VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When anyone cries out to God for healing or help, God always listens, Pope Leo XIV said.

"There is no cry that God does not hear, even when we are not aware we are addressing him," the pope told thousands of people gathered under a hot sun in St. Peter's Square June 11.

At his weekly general audience, the pope spoke about the Gospel story of the healing of Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52) as he continued a series of talks about how the life and ministry of Jesus is a source of hope.

And, noting that June is the month devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pope Leo invited people "to bring before the heart of Christ your most painful and fragile parts, those places in your life where you feel stuck and blocked. Let us trustfully ask the Lord to listen to our cry, and to heal us!" 

In the Gospel story, the pope said, Bartimaeus' cry, "Jesus, son of David, have pity on me," is an act of faith. And even though the crowds tried to silence the blind man, he continued to cry out to Jesus.

"He is a beggar, he knows how to ask, indeed, he can shout," the pope said. "If you truly want something, you do everything in order to be able to reach it, even when others reproach you, humiliate you and tell you to let it be."

"If you really desire it, you keep on shouting," he said. 

Pope Leo also said the Gospel story makes clear that Jesus does not go and lift Bartimaeus up, but encourages him to stand on his own, knowing that "he can rise from the throes of death."

"But in order to do this, he must perform a very meaningful gesture: he must throw away his cloak," the pope said. And "for a beggar, the cloak is everything: it is his safety, it is his house, it is the defense that protects him."

Christians today can learn from Bartimaeus, he said.

"Many times, it is precisely our apparent securities that stand in our way -- what we have put on to defend ourselves and which instead prevent us from walking," Pope Leo said. "To go to Jesus and let himself be healed, Bartimaeus must show himself to him in all his vulnerability. This is the fundamental step in any journey of healing."

"Let us trustfully bring our ailments before Jesus, and also those of our loved ones; let us bring the pain of those who feel lost and without a way out," the pope said. "Let us cry out for them too, and we will be certain that the Lord will hear us and stop."
 

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CNA Staff, Jun 10, 2025 / 16:24 pm (CNA).

Australian priest Father Liam Ryan, also known as “the surfing priest,” is making headlines after rescuing a pair of struggling surfers from a rip current — the second time the priest has saved a person in danger of drowning.

The 38-year-old priest from Our Lady Queen of Peace Cathedral Parish in Broome, Western Australia, was surfing when he saw a father and son struggling to stay afloat at Western Australia’s Cable Beach. The two were caught up in a nearby rip current.

“I saw a couple of fellows who looked like they were getting pretty close to where a little flash rip was,” he said in an interview with ABC News Australia. 

Ryan paddled over to them after he yelled out and heard no response. A few moments after reaching the area, one of the individuals climbed onto the priest’s surfboard, grateful for the help. 

“Being in a tourist town, we do get a few people who are not familiar with being around open water," he said. “[It] can look really calm, but if there’s a big tide … one minute you’re in the flags, next minute you’re on your own.”

The parish priest, who is also well known in the community for surfing and swimming in the open ocean, said this rescue was “a little scarier” than his first one almost five years ago.

On July 31, 2020, Ryan helped a surfer survive a shark attack at Bunker Bay in Western Australia. The priest was surfing while on vacation visiting his best friend when he noticed a fellow surfer — Phil Mummert — in distress. 

“I saw him off his board, looking really lost, and there was half a board floating there,” Ryan told The Catholic Leader, a publication of the Archdiocese of Brisbane.

He then saw a great white shark, approximately 13 to 16 feet long, bite Mummert’s leg. Ryan began to yell for assistance and Alex Oliver, another surfer, heard his cries for help and paddled over. Ryan and Oliver were able to hoist Mummert onto Oliver’s longboard and the two paddled him back to shore. 

According to The Catholic Leader, Mummert was “bleeding profusely” by the time they reached shore, having sustained deep shark bites in his upper leg.

Ryan shared that once Mummert was airlifted to the hospital, he took a “quiet moment of solitude in the sand dunes.” 

“I had a little bit of a cry, and just blessed the Lord,” he told The Catholic Leader. 

The priest also told The Catholic Leader that he didn’t hesitate to help.

