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In the interview, Mata claims to be well taken care of and said he has received visits from a brother and a niece at his residence. However, local observers have raised alarm at what appears to be an unofficial house arrest, as the bishop has not been publicly accused of any crimes.

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Mata, who is 80 years old, was taken into police custody on June 29, following a homily mentioning the persecution of the Church in the country.

The bishop was taken from a local hospital, where he was undergoing a checkup related to his pacemaker, and was brought to a regime prison, where he was held for several hours, according to local media.

On July 4, the Nicaraguan regime published a statement claiming that Mata had returned to his home “in perfect condition,” after “a necessary inquiry on the origin of properties and family links that are incoherent with the priestly condition” of the bishop.

“Mata has provided [authorities] with statements on different events that violate national laws… After returning with his residence, Bishop Mata acknowledged that he was treated in every moment with the due respect and consideration that characterizes Nicaraguan law enforcement.”

However, Church sources and local human rights advocates say that Mata’s residence has been surrounded by police since he was initially detained, and neither his relatives nor other close contacts have been able to see or speak with him.

The lack of independent confirmation of his whereabouts has fueled fears that he is either being held under unofficial house arrest or has been transferred to another detention facility.

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Following international pressure, Canal 4, a regime-controlled publication, released an interview with Mata on August 13.

The video depicts Adolfo Pastrán, an MP of the Nicaraguan regime, visiting Mata at his home. Pastrán described Mata as “an old friend.”

The video depicts the pair walking around Mata’s farm. The bishop mostly talks about his crops and horses. Pastrán asks him if he’s being taken care of, and Mata says, “Yes, that’s not an issue.”

Afterward, Pastrán asks if he has received visits from his family. Mata says that he’s received visits from his brother and niece, but that he is not a very social man.

“I like silence, study, and prayer. I’m in my corner, leading a monk’s life… prayer, intellectual work.”

The interview comes less than 24 hours after the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights called for “urgent measures” to guarantee Mata’s wellbeing.

Human rights activists had demanded a proof-of-life, voicing doubts that the bishop was actually at his residence.

A source close to the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference told The Pillar in July that “the police returned hours after they had taken Bishop Mata home, and his family lost contact with him. Some outlets have said he’s under house arrest, but no one really knows where he is, his family has no access to the house, which is surrounded by police.”

“He could be there, but it also may be the case that they’re just surrounding the house to make people believe he’s there, while he’s actually in El Chipote,” the source said. El Chipote is a Nicaraguan regime prison, which human right activists have described as a torture center for political opponents and priests.

On the same day that it released the interview, Canal 4 also published an unnamed op-ed, criticizing that the “coup-promoters and propagandists of the right said that [Mata] was disappeared, ‘kidnapped,’ ‘tortured,’ or ‘in danger of death… the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, a discredited organization that is in favor of coup-plotters… joined this media war.”

“But once again, truth prevailed over lies… because Bishop Abelardo Mata himself voluntarily and calmly gave an interview to Adolfo Pastrán. Mata looked serene, joyful, vigorous, and agile, he spoke with naturality and walked without difficulties in his property,” the article added.

In 2024, the same outlet had published an article calling Mata “the emeritus devil.”

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Mata served as the bishop of Estelí between 1988 and 2021. He is well known for his opposition to the Nicaraguan regime, especially during the 2018 protests in the country. In July 2018, the bishop’s car was hit by gunfire from members of a paramilitary group connected to the Nicaraguan regime as he was travelling to Managua, the country’s capital.

The Nicaraguan regime had previously barred Mata from returning to his diocese and celebrating Mass there, but the retired bishop defied the ban, arriving in Estelí on Thursday, June 25, and celebrating Mass publicly on Sunday, June 28. It was during that Mass that he asked for prayers for the “persecuted Church in Nicaragua” and for exiled Bishop Rolando Álvarez, according to La Prensa.

A local source told La Prensa that several other people had been arrested and interrogated alongside Mata on June 29.

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Nicaragua, a country of around 7 million people bordering Honduras and Costa Rica, is led by an authoritarian regime that dates back to 2007, when Sandinista Front leader Daniel Ortega, who served as president from 1979 to 1990, returned to power. The regime launched a crackdown on the Church following mass protests in 2018.

Since the start of the persecution against the Catholic Church, the Nicaraguan regime has forced the closure of dozens of Catholic TV and radio stations, the dissolution of the legal structures of religious congregations, Catholic universities, and Catholic foundations, and the seizure of their properties.

Several religious orders have been forced to leave the country, including the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Poor Clares, the Discalced Carmelites, and the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

More than 250 clergy and religious have been forced into exile, including four bishops and almost one-fifth of the country’s priests.

The Diocese of Matagalpa has been hit particularly hard, losing over 60% of its clergy, including its bishop and most of its diocesan curia. The regime also seized the local seminary in 2025.

Matagalpa was home to Bishop Rolando Álvarez, widely seen as one of the most stringent critics of Ortega. His criticism of the regime led to his arrest in August 2022, and his subsequent 25-year prison sentence on charges of conspiracy.

After beginning his prison sentence, Álvarez was exiled to Rome in January 2024 and has lived there ever since.

Bishop Isidoro Mora of the Diocese of Siuna, who was detained after he mentioned Álvarez in a homily in December 2023, has also been in exile since January 2024.

Bishop Carlos Herrera, OFM, president of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference, was forced into exile in 2024 after criticizing a pro-regime mayor during Sunday Mass in the Jinotega cathedral.

Bishop Silvio Báez, OCD, auxiliary bishop of Managua, has been in exile since 2019, first in Rome and then in the United States, after receiving death threats from the Nicaraguan regime.

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Happy Friday friends,

Let’s kick off with something fun: We have a live show coming up!

Next month will see (finally) the beatification of Ven. Fulton Sheen. After a lengthy, sometimes acrimonious, and always contentious back-and-forth between the archbishop’s home Diocese of Peoria and the Archdiocese of New York, where he served as an auxiliary bishop and was buried for many years, the beatification is now scheduled to take place in… St. Louis on September 24.

I tease. The Diocese of Peoria opted to move the event to a larger city because Sheen is a towering figure in American Catholic culture and, hopefully, there will be a lot of people coming to celebrate. JD and I will certainly be there, in fact we’ll be combining work with personal piety and rolling along the Sheen celebrations on a small Pillar pilgrimage, which you can still attend.

But, while the main event of the week is the beatification itself on the 24th, JD and I will be pre-gaming with a live Pillar Podcast at 9pm on September 23rd and we want you all to come.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Catholic Education Fund, we’re able to go a little bit bigger than our usual MO of taking over a local dive bar and turning the mics on before they realize what we’re doing. We’ve got an actual room to ourselves at a local brew pub, our legendary live show guest producer Kyle is coming in to run the board, and it is going to be a great night. For those of you who came to the Eucharistic Congress Live Show in Indianapolis, you guys know what I am talking about.

And the best part is, while St. Louis might be home to the most boring baseball team in the country, it is in the more-or-less exact center of the country, which means it is local for literally everyone!

