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The International Theological Commission, founded in 1969, specializes in addressing complex topics years before they register at the grassroots level in the Catholic Church.

In 2018, for example, the ITC issued a document on the then exotic-sounding concept of synodality. Eight years and two synod on synodality sessions later, the text remains an important reference point.

The ITC is led by its Italian secretary-general Msgr. Piero Coda. It has 26 current members, who are serving a five-year term that will expire or be renewed in 2026. The U.S.-based members are the Catholic University of America professors Reinhard Huetter and Robin Darling Young.

At the beginning of March, the ITC issued a new document, which appeared this week in English translation. It’s called Quo vadis, humanitas? (“Humanity, where are you going?”).

What’s the genesis of the new document, subtitled “Thinking through Christian Anthropology in the Face of Certain Scenarios for the Future of Humanity”? And what does it say?

Here’s a brief guide for busy readers.

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What’s the background?

During its current five-year term, the ITC has focused on Christian anthropology — the study of human beings in relation to God — in light of contemporary cultural challenges.

It has looked at the topic through the lens of Gaudium et spes, a foundational document of Vatican Council II, whose 60th anniversary fell in 2025.

This project was driven by a subcommission with the following members:

• 🇪🇸 Fr. Javier Prades López (chairman)

• 🇮🇹 Fr. Alberto Cozzi

• 🇬🇧 Fr. Simon Francis Gaine, O.P.

• 🇦🇷 Fr. Carlos Maria Galli

• 🇺🇲 Reinhard Huetter

• 🇵🇪 Fr. Victor Ronald La Barrera Villarreal

• 🇦🇺 Sr. Isabell Naumann, I.S.S.M.

• 🇨🇩 Sr. Josée Ngalula, R.S.A.

• 🇧🇪 Fr. Bernard Pottier, S.J.

After three years of study and discussion, ITC members unanimously approved the text Quo vadis, humanitas? in 2025. It was submitted to the ITC’s president, Vatican doctrinal chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who in turn presented it to Pope Leo XIV.

With the pope’s approval, Fernández authorized the document’s publication on Feb. 9, 2026. It was published in Italian and Spanish on March 4.

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What does it say?

The document argues that culture is changing so rapidly, due to technological advances, that previously stable notions of what it means to be human are at risk of being overthrown.

It suggests ways in which Catholics can convincingly proclaim the Christian understanding of humanity’s nature and purpose as the world is shaken by a series of cultural, economic, health, and military crises.

It argues that human life is defined by relationships — with nature, others, and above all God — and because human existence is a gift, it comes with certain constraints and responsibilities, but can open up to an awe-inspiring communion with God.

The text is around 28,000 words and takes an average reader roughly two hours to absorb. Its target audience is likely theologians, philosophers interested in Catholic thought, and laity who have previously studied theological texts. Its style is unusually clear for a Vatican document.

The text consists of an introduction, followed by four chapters, and a conclusion.

The 20-paragraph introduction sets the scene of a world in crisis where consensus on the nature of humanity has been shattered. It says that it aims to build on Gaudium et spes, which “systematically proposed a vision of the human being illumined by the mystery of Christ,” applying its insights to distinctively 21st-century questions.

It explains that it will do this by considering four “key categories,” which are highlighted with italics in the following sentence.

“It begins by considering the notion of development, which underpins many of the technological and social innovations currently underway,” it explains. “The need to ensure integral human development then leads to a reflection on the category of vocation as a key to anthropological understanding, which in turn refers to the question of human identity, on both a personal and social level. Finally, it explores the historical and free dramatic condition that characterizes human identity, understood as vocation, and its dialogue with new techno-scientific challenges.”

The document is responding to two rising schools of thought: transhumanism and posthumanism.

It defines transhumanism as “a philosophical movement that operates on the belief that human beings can and should use the resources of science and technology to overcome the physical and biological limitations of the human condition, in particular aging and even death.”

It says that posthumanism “criticizes traditional humanism, questioning the specificity of human beings and the existence of a ‘human form’ that, as such, deserves to be preserved because it carries a universally valid meaning.” It advocates a blurring of the boundaries between human beings and machines.

The document rejects both techno-utopianism — the idea that technological advances will render humanity’s perennial problems obsolete — and the “radical pessimism” that predicts human beings will be replaced by cyborgs. It offers a sustained critique of what it considers to be the fantasies and delusions of transhumanism and posthumanism.

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The first chapter, Development: Humanism and posthumanism, which contains 42 numbered paragraphs, explores what qualifies as authentic human development, against the background of the race to create an artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that is “capable of replacing all computational and operational aspects of human intelligence thanks to extremely high computing speeds.”

The 28-paragraph second chapter, Life as vocation: The human person as an agent of history, highlights “some fundamental dimensions of human experience” that are in danger of being eclipsed by false ideas of progress found in transhumanism and posthumanism.

It calls for renewed attention on the historical and intersubjective dimensions of human experience. It says that reflecting on these dimensions can lead to a recognition that each human life has a distinct calling, or vocation, whose nature is revealed in a prayerful relationship with God.

The 22-paragraph third chapter, The gift of life and communion in the face of scenarios for the future of humanity, explores how authentic human identity can be recognized and distinguished from counterfeits. It defines identity as both “a gift and a task,” as it is freely given by God and requires responsible development.`

The 31-paragraph fourth chapter, Humanity affirmed, saved and elevated, argues that what humanity truly needs is not the “evolutionary leap” proposed by posthumanism, “but rather a saving relationship” with God. Life, it says, is unavoidably dramatic, requiring us to grow amid ever-present tensions.

“The Christian proclamation of salvation offers a completely human way, by grace, of living these polarities which is both healing and elevating,” it comments.

It explores tensions between the material and spiritual, man and woman, and individual and community, insisting they can only be properly understood in the light of God’s plan of salvation.

The six-paragraph conclusion, The gift of divinization as true humanization, returns to its title question: where is humanity heading?

It says: “Today more than ever, the anthropological and cultural proposal that Christianity offers involves the conception of life as a vocation, which makes possible a human way of inhabiting time and space and of conceiving intersubjective relationships, while at the same time becoming a prophetic judgment on the more disturbing aspects we cannot fail to recognise in transhumanism and posthumanism.”

It underlines that the ultimate goal of human life is accepting “the gift of divinization by grace.” This refers to the daring concept of theosis (divinization) found in the writings of the Church Fathers, who taught that human beings can become godly through God’s grace.

The text says: “The Christian proclamation identifies the appropriate way to go beyond (trans) the limits of human experience, with the deification (theosis) possible only to God, which is the exact opposite of transhumanist self-deification.”

The conclusion stresses that the risks associated with current technological changes are exceptionally high, especially for the poor and vulnerable, who “run the risk of becoming waste material, ‘collateral damage,’ swept away without mercy.”

It challenges Christians to be “humble sentinels” who are alert to the impact of social developments on the weakest.

“We must respond with a prophetic word and with generous involvement,” it says. “The authenticity of our faith and the human value of our lives are at stake.”

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Happy Friday friends,

Six years ago this week, Seattle became the first U.S. Catholic diocese to suspend public celebration of the Eucharist in the face of the coronavirus.

Announcing the move at the time, Archbishop Paul Etienne called it “an extreme measure of caution,” and said that “out of an extreme caution, we want to do our part to prevent the spread of this virus.”

The diocesan dominoes fell fast thereafter, with churches closing nationwide, often in response to government orders, but as often in anticipation of them, and even culminating in the indefinite suspension of baptisms in some places.

The death toll eventually taken by the pandemic sits north of a million lives in the United States. And the Covid effect on our society and politics may eventually become one of the great moments of speculation and argument by historians.

But to date there has been no systematic reflection on the long-term effects of voluntary ecclesiastical lockdown nor, as best I have seen, any substantive discussion among Church leaders to assess with hindsight the posture of “extreme caution” the bishops adopted.

For myself, I look back on how the Church confronted the pandemic with distinctly mixed emotions.

Pope Francis’ famous Eucharistic benediction urbi et orbi is a defining image of the 21st century Church, and one of the most powerful and direct announcements of faith to a wounded world I can think of.

And I know personally dozens of priests who sincerely believed that their entire formation and ministry were in preparation for spiritual service during the pandemic — ministering to the dying, the isolated, the abandoned — and quite literally willing, to the point of signing papers to this effect with hospitals, to risk their own death to minister the sacraments.

But alongside those heroic examples and moments, many of the Church’s leaders offered a catechesis as clear as it was unintended: that, in the end, the sacraments were not ultimately a matter of life and death.

This is not to say the bishops should have opted for open defiance of all precaution, or acted with reckless disregard for human life. I am not saying that.

But as clearly as I remember the beginning of the lockdown in March of 2020, I remember the public pressure and the private opprobrium and even direct abuse heaped by some, some of their brother bishops even, on those bishops who broke ranks in the months that followed, leading themselves or authorizing celebrations like drive-in Masses in church parking lots.

The pandemic was for the Church a moment of truth; amid a visceral, global confrontation with the reality of death, the Church was asked what answer she had to give in response to it — what Gospel did she preach, what power had her sacraments to save?

The answers were by no means unanimous, and I hope the lessons of that time can one day be learned and understood.

Anyway, that was then, here’s the news.

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The News

Pope Leo has appointed Bishop Luis Marín de San Martín, OSA, as the new papal almoner, succeeding the Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who will return to lead his home Archdiocese of Łódź.

The now-Archbishop Marín, who has been serving as the undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod, is a published authority on St. John XXIII’s vision for Vatican Council II, leading to role as an organizer of the global synodal process launched by Pope Francis in 2021.

But before that, as an Augustinian, he was first called to Rome by the then-prior general, Robert Prevost, to serve as general archivist, living in the same community house as Prevost. They enjoyed what Marín recalled as “five years of wonderful coexistence.”

So who is Marín, and what kind of role has the pope given him now? Read all about it here.

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Vatican officials will investigate allegations of psychological and spiritual abuse in the Sisters Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus, women formerly in formation with the religious community say they’ve been told.

The community is connected to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, a society of priests known for its use and promotion of preconciliar liturgical texts.

While a number of former postulants of the women’s group allege a culture of intimidation and fear, manipulative spiritual practices, and disordered governance in their community, the community’s superior says that women who have raised complaints about the community “were unable to adapt” to religious life, and that their concerns were “exaggerations or misunderstandings of our rules and of different situations.”

But an expert on abuses in religious life and the Church told The Pillar that the women flagged issues that could constitute “spiritual abuse,” and which merit more examination from Church officials.

This is a long read, with some deep and clearly painful experiences recounted. And it raises important questions about what makes for a healthy Christian experience of religious life.

Read the whole thing.

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The excommunicated Poor Clares of Belorado have left their convent just ahead of a scheduled March 12 eviction, putting an end to a nearly two-year legal battle with the Archdiocese of Burgos in Spain.

The sisters announced their split from the Catholic Church in May 2024, leading to their excommunication a month later. Since then, they have faced allegations of financial misconduct, leading to the brief arrest of the community’s superior in November 2025.

In December, Spanish police transferred to another Poor Clares’ convent five older sisters who were neither excommunicated nor included in the eviction proceedings. The Archdiocese of Burgos also recently announced that two former nuns who had fled the convent have reconciled with the Catholic Church.

This is, dare we to hope, the end of a long, complicated, occasionally farcical but always tragic saga for the sisters. Read all about it here.

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The Vatican released a new document this week presenting a theological rationale for expanding women’s access to leadership positions in the Catholic Church.

The 74-page text, on “women’s participation in the life and leadership of the Church,” was produced by the fifth of the 10 study groups formed by Pope Francis following the 2023 session of the synod on synodality.

The document is particularly significant because women’s role in the Church was one of the most hotly discussed topics at the synod on synodality. The meeting’s final document mentioned women almost 50 times, calling for “increased participation of laymen and laywomen in Church discernment processes and all phases of decision-making processes.”

So if you want a look at the new document’s background, its structure, and its content, Luke Coppen explains it all here.

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Parishioners in South Africa are planning to appeal against a decision to reassign their pastor, which they believe was taken because the priest reportedly engages in traditional African healing practices.

Fr. Sifiso Ndlovu, who has served as pastor of the Pinetown church since 2021, is one of two clerics in the Durban archdiocese who have been dubbed “the poster priests for syncretism” by the local newspaper.

The personnel moves in the Durban archdiocese follow a joint pastoral letter issued in September 2025 by eight KwaZulu-Natal bishops that cautioned priests against syncretism, which they defined as “the blending of Catholic beliefs and practices with traditional African practices (esp. ubungoma) in ways that contradict the Gospel.”

