Category: Diocese of Scranton News

ROME (OSV News) – Pope Leo XIV has pointed to Our Lady of Guadalupe as the model of “perfect inculturation” as Mexico prepares to mark the 500th anniversary of the apparition in 2031 with a jubilee year.

In a Feb. 24 message to the Theological-Pastoral Congress being held in Mexico City, the pope said Our Lady of Guadalupe “manifests God’s way of approaching his people.”

The congress, running Feb. 24-26, was organized to prepare for the 500th anniversary of the Marian apparitions to St. Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City. It is promoted by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the Mexican Episcopal Conference, the Knights of Columbus and the Pontifical International Marian Academy.

“Our Lady of Guadalupe is a lesson in divine pedagogy on the inculturation of salvific truth,” Pope Leo said. “She does not canonize a culture or absolutize its categories, but neither does she ignore or despise them: they are assumed, purified, and transfigured to become a place of encounter with Christ.”

In December 1531, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared four times to St. Juan Diego, an Indigenous Mexican convert to Christianity, on Tepeyac Hill. She asked that a church be built in her honor on the site and left her image miraculously imprinted on St. Juan Diego’s tilma, or cloak, which remains on display today at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Scholars and theologians have long noted how the image on the tilma is rich with symbolism that was intelligible to the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central Mexico from her turquoise mantle, associated with a queenly status in Aztec culture, to the black band around her waist, which was a sign of pregnancy in Indigenous tradition. The four-petaled flower, located on her garment over Our Lady’s womb, was an Aztec symbol for the center of the universe and the fullness of the divine.

The pope said the apparitions on Tepeyac Hill can be seen as “a permanent criterion for discerning the evangelizing mission of the Church, called to proclaim the True God for whom we live, without imposing him, but also without diluting the radical newness of his saving presence.”

Inculturation refers to the concept of making the Gospel incarnate in different cultures. The pope clarified that “inculturation does not equate to a sacralization of cultures or their adoption as a decisive interpretive framework for the Gospel message.”

“To legitimize everything that is culturally given or to justify practices, worldviews, or structures that contradict the Gospel and the dignity of the person would be to ignore that every culture — like every human reality — must be enlightened and transformed by the grace that flows from the Paschal mystery of Christ,” Pope Leo added.

He noted that Our Lady of Guadalupe exemplifies an inculturation that is “respectful in its starting point, intelligible in its language, and firm and delicate in its guidance toward the encounter with the full Truth, with the blessed Fruit of his womb.”

“Inculturation is, rather, a demanding and purifying process, through which the Gospel, while remaining intact in its truth, recognizes, discerns, and assumes the semina Verbi present in cultures, and at the same time purifies and elevates their authentic values, freeing them from what obscures or disfigures them,” the pope said.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is venerated as the patroness of the Americas. Pope Leo noted that “today, in many regions of the American continent and the world, the transmission of faith can no longer be taken for granted, particularly in large urban centers and pluralistic societies marked by visions of man and life that tend to relegate God to the private sphere or to dispense with Him altogether.”

Pope Leo, who is on his Lenten retreat this week, signed the message on Feb. 5, the feast of St. Philip of Jesus, the first canonized saint born in Mexico.

He pointed to the example of “many holy evangelizers and pastors” who can serve as examples and intercessors for the congress’ efforts, citing St. Toribio de Mogrovejo, St. Junípero Serra, Blessed Sebastián de Aparicio, St. Mamá Antula, St. José de Anchieta, Blessed Juan de Palafox, St. Pedro de San José de Betancur, St. Roque González, St. Mariana de Jesús and St. Francisco Solano.

“And may Our Lady of Guadalupe, Star of the New Evangelization, accompany and inspire every initiative leading up to the 500th anniversary of her apparition,” Pope Leo said.

ROME (OSV News) – Pope Leo XIV will travel to six countries over the next four months, including a 10-day tour of Africa and trips to Monaco and Spain, the Vatican announced Feb. 25.

The pope’s international travel plans include a day trip to the Catholic principality of Monaco on March 28, a long journey across the African continent April 13 to 23, and a weeklong visit to Spain June 6 to 12 with expected stops in Madrid, the Canary Islands and in Barcelona to inaugurate the tallest tower in the Sagrada Familia.

In the first visit to the African continent since the start of his pontificate, Pope Leo will travel to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea. The Vatican has highlighted that peace and care for the poor will be central themes of the African journey, which will also bring him in the footsteps of St. Augustine.