So, at 9 pm on Wednesday September 23, JD and I will be at Schlafly, the first and oldest brewery-pub in the state, founded with the express purpose of bringing proper English ales to the home of Budweiser, and I ask you: what nobler work is there than that?

So please, come along for a great night. These live shows have become the standing exception to my acute social awkwardness. Every one, wherever it is — Chicago, Baltimore, Indianapolis, St. Paul, Rome — feels like a friends-and-family affair.

We say it often, because it is true: The Pillar exists because it is a community of people who love the Church and love the truth, and because of that, we are free to love each other, even when we disagree. That’s nothing to take for granted, and it’s a joy to be a part of. So come out and be a part of it, drink some real beer with me, and let’s have a great night.

See you then. Now, here’s the news.

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The News

The top story this week is that Bishop Christopher Saunders, the former leader of the Australian Diocese of Broome, has been convicted of 13 counts of sexual abuse — including against a canonical minor.

The bishop was arrested in 2024, following a second police investigation into widespread rumours and allegations he used diocesan resources, for years, to groom young aboriginal men to abuse them. That second investigation came after an initial police enquiry closed without charges in 2021 for lack of evidence. What happened in between was a Vatican-ordered Vos estis investigation into Saunders, the results of which were leaked to the cops.

All of this followed Saunders first voluntarily stepping back from governance of his diocese in 2020 — when all of these allegations were well-known in the diocese — and then resigning for “health reasons.”

There’s a lot to unpack about this story, and we will get there in a minute. But for now I just want to say we’ve been across this story for years, following every development, interviewing people in the diocese — including those who went on to testify against Saunders — because it matters, and it is worth the investment of time and work.

That is what we are here for, that is why The Pillar exists. Read the whole thing here.

—

An English bishop accused of raping a minor appeared in court on Thursday, where he was ordered not to contact his alleged victim ahead of his plea hearing set for next month.

Bishop David Okaley appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court via video from his lawyer’s office for the Aug. 13 preliminary hearing, with the bishop released from custody on bail as he awaits his upcoming trial.

The bishop, 70, was charged last month with two counts of rape of a minor, over claims dating back to alleged sexual misconduct involving a girl younger than 16, which reportedly took place between February 2000 and February 2001, when Oakley was in ministry as a priest.

While charges were announced in June, Oakley was under investigation for months before that, and the bishop began a leave of absence in October 2025, which he and his diocese announced was taken for “personal reasons,” although he was initially arrested on the charges a month earlier.

Read the whole story here.

—

The head of Catholic schools in New South Wales is being investigated over claims that he hired political allies and allowed them to engage in political efforts during work hours.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is looking into allegations that Dallas McInerney, chief executive of News South Wales Catholic schools, hired people affiliated with the center-right Liberal Party for the purpose of having them spend a significant part of their working hours on political efforts to recruit new party members.

McInerney has spent nearly 10 years leading the Catholic schools in the Australian state. He has a background in financial regulation and policy, and he previously served for years as General Manager of Government and Public Policy at National Australia Bank. He has stepped aside from his position while the investigation proceeds.

Read the whole story here.

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Thankfully, the Church is always blessed with the witness of new saints. But it is a rare thing when a married couple starts on the road to canonization together, as a couple. But that’s exactly what is happening with the Servants of God Tomás and Paquita Alvira.

If they make it all the way, they will be only the third married couple to be raised to the altars together. This week Edgar Beltran spoke to the postulator of their cause about what made their marriage a unique witness to everyday holiness.

They also talked about the canonical technicalities of a joint cause for beatification, because who doesn’t want to get into the weeds on that?

Read the whole interview here.

—

The head of the Armenian Apostolic Church faced a courtroom last week. Catholicos Karekin II faces obstruction of justice charges alongside five other Armenian bishops, as the latest in a long-running and complex dispute between Armenian Apostolic prelates and Armenia’s prime minister.

Karekin and six other Orthodox Armenian Church officials are accused of disobeying a court decision ordering the reinstatement of Bishop Gevorg Saroyan, an ally of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was dismissed from his post and laicized by Karekin after repeatedly calling for the Karekin’s ouster.

The trial is the high point of a conflict between the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian government which began with Pashinyan’s election in 2018.

As with everything in Armenia, it’s complicated — and it seems likely the Vatican has complicated feelings about it, too. Read the whole story here.

—

One of the more remarkable stories to emerge thus far in the Leonine pontificate is the rise of a cadre of fiercely qualified lay leaders, the best known of them women, all on the younger side — certainly by Vatican standards.

As Tim Glemkowski wrote in a column for us this week, “Millennial” doesn’t mean “young adult” in Church speak anymore, and this emerging cohort of Catholic leaders have some distinct generational markers, too.

This ain’t your Grandma’s lay leadership.

Read the whole thing here.

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Are you looking for a flexible, online degree to deepen your faith and advance your career? The University of Mary offers Pillar subscribers scholarships of up to $10,000 toward qualifying programs, including the MBA, Master of Organizational Leadership, MBA/MA in Philosophy, and MA in Applied Catholic Theology. Learn more and apply at pillar.umary.edu.

A healthy episcopate

The Saunders case has, at least from what I can tell, failed to make much of an impression outside of Australia, and I really don’t understand why.

The horrific nature of the crimes of which the bishop is now convicted speak for themselves and are now public record. But there remain some distinctly unanswered questions about the case and how it unfolded which should be of keen interest to Catholics, wherever they live.

One of which must surely be how the bishops’ conference came to announce, while keeping the conclusions of a 2023 Vos estis investigation confidential, that it found no suggestion of minors being involved — this despite that same Vos estis forming the substance of the police investigation which led to Saunders’ conviction of, inter alia, sexual abuse of a canonical minor.

But the one I want to focus on now, and which extends well beyond Australia, is how Saunders was allowed by the Vatican, in what is now almost a nauseatingly time honored tradition, the privilege of first stepping back from the governance of his former diocese and then resigning under the ludicrous and patently specious pretense of “ill health.” This, even as his entire diocese was under no illusions about why he was stepping down and the bishop himself was under police investigation.

Of all the trappings of a disordered clericalist culture the Church was meant to have had an ultimate reckoning with after the McCarrick and Chilean bishops scandals of 2019, perhaps the most stubbornly enduring — and from a lay perspective inexplicable — is extending disgraced bishops the “professional courtesy” to dissemble and even deceive their flocks on their way out the door.

Lest anyone be tempted to think this is a far away issue in a distant land, it is not. In the last five years alone it has spanned continents and pontificates.

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Bishop David Okaley appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court via video from his lawyer’s office for the Aug. 13 preliminary hearing, with the bishop released from custody on bail as he awaits his upcoming trial.

The bishop, 70, was charged last month with two counts of rape of a minor, over claims dating back to alleged sexual misconduct involving a girl younger than 16, which reportedly took place between February 2000 and February 2001, when Oakley was in ministry as a priest.

While charges were announced in June, Oakley was under investigation for months before that, and the bishop began a leave of absence in October 2025, which he and his diocese announced was taken for “personal reasons.”