Read all about it here.

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What makes a lord

Back home in London, this week saw the final agreement to expel the remaining 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords.

Having previously worked in Parliament, and having had some things to do with the workings of the upper house, I’m sad to see them go.

I’ve written before about the irony of how the British hereditary aristocracy have actually come to be the most diverse demographic (ideologically and socioeconomically) in the chamber, compared to the Anglican bishops and the hundreds of political placemen, party donors and superannuated civil servants who make up the bulk of the place since the great constitutional vandalization of 1999.

This final severing of a link to the kingdom’s history, dating back past the Magna Carta and to the Witan of the Saxon kingdom of England, is a loss to the institutional and cultural continuity of the country.

Though it’s not especially fashionable to say so, I happen to think that continuity, especially now, is of infinitely more importance than any absurd political posturing about democratic values — values which will be as alien to membership in the House of Lords with or without the presence of the Dukes of Norfolk for another 1,000 years, and most of the House of Commons too, come to that.

When I was still in the game back in Westminster, the remaining hereditaries counted among themselves some of the most dedicated people in politics, and a fair few entitled chancers as well. As I say, they are a wonderfully representative mixed bag in their way.

But I have been a little charmed and more than a little amused to see a number of Americans — m’collegue JD among them — pining wistfully about noblesse oblige and the Platonic virtues of aristocracy with a smattering Bridehead-ish anemoia.

I think most Americans’ idea of a lord is largely imagined from the affectations of East Coast Americans like William Buckley and George Plimpton — faultlessly mannered, impeccably dressed, slightly eccentric, and dependably patrician. A Charles Dance character, of one stripe or another.

In reality, properly landed English aristos tend to wear trousers louder than an AC/DC concert, swear like stevedores and smell like damp spaniel — not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you, this could describe some of my best friends. But few if any of these have set foot in the House of Lords for decades, and that is the real loss, and misapprehension of the current reform.

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I’m Luke Coppen and I aim to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and comment.

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A Synod on Synodality study group releases its final report on the participation of women in the life of the Church. Two dioceses in Germany publish …

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When he heard the words “Robertum Franciscum,” Marín immediately realized the cardinals had chosen a man he knew better than almost anyone at the Vatican: Cardinal Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV.

In the following days, the Spanish bishop became a sought-after commentator on the first Augustinian pope, helping to shape early perceptions of Leo XIV.

It was clear from their public interactions that Leo XIV held Marín in high regard, evidently grateful to have a familiar face — with its distinctive white beard and rimless glasses — close by.

Given the pope’s esteem, it seemed only a matter of time before the 64-year-old undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod received weightier responsibilities.

On March 12, Leo XIV appointed Marín as the new papal almoner, succeeding the Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who will return to lead his home archdiocese of Łódź.

Who is the now-Archbishop Marín? And what is the role that he’s inheriting?

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Who is Archbishop Marín?

Luis Marín de San Martín was born in Madrid on Aug. 21, 1961. He attended the city’s prestigious Colegio San Agustín, run by the Augustinian order. After his studies, he enrolled in the order, taking temporary vows in 1982 and solemn vows in 1985. He was ordained a priest in 1988.

Marín’s first priestly assignments were in San Sebastián de los Reyes, a suburban area north of Madrid, the lofty Sierra de Madrid, and the capital itself. He remembers these as “years of incredible richness,” in which he discovered “the greatness of the priestly vocation, the task of evangelization, and the need for coherence.”

Marín embarked on further theological studies, gaining licentiates from the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He earned a theology doctorate from Comillas with a dissertation on the ecclesiology of Pope St. John XXIII.

Marín would go on to write several books about “the Good Pope,” becoming an authority on John XXIII’s vision for Vatican Council II. It was partly this background that led to his later role as an organizer of the global synodal process launched by Pope Francis in 2021.

In the 1990s, Marín served in parishes, oversaw the formation of future priests, and led theological institutes. In 1999, he was appointed provincial councillor of the Augustinian Province of Spain.

In 2002, Marín became prior of the Monastery of Santa María de la Vid in northern Spain, where St. Dominic lived before he founded his own religious order. It was in this period that Marín first met Fr. Robert Francis Prevost, the then-prior general of the Augustinian order, during the latter’s visits to community houses in Spain.

In 2008, Marín received a summons to Rome from Prevost. There, Marín served as the order’s general archivist, living in the same community house as Prevost. They enjoyed what Marín recalled as “five years of wonderful coexistence.”

In 2013, Marín became the Augustinian order’s assistant general and president of the Augustinian Institute of Spirituality.

After Prevost was sent to lead Peru’s Chiclayo diocese in 2014, he would call on Marín to help in the continuing formation of local priests. Marín observed how Prevost loved to drive around the city, being greeted warmly wherever he went.

Pope Francis named Marín as the undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops on Feb. 6, 2021. Marín was ordained a bishop on April 11, 2021, at Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral. Cardinal Mario Grech, head of the General Secretariat of the Synod, was scheduled to preside, but was unable to travel to Spain due to COVID-19 restrictions. Madrid’s Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra was the principal consecrator instead. Marín took the episcopal motto Deus caritas est (“God is love”).

He quickly became a well-liked figure at the General Secretariat of the Synod, with an easy-going personality that made him a good teamworker who could build consensus. When Marín spoke about synodality, he generally avoided jargon, stressing its spiritual aspect and roots in Church history.

In a 2022 address, he described the synodal transformation of the Church as “an irreversible process, with different speeds, full of nuances and in need of clarification, but with no turning back.”

He added: “We should not be frightened by the different speeds, nor should we be anxious to achieve immediate results; the important thing is to assume a new, more coherent way of being Church, advancing serenely along this path of renewal and hope. If possible, with enthusiasm.”

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What is a papal almoner?

From the earliest times, popes had trusted collaborators who carried out charitable work on their behalf. They were typically deacons.

The post of papal almoner was first mentioned in a bull issued by the 12th-century Pope Innocent III. An office of papal charities, responsible for care of the poor, was first organized by the 13th-century Pope Gregory X.

Leo XIII, the long-reigning 19th-century pope, came up with a creative way to fund the office, through the sale of papal blessing parchments — a practice that continues to this day.

Papal almoners were typically low-profile figures, despite holding the rank of archbishop and being members of the papal household. But the role became dramatically more prominent under Pope Francis, who had been known for his closeness to the poor as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

The Argentine pope wanted a papal almoner who would seek out the poor and attend to their needs, without waiting to be asked. He chose Fr. Konrad Krajewski, who had previously served as Papal Master of Ceremonies.

Pope Francis famously advised Krajewski to “sell your desk.” Being the papal almoner was no longer a desk job, but an adventurous calling. The pope gave Krajewski a red hat, making him the first papal almoner to be a cardinal.

Stories began to emerge of Krajewski’s daring and unconventional methods of delivering aid. In 2019, he climbed down a manhole to restore electricity to a building occupied by 450 squatters, including 100 children. The action prompted a political storm in Italy.

But Krajewski insisted the gesture was not political. “I am the almoner, and I worry about the poor, those families, children … they finally have light and hot water,” he said.

Later, he would personally deliver truckloads of humanitarian aid to front-line areas in Ukraine.

Pope Francis further enhanced the papal almoner’s role in 2022, when he issued the apostolic constitution Praedicate evangelium, which turned the office of papal charities into the Dicastery for the Service of Charity. Krajewski became the dicastery’s prefect, in addition to his role as almoner.

Praedicate evangelium defined the dicastery as “a special expression of mercy” that “carries out in every part of the world the work of aid and assistance offered in the name of the Roman Pontiff.”

Krajewski will likely be a hard act to follow as papal almoner, given his ingenuity and courage. Archbishop Marín is a slightly older man, with a different temperament and background. But those who know him say he has a spiritual groundedness and serenity that should enable him to leave his own mark on the role.

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The community is connected to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, a society of priests known for its use and promotion of preconciliar liturgical texts.

While a number of former postulants of the women’s group allege a culture of intimidation and fear, manipulative spiritual practices, and disordered governance in their community, the community’s superior says that women who have raised complaints about the community “were unable to adapt” to religious life, and that their concerns were “exaggerations or misunderstandings of our rules and of different situations.”

But an expert on abuses in religious life and the Church told The Pillar that the women flagged issues that could constitute “spiritual abuse,” and which merit more examination from Church officials.

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The Sisters Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest was founded in 2001, as an outgrowth of the male Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, founded 11 years earlier by French clerics.

The women’s community has 71 sisters, according to its website, and was reportedly given in 2008 recognition as an association of pontifical right, meaning that its internal governance and life is overseen directly by the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life at the Vatican.

The community has houses in several European countries, with its motherhouse and novitiate in Italy, and one house in Wisconsin.

The Pillar spoke with several women who lived in formation houses of the community as postulants, entering with hopes to find an expression of traditional religious life in the community, with the experience of contemplative prayer, worship, and religious community among sisters.

The women say they knew adjustment to religious life would be difficult, but they did not expect to experience psychological and physical harm in the community, which they say is the result of an unhealthy leadership culture and disordered notions of obedience.

Several women who lived in formation with the community told The Pillar that they experienced and witnessed inadequate living conditions, psychologically manipulative exercises of authority, a pattern of isolation between sisters, hazardous and unsanitary working conditions, and a culture of fear and intimidation during their time in the community.

The women said that formation in the community seemed designed to defeat them psychologically, to rid them of self-confidence, or to condition them to distrust themselves and place an unhealthy reliance on religious superiors. They added that they could not approach superiors about concerns, and that voicing their experiences was not welcome in the community.

And in a letter written in 2024 to the community’s superior, one woman said that she and another postulant who lived with the community experienced “precipitous psychological decline during our time in the Community, developing problems that we had not experienced before.”

“At various points, with varying intensity, one or the other of us experienced …. frequent crying, panic attacks, insomnia, nightmares, self-harm (that once occasioned a doctor’s visit), suicidal feelings,” the woman wrote.

“While one might expect weaknesses to be revealed in religious life, it is worrisome that in our case new wounds were inflicted.”

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One woman told The Pillar that when she entered postulancy with the community in 2022, she first experienced uninhabitable living conditions, with little heat, no hot water, and insect infestations in the house where postulants lived. She recalled finding a worm in her breakfast bread one morning, and being instructed to clean, cook, and eat rotting vegetables — even while “the canons and the superiors were always served the freshest food.”

When they drew attention to things in need of repair or raised concerns, the women said, they were chastised for complaining.

Several women attested to similar conditions in conversation with The Pillar, saying that problems began soon after they entered the community, even because of the language of the house.

“Before entering, we were told that we’d learn French in the community. But some weeks after arrival we were expected to conduct ourselves entirely in French, and were scolded by the novice mistress” if they did not, one said.

And they said that while they were issued French grammar texts for self-study, their language limitations often were treated as moral failures, or used as occasions for public humiliation.

“We were supposed to be learning French during this time,” one woman recalled, “but the only words that the sisters taught me were the words for ‘dust’ and the words for ‘wash by hand.’”

“While every single sister I interacted with could speak English,” she said, “there was just no effort made [to teach].”

When postulants were uncertain how to say something in French, they say, their formator, the community’s novice mistress, would pretend she couldn’t understand. Eventually, the language barrier would become a source of shame.

“You just feel so defeated,” one woman recalled.

Another told The Pillar that insistence on the French language was “a sick play of power and submission,” recalling that superiors would give instructions or directives in quickly-spoken French, and then punish or scold women who failed to understand and comply.

In one formator’s “twisted mind, she thought that would help all of us learn faster,” a woman recalled.

Though there were English-speaking priests in the vicinity, “my spiritual director didn’t even speak English,” one woman recalled, “I had a very, very hard time. The two meetings we had together …he didn’t speak more than three words of English.”

Another woman remembered that “all of my meetings with my spiritual director [a priest of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest] were trying to express the fact that we were being mistreated, but he could barely understand what I was saying.”

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Alongside insistence on French language, the women say, they experienced isolation in their formation — being rarely allowed to speak or confer with other postulants, unable to seek guidance from outside of their community, and even struggling to schedule meetings with priests.

One woman recalled that when she talked with a priest who spoke English for confession — the postulants’ chaplain — he encouraged her to meet for further conversation, because the experience of the community was leading to spiritual scrupulosity and confusion. She was, she recalled, in a crisis, and the priest had offered her pastoral counseling.

“He offered to speak to me, and that day I requested verbally and in writing that I wanted an appointment with him. But it took 23 days to actually get that appointment scheduled.”

“They asked me, ‘Are you actually sure you have to talk to him? This is kind of irregular. Do you really need to bother [the priest]? You know he can’t be your spiritual director, right?’”

