Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 12, 2025 / 14:24 pm (CNA).

A group of teens will speak with the Holy Father during a digital encounter at the upcoming National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) in Indianapolis.

Pope Leo XIV will hold a 45-minute digital encounter with young people from across the United States during the Nov. 20–22 NCYC, hosted by the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM). The pope will speak at 10:15 a.m. ET on Nov. 21 and enter into dialogue with a group of high school students. 

This marks the first time that a pope will directly engage with U.S. youth in a live digital encounter at NCYC. More than 40 teens have participated in the dialogue planning processs, and five of them will get the chance to speak directly with the Holy Father, organizers said.

Mia Smothers, Elise Wing, Christopher Pantelakis, Micah Alcisto, and Ezequiel Ponce will ask Pope Leo questions next week as thousands of teens gather in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Mia Smothers 

Mia Smothers, a high school freshman from Joppa, Maryland, is the youngest teen selected to speak with the pontiff. Growing up in a large family has taught her patience and teamwork, she said. Her parents have encouraged her to stay grounded in faith and to serve others.

Smothers is the second of 10 children and said she hopes her faith and NCYC experience will set a good example for her younger siblings. She wants to show them how wonderful it is to know and love God.

As a parishioner at St. Francis De Sales, Smothers serves as an altar server and helps with Vacation Bible School and youth group. She also participates in cheer, choir, and Helping Hands Club at her school and enjoys reading, dancing, singing, and doodling. 

Elise Wing

Elise Wing is a high school senior from Waterloo, Iowa, who says she enjoys nature and coffee. 

Wing is usually busy with speech, theater, competitive swimming, and serving her parish community at St. Edward’s. She said she loves to have bonfires and game nights with friends and go on road trips with her family. 

Her Catholic faith is the lens through which she sees the world, she said. She said she is inspired daily by St. Thérèse of Lisieux — her confirmation saint. Wing said she is looking forward to going on a pilgrimage to Rome, Florence, and Assisi in Italy this spring and is excited to represent faithful teens at NCYC next week.

Christopher Pantelakis

Christopher Pantelakis, or Chris, is a high school junior who was born and raised in Mesquite, Nevada. Pantelakis said he gets his inspiration from young people who go out in the world to make it a better place.

For fun, Chris said he loves watching sports and participating in any athletic activity. Recently his soccer team at Virgin Valley High School qualified for state. His favorite soccer team is Chelsea in England, which he hopes to watch play in person someday.

Micah Alcisto

Born and raised in Honolulu, Micah Alciso said he enjoys playing baseball, working out, fishing, and going to the beach. The high school senior is a leader in his community serving as a member of Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, LIFE team, and Catholic Honors Society.

Seeing how God continues to work in his life and in the lives of others inspires Alciso, he said. Even in hard times, he said experiences with God remind him he is not alone.

Keeping his faith strong and at the center of his life is important to Chris as he said he believes it will guide his career, relationships, education, and family.

Ezequiel Ponce

Ezequiel Ponce is a high school senior from Downey, California. He has a brother and sister who introduced him to St. Dominic Savio Parish, where he serves as a summer camp counselor and helps lead youth group.

Ponce said he sees his parish as his home and loves participating in the community and growing in his faith. He shares the same birthday as his favorite saint — St. John Bosco on Aug. 16.

Doing community work with kids led him to find a passion for teaching, he said. Ponce teaches at a middle school for one period of his school schedule every day. 

Ponce, who will ask the pope a question, said in an Nov.11 interview with NFCYM that it is “an honor and a great privilege to … talk to the Holy Father.” He added: “It makes me feel like my voice is heard and … that the youth of America’s voice is heard.”

“It is very reassuring that the Holy Father wants to indulge in dialogue with the youth,” Ponce said.

Katie McGrady, Catholic author, speaker, and radio host who will serve as the NCYC event moderator, said: “As we’ve prepared these teens to ask a question of the Holy Father, I’ve been struck by how excited they are to get to represent their peers in this moment. Their openness to dialogue, with each other and with adults who have helped prepare this moment, has inspired me to remember that the young Church is the Church of now, not tomorrow.”

Baltimore, Maryland, Nov 12, 2025 / 13:15 pm (CNA).

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved a new translation of the Bible, which will be used for personal Bibles, the lectionary at Mass, and the text in the Liturgy of the Hours.

Bishop Steven Lopes, chair of the Committee on Divine Worship, announced the translation will be called the “Catholic American Bible.” The translation for personal Bibles and the Liturgy of the Hours will be available on Ash Wednesday in 2027.