Algeria: St. Augustine and Interfaith Dialogue

The pope’s apostolic journey to Africa will begin in Algeria, with stops in the capital Algiers and the northeastern city of Annaba from April 13 to 15. Pope Leo previously expressed to journalists his desire to visit the country to see the places associated with St. Augustine and to “continue the conversation of dialogue, of building bridges between the Christian world and the Muslim world.”

Annaba is home to the Basilica of St. Augustine, built near the ruins of the Basilica Pacis where the theologian died in A.D. 430 as Vandals besieged the city. A statue in the basilica contains a relic of one of Augustine’s arm bones.

Algeria is 99% Sunni Muslim, and the Catholic Church counts just 8,740 members, about 0.019% of the population, out of more than 45 million people, according to the 2025 edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican’s annual yearbook.

Cameroon: A Visit to a Conflict Zone

From Algeria, the pope travels to Cameroon from April 15 to 18, visiting the capital Yaoundé, the northwestern city of Bamenda and Douala, the country’s largest city and economic hub. The Bamenda stop brings Pope Leo directly into Cameroon’s Anglophone northwest, where a separatist conflict has been ongoing for nearly a decade.

The crisis began in 2017 when the government cracked down on strikes by English-speaking teachers and lawyers, triggering an armed insurgency that has since claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Security concerns had cast doubt on whether the papal visit would be feasible.

Christianity is the predominant faith in Cameroon, practiced by more than 60% of the population, with more than 7.9 million Catholics in the country, making up 27.9% of the population, according to the Vatican’s latest statistics. Muslims account for approximately 30% of the population.

Angola: More than 17.9 million Catholics
The pope will then travel to Angola from April 18 to 21, visiting Luanda, Muxima and Saurimo. Catholicism is the largest religious group in the country, which is home to more than 17.9 million Catholics, according to Vatican statistics, about 49% of the population.

Angola, despite its considerable oil wealth, continues to struggle with high poverty rates and deep economic inequality. Pope Benedict XVI was the last pope to visit Angola in 2009 following St. John Paul II’s 1992 trip to mark the 500th anniversary of its evangelization.

Equatorial Guinea: A Spanish-speaking African country

The final leg of the African journey brings Pope Leo to Equatorial Guinea from April 21 to 23, with stops in Malabo, Mongomo and Bata. About 81.58% of the country’s 1.37 million population is Catholic, according to the Vatican, making it one of the most Catholic nations in sub-Saharan Africa by percentage and the only Spanish-speaking country on the continent. It will be only the second papal visit in Equatorial Guinea’s history; the first was St. John Paul’s trip on Feb. 18, 1982.

In total, the apostolic journey to Africa will span 10 days, nearly as long as St. John Paul’s 11-day, seven country African trip in 1985.

Monaco: A Brief but Historic Visit

Before his African journey, Pope Leo will make a day trip to Monaco, the city-state nestled along the French Riviera, on March 28. His visit to Monaco, the second-smallest country in the world after Vatican City, will be his first international trip of 2026 and only the second of his pontificate. It will be the first papal visit to Monaco in the modern era.

The trip follows an invitation from Prince Albert II, who met with the pope at the Vatican in January and had previously invited Pope Francis. Roman Catholicism is the official state religion of Monaco, where roughly 82% of the population is Catholic, according to the Vatican.

Spain: Sagrada Família and the Canary Islands

Pope Leo’s international travel plans also include a weeklong visit to Spain from June 6 to 12 with expected stops in Madrid, Barcelona and the Canary Islands.

A highlight of the Barcelona visit will be the inauguration of the newest and tallest tower of the Sagrada Família.The visit falls during the centenary of Venerable Antoni Gaudí’s death; the architect was declared venerable last year, one step away from his possible beatification.

The Canary Islands, with expected stops in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, will likely draw attention to the issue of migration. The Atlantic archipelago, situated off the northwest coast of Africa, is one of Europe’s main entry points for migrants crossing from Africa, with tens of thousands of arrivals each year. The late Pope Francis had long hoped to visit the islands himself.

In addition to his international travel, the Vatican has previously announced that Pope Leo will make six trips within Italy this year, including visits to the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii, the tomb of St. Augustine in northern Italy and the island of Lampedusa on July 4.

PHILADELPHIA (OSV News) – On the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Catholic bishops of the U.S. said “the people of God resist, trust, and pray” despite the “countless deaths and millions of casualties” the brutal conflict has claimed in 12 years of warfare.