“And yet,” she told The Pillar, “he was the only canon who spoke English.”

Another woman recalled that postulants were, in principle, permitted to write letters to immediate family members for two hours per month, though a time was actually allocated for correspondence only every six weeks or so — “and never during Advent or Lent.”

And — she said — correspondence came with strict regulation.

Postulants were told, she said, that letters home could not disclose interior difficulties or struggles, discuss other sisters, “cast the community in a bad light,” or disclose any details about the community’s life. Instead, she said, postulants were instructed that letters were meant to “spiritually edify” recipients, and considered “a concession to the weakness and worldliness of our families.”

Photographs could not be requested from family members, she recalled, and if photographs were sent, they could be kept for a week and then turned in to superiors.

Communication inside the community was also restricted, women told The Pillar — with the Sister Adorers observing a “rule of three” which meant that women “could never speak to another woman of the community without it being a group of three. The only exceptions were the novice mistress and (exceedingly rarely) the mother superior.”

“We could never confide in another sister,” one woman recalled, leaving her isolated and without trust in companions.

The women said those norms came alongside ever-shifting, exacting, and sometimes ambiguous disciplinary norms, and even strict rationing of personal supplies like toilet paper and hygiene items. They also came with sharp criticism from superiors, they said, in a pattern which seemed to suggest not issues for correction, but deficiencies in their identity.

“We were always told over and over again that we have to spiritualize everything, and that every word that comes from them is coming from God actually. We were told that whatever [a superior] says, it’s God telling us. So when she told me that I was awkward, or clumsy, or dirty, or irreligious, I heard God telling me that.”

Women recalled unsafe working conditions — among them, using ladders improperly, without securing them and women instructed to stand at a ladder’s apex, well above its highest permitted standing rung, in order to clean. Another woman recalled being instructed to clean calcium buildup inside a toilet bowl using a pin, and being denied gloves when she asked for them.

One woman recalled that shortly before she left, she was charged with mopping the kitchen at night. She noticed some cockroaches, and told another postulant. Word of the insects got to the novice mistress, she said, and she was identified in a community meeting as “lazy” and as failing to properly clean the kitchen area.

The superior said in the community meeting that “the sister who is not cleaning the kitchen well would make the whole community sick because of the cockroaches,” she said.

One woman recalled providing a personal hygiene item to a young woman who was visiting the community and was suddenly in need of a feminine pad — which were kept under lock and key in a supply closet, and doled out to each woman by a superior. She was later privately scolded, she said, because she did not have permission to distribute the community’s property, and it was not her responsibility to care for the visitor.

Because she wasn’t given any additional feminine pads to make up for the one she provided, the woman said, she eventually bled through her clothing.

Another woman, who wrote a letter to the community’s superior after her departure, attested that such instances — “being scolded for common-sense decision making” — in the community were “commonplace.”

The woman’s letter said that when she was eventually permitted to raise concerns with her novice mistress, she was made to feel that her difficulties in religious life were her fault, and that any sense of isolation she had experienced was caused by her own faults in relating to sisters and others in formation.

She said the conversation reflected a kind of moral spiritualization of her concerns — that any difficulty she had must be the consequence of vice.

“I was also concerned by a recurring tone that assumed that incoming postulants were incompetent, selfish, and immature – as opposed to being the intelligent, generous, and integrous women I know my peers to have been,” the woman wrote in 2024.

“Morally neutral human weaknesses were often given an inappropriate moral spin. For example, we were told that poor singing indicated pride; using our limited free time for something other than completing chores was a lack of charity; leaving hair in the bathroom was a lack of zeal.”

“The negative effect of this cannot be overstated,” the woman wrote, recalling that she and another postulant “both often overheard sobbing in the cells of the novitiate at night, and we ourselves frequently cried during the night.”

Another woman offered a similar recollection, telling The Pillar that “the rule specifically said that we could not ask questions or seek to know things that were not openly presented to us, because this would be the vice of curiosity. We were told to never ask why we were ordered to do something or to seek information.”

Because of that, one woman recalled, “women who left the community,” or were reassigned, “simply disappeared overnight. Usually there were no goodbyes — except in the case of some postulants.”

Women recalled “chronic exhaustion,” and “fatigue” in their formation period, noting the work assignments often occupied the whole of the daily 30-minute recreation period. They said if they made mistakes because they were tired, they would be sanctioned for failing to put in their full effort. They said they were not provided opportunities to see physicians and dentists, even when health problems required it, or medical providers required follow up appointments. That, they said, compounded health problems.

The women added concern about what one called an “an almost superstitious and legalistic ban on criticism” of superiors or common life.

That element of the sisters’ life, one woman said, means that “when trying to talk about things that are dysfunctional at best and abusive,” women might be silenced “by people telling you ‘Well, you’re not allowed to criticize, so you can’t say that.’”

Another recalled that the “prohibition [on] all critique [and] criticism” was emphasized frequently to women in formation, being told that criticism of the community or of a particular practice would be a violation of charity.

Several women told The Pillar that the abbreviated rule they were given was explicit on that front, referring to internal criticism as “a slow poison that kills the community.”

The Pillar requested a copy of that text, but was told that it is currently under revision and not available for public review.

The effect of those experiences, the women said, was to give them a sense that they were inadequate, too weak, or too craven to be good religious — or even, in some cases, to be loved by God — a situation which left them disoriented, discouraged, and confused.

But one woman said they also realized that what they were experiencing was “very wrong.” For some women that led to departure — others said they left to tend to visa or health issues, and decided not to return.

“In my mind, I was always asking ‘how does that compare to the Gospel, and the epistles of St. John?’”

“I would think about St. John saying that ‘whoever does not love the brother before him can not love God.’ And so there was this set of core beliefs that kept me grounded, but I was still pretty thoroughly scandalized by my experience,” one woman recalled.

One told The Pillar that when she departed to attend to a health issue, she planned to return as soon as possible. But eventually, her perspective changed.

“For me, it was like an abusive relationship; when you’re in it you’re madly in love. Once you get out of the situation, you see yourself, what you have become, what’s been done to you,” she told The Pillar.

One woman wrote the community’s superior after departing that “religious life ought to be a school of charity, but we did not feel confident that we could learn such a lesson but rather felt we were in danger of being humanly and spiritually crippled.”

The women also raised questions about the structure of the Sisters Adorers — which is organized as a public association of the faithful, recognized and approved by the Holy See — which might eventually be approved formally as an institute of consecrated life.

They noted that members do not take perpetual vows, instead taking temporary private vows for one year at a time — a relatively uncommon circumstance in contemporary religious life — in a situation which leaves women subject to the prospect of dismissal at any time. They noted that instability may have contributed to the departure of some of the earliest sisters in the community, and to regular turnover among the community’s professed sisters.

The women also noted that the community’s superior is not chosen by the sisters themselves, but appointed by the superior of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest — a situation which they say reflects their broader experience that the women’s community is positioned often in roles of servitude and deference toward the Institute, its priests and seminarians, even regarding its own internal life.

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Mother Madeline-Marie, superior of the community, told The Pillar that she has heard criticism of the community, and was aware of a testimony published in September by women who spent time with the community in formation as postulants.

But she told The Pillar by email that the women raising concerns “left for various reasons, but it was obvious that they couldn’t stay because they were unable to adapt.”

That came as a surprise to the women, who emphasized that they were not dismissed from the community, and that some were explicitly told they were free to return if they chose.

Noting that “these young women had great difficulties from the moment they arrived,” the superior added, without specifying particular concerns, that “some of their behavior was even unacceptable in a convent, but patience must be practiced if one is a disciple of Saint Francis de Sales.”

Mother Madeline-Marie said the community “did our best to help them adapt and to answer their questions and respond to their needs.”

“Leaving one’s family and the world to embrace a more secluded life, a life in silence, a more regulated life, giving up some of the comforts and conveniences of today’s life is very difficult, even for those who do it out of love for God.”

She added that when she received a letter expressing concern about the experience of some postulants, she “took it very seriously. I visited our other houses to investigate. What I came to see was that there were exaggerations and misunderstandings of our rules and of different situations. All one had to do was to ask the Mistress of Novices or the Superior for an explanation. I could see that there was a clear lack of understanding on their part regarding communication with the superiors, exposing one’s difficulties and asking for help.”

Despite her own satisfaction, Mother Madeleine-Marie said that she asked for a review from the Institute of Christ the King.

She explained that “I asked the Institute [of Christ the King]’s prior general if a canonical visitation could be carried out in each of our houses. During the visit, each sister was free to say what she wanted: her concerns, her worries, her difficulties, how things were going, whether she was eating well, sleeping well, being treated well, and so on. All this was done, and Rome, with whom we work closely and regularly, received this information.”

The Pillar requested the results of the visitation conducted by the Institute of Christ the King, but Mother Madeleine-Marie told The Pillar that the report “must remain confidential, as has always been the case.”

”I can tell you that the results were positive, and that has helped us,” she told The Pillar.

Mother Madeleine-Marie pushed back on claims of rigidity in the life of her community, telling The Pillar that “our rule of life is based on the Rule of Saint Augustine. Our community is Salesian, which allows great flexibility and adaptation according to individuals and circumstances.”

Still, she did emphasize that obedience is important, explaining by email that “a religious community is a family where paternal/maternal and filial love must reign. Superiors in particular exercise this paternity/maternity.”

But the “exercise of authority,” she insisted, “is rooted in mutual trust, in the image of the love between God and us, his children.”

She also pushed back on charges that criticism is not welcome in the community, telling The Pillar that she and other formators “regularly encourage all our sisters and postulants to tell us about the difficulties they encounter so that we can help them.”

“We gladly invite such constructive criticism, as the Rule of St. Benedict asks, because everyone sees things differently, which brings a richness and diverse perspectives on different circumstances and situations,” Mother Madeleine-Marie said. “This allows us to better adapt in order to facilitate the religious life of our sisters and the formation of our novices and postulants.”

Mother Madeleine-Marie declined to provide a copy of her community’s constitutions or governing documents, saying that they are “being revised” and not available for public review.

But, she said, “as soon as these deliberations, accompanied by Rome, have come to an end, the final form of the constitutions can be made available.”

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—
Fr. Thomas Berg is a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, and an expert on abuse in religious life.

Berg told The Pillar that the women’s description of their formation in the Sisters Adorers community could indicate numerous “red flags” for the prospect of “serious spiritual abuse.”

The priest offered a definition of spiritual abuse from Samuel Fernández, a scholar at the Catholic University of Chile:

“Spiritual abuse in the Catholic context is the misuse of spiritual authority that controls the victim to the point that the abuser, taking the place of God, obstructs or nullifies the victim’s spiritual freedom. This type of abuse is perpetrated by an individual or a system supported by the Church as trustworthy. Hence, it always has an ecclesial dimension. This kind of abuse can harm the person at the spiritual, psychological, and physical levels.”

Berg flagged the women’s account of the community’s approach toward obedience — the use of shame in correction, and any rhetoric which might equate the superior’s direction to God’s own will.

He quoted from “Abuses in religious life,” a 2023 book by Carthusian superior general Fr. Dysmas de Lassus: “What God is asking of her is not the same as what the superior asked. This clarification is so important that it should be chiseled over the entrance to the novice’s quarters.”

Those issues, he said, constitute “hallmarks of unhealthy obedience, where the exercise of authority becomes authoritarianism — ‘you’re going to do this because I say so.’”

That approach “could be appropriate for 10-year-olds,” Berg said, “because maybe they don’t have the wherewithal to act responsibly, but it’s never appropriate in religious life, nor in any exercise of authority in the Church.”

Further, the priest said, while developing the virtue of obedience is important in a period of formation, that sense of obedience should be ordered toward making good judgments with some degree of autonomy, rather than obeying rules without freedom for discernment. Any notion of “blind obedience” in religious life should be “abandoned altogether,” Berg said.

On that front, he flagged accounts of correction for the use of judgment as potentially indicative of problems in the community’s sense of obedience.

Berg also commented on reports that access to spiritual directors and confessors was generally limited to one hour per month, and especially about a woman’s account of facing questions about why she wanted to meet with a priest.

“Absolutely red flag, absolute red flag. That to me sounds like an isolationism, a cutting off,” he said.

And he raised concern about their account of being directed to limit information in letters to family.

“That,” he said, “is a huge red flag.” In ordinary religious life, he said, “if a religious feels in conscience that they need to share a concern with a family member, that freedom needs to be respected. Even if that means the family will want to come and talk with the superior, you might have to deal with that, but you do not restrict the freedom in conscience of the individual to say whatever they want.”