The bishops have not announced when the revised lectionaries will be available.

The USCCB also approved a Spanish-language translation of the New Testament, the Biblia de la Iglesia en América, which will be available on Ash Wednesday in 2026.

Lopes made the announcement during the USCCB’s Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore on Nov. 11.

According to Ascension Press, one of the publishers of the translation, the Catholic American Bible has a modified translation of the Old Testament from the New American Bible Revised Edition. It will replace the current translation of the Book of Psalms with The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, which was translated by monks at Conception Abbey in Missouri.

The new translation will also include a revised New Testament.

U.S. bishops also approved a new edition of the Roman Pontifical, which is the liturgical book for pontifical Masses, which can only be celebrated by bishops. It is expected to be ready in 2027. The bishops are still awaiting Vatican approval for two of the five pontifical rites, but approval is anticipated in December. 

Washington, D.C., Nov 12, 2025 / 12:45 pm (CNA).

Nostra Aetate, the Church’s declaration on building relationships with non-Christian religions,  “planted a seed” that must continue to be nourished, according to panelists reflecting on the document’s legacy at The Catholic University of America on Nov. 11.

At the event, titled “The Church and the Jewish Community in Our Age,” Bishop Étienne Vetö, ICN, auxiliary bishop of Reims, France, and Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, discussed the state of Catholic-Jewish relations as well as shared practices and difference. 

“Even though Nostra Aetate is one of the shortest, if not the shortest document of Vatican II, it has had a powerful impact,” Vetö said. “A Jew or a Christian from the first half [of] the 20th century who traveled in time to 2025 would find unbelievable the quality of dialogue, understanding, and trust that is now growing between the two communities.”

Rebecca Cohen, program and research specialist for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, agreed, saying Nostra Aetate produced a “seismic shift in Christian understanding” of Judaism that was revolutionary for its time in 1965. 

Nostra Aetate contains a paragraph on Judaism that centers on the biblical roots and shared history with Christianity rather than the Judaism of today. It sowed the beginnings of something that needs nurturing, Cohen said. 

Carmelite Father Craig Morrison, director of the Center for Carmelite Studies and professor of biblical studies, said Nostra Aetate “launched new possibilities for a relationship between Catholics and Jews.”

“No longer was this relationship to be triumphal, Catholics telling Jews who they are, what they believe, and how they kill God, Jesus,” he said, adding: “Western Christianity kept the Jews mostly silent for centuries.”

Today, he continued, “our present task on the Catholic side is not so much as dialogue but rather to listen to the Jews for the first time in our shared history.”

“Our Gospels are a part of Jewish documents and cannot be properly understood apart from the Judaism of the late Second Temple period,” he said.

Ultimately, Craig said, “we know that a better understanding of the concerns of first-century Jews will illuminate the Gospels and significantly reduce the risk of anti-Jewish preaching. Then we will hear Jesus speaking within the first-century Jewish world in which he was incarnated.” 

Marans reflected on the legacy of Nostra Aetate for Jewish people, saying that prior to the document’s publication, the Jewish people viewed Christianity “as a threat.” Conversely, he said, Nostra Aetate was a “gift for Christians” because it meant “Christianity no longer needed to self-define in opposition to the other.” 

At the end of the day, Marans said, “Nostra Aetate was not perfect, but it was good [and] has been perfected over time.” 

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 12, 2025 / 12:15 pm (CNA).

The Czech Republic, known for its historical heritage, fairytale castles, and medieval architecture, is considered the most atheist country in Europe.

Evangelization in this land — which still bears the scars of a past marked by communism and division — is a constant challenge but not an impossible goal. Czech missionaries say they perceive “miraculous touches of God’s presence” in a society increasingly thirsting for love and truth. 

Approximately 80% of the Czech Republic’s more than 10.5 million inhabitants claim to have no religious affiliation. Although about a third of the population say they believe in God — in many cases without being linked to a specific denomination — only 9.4% identify as Catholic.

Nearly a quarter of Czechs declare themselves atheist, according to the 2017 Pew Survey on European Values, making the country one of the most secularized on the continent. Comparing census results since 1991 reveals a clear decline in church membership and an increase in personal belief in God without institutional affiliation.

‘Miraculous touches of God’s presence’

Brother Šimon Růžička, OFM, who is in charge of the Franciscan urban missions in the country, explained to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that the missionaries experience “miraculous touches of God’s presence,” reflected in a “deep thirst for love and, therefore, for God.”