The bishops, led by Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia, issued a statement a day prior to the anniversary of Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion, while observing the war began with Russian-backed attacks on the country in 2014.

In their statement, the bishops said “the genocidal intent is manifest” as Russia has regularly pummeled Ukraine’s energy grid, leaving millions without heat or electricity for days at a time, amid a winter that has been “the harshest in years.”

The bitter cold, with temperatures dropping well below freezing on a sustained basis, “has been deliberately exploited to break the spirit of a nation … standing for freedom, justice, democracy, and God-given human dignity.”

“It is a war against the people,” said the bishops.

They stressed that “Russia has systematically targeted Ukraine’s social and spiritual infrastructure,” pointing to “at least 2,881 attacks” on health care sites and personnel across the country.

Well over 4,000 educational institutions have been damaged, with 408 destroyed, said the bishops, noting Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian schools — which have seen children move to underground classrooms, or forego education altogether — affects “millions of children,” a number the United Nations recently put at about 4.6 million.

Russia has also taken aim at Ukraine’s religious communities, the bishops said, explaining that the Catholic Church and other Christians not affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church have been systematically persecuted under Russian occupation.

“More than 600 churches and places of worship, representing various denominations, have been damaged or leveled,” they said, noting that “civilian prisoners, including clergy, are mercilessly tortured.”

In March 2024, the Russian Orthodox Church declared Russia’s war on Ukraine a “holy war.” Patriarch Kirill, the church’s head, told believers in a September 2022 sermon that Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine will have “all sins” washed away by their deaths.

Russian officials in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region formally “banned” the UGCC, the Knights of Columbus and Caritas.

Two UGCC Redemptorist priests, Father Ivan Levitsky and Father Bohdan Geleta, were abducted in late 2022 and subjected to torture while held in Russian custody for some 18 months prior to their Vatican-brokered release.

Multiple human rights reports have documented that torture — including beatings, mutilation and burning — and execution are commonplace and systematic in Russian captivity.

The bishops underscored these events to highlight how Ukrainians “stand and fight evil and tyranny to live and witness to the truth” at tremendous cost.

“Despite it all,” said the bishops, Ukrainians “live with gratitude. First, to God. And to all people who help.”

“They thank Americans and all people of goodwill throughout the world for their prayers,” the bishops said. “Prayers move mountains.”

In addition, Ukrainians “are grateful to all who stay informed, who counter disinformation, and who advocate for justice, a truly just peace,” said the bishops.

They concluded, “In their name, we ask that you continue until God’s truth prevails. It will. Our faith and our hope are in the Lord.”

ASSISI, Italy (OSV News) – For the first time in eight centuries, the mortal remains of St. Francis of Assisi are being exposed for an extended period of public veneration, drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world to pray before “the Little Poor Man of Assisi.”

The bones of the beloved saint were unveiled for public display Feb. 22 in the Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Pilgrims waited in line outside of the Assisi basilica, taking in the panoramic views of the Umbrian countryside from the medieval hilltop town, for their chance to pray before the relics.

The veneration runs through March 22 as part of the Catholic Church’s yearlong celebration of the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ death in 1226.

Heather Martin, an American mother who has lived in Assisi for five years with her family, was among the first pilgrims to venerate the relics.

“St. Francis is by far the most important saint in my life. He’s shown up for me in so many ways and so many dark moments,” she told OSV News.

“This experience to be able to go and physically see his physical form has been utterly life-changing.”

Martin recalled a conversation she had with one of the Franciscan friars about the experience. “He felt like he was finally meeting a long-lost relative for the first time,” she said. “And I can’t agree with that more.”

Fabrizio Ballanti traveled from Ancona, Italy, as part of a care home run by the Focolare movement.

“We are a community for people with HIV and AIDS, and we all came together to live this experience,” Ballanti said.

Standing before the relics of St. Francis, he said, “I felt the presence of the Lord very strongly,” calling it “a truly powerful experience.”

For 21-year-old seminarian Gregory Maloney from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the moment was an opportunity to ask St. Francis for the gift of a deeper conversion “to grow in the virtue of poverty.”

He said that the long wait in line to view the relics gave him an opportunity to reflect on the life of St. Francis in prayer. “Here is the man who wanted to live poverty as Christ really said it in the Gospel,” Maloney said. “He wanted to give up his whole life, to give up all the things of the world to focus on the pearl of great price … the treasure of heaven.”

“And so that was a great encouragement for me then to say, ‘OK, what are the areas in my life I need to give to the Lord? I need to focus more on the things of heaven,” the seminarian added.

