Author: Eric Deabill

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – God loves every person and wants to help everyone discover their inherent value and dignity, especially those who feel unworthy or unappreciated, Pope Leo XIV said.

“God wants to give his kingdom, that is, full, eternal and happy life, to everyone,” the pope said June 4 as he held his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“And this is what Jesus does with us: he does not establish rankings, he gives all of himself to those who open their hearts to him,” the pope said.

Pope Leo continued a series of talks focusing on Gospel parables that give hope, focusing on “The Workers in the Vineyard” in the Gospel of St. Matthew (20:1-16), which reveals the equality of all the disciples in inheriting eternal life.

Pope Leo said it is “a story that fosters our hope,” because “at times we have the impression that we cannot find meaning for our lives: we feel useless, inadequate, just like the laborers who wait in the marketplace, waiting for someone to hire them to work.”

“The metaphor of the marketplace is very appropriate for our times, too, because the market is the place of business, where unfortunately even affection and dignity are bought and sold, in the attempt to earn something,” he said. “And when we do not feel appreciated, acknowledged, we risk selling ourselves to the first bidder.”

“Instead, the Lord reminds us that our life is worthy, and his wish is to help us discover this,” he said.

The Lord, represented by the owner of the vineyard in the parable, wants to establish a personal relationship with everyone he meets, and he repeatedly goes out looking for “those who are waiting to give meaning to their lives,” Pope Leo said.

“This tireless master, who wants at all costs to give value to the life of every one of us,” even goes out toward the end of the workday to take on those who are still waiting, he said. This shows that “even when it seems we are able to do little in life, it is always worthwhile. There is always the possibility to find meaning because God loves our life.”

The landowner pays each worker the same, even those who arrived late in the day and worked fewer hours in the field, because God believes “it is just that each person has what he needs to live” because he knows their dignity, the pope said.

“The story says that the laborers from the first hour are disappointed,” Pope Leo said. “They cannot see the beauty of the gesture of the landowner, who was not unjust, but simply generous, who looked not only at merit but also at need.”

The “payment” God wants to give is his kingdom, and he offers the same reward of a full, eternal and happy life to everyone without “rankings,” he said. The Lord gives everything to everyone who opens their hearts to him.

But, he said, “in the light of this parable, today’s Christian might be tempted to think, ‘Why start work immediately? If the pay is the same, why work more?'”

Pope Leo said St. Augustine responded to that question in a sermon asking why would someone delay when God is calling with a promise that they know is a sure thing. The saint warned that people do not know when their time will come, and they should be careful because a delay might mean they miss out on what God wants to give.

“I would like to say, especially to the young, do not wait, but respond enthusiastically to the Lord who calls us to work in his vineyard,” the pope said. “Do not delay, roll up your sleeves, because the Lord is generous and you will not be disappointed!”

It is by “working in his vineyard” that people find the meaning of their life, he said.

Do not be discouraged “even in the dark moments of life” when answers seem to be lacking, the pope told his listeners. “The Lord is generous, and he will come soon!”

Before the general audience, Pope Leo met with members of the board of directors of the National Italian American Foundation, which educates young people about Italian culture and history, as well as provides scholarships and other charitable assistance in both countries.

“A hallmark of many who immigrated to the United States from Italy was their Catholic faith, with its rich traditions of popular piety and devotions that they continued to practice in their new nation,” he said. “This faith sustained them in difficult moments, even as they arrived with a sense of hope for a prosperous future in their new country.”

“In an age beset by many challenges,” Pope Leo prayed that their visit to Rome would “renew your sense of hope and trust in the future.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The Trump administration announced June 3 that it would revoke Biden-era guidance to the nation’s hospitals directing them to perform abortions in emergency circumstances even in states that banned the procedure.

In 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the court’s previous precedent that held abortion as a constitutional right, the Biden administration issued the directive under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

Supporters of the Biden administration’s directive argued it would shield doctors and medical staff from legal repercussions in states that restricted abortion if they performed an abortion in an emergency, but opponents argued the 1986 EMTALA law obligates doctors and hospitals to attempt to stabilize both mother and unborn child in an emergency.

The Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said they would rescind the directive, adding that “CMS will continue to enforce EMTALA, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.”

“CMS will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions,” the announcement said.

EMTALA was initially enacted to ensure patients’ access to emergency services regardless of their ability to pay. It requires Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to stabilize patients without the means to pay for treatment instead of transferring them to another hospital.

A statement on X from the Pro-Choice Caucus in the U.S. House said, “Every patient in America has the right to lifesaving health care.”
“EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency care, including abortion,” the statement said. “No matter how hard he tries, Donald Trump cannot change that.”

But Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, argued in a statement that the previous guidance “warped EMTALA obligations and created widespread confusion in emergency rooms nationwide.”

“EMTALA is a decades-old statute that was originally designed to protect mother-patients and their unborn children in emergency situations, but the Biden administration manipulated the law’s purpose by issuing guidance that forced emergency room doctors to perform abortions, regardless of their states’ life-affirming laws,” Hyde-Smith said. “Restoring EMTALA to its original purpose brings much-needed clarity to our incredible emergency room doctors across the country and peace of mind to the patients they serve.”

The Justice Department under the Biden administration previously argued Idaho’s abortion restrictions were in conflict with EMTALA, but that suit was dismissed on procedural grounds by the Supreme Court in 2024 without resolving the central question. In March, the Justice Department under the Trump administration said it would drop that suit.

The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred and must be respected from conception to natural death, and as such, opposes direct abortion. The U.S. bishops’ “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” Directive 47, states, “Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention for June, a month devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is “that the world might grow in compassion.”

“Let us pray that each one of us might find consolation in a personal relationship with Jesus, and from his heart, learn to have compassion on the world,” the pope prays in English in his first contribution to “The Pope Video,” a monthly reflection published by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.

The video, released June 3, also includes an original prayer people can recite daily during the month.

“You showed us the Father’s love by loving us without measure with Your divine and human Heart,” the prayer said.

“Grant all Your children the grace of encountering You. Change, shape and transform our plans, so that we seek only You in every circumstance: in prayer, in work, in encounters and in our daily routine,” the prayer continued. “From this encounter, send us out on mission, a mission of compassion for the world in which You are the source from which all consolation flows.”

The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, formerly known as the Apostleship of Prayer, is a global movement of people who make a commitment each day to pray for the pope’s intentions.

Jesuit Father Cristóbal Fones, director of the prayer network, said Pope Leo’s intention “focuses on growing in compassion for the world through a personal relationship with Jesus.”

“By cultivating this truly close relationship, our hearts are more conformed to His. We grow in love and mercy, and we better learn what compassion is,” Father Fones said. “Jesus manifested an unconditional love for everyone, especially for the poor, the sick and those who were suffering. The pope encourages us to imitate this compassionate love by extending a hand to those in need.”

In a statement accompanying the video, Father Fones also pointed out that during the Holy Year 2025, “The Pope Video acquires special relevance since through it we know the prayer intentions the pope holds in his heart. To properly receive the graces of the Jubilee indulgence, it is necessary to pray for the pope’s intentions.”

The prayer network also noted how four popes have devoted encyclicals to Catholics’ devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“Pope Leo XIII, whose name the current pope took, wrote ‘Annum Sacrum’ in 1899, in which he consecrated all of humanity to the Heart of Jesus. In 1928, Pope Pius XI, in ‘Miserentissimus Redemptor,’ invited us to make reparation through acts of love for the wounds our sins inflict on the Heart of Christ,” the network said.

“For his part, Pope Pius XII published ‘Haurietis Aquas’ in 1956, in which he explores the theological basis for devotion to the Sacred Heart,” it said. And “lastly, Pope Francis wrote ‘Dilexit Nos’ in 2024, and proposed devotion to the Heart of Christ as a response to the throwaway culture and the culture of indifference.”