“We also perceive how God touches people’s hearts, sometimes even long before they meet one of our missionaries,” he added.

For Father Daniel Vícha, vicar for pastoral care of the Diocese of Ostrava-Opava, evangelizing those who “know nothing about the faith” is not “so difficult” since, he noted, matters of faith “are usually a surprise” to them.

“The majority of the population declares themselves atheist, but at the same time, 70% say they believe in ‘something,’ and that is precisely where we must begin,” he said.

The priest told ACI Prensa that he encounters greater difficulties evangelizing those who have some notion of Christianity, for example, “because of history classes or reports about abuse” and that they “are usually more unreceptive.” 

Růžička agreed with this statement and emphasized that it is more difficult “to be a prophet in your own home” and in the daily mission, in parishes, and among friends or family.

Atheism, a consequence of deep historical roots

The low number of Catholics in the country is due to several reasons. At the beginning of the 15th century, Protestant reformer Jan Hus — and the subsequent repression of his followers, the Hussites, by the Austro-Hungarian Empire — the Catholic Church has been associated in the collective memory with foreign power and imposition. 

Furthermore, the aftermath of 40 years of communist persecution following World War II left “deep wounds in the local Church” that have not yet fully healed, according to the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

After the fall of communism, there was a brief religious resurgence, though more as a political reaction than a genuine conversion. Since then, religious affiliation has continued to decline, and faith in the Czech Republic today is characterized by individual spirituality without strong institutional ties.

Vícha explained that communism has played a significant role but “simply completed something” that was already deeply ingrained in Czech society. 

“Four centuries of the nation being part of the Catholic Austrian monarchy fostered a negative predisposition toward faith,” he said.

Because of its strong sense of national identity, the priest explained, the Czech nation distanced itself from Catholicism, which was represented by the Austrian government.

“With such a varied history, it’s not surprising that Catholics make up less than 10% of the population. However, I see it as a miracle that the Church of Christ is a truly living organism, independent of worldly powers and human errors and failures, often including our own,” Růžička added.

The faith of the Czech people

Vicha emphasized that Czechs “are skeptical by nature” and that “before accepting something as their own, they need to reflect for themselves.” 

This, according to the priest, is due to their location in central Europe, where “various schools of thought have alternated and the nation has had to think for itself about what is truly right. If a Czech person accepts a faith, it very often needs to be rationally justified,” he said.

The vicar for pastoral care underscored that believers “are no longer burdened by fear, as was the case during the communist era. If their faith is authentic, they are not ashamed of it and can talk about it with their peers.” 

Conversely, if it is merely “a dead tradition” — as often happens in more religious areas — they prefer to abandon their faith “because it offers them nothing. They are very sensitive to any form of clericalism, superiority, or dogmatism,” Vícha said.

Růžička pointed out that young people receive the faith from their elders “with openness and new creativity,” and although they are sometimes “immersed in a sea of ​​confusion and uncertainty,” he assured that “they are not satisfied with mere words, but seek and yearn for a true relationship with God.”

Challenges in the face of atheism

Vícha noted that although the Catholic Church is a minority in the country, it represents the strongest community in the religious sphere. “Due to historical experience, people do not seek faith within Christianity. For this reason, it is necessary for the Church to strive, above all, to be credible.”

For his part, Růžička identified the Church’s image in the world, which sometimes shows “a divided Church, worn down by material concerns,” as one of the main challenges.

Consequently, he said that a “living and spiritual Church” is necessary, one that loves the sinner but does not tolerate sin. A Church that does not judge but encourages and shows the way through its life and works. “That Church exists in our country, and I eagerly hope that it will grow and bear fruit.”

Increase in baptisms

Some 300,000 people regularly attend Sunday Mass, which is equivalent to a third of those who identify as Catholic. Last year, nearly 15,000 baptisms were administered (more than 12% of births), and adult baptisms reached 7%, the highest percentage since 1993.

Vícha confirmed that the Church is witnessing “an increase in the number of adults requesting baptism. But more and more believers are also dying due to old age. Therefore, the total number continues to decline, even though the number of catechumens is growing.”

Růžička noted with hope that in recent years “the number of people for whom this world without God has lost its meaning and who yearn for God has indeed increased. It depends on us if we know how to respond to that desire.” 

For this reason, he “sincerely believes that in the future it will not be a matter of quantity but of quality.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Vatican City, Nov 12, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV reflected Wednesday on the world’s need for fraternity — a gift from Christ that frees us from selfishness and division.