The priest also noted the women’s report that criticism within the community is not accepted — a report disputed by Mother Madeleine-Marie.

To the extent that exists in the community, Berg said, “the resistance to criticism is a sign of dysfunction, and almost always abuse.”

He noted other religious communities — including the Legion of Christ, to which he formerly belonged as a priest — in which an aversion to internal criticism “was devastating…. And meant to protect superiors from necessary correction.”

The priest said that a culture of complaints is not the goal of religious life. But there can be a balance in a “culture of evaluation.”

In a “culture of evaluation,” Berg said, “any religious, postulant or novice should be able to approach her superior at any time, on any topic, and say, ‘I wonder about this,’ or’ I’m really struggling with this,’ or ‘I have to say I just find it troubling when you do X, Y, or Z.’”

“And that conversation is going to be a difficult conversation, but it has to be had. And maybe it will be that the postulate, or novice, or religious is objectively overreacting to something, but maybe it won’t be.”

Considering the women’s reports, Berg concluded that several issues reported by them “are already red flags which could easily be indicators that spiritual abuse is actually happening.”

Berg said spiritual abuse “is not just a dysfunction” in a religious community: “It’s actually abusive behavior.”

The priest said it’s important to note that spiritual abuse can occur without malicious intent on the part of superiors.

“Something that’s more common is negligence, the failure to care for people appropriately. It may be there may be no malice whatsoever, it’s just a superior has a blind spot and that impacts community life: A failure to get a sister the medical care that she needs, a failure when it’s clear that sister really is struggling, that she could really benefit from a therapist, but the superior never gets around to doing that, or a blind spot in the way the superior treats Sister So-and-so.”

A superior might think that younger women in religious life seem to have different needs than she did during formation, and might reflexively discount those needs as frivolous, Berg said.

But, “she has to adapt to the reality of the subjects that have become a part of the community.”

“There doesn’t necessarily have to be malice” to perpetrate abuse, Berg said, “but I think the malice comes in when there’s not a culture of openness to critiquing our community and how we’re living.”

“If you have a culture of evaluation,” Berg said, “there have to be internal reviews, including the provincial and major superiors, there have to be internal reviews, there have to be regular intervals of visitation of a community from an independent body of visitators.”

In a culture of evaluation, “there are community conversations where there’s time to share openly concerns about the community.”

For a healthy religious community, Berg said, “that has to be the internal culture.”

And, the priest said, when such a culture exists, “you can obviate a lot of the unhealthy criticism.” In religious life, “bickering, negativity, and unhealthy criticism can develop because you don’t have the opportunities to actually talk about stuff.”

“But if a religious doesn’t feel free to speak of what troubles them, or if they feel that they have nowhere to turn, or they’re afraid to be open about something in confidence or to even open up with another sister, then that’s what you have there, is a culture of secrecy, and that’s definitely unhealthy. And that can easily be a red flag too.”

The priest noted that it can also be a sign of problems if several people raising concerns are characterized as struggling to adapt to religious life. That response, Berg said, can reflect a failure to appreciate “the kinds of abuses which can unfold in religious life,” or can be an attempt to deflect from the issues raised.

Berg said he understood that issues in the Sister Adorers community might be defended as traditional expressions of religious life from other periods in the Church’s history — especially because of the community’s preconciliar liturgical praxis — and seen even as a counterbalance to a perception of laxity in some contemporary religious communities.

But the priest cautioned against a tendency to spiritualize harmful practices in religious life.

“I think a lot of what we look back on as traditional religious life was actually abusive, and perhaps by God’s mercy saints still emerged from that.”

“God does not call anyone to religious life, [in order] to drive them to psychological illness because of an abusive superior. That is not the kind of gift of self or the annihilation of self that our Lord calls to.”

“We’re not trying to psychologize religious life,” Berg said, of those urging a focus on mental health in religious life.

“We’re trying to get people to live consecration in a healthy way, to live obedience. You can’t live radical obedience if you’re not healthy. So we need to honestly identify what is abusive [in religious communities], and correct that, so that going forward, consecrated religious will actually be in a place to rise to the degree of holiness and self-emptying to which our Lord calls them.”

“The aspiration to a life of total self-gift is not at odds with making sure we’re living religious life in a healthy way. But the aspirations to a life of total self-gift should never be understood to be a life of kind of self-annihilation by allowing myself to suffer all kinds of psychological and spiritual harm. So God does not call us to that.”

Berg said he believes the accounts raised by the women should be independently investigated, under careful watch of the Dicastery for Consecrated Life. He said if major issues are confirmed in the community — or in any religious community — reform “is possible, but there has to be a very concerted effort, and it usually requires intervention from the outside to make sure that the reforms actually happen.”

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For their part, one woman in October 2024 raised concern to the Diocese of Trier in Germany — where one house of formation is located. She was told that her concerns — and a letter she wrote to the Trier bishop — was sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Consecrated Life.

The women say they were also in touch with Mother Madeline-Marie, but most did not hear back directly from her.

And after their time in formation, the women say they connected with each other, and have connected now with a community of women, from different countries, who all experienced abuses in the Sisters Adorers community.

In December 2025, two of the women — Natalia and Belen —- met with senior officials at the Dicastery for Consecrated Life.

There, they were told that the dicastery was planning to conduct a visitation of the Sister Adorers, to investigate the allegations of problems in the community.

But it is not clear whether any investigation is yet underway. For her part, Mother Madeleine-Marie did not respond to direct questions about the prospect of a visitation, or whether she has been informed that one might be conducted.

But the women say they hope the Vatican will take their concerns seriously, both because they hope the Sisters Adorers can be reformed, and so that women considering a vocation in the community are aware of the challenges they might face.

“The thing is, not all the sisters were evil,” one woman told The Pillar. “Obviously there were a lot of sisters that we loved and that we still love. And so we’re worried for them. I remember some of the sisters … leaving the office of the novice mistress in tears. And it’s difficult to think about them being stuck there with no recourse.”

One woman said the trauma she faced left her with profound spiritual consequences.

At the Vatican, she said, an official “asked me if I still believed that God loved me. And I said I knew it, but I don’t feel it anymore.”

Another said that when she left the community, she did so with deep wounds.

“I feel like I’ve recovered enough to be resilient, but it was such a long journey and lots of work in spiritual direction, and in the psychological field, because the experience … was very confusing in a way. It really made me feel almost like I was hopelessly …cursed,” she said.

“I left feeling like you have to suffer horribly to be agreeable to God. That’s what I learned … and even that I was being ungrateful, for not loving the suffering that was supposedly coming from God,” she added.

“But now you see… it takes time, but then you see that God’s will is not always suffering.”

Another woman put it this way: “We gave up everything, we went to another country, we couldn’t really talk to our family, we gave up our language and our culture. But we were taught that whatever we did, it wasn’t enough.”

Mother Madeleine-Marie had a different view.

“Sometimes, unfortunately, those who leave a community can harbor bad feelings because they’re disappointed that it didn’t work out, that it wasn’t as they had imagined, and they want to blame someone. And it’s easy to misrepresent circumstances in a negative light. Some of these young women were very sensitive to correction, which could lead to a certain lack of confidence in their superiors,” she said.

“But that’s the small number, because the vast majority of young women who eventually discerned that they had no religious vocation have remained very close to the community. They visit us, invite us to their weddings and the baptisms of their children. They often express their gratitude to the community for all it has given them, and we remain very good friends.”

The women told The Pillar that while they were told in December that the dicastery would begin the process of a formal evaluation of the community, they have not since received notification that it is underway.

I’m Luke Coppen and I seek to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and comment.

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The sisters announced their split from the Catholic Church in May 2024, leading to their excommunication a month later. Since then, they have faced allegations of financial misconduct, leading to the brief arrest of the community’s superior in November 2025.

In December, Spanish police transferred to another Poor Clares’ convent five older sisters who were neither excommunicated nor included in the eviction proceedings. The Archdiocese of Burgos also recently announced that two former nuns who had fled the convent have reconciled with the Catholic Church.

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The eviction is the latest chapter in a dispute that erupted when 10 members of the Poor Clare community signed a 70-page “Catholic Manifesto” in May 2024 describing the post-Vatican II Catholic Church as illegitimate.

A month later, the nuns’ local bishop, Archbishop Mario Iceta of Burgos, sent a decree of excommunication to the nuns who signed the document, after they declined to appear before a Church tribunal.

Five other members of the community, who are reportedly elderly and in delicate health, did not incur excommunication as they did not endorse the schismatic declaration. One of the elderly sisters died in December 2025.

Schism is defined by canon law as the “refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” The penalty attached to the canonical crime of schism is excommunication.

The excommunicated nuns refused to leave the convent of Belorado, arguing they were its rightful owners, prompting the Burgos archdiocese to take legal action.

A Spanish court ordered the women’s eviction from the monastery in August 2025. The women lost a series of court appeals against the decision. Spanish law enforcement was set to evict the Belorado convent in the morning of March 12, after the Poor Clares of Belorado exhausted all legal resources against the eviction proceedings.

Several local outlets reported that most of the excommunicated sisters had already moved to the convent of Orduña, a property originally owned by the community but now the subject of a separate eviction case because the Poor Clares of Belorado never completed payment for the property after acquiring it in 2020.

Only three nuns reportedly remained in Belorado to finalize the logistics of the move.

The nuns own a third convent in Derio but claimed in an interview to The New York Times that they didn’t wish to go there because the building was under demonic influence.

Because the Orduña case could end similarly to the Belorado eviction, the excommunicated nuns launched a fundraising campaign in February also asking supporters in Spain and abroad to propose properties where they could relocate. The campaign raised less than $500.

The women’s spokesman, Francisco Canals, said that after the sisters left Belorado some would temporarily move to Derio and others to a town near Toledo, “until they find a solution or a definitive space to settle.”

According to the Spanish outlet Vida Nueva, the excommunicated sisters heading to Toledo were expected to stay at a property owned by the family of one of the women.

Canals added that the women were evaluating three or four property proposals in northern Spain as possible locations to continue their schismatic community.

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The Belorado community originally consisted of 16 sisters when they published the “Catholic Manifesto” announcing their break with the Catholic Church.

One sister left a day later, five older sisters between 86 and 100 years old weren’t excommunicated as they weren’t considered as part of the schism, while three sisters that originally signed the manifesto ended up leaving the community.

One of these sisters left the community in January, but remained working as the cook of a restaurant owned by the community in the Asturias region.

On Feb. 22, the Archdiocese of Burgos announced that it had lifted the excommunications against two of the sisters, Sister Paz and Sister Adriana, after they had left the community months before and had reconciled with the Church by “following an itinerary of conversion.”

However, the archdiocese clarified they were brought back to the Church as laypeople and that “if they wished to be religious again, they would have to start from scratch in a monastery.”

The statement added that the sisters “retracted the contents of the so-called ‘Catholic Manifesto’ publicly disseminated on May 13, 2024, and have been accompanied in a process of personal conversion that they lived with humility and gratitude.”

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The eviction is the latest of a series of legal, financial, and canonical scandals in which the community has been involved.

Agents of the judicial police of Burgos and the Spanish civil guard entered the excommunicated nuns’ convent in the early morning of Nov. 27 with a warrant due to a potential crime of misappropriation of assets classified as historical heritage.

The Monastery of St. Clare of Belorado is officially recognized by UNESCO as part of the Camino Francés and routes of northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. The sale, manipulation, or transfer of assets from the monastery is subject to strict rules and approval from relevant authorities, which the sisters allegedly did not seek.

The police arrested former abbess Laura García de Viedma, known as Sr. Isabel, and a woman identified as Sr. Paloma. They were later released while the investigation continues.

As part of the investigation, a 17th-century figurine of St. Anthony of Padua was discovered in an antiques store in Madrid that belonged to the monastery.

The breakaway nuns also face another investigation after Archbishop Iceta, the Vatican-appointed commissary to the community, filed a criminal complaint for three crimes of aggravated fraud.

In July 2024, it was reported that the nuns owed more than 42,000 euros (roughly $49,000) in unpaid invoices and almost 10,000 euros ($11,600) in unpaid salaries to convent staff. The archdiocese said it had not accessed all of the sisters’ financial information and that the monastery might have had additional debt.

According to local reports, the sisters bought items such as high-quality dry-cured ham, silk sheets, laptops, and cell phones, and even a fighting bull that had to be sold after it could not be tamed.

The nuns have also been reported to have sold more than 300,000 euros (around $350,000) in gold bars.

Local media reported that the Spanish social security institute ordered the community to return thousands of euros in pension money claimed on behalf of a nun who died in April 2022.