SÃO PAULO (OSV News) – A video of Brazilian nuns beatboxing and dancing hip-hop, a scene taken from a local TV show and defined by celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg as “a real life ‘Sister Act,'” went viral on May 28, with millions of views all over the world.

Sisters Marizele Isabel Cassiano Rego, 46, and Marisa de Paula Neves, 41, were taking part May 20 in a TV show of the Catholic network Pai Eterno (Eternal Father), in Goiás state, in order to talk about a vocational encounter the two were attending in the region.

As they mentioned their artistic ways of reaching the youth, they presented a song they wrote about God’s calling. Sister Marizele sang it and Sister Marisa began to dance — the whole act had a noticeable hip-hop nature. That’s when Sister Marizele began beatboxing.

The short clip went viral on social media and was reproduced by international news agencies on May 28. Actress Viola Davis shared it on her Instagram account, mentioning Sister Mary Clarence, Whoopi Goldberg’s character in the 1992 movie “Sister Act.”

On ABC’s “The View,” Goldberg commented on the clip, saying that “anytime you can praise the Lord with some music and you’re doing your thing, I think it’s a good sign.”

Sister Marizele and Sister Marisa are members of the Brazilian congregation of the Sisters of the Copious Redemption, created in 1989 by Redemptorist Father Wilton Lopes in the city of Ponta Grossa, Paraná state, where both of the sisters live today. Their mission is to work especially on the rehabilitation of drug addicts.

Father Lopes received a revelation in 1991, after which it was decided that every day each sister will pray for drug or alcohol addicts in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

“I’ve learned how to sing with my family. My grandfather was a player of Caipira guitar,” Sister Marizele told OSV News, mentioning a 10-string guitar developed in the colonial era in São Paulo state — traditionally used for playing rhythms from the countryside.

At home, she and her sisters would promote karaoke nights, something that further developed her abilities. Since her teens, she has been experimenting with mouth sounds as well.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to formally learn beatboxing, but somehow I managed to develop my own way of doing it. Experts told me it’s pretty fine,” said Sister Marizele.

As a young participant of Catholic charismatic renewal groups, she began singing at church before joining the congregation, which happened 21 years ago.

“In order to evangelize drug addicts, we would resort to beatboxing, dance, music, theater. We need to be rather creative,” described Sister Marizele, who has lived for nine years in therapeutic communities.

Sister Marisa, in a convent for the last 14 years, told OSV News she has always liked to dance. Coming from a small city in Paraná state, she first learned to dance the traditional rhythms of the region, also connected to the Caipira culture and U.S. country music.

“But afterwards I joined the city’s dance group and took classes in ballet and street dance,” she explained.

As a nun, she worked with children and teens in a cultural center where she learned tap dancing and break dance.

“As they saw me learning how to dance those rhythms, they would be encouraged to join the classes too,” Sister Marisa explained.

The impact of such artistic activities in the sisters’ missionary work has been noticeable, they said. They both have been focusing on vocational initiatives and realized how the arts can break down barriers and bring the youth close to them.

“People usually think nuns are rigid, even grumpy women. When they see us singing and dancing, when they get to know us better, they realize we’re not,” Sister Marizele said.

The same thing happens in different parishes and church groups, added Sister Marisa. Some of them promote contemplation, while others are more vivacious. People can be attracted by different styles.

“Our church is diverse. That is her beauty,” she said.

With its intense use of music and its particular spirituality, the Catholic charismatic renewal, to which both sisters are connected, is viewed by many analysts in Brazil as a way to halt the continuous erosion of Catholicism in the country.

Traditionally a Catholic nation, only 50% of Brazil’s population today is Catholic, while evangelicals make up 25% of the population. Scholars predict that by 2032 Brazil may become a predominantly evangelical country.

The charismatic renewal way may be productive drawing people back to the Catholic Church, indeed. According to Sister Marizele, since their video went viral, more and more people have been looking for them.