At the time it was announced that Oakley was taking the “personal reasons” leave of absence, the bishop was considered a possible contender to become the Archbishop of Westminster and effectively the leader of the Catholic Church in the country.

Oakley was in ministry as a seminary rector before his 2020 appointment as a diocesan bishop. Sources close to the case have told The Pillar that the Archdiocese of Birmingham, where Oakley was incardinated, was first informed in 2006 of possible sexual misconduct on the priest’s part, and failed to notify law enforcement officials or initiate canonical proceedings.

Both the Birmingham archdiocese and a spokesman for Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who led the Birmingham archdiocese at that time, told The Pillar that because of the active criminal case against Oakley, they were unable to comment.

Oakley’s Northampton diocese, which serves around 180,000 Catholics in central England, is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Westminster in London.

Pope Leo named Archbishop Richard Moth as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Northampton June 30.

Leo XIV specified that Moth will remain apostolic administrator sede plena at the discretion of the Apostolic See, which means that Oakley retains the title of Bishop of Northampton as he undergoes criminal proceedings.

The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales explained June 30 that Moth’s appointment was “a temporary role, by which the Holy See ensures that the pastoral governance of a diocese will continue, when it is not possible for a diocesan Bishop to exercise his office.”

“Therefore, the governance of the Diocese of Northampton is now canonically entrusted to Archbishop Moth,” it said.

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The Independent Commission Against Corruption is looking into allegations that Dallas McInerney, chief executive of News South Wales Catholic schools, hired people affiliated with the center-right Liberal Party for the purpose of having them spend a significant part of their working hours on political efforts to recruit new party members.

McInerney has spent nearly 10 years leading the Catholic schools in the Australian state. He has a background in financial regulation and policy, and he previously served for years as General Manager of Government and Public Policy at National Australia Bank. He has stepped aside from his position while the investigation proceeds.

Evidence introduced in the investigation so far has indicated that a number of individuals hired by McInerney spent some or most of their time at work aiding the efforts of a political group known as the Reformers, according to local media.

The Liberal Party is the more conservative of the political parties in Australia. However, its membership holds mixed views on a number of social issues, including abortion.

A subgroup of Australia’s Liberal party, the Reformers consist of largely young Christian men who have sought to shift the Liberal party to become more conservative – particularly on moral issues such as marriage and abortion – from within the party itself.

Part of the Reformers’ strategy was to recruit social conservatives into the party in specific locations – stacking the party strategically to shift votes.

The corruption investigation will consider whether these claims, if true, constitute donations to the NSW Liberal Party that are both undeclared and over the legal limit. It will also look into whether taxpayer money was used to further political interests.

Catholic schools in New South Wales receive more than $3.6 billion in federal and state government funding, the vast majority of their budget, according to local media.

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In addition to the allegations of hiring Catholic Schools NSW employees for political interests, McInerney is also accused of directing well over $100,000 to individuals within the Reformers movement. According to allegations, he was responsible for signing a contract with a Reformer-linked government relations firm, and approving inaccurate invoices from the firm.

McInerney was questioned as part of the investigation this week, particularly over a message in which he told one of the co-founders of the Reformers that he wanted to “shake down Angus [Taylor, head of the Liberal Party in the country] for 10k.”

In his testimony, McInerney acknowledged that he had asked Taylor for funding. However, he said it was for internal party elections, not to support Reformers efforts.

McInerney will face further questioning later this week. If the corruption investigation finds that he is guilty, he could face criminal charges.

The scandal has given new life to debates over the funding of Catholic and other private schools in New South Wales.

There are roughly 270,000 students who attend some 600 diocesan Catholic schools in the Australian state.

Some organizations, including the Independent Education Union of Australia, are calling for stricter oversight of educational bodies such as Catholic Schools NSW.

Others have called for the Church to lose its government funding if the investigation determines that the allegations against McInerney are correct.

The investigation into McInerney comes amid a broader probe into allegations of illegal donations to the Liberal Party.

Kellie Sloane, leader of the New South Wales Liberal Party, said she supports the corruption probe. She has moved to suspend McInerney and other party members who are currently under investigation.

New South Wales will hold a state parliamentary election next March.

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The Western Australia district court found Saunders guilty on 12 counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual penetration against young Aboriginal men. The court found the bishop not guilty of six other charges.

Most of the charges reportedly concerned one victim, who was 16 when the sexual contact began and 19 when it ended. In canon law, persons below the age of 18 are considered minors. According to the prosecutor, the young man “felt shame” at what had occurred but “felt like he could not say no.” Saunders was also accused of committing offenses against a 24-year-old man and another man who was in his late teens.

In the course of the three week trial, Bishop Michael Morrissey of the neighboring Diocese of Geraldton appeared in court to give evidence as a witness for the prosecution, answering questions about Saunders’ use of alcohol in supposedly “pastoral” interactions with young men. Morrissey served as apostolic administrator of the Broome diocese following Saunders’ stepping down, until a successor bishop was appointed in 2024.

Saunders formally resigned from office as bishop of the Broome diocese in 2021 — citing ill health — having stepped back from governance of the diocese in 2020, after accusations surfaced that he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of Church funds on gifts for vulnerable young men, including cash, phones, alcohol, and travel.

A police inquiry into allegations against the bishop was closed in 2021, and filed no charges for lack of evidence, but the case was reopened after law enforcement authorities were given a copy of the results of a subsequent internal Church investigation conducted under the norms of Vos estis lux mundi. A second police investigation was opened in 2024, leading to Saunders’ arrest in February of that year.

Previous statements from the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference have said that Saunders’ case has been at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome since 2023, and he is charged with “alleged canonical crimes, as defined by Vos estis lux mundi, and alleged breaches of the Church’s Integrity in Ministry protocols.”

However, the bishops’ conference also claimed initially that the Church’s investigation into Saunder did not identify any alleged or potential victims under the age of 18, even while Saunders has now been convicted of sexual offenses against a person under 18.

Leaked portions of the report produced by the Church’s investigation, which triggered the renewed police action against the bishop last year, identified a pattern of behavior by Saunders consistent with grooming dozens of young men over a period of decades.

According to media reports on the leaked text, one man told Vatican-commissioned investigators that Saunders had employed him to do gardening work at his residence and offered him the use of his shower afterwards. According to the victim, the bishop then climbed into the shower with him.

“I was scared. He was a big fella and I was just a teenager at the time,” he told investigators, and that the bishop subsequently started showering him with gifts of cash, phones, cigarettes and alcohol.

Another man testified that Saunders threw so-called “bunga bunga parties,” to which only male guests were invited and at which he saw the bishop ask attendees to strip, and kiss and grope young guests. “The bishop has been variously described by witnesses as … a sexual predator that seeks to prey upon vulnerable Aboriginal men and boys,” the report said.

Following his resignation and the opening of the Vos estis investigation, Saunders was ordered by the Vatican to reside outside the diocese, a directive he ignored, continuing to live in a Church-owned house in Broome and to exercise considerable influence over diocesan affairs. By December 2023, Saunders was still listed as the “responsible person” for nine Catholic charities in his former diocese, several of which are affiliated with local parishes.