Despite the sister’s death, the community allegedly continued to collect the monthly payments of 400 euros (around $465) until January 2024.

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The text was released March 10 by the General Secretariat of the Synod, the body that oversaw the 2023-2024 synod of synodality in Rome. But the document was produced by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, arguably lending it added weight.

The 74-page text, on “women’s participation in the life and leadership of the Church,” was produced by the fifth of the 10 study groups formed by Pope Francis following the 2023 session of the synod on synodality.

The document is particularly significant because women’s role in the Church was one of the most hotly discussed topics at the synod on synodality. The meeting’s final document mentioned women almost 50 times, calling for “increased participation of laymen and laywomen in Church discernment processes and all phases of decision-making processes.”

Let’s take a look at the new document’s background, its structure, and its content.

What’s the background?

Pope Francis launched a global synodal process in October 2021 with the aim of creating a “listening Church” that enhanced communion, mission, and participation among Catholics.

The process culminated in two meetings in Rome, known together as the synod on synodality. At the end of the first session, the Argentine pope opted to take several of the most contentious issues off the table and entrust them to study groups, which would report back after the synod formally ended.

When the synod study groups were announced, Vatican watchers noticed something unusual about Study Group 5. While the other nine had full lists of members, the only name associated with the fifth group was that of Msgr. Armando Matteo, the secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The new document explains that Study Group 5 conducted its work not through a roster of handpicked experts, but via the doctrinal office’s existing structures, involving not only staff members but also dozens of consultants.

“It soon became evident that Study Group 5 would have a rather original structure compared with the other study groups, as its organizational framework overlapped with the dicastery’s working structure,” the text says.

This “rather original” approach has resulted in a rather original document, which differs in style from the other two final reports released so far, on priestly formation and digital mission.

It’s worth saying, before we dive into the text, that it should not be confused with another document associated with the synod, about women deacons. That text was released in December 2025, by a study commission established by Pope Francis in 2020. The new document refers to the study commission’s report, but doesn’t explore the topic of women deacons in any depth.

The final reports of the 10 study groups are defined as “working documents.” This means that the Study Group 5 text is less authoritative than other types of documents produced by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

When a study group submits its final report to the General Secretariat of the Synod, it has completed its mandate and is dissolved.

Vatican officials will fillet each of the final reports, looking for “operative proposals.” These will be presented to Pope Leo XIV, who will decide whether they should be enacted.

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How is the text structured?

The Study Group 5 document has a peculiar structure. The first part consists of a two-page description of the study group’s development.

The second part is a 12-page summary of the principal issues related to the expansion of women’s “participation in the life and leadership of the Church.”

The third part consists of 55 pages of appendices, with contents as varied as a chronicle of female figures in the Bible and a reflection on the origins of ecclesiastical authority.

At around 44,000 words, the text can be read in three to four hours. But the document’s preference for winding sentences makes it hard to follow at times.

Consider this sample sentence: “The creation of greater spaces for female participation in institutional roles enables decision-making processes to be enriched with diverse perspectives, to challenge social stereotypes that have now been surpassed, and to create an environment in which all may feel they have equal opportunities to realize their vocation.”

It makes sense, but it’s wordy. Perhaps it could have been shortened to: “Having more women in leadership enriches decisions, challenges stereotypes, and ensures equal vocational opportunities.”

If you don’t have time to ponder the full document, you could simply read the two-page executive summary. If you’re short of time but want to go deeper, you could read Part Two, along with Appendix V on ecclesiastical authority, and come away with a good sense of the document.

Even reading the entire text might leave you with some uncertainty about what, precisely, it is proposing. It arrives at its conclusions in a roundabout fashion. The Vatican official responsible for discerning its “operative proposals” has an unenviable job.

What does the text say?

Part 1

The opening section explains how the Vatican doctrinal office came to take responsibility for the study group on women in the Church. It describes how the final report’s content slowly came into focus.

It says it became clear that the text would highlight how, throughout Catholic history, women have “exercised genuine authority and real power in service of the Church’s mission,” which did not derive from Holy Orders.

The document would also explore the relationship between the Church’s ministerial and charismatic dimensions, considering how official, structured roles have coexisted with spontaneous initiatives by people who have received gifts (charisms) from the Holy Spirit.

This would lead to a call for the broader “recognition of charisms or the establishment of ecclesial services not immediately or necessarily linked to sacramental power.”

Part 2

The second section is arguably the most important part of the document. It begins with a lament about the “growing disengagement of women from active participation in the life of the local Church,” pointing to the rapid decline of female religious life after Vatican Council II.

“This is a phenomenon that is no longer limited to the Western world alone,” it notes.

The text suggests that expanding women’s role in the Church is urgent, given the “increasing number of women, of every age group and in different parts of the world,” who are abandoning Catholicism. It lays the blame partly on clericalism and macho attitudes in Church circles.

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At the same time, the document cautions against “fear and haste,” as well as responses that are “purely sociological, cultural, philosophical, or historical.”

It then considers three “fundamental issues”: the relational nature of the human person, Potestas (sacred power), and ministry.

It stresses that God made men and women to complete each other in deep, mutual relationships. Therefore, women’s participation in Church decisions isn’t some kind of special favor conceded by male leaders.

Turning to the second core issue, the document praises “laudable examples” of women participating in Church leadership.

“For example, in some French dioceses, a female ‘general delegate’ or ‘episcopal delegate’ assists the bishop and the vicar general in important administrative responsibilities,” it notes.

“Likewise, in certain regions of the Amazon, women lead the pastoral activity of communities, in addition to exercising the ministry of the Word and serving as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.”

In a crucial sentence, it says: “It is necessary to reflect on a reformulation of the areas of competence of the ordained ministry.”

It adds: “Redefining these areas of competence could open the way to recognize new spaces of responsibility for women in the Church.”

It might seem that the document is merely suggesting that institutional jobs formerly reserved for priests should be reassigned to women. But it also insists that women’s participation in the “charismatic dimension” of the Church’s life be taken seriously.

“It is important to reiterate this point: alongside the sacramental path and distinct from it, there is also a charismatic path that can be fruitfully pursued to open new spaces of participation for the lay faithful, particularly for women,” it says.

What is the theological and canonical basis for lay people taking on institutional roles? The document says that in such cases, the laity “do not participate in Holy Orders but rather in the exercise of the bishop’s ministry.”

“The bishop, therefore, remains ultimately responsible for the discernment of any charisms that may arise within the People of God,” it says.

On the third issue — ministries — the document notes that women can be formally instituted in the lay ministries of lector, acolyte, and catechist. It regrets that many dioceses haven’t yet embraced these possibilities.

It also notes that local bishops’ conferences can propose further instituted lay ministries, subject to Vatican approval.

Part Two concludes with an extended reflection on the “charismatic dimension” of women’s participation in Church life.

It says: “The development of healthy forms of synodality will facilitate the flourishing and exercise of lay or baptismal charisms (that is, charisms rooted in the Sacrament of Baptism) among the multitude of women who constitute the majority in our communities.”

“These include charisms of leadership, guidance, coordination, and the management of processes, as well as others more closely related to communal prayer, spiritual accompaniment, and closeness to those most in need.”

It notes “particular historical cases in which women exercised de facto authority even over clerics, such as the abbesses of Las Huelgas (Burgos, Spain) and Conversano (Bari, Italy).”

It also namechecks authoritative Catholic women through the centuries, beginning with St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo. Its choices from the 20th century are eclectic: Adrienne von Speyr, Maria Montessori, Dorothy Day, and Madeleine Delbrêl.

Finally, it stresses that the expansion of women’s participation in the life and leadership of the Church should not lead to a devaluation of “the vocation of the wife and mother within marriage and the family.”

Part 3

The document’s third part consists of six appendices: on female figures in the Bible, women in Church history, testimonies from women in Church leadership, a critical look at the “Marian Principle” and “Petrine Principle,” the nature of ecclesiastical authority, and the contributions of Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV.

The most interesting are arguably the fourth and fifth, on the Marian Principle and Petrine Principle, and ecclesiastical authority.

Appendix IV looks at how recent popes have taken up the concepts of the “Marian Principle” and “Petrine Principle” from the work of the 20th-century Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. The two terms relate respectively to the charismatic and hierarchical dimensions of the Church.

The appendix considers criticisms of the concepts, but ultimately emphasizes that the Marian principle “can help the Church’s efforts to create spaces in which women’s co-responsibility is fully recognized and their contributions are heard and valued.”

Appendix V, which is likely to provoke debate, explores the roots and evolution of ecclesiastical authority. It highlights two different schools of thought on the nature of authority, which influence the current discussion about lay participation in Church governance.

It considers recent developments, such as the appointment of women to senior leadership roles at the Vatican, and calls for further theological and canonical reflection.

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Having issues? Email our producer Kate at kolivera@pillarcatholic.com

Show notes:

Leo accepts resignations of Chaldean patriarch and bishop amid corruption scandal

Chaldean bishop pleads ‘not guilty’ as patriarch calls for ‘unity and harmony’

Archbishop Caccia named nuncio to the US

USCCB clarifies after birthright citizenship brief stirs controversy

Why are Swiss bishops doubling down on mandatory psych screening?

Bavarian Benedictines retain local council seats

Cardinal of Tehran evacuates to Rome

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I’m Luke Coppen and I aim to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and comment.

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Reading 1 - 1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a

Psalm 23: 1-6

Reading 2 - Ephesians 5: 8-14

Gospel - John 9: 1-41

Members of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, hope to meet March 11 with Archbishop Mandla Jwara of Durban, to discuss why their priest was placed on an involuntary sabbatical.

Fr. Sifiso Ndlovu, who has served as pastor of the Pinetown church since 2021, is one of two clerics in the Durban archdiocese who have been dubbed “the poster priests for syncretism” by the Sunday Tribune newspaper.

The other priest, Fr. Thembelani Ngcobo of Sacred Heart Parish in Montclair, who has a large social media following, has also been placed on an involuntary sabbatical, the Durban-based paper reported March 8.

Neither priest appears to have publicly acknowledged any engagement with traditional healing practices. But their reassignments have generated a controversy that the Sunday Tribune has called a “syncretism crisis.”

The personnel moves in the Durban archdiocese follow a joint pastoral letter issued in September 2025 by eight KwaZulu-Natal bishops that cautioned priests against syncretism, which they defined as “the blending of Catholic beliefs and practices with traditional African practices (esp. ubungoma) in ways that contradict the Gospel.”

Ubungoma is a Zulu term referring to the traditional healing and divination practices of the Nguni people, a cultural group native to Southern Africa. Ubungoma is practiced by a traditional healer or diviner known as a Sangoma, who is seen as a conduit between the visible and invisible world.

The bishops’ joint letter, whose signatories included Archbishop Jwara, expressly prohibited priests, deacons, religious, and lay people from participating in any syncretic religious practices, “including but not limited to slaughter of chickens, use of colored water, colored candles, blessing of non-liturgical wild dancing, and healing ritual services outside of Catholic liturgical practice.”

It said: “Any priest or religious found to be promoting or participating in such practices will be subject to immediate correction, including ultimately suspension from ministry. If unrepentant, he or she will be removed from ministry, in accordance with canon law.”

Jwara has not commented publicly on the two priests’ reassignments. The Sunday Tribune said it became aware of the moves after it received a leaked letter listing upcoming clergy changes in the Durban archdiocese. The paper published the full list of moves that will come into effect in April, which included the names of new pastors for the parishes in Pinetown and Montclair.

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The bishops’ September 2025 intervention reportedly provoked a backlash among Catholics in KwaZulu-Natal. Jwara clarified in October 2025 that the episcopal joint letter sought to discourage priests from performing traditional healing practices, rather than serve as a blanket condemnation of ancestral veneration, a deep-rooted custom in South Africa.

“The main thrust of our recent joint statement was to address priests who engage in the practice of ubungoma in the Church/in parishes, and by doing so generate confusion among the faithful, as well as commit liturgical or pastoral abuses,” he said.

There are reportedly 69,000 registered Sangomas in South Africa, including white South Africans. Sangomas are believed to communicate with ancestral spirits through rituals such as throwing bones for divination, burning sacred herbs, or entering a trance state.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “all forms of divination are to be rejected.” Nevertheless, some South African priests, religious, and lay people are reported to engage in ubungoma.

In 2019, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference asked its theological advisory committee to research ubungoma in its member countries of Botswana, Eswatini, and South Africa, in response to growth in the practice, especially among young people.

The bishops’ conference discussed the committee’s research at a January 2025 plenary meeting. The research was aimed at helping the bishops of Southern Africa to adopt a common stance on the topic.

