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‘It will be breathtaking,’ Notre Dame’s chief architect says; iconic cathedral reopens Dec. 8

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By Caroline de Sury

PARIS (OSV News) – Philippe Villeneuve, Notre Dame Cathedral’s chief architect, learned about the 2019 fire 300 miles from Paris and rushed to the capital to help firefighters save the iconic monument.

For France’s top architect of historical sites, the evening of April 15, 2019, was especially dark as Notre Dame Cathedral was already his passion when he was a little boy. Since the inferno, he has worked tirelessly to finalize major parts of renovations by Dec. 8 when the cathedral is reopened.

In fact, it was a fascination with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the French architect who restored the cathedral in the 19th century, that inspired Villeneuve to become an architect of historic monuments. A graduate of École Nationale Supérieure D’architecture de Paris Val-de-Seine, Paris’ architecture university, he has been entrusted with the renovation of many iconic monuments, including one of the most well-known castles in the Loire Valley – Chambord.

In 2013, he was asked to renovate part of Notre Dame in Paris – including repairing the stonework of the flying buttresses and the fissures in Viollet-le-Duc’s spire. When the fire broke out, he was working on the spire.

The fire of 2019, the cause of which remains unknown, struck Villeneuve as a personal tragedy.

“Everyone was scared, and it went on for hours, getting worse by the hour,” he told OSV News. He was immediately asked to secure the site, and the Ministry of Culture confirmed him in his mission to repair the damaged cathedral. Since then, he has devoted all his time and passion to the challenge.

Today, the chief architect is confident of meeting the deadlines imposed on him. “Yes, the cathedral will be ready for its official reopening on December 8, 2024. The framework is finished. The roofers are still working,” he told OSV News. “There was a lot of wind at Easter, so we were a little behind schedule. But we will make it up. We have to hurry, but everything will be fine.”

The spire of Notre Dame Cathedral, pictured April 10, 2024, is now back atop the iconic structure with part of the scaffolding removed. Reconstruction work on the spire and roof of the iconic structure entered its last phase as the world prepared to observe the fifth anniversary of the April 15, 2019, blaze that caused the spire to collapse inside the cathedral. Notre Dame is scheduled to reopen Dec. 8, to be followed by six months of celebrations, Masses, pilgrimages, prayers and exhibitions. (OSV News photo/Charlene Yves)

The site of the Notre Dame reconstruction is still sealed off, with tourists patiently watching the front towers of the cathedral from the wooden steps installed in front of it. The steps are placed not far from the place where Villeneuve found the copper rooster perched at the spire’s top that was feared lost on April 15. However, on April 16 at dawn, Villeneuve found the battered rooster lying in the gutter of Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame, a street right next to the cathedral square. The relics of Paris’ patron, St. Genevieve, were found intact inside.

After five years of intense work and installation of a new rooster – one he designed himself – on top of the new spire, Villeneuve told OSV News they are now “preparing the most decisive phase of the project.”

“This involves dismantling the large scaffolding at the transept crossing. Removing it will enable us to rebuild the cross vault, replace the paving and install the altar. We are going to erect a new scaffolding, but this time detached from what is below, to put the finishing touches to the work on the spire’s roof at this point,” he explained.

“This work, above the transept crossing vault,” he said, “is the most delicate part of the project. But everything is going well.”

Villeneuve emphasized that this magnificent project was made possible by the international outpouring of generosity and donations that followed the fire. “I would never have imagined that Notre Dame could have aroused such emotion throughout the world, during and after the fire,” he told OSV News. “It was astonishing.” Those involved in the reconstruction emphasize that many American donors generously supported rebuilding of the icon of Paris and icon of the Catholic Church.

“Notre Dame shows France’s influence in the world, and its extraordinary heritage. But the fire was not just a national issue. Notre Dame is also a (UNESCO) World Heritage site, and during the fire, we really felt that it was humanity that was seeing its heritage disappear.”

Villeneuve added that “the flames and the fall of the spire sent shockwaves around the world” but “fortunately, the firemen did an extraordinary job, and in the end we lost a frame, a roof, a spire, a few pieces of vaulting, but no more. And thanks to all that, in the end, we will have an even more beautiful cathedral than before the fire. This is very stimulating.”

Since the rebuilding work began, all those involved on site have testified to the exceptional quality of the skills and spirit of Notre Dame’s craftsmen. “It is true that there is an extraordinary atmosphere,” Villeneuve confirmed. “If so far we were able to meet the deadlines, it is because the contractors and craftsmen trusted me. And I trusted them. The complicity and commitment were total, for the good of the cathedral, and also for the pleasure and pride of working on this extraordinary monument”.

He said he also has “deep respect and affection for the totally anonymous people on the site, such as those who take care of the daily clean-up,” Villeneuve told OSV News. “It is thanks to them too that this project is progressing so well. I greet everyone in the same warm way.”

Eight months into the reopening, various teams are working on the process of equipping the cathedral with electricity, IT, heating, lighting, among other systems.

Vileneuve said every person working in the reconstruction has a symbolic task of passing on their knowledge and work for future generations. They “will spread out everywhere after the site is finished,” Villeneuve said, “Those who will have benefited from this project to perfect their craft, will pass on all this as (craftsmen did) in the Middle Ages. They will pass on all this know-how.” Villeneuve added, “Life is about transmission. … We are passersby.”

Villeneuve doesn’t treat the cathedral’s reconstruction merely as a work project. In a conversation with OSV News, he described the cathedral as if it were a human being. “We are giving the cathedral all the elements that will bring it to life,” he said. “I would like to give people something that will touch them. I would like to help Notre Dame Cathedral speak to people, as best as it can.”

He said, “Notre Dame speaks to me. … Notre-Dame means a lot to me,” adding that this cathedral “is no ordinary monument. Everything we do has a strong mystical and religious significance. We cannot forget that. There is a mystical and religious dimension in our work.”