The Broome diocese covers the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of the sparsely populated state of Western Australia, serving around 15,000 Catholics out of a total population of 44,000 people.

Bishop Timothy Norton, S.V.D., was installed as the new Bishop of Broome on Dec. 4, 2024. In a pastoral letter to the local community issued after the verdict, Norton offered his “gratitude” to police and prosecutors “for their commitment to bringing this matter before a jury.”

“Most importantly, our diocese acknowledges the courage of victims, survivors and other witnesses who came forward to express their truth,” said the bishop. “They showed extraordinary resilience and commitment through a long and difficult process. They deserved to be heard with compassion and treated with dignity.”

“We are deeply sorry for the hurt they have experienced. We are sorry for the shame they have endured. We are sorry that it has taken so long for their voices to be heard and for their pain to be acknowledged. We will do all we can to reach out to them for hope and healing,” the bishop said, while pledging to visit local communities around the diocese in the coming months for a time of “grieving, listening, and walking together.”

Saunders will face a sentencing hearing on September 21.

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Their cause is one of the few “joint” causes of beatification for a modern married couple, much like the cases of Blessed Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Maria Corsini, a couple beatified in 2001 by Saint John Paul II, and Saints Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux.

The Pillar spoke with Fr. José Carlos Martín de la Hoz, postulator of the cause, about the life of Tomás and Paquita Alvira and their beatification cause.

The interview was conducted in Spanish and was edited for clarity and length.

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Who were Tomás and Paquita Alvira, and how has the cause progressed?

Tomás Alvira Alvira and Francisca (better known as Paquita) Domínguez Susín met in Aragón, Spain in the 1930s. He was a science teacher. She was a schoolteacher working in a town in Spain’s Huesca province.

The two were deeply in love, hoping to marry and build a Christian home, but the Spanish Civil War broke out just as Tomás was about to secure a high school teaching chair. All their plans of love and hope for building a family were shattered by that terrible war that devastated Spain.

When the conflict ended in 1939, Tomás was still in love with Paquita, and as soon as he could, he found her again — during the war they had ended up in two different zones: Spain had been divided between the Republican zone and the zone held by the insurgents. Tomás was in Madrid, which was on the Republican side.

Tomás was able to reunite with Paquita almost immediately, and he secured a teaching chair at the Instituto Ramiro de Maeztu in Madrid, which was then Spain’s model secondary school, and served as secretary of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), at the San José de Calasanz Institute.

This meant he finally had the financial means to support a family in peace and stability. Even so, like all Spanish professionals of the time, Tomás was always looking for additional work, since if you had a large family — as this couple did, with nine children — you had to find more sources of income.

That’s why it’s delightful to see Tomás, even in his mature years — 50-something, [maybe] 60 — launch into a new professional adventure, setting up secondary schools across the country. Paquita, on the other hand, was a teacher who gave up her profession once she was married in order to raise their children.

So this is a cause for beatification as a married couple, because both Tomás — carrying forward his professional work while also seeing to his children’s upbringing — and Paquita — who bore the weight of raising the children and running the household — fell deeply in love with one another, and through that human love managed to build a Christian home together.

That is, it is a cause of marriage because both of them lived from that love, and from that love came both the children’s upbringing and the building of a Christian home.

In a cause involving a married couple, what’s done is to study his life first and then hers. Each one’s personal holiness has to be studied. But the grace of it lies in the fact that marriage is a theological place, and so, in studying how he lived the virtues to a heroic degree, and how she lived them to a heroic degree as well, in both cases one is always looking at how they lived those virtues through married love.

Married love isn’t a goal in itself, but the means through which both people arrive at holiness. That’s why, when there isn’t a clear sense that marital love was what led to the heroic practice of the virtues, the cause for him or her is opened separately. But when that awareness does exist — as it did in this case — that marital love was the cement, the means through which each of them, in their profession and in their ordinary activities, attained heroic virtue, then it is presented as a cause “of the marriage” you can say.

The closing session of the diocesan phase doesn’t take place until both causes have been completed separately, even though the cause itself is one of marriage, and the boxes from one process are sealed first, and then the boxes from the other, and both sets of boxes are sent to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

As the postulator, I personally carried the boxes to Rome to make sure they weren’t lost, along with sealed letters from the process’s judge and promoter of justice, and from the bishop of the diocese, certifying that both causes were carried out with all the necessary juridical and theological rigor.

Once it is all delivered to the dicastery, they usually ask for some addition — that is, that further favors or graces attributed to their intercession be sought out. That’s precisely where the grace of a marital process lies: the miracles aren’t studied separately, as ones attributed to him and ones attributed to her, but rather attributed to the couple, to their love, to the marriage.

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That’s why their prayer card shows both of them together. What that indicates is that what God has joined together, man does not separate — so neither do we separate them in our prayers of intercession.

And it is important to note that a cause cannot be opened unless the devotion has reached a significant part of the people of God. Now in the Roman phase, the members of the dicastery — the theological consultors, the historical experts, the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and canonists of the dicastery — have to agree that there is heroic virtue in both his and her lives, and that a reputation for graces and favors attributed to their intercession has been established.

That’s what’s still needed next: for the decree of heroic virtues to be issued for both of them, and those in turn function as recognition that the reputation for holiness and favors of the couple has reached a significant part of the people of God.

The third phase of the process is the “miracle phase.” At this point, my role as postulator is twofold: On one hand, praying that the work be carried out with the greatest rigor possible, so that the Church can declare the heroic virtue of Tomás and Paquita.

My other job at this point is to keep spreading their reputation for holiness and favors throughout the world, so that, among all the favors and graces being obtained, one day something emerges that can be classified as a miracle.

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How does devotion to servants of God develop and spread?

For the past five years, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints has organized an annual international congress for the training of postulators of causes, as well as of tribunals, judges, promoters of justice, notaries, and historical experts. At the first of those congresses, we had the good fortune of being received by Pope Francis in the Clementine Hall.

Pope Francis addressed the postulators and tribunals from around the world, and, with the good humor he kept up to the very end, told us not to put our trust in the internet. He said it’s very easy for a cause to “go viral” and disappear again just as quickly; it’s very easy to post a video online and suddenly see favors and graces pouring in. But what matters is what happens the following week: whether it holds, whether favors and graces keep coming in, or whether it was something momentary.

That’s why Pope Francis told us: “I trust a mother more — one who watches her daughter spend the whole afternoon studying, worn out because she has a math exam coming up, and the mother comes over, gives her a kiss, and says, ‘keep studying, but pray to this saint who works so many miracles,’ and leaves her a prayer card of a saint or a servant of God, so she keeps studying but also keeps counting on heaven’s help.”

We make prayer cards, we produce informational bulletins about the process, we make short videos. But in the end, what truly matters is word of mouth.

It’s lovely to see how international the favors are, arriving from Latin America and many other parts of the world.

What Tomás and Paquita “sell,” so to speak, is love. The favors people most often ask for have to do with love: people ask for a girlfriend, a boyfriend; they ask for family love; they ask that a child who has drifted away from God come back; they ask that harmony return home because the father or husband is too busy with work and barely ever at home, or a couple has trouble communicating. Love is the great key right now. Love is universal, and it’s asked for from all four corners of the Earth.