“Boys and girls who we meet in different locations have been asking us about our work and our congregation, including boys interested in beatboxing,” she said with a smile.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Pope Leo XIV, as the first U.S.-born pope, may bring unique insight to the problem of polarization in the U.S. and in the U.S. church, analysts told OSV News.

“From what I’ve heard, Rome always has an eye on the U.S. church, but that doesn’t mean that what is going on in the United States is going to shape the ways Pope Leo leads the global church. However, he is going to be more intimately aware of what is happening in the United States and more attuned to the cultural subtleties than previous popes have been,” Maureen Day, a research affiliate at the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture and that university’s Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, told OSV News.

Multiple recent academic studies show evidence of growing partisanship and polarization in the U.S. A New York Times analysis even found these trends apparent in moving patterns of Americans who relocate to other neighborhoods, towns or states.

Catholic leaders, including the U.S. bishops, have also observed these trends in the U.S. church.

Father William Dailey, a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, lecturer in law at Notre Dame Law School, and St. Thomas More Fellow of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame, told OSV News the new pontiff “already (has) me thinking less about what divides and more about what does and must unite us.”

Father Dailey cautioned against looking at Leo’s pontificate through an inward lens, and to remember he is the leader of a global church.

“Anyone who comes from a particular culture stands a decent shot at understanding its nuances and particularities better than someone from outside, presumably,” he said. “So we might imagine that in working with the U.S. bishops and in appointing them he’ll have a better than usual sense of our challenges and how he might hope to offer guidance. He also brings a better sense of the global church to that conversation than many of us here would, which might help complement his insights about the U.S. church and what we might think are unique challenges or priorities for us but he might see as part of something larger.”

The political and social views of the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost were among the subjects some Catholics were eager to find clues to when he became pontiff. A review of a social media account previously used by the now-pope critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, but also posts critical of abortion and the death penalty, calls for a greater effort to address gun violence in the U.S., as well as prayers for healing and an end to racism after the murder of Minneapolis man George Floyd, whose death in police custody sparked unrest.

Both Father Dailey and Day suggested that in each of those subjects, the posts suggested an alignment with church teaching.

His posts “look like he puts his faith first and lets the politics fall into place,” Day said, while Father Dailey noted, “There’s very little in his tweeting in his own voice, as far as I can tell.”

“He retweeted articles that made basic points about the church being pro-life further in the past, and basic points about the church caring for immigrants and the poor more recently — these should not be polarizing among believing Catholics,” Father Dailey said of now-Pope Leo. “I imagine he agreed with the contents of the retweets, but I don’t see it as him wading into partisan politics then, and doubt he would do so now.”

Day added, “I think Pope Leo will be very clear on what the church teaches without ending conversations with those who see things differently. In a spirit of synodality, I think he will want to start a lot of conversations and make room for people to grow and surprise us.”

“He’s not going out of his way to excite one side or another,” Father Dailey said, arguing that Pope Leo’s early actions appear to be “about being Christ-centered.”

“So far, the tone that Leo has established has been interesting and calm,” he said. “Remember the great fanfare around Francis choosing a unique name and dressing a bit differently from his predecessors — it’s no criticism of those choices to note that people made a huge deal about them (some happy, some unhappy) whereas so far with Leo there’s a sense of his quietly surrendering himself into this unique and incomprehensibly demanding office — not without a vision but very much not making a splash.”

Day added that the late Pope Francis “was often dismissed by those who disagreed with him as simply not understanding the U.S. context,” and for some of those critics, when Pope Leo “weighs in on issues that are occuring within American public life,” they may see him more as a voice who carries “the weight of an insider.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Catholic Church, its ministers and its members must find new ways to reach out to and welcome families who are distant from the church and have no understanding of how much God loves them, Pope Leo XIV said.

Writing to 40 theologians and pastoral ministers participating in a seminar on evangelizing with families, the pope said the first goal of outreach is to help people longing for love and meaning to find that in Jesus.