Villeneuve also confessed that he is already dreaming of seeing people’s amazement when they enter the cathedral. “It will be breathtaking,” he said. “On the outside, it is now exactly as we knew it. But on the inside, it is more beautiful than we have ever seen it.

“Even us. Even I, who knew it by heart, am amazed to finally see what this cathedral was really like inside (in the further past), in terms of architecture, light, care and quality. It is extraordinary. You will not recognize it.”

For Notre Dame’s chief architect, this “project of a lifetime” will not end at the end of the year. “There will still be the restoration of the chevet,” or apse, he said. “And we are going to use the rest of the donations to restore the sacristy, the presbytery, maybe even the transepts. We will not stop work after December 8. I will be here on a daily basis until 2028.”

He said for him the most important thing in life “is doing useful things for others,” Villeneuve added. “I am happy to be able to contribute something to the world.”

(Caroline de Sury writes for OSV News from Paris.)

Pope Francis grants plenary indulgences for National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Congress participants

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By Maria Wiering
(OSV News) – Participants in the National Eucharistic Congress and related National Eucharistic Pilgrimage now have opportunities to receive plenary indulgences, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced April 9.

“It is with gratitude to the Holy Father that we receive his Apostolic Blessing upon the participants in the National Eucharistic Congress, and for the opportunity for Catholics in our country to obtain a plenary indulgence by participating in the events of the Eucharistic Revival,” he said in a USCCB statement.

According to the statement, Archbishop Broglio, who also leads the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, had requested that a plenary indulgence be available to Catholics who participate in the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and that “he or another prelate be designated to impart the Apostolic Blessing with a Plenary Indulgence” to the faithful joining the National Eucharistic Congress.

The requests were granted in two separate decrees by the Apostolic Penitentiary, an office with the church’s central administrative body known as the Roman Curia, which grants the use of indulgences “as expressions of divine mercy,” the statement said. Both decrees were approved by Pope Francis.
The congress and preceding pilgrimage are efforts of the National Eucharistic Revival, a three-year initiative of the U.S. bishops that began in 2022 to inspire greater understanding of and love for Jesus in the Eucharist. Held in Indianapolis July 17-21 at Lucas Oil Stadium, the congress aims to bring together tens of thousands of Catholics for liturgies, devotions and well-known Catholic speakers.

Beginning the weekend of May 17-18, 24 young adults in four groups are traveling thousands of miles to the congress from starting points in California, Connecticut, Minnesota and Texas. Pilgrims in this National Eucharistic Pilgrimage plan to travel – often by foot – with the Eucharist in a monstrance, with stops along the routes for Mass and Eucharistic adoration at local parishes and national shrines. The “perpetual pilgrims” anticipate thousands of Catholics from across the country will join them at pilgrimage events or journey with them for segments of the routes.

Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, chair of the board of directors of the National Eucharistic Congress, told OSV News that the “tradition of giving an indulgence for pilgrimages and important celebrations is ancient.”

“We are grateful to the Holy Father through the Apostolic Penitentiary that offers this blessing to those who are seeking to grow in greater purity of heart through the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and Congress,” he said. “These events will be great moments of conversion which this indulgence points to as we seek to be free from the effects of our sins. We are grateful for the Holy Father’s blessing on these events.

He added, “Pope Francis himself said that (the) ‘National Eucharistic Congress marks a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States’ and he prayed that the National Eucharistic Congress would guide men and women throughout our country to the Lord who, by his presence among us, rekindles hope and renews life.”

According to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Indulgences are the remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. The faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains the indulgence under prescribed conditions for either himself or the departed. Indulgences are granted through the ministry of the Church which, as the dispenser of the grace of redemption, distributes the treasury of the merits of Christ and the Saints.”

One may obtain indulgences for other people, but can only apply them to the souls in purgatory. One may also obtain the indulgence for oneself. But one cannot apply an indulgence to another living person; that person (unlike someone in purgatory) can still obtain one for himself or herself.

The plenary indulgence for National Eucharistic Pilgrimage is granted to anyone who participates in the pilgrimage between May 17 and July 16, as well as to elders, people with infirmities and “all those who cannot leave their homes for a serious reason and who participate in spirit with the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, uniting their prayers, pains, or inconveniences with Christ and the pilgrimage,” the USCCB statement said. To receive the indulgence, an individual must fulfill the usual conditions: sacramental confession, Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father.

This is an updated map showing the four routes of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage to the National Eucharistic Congress in 2024. Participants in the National Eucharistic Congress and related National Eucharistic Pilgrimage will have opportunities to receive plenary indulgences, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced April 9, 2024. (OSV News illustration/courtesy National Eucharistic Congress)

In granting the indulgence, the Apostolic Penitentiary requests that all priests with appropriate faculties “present themselves willingly and generously in administering the Sacrament of Penance” to pilgrimage participants, according to the statement.

The second decree of the papal blessing with plenary indulgence for the National Eucharistic Congress empowers Archbishop Broglio or another prelate assigned by him to impart it, following Mass, to the faithful participating in the congress. As is the case with the previous indulgence, Catholics must be truly repentant of their sins, be motivated by charity, and meet the usual conditions of sacramental confession, Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father.

However, Catholics who “due to reasonable circumstances and with pious intention” cannot be physically at the congress may also receive the indulgence if they have participated in Mass and received the blessing through media communications.

“Through the efforts of the revival over the last two years, we have been building up to the pilgrimage and congress that will offer Catholics a chance to experience a profound, personal revival of faith in the Eucharist,” said Archbishop Broglio. “Pope Francis continues to encourage and support us as we seek to share Christ’s love with a world that is desperately in need of Him.”

The National Eucharistic Revival continues after the congress through 2025 with a “Year of Missionary Sending.”

(Maria Wiering is senior writer for OSV News.)