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Tomás and Paquita had nine children, though the eldest died as a child. What do their children, grandchildren, and friends say about this family life?

I was actually Tomás’ student growing up, and he was a close friend of my father. I was 15 at the time. One day in class, we were looking through the microscope at a preparation of olivine rock, a volcanic rock containing a mineral called peridot, a beautiful green crystal resembling an emerald. I was in awe, looking through the eyepiece at that preparation, and Tomás came over and said quietly in my ear: “If the macroscopic work of creation that God has made is great and wonderful, now look at the microscopic beauty of creation.”

And it’s true: looking at that preparation, one can’t help but give thanks to God for having made something so beautiful, so wonderful, in the innermost structure of matter. I studied geology before becoming a priest, moved by what I’d learned from Tomás, my natural sciences teacher.

I always thought Tomás was especially fond of me because he was such a close friend of my father’s. Years later I discovered that wasn’t true: every one of Tomás’s students felt loved by him. Why? Because that, quite simply, was the key to his teaching, the key to being a great natural sciences teacher: conveying warmth and affection to his students, and opening up horizons for them, taking them further — which is also part of true affection. Affection isn’t just giving warmth, but also opening horizons, carrying the person further than they’d ever dreamed, because love always leads to the growth of the person loved.

That’s what the children remember about the atmosphere at home: they felt loved and encouraged by both their father and their mother. All of them remember their mother’s tenderness and warmth, and they also point to her humility. Paquita always worried that her children wouldn’t let it go to their heads how clever, how intelligent they were — and it was true, all of them were truly brilliant — but they all ended up humble, because they learned to love by watching their parents.

Now, you ask me about grandchildren. Tomás and Paquita had no grandchildren, because their eight children who reached adulthood all chose to become numeraries of Opus Dei — that is, celibate members — one of whom is a priest.

Now, what’s essential to family life isn’t that the children became members of Opus Dei, obviously, but rather that they, as a couple, were deeply faithful to married love — that as parents they loved each other madly until death and then eternally, that both of them loved Jesus as the foundation of that love. And then, each of the children remains freely responsible for how they respond to the promptings of grace.

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Much has been made about their connection to Opus Dei. What did that mean for their faith?

There’s an anecdote about this that sums it up very well. The record has been preserved from the first study week of the earliest supernumeraries — members who don’t commit to celibacy — of Opus Dei, among whom was Tomás.

The diary of that gathering was written by a priest who was leading that first push of Opus Dei’s work among family men and women, among professionals. He writes, full of wonder, about the enthusiasm for formation, the desire for holiness, the desire to be faithful to the vocation they’d received, the desire to leave a mark, to transform the world through the love of God and through the virtue of charity.

But it’s far more interesting to read what they themselves said, the first three of Opus Dei, when they arrived from that gathering.

What they said was quite revealing: they spoke of the founder of Opus Dei, who had led that gathering, and said, in summary, “we have never heard anyone speak of human love the way we heard St. Josemaría speak of it at that gathering.” In other words, what they learned at that gathering is that, alongside the ordinary calling of belonging to Opus Dei — sanctifying the ordinary realities of life — there was something specific to being a supernumerary that had to be underscored: marital love.

It became very clear to them that a man of Opus Dei’s first business is his family, and a woman of Opus Dei’s first business is her family. So, above work, above health or illness, above everything, stands the love within the family. And family love is the love that springs from the love between husband and wife.

When that marriage is grounded in love, aims at love, and grows through love, the children grow up healthy, the family situation is stable, and that man and that woman achieve not only professional standing or social position, but heaven — which, in the end, is what matters.

Beyond that, something else that stood out was the joy with which they lived. The best business schools teach that the finest executives are those who have their backs covered, so to speak — those with a stable family life, who arrive at work with a full heart, who know they’re loved by their spouse and children.

Those are the best professionals. Why? Because when your back is covered, when you know that what you’re doing is to provide for your family and, through it, for society, you feel happy and complete. And that’s exactly what was felt in the home of Tomás and Paquita.

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There’s a story about Paquita, from when she attended her first spiritual retreat, already a mother of several children. Coming back, she resolved to make five minutes of daily mental prayer — which was what she believed she could manage.

How did they live out their spiritual life amid so many professional and family responsibilities?

That’s a question a young woman with a very demanding professional life asked me the other day. She told me: “Look, I get to work in the morning and leave at one in the morning. I have an intense schedule, but I really enjoy my work. I’m very happy there, I have wonderful bosses, great colleagues — but I don’t have time to go to Mass. Do you think I should quit my job so I can go to Mass?”

I told her: “You’re like a merchant sailor, who goes to Mass whenever the ship docks. What matters is that you turn every day into a Mass.”

The great secret of Tomás and Paquita was what they learned from St. Josemaría: turning the day into a Mass. The Mass is the center and root of one’s interior life, and if everything revolves around the Mass, then we’ll know how to seek it out whenever we can, seeking out moments and opportunities so that the Mass just lived ends up transforming everything else.

That’s why children remember Sunday Mass — going together as a family to the parish church next to their house, and afterward, once Mass ended, there was always something special, a special breakfast. There was a time of family joy, because the Mass was the event of the week that they lived with God and as a family. And from there flows what’s called a “plan of life,” the norms of piety that keep God’s presence alive.

A newly married woman told me recently as well: “Look, sometimes I get home at half past ten at night, and my husband too, and by eleven we already have to go to sleep. I still have almost my whole plan of life left to do: prayer, the rosary, spiritual reading.” And I told her: “Give your husband a big hug, and with that you’ve already fulfilled your whole plan of life, because in the end the plan of life exists to help us love, and when you embrace your husband, that’s the reality of marital love — you’re carrying out your whole plan of life.”

It’s about the naturalness of love. As I said before, all their children chose celibacy as their vocation, but they were never forced into anything: it was their parents’ example. Seeing them go to Mass daily, seeing them in their room spending a while in prayer or reading the Gospel, praying the Rosary together after dinner every day.

They saw their mother ask them to come along on a short visit to the Blessed Sacrament in the mid-afternoon for a few minutes, and then they’d head back home.

If parents set an example of being people of prayer, and pray with their children, then those children — even if they go through a phase of adolescence, of rebellion, of confusion — will, because they had these things so deeply rooted, and had seen them lived out naturally by their parents, find themselves drawn back to all of it over time.

That’s why Paquita often used to say that the Alvira home was a home one always returned to, like a magnet drawing everyone back through Madrid to see their parents, to be with the family, to be with their siblings.

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We’ve spoken a lot about ordinary life — but in the lives of Tomás and Paquita there were also extraordinary crosses: the Spanish Civil War that kept them apart for three years, the loss of their eldest child at age five, Tomás’s eventual cancer, and then Paquita’s two years as a widow. How did they live through these more extraordinary moments as well?

Well, as the Acts of the Apostles put it, quoting St. Paul’s very apt words: “It is through many tribulations that we must enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). So the cross is going to appear, and not just once, but habitually — just as gold is refined in fire, man is refined in tribulation.