“There’s something deep inside you that wants to help,” he said. “Christianity is built on that principle of someone giving their life for you.”

“You come face to face with what would be one of the greatest fears for a lot of people, a lot of surfers… but what gives you strength in that moment is the grace of God,” he added.

In 2022, Ryan received an Australian Bravery Award in recognition of the rescue. 

“It feels like I haven’t done anything extraordinary,” Ryan told The Catholic Leader after receiving the award. “I thank God for giving me courage in that moment, and I also remember that I was not alone.”

CNA Staff, Jun 10, 2025 / 15:51 pm (CNA).

A U.S.-based biotech company has announced the launch of Nucleus Embryo, a company that screens human embryos for desired genetic profiles, a practice the Catholic Church teaches violates human dignity and contributes to a eugenic mentality. 

People undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) will be able to screen up to 20 embryos for over 900 conditions and traits, including health risks, intelligence, and physical characteristics like height and eye color, in order to “optimize” their embryos, according to Kian Sadeghi, founder of Nucleus Genomics, parent company of Nucleus Embryo.

“I see a world where sequencing, analyzing, and editing DNA merge seamlessly to create a truly preventative health care system,” the 25-year-old Sadeghi said on the company’s website, adding: “Every parent wants to give their children more than they had. For the first time in human history, Nucleus adds a new tool to that commitment.”

Embryos that meet parental desires will be eligible for implanting, and undesirable ones will be discarded.

While the Catholic Church teaches that IVF is morally illicit because it completely separates procreation from the marital act and violates the dignity of the child, the Church also condemns preimplantation diagnosis as “shameful and utterly reprehensible,” an “expression of a eugenic mentality” that leads to the destruction of innocent human life.

Published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the 2008 document Dignitatis Personae affirms that the human embryo cannot be treated as “mere laboratory material” because this violates its dignity, which “belongs equally to every single human being, irrespective of his parents’ desires, his social condition, educational formation, or level of physical development.”

The document explicitly condemns preimplantation diagnosis and resulting genetic enhancements because they can result in the killing of human embryos “affected by various types of anomalies,” and they “presume to measure the value of a human life only within the parameters of ‘normality’ and physical well-being, thus opening the way to legitimizing infanticide and euthanasia.”

Such procedures could also marginalize individuals, widen societal divides, and “harm peaceful coexistence among individuals,” the dicastery stated.  

The document questioned who would establish which gene edits were worthwhile and which were not, and what limits, if any, should be placed on genetic enhancements “since it would be materially impossible to fulfill the wishes of every single person.”

In the end, the common good will be harmed by “favoring the will of some over the freedom of others.”

National Catholic Bioethics Center senior ethicist Father Tad Pacholczyk told CNA that “couples will now be tempted to impose quality control and eugenics onto their vulnerable and voiceless children.”

Nucleus Embryo’s website emphasizes genetic manipulation of embryos before implantation and states: “The best time to prevent disease is pre-pregnancy. Knowing what you could pass on to your kids lets you plan with clarity and avoid future surprises.”

This is a “‘command and control’ mentality over procreation,” Pacholczyk said, which allows people to treat their “own offspring like raw material … It’s tragic when our children become a mere abstraction, pawns to be played in the end game of seeking what we want.”

“Society’s demand for physical perfection places untold pressure on couples today to ‘conform to the norm’ by aborting or otherwise eliminating any less-than-perfect children,” he continued.

“Human embryos, among the most vulnerable of God’s creatures, have been entrusted to us to be received unconditionally and lovingly by all parents, without demanding that they run any gauntlet of prenatal screening. Every child, exactly as he or she arrives into our families, is precious, good, and beautiful.”

Pacholczyk said not every use of prenatal diagnostic information is morally unacceptable, however. 

Diagnostic information that “assists in the treatment of an in-utero patient represents a morally praiseworthy use of this powerful technology.”

For example, a life-threatening disease known as Krabbe’s leukodystrophy can be treated through a bone marrow transplant immediately following a child’s birth. If the disease is diagnosed prenatally, the parents can look for matching bone marrow before the child is born. Certain other diseases, such as spina bifida, can also be surgically treated prenatally.