Category: Diocese of Scranton News

(OSV News) – President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 5 barring biological males from competing in women’s sports.

“Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls,” the president said at the signing ceremony, surrounded by female athletes. “From now on, women’s sports will be only for women.”

The order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” stated that allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”

Under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the order says, educational institutions that receive federal funding “cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports” adding that, as some courts have said, “ignoring fundamental biological truths between the two sexes deprives women and girls of meaningful access to educational facilities.”

The administration will “prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions” that “deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”

Additionally, the order called for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to use “appropriate measures” to see that “the International Olympic Committee amends the standards governing Olympic sporting events” so that “eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Trump “does expect the Olympic Committee and the NCAA to no longer allow men to compete in women’s sports,” saying, “the President with the signing of his pen starts a very public pressure campaign on these organizations to do the right thing for women and for girls across the country.”

While the U.S. bishops have yet to comment on this latest move by the Trump administration, Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minn., the chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, recently praised President Trump’s Jan. 28 order that seeks to prohibit certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender.

“Helping young people accept their bodies and their vocation as women and men is the true path of freedom and happiness,” Bishop Barron said at the time. “As Pope Francis affirms (‘Dignitas Infinita,’ 60), we are all called to accept the gift of our bodies created in God’s image and likeness as male and female. Sexual difference is profoundly beautiful and the basis for the union of spouses whose love can bear fruit in the inestimable gift of a human life.”

In 2023, the U.S. bishops backed a bill in Congress that would require federally funded female sports programs “to be reserved for biological females.”

Then, Bishop Barron and Bishop Thomas A. Daly of Spokane, Washington, wrote that, “in education and in sports, we must seek to avoid anything that undermines human dignity, including denial of a person’s body which is genetically and biologically female or male, or unequal treatment between women and men.”

(OSV News) — When it comes to the pressures associated with being the shepherd of a diocese, it doesn’t get much easier than advocating for your community’s football team.

Such is the situation for Bishop James V. Johnston, who has spearheaded the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, since 2015. On Feb. 9, Bishop Johnston’s favorite football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, meets the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

To the dismay of every other NFL fan base, watching the Chiefs grapple for the Lombardi Trophy has almost become an annual occurrence. No team has won more games than Kansas City since two-time NFL Most Valuable Player quarterback Patrick Mahomes assumed the reins in 2018.

Sunday’s worldwide event marks Kansas City’s fifth Super Bowl appearance overall and the team’s third during Bishop Johnston’s tenure. The Chiefs have won three crowns, including the past two. If they defeat the Eagles, the Chiefs would become the first franchise to win three consecutive Super Bowls.

“While our faith is paramount as we journey through this life, sports and teams have a very important role in a community,” Bishop Johnston told OSV News. “The Chiefs’ run over these last seven years is something that I was privileged to be a part of during my years here as bishop.”

Regardless of the Super Bowl victor, Bishop Johnston said fans from all over the globe are encouraged to maintain perspective.

“A Super Bowl brings people together across so many lines and in ways no other event could,” Bishop Johnston said. “It supercharges community spirit and common identity in ways that are truly amazing. The greater Kansas City area, and indeed this multistate area of the Midwest, feels like a family when it comes to the Chiefs. It’s a source of pride and joy.”

Two years ago, Bishop Johnston and Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia found themselves in the exact same scenario. Shouldering a tradition known as the “Bishops’ Bet” — a friendly wager between the Catholic spiritual guides of the respective dioceses of the Super Bowl teams — the two leaders promised to send a $500 donation to the charity of the other’s choice. The Chiefs’ last-second win secured a generous offering to the Catholic Charities of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

Before the Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers last year, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco had promised — and reportedly ultimately delivered — a monetary donation along with a shipment of San Francisco-based food product Rice-A-Roni.

This year, in addition to a charitable donation, there has been some talk of cheesesteaks — a culinary delight that originated in Philadelphia — heading to the Midwest should the Chiefs capture an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl. An Eagles Super Bowl win — which would be the franchise’s second — could procure some Kansas City barbecue spicing the environs of the City of Brotherly Love.