(Editor’s note: The Southern route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage (St. Juan Diego route) will be traveling through the Diocese of Biloxi between June 10-14. Visit https://www.biloxidiocese.org/eucharist and click on the button “Eucharistic Revival Procession (Across the Coast)” to view a schedule of events.)

Survivors shine light on immigrant communities’ plight with church abuse

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By Maria del Pilar Guzman
(OSV News) – When Eduardo Lopez de Casas was abused by a priest during his school years, he could not bring himself to tell his mother what was happening, fearing it would ruin her faith in the Catholic Church. Having grown up hearing about her mother’s upbringing – and how she came to find solace in her faith after becoming an orphan at an early age in Mexico City – Lopez de Casas “did not want, ever, to come in between my mother’s faith because it was so strong.”

Lopez de Casas’ mother passed away in 2021, never hearing of her son’s plight with the abuse he had suffered at the hands of a man who was supposed to offer him guidance.

Now the vice president of the board of directors for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Lopez de Casas shared his story in the January webinar “Courageous Conversations: How Immigrant Voices Are Silenced in Church Abuse,” part of a speaker series hosted by Awake, a survivor support and advocacy organization that works to support survivors and educate Catholics on the issue of sexual abuse within the church.

The independent nonprofit was established in 2019 in Milwaukee by a small group of Catholics and recently broadened its focus. Its mission? To “awaken our community to the full reality of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, work for transformation, and foster healing for all those who’ve been wounded,” Catherine Owers, Awake’s community engagement specialist, told OSV News in March.

Owers said the Courageous Conversations episode speaks directly to the first part of the mission statement – awaken our community to the full reality of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church – as many people, when they think about abuse in the church and survivors of abuse, “they have this classic image of an older man, usually an older white man, who has abused the child, (such as) a priest and maybe the child was serving as an altar boy.”

While that is true in many cases, there are other kinds of survivors, Owers affirmed.

“People of color, women, survivors who have experienced abuse as adults, maybe not by priests but by other religious leaders, by religious sisters, by lay ministers,” Owers said, adding, “So, having these conversations, where we’re really highlighting the diversity of stories, I think it’s just so tremendously important.”

Aside from Lopez de Casas, the webinar also gave voice to Aimee Torres, a Filipino filmmaker from Los Angeles who was harmed by a priest when she was a child, and Susan Bigelow Reynolds, assistant professor of Catholic Studies in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Reynolds, whose essay “’I Will Surely Have You Deported’: Undocumenting Clergy Sexual Abuse in Immigrant Communities” was published in the journal Religion and American Culture in 2023, said that, for her research, she examined the case of Peter Edward Garcia. A priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from the 1960s through the 1980s, Garcia targeted the children of undocumented immigrants for sexual abuse, threatening them with deportation if they ever told on him.

“(Garcia) served for a time as the head of Hispanic outreach in the archdiocese, which gave him a really unique, trusted status, particularly for recently arrived families,” Reynolds shared during the webinar. He would then “use families’ undocumented status to threaten these children effectively, children and teenagers … who feel an obvious and understandable sense of loyalty and fidelity to their families, into silence, to scare them not to report their violence,” she added.

Garcia was accused of abusing at least 12 minors in a period of 20 years. He was laicized in 2006 and died in 2009, according to records from bishop-accountability.org.

Reynolds pointed to power abuse and clericalism as chief contributors to the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as, because of these, perpetrators enjoyed immunity from criminal prosecution due to their position in the church.

However, clericalism does not operate in a vacuum, Reynolds said.

“Clericalism gains traction, gains force and power by trading on other structures of domination based on race and ethnicity and class and legal status and gender and age,” she said.

Torres can see the power dynamics at play in her experience of abuse. Growing up in a predominantly Catholic family of Filipino immigrants, she witnessed how priests held revered status within her community and how they were viewed as “little kings.” Inevitably conditioned by her culture, she did not report the abuse she suffered at the hands of a priest, a close friend of an aunt, between the ages of 8 and 12, until she was 17.

“The priest that abused me; he used his power as a priest over me because I felt, at the time, that I was doing something wrong,” Torres said. “At that point, you feel so small over somebody like this,” she added.

Because immigrants experience unique challenges associated with economic hardships, language and discrimination, among others, they become more vulnerable to potential acts of abuse.

Even before the death of her father at a young age, Torres’ mother, dealing with financial pressures, worked “full-time and lacked resources for child care,” leaving Torres and her sister in the care of her aunt.

“The priest that abused me, he would come over every Sunday after Mass at his parish and stay over at her (aunt’s) house, and that’s where the abuse happened,” she shared.

For Lopez de Casas, it was the language barrier that became the ultimate obstacle when he tried to report his first instances of abuse at school (this was before being abused by a priest). Wanting to know what was happening to their son, Lopez de Casas’ parents met with the school principal, counselors, and teachers. Not speaking English, they resorted to a translator.

However, “from the very beginning, even though I was very young, I did learn immediately at these meetings that, whenever I would say something, they would translate my statements to my mom, but they were very whitewashed … they would do it in a way that made me look bad and made the predators look sane,” he said.

This shaped how he would report – or not – future instances of abuse.
Responding to Reynolds’ call at the end of the webinar to look “harder for the stories” of immigrants who have suffered abuse within the church “and bring them to light,” Owers said Awake continues to work toward bridging “the gap between survivors and concerned Catholics who want to learn more.”

In an earlier interview with OSV News, Sara Larson, Awake’s executive director, said she has seen “so many survivors work so hard to disentangle their abuser and the things he or she said or did or the way that spirituality was used – disentangle that from their own spiritual life, their own understanding of God and, for some, their own relationship with the church.”

Awake has a “desire to be really survivor-centered,” and to “make sure that when people are engaging with abuse survivors, that they’re ready for that and have the training and an approach that’s not going to cause additional harm,” she said.