Fraternity “is without doubt one of the great challenges for contemporary humanity, as Pope Francis saw clearly,” the pope said during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Nov. 12.

“The fraternity given by Christ, who died and rose again, frees us from the negative logic of selfishness, division, and arrogance,” he added.

Continuing his meditations on Christ’s death and resurrection, Leo said “to believe in the death and resurrection of Christ and to live paschal spirituality imbues life with hope and encourages us to invest in goodness.”

He observed that fraternity “cannot be taken for granted, it is not immediate. Many conflicts, many wars all over the world, social tensions and feelings of hatred would seem to prove the opposite.”

Fraternity “is not a beautiful but impossible dream; it is not the desire of a deluded few,” he emphasized, inviting the faithful “to go to the source, and above all to draw light and strength from him who alone frees us from the poison of enmity.”

The importance of relationships

The pope reflected that “fraternity stems from something deeply human. We are capable of relationship and, if we want, we are able to build authentic bonds between us. Without relationships, which support and enrich us from the very beginning of our life, we would not be able to survive, grow, or learn. They are manifold, varied in form and depth. But it is certain that our humanity is best fulfilled when we exist and live together, when we succeed in experiencing authentic, not formal, bonds with the people around us.”

He warned that “if we turn in on ourselves, we risk falling ill with loneliness, and even a narcissism that is concerned with others only out of self-interest. The other is then reduced to someone from whom we can take, without ever being truly willing to give, to offer ourselves.”

Recalling that “disagreement, division, and sometimes hatred can devastate even relationships between relatives, not only between strangers,” the pope cited St. Francis of Assisi’s greeting of “omnes fratres,” (“all brothers”) — “the inclusive way in which the saint placed all human beings on the same level, precisely because he recognized them in their common destiny of dignity, dialogue, welcome, and salvation.”

Leo noted that Pope Francis had reproposed this approach in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, emphasizing that the word “tutti” — Italian for “everyone” — “expresses an essential feature of Christianity, which ever since the beginning has been the proclamation of the good news destined for the salvation of all, never in an exclusive or private form.”

He explained that “this fraternity is based on Jesus’ commandment, which is new insofar as he accomplished it himself, the superabundant fulfillment of the will of the Father: Thanks to him, who loved us and gave himself for us, we can in turn love one another and give our lives for others, as children of the one Father and true brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.”

They weep and rejoice together

“Brothers and sisters support each other in hardship, they do not turn their back on those who are in need, and they weep and rejoice together in the active pursuit of unity, trust, and mutual reliance,” the pope said. “The dynamic is that which Jesus himself gives to us: ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ (cf. John 15:12).”

He concluded his general audience by reminding the faithful that “the fraternity given by Christ, who died and rose again, frees us from the negative logic of selfishness, division, and arrogance, and restores to us our original vocation, in the name of a love and a hope that are renewed every day. The Risen One has shown us the way to journey with him, to feel and to be ‘brothers and sisters all.’”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 12, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday celebrated Mass at a Benedictine monastery in Rome, where he urged the monks to confront modern challenges with prayer, study, and personal holiness.

Sant’Anselmo Church, located on the Aventine Hill, was consecrated on Nov. 11, 1900. It is part of a residential college and offices of the Benedictine Confederation, the governing body of the Order of St. Benedict. St. Anselm was a Benedictine monk and doctor of the Church.

Upon his arrival at Sant’Anselmo Church, Leo was welcomed by the abbot primate of the Benedictines, Jeremias Schröder, who symbolically handed over the keys of the church to the pope.

The Holy Father recalled that the church was erected at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when Pope Leo XIII “was convinced that your ancient order could be of great help to the good of all God’s people at a time full of challenges.”

“The monastery,” he continued, “has increasingly come to be seen as a place of growth, peace, hospitality, and unity, even during the darkest periods of history.”

Turning to the present day, Leo reflected on the challenges of the modern world, which “provoke and question us, raising issues never before encountered.”

He addressed the Benedictine monks directly, inviting them to respond to the demands of their vocation by “placing Christ at the center of our existence and our mission — beginning from that act of faith that leads us to recognize in him the Savior, and translating it into prayer, study, and the commitment of a holy life.”

He urged the monks of the Aventine to become “a beating heart within the great body of the Benedictine world — with the church at its center, according to the teachings of St. Benedict.”

“In the industrious hive of Sant’Anselmo,” he added, “may this be the place from which everything begins and to which everything returns to be verified, confirmed, and deepened before God.”