But it’s the small crosses that prepare us for the big ones. And that was one of the characteristics of the Alvira marriage. They learned to correct each other with love and to bear each other’s flaws with love. They never said things like “you’re a disaster.”

When they had something to tell each other, they’d first exchange five kisses, five hugs, and, for instance, he would say: “My love, if you arrived on time, you’d already be the holiest woman in the universe.” Or she’d tell him, with five kisses and five hugs: “Tomás, you should eat more breakfast, you should eat more, because you work too much.”

That is, whatever needed to be said, they said one thing at a time, without generalizing, and with charity. And they said it in a positive spirit, so that the other person felt loved and felt hopeful.

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A family of eight children faces certain hardships, even if nothing truly essential is lacking materially. I once read, for example, that Tomás never owned a car. How did they live out the virtue of poverty?

You also have to understand the circumstances of living in the Spain of the 1950s and ’60s. To get a car you had to put your name on a waiting list, and eventually you might be able to buy a small utility car, the Seat 600. My own father didn’t have a car back then either — it wasn’t the norm.

We’re talking about a country coming out of a civil war, one that didn’t take off economically until the 1960s and ‘70s. So, on one hand, there are traits particular to a country recovering from war and catching up to a European economy it had been shut out of because of the dictatorship.

In the Alvira family, as in all Christian families, and especially the larger ones, there’s always some scarcity. St. Josemaría used to advise Opus Dei supernumeraries to gradually give their children more freedom: that is, he encouraged them to grant their children freedom, and financial means too, little by little, according to each child’s ability to manage money and manage freedom.

In that way, they were forming their children in a fundamental virtue: generosity toward God. One must lean on God’s hands, trust in God, put all of one’s love in God, so as not to be attached to earthly things, but rather know how to use them sensibly. Teaching them to be good stewards of money, and good stewards of freedom, is, at bottom, teaching them to have a free heart, so they can love God and their neighbor.

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In your experience, what do people most identify with in Tomás and Paquita, or which virtues do others highlight most about them?

I think what strikes people most is seeing them very elderly, still very much in love — seeing how they looked at each other, how they smiled at each other. It’s very moving to know, for instance, that they used to sit on the porch of their house, well along in years, as evening fell. And suddenly Tomás raises an eyebrow, and Paquita asks him: “Do you feel like having a snack?” And he answers: “You know me so well — even down to raising an eyebrow?” When we’re truly in love, we’re attuned to each other; words aren’t necessary, the naturalness of love is enough.

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Only two months ago, Pope Leo XIV also made Montse Alvarado the prefect for the Dicastery of Communications, meaning a millennial lay woman is now in charge of one of the Holy See’s influential dicasteries and its largest or near-largest single administrative cost.

Like Montse, these two new council members are extraordinarily qualified and credentialed. Gisela Bergmann is a 36-year old princess — a real-life princess — who is trusted enough by her family, who have run Liechtenstein since just after the First Crusade, to be the CEO of one of their larger wealth preservation companies.

The other new member, Elena Principato-Wettstein, got an MBA, did post-grad work in accounting and business/management at the Sapienza Università di Roma and still found time to work as a head of sales management at UBS since she was 32. She is now also an executive director for them, having stayed at the company for 12 years — a very un-millenial thing to do.

These appointments remind the Church that millennial is not code language for “young adult” anymore. The millennial generation is coming of age, and increasingly leading the way to set the tone across the Church’s institutions: in chanceries, schools, parishes, apostolates, and, now, even the Vatican.

That news may terrify or encourage you.

Either way, as a member of this much-maligned-millennial generation myself, I thought I would share seven unique qualities of millennial leaders, pulled from my own conversations, to give Catholics a sense of what to expect with a growing cadre of Church leaders who at some point owned a Tamagotchi.

Orthodoxy is presumed table stakes.

Millennials might have different avocations, liturgical preferences, or highlight different aspects of the Church’s life and mission, but pitched doctrinal battles are almost non-existent in our generation. Because of that, we do not feel the need to prove our orthodoxy at all times. If we did not actually believe all this stuff, we would not be here at all.

Authenticity and sincerity are prioritized over polished appearances and status.

We are a generation which prefers courageous, authentic, and human (read: real and, at times, messy) leadership over perfectly polished external appearances. To us, that kind of sincere authenticity cues as integrity.

Our mistrust in institutions (driven largely by their complete moral failure in our lifetime) means we want to know that what is on the inside matches the outside. We would rather have a real conversation about the best way to achieve the mission God has given to us over a perfectly organized board meeting.

A curated, corporate-feeling Catholicism does not move us. We want the real thing, wounds and all.

We have less patience for “kingdom building,” and we value collaboration over competition.

Without criticizing any previous generations, millennials are more “We” and win-win oriented than has been typical in the last 25 years of Church life. We are less attached to advancing our own project or initiative at all costs — including, perhaps — by defeating others and more connected to seeing the Church, as a team, win in the mission Christ gave to it.

Our tone is more “apostolic mission” and missio ad gentes than “new evangelization.”

Our generation did not experience the pain of watching the culture around us lose a Christian worldview. We were raised in a secularized world. So, the primary lens with which we arrive to the work of the Church is not just evangelizing or re-evangelizing Catholics, but preaching the Gospel to the entire world. That dramatically reframes how we think and what we prioritize.

We are less inclined to maintain the institutional status quo, and more oriented to change management.

Older Church leaders often built and trusted structures and institutions because that is what they grew up with. Millennials tend to ask, “Is this working? Does it bear fruit?” before asking “Is this how we’ve always done it?”

We are loyal to the mission above all which means we are strikingly ready to say, both, “What is this structure/institution of the Church meant to be and do?” AND,“How do we repurpose it, without impacting that nature, that for the life of the Church and the world today?” We are very end-game and results-oriented.

Millennials lead collaboratively, not from the top down.

Shaped by flatter workplaces, and a culture of organizational health that has impacted secular/corporate workplaces, we are comfortable sharing responsibility, and credit, and less drawn to the lone-authority, Jack Welch, command and conquer model and the myth of the self-sufficient Strong Man.

We live by the principle, instead, that, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

We are exhausted from polarization and have no desire to see more of it in the Church.

We came of age watching everything, in the Church and our culture, fracture into camps. We have seen the internal Catholic wars up close, and we are tired of them. This is not to say we lack conviction, simply that we are going to look for common ground before we draw lines of division. Many of the issues in the Church that plagued the debates of previous generations are real, and they persist. But we are looking for something deeper than the old divisions, something that looks like a Church living communion and mission.

Admittedly, I am not sure how we get there, but everyone I know wants it.

Thirty-three years ago, Pope St. John Paul II came to Denver, a trip he privately shared with some that he viewed as the inauguration of a “new evangelization” which would spread in the Americas and across the world. Twenty-seven years ago, he came back to St. Louis, right before the Great Jubilee, and issued Ecclesia in America as a sort of charter for that work.

Since those visits, we have seen a flowering of that New Evangelization, driven by trailblazers who heard the Holy Father’s call to coraggio and took off running. And, just as this work has come to full maturation and effectiveness (which I think is inarguable at this point) new generations of leaders are stepping in, with their faults, personal and generational, but also with renewed vitality and fresh perspective.