Thokozani Zulu, a member of the Immaculate Conception parish in Pinetown, told the Sunday Tribune that some parishioners wept when they were told there was little chance of successfully challenging the decision to reassign Fr. Sifiso Ndlovu.

“We are saddened because we have come a long way with Fr. Ndlovu. When he arrived here five years ago, the congregation was a handful of faithful who’d fill only two rows of benches. Today, the church is fully packed because of him,” said Zulu, a well-known South African musician.

He explained that a group of parishioners planned to meet with Archbishop Jwara and ask for Fr. Ndlovu’s term at the church to be extended, if the decision to move him cannot be reversed.

Zulu noted that some church members had threatened to withhold their monthly offerings or leave the parish as a result of the decision. Some were even considering exiting the Church, he said.

Zulu said that Fr. Ndlovu had never engaged in traditional healing practices on parish premises or at church events.

“When we are at the house of worship, there is no telling that he dabbles in traditional practices. He delivers his homilies in the manner familiar to Catholics. That is why we are saying we have no problem with his traditional practices,” he said.

Zulu suggested that Church authorities only became aware of the priest’s involvement in traditional rituals when a parishioner invited him to assist in a ceremony, took a photo, and shared it with the pastor’s superiors.

In his October 2025 clarification, Archbishop Jwara underlined that priests are representatives of Christ and therefore “cannot serve two masters.”

“His very life must be a witness and testament to the person and message of Christ, admitting of no duality that would diminish or displace Christ or the Gospel, or lead to scandal among the faithful,” he wrote.

He added: “As bishops, we have no control over what people do privately in their homes, rather our concern is that whatever ancestral rituals are practiced privately at each family should not be brought into our liturgical celebrations.”

“Let us pray that, just as the vine is pruned by the vinedresser, our cultures may be pruned by Christ of any practice incompatible with our faith.”

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Listen to JD read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR

Hey everybody,

Today’s the feast of St. John Ogilvie, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.

John was born in 1580 in Scotland, the son of a baron, who was a prominent Calvinist landowner. His mom was a Catholic, but she died when John was three, and he was raised Protestant.

When he was 13, John was sent abroad, to Germany, where he studied at Lutheran boarding school.

We don’t know exactly what happened at the boarding school — what John studied and who he met — but four years later, when he was 17, John went to Louvain (now in Belgium), and was received into the Catholic Church.

He also entered the Scots College, and then the Society of Jesus.

You’ve got to understand the weight of that. Scotland was in the throes of its Reformation, and Catholics faced real persecution in the country. Becoming a Catholic would mean difficulties at home; becoming a Jesuit would mean maybe never going home at all. Or it would mean going home, and facing prison, and most likely death.

But John chose it anyway. He was ordained a priest in 1610, when he was 30 years old. He was sent to France.

But John didn’t want to be in France. He wanted to be in Scotland. By then, Catholics were being martyred by the dozen. Those who lived abandoned the faith, or abandoned the country — except for a faithful remnant, an underground Church. John wanted to be their priest.

For three years, John asked for a transfer. He tried to convince his superiors that his own noble birth would mean that Catholic nobles support him if he ministered secretly in Glasgow.

Finally, they let him try. But John found that the Catholic nobles he had hoped would support him weren’t keen on housing an underground priest. So instead, he snuck into Scotland posing as a horse trader named John Watson.

He went to Edinburgh, and then Glasgow, quietly reconciling people to the Church, hearing their confessions, and offering secret Masses.

But he had only about 11 months of active ministry, before an underground Catholic betrayed the priest— telling the Protestant archbishop of Glasgow about Fr. John.

Ogilvie was arrested, and led to Archbishop John Spottiswoode, the Church of Scotland primate who was also Scotland’s Lord Chancellor.

According to the accounts of people who were there, the difference between the two men was immediately apparent.

Fr. John was scruffy — he’d been sleeping rough — and weatherworn, while Spottiswoode presented himself ensconced in fine clothing, and surrounded by the regal trappings of office.

But Ogilvie apparently stood silent, his hands bound, while Spottiswoode accused him of betraying crown and country. The priest’s silence apparently enraged his interrogator, who is said to have punched the priest in the face.

Ogilvie was then beaten, thrown in a fetid cell, and tortured. He was interrogated again, and refused to recant the faith — that choice saw him tortured with nine days of sleep deprivation, driving him nearly mad.

A few days before Christmas, 1614, Ogilvie was interrogated again. He was starving. He hadn’t slept. His cell was filled with vermin. But when he was asked to give the names of the Catholics who’d come to his Masses, he sat silent.

Grace abounded in his cell that day.

The priest was nearly silent again in January 1615, when he was presented with a document he was supposed to sign, renouncing the faith. Ogilvie looked at his interrogators coolly. Perhaps his life of 35 years played out across his mind — the trials he’d already faced, and God’s enduring faithfulness.

The pope is the supreme authority of the faith, he said, and the pope has the authority to excommunicate the king.

The answer was a death sentence. King James I — VI in Scotland — ordered a trial on March 10, 1615. Ogilvie was ready. He stood accused of high treason, and he was convicted. The sentence was death.

Ogilvie had three hours, while the court officials took a lunch break. He prayed a deep meditation on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Then he was led to the scaffold, where he held a rosary in his hands — it was forbidden in Scotland, but the executioner let that pass.

It took him a few minutes to die when he was hung from the scaffold — finally the executioner had to pull tight on his legs to see the job finished. His body was dumped in a field for criminals.

And John Ogilvie entered, that day, into eternal beatitude.

May we have his courage. May God grace us with his clarity of conviction. And may he intercede for us.

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The news

This morning brought very big news in the Chaldean Catholic Church, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic sui iuris Churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome.

Pope Leo accepted this morning the resignation of Bishop Emanuel Shaleta, who is facing embezzlement and money laundering charges in California. The pope also accepted the unexpected and surprise resignation of Chaldean patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, who had given no indication of his plans to step down from office.

The Pillar began reporting in mid-February that Shaleta was under criminal investigation for charges of stealing hundreds of thousands from his own eparchy, and using money taken from charity accounts to cover up the theft.

We also reported that Shaleta is accused of other misconduct, including allegedly frequent trips to a Tijuana brothel, with his transit to the club observed by a former FBI special agent, working as a private investigator in the case.

The Pillar also reported that Sako, meanwhile, had attempted to see the bishop transferred rather than removed from office, and Sako admitted to The Pillar some version of that last month. But our most recent reporting confirmed that Sako was trying as recently as last month to see the bishop transferred to a high-ranking position in Baghdad.

While Sako says he resigned freely to spend more time in prayer, that lobbying seems to be the straw which saw his term as patriarch come to an end.

I’ll offer some more reflections on this after the rest of the news, but for now, you can read the latest right here.

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—
And on Monday, before his resignation was made known, Shaleta was arraigned in a San Diego courtroom, pleading not guilty on the criminal charges that could see him do 15 years in prison.

The bishop’s lawyer said her client would be shown innocent, and argued that he was not a flight risk and should be given bail without monitoring — while prosecutors pointed out that when the bishop was arrested, he was literally waiting to board a flight for Europe, and that he had more than $9,000 cash in his bag.

The bishop’s bail was set at $125,000, and a judge ordered that he wear a monitor, so that he would have no opportunity to flee the country.

The next court hearings will take place in early April — if Shaleta doesn’t reach a plea bargain first.

If you want to read Monday’s courtroom drama, here’s our report.

—
That wasn’t the only big news in recent days.

The Holy See announced Saturday the appointment of Italian Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia as the new apostolic nuncio to the U.S.

The Pillar reported earlier this year that Caccia, a veteran Vatican diplomat, was the front-runner to succeed the French Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who turned 80 in January.

Caccia has served since 2019 as the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations in New York, a role that has given him a degree of familiarity with the U.S. Church.

If you ask me, the archbishop’s got a job ahead of him.

While outgoing nuncio Cardinal Pierre has been celebrated in some corners, victims’ advocates have a different version of the diplomat: They recall that Pierre is the cardinal who famously declined to respond when Knoxville priests wrote to him accusing their bishop of covering up allegations of abuse against a favored seminarian, and they recall that Pierre made the choice to implement Vos estis lux mundi — designed to transparently assure justice for bishops accused of abuse and negligence — with maximum commitment to secrecy, declining even to acknowledge when Vos estis investigations were underway.

Pierre had the unenviable job of presiding over the U.S. Church’s 2018 moral reckoning — but while that moment seemed to move ordinary Catholics towards a desire for justice, accountability, and transparency in governance, Pierre implemented practices which seemed to thwart those things, or to suggest the “McCarrick crisis” was a mere flash-in-the-pan.

And, the thing is, he obviously didn’t need to take that approach: At the same time, nuncios in other nations developed systems to make Vos estis transparency simple and available. That those things did not happen in the United States shattered confidence in many corners that the Church would take abuse and neglect complaints seriously, or that Pope Francis’ words on the subject would match reality.

Caccia, therefore, moves to Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. with the challenge of reading the room, and deciding for himself whether the approach of the last few years is ready for a shake-up.

But my guess is that Pope Leo himself will offer no objections if Mass Ave. adopts a different way of doing things — and neither will advocates for the reform and renewal of the Church in the United States.

Here’s our report on Caccia’s appointment.

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The U.S. bishops’ conference made headlines earlier this month for a legal brief on President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship.

The brief was widely criticized by Catholics who said it argued that birthright citizenship is a requirement of morality for nations — a position which critics said exceeds the norms of Catholic social teaching.

Well, The Pillar obtained an internal memo last week, in which the USCCB told bishops that its legal brief did not claim that “that every democratic polity must adopt” a birthright citizenship policy “to satisfy moral standards.”

Instead, the conference said, its brief aimed to argue that revoking birthright citizenship in the U.S. would leave some children born here potentially stateless — a genuine problem which, the conference argued, should be considered in the judicial fight over Trump’s executive order.

“[T]he brief does not urge the Court to decide the case on the basis of Catholic doctrine. It urges the Court to apply the Constitution in light of its text, history, and precedent, and to recognize how the executive order threatens to produce de facto statelessness for children born here, an outcome inconsistent with the Citizenship Clause as interpreted by the Court,” the USCCB told bishops in the internal memo.

“References to Catholic teaching do not supply a rule of decision for the Court; they explain the Conference’s reasons for participating and highlight the consonance between the American constitutional tradition and a broader moral understanding of the dignity of the child and the integrity of the family.”

Here’s our exclusive report on the USCCB’s internal birthright citizenship memo.

—
Meanwhile, a report from Switzerland, where bishops agreed last week that mandatory psychological assessments of future pastoral workers, including laity, should continue past an initial trial period, following a positive assessment of their effectiveness.

There’s controversy, though, between those who say the tests are helpful to prevent abusive situations, and those who say they’re not well-administered, or well-proven.

Here’s why — and how the tests work.

—
And a report from Bavaria, where — in a custom from another time — three Benedictine monks were re-elected to their seats on the local municipal council.

Why? What gives? And isn’t this against canon law?

Here’s the story.

—
Finally, Cardinal Dominique Mathieu, OFM Conv. of Tehran-Isfahan announced on March 9 that he had fled to Rome, along with the staff of the Italian embassy to Iran, “not without regret and sorrow.”

There remain Christians in Iran, prompting pushback from some who ask why the cardinal opted to leave.

On the other hand, it’s possible the decision was a prudential one about geopolitics — leaving a cardinal to be taken into Iranian custody could dramatically impact the direction of the conflict there — and (possibly) leave Christians in a place of more exposure to danger.

I myself am eager to get the rest of this story, if we can. But for now, here’s what we know.

—
Let’s go back to the Chaldeans for a minute, because we’ve been getting questions about the reports, and about what happens next.

First, if you’re wondering, the Chaldean synod of bishops is now expected to convene for the election of a new patriarch, whose election must be confirmed subsequently by the Roman Pontiff.

In an election that will be a referendum on Sako, I have some ideas on who the front-runners are, but I want to do some more reporting before I put my cards on the table, if you don’t mind.

Next, the USCCB said this morning that Shaleta’s resignation was accepted “in February,” but not announced until today. That’s a bit curious, and not conveyed in the Vatican’s bollettino. So what’s going on?

Well, here’s what I think: When we began reporting this story in mid-February, sources said that while Shaleta’s resignation had been sent to Rome, there was debate between the dicastery for Eastern Churches and Patriarch Sako, over what should happen next. After The Pillar’s public reporting about the scandal, especially, the debate seemed to boil down to two things: Whether Sako would nominate an administrator, as is typically the patriarch’s right, and what would happen to Shaleta.