“This doesn’t get old,” Bishop Johnston said. “It’s all in good fun. We try to use it to emphasize the positives that sports offer, but also the friendship between the bishops and our dioceses.”

Despite the Chiefs’ sustained success, Bishop Johnston recognizes that sports often result in bitter disappointment.

A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, and a graduate of the University of Tennessee, Bishop Johnston vividly recalls Super Bowl XXXIV on Jan. 30, 2000, a contest that defined the ubiquitous thrill of victory and agony of defeat.

Trailing the St. Louis Rams, 23-16, in the waning seconds, the Tennessee Titans fell one yard shy of a touchdown as the clock posted all zeroes. The scene of grown men — not to mention stunned Titans fans scattered throughout the Georgia Dome in Atlanta — visibly crying tears of disbelief remains a legendary talking point a quarter of a century later.

“I’m first a Tennessee Volunteer fan, still cheering for the Big Orange,” Bishop Johnston said. “The Titans moved to Tennessee from Houston, and so my emotional ties to them are not as strong. But I did pull for the Titans and vividly remember the ending to that Super Bowl, where they were so close. I pull for the Titans — unless they’re up against the Chiefs.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Christians are called to follow Mary’s example by responding to God’s love with action, reaching out to others instead of withdrawing from the world, Pope Francis said.

Reflecting on Mary’s visit to her pregnant cousin Elizabeth after learning that she will bring the Messiah into the world, he said that “this young daughter of Israel does not choose to protect herself from the world, does not fear the dangers and judgments of others, but goes out to meet others.”

The pope began his general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall Feb. 5 by apologizing for being unable to read his catechesis due to a lingering cold, and explained that an aide, Msgr. Pierluigi Giroli, would read his prepared text.

“It is difficult for me to speak,” Pope Francis said before ceding to the floor to his aide. However, he did read the summary of his catechesis in Spanish and spoke without clear signs of difficulty.’

In his prepared text, the pope said that moved by love, Mary goes out to meet Elizabeth, who is “an elderly woman who welcomes, after a long wait, an unexpected pregnancy, tiring to confront at her age.”

“But the Virgin also goes to Elizabeth to share faith in the God of the impossible and hope in the fulfillment of his promises,” he said.

Even after Elizabeth recognizes the significance of Mary’s pregnancy, saying, “Most blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” Mary responds by speaking “not of herself but of God and raises a praise full of faith, hope and joy,” Pope Francis said.

Mary’s response to Elizabeth, recited today as the Magnificat prayer, “resounds daily in the church during the prayer of vespers,” the pope noted.

The Magnificat, filled with references from the Old Testament and recalling Israel’s liberation from Egypt, is “imbued with a memory of love that ignites the present with faith and illuminates the future with hope,” he said.

“Mary sings the grace of the past but is the woman of the present who carries the future,” Pope Francis wrote in his message.

Christians, he said, should “ask the Lord for the grace to know how to wait for the fulfillment of all his promises; and to help us welcome Mary’s presence in our lives.”

At the end of the audience, the pope took the microphone to ask that people remember the many countries suffering from the effects of war: “martyred Ukraine, Israel, Jordan — so many countries that are suffering there — let us remember the displaced people of Palestine, and let us pray for them.”

A transcript of the pope’s remarks published by the Vatican listed Palestine in the place of Jordan among the countries he referenced.

Pope Francis met Feb. 3 with Jordan’s Queen Rania as part of a Vatican summit on the rights of children.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – “Blessed are those who have not lost hope” is the theme for the fifth World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly which will be observed in the Catholic Church July 27.

The theme, announced by the Vatican Feb. 4, is taken from the Book of Sirach as part of its moral instruction to the Jewish faithful.

The theme expresses “the blessedness of the elderly and points to the hope placed in the Lord as the way to a Christian and reconciled old age,” the Vatican said in its announcement.

Particularly during the Holy Year 2025, the world day “seeks to be an opportunity to reflect on how the presence of grandparents and elderly people can become a sign of hope in every family and ecclesial community,” it continued.

The motto for the current Jubilee, selected by Pope Francis, is “Pilgrims of Hope.”

The Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, which organizes the world day, invited every diocese to organize local celebrations for World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly July 27, “promoting visits and occasions for encounter between generations.”

Pope Francis instituted the world day to be celebrated in the church on the fourth Sunday of July, near the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anna — Jesus’ grandparents.

Last year, the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican court charged with granting indulgences, announced that grandparents, the elderly and all the faithful who attend Mass or other prayer services as part of the day’s celebration could receive a plenary indulgence.

Additionally, the indulgence could apply to those who “devote adequate time to actually or virtually visiting their elderly brothers and sisters in need or in difficulty,” such as those who are sick, lonely or disabled, the Vatican said.

(OSV News) – A sea of heart-shaped cards, candy and decor reminds couples that Valentine’s Day is around the corner. But at the same time, many Catholic parishes are preparing to celebrate a related but different memorial to love — World Marriage Day.

The holiday began in Baton Rouge in 1981 when marriage enthusiasts declared Feb. 14 “We Believe in Marriage Day.” The Catholic organization Worldwide Marriage Encounter adopted and spread the celebration, now held on the second Sunday of February. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops picked “Marriage: Source of Hope, Spring of Renewal. Pursue a Lasting Love!” as the theme for this year’s World Marriage Day, Feb. 9 and National Marriage Week, Feb. 7-14.

In College Station, Texas, St. Thomas Aquinas Parish is celebrating World Marriage Day with a blessing over all the married couples at the Feb. 8 vigil Mass followed by a parish dinner dance. This year’s dance has a Polish wedding theme, complete with kielbasa, sauerkraut, a traditional cookie table and polka dancing. Each table will have bread and salt, a Polish wedding custom symbolizing the saltiness of life and a prayer for continued sustenance.

The whole parish pitches in to make the event a success, said St. Thomas Aquinas’ pastor, Father Albert Laforet Jr.

“We try to make it very family friendly and inexpensive so our young families can participate,” he told OSV News.

“We have a group of parishioners called the St. Lawrence Grill team to prepare the food — smoking meat is a great Texas tradition. Another group of parishioners formed a band for the dancing. The American Heritage Girls do the decorations,” he said.

A strong marriage and family culture in the church fosters vocations, said Father Laforet. He shared that St. Thomas Aquinas has several parishioners in formation, including four seminarians and one woman discerning religious life.

“We encourage our families to promote all the vocations in their family life,” he said.

As World Marriage Day coordinators for Worldwide Marriage Encounter, Tom and Julie Gennaro are promoting the holiday by sharing ways parishes can mark the occasion.

“It can be as simple as asking your priest to pray over married couples to handing out Hershey’s Kisses as people leave the parish,” said Julie Gennaro.

Other ideas include running a bulletin announcement celebrating marriage, posting a video message with testimonies from married couples, celebrating a liturgy honoring marriage or hosting a marriage enrichment event.

“Our marriages are an outward sign of God’s grace to us and it’s incumbent on us to celebrate our marriage and celebrate the sacrament of marriage,” said Tom Gennaro.

Worldwide Marriage Encounter also promotes marriage throughout the year with its annual Longest Married Couple Project, an initiative to find and honor longtime married couples across the country. Recent winners include Charles and Goldia Sasse from Fairbury, Illinois, who had been married 79 years.

“We personally love recognizing couples that inspire us in our community … and letting them know we think their longevity has been an inspiration to us as a married couple,” said Julie Gennaro.

Thirteen years ago, Louisiana Catholic couple Ryan and Mary-Rose Verret, co-authors of “The Road to Family Missionary Discipleship: Forming Marriages and Families to Share the Joy of the Gospel,” wanted to help marriages by connecting couples more meaningfully to their church community. So they founded the Witness to Love marriage ministry.

Their marriage formation program is modeled on the catechumenate and has engaged couples also pick their mentor couple (using specific criteria) that they know and respect. The mentor couple commits to walk alongside the engaged couple throughout their entire marriage.

“We were trying to do a two-for-one evangelization effort, and by allowing the church community to get involved in marriage preparation, it just changed the whole parish,” Mary-Rose Verret told OSV News.