Franciscan friars opened the sarcophagus to exhume St. Francis’ remains Feb. 21, placing his bones on a specially prepared table in the crypt before carrying them in procession through the Lower Church while praying the Litany of the Saints.

Franciscans from across the world participated in a solemn vespers with the exposed relics beneath the basilica’s frescoed ceiling on the evening before the relics opened to the public.

Friar Ignacio Ceja Jimenez, a Franciscan friar from Mexico, called it a historic moment of fraternity for all branches of the Franciscan family “because we all recognize ourselves as children of St. Francis, heirs to his charism.”

“Seeing and praying before the body of St. Francis also means that we must commit ourselves to living what he lived,” he said.

“St. Francis reminds us that the Gospel can not only transform human beings, hearts, but that the Gospel can also transform the structures of our world and help us build a fraternal, peaceful world.”

Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, the pontifical delegate for the Papal Basilicas of Assisi, presided over both the vespers and the inaugural Mass Feb. 22.

The cardinal recalled St. Francis’ final hours on Oct. 3, 1226, in his homily for the Feb. 21 vespers.

“When St. Francis felt his death approaching, he asked a friar to read the Gospel to him. Not just any passage, but chapter 13 of John: ‘Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come … having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end,'” Cardinal Artime said.

“His life had been this: a constant listening to the Word, a burning desire to conform himself to the poor and crucified Christ. Service and self-sacrificing love are the heart of Francis’s spirituality.”

Brother Jimmy Zammit of Toronto, now based in Rome as general definitor for the Franciscan order, shared his advice for Catholics unable to make the trip to Assisi who want to live out the special Jubilee Year of St. Francis in a particular way.

“If our heart becomes more Franciscan, we become makers of peace,” Brother Zammit said. “We seek out to help those who are less fortunate than we are to help the poor, but also to help those who are suffering because they’re feeling isolated and maybe even shunned in some way.”

Approximately 370,000 people from five continents have registered to venerate the relics, with Italians making up 80% of registrants. International registrations include 5,000 from the United States, 3,100 from Croatia, 2,000 from Slovakia and 1,500 each from Brazil and France. Some 400 volunteers from dozens of countries are giving of their time to make the monthlong historic event possible.

Entry to view St. Francis’ relics is free, but it requires advance registration at saintfrancisliveson.org. The exposition will close with Mass on March 22 in the Upper Church, to be presided over by Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

“We are experiencing an event of extraordinary grace: For an entire month, in this holy land where St. Francis of Assisi lived and was buried, the exposition of his body is offered for the veneration of the faithful, on the eighth centenary of his death,” Cardinal Artime said.

“This body, fragile and poor, reminds us that the Gospel is also lived with the body, with real choices, with daily gestures. Francis did not love an idea of ??Christ: He loved Christ, poor and crucified, to the point of bearing his marks in his flesh.”

VATICAN CITY (OSV News) – St. Peter’s Basilica inaugurated a new Stations of the Cross Feb. 20, with paintings by a young Swiss artist who won the Vatican’s international art competition and said in an interview with OSV News that he was deeply moved by the experience of painting St. Veronica’s encounter with Christ.

The 14 stations, which were prayed in St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time on the first Friday of Lent, will be displayed temporarily until Easter as part of the many initiatives to mark the 400th anniversary of the basilica’s consecration.

Manuel Andreas Dürr, a 36-year-old artist and father of three, was chosen after a commission of art historians, liturgists and Vatican representatives unanimously selected his proposal from among more than a thousand submissions from 80 countries in the art competition that the Vatican opened in December 2023.

“To paint Jesus is very, very difficult because he is not someone I am introducing; he is someone that billions of people already have an idea of and have a relationship with,” Dürr said ahead of the inauguration in St. Peter’s Basilica Feb. 20.

Dürr is not Catholic, but describes himself as theologically “quite close to Catholic faith.” He is a member of the Jahu community, a Christian group with roots in the Reformed Church that he said is “very ecumenical and influenced by different traditions.” He had previously painted Stations of the Cross for his local church in Switzerland in past years. Now his Via Crucis hangs in one of the world’s most visited religious sites.

The experience of visiting the Vatican, he said, was the first time he understood the universal dimension of the Catholic Church.

“One thing that came as a bit of a shock, in a sense, was when I came to Rome, I suddenly realized that really this is a global Church,” he said. “My own church at home feels very provincial when I come here and I see people from all ages, from all continents, and from all income classes, are gathering around shared expressions of faith.”