“How often, even in the not too distant past, have we forgotten this truth and presented Christian life mostly as a set of rules to be kept, replacing the marvelous experience of encountering Jesus — God who gives himself to us — with a moralistic, burdensome and unappealing religion that, in some ways, is impossible to live in concrete daily life,” the pope wrote in a June 2 message.

The Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life gathered the experts at its Vatican office June 2-3 to reflect on the theme, “Evangelizing with the Families of Today and Tomorrow: Ecclesiological and Pastoral Challenges.” The seminar followed the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly.

Pope Leo told them, “This theme clearly expresses the church’s maternal concern for Christian families throughout the world as living members of the Mystical Body of Christ and the primary nucleus of the church, to whom the Lord entrusts the transmission of faith and the Gospel, especially to the new generations.”

Every human being, as St. Augustine taught, has a longing for God, the pope said. And parents have the first responsibility to respond to that longing by making their children “aware of the fatherhood of God.”

And while church attendance and formal religious affiliation in many places are declining, he said, “ours is a time marked by a growing search for spirituality, particularly evident in young people, who are longing for authentic relationships and guides in life.”

“Hence, it is important that the Christian community be farsighted in discerning the challenges of today’s world and in nurturing the desire for faith present in the heart of every man and woman,” he said.

But that, the pope said, requires paying special attention “to those families who, for various reasons, are spiritually most distant from us: those who do not feel involved, claim they are uninterested or feel excluded from the usual activities, yet would still like to be part of a community in which they can grow and journey together with others.”

“How many people today simply do not hear the invitation to encounter God?” Pope Leo asked.

Another problem, he said, is “an increasingly widespread ‘privatization’ of faith” so focused on the individual that newcomers have no experience of “the richness and gifts of the church, a place of grace, fraternity and love.”

“What drives the church in her pastoral and missionary outreach is precisely the desire to go out as a ‘fisher’ of humanity, in order to save it from the waters of evil and death through an encounter with Christ,” the pope said.

As an example, he pointed to young people who choose cohabitation instead of Christian marriage. What they need, he said, is “someone to show them in a concrete and clear way, especially by the example of their lives, what the gift of sacramental grace is and what strength derives from it. Someone to help them understand ‘the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to love and the service of life’ that God gives to married couples.”

When reaching out to families who are distant from the church, he said, patience and even creativity are needed.

“It is not a matter of giving hasty answers to difficult questions, but of drawing close to people, listening to them and trying to understand together with them how to face their difficulties.” Pope Leo said. “And this requires a readiness to be open, when necessary, to new ways of seeing things and different ways of acting, for each generation is different and has its own challenges, dreams and questions.”

The bishops have the first responsibility “to cast their nets into the sea and become ‘fishers of families,'” the pope said.

But it is a duty all Catholics share since “through baptism, each one of us has been made a priest, king and prophet for our brothers and sisters, and a ‘living stone’ for the building up of God’s house ‘in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity,'” he added, quoting from the homily at the inauguration of his papacy May 18.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Families are the cradle of the future of humanity, Pope Leo XIV said during a Mass concluding the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly.

“Today’s world needs the marriage covenant in order to know and accept God’s love and to defeat, thanks to its unifying and reconciling power, the forces that break down relationships and societies,” he said in his homily at the Mass celebrated June 1 in St. Peter’s Square.

The day also marked World Communications Day, and in remarks after the Mass Pope Leo thanked all “media workers who, by taking care of the ethical quality of messages, help families in their role as educators.”

In the family, he said in his homily, faith “is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.”

Speaking to all married couples, the pope said that “marriage is not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful,” and enables them, “in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life.”

“I encourage you, then, to be examples of integrity to your children, acting as you want them to act, educating them in freedom through obedience, always seeing the good in them and finding ways to nurture it,” he told married couples.

“And you, dear children, show gratitude to your parents. To say, ‘thank you’ each day for the gift of life and for all that comes with it is the first way to honor your father and your mother,” Pope Leo said.

Speaking to grandparents and elderly people, he asked that they “watch over your loved ones with wisdom and compassion, and with the humility and patience that come with age.”