The pope also reflected on the deeper meaning of the anniversary, saying that “the dedication marks the solemn moment in the history of a sacred building when it is consecrated to be a place of encounter between space and time, between the finite and the infinite, between man and God: an open door toward eternity, where the soul finds an answer to ‘the tension between the circumstances of the moment and the light of time, of the larger horizon … which opens us to the future as a final cause that attracts.’”

He went on to recall the teaching of the Second Vatican Council in Sacrosanctum Concilium, a constitution on the sacred liturgy, which “describes all this in one of its most beautiful pages, when it defines the Church as ‘human and divine, visible yet endowed with invisible realities, zealous in action and dedicated to contemplation, present in the world and yet a pilgrim; … in such a way, however, that what is human in her is ordered and subordinated to the divine, the visible to the invisible, action to contemplation, the present reality to the future city toward which we are journeying.’”

“This,” the pope said, “is the experience of our lives and of the lives of all men and women of this world — searching for that ultimate and fundamental answer that ‘neither flesh nor blood’ can reveal, but only the Father who is in heaven; ultimately, a need for Jesus, ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God.’”

At the end of his homily, the Holy Father recalled that Jesus “is the one we are called to seek, and to him we are called to bring all those we meet — grateful for the gifts he has bestowed upon us, and above all for the love with which he has gone before us.”

“Then this temple,” Leo XIV concluded, “will increasingly become a place of joy, where we experience the beauty of sharing with others what we have freely received.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

“AI and Medicine: The Challenge of Human Dignity" was the title of a conference bringing together medical professionals, philosophers and theologians in Rome this week.

Read all

 

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 12, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Ana Lazcano, director of the University Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Francisco de Vitoria University in Spain, warned that AI is not an all-powerful deity and it is necessary to “lay the foundations of critical thinking” about the technology.

In a conversation with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Lazcano explained that the recently created institute she directs seeks to provide a unified vision of AI: “It is a discipline that has arrived like a tsunami, an interdisciplinary science that is sweeping us all away in every area, and we need a unified approach; we need to build strength together.”

For Lazcano, who also directs the university’s master’s programs in business analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and generative AI for business, this unified vision is “very necessary, because many ethical questions are also involved. How are we using AI? What is the objective? To replace us, to complement us? The more aligned the vision is with the university’s mission, the greater the benefit we will be able to obtain.”

The new University Institute of Artificial Intelligence is integrated into the university both organizationally and through the multidisciplinary nature of its collaborators: philosophers, anthropologists, educators, engineers, psychologists, and others.

“There are representatives from all faculties and departments of the university, allowing each to have their perspective from their field, share it, and find those common points,” Lazcano explained.

The proposed approach to AI from a specifically Catholic perspective, she affirmed, is the one of Pope Leo XIV: “Not to be afraid of it, to understand it, to approach it with great caution.”

This caution refers to the fact that “we cannot attribute qualities and properties to it that it does not possess: Artificial intelligence is not all-powerful. If we put this technology in its proper place — and what we are doing is prioritizing human knowledge, human wisdom, and above all, what makes us different from it — that is when we can make the most of it.”

“The moment we treat artificial intelligence as a deity, we are mistaken; it is far from that, it is a complement,” she emphasized.

Contribution to the common good

The new institute aims to base its activities on four pillars: training, research, technology transfer and application, and dissemination in order to contribute to the common good.

Lazcano shared that the institute hopes to provide society with “well-trained and prepared students,” not only in technical aspects, but above all, “for the ethical challenges posed by” AI as well as the knowledge generated through research and its practical application.

Regarding dissemination, Lazcano pointed out that “it is necessary to lay the foundations for critical thinking. There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence, and unfortunately, because there are a lot of voices, there is a lot of noise. We want what we generate to truly contribute; to be quality content that is useful to people.”

Impact on the university world

Artificial intelligence has also impacted the university sphere, Lazcano said, posing a significant challenge to “how we teach, learn, and assess.” 

She said the university should provide technology training and services to professors, students, and researchers because “when you know the tools at your disposal, you are able to apply them more effectively.”

However, “there is resistance to change,” she acknowledged, so the school hopes to implement “a technological support model in which we explain that this is a small but significant revolution; that we have to ride the wave and, above all, take advantage of its capabilities, rather than fearing it or having a negative view.”