The Witness to Love program is now in 85 dioceses and has been used by thousands of couples and their mentors.

Much like when seminarians give their testimony at the end of Mass, Ryan and Mary-Rose Verret hope married couples can take to the pulpit to share their story on World Marriage Day.

During this Jubilee Year, which Pope Franics has given the theme “Pilgrims of Hope,” the Verrets are also encouraging parishes to reach out to civilly married couples.

One small parish in a remote part of Texas launched Witness to Love’s Civil Marriage Initiative and had 20 couples and their mentors have their marriages convalidated on the same day, said Mary-Rose Verret.

“Exactly a year later they had another 20 couples,” she said. “They just decided they were going to make this a priority — they’re being evangelical, they’re being missionaries. It’s really beautiful.”

On their social media, Witness to Love will be sharing a novena for the sacrament of matrimony. Each day of the nine-day prayer will have a patron saint couple and special intentions including for widows and widowers, couples experiencing infertility and couples in challenging marriages.

“Married life can be difficult, especially in today’s culture (so) we’re just trying to wrap every married couple in a prayerful hug with this novena,” said Mary-Rose. “You can never pray enough for marriage.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Wrapping up a Vatican summit on the rights of children, Pope Francis announced he was going to publish a papal document dedicated to children.

He called the Feb. 3 summit venue in the frescoed halls of the Apostolic Palace, a kind of “open observatory” in which speakers explored “the reality of childhood throughout the world, a childhood that is unfortunately often hurt, exploited, denied.”

Some 50 experts and leaders from around the world, who shared their experience and compassion, he said, also “elaborated proposals for the protection of children’s rights, considering them not as numbers, but as faces.”

“Children are watching us,” he said, “to see how we are going about living” in this world.

The pope said he planned to prepare a papal document “to give continuity to this commitment and promote it throughout the church.” Those in attendance applauded the pope and his brief closing remarks and gave him a standing ovation.

The one-day world leaders’ summit titled, “Love them and protect them,” discussed several topics of concern including a child’s right to food, health care, education, a family, free time and the right to live free from violence and exploitation. It was organized by the recently created Pontifical Committee for the World Day of Children, headed by Franciscan Father Enzo Fortunato.

The invitees included Nobel Prize winners, government ministers and heads of state, leaders of international and nonprofit organizations, top Vatican officials and other experts.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in his talk, “The threat of ecological devastation — which encompasses the climate crisis and also the biodiversity crisis — is a terrible burden that we are placing on our children.”

He praised the pope for highlighting “the spiritual crisis we face as stemming in part from the willful blindness that prevents so many from seeing the way in which our economic system is driving us toward the exploitation of both people and the planet at the expense of our moral values and the future of children.”

“Those that hold power today must alter our ways of thinking; and our new thinking must result in deep changes that transform our current systems of economics and politics, giving way toward a more just and ecologically-minded system that puts environmental and social justice at the center of our plans and efforts,” Gore said. “We have all the solutions we need.”

Kailash Satyarthi of India, co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize and activist campaigning against child labor in India and advocating for the universal right to education, said in his talk that while he trusts everyone’s concern for children, he also feels ashamed.

“I am ashamed because we are failing our children every day. I am ashamed to listen to all these data and statistics that I have been listening” to and talking about for the past 45 years, he said.

“We know the problems, we know the solutions,” he said, but so far, everything has just been rhetoric and words.

The problem-solvers of the world “are not really honest (with) the problem-sufferers,” he said, when they lack any sense of “moral accountability and moral responsibility.”

“The solution lies in the genuine feeling and connection” to every child as if he or she were one’s own, he said. It is only when people feel genuine compassion will they feel “an honest urge to take urgent action.”

“We have to fight this menace (of child labor and poverty) and all other crises through compassion in action. We have to create a culture of problem-solving. Let us globalize compassion because they are all our children,” Satyarthi said.

(OSV News) – The long-awaited and elusive ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has silenced bombs and halted air raids on the Gaza Strip, for the time being, but the humanitarian situation there is dire, the regional director of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association reported.