“(Survivors) are out there, and they are part of our community,” Owers said.

“We also want to continue to connect with church leaders and provide resources for them to help the church become safer, more accountable, and more compassionate,” she added.

(Maria del Pilar Guzman writes for OSV News from Boston. Notes: To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 800-656-HOPE (4673)

For more information about Awake, visit: https://www.awakecommunity.org/)

Vatican says abortion, surrogacy, war, poverty are attacks on human dignity

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Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, speaks at a news conference to present the dicastery’s declaration, “Dignitas Infinita” (“Infinite Dignity”) on human dignity at the Vatican press office April 8, 2024. (CNS photo/Pablo Esparza)

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Being a Christian means defending human dignity and that includes opposing abortion, the death penalty, gender transition surgery, war, sexual abuse and human trafficking, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a new document.

“We cannot separate faith from the defense of human dignity, evangelization from the promotion of a dignified life and spirituality from a commitment to the dignity of every human being,” Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, dicastery prefect, wrote in the document’s opening section.

The declaration, “Dignitas Infinita” (“Infinite Dignity”), was released at the Vatican April 8.
In the opening section, Cardinal Fernández confirmed reports that a declaration on human dignity and bioethical issues – like abortion, euthanasia and surrogacy – was approved by members of the dicastery in mid-2023 but Pope Francis asked the dicastery to make additions to “highlight topics closely connected to the theme of dignity, such as poverty, the situation of migrants, violence against women, human trafficking, war and other themes.”

In February the cardinals and bishops who are members of the dicastery approved the updated draft of the document, and in late March Pope Francis gave his approval and ordered its publication, Cardinal Fernández said.

With its five years of preparation, he wrote, “the document before us reflects the gravity and centrality of the theme of dignity in Christian thought.”

The title of the document is taken from an Angelus address St. John Paul II gave in Germany in 1980 during a meeting with people with disabilities. He told them, “With Jesus Christ, God has shown us in an unsurpassed way how he loves each human being and thereby bestows upon him infinite dignity.”

The document is dated, “2 April 2024, the nineteenth anniversary of the death of Pope St. John Paul II.”

Cardinal Fernandez said initially the dicastery was going to call the document “Beyond all Circumstances,” which is an affirmation by Pope Francis of how human dignity is not lessened by one’s state of development or where he or she is born or the resources or talents one has or what one has done.

Instead, he said, they chose the comment St. John Paul had made.

The declaration noted that the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World also listed attacks on human dignity as ranging from abortion and euthanasia to “subhuman living conditions” and “degrading working conditions.”

Members of the doctrinal dicastery included the death penalty among violations of “the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances” and called for the respect of the dignity of people who are incarcerated.

The declaration denounced discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and particularly situations in which people are “imprisoned, tortured and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.”

But it also condemned “gender theory” as “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”

Gender theory, it said, tries “to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”

The Catholic Church, the declaration said, teaches that “human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift from God. This gift is to be accepted with gratitude and placed at the service of the good.”

Quoting Pope Francis’ exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” the declaration said gender ideology “envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”

Dicastery members said it is true that there is a difference between biological sex and the roles and behaviors that a given society or culture assigns to a male or female, but the fact that some of those notions of what it means to be a woman or a man are culturally influenced, does not mean there are no differences between biological males and biological females.

“Therefore,” they said, “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected.”

Again quoting Pope Francis’ exhortation, the declaration said, “We cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and experiences, and where biological elements exist which are impossible to ignore.”

“Any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” it said. However, the declaration clarified that “this is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities.”

Members of the dicastery also warned about the implications of changing language about human dignity, citing for example those who propose the expressions “personal dignity” or “the rights of the person” instead of “human dignity.”

In many cases, they said, the proposal understands “a ‘person’ to be only ‘one who is capable of reasoning.’ They then argue that dignity and rights are deduced from the individual’s capacity for knowledge and freedom, which not all humans possess. Thus, according to them, the unborn child would not have personal dignity, nor would the older person who is dependent upon others, nor would an individual with mental disabilities.”

The Catholic Church, on the contrary, “insists that the dignity of every human person, precisely because it is intrinsic, remains in all circumstances.”

The acceptance of abortion, it said, “is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake.”

“Procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth,” it said.

The document also repeated Pope Francis’ call for a global ban on surrogacy, which, he said, is “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”

Surrogacy, it said, transforms a couple’s legitimate desire to have a child into “a ‘right to a child’ that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life.”

Extreme poverty, the marginalization of people with disabilities, violent online attacks and war also violate human dignity, the document said.

While recognizing the right of nations to defend themselves against an aggressor, the document insisted armed conflicts “will not solve problems but only increase them. This point is even more critical in our time when it has become commonplace for so many innocent civilians to perish beyond the confines of a battlefield.”

On the issue of migrants and refugees, the dicastery members said that while “no one will ever openly deny that they are human beings,” many migration policies and popular attitudes toward migrants “can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human.”

The promotion of euthanasia and assisted suicide, it said, “utilizes a mistaken understanding of human dignity to turn the concept of dignity against life itself.”

The declaration said, “Certainly, the dignity of those who are critically or terminally ill calls for all suitable and necessary efforts to alleviate their suffering through appropriate palliative care and by avoiding aggressive treatments or disproportionate medical procedures,” but it also insisted, “suffering does not cause the sick to lose their dignity, which is intrinsically and inalienably their own.”

(Maria Wiering is senior writer for OSV News.)

Parish priests are lifeline to church’s mission, cardinal says

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By Carol Glatz
ROME (CNS) –The success of the Synod of Bishops on synodality will much depend on also including parish priests in the process, said Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington.

Of the more than 360 bishops, religious and laypeople who participated in the first assembly at the Vatican last October, the small number who were ordained priests “were scholars, missionaries (or) they were engaged in leadership in religious communities,” he said.