The pope focused his homily on “The Prayer of Jesus” in the day’s Gospel reading (John 17:20-26) in which Jesus prays to the Father that all of Christ’s disciples not only follow him but also seek to be in union with the Father.

He re-read portions of the Gospel to emphasize God’s plan of unity for all of humanity, particularly: “I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.”

“Jesus is telling us that God loves us as he loves him. The Father does not love us any less than he loves his only-begotten Son. In other words, with an infinite love,” Pope Leo said.

“In his mercy, God has always desired to draw all people to himself. It is his life, bestowed upon us in Christ, that makes us one, uniting us with one another,” he said, connecting the Gospel reflection to how it relates to celebrating the Jubilee of families.

Jesus’ prayer “makes fully meaningful our experience of love for one another as parents, grandparents, sons and daughters,” he said.

“That is what we want to proclaim to the world: We are here in order to be ‘one’ as the Lord wants us to be ‘one,’ in our families and in those places where we live, work and study. Different, yet one; many, yet one; always, in every situation and at every stage of life,” the pope said.

“If we love one another in this way, grounded in Christ,” he said, “we will be a sign of peace for everyone in society and the world. Let us not forget: Families are the cradle of the future of humanity.”

By beatifying and canonizing married couples who gave exemplary witness of married life, such as Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin and the Blessed Ulma family — mother, father and seven small children — “the church tells us that today’s world needs the marriage covenant” in order to discover and embrace God’s love and to defeat that which breaks down relationships and communities, he said.

No one chose to be born, he said, but someone was there to offer care. “All of us are alive today thanks to a relationship, a free and freeing relationship of human kindness and mutual care.”

However, “that human kindness is sometimes betrayed. As for example, whenever freedom is invoked not to give life, but to take it away, not to help, but to hurt,” he said.

Nonetheless, the pope said, “even in the face of the evil that opposes and takes life, Jesus continues to pray to the Father for us. His prayer acts as a balm for our wounds; it speaks to us of forgiveness and reconciliation.”

More than 70,000 people from 131 countries gathered in the square after three days of jubilee events in Rome. Families of every age and size were present in the square; some were holding banners or flags, wearing matching hats or seeking shelter under umbrellas from the hot morning sun.

Pope Leo rode through the crowds before the start of Mass while temperatures were still in the high 70s. He broke from his usual blessing of infants and small children hoisted up to him when a young boy in the crowd held out his hand for a shake. The pope leaned far out from the popemobile to give him a “low five” to the cheers and fist pumps of the boy and his friends.

Before praying the “Regina Coeli” in the square, the pope prayed for all families, especially those “suffering due to war in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in other parts of the world. May the Mother of God help us to press forward together on the path of peace.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – As spring turned into summer, some 2,000 people closed the month of May with a rosary walk through the Vatican Gardens.

The temperature was still close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit at 8 p.m. May 31 when the pilgrims set off from behind St. Peter’s Basilica, led by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of the basilica.

At the top of the Vatican hill, at the ivy-covered replica of the grotto at Lourdes, France, they were joined by Pope Leo XIV.

The rosary walk, he said, brings together the most important aspects of the Jubilee Year: “praise, a journey, hope and, especially, faith pondered and demonstrated together.”

As they walked, the pilgrims recited the five joyful mysteries of the rosary — the Annunciation, the Visitation, the birth of Jesus, the Presentation and the finding of Jesus in the Temple — and listened to the Scripture passages that recount the events in the life of Mary and Jesus.

“Your steps have been marked by the Word of God, whose rhythm has marked your progress, your stops and starts, just as it did for the people of Israel in the desert on their way to the promised land,” the pope told the pilgrims.

The Christian life should be like that, too, Pope Leo said.

“Let us look, then, at our existence as a journey following Jesus, to be traveled, as we did tonight, together with Mary,” he said. “And let us ask the Lord to teach us to praise him every day with our life and our tongue, with our heart and our lips, with our voice and our conduct, avoiding dissonance: our speech in harmony with our lives, and our lips with our conscience.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In a church and a world divided and fractured, priests are called to be witnesses of God’s love and forgiveness, which reconciles people and makes them one community, Pope Leo XIV told new priests.