CNEWA, established in 1926 by Pope Pius XI to support the Eastern churches, administers the Pontifical Mission, which was founded as the Pontifical Mission for Palestine by Pope Pius XII in 1949 to care for Palestinian refugees. The mandate of the mission, which was subsequently placed under CNEWA’s direction, has been extended by several pontiffs to care for all those affected by war and poverty in the Middle East.

CNEWA is tending to the needs of thousands of people including children left without families, pregnant women, new mothers and the chronically ill in desperate need of health care.

“Gaza’s humanitarian situation is bleak,” Joseph Hazboun told The Catholic Register, Canada’s national Catholic newspaper based in Toronto, from his office in Jerusalem. “Over 17,000 Gaza children are without their families, many of them orphaned. An estimated 150,000 pregnant women are in desperate need of vital health services. Those with chronic illnesses have no medicine or access to medical treatment. Women and girls face sexual violence.”

The war has also taken a heavy toll on the mental health of children and adults who’ve had to endure the ordeal of a war launched by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which persisted until ceasefire took effect Jan. 19 while the parties involved resisted proposals for a peaceful settlement along the way, he said.

“One million children need mental health and psychosocial support for severe depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts,” he said, quoting numbers provided by UNICEF.

Hazboun is also deeply concerned about the dwindling numbers of Christians left in the Holy Land. One of his own staff, Sami Tarazi, lost both his parents while they were sheltering in the Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrios when it was struck by a missile, while Tarazi himself was out in the field carrying food and water to people of all faith groups.

“There are only 600 (Christians) left now,” Hazboun said.

He estimated that as the Rafah crossing fully reopens, there will be only 300 left.

On Feb. 1, the Rafah border crossing was opened for the first time so that sick and wounded Palestinian patients from Gaza could travel to Egypt for medical treatment abroad. The crossing was shut down for the last nine months.

But undaunted by the enormous challenges to addressing the human cost of war, CNEWA’s Pontifical Mission for Palestine, or PMP, is moving forward with relief programs, Hazboun continued.

Currently, PMP-Jerusalem is delivering psychosocial programs in various areas of the Gaza Strip, providing food packages as well as funding a medical care program serving thousands of children, youth and women.

“Nutrition programs for mothers and children are a priority as chronic diseases continue to spread,” he said. “Medical care is urgently needed as patients have not seen a specialist in 15 months. Schools need to be opened and functional again to allow children to resume their education.

“We provide support to all of Gaza’s communities as well as the Christian community that will continue to call Gaza home,” he emphasized, adding that the aid programs are conducted in cooperation with partners and are dependent on funding by donors around the world.

Aid to the Church in Need, or ACN, another pontifical charity that works in collaboration with the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, is also actively working to deliver critical humanitarian aid to the Christian community (and others) in Gaza, focusing on medical supplies, food and shelter assistance, since the Christian population there has been significantly impacted by the conflict and urgently needs support to rebuild their lives.

“The ceasefire agreement has been reached between Hamas and Israel … allowing the inhabitants of the Holy Land, affected by the war that broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, to breathe a sigh of relief and, above all, to finally hope for a lasting peace,” said Mario Bard, the Montreal-based head of information of ACN.

Hazboun cautioned however, that there are obstacles to both a lasting peace and challenges to the delivery of aid.

“The biggest challenge moving forward is the free movement of people and the reconstruction of Gaza, which will cost billions of dollars,” he said. “The checkpoints and road closures are worse after the ceasefire. All the side roads are blocked and we have to take a long route to get to Ramallah to avoid long hours of waiting at a busy checkpoint.”

Church leaders in the Holy Land issued a joint statement Jan. 16 saying: “The end of the war does not mean the end of the conflict. It is therefore necessary to seriously and credibly address the deep-rooted issues that have been at the root of this conflict for far too long.”

The prospects of an enduring peace look dim at this point, according to Hazboun and other observers, given the history of the ceasefire deal that has finally been brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt. An earlier ceasefire was only temporary and saw fewer than half of the Israeli hostages returned in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners before fighting broke out again.

“Only peace and freedom and a life with dignity for both Israelis and Palestinians can bring peace and security,” Hazboun said.