“Not that those other participants weren’t generous and insightful,” he said, but in his 40 years as a bishop, his experience has been that “a number of people may know who the bishop is, they all know who the pastor is.”

The parish priest is the church’s “point of contact and if we lose contact with our people through their priests, it disables the mission of the church,” he told Catholic News Service April 10 at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where he was to receive the annual Rector’s Award April 11.

Cardinal Gregory had served as an auxiliary bishop of Chicago before leading the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, and then the Archdiocese of Atlanta; he was named archbishop of Washington in 2019 and then elevated to the College of Cardinals the next year.

Pope Francis personally invited the 76-year-old native of Chicago to attend the synod on synodality in Rome.

“There was a lack of parish priests present” at the first assembly, Cardinal Gregory said, noting the importance of the upcoming gathering of 300 parish priests from all over the world to make their contribution to the ongoing synod process by sharing their experiences of parish life.

Parish priests are the ones who “serve the folks in the pew, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday,” he said. The gathering of parish priests, which will be held April 28-May 2 outside of Rome, was needed “because if the synod is going to be a success, it really needs to keep its roots in the Sunday pew.”

The priests, selected by bishops’ conferences and Eastern Catholic churches, also will have the chance to dialogue with Pope Francis as part of responding to the first assembly’s report requesting more active involvement of deacons, priests and bishops in the synodal process.

Because there will only be one to four priests representing each bishops’ conference and Eastern-rite Catholic church, Cardinal Gregory said it would be important for the priest delegates to “use media to pass on what they did, what they heard, what they said.”

“After all, 300 priests is a good delegation, but it’s a small representation of the total number of priests who are engaged directly in pastoral ministry,” he said.

Just as priests are being asked to “follow up more effectively with their parishioners and learn how to listen to and to learn from criticism and also support” as part of the synodal process, he said, bishops, too, should be showing their support of their priests, even in the simplest of ways.

“Long before the synod and in every diocese that I’ve served in,” he said, he has always shared messages and comments he receives complimenting one of his priests for something they did.

“I always send that complimentary letter to the priest himself, along with my letter of thanks to the individual who thought enough of a pastor to say something nice,” he said.

“That builds a relationship with the priest and the bishop that says, ‘you know, he contacts me not necessarily because I’ve done something wrong, but because I’ve done something right.’ And that’s very important. Our guys need to know that the bishop is grateful,” he said.

The success of the synod, Cardinal Gregory said, will be seen with “an increase in the contact that people, ordinary people, the faithful of God, have with their priests,” their bishop and with the pope. Success will be recognizing that the pope “is not an individual who governs the church simply from the desk of the papal apartment” and that the bishop and pastor are not leaders who simply manage or direct activities from afar.

“To have a successful synod outcome, it has to tighten the bonds that unite us, even going into those areas where most people had not been before. And unfortunately, sometimes where bishops haven’t been before, that is, in the midst of their flock,” he said.

“Isn’t that one of Pope Francis’ favorite early terms, the smell of the sheep?” the cardinal asked. “You’ve got to have the smell of the sheep.”

Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington speaks with Catholic News Service Senior Correspondent Carol Glatz during an interview at the Pontifical North American College in Rome April 10, 2024. (CNS photo/Justin McLellan)

Briefs

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Jesuit Father William J. Byron, a former president of The Catholic University of America in Washington and University of Scranton, Pa., and known for his writings on the relationship between business practices and Catholic spirituality, died at age 96 April 9, 2024. He is pictured in a file photo. (OSV News photo, CNS file)

NATION
PHILADELPHIA (OSV News) – Jesuit Father William J. Byron, known for his leadership of Jesuit institutions of higher learning and his many years of lecturing, teaching and writing on the relationship between business practices and Catholic spirituality, died April 9 at Manresa Hall, the health center of the Jesuit community at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He was 96. Byron was a former president of the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, 1975-1982, and The Catholic University of America in Washington, 1982-1992. He spent a year as acting president of Loyola University New Orleans, 2003-2004, and served as president at his high school alma mater, St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, 2006-2008. His other leadership roles for the Society of Jesus included rector of the Jesuit community at Georgetown University in Washington, 1994-2000. A funeral Mass for Father Byron was celebrated April 20 at St. Matthias Church in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. In an April 9 message to the university community, Jesuit Father Joseph Marina, Scranton’s current president, said that during one of their last visits together, Father Byron managed to ask him if he was “the president at Scranton now. When I nodded yes, he said, ‘Take good care of it.’”

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. (OSV News) – By any measure, Louis Anthony “Lou” Conter, a Catholic hero of World War II who died April 1 at his home in Grass Valley, California, at age 102, led a celebrated life. Conter’s funeral Mass will be celebrated April 23 at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Grass Valley, followed by burial with full military honors. Born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921, Conter graduated from high school in Colorado. He escaped a hardscrabble life – at age 7, he hunted rabbits in Kansas, where his family was living, in order to provide dinner – and a job in a Hormel meatpacking plant by enlisting in the Navy in 1939. As a quartermaster on the battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Conter was one of only 335 crewmen and officers aboard to survive the assault by Japanese fighter pilots, bombers and torpedo planes that sank it on Dec. 7, 1941, launching the United States into World War II. The sailors and Marines killed aboard numbered 1,177. The Arizona casualties amounted to nearly half of the 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, who died that day. Conter served for 28 years, retiring at the rank of lieutenant commander, the highest rank possible for someone with a high school diploma.