Dürr spent eight months completing the paintings after winning the contest, which carried a cash prize of 120,000 euros, or about $131,000.

He had not sought out the competition himself. “I actually wasn’t aware of the competition,” he said. “A friend of mine suggested that I partake in it. Of course, I never dreamed that it would actually happen, but somehow here we are, almost two years later. And I’m really, really humbled by having the honor to attempt such a thing.”

Among the 14 stations, Dürr said one particularly moved him. “To my surprise, maybe, a little bit, Veronica was the most special station for me,” he told OSV News.

“She holds up a cloth which then has an imprint of the image of Christ. And I found basically that’s what I’m attempting to do. I’m painting on cloth in a small way. … And for me, this kind of dignified, I think, what the painter is attempting to do which is … to provide a trace of something deeper to be experienced.”

The Crucifixion scene, he said, was both the first oil painting he began and the last he completed.

“This story has shaped Christian art and European culture … the world’s culture, like no other story has,” he said. “And how this cross, which was intended as a symbol of terror, instilling fear into the subjects of the Roman Empire, suddenly becomes something that we wear around our necks as a symbol of hope.”

Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, rector of St. Peter’s Basilica, presided over the inauguration at the Altar of the Chair in the basilica, where afterward the Way of the Cross was prayed with the new images for the first time.

Among those praying before the paintings that day was Hannah Kemper, a 27-year-old American who had no idea she was among the first to see the works on display. She had simply been visiting the basilica and felt drawn to pray the Stations of the Cross when she spotted them.

“How could you not feel close to our Lord like in this place?” she said, looking around the basilica. “My senses are so heightened to his glory and to contrast that to his suffering on the cross — it’s just so beautiful.”

(OSV News) – A Texas bishop and head of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ migration committee is sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s plans to acquire massive warehouses all over the country, each capable of interning thousands of people, in the name of its sweeping — and at times deadly — crackdown on immigration.

“The thought of holding thousands of families in massive warehouses should challenge the conscience of every American,” said Bishop Brendan J. Cahill of Victoria, Texas, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, in a Feb. 20 statement released by the USCCB. “Whatever their immigration status, these are human beings created in the image and likeness of God, and this is a moral inflection point for our country.”

The New York Times, citing internal Department of Homeland Security documents it had obtained, reported Feb. 18 that the administration is seeking to purchase some 20 warehouses for the detentions, with the goal of 92,600 total beds. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, called it a “necessary downstream requirement” for the planned tempo of its enforcement and arrest operations in 2026 after a “surge hiring effort” that added 12,000 officers.

All of the new facilities are set to open by Nov. 30, 2026, “ensuring the timely expansion of detention capacity,” ICE said.

So far, at least eight facilities — located in Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas — have already been acquired by the Trump administration.

The statement released by the USCCB drew particular attention to eight “mega centers” that would be each “capable of detaining 7,000 to 10,000 people.”

Warehouses are also being considered in Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.

A majority of the people targeted by ICE for mass detention and eventual deportation are expected to be Catholics in six out of 10 cases, according to a 2025 joint Catholic-Evangelical report published by the USCCB and World Relief. It also found Christians make up 80% of those at risk of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort. The report also found nearly one in five Catholics (18%) in the U.S. are either vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is.

In a Feb. 13 document, ICE detailed its “Detention Reengineering Initiative,” aiming to “meet the growing demand for bedspace and streamline the detention and removal process.”

Along with “eight large-scale detention centers,” the plan includes “16 processing sites” and “the acquisition of 10 existing ‘turnkey’ facilities” where ICE already operates.

The estimated cost for the ICE’s “new detention center model” will be $38.3 billion, to be funded by congressional allocations under the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

But the USCCB preface to Bishop Cahill’s statement noted, “Aside from the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in the 1940s, such facilities have no precedent in American history.”

During World War II, the federal government at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt incarcerated more than 125,000 Japanese Americans to remotely located camps throughout the nation, claiming they posed a security threat following the Empire of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Some 70,000 of those interned were U.S. citizens, with 1,600 of the people imprisoned dying during their incarceration. Interment also economically ruined families who lost property and businesses as a result.

The final camp was closed in 1946, and in 1988, a formal apology and reparations were issued under President Ronald Reagan. Only in 2022 was a full, accurate list of victim names made available thanks to the work of Duncan Williams, a scholar at the University of Southern California Dornsife.