As recently as last month, Sako was consulting with Chaldean bishops about the prospect of transferring Shaleta to Baghdad, and there was no clarity about what would happen to the San Diego eparchy.

So I think what’s being said about the resignation’s acceptance in February is basically something like: “Yes, we knew Shaleta was going to be out, but we didn’t know when or what was going to happen to him.”

Interestingly, the USCCB said the delay was over the San Diego County Sheriff’s investigation — that the Holy See was waiting until the police investigation was over, so as not to interfere with it.

If that’s true, they might have been waiting quite some time, as our sources in San Diego tell us that the investigation had been slowgoing, or more-or-less dormant, until The Pillar’s Feb. 22 reporting, after which investigators accelerated their review of the complicated story, which required some specialized knowledge of how the Church works to untangle, and began re-interviewing witnesses and seeking clarification on documents.

But whatever the situation with delay on Shaleta’s resignation, the fact is that the bishop was arrested, criminally charged, and then relieved from office. This is a sign of good papal governance, if you ask me.

But an even more telling sign is the resignation of Sako. The cardinal patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church is a fascinating figure, and has been controversial for quite some time. Internally, he’s gotten lots of pushback from Chaldeans, because of liturgical and cultural tendencies they see as both liberalizing and Latinizing.

He’s gotten pushback from bishops who say he was autocratic and unwilling to govern synodally — that led to a high-profile conflict with five bishops who refused to attend a synod Sako convened in 2024, in some part because the cardinal wouldn’t listen to their interventions or concerns, they say.

He’s gotten pushback more broadly for a bizarre post-conclave incident, in which the cardinal went on Middle Eastern TV talking about the papal conclave, and then later said it wasn’t him.

He suggested to The Pillar that an Iranian-backed militia somehow created the appearance of an interview with him, to “publish false information about the conclave.”

That’s an unusual suggestion, to be sure.

But the Shaleta controversy reveals even more issues in Sako’s governance — that he seemingly blamed the allegations, even those backed by documents or unimpeachable sources — on a misinformation campaign, with suggestions that, too, was coming from Iran. And that he advocated to find a place in Church governance for Shaleta, with whom he has a long-time friendship, and whom he backed for appointment to San Diego several years, despite misgivings from many Chaldean bishops.

I think in the pontificate of Pope Francis, Shaleta’s resignation would have probably been accepted. But I don’t know if Sako’s would have been (seemingly) requested and accepted, as it seems likely to have been here. (Though Sako says the resignation says the resignation came freely, so the cardinal would have more time for prayer.)

Francis was resistant to the idea of being backed into a corner, and frequently demonstrated reflexive support to prelates under fire, even if they were accused, as Sako was in recent weeks, of serious cover-ups.

But Leo’s swift action demonstrates — to me at least — that the pontiff has a primary concern for good governance, and will not be slow to act if situations unfold conveying the opposite.

Of course, there was already a big file on Sako at the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, given the controversies mentioned above. But the pope made no hesitation in his clear removal of the patriarch this week.

And more to the point, the Vatican appointed to lead temporarily the San Diego eparchy one of the bishops who had refused to attend Sako’s 2024 synod — a bishop whom Sako himself had attempted to excommunicate, in a case that was until today still active at the Dicastery for Eastern Churches.

In other words, Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop was in the Chaldean doghouse with his patriarch as recently as yesterday, and is now chosen by the Vatican to lead a diocese in turmoil.

That’s a very clear sign from the Apostolic See, one which Leo would have understood, and one which speaks volumes.

What’s the lesson?

There’s a new sheriff in town. Buckle up, buttercups.

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Varia

Today was the funeral Mass for Bishop Richard Stika in Knoxville, Tennessee, who died last month, just a few years after his resignation from leadership in the Diocese of Knoxville.

I had hoped to attend the funeral, but both family and professional obligations made it impossible. But I wanted to go because I wanted to pray for Stika’s soul, and to pray for those who were impacted — positively and negatively — by his ministry.

After years of covering Stika, I felt a kind of connection to the man, and I now feel a special obligation to pray for his soul, which I’ll try and meet today in our parish adoration chapel.

The Church is composed of human beings, all of us beloved by God, all of us baptized and called to holiness, and, here on earth, all of us sinners in need of ongoing sanctification.

It’s easy, if you pay attention to Church news, to reduce the whole thing to a kind of soap opera, or to frame the actors who make headlines as “good guys” and “bad guys,” white hats and black ones.

The reality is more complicated. And nothing — no matter how heinous, or how much it disqualifies for governance or leadership — can separate any of us from the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, the love which holds us in existence.

I say this because I covet your prayers for Stika, too. And I covet your prayers for everyone we cover. I think it matters for our own souls — Pillar readers. If we’re paying attention to the news, we have to be so careful not to reduce the people we read about to only two dimensions, or to an assessment of personal dignity which forgets that each of us is equal in our sonship or daughterhood of the King himself. Praying for the people we read about makes a difference. Trust me. I need to do it, or I lose perspective fast.

The Church is a society, but a mystical one, in which we’re called to help one another grow closer in intimacy with the Lord. Public accountability is part of that. But so is intercessory prayer — on this side of the veil, and on the other.

May Richard Stika rest in the sort of peace which each one of us longs for in this vale of tears. May perpetual light shine upon him.

—
And before we go, take a moment to watch Sky Brown, who became at 17 years old this week the world skateboarding champion.

After she won, Brown told reporters that there are more important things in the world than skateboarding, and that she wanted to encourage people to “pray for peace for the world.”

She’s right. There are more important things than skateboarding. But it’s still impressive to watch the best in the world at her craft:

@worldskatesb

World Skate Skateboarding on Instagram: "🏆 WOMEN’S PARK WORLD …

I couldn’t do that. In fact, I don’t stand up straight on a skateboard without falling over, nor do I wish to.

But I’m pretty sure I could beat Brown at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. In college, I practically minored in that game. And I’m almost done paying off the loans which made it possible.

Please be assured of our prayers, and please pray for us. We need it.

Yours in Christ,

JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar

St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry is a Catholic graduate school that seeks to reunite theology, prayer, and sanctity by providing a true formation of mind and heart, led by a personal encounter with Christ, while studying theology and philosophy in and from the heart of the Church. Through the generosity of the Knights of Columbus, you can audit one summer course for free! Learn more here!

The Vatican announced March 10 that the pope had accepted the resignations of Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako and Bishop Emanuel Shaleta one day after the bishop entered an initial plea of “not guilty” on money laundering and embezzlement charges in a California court following his arrest Friday.

As recently as last month, Sako attempted to arrange a transfer for the embattled bishop to a high-ranking position within the Chaldean Church’s curia, despite allegations of criminal financial and personal misconduct by the bishop.

The Pillar has previously reported that Shaleta offered his resignation as leader of the Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle in January, following a Vatican ordered investigation into allegations of financial crimes by the bishop. The eparchy encompasses all Chaldean Catholics in the western half of the United States.

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Cardinal Sako, 76, has led the Chaldean Church since 2013. Members of the eparchy made criminal complaints against Shaleta last August, with several Chaldeans expressing their concerns about the bishop’s personal misconduct to the Vatican’ Dicastery for Eastern Churches in the second half of 2025.

A Vatican-ordered investigation into allegations of substantial embezzlement concluded last year. After the bishop submitted a letter of resignation from his diocesan post in late January, Cardinal Sako consulted with Chaldean bishops about his hope to see the bishop transferred to an administrative post in Baghdad, as a high-ranking official of the Chaldean patriarchate, The Pillar has previously reported.

Sako had acknowledged to The Pillar in February that he raised the prospect of a transfer to Vatican officials, but that he had proposed the idea before the results of the Vatican-ordered investigation into Shaleta were “clear.”

However, The Pillar reported that the dicastery received a report on the case in late 2025, alongside several episcopal complaints about Shaleta — well before Sako polled Chaldean bishops about a transfer last month.

It is not clear whether the papal office had been aware of Sako’s recent move on that front until it was reported publicly.

In a statement on the patriarchal website Tuesday, Sako said he “freely decided to submit my resignation to His Holiness Pope Leo XIV” on Monday “so that I could devote myself quietly to prayer, writing, and simple service.”

“To dispel any misinterpretation,” the cardinal said, “I want to emphasize that no one asked me to do so; I submitted my resignation of my own volition.”

Thanking the clerics and staff of the patriarchate, Sako added that he wished to “sincerely apologize to anyone I may have offended.”

According to a statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Shaleta’s resignation was accepted by Pope Leo “in February” and made public March 10.

Shaleta was arrested Thursday on several counts of embezzlement and money laundering. The bishop was arrested Thursday at the San Diego airport as he attempted to leave the United States, after The Pillar reported last week that the bishop was expected to travel to Rome to offer explanations for the allegations against him.

In a pastoral letter addressing the situation released Sunday, Cardinal Sako said he “stand[s] with justice, and for this reason [he is] in communication with the Holy See, hoping that the proper measures will soon be taken for the good of the diocese.”

Shaleta is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from his cathedral, attempting to reimburse missing funds with checks signed by him from an Eparchy charity account.

He is also alleged to have made frequent trips to a Tijuana brothel linked to the human trafficking industry, and known to have maintained a longstanding and close relationship to a woman with whom he shared a bank account and unfettered access to each others’ homes.

The bishop has not offered an explanation for the reimbursement discrepancies in his diocesan accounts. Shaleta has said he is the victim of a media campaign and of Chaldeans in his diocese who opposed his leadership.

In a homily on Sunday in the Eparchy of St. Peter’s cathedral parish, Bishop Francis Kalabat, who leads the Chaldean eparchy for the eastern United States, told the local faithful that they “absolutely” have “the right to know what is going on” regarding the accusations facing Shaleta.

“You are the children, you have every right to know what the father of this household is going through,” said Kalabat, while praising as “necessary” media outlets “who are coming out and saying the truth as it is, without putting judgments.”

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Also on March 10, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo has appointed Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop as apostolic administrator of the Eparchy of St. Peter, who previously pushed back on Sako’s public efforts to rally support for Shaleta.

In February, following The Pillar’s initial reporting on Shaleta’s alleged activities, Sako published on his website a “message of solidarity and support from the bishops of the Chaldean synod” addressing several brewing issues in the Chaldean Church, including “the controversy surrounding the Diocese of St. Peter in San Diego, United States, before the truth has been revealed and justice achieved.”

On that front, the Chaldean bishops “urge all to calm tensions and refrain from spreading false information on social media,” according to Sako.

In response, Bishop Saad Sirop, pushed back in a lengthy Facebook post, saying the patriarch’s statement’s “tone of absolute solidarity creates an impression of alignment, and may be understood as issuing premature judgments or favoring a particular narrative before investigations are completed and the truth emerges.”

In 2024, Saad Sirop was also one of five Chaldean bishops who did not attend a synod of the Church sui iuris, called by Sako as patriarch.

The Pillar reported at the time that the bishops communicated to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Eastern Catholic Churches that they would not be attending, reportedly saying that they believed the meeting would not be productive because Sako would not be receptive to what they had to say about the state of the patriarchate, while also raising concern that Sako had been living outside of his diocese for nine months, a violation of the canonical residency requirement for diocesan bishops.

Sako in response demanded that the Holy See consider canonical penalties against the bishops, including excommunication.

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I’m Luke Coppen and I seek to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and comment.

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Meanwhile, Shaleta faced a judge Monday, entering an initial plea of “not guilty” on money laundering and embezzlement charges, while his attorney said the bishop denies the allegations against him.

Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako issued a pastoral letter from Baghdad to the Chaldean Catholics of the eparchy March 8, expressing his closeness to them “in this exceptional and painful situation through which your beloved diocese is passing.”

Cardinal Sako told the faithful in his letter Sunday that he “stand[s] with justice, and for this reason [he is] in communication with the Holy See, hoping that the proper measures will soon be taken for the good of the diocese.”

Bishop Shaleta appeared Monday before a judge for an arraignment hearing, at which he pled not guilty to eight counts of embezzlement, eight counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated white collar crime enhancement.

A deputy district attorney argued at the hearing that Shaleta stole more than $250,000 from the Eparcy of St. Peter the Apostle, which he leads, by perpetrating a rent scam — which includes both alleged embezzlement and money laundering — as first reported by The Pillar last month.

Shaleta “took proactive steps” to avoid detection, the prosecutor said, and limited whistleblowers’ access to accounts, ensuring “no transparency, and no oversight” of eparchial accounts.

The bishop spent the weekend in county jail, The Pillar has learned, after bail was set at $125,000 and the bishop was not able to be brought before a judge before the weekend.