One of the biggest challenges is that AI “is opening a spectacular technological gap between teachers and students” in which students are more advanced. “Written work no longer makes much sense. I can no longer tell if a student has done a piece of work or not,” pointed out the expert, who, nevertheless, has a hopeful outlook on the matter.

“I like to think that this is bringing us back to an original concept of university, to debate, to conversation; to putting the student at the center and supporting him in that learning process,” she said. “It’s going to completely change the rules of education, but I think for the better. Once we’ve stabilized a bit, we’ll be able to return to those fundamental subjects and make critical thinking fashionable again, rather than artificial intelligence.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Being a Christian means recognizing every person as a brother or sister and always being ready to lend a helping hand, Pope Leo XIV said.

"Brothers and sisters support each other in hardship, they do not turn their back on those who are in need, and they weep and rejoice together in the active pursuit of unity, trust and mutual reliance," the pope said Nov. 12 at his weekly general audience.

Continuing his series of audience talks on "Jesus our hope," the pope said he wanted to look specifically at Jesus' command to his followers that they love one another. 

Relationships support and enrich human life and make it possible to survive, grow and learn, he said. They are an antidote to "loneliness and even a narcissism that is concerned with others only out of self-interest."

But even more, the pope said, fraternity is "an essential feature of Christianity, which ever since the beginning has been the proclamation of the Good News destined for the salvation of all, never in an exclusive or private form."

As sons and daughters of God, he said, it is clear that all people are brothers and sisters to each other. 

In a world torn by war and division, he said, it is "more urgent today than ever, to reflect on the greeting with which St. Francis of Assisi addressed everyone, regardless of their geographical, cultural, religious and doctrinal origins: 'omnes fratres' (brothers and sisters all)."

St. Francis "placed all human beings on the same level, precisely because he recognized them in their common destiny of dignity, dialogue, welcome and salvation," the pope said.

Summarizing his talk in English, Pope Leo said that St. Francis of Assisi "knew that everyone has the same needs: to be respected, welcomed, heard and saved. Indeed, this is the Good News and a core tenet of our Christian faith: God's saving love is for everyone, no exceptions."

Addressing Portuguese speakers, the pope said Jesus calls his followers to live fraternity "through concrete gestures, words and actions."

Christians, he added, are called to "a continual striving to outdo one another in mutual respect and reciprocal care."

"May the Lord free us from all selfishness and division and renew us in hope that we may faithfully imitate his generous love for all people," he prayed.
 

BALTIMORE – As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) gathered for their Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore, the bishops issued a Special Message addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States. It marked the first time in twelve years the USCCB invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops. The last one issued in 2013 was in response to the federal government’s contraceptive mandate.

Under the regulations pertaining to statements and publications of the Conference, a “Special Message” may only be issued at plenary assemblies, and they are statements which the President of the Conference, the Administrative Committee, or the general membership consider to be appropriate in view of the circumstances at the time. To show the consensus of the body, a Special Message must receive two-thirds of the Conference members present and voting at the plenary in order to pass. In a vote of 216 votes in favor, 5 votes against, and 3 abstentions, the bishops overwhelmingly approved the Special Message, with sustained applause of the body following the vote.

The full text of the bishops’ Special Pastoral Message follows:

As pastors, we the bishops of the United States are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. 

Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation. We as Catholic bishops love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity. For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.

Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants. We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures. Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.

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

The Church’s teaching rests on the foundational concern for the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). As pastors, we look to Sacred Scripture and the example of the Lord Himself, where we find the wisdom of God’s compassion. The priority of the Lord, as the Prophets remind us, is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zechariah 7:10). In the Lord Jesus, we see the One who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9), we see the Good Samaritan who lifts us from the dust (Luke 10:30–37), and we see the One who is found in the least of these (Matthew 25). The Church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants is a response to the Lord’s command to love as He has loved us (John 13:34).

To our immigrant brothers and sisters, we stand with you in your suffering, since, when one member suffers, all suffer (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:26). You are not alone!

We note with gratitude that so many of our clergy, consecrated religious, and lay faithful already accompany and assist immigrants in meeting their basic human needs. We urge all people of good will to continue and expand such efforts. 

We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. We pray that the Lord may guide the leaders of our nation, and we are grateful for past and present opportunities to dialogue with public and elected officials. In this dialogue, we will continue to advocate for meaningful immigration reform. 

As disciples of the Lord, we remain men and women of hope, 
and hope does not disappoint! (cf. Romans 5:5)

May the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe enfold us all in her maternal and loving care and draw us ever closer to the heart of Christ.

 

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