May we keep all of them in our prayers, that their work might be exactly what the Church needs at this time.

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Karekin II and six other Orthodox Armenian Church officials are accused of disobeying a court decision ordering the reinstatement of Bishop Gevorg Saroyan, an ally of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was dismissed from his post and laicized by Karekin II after repeatedly calling for the Karekin’s ouster.

The trial is the high point of a conflict between the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian government which began with Pashinyan’s election in 2018.

Five other Armenian bishops are standing trial alongside Karekin II — Archbishop Nathan Hovhannisyan, Archbishop Haykazun Najaryan, Bishop Vahan Hovhannesyan, Bishop Edgar Hakobyan, and Bishop Artur Hakobyan.

If found guilty, the bishops could face two years in prison.

Armenia, a country roughly the size of Maryland, has a population of around three million people. It is bordered by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the south. Around 95% of the population belongs to the Armenian Apostolic Church and 0.6% belong to the Catholic Church.

The Armenian Apostolic Church is one of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, a roughly 70 million-strong communion that also includes the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church.

The Oriental Orthodox Churches diverged from the Chalcedonian tradition — represented today by the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches — after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D., largely because of differences over formulas used to define Christ’s nature.

Bishop Saroyan was among a group of 10 Armenian bishops who showed their support for a controversial 2025 “roadmap” introduced by Pashinyan to reform the Armenian Apostolic Church, which called for new statutes in the church, and a reform of governance, which he said was meant to ensure greater transparency . The roadmap also called for the election of a new ecclesiastical leader in place of Karekin II.

Support for that plan saw Saroyan dismissed from office by Karekin II in January.

When announcing his dismissal, the Church cited Saroyan’s “abuse of office, failure to fulfil the duties incumbent upon the primate, as well as instances of coercion and pressure exercised against the clergy of the diocese.”

But a court in Armenia ordered the Church to reinstate Saroyan the same month. Karekin II responded by laicizing Saroyan.

Prosecutors then opened a criminal case against Karekin II on Feb. 14 and barred him from leaving the country, accusing him of obstructing the court order.

Pashinyan, who has served as prime minister since 2018, posted a video in early January in which he read aloud a statement setting out his “roadmap” for the reform of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The video showed eight Armenian Orthodox bishops signing the document at Pashinyan’s residence. Two others, who were not present, also endorsed it.

On Jan. 6 — Christmas Day in Armenia — Pashinyan called for a procession in support of reform from St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral to the Katoghike Holy Mother of God Church in the capital, Yerevan.

In a fiery address to participants, he said: “Today, the de facto head of our Church and his upper circle — the narrow group he has formed — are operating with a sectarian mindset, which means that we must liberate the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church from schism and return it to the people.”

One of the 10 signatories of the reform roadmap text was Bishop Gevork Saroyan, head of the Diocese of Masyatsotn. On Jan. 10, Karekin II removed Saroyan from his post, citing abuse of office.

Karekin II’s legal representative described the move as “direct interference in the internal affairs of the Church.”

The root of the conflict is a dispute about the role of the Church in Armenian public affairs, with Pashinyan accusing Karekin II of having problematic foreign ties, and Karekin suggesting the prime minister is responsible for war losses in the country’s long-simmering conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan.

In December 2025, Pashinyan accused Karekin II of having ties to “foreign intelligence services,” through his brother, who is also an Armenian bishop serving in Russia.

In June 2025, Pashinyan also accused Karekin II of fathering a daughter, saying that “If it turns out that Karekin II has indeed broken his vow of celibacy and has a child, he cannot remain the Catholicos of All Armenians.”

Pashinyan then said that the Armenian government “must have a decisive voice in the election of the Catholicos of All Armenians” and that candidates “must undergo an integrity check.”

On May 30, Pashinyan’s then-pararmour, Anna Hakobyan, called the country’s clergy “the country’s chief pedophiles” and “the country’s chief maniacal perverts.”

Pashinyan’s hostility after the Armenian Church has grown after several senior officials, including Karekin II himself have asked for his resignation and issued critical pastoral letters against him.

In 2024, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan launched a campaign of civil disobedience called the Holy Struggle, including a large rally in the country’s capital on May 9, 2024 with Karekin II’s support. While Galstanyan said the movement was not political, calls for Pashinyan’s resignation brought together various opposition groups.

The Church issued strong criticisms of the government and called for Pashinyan’s resignation after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia. After another major offensive in 2023, Azerbaijan took control of the region and displaced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians, prompting Karekin II to call for Pashinyan’s resignation once again.

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The trial of Orthodox Church’s head will undoubtedly raise diplomatic and ecumenical flags within the Vatican, even if Catholics represent a tiny percentage of the Armenian population. The Holy See certainly has diplomatic interests in the region though, especially in neighboring Azerbaijan.

The Vatican has been criticized for its ties to the Azeri regime, which is accused by human rights organizations of ethnically-based persecution of Armenian Christians in the Nagorno Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan signed agreements in September with the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital and the Vatican Apostolic Library and Apostolic Archives, alarming critics who accuse the Azeri regime of human rights abuses against the Armenian minority and of practicing “caviar diplomacy” by using its cultural and economic power to shape Vatican policy in the South Caucasus region.

In April 2025, the Azeri regime held a conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, prompting widespread backlash.

The conference was entitled “Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity.” But Armenian activists and Church leaders called the event part of a broader campaign to erase Armenian Christian heritage from disputed territories.

Promotional materials for the conference included distinctly Azeri reads on West Asian history, including a display of the medieval Armenian monastery of Dadivank, with the claim that it belonged to the “Caucasian Albanian” culture, an Azeri government claim widely disputed by historians.

“This has no basis in reality. They say these are Caucasian Albanian churches, but Caucasian Albanians disappeared in the 8th century,” Orthodox Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, ecumenical director of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, told The Pillar back in April 2025.

Despite these controversies, the conference received a letter of congratulations from Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.

Months before the 2020 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva was awarded the Order of Pope Pius IX at the Vatican.

Ilqar Mukhtarov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the Holy See, received the same distinction on April 3, 2025.

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation lists the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Vatican Museums among its partners and several restoration projects that it is supporting at the Vatican.

The list includes the Roman Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, the Catacombs of Commodilla, and the Catacombs of San Sebastiano, the restoration of a statue of Zeus in the Vatican Museums, the restoration and translation of more than 3,000 books and 75 manuscripts in the Vatican Apostolic Library, the restoration of a bas-relief with the encounter between Pope Leo the Great and Attila the Hun in St. Peter’s Basilica, and the restoration of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

According to Italian outlet Irpi Media, the donations amounted to 640,000 euros (around $730,000). But an Azeri official said publicly in 2020 that the figure was “over 1 million euros.” Many of the restoration works came after 2020, suggesting the actual sum could be even higher.

One of the largest restoration projects was unveiled in 2024, when the Vatican City State Governorate announced an agreement between the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls and the Heydar Aliyev Foundation.