Leading Christian communities not as “lords” but as stewards, “we will rebuild the credibility of a wounded church sent to a wounded humanity within a wounded creation,” he told the 11 men he was about to ordain to the priesthood May 31.

“It is not important to be perfect, but it is necessary to be credible,” the pope said in his homily at the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The 11 men had been scheduled to be ordained May 10 by Pope Francis, but the ordination was pushed back when the pope died April 21.

Seven of the new priests studied at the Rome diocesan seminary while four of them attended the Rome Redemptoris Mater Seminary, which is run by the diocese and the Neocatechumenal Way.

Pope Leo told the men, who ranged in age from their late 20s to early 40s, “You bear witness to the fact that God has not grown weary of gathering his children, however diverse, and of constituting them into a dynamic unity.”

The ministry of a priest, like that of the pope and the bishops, is to gather all people in the church, the pope told them. “Make room for the faithful and for every creature to whom the Risen One is close and in whom he loves to visit us and amaze us.”

“The people of God are more numerous than we see,” he said. “Let us not define its boundaries.”

God will place many people in their paths, Pope Leo told the new priests. “To them consecrate yourselves, without separating yourselves from them, without isolating yourselves, without making the gift you have received some kind of privilege.”

An ordination obviously is a joyful occasion for the church, he said. But “the depth, breadth and even duration of the divine joy we now share is directly proportional to the bonds that exist and will grow between you ordinands and the people from whom you come, of which you remain a part and to which you are sent.”

While the identity of the ordained priest “depends on union with Christ the high and eternal priest,” the pope said, the church’s ordained ministers must recognize and encourage the exercise of the common priesthood of all believers that flows from baptism.

“We are the people of God,” he said. “The Second Vatican Council made this awareness more vivid, almost as if anticipating a time when a sense of belonging would become weaker and the sense of God more rarefied.”

Being part of the people of God and called to lead them, he said, means the priests always must try to be role models of Christian living with the transparency of their lives, “lives known, readable lives, credible lives!”

“We stand within God’s people, so that we can stand before them with a credible witness,” Pope Leo said.

Like the still-visible wounds of the risen Jesus, the flaws of individuals and the fractures within humanity are also signs that God’s love transforms everything and everyone, he said. “Everything that to our eyes seemed broken and lost now appears to us in the sign of reconciliation.”

(OSV News) – The four years Robert F. Prevost spent at Villanova University in Philadelphia – from the fall of 1973 until May 1977, when he graduated with a degree in mathematics and began his novitiate with the Augustinian order – included the opening salvos of the pro-life movement.

On Jan. 22, 1974, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which enshrined abortion on demand as a constitutional right, Villanova students, including Prevost, the future Pope Leo XIV, were part of a pro-life demonstration at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. The principal speaker was Cardinal John J. Krol of Philadelphia, who was then president of the U.S. bishops’ twin conferences, now called the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

That same day in Washington Nellie Gray, a Texas-born former government lawyer renowned for her bluntness, led, along with the Knights of Columbus, the first national March for Life, which drew many thousands of marchers and included the formation of a “circle of life” around the U.S. Capitol.

She became famed for never seeking compromise. Typical of Gray’s comments was one to The Catholic Commentator, the newspaper of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1979: “We won’t settle for just a little bit of abortion, because babies can’t be just a little bit dead.”

The national march has evolved since then. Even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the March for Life’s participants have included student groups arriving in Washington by bus from around the country. It is currently focused on state abortion laws as well as one of its original goals, a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.

The bus pilgrims have included Villanova students since 1975.

Prevost was a founding member of Villanovans for Life, which had an office on campus by the spring of 1974. That September, students Margaret Mary Dowdall and Robert Dodaro formalized it as a club. According to Villanovans for Life, they are the oldest collegiate pro-life club in the United States and currently have 50 members.