AMARILLO, Texas (OSV News) – An assault on a Texas priest highlights the need for parishes to implement more robust security measures, experts told OSV News. On April 10, Father Tony Neusch, rector of St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Amarillo, was pepper-sprayed while hearing confessions. The priest advised in a Facebook post that he was uninjured and that police had been notified, but that walk-in confessions would be suspended pending security upgrades. The assault comes in the wake of Catholic churches and shrines throughout the U.S. and Canada having seen a number of security incidents in the past few months, from protesters to mentally-ill individuals. Preserving both pastoral welcome and commonsense security in places of prayer can be a delicate balance, said Craig Gundry of Critical Intervention Services, a Tampa, Florida-based security consulting firm with extensive experience in church security. Having a parish security team is valuable, he added – and the Catholic Community of St. Thomas More in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, established such a team in 2017. The St. Michael the Defender Ministry, according to its leader and security professional Jeff Malkovsky, has now been applied to parishes and schools throughout the Diocese of Raleigh. But keeping priests and penitents safe during the sacrament of reconciliation, which is bound by anonymity and the seal of confession, requires extra consideration, admitted St. Thomas More pastor Father Scott McCue. The attack on Father Neusch, he said, is “a good conversation starter” for additional discussions on parish security.

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Hundreds of parish priests from around the world will spend three days praying and talking about experiences of synodality and discernment in parishes and dioceses before having a two-hour dialogue with Pope Francis May 2. The priests, chosen by their national bishops’ conference or Eastern Catholic church synod, will meet outside of Rome April 29-May 1 to reflect on the theme “How to be a synodal local Church in mission.” The results of their discussions will be used, along with contributions from bishops’ conferences, in preparing the working document for the second session of the Synod of Bishops on synodality in October. Publishing a detailed schedule of the priests’ meeting April 16, the synod secretariat listed the questions the priests will be asked to pray about and discuss during their time at Sacrofano, outside of Rome. The priests will be asked what “experiences of a synodal church” have they had in their parishes and “which ones have been happy and which ones less so?” They also will be asked how they have experienced the participation of “different charisms, vocations, ministries in the life of the parish and diocese/eparchy” and what questions those experiences raised.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Peace can spread and grow from “small seeds” like including someone who is left out of an activity, showing concern for someone who is struggling, picking up some litter and praying for God’s help, Pope Francis told Italian schoolchildren. “At a time still marked by war, I ask you to be artisans of peace,” the pope told some 6,000 Italian schoolchildren involved in the National Network of Schools of Peace, a civic education program designed to teach the children to care for themselves, their friends, their communities, the world and the environment. During the gathering April 19 in the Vatican audience hall, Pope Francis led the children in a moment of silent prayer for their peers in Ukraine and in Gaza. “In a society still prisoner of a throwaway culture,” he told them, “I ask you to be protagonists of inclusion; in a world torn by global crises, I ask you to be builders of the future, so that our common home may become a place of fraternity.”

WORLD
MOHNYIN, Myanmar (OSV News) – Unknown assailants gunned down and seriously injured a priest while celebrating morning Mass in Myanmar’s conflict-stricken northern Kachin state on April 12. Two men opened fire at 6:30 a.m. on Father Paul Khwi Shane Aung, 40, parish priest of St. Patrick’s Church in Mohnyin town, within the Myitkyina Diocese, according to church sources. “They were wearing black clothes and masks and entered the church on a motorcycle to shoot the priest three times,” U Zaw, a local catechist, told UCA News, an independent Catholic news service covering East, South and Southeast Asia. The motive behind the attack is not yet known. Zaw said the injured priest was rushed to a Mohnyin hospital and was later moved to a hospital in Myitkyina, the state capital. An activist based in Kachin state said anti-social elements are fomenting religious and ethnic conflict as the civil war in military-ruled Myanmar has entered a critical phase. Clergy, pastors and church-run institutions are being targeted by the military, which toppled the civilian government in February 2021, for supporting the rebels. Kachin state’s 1.7 million people are mainly Christians, some 116,000 of whom are Catholics.

LAGOS, Nigeria (OSV News) – For decades, Nigeria has remained a source, transit and destination country for human trafficking in sub-Saharan Africa, with her citizens making up 6% of immigrants in Libya, where they are commonly traded in open markets, according to a 2021 report from the International Organization for Migration. But a network of Catholic Sisters of St. Louis at the Bakhita Empowerment center, a safehouse in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, is determined to change this by providing shelter to survivors and conducting education campaigns to prevent others from being victimized. At the transit shelter, women and girls receive rehabilitation and counseling to restart their lives. The shelter is named after St. Josephine Bakhita, the patron saint of human trafficking survivors. Kidnapped at age 7 in Sudan and sold into slavery, Josephine was taken to Italy in 1885 by her last owner. A court ruled she was free because slavery was illegal in Italy. The Catholic Sisters of St. Louis offer assistance, counseling and vocational training at the shelter to help trafficking survivors reintegrate into society. They also do prevention and sensitization campaigns, to raise awareness on the causes of human traffickers. The shelter accommodates about 30 survivors whom Sister Patricia Ebegbulem, project coordinator of the safehouse calls “treasures.” Human trafficking is a global plague that generates billions of dollars in profits; over 40 million people are exploited and trafficked each year.

Movie Review: Irena’s Vow

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By John Mulderig
NEW YORK (OSV News) – An inspiring but once little-known chapter of history provides the basis for the Holocaust drama “Irena’s Vow” (Quiver). The humane basic values of the story could potentially make it appealing for older teens as well as grown-ups. However, a plot development involving an objectively immoral situation requires careful assessment.

Sophie Nélisse plays Irena Gut, a young Catholic Polish woman swept up in – and left homeless by – the Nazi occupation of her homeland following the outbreak of World War II. Irena is eventually put to work as a waitress in the local Wehrmacht officers’ mess. She’s also placed in charge of the group of Jewish laundry workers who tend to the officers’ clothing.

Overhearing that all Jews in the area will be transported and liquidated in the near future, Irena resolves to act quickly. A lucky but unlikely opportunity to rescue her new friends arises when Major Rugemer (Dougray Scott), one of the soldiers who dines at the mess, decides to make Irena his personal housekeeper.