On Feb. 1, 183 Palestinian prisoners were freed from Israeli jail after Hamas released three Israeli hostages: Ofer Kalderon, 53, and Yarden Bibas, 34, handed to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, and dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Keith Siegel, 65, who was released in Gaza City.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – It is unacceptable that a child’s right to life and a dignified childhood should be sacrificed to “the idols” of power, profit, ideology and nationalistic self-interest, Pope Francis told a group of world experts and leaders.

“A childhood denied is a silent scream condemning the wrongness of the economic system, the criminal nature of wars, the lack of adequate medical care and schooling,” he said in his address opening a Feb. 3 summit at the Vatican on children’s rights.

“We are here today to say that we do not want this to become the new normal,” he said, and “we are all here together, to put children, their rights, their dreams and their demand for a future at the center of our concern.”

About 50 guests from all over the world, including former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, attended the one-day world leaders’ summit titled, “Love them and protect them.” The invitees included Nobel Prize winners, government ministers and heads of state, leaders of international and nonprofit organizations, top Vatican officials and other experts.

Talks were divided into topics of concern including a child’s right to food, health care, education, a family, free time, and the right to live free from violence and exploitation.

The pope opened the summit by urging everyone to listen to children – their hopes, dreams and fears – and “to build a better world for children, and consequently for everyone!”

“I am confident that, by pooling your experience and expertise, you can open new avenues to assist and protect the children whose rights are daily trampled upon and ignored,” he said.

“Listening to those children who today live in violence, exploitation or injustice serves to strengthen our ‘no’ to war, to the throwaway culture of waste and profit, in which everything is bought and sold without respect or care for life, especially when that life is small and defenseless,” the pope said.

“In the name of this throwaway mentality, in which the human being becomes all-powerful, unborn life is sacrificed through the murderous practice of abortion,” he said. “Abortion suppresses the life of children and cuts off the source of hope for the whole of society.”

The pope highlighted the plight of children living in “limbo” because they were not registered at birth and of “undocumented” children at the border of the United States, “those first victims of that exodus of despair and hope made by the thousands of people coming from the south toward the United States of America.”

“What we have tragically seen almost every day in recent times, namely children dying beneath bombs, sacrificed to the idols of power, ideology and nationalistic interests, is unacceptable,” he said. “In truth, nothing is worth the life of a child. To kill children is to deny the future.”

Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Vatican foreign minister, followed up on the pope’s condemnation of abortion in his talk.

“All children, even before birth, have the right to life and should be protected from discrimination on the grounds of sex or health,” he said. “The choices that societies make regarding the protection of the child in its mother’s womb have an impact on the way we see children, indicating the space and importance we are prepared to give them.”

He also said, “Every child should have the right to a family, the right to be raised by a father and a mother,” as “it is within the family that the rights and the well-being of children are best protected and promoted.”

Parents also have the right to “educate their offspring according to their own religious beliefs,” the archbishop added.

Pope Francis attended the early morning panels and was scheduled to return for the closing session. He was present for the speech of Jordan’s Queen Rania, who told the gathering that “the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history.”

“In theory, the consensus is clear: Every right for every child. Yet so many children around the world are excluded from this promise, particularly in war zones,” she said. “Worse yet, people have grown desensitized to their pain.”

The media blur horrific scenes of war “for our protection,” she said, adding that it is absurd that a child’s “lived reality is deemed too graphic for even adults to watch.”

Some children are even denied the promise and protections of childhood, she said, when “they are demonized, aged up, portrayed as threats or simply dismissed as human shields.”

“From Palestine to Sudan, Yemen to Myanmar and beyond, this un-childing creates chasms in our compassion. It stifles urgency in favor of complacency. It allows politicians to sidestep blame,” she said.

Today, Queen Rania said, there is “a status quo that deems some children’s suffering acceptable based on their name, faith or the land of their birth, where every child’s fate depends on where they fall on some artificial line between ‘our’ children and ‘theirs.'”

“Without equal application, global commitments ring hollow. Because if a right can be willfully denied, then it is not a right at all. It is a privilege for the lucky few,” she said. “Every child has an equal claim to our protection and care. No exceptions, no exclusions, no preconditions.”