In his statement, Bishop Cahill described the Trump administration’s ICE detention facility expansion plans as “deeply troubling.”

“The federal government does not have a positive track record when it comes to detaining large numbers of people, especially families, and the proposed scale of these facilities is difficult to comprehend,” he said.

A number of immigration advocates have deplored conditions at ICE detention centers, citing unsanitary conditions, lack of basic care, and instances of violence and death, as well as denial of pastoral visits and access to legal counsel.

Last year, 32 people died while in ICE detention — the largest number in over two decades, according to a Jan. 4 report by The Guardian. As of January, six people have died in ICE custody.

As of Feb. 7, 68,289 persons were in ICE detention, with 73.6% of detainees having no criminal conviction, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Bishop Cahill said that “the private prison industry is who stands to gain the most from this supercharging of immigration detention.”

He pointed to the USCCB’s special pastoral message on immigration, issued during the conference’s annual fall meeting in 2025.

“Last November, my brother bishops and I unequivocally opposed the indiscriminate mass deportation of people and raised concerns about existing conditions in detention centers,” he said. “We specifically highlighted a lack of access to pastoral care for detainees. On many occasions, we have also opposed the expansion of family detention, recognizing its harmful impacts on children in particular.”

Catholic social teaching on immigration 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.

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

The bishops’ condemnation of “indiscriminate mass deportation” also has a reference point in the Church’s magisterial teaching at the highest level. 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 condemns specifically “whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation” among others. It calls them “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.”

Papal teaching in “Veritatis Splendor” reinforced the Council’s moral condemnations, stating these acts are examples of “intrinsic evil” incapable of being ordered to God or the good of the human person.

Bishop Cahill implored the Trump administration and Congress “to lead with right reason, abandon this misuse of taxpayer funds, and to instead pursue a more just approach to immigration enforcement that truly respects human dignity, the sanctity of families, and religious liberty.”

ROME (OSV News) – On Ash Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV encouraged Catholics to ask the Lord for “the gift of true conversion” at the start of the 40-day penitential season of Lent.

Speaking to English-speaking pilgrims at his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square Feb. 18, the pope encouraged people to approach Lent as a time of “conversion of heart” so that “we may better respond to his love for us and share that love with those around us.”

“At the beginning of Lent, I urge you to live this liturgical season with an intense spirit of prayer so that you may arrive, inwardly renewed, at the celebration of the great mystery of Christ’s Resurrection, the supreme revelation of God’s merciful love,” Pope Leo added in Italian at the close of the audience on a sunny winter day in Rome.

Before the audience, the pope greeted pilgrims from the popemobile, frequently stopping to bless babies as he made his way through the square.

Continuing his weekly catechesis on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Leo offered a reflection on “Lumen Gentium,” the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which he explained “presents the Church as both a sign and an instrument of this plan of salvation.”

He said the Church is a sign “because the Church community makes the unity established by Christ through his Cross and Resurrection visible to the world today” and an instrument as
“It is through the Church that God achieves the aim of bringing people to him and uniting them with one another.”

“As we journey through a world still marked by division, let us ask the Lord to continue to guide his Church in the mission of sanctification and reconciliation,” he said.

In his message for Lent this year, Pope Leo encouraged the faithful to embrace the “ancient ascetic practice” of fasting, as well as “refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor.”

Lent is a liturgical season of penance stretching from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday, during which Christians are encouraged to undertake voluntary acts of self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, along with charitable and missionary works.

On Wednesday afternoon, Pope Leo will lead a solemn procession on Rome’s Aventine Hill from the Benedictine Basilica of Sant’Anselmo to the Dominican Basilica of Santa Sabina, retracing a papal procession route that dates back centuries.

The procession will culminate with the pope offering Ash Wednesday Mass at Santa Sabina, one of the oldest surviving Christian basilicas in Rome. Built in 422 A.D., the ancient church is the first stop in the Lenten Station Church pilgrimage, a tradition rooted in the early practice of the Bishop of Rome celebrating the liturgies of the church year at various churches throughout the city. By the latter half of the fifth century, a fairly fixed calendar had developed, with Mass held at different churches throughout Rome each day of the Lenten season.

The station church tradition has experienced something of an Anglophonic revival in recent decades, spearheaded by the Pontifical North American College, which has offered a 7 a.m. English-language Mass at the station churches each day of Lent in recent years.

On Feb. 18, hundreds of people, including many American college students and seminarians, attended an English-language Ash Wednesday Mass at Santa Sabina organized by the seminary.