud applause from the bishops’ assembled, Bishop Lopes, head of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, shared the news that the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship issued a decree approving the new edition of the church’s ancient daily liturgical prayer.

The Liturgy of the Hours, or the Divine Office, is the daily prayer of the church and sanctifies the day with prayer. This liturgical prayer also takes different set forms within the Latin Catholic and 23 Eastern Catholic churches that together make the worldwide Catholic Church, and each form has prayers that vary in accordance with each particular church’s calendar.

The standard Liturgy of the Hours in the Roman rite of the Latin Church is divided into five “hours” or parts prayed at different times each day: the office of readings; morning prayer or lauds; daytime prayer; evening prayer or vespers; and night prayer or compline. These five parts, which draw from Scripture, particularly the Psalms, usually take less than 20 minutes to pray.

Outgoing USCCB president Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services signed the decree of publication, moving the process to the publishers.

“It is imagined, because that’s a bit of a complicated work to produce a four-volume work like that,” Bishop Lopes said, “that the first volume to be released will be Volume Two: Lent and Easter and so that will be able to go into effect for Ash Wednesday of 2027.”

Bishop Lopes expressed his gratitude to the body of bishops for their patience and their work over “what has been a 13-year process” from when the bishops first agreed to begin work on revising the Liturgy of the Hours in November 2012 with the aim of retranslation to “more accurately reflect the original Latin texts.”

On Oct. 7, Ascension and Word on Fire Publishing announced that they had been selected as publishers for the new edition.

At the time, Word on Fire’s senior publishing director, Brandon Vogt, said that Word on Fire was honored to be selected. He told OSV News that the organization published booklets to help the lay faithful — 30,000 subscribers — in praying the Liturgy of the Hours which he called the “highest form of prayer” after the Mass and sacraments.

“The success of these booklets has positioned Word on Fire well to publish the new Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition,” he added.

Jonathan Strate, president and CEO of Ascension, said in a press release at the time that the company was honored to serve as publishers for the new edition.

“Our goal is to create a reverent and beautiful edition that embodies the dignity of the Church’s common prayer. This new translation marks an extraordinary moment for Catholics everywhere,” he said.

Ahead of the new English edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, liturgical experts have been encouraging parishes and other Catholic communities to begin praying the Liturgy of the Hours.

While it is a required prayer for clergy, the church encourages the faithful to take it up as it is meant to “become the prayer of the whole people of God,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“Sacrosanctum Concilium,” the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, encourages the laity to pray the Divine Office “either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually.”

BALTIMORE (OSV News) – As the U.S. marks its 250th anniversary next year, the U.S. bishops will consecrate the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The decision was taken during a Nov. 11 session of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ fall plenary assembly in Baltimore.

Ahead of the vote, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chair of the USCCB’s Committee for Religious Liberty, said the consecration would take place at the USCCB’s spring assembly in June 2026, which concludes on the solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“To help Catholics prepare for the consecration, we would develop prayer resources, including a novena that will lead up to the solemnity of the Sacred Heart,” said Bishop Rhoades.

Devotion to the Sacred of Heart of Jesus, which traces its roots to at least the second century, grew during the Middle Ages and was later extended to the universal church following Christ’s revelations of his Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a 17th-century French woman religious.

Bishop Rhoades said USCCB staff are assembling resources for “dioceses, parishes and other groups to engage Catholics” during the 250th anniversary of the July 4, 1776, signing of the Declaration of Independence, through which the 13 American colonies formally separated themselves from Britain.

In preparation, a diocese might for example “invite the faithful to participate in 250 hours of adoration, or 250 works of mercy,” said Bishop Rhoades.

He pointed to the tradition behind, and aim of, such a consecration.

“One hundred years ago, in 1925, in his encyclical instituting the feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius XI — drawing on the teaching of Pope Leo XIII — referred to the pious custom of consecrating oneself, families and even nations to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a way to recognize the kingship of Christ,” said Bishop Rhoades.

Through his final encyclical, “Dilexit Nos” (“He Loved Us”), Pope Francis “brought devotion to the Sacred Heart to the forefront of Catholic life as the ultimate symbol of both human and divine love, calling it a wellspring of peace and unity,” said Bishop Rhoades.

Pope Francis “wrote of how the Sacred Heart teaches us to build up in this world God’s kingdom of love and justice,” Bishop Rhoades said.

Pope Leo XIV, writing in his first apostolic exhortation, “Dilexi Te” (“I Have Loved You”), carried forward his predecessor’s teaching, inviting the faithful “to contemplate Christ’s love, the love that moves us to mission in our suffering world today.”

“To entrust our nation to the love and care of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as we celebrate its 250th anniversary is an opportunity to promote the beautiful devotion to the Sacred Heart among our people — and also to remind everyone of our task to serve our nation by perfecting the temporal order with the spirit of the Gospel, as taught by the Second Vatican Council,” said Bishop Rhoades.