Sophie Nélisse stars as Irene Gut, left, alongside members of the ensemble cast in a scene from the movie “Irena’s Vow.” The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R – restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. (OSV news photo/Quiver)

Rugemer has requisitioned a large villa with a multi-room basement. As Irena gets the dwelling ready for its new occupant, but before he moves in, she smuggles the launderers into the cellar and arranges to keep them safely concealed there.

The perils of the precarious situation uphold viewer interest in director Louise Archambault’s generally uplifting adaptation of screenwriter Dan Gordon’s play. But the film is not free of challenging content.

In addition to scenes of brutality, Irena has to confront an unforeseen problem when one of her proteges – who, with the arrival of a newcomer, now number 12 – becomes pregnant and announces her intention to terminate her baby’s life. Though this subplot has a happy ending, and shows Irena in a still more favorable light, it obviously constitutes mature fare.

So, too, does the turn the relationship between Irena and Rugemer takes as the movie nears its end. While revealing the specifics would constitute a spoiler, suffice it to say that – to borrow a phrase from Facebook – it’s complicated.

This aspect of the picture shouldn’t necessarily bar mature adolescents from watching it. But a family discussion might be needed to unpack its ins-and-outs.

The real-life Irena survived the global conflict and went on to marry United Nations worker William Opdyke. She resisted telling the tale of her wartime activities until provoked to do so, beginning in the 1970s, by a Holocaust denier. Having been honored both by the State of Israel and by St. John Paul II, she died in 2003 at age 85.

The film contains stylized but sometimes disturbing violence, including infanticide, implied nonmarital sexual activity and discussion of an abortion. The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is R – restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

(John Mulderig is media reviewer for OSV News. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @JohnMulderig1.)

Pew finds Catholics diverge by political parties, Mass attendance on many, but not all, issues

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By Gina Christian
(OSV News) – A new study of U.S. Catholics suggests that Mass attendance and political affiliation are associated with their views of Pope Francis and Catholic teaching on key moral issues.
The findings were released by the Pew Research Center April 12 from a study that surveyed close to 12,700 respondents, 2,019 of whom self-identified as Catholic.

The sample was designed to be representative of the nation’s self-identified Catholics, who constitute 20% of the U.S. population, about 52 million U.S. Catholic adults out of the nation’s 262 million adults counted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2023.

Most (57%) of the nation’s Catholics are white, while 33% are Hispanic, followed by Asian (4%), Black (2%) and Catholics of other races (3%). Racial and ethnic distribution of Catholics varies in the U.S., with greater numbers of U.S. Hispanic Catholics living in the South and West, where they respectively represent 40% and 55% of the Catholic population in those regions.

A majority of U.S. Catholics (58%) are age 50 and above, as compared to 48% of all U.S. adults in Pew’s survey.

Hispanic Catholics tend to be significantly younger than white Catholics, with 57% of Hispanic Catholics under 50 as compared to 32% of white Catholics.

Regionally, 29% of U.S. Catholics live in the nation’s South; 26% in the Northeast; 24% in the West; and 21% in the Midwest.

Pew found that nearly three in 10 (28%) of U.S. Catholics reported attending Mass weekly or more often, similar to results reported by a recent Gallup poll in which 21% of U.S. Catholics said they attend weekly and 9% almost every week.

Daily prayer was reported by 52% of U.S. Catholics, while 46% described religion as “very important” in their lives. According to Pew, 20% of U.S. Catholics reported weekly Mass attendance, daily prayer and a regard for religion as “very important” in their life.

Politically, a majority of Catholic registered voters (52%) identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and 44% with the Democratic Party.

The data showed that 75% of U.S. Catholics regarded the pope favorably, which is down from 83% in 2021, and 90% in early 2015.

The report said that 89% of U.S. Catholics who are or lean Democrat approve of the pope, while just 7% disapprove of him. In contrast, just 63% of U.S. Catholics who are or lean Republican give the pope a thumbs-up, while 35% view him unfavorably. Those unfavorable views among Catholics who are or lean Republican are higher than 2018, the year a new wave of sex abuse scandals, including abuse accusations involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, broke out.

“The partisan gap in views of Pope Francis is now as large as it’s ever been in our surveys,” said the report.
Despite the church’s teaching against abortion, some six in 10 U.S. Catholics support legalized abortion in all or most cases, with Hispanic Catholics (63%) slightly more approving of keeping abortion legal in all or most cases than white Catholics (59%).

Those opinions about abortion “tend to align” with U.S. Catholics’ political preferences, noted Pew, with 78% of Catholics who are or lean Democrat favoring legalized abortion in most or all cases less than 84% of U.S. adults who are or lean Democrat; and 43% of Catholics who are or lean Republican slightly favoring abortion compared to 40% of U.S. adults who are or lean Republican.

The survey also assessed U.S. Catholics’ views on contraception, sexuality and the priesthood, and found “big differences between Mass-attending Catholics and those who don’t (attend)” on those issues.

“Catholics who attend Mass regularly (once a week or more) are far more inclined than those who go less often to say the church should take a traditional or conservative approach on questions about the priesthood and sexuality,” said the report.

Most weekly Mass attendees said the church should not recognize same-sex marriages (65%) or allow women to be ordained as priests (56%).

A majority of U.S. Catholics (69%) across the political divide – including 53% of weekly Mass attending Catholics – said the church should “allow priests to get married.”

The Pew survey question on this point, however, does not accurately distinguish between the normative practice in the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches of ordaining married men to the priesthood on the one hand, and the churches’ ancient prohibition on priests attempting marriage after ordination.

Although the Latin Church, which most Catholics belong to, only ordains celibate men with few exceptions, and could legitimately change its discipline on the ordination of married men to align with the Eastern Catholic or Orthodox churches – none of these churches allows priests to marry unless they are returned first to the lay state, rendering them no longer in a position of spiritual power over a lay woman whose full and free consent is necessary for sacramental marriage.