Villanova classmate Laura Pyne told OSV News that she recalled meeting Prevost on the bus from Philadelphia to the march in Washington, but was uncertain whether the year was 1975, 1976 or 1977.

“He was a member of the Augustinian pre-novitiate group of young men who went to a seminary high school in Michigan and then attended Villanova,” she said. “They were all wonderful young men.”

“I do not recall what year or years our new pope attended the March for Life,” she said. “If only we had known the future, we would have taken notes and lots of pictures!”

Pyne, however, said she has a sharper memory of Prevost once attending a Halloween party costumed as Groucho Marx. The comedy legend was undergoing a sort-of renaissance in the 1970s until his death in 1977.

Not all Villanovans for Life participated in the national march, making memory recall of who went and who didn’t 50 years ago a bit hazy. A typical response was like that from Father William Lego, pastor of St. Turibius Parish in Chicago, a member of Villanovans for Life and a friend of the pope’s since grade school: “I did not attend a march in Washington, and I do not remember if the pope did.”

Father John Lydon, another founding member of the club, is the former president of the Catholic University of Trujillo in Peru and worked for 10 years with then-Bishop Prevost for 10 years when he was the bishop of Chiclayo and taught canon law at the university.

“I know I was at several Marches for Life in Washington, but I can’t recall if I went with Villanovans for Life,” Father Lydon told OSV News. “I presume so, but can’t remember.”

According to her children, the late Margaret Mary Filoromo (formerly Dowdall) — who was honored by Villanovans for Life at their 50th anniversary dinner in March 2024 — took immense pride in the other founding members of the club, including her co-founder, the now-Father Dodaro, who did not respond to an interview request.

Filoromo, who met her future husband, Mike Filoromo, in Villanovans for Life and married him in 1979, built a career in nursing and headed the Chester County Pro-Life Coalition. She never forgot her college friend, the future pope, before her death last June.

“I have heard about him all my life,” her daughter, Maura Filoromo, told OSV News from her home in suburban Philadelphia. “She talked about where he was in Peru, when he became head of the Augustinians (prior general), and so on. She was really proud of all he accomplished.”

Filoromo added, “When he became cardinal less than two years ago, she told everyone she knew. She said to me, ‘My friend could become pope. Wouldn’t that be wild?'”

Pope Leo’s college years at Villanova were bracketed by pro-life demonstrations. At his commencement on May 19, 1977, a group of students — with a coffin as a prop — objected to the honorary degree being given to Jesuit Father Robert Drinan. Father Drinan, as a U.S. congressman from Massachusetts (in office 1971-1981), supported a legal right to abortion. He received the degree anyway.

The national March for Life events held from 1975-77 — the timeframe for when then-Robert Prevost would have participated — had a freewheeling and somewhat raucous character. They usually began with a rally on the West Terrace of the Capitol and then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Ellipse, near the White House, for a second rally.

The 1977 march was more boisterous than usual thanks to, not in spite of, temperatures hovering around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. It was held on a Saturday, which undoubtedly improved attendance, but since congressional offices were closed, the lobbying effort was useless.

At the Capitol rally, estimated by U..S. Capitol Police to have 35,000 attendees, all battered by the chill, participants demanded that the speeches by politicians be cut short and began to chant, “March! March! March!” Then at Lafayette Park, some marchers made their way to the fence of the White House (then occupied by President Jimmy Carter) and chanted, “Come out, Carter!”

In any event, Villanovans for Life has a founding member now with a global platform to speak on the dignity of all human life. Pope Leo’s first comments on abortion since his May 8 election to the papacy were made in May 16 remarks to the Vatican diplomatic corps.

He said, “It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies. This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman.”

The pope added, “In addition, no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.”

He said the church “can never be exempted from speaking the truth about humanity and the world, resorting whenever necessary to blunt language that may initially create misunderstanding. Yet truth can never be separated from charity, which always has at its root a concern for the life and well-being of every man and woman.”