Shaleta’s attorney argued Monday that the bail was excessive, and that the bishop does not pose a flight risk because his passport has been confiscated.

The judge rejected that argument, pointing to the number of charges Shaleta faces, the amount of money he is alleged to have stolen, and the fact that he was arrested while at the airport, with a flight booked to Europe, and more than $9,000 in his possession.

If Shaleta makes bail, the judge said, he will be required to undergo GPS monitoring until his trial.

According to sources close to the bishop, Shaleta was expected to post bail after the hearing, but The Pillar has not yet confirmed whether Shaleta has been released.

The bishop’s attorneys said he will no longer have access to eparchial bank accounts, though Shaleta remains the diocesan bishop, and it is not clear whether an administrator will be appointed in his stead.

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In his pastoral letter Sunday, Cardinal Sako appealed for patience and peace as the legal process unfolds.

“I ask you, as we are in the time of the Lent, not to allow division and discord, nor to give place to voices lying in wait to attack our Church, rather, I ask you to unity and harmony with a living conscience and a compassionate, faithful heart, far from the spirit of revenge or vindictiveness,” he wrote. “Let the legal procedures take their course in revealing the truth and upholding justice.”

“I had wished to come to you and stand beside you, but the current troubling and frightening circumstances in the region do not allow me to do it, it could [be possible] in the future,” said the patriarch.

In the meantime, Sako urged local Chaldeans to “cooperate” with the eparchial vicar general, and noted that Bishop Francis Kalabat, who leads the Chaldean eparchy for the eastern United States, was in San Diego “in order to calm hearts.”

In a Sunday homily in San Diego, Bishop Kalabat recognized the suffering of the local community because of “let’s say it as it is: all the garbage that is going on, all the pain and suffering that is going on, all the hurt that is going on.”

Referencing “all the accusations” relating to “a father in this community” Kallabat said that “when the children look at the father, the hurt and the pain is deep, and it’s a reality.”

“It’s difficult [in] times like these, where we have two conflicting voices,” said the bishop, “we have the voice of Christ who wants to heal, and we have the voice — and right now the reality — that keeps stinging our hearts and our minds and thinking also that somehow, maybe, was there a betrayal of some kind? By the father of this community? By the people that were working with him somehow, somewhere? By God Himself?”

“How could this be? How can we be living in such pain and shame? Now we’re the talking point around the world and — I am going to use this word — it hurts like hell. And I am specifically using the word hell on purpose because it is hell, and it does exist.”

Offering a meditation on the cross, the bishop said that the reaction to Christ’s passion was that “this is shame, this is ugly, and this isn’t what we signed up for.”

“Am I saying all news reports are wrong?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do we have the right to know?” he asked the congregation. “Absolutely, and the [media outlets] who are coming out and saying the truth as it is, without putting judgments, are necessary. You have the right to know what is going on. You are the children, you have every right to know what the father of this household is going through.”

“But,” said Kallabat, “there is something deeper, and that which is deeper is that we are in need of a medicine.”

“What is the medicine of [Lenten] fasting? Trust: trust that the Lord is going to take us through this. Humility: instead of looking at his or her sins, I look at mine first, and I need to ask for forgiveness — that’s what Jesus said [...] It’s the humility of saying ‘this is unacceptable’ and therefore those who are accused are in need of our prayers more than anybody else. You know, it is easy to love somebody in the good times, it’s not so easy to love somebody in the bad times. Offering up the medicine of our fasting for this, allowing the Lord to heal […] and it’s very painful, but there is a Lord and He gives healing and He gives strength.”

“We need truth, but that means we need Jesus.”

Bishop Shaleta was arrested Thursday on several counts of embezzlement and money laundering. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release that the bishop was picked up at the San Diego airport as he attempted to leave the United States, after The Pillar reported last week that the bishop was expected to travel to Rome.

He had submitted his resignation to the Vatican in late January, The Pillar has reported, following criminal complaints made by members of the eparchy last August, and a Vatican-ordered investigation into allegations of substantial embezzlement and personal misconduct, which concluded last year.

The Pillar has also previously reported that after the bishop submitted a letter of resignation from his diocesan post in late January, Cardinal Sako consulted with Chaldean bishops about his hope to see the bishop transferred to an administrative post in Baghdad, as a high-ranking official of the Chaldean patriarchate.

Sako had previously acknowledged to The Pillar that he raised the prospect of a transfer to Vatican officials, but suggested the idea was floated only before the Vatican-ordered investigation into Shaleta was “clear.” Sources have told The Pillar that the dicastery received a report on the case in late 2025, well before Sako polled Chaldean bishops about a transfer this year.

Shaleta is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from his cathedral, attempting to reimburse missing funds with checks signed by him from a cathedral charity account.

While Shaleta has insisted that he did not mishandle money, The Pillar reviewed financial records indicating that he “reimbursed” his cathedral with checks from its own charity account, signed by him, after reportedly directing a parish tenant and others to make payments to the parish through him in cash, which went unaccounted for.

The bishop has not offered an explanation for the reimbursement discrepancies in his diocesan accounts. Shaleta has said he is the victim of a media campaign and of Chaldeans in his diocese who opposed his leadership.

In addition to financial misconduct, Shaleta is accused of personal misconduct, including his connection to a woman with whom he has maintained a joint bank account, into which he made frequent deposits, for several years and who has repeatedly moved across North America to follow Shelata’s different pastoral assignments.

Findings by a private investigator showed the bishop and the woman appeared to have unfettered access to each others’ houses and made frequent mutual visits.

The investigator also found that the bishop habitually visited a Tijuana brothel flagged for its involvement in human trafficking. These findings were later endorsed publicly by employees at the establishment, known as the “Hong Kong Gentlemans’ Club.”

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Belgian outlet Cathobel reported that Mathieu had arrived in Rome on March 8 after being evacuated with the Italian embassy staff.

The archdiocese's Cathedral of the Consolata and the archbishop’s residence are located within the territory of the Italian embassy.

“I arrived in Rome yesterday, not without regret and sorrow for our brothers and sisters in Iran, as part of the complete evacuation of the Italian embassy, ​​[where] the archdiocese [is located]. Until I return there, pray for the conversion of hearts to inner peace,” Mathieu said in a statement to Cathobel.

Mathieu, a conventual Franciscan, was appointed as the archbishop of Tehran-Isfahan in 2021 by Pope Francis. He was created cardinal in Francis’ last consistory in December 2024.

The conventual Franciscans confirmed the news, saying on March 9 that the cardinal had left the country two days before.

“We inform our readers that we are in contact with Cardinal Dominique Joseph MATHIEU, OFM Conv. In the context of the evacuation of the Italian embassy — which hosts the Latin Catholic cathedral of Tehran — Cardinal MATHIEU left the country the day before yesterday and is safe.”

The announcement came after his congregation announced on March 5 they had been able to reestablish contact with the cardinal that day.

Before the announcement, Catholics around the world had expressed concern for Mathieu, since he hadn’t been reached since before the Feb. 28 U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran.

On March 4, a spokesman for the congregation had said that their last contact with Mathieu had been on Feb. 28, the day the conflict began. Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, in Northern Iraq, had also said that they hadn’t been able to reach Mathieu. “We have tried several times, but there is absolutely no communication,” Warda said in a TV interview.

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The Catholic Church in Iran represents a small minority. The most conservative estimates indicate that there are around 3,500 Catholics in the country, of which 1,300 are Latin Catholics. Other estimates say there could be as many as 20,000 Catholics in the country. According to Vatican statistics, there were only three priests in the country in 2024.

However, Cathobel reported that Mathieu had been serving as the sole priest for the Archdiocese of Tehran’s five parishes.

Iran is consistently recognized as one of the worst countries in the world for Christians to live, with local Christians facing serious persecution.

While Christians are officially recognized by the government as a religious minority and permitted to worship, their churches are closely monitored and their rights are heavily restricted. Distributing Bibles in the local language of Farsi is illegal, as is any kind of evangelization.

Human rights groups say the government has a history of arresting or executing religious minorities and protestors, charging them with offenses including blasphemy, “enmity against God,” ani-regime propaganda, or violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

Pope Leo has repeatedly appealed for peace in the region since the Feb. 28 American and Israeli attacks, and Iran’s ongoing response.

On his March 1 Angelus address, Pope Leo said that “tragedy of enormous proportions” was arising, and added, “Stability and peace are not achieved through mutual threats, nor through the use of weapons, which sow destruction, suffering, and death, but only through reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue.”

He called all parties to stop “the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss”.

A week later, the pope again called for peace in his Angelus address.

“In addition to the episodes of violence and devastation as well as the widespread climate of hatred and fear, there is also the concern that the conflict will spread and that other countries in the region, including beloved Lebanon, may again sink back into instability.”

“We lift up our humble prayer to the Lord, so that the thunderous sound of bombs may cease, weapons may fall silent, and a space for dialogue may open up in which the voice of the people can be heard,” the pope added.

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Church law states that “clerics are forbidden to assume public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power.”

Among the most famous cases related to the norm is that of Fr. Robert Drinan, S.J., who served as a member of Congress for a full decade, beginning in 1971.

In 1980, Pope St. John Paul II directed that priests withdraw from public office, and Drinan did not stand for reelection to his seat.

Still, in Bavaria, the custom of Benedictine monks standing in local elections dates back more than a century.

The Benedictine priests argue that they are not violating canon law because the local council posts are non-partisan and they have no individual executive power, since decisions are made by collective majority vote. The monks are not allowed to be elected as mayors, they say, as they believe that would cross the threshold from civic participation to the exercise of civil power.

The Apostolic See has seemingly not intervened in the situation.

The custom makes Bavaria something of an outlier in Europe, where it is rare for clergy to run for elected office — but not unheard of.

In France, a country with strict Church-state separation, a priest can stand for election as a local mayor, though it seldom happens. Fr. Elie Geffray, a priest of the Diocese of Saint-Brieuc, served as mayor of Eréac, northwestern France, from 2008 to 2014.

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In Poland, Archbishop Sławoj Leszek Głódź was controversially elected as a village administrator in Piaski in 2021. The former Gdańsk archbishop had been sanctioned by the Vatican over his handling of abuse cases. He appears to continue to hold the post.

More high-profile examples of priests running for office are found outside of Europe.

Fr. Hyacinth Alia was elected governor of Nigeria’s Benue State in 2023. He was suspended by his bishop when he announced he was standing for the post.

Bishop Fernando Lugo of San Pedro was laicized by Pope Benedict XVI after he was elected president of Paraguay in 2007.

In Bavaria’s March 8 local elections, Fr. Christoph Gerhard of Münsterschwarzach Abbey retained his seat in Schwarzach am Main, Lower Franconia, after a list of the abbey’s monks gained 6.2% of the votes, giving the community one local council post.

Fr. Tassilo Lengger of St. Ottilien Archabbey also held his seat in Eresing, Upper Bavaria, after the abbey’s electoral list won 9.8% of votes, enabling the community to hold one council position.

Fr. Lukas Wirth was re-elected to a post he has held for 24 years on the council of Scheyern, Upper Bavaria. He was not elected from an abbey list but from a joint list of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union party and a local voters’ association.

Wirth, a member of Scheyern Abbey, is typically placed last on the list, meaning that he qualifies for a seat through votes cast personally for him, rather than because of party allegiance. He came fifth on this year’s list.

Monks from Münsterschwarzach Abbey were first elected to the local council in 1918. The practice was interrupted during the Nazi era, but resumed after the Second World War.

The abbey, which belongs to the Benedictine Congregation of St. Ottilien, has around 90 monks. It is one of the area’s largest employers, with around 300 people working with the community, including in administrative and agricultural roles.

The abbey even has its own fire department, which attracted headlines in 2019 when it rescued a duck and five ducklings after they became stuck in the spillway of a hydroelectric power plant.

Fr. Gerhard, who has held a seat on the local council since 2014, said in a 2020 interview that monks who provide pastoral care in the local villages are not allowed to stand for election, as this would be seen as a conflict of interest. He oversees the abbey’s business affairs, in his role as cellarer, enabling him to hold the elected post.

As a council member, he has deliberated on topics such as schools, flood protection, highway expansion, and gravel mining.

The abbey expressed delight at its showing in the March 8 election, after it stressed the need to support local young people and develop the town of Schwarzach am Main in the run-up to the ballot.

“The abbey’s monks were particularly pleased about the increase in votes. Compared to the last election, significantly more voters chose the monastery list,” it commented.

Gerhard said: “We are surprised and pleased with the good election results. For us, this is a clear sign that people appreciate our commitment to the community.”

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