U.S. Catholics who do not attend Mass on a weekly basis favored recognition of same-sex marriages (61%) and women’s ordination (71%).

Broadly, 83% of U.S. Catholics surveyed said the church should permit the use of contraception, 75% said the church should permit reception of holy Communion by unmarried couples living together and 54% said the church should recognize same-sex marriage.

Among Catholics who opposed deviating from church teaching on contraception, priestly celibacy, women’s ordination, holy Communion for unmarried cohabiting couples and recognition of same-sex marriages, 59% said they attend Mass at least once a week, and 72% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.

For those Catholics who said the church should permit the above practices, 56% reported seldom or never attending Mass, and 57% identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party.

Pew research associate Patricia Tevington told OSV News the report, for which she was one of three primary researchers, is intended to serve as “a descriptive source of information,” rather than a causal analysis of the nation’s Catholics and their characteristics.

“We try to just tell you what’s going on,” said Teverington. “If we can rule out explanations that might be obvious, we try to do so, but generally we just … give you the facts.”

The data has been released publicly and can be downloaded from Pew’s website, she said, so that other researchers “are able to run deeper analyses … and make more causal arguments” about the results.

Still, Teverington said that the effects of political divides and weekly Mass attendance can be detected in the data.

“Political partisanship has definitely been … increasing over time,” she said. “And people (who) attend Mass weekly or more are definitely different than folks that attend less often.”

(Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @GinaJesseReina.)

Calendar of events

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PARISH, FAMILY & SCHOOL EVENTS
DIOCESE – Jackson area young adults (ages 18-35), Co-ed Softball league, register by May 8. Cost: $30. Games on Monday and Thursday evenings; game locations vary from Ridgeland Baptist Church, Liberty Park and in Canton. Details: Register at https://jacksondiocese.flocknote.com/signup/164316 or email amelia.rizor@jacksondiocese.org.

CLEVELAND – Our Lady of Victories, Parish Picnic, Sunday, May 19. Enjoy cookout and games for the whole family. Details: church office (662) 846-6273.

DIOCESE/JACKSON – Cathedral of St. Peter, Priestly Ordination of Tristan Stovall, Saturday, May 18 at 10:30 a.m. All are invited to attend.

JACKSON – St. Richard, Evening with Mary, Thursday, May 2 at 6 p.m. Please join us for a time of reflection and prayer honoring the Blessed Mother, with speaker Fran Lavelle, director of faith formation for the diocese. Details: RSVP to the church office at (601) 366-2335 or secretary@saintrichard.com.

MADISON – St. Joseph School, “Bruin Burn” 5k Run/Walk and fun run, Saturday, May 11 at 8 a.m. Registration $30 for 5k or $15 for fun run after April 25. Register at https://raceroster.com/events/2024/87878/bruin-burn. Details: email bruinburn@gmail.com.
NATCHEZ – Cathedral School, Cajun Countdown, Friday, May 3. Details: eks_46@yahoo.com or sarahc@terralriverservice.com.

OLIVE BRANCH – Queen of Peace, Cinco de Mayo Dinner Celebration, Saturday, May 4 after Mass in the social hall. Sign-up to attend in the common area. cost: $20/person or $30/couple – includes dinner and one beverage. Must be 21 or older to attend. Details: church office (662) 895-5007.
PEARL – St. Jude, Spring Fair, Saturday, May 4 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the parish hall. This free event will feature a variety of handmade items, homemade food, raffle and more. All proceeds will benefit the St. Jude’s Artisan Guild ministry. Details: church office (601) 939-3181.

RIPLEY – St. Matthew, Free Immigration Day, May 4 at 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 2-5 p.m. Conference is on key aspects of Immigration Law in the U.S. Special guest: attorney, Steven Balson-Cohen, Esq. of Immigration Pro, LLC. Conference includes free case evaluation and consultation. Details: church office (662) 993-8862.

SPIRITUAL ENRICHMENT
BOONVILLE – National Day of Prayer, Thursday, May 2 at 12 p.m. at the Booneville City Hall steps. Join this day as Christians come together and pray for our nation. Lunch provided for attendees.

BROOKHAVEN – St. Francis of Assisi, Vietnamese Language Mass, 11 a.m. on Sunday, May 12 (then the first Sunday of the month thereafter).

NEW ORLEANS – Directed Retreat with the Archdiocesan Spirituality Center at the Cenacle on Lake Pontchartrain, June 28-July 3. Cost $500 – includes lodging, meals and personal spiritual director. To register call (504) 861-3254. Details: for more information call Melinda at (601) 597-7178.

MERIDIAN – St. Patrick, Men’s Group, Saturday, May 4 at 9 a.m. in the Father Vally room in the St. Patrick center. This is the first meeting of this newly formed group. Details: John at jmcylk@gmail.com.

NATCHEZ – National Day of Prayer, Thursday, May 2 at 12 p.m. at the Gazebo on the Bluff.

SOUTHAVEN – Christ the King, “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist,” Thursdays, May 2, 9, 16, 23, 30; and June 6 from 6:30-8 p.m. How do these Jewish roots help us, to understand his real presence in the Eucharist? Facilitator is Don Coker. Details: church office (662) 342-1073.

SAVE THE DATE
BROOKHAVEN – St. Francis of Assisi, Vacation Bible School, July 14 – 17.

MADISON – St. Francis, Vacation Bible School – June 17-20, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. for Pre-K4 through fourth graders. Email mc.george@stfrancismadison.org to volunteer.

St. Francis, Cajun Fest, Sunday, May 19.

DIOCESE – Each month, the Office of Catholic Education holds a Rosary in thanksgiving for Catholic education in the diocese. Join them via Zoom on Wednesday, May 1 at 7 p.m. Check the diocese calendar of events for the Zoom link. Join us!