Observers suggest links between the Vatican and the former Soviet republic were strengthened thanks to Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, who is now prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches and was the apostolic nuncio to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia from 2001 to 2011.

During Gugerotti’s service as nuncio, Azeri authorities signed a bilateral agreement with the Holy See in 2011, appointing an ambassador the same year, and began to have frequent meetings, both in Azerbaijan and the Vatican, with Holy See officials, among them then-Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the then-president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

According to Irpi Media, Ravasi is another central figure connecting Azerbaijan and the Vatican.

Ravasi opened the doors to Azeri-funded restoration projects in the Vatican with a 2012 agreement to restore Roman catacombs, as well as another to translate and restore manuscripts in the Apostolic Library.

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Hey everybody,

Two things can be true at once.

Take Tibet.

Tibetan people have a litany of legitimate grievances against the Chinese Communist Party, and Beijing’s human rights record in Tibet is deeply troubling, especially where freedom of religion, culture, speech, and conscience are concerned. There are ample reports of forced labor and labor trafficking from Tibet, and claims of forced sterilization and abortion in the region. These days, issues arise under Beijing’s plan for a “sinicization” of China’s peripheral territories, especially those populated by ethnic minorities.

But Tibet is not the one-dimensional Shangri-la it’s sometimes painted as by its Hollywood advocates, a magical land where gurus exist on a higher plane, waiting around to dispense wisdom one koan at a time to recently divorced Westerners making a spirit quest tour of its finest yurts.

Tibet is a real place, the center for a major branch of Buddhism, and apart from the killer scenery, the flags, and its propensity for yak meat, it has a complex and not-alogether-peaceful history, including an ironically violent history for religious minorities.

And that history brings me to Fr. Maurice Tornay.

He was an Augustinan canon — not the Pope Leo kind of Augustinian, but a different branch of the extended family — who left Switzerland in 1936 as a seminarian with a bit of dental and medical training, en route to the missions in China.

He was ordained a priest in Hanoi in 1938, spent seven years teaching seminarians in China, and then was made a parish pastor at a village high in the mountains of southern Tibet — then the only parish in the country.

Well, the local Tibetan Buddhist monks were no fans of the parish. They didn’t appreciate the incursion of Westernism, as they saw it. (Christianity is in fact an Asian religion, but that was a distinction they seemingly failed to make.)

They also didn’t appreciate that Christianity seemed to threaten their social status atop rigidly hierarchical Tibetan structures, and the economic consequences of that threat. And perhaps some of them — though I really don’t know — genuinely believed that Christianity would lead people astray from the world’s cosmology as they understood it, and the necessary path to truth which that demanded.

But for all the reasons, Catholicism was unwelcome in much of Tibet. Violently so. In fact, in the late 1800s, bandits acting at the behest of those local monks reportedly killed several priests in the region, and destroyed several parishes. In the early 1900s, monks themselves slaughtered Tibetan Catholics and killed their pastor, Fr. André Soulié, along with another priest.

Violence against Christians was still a problem in 1945, when Fr. Maurice became pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Yerkalo.

The next year, monks broke into his rectory, occupied his church, and forced him into hiding. He lived in Parme, China, reportedly with an old peasant, an alcoholic, and the only person willing to take him in.

Months outside Tibet turned into years. Fr. Maurice learned that his parishioners had been forbidden from gathering together to pray, and that some had faced torture, because they would not apostasize.

He sent them messages of encouragement, and he asked Rome to help him, but no one was sure what could be done.

Finally, Fr. Maurice decided he wouldn’t wait any longer. He would go to see the ruler of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, in the capital of Lhasa.

To get there, he shaved his beard, dressed like a Tibetan, and joined a caravan of merchants, traveling with a Tibetan companion. He kept his head down, and tried to fit in. It was some real Obi-Wan type stuff, if you ask me.

But eventually, he was found out. Someone recognized him. And armed men tried to force him back out of the country.

Fr. Maurice kept going. But before he could get to the Dalai Lama, monks grabbed him, and pulled him into the Tothong forest. His last words, people say, were simple: “Don’t shoot. Let’s talk instead.”

But they did shoot. Fr. Maurice and his companion died there in the Tibetan mountains, on August 11, 1949.

He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1993.

Slogans aside, if Tibet will ever know real freedom — the freedom that comes through Jesus Christ, not through ideology — I suspect it will be through his intercession.

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The news

Well, it’s the August doldrums, which means things are slow in Rome, but there’s nevertheless news out of Italy for you. And for some Pillar readers, it’s the kind of news you most enjoy — Freemasonry news.

Ok, so Freemasonry officials in Italy announced that two recently deceased Italian men, one of some celebrity, were members of a Masonic lodge. That announcement caused a problem, because both men had funeral Masses scheduled in their dioceses. And that meant their diocesan bishops felt obliged to intervene, and to see the funerals canceled.

Why?

Well, because the Church in Italy has been taking pains in recent years to make clear that it remains a very serious canonical crime — and a moral issue for the matter — for Catholics to join Masonic lodges. And they’re not the only bishops trying to emphasize that.

Read all about it.

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An estimated 80,000 people flooded across the border from Morocco to Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in Morocco, in a matter of hours on July 30, overwhelming the city of just under 83,000 inhabitants.

It is not entirely clear what caused the mass border crossing. The vast majority of the undocumented migrants returned to Morocco after Spanish authorities made it clear that they would not be permitted to stay. But the crisis sent the Spanish religious and political worlds into turmoil, with some in the Church – including the president of the bishops’ conference – calling the crisis an “invasion,” while others focused on the humanitarian response.

So The Pillar spoke with Archbishop Emilio Rocha, OFM, of Tangier about the unexpected mass exodus and return of people, the situation on the ground in Morocco now, and the broader situation surrounding migration in the region.

This is the kind of insightful conversation you’ll only read at The Pillar. It’s what we do. (And if you like, you can read it right here in Spanish.)

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Here’s a fascinating story — Catholics in the African nation of Angola are locked in a controversy centered on a historically significant diocese, over a letter that was seemingly leaked from within the country’s apostolic nunciature — which has spread across social media in Angola, and which requests that the pontiff appoint a “white bishop” to replace Bishop Vicente Kiazuku, the 69-year-old Angolan leader of the Mbanza-Kongo diocese.

While some experts say the letter is a pointed political move focused on a singular situation, it has prompted fierce debate about the state of the Church, the role of missionaries, and the Church’s response to the nation’s government.

This story is a lot more complicated than you might expect. And it points to the very broad range of cultures in which the Church proclaims and lives the Gospel. It’s worth reading.

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When you think about the Church in Germany, you think about, like most of us do, the synodal path, the doctrinal tomfoolery, and the evermore acute clashes with Rome.

You might not think about a surfing apostolate. But actually, German Catholics have those, too.

So read about this one.

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A Baltimore deacon charged with sexually soliciting a minor was discovered in a partnership between local sheriffs and a streaming predator investigation television program.

This is a truly terrible story, but it’s not a surprising one to Pillar readers — it involves a cleric who made use of some kind of location-based hookup technology, and made use of it to attempt sexual contact with a minor.

It’s all the more disturbing in this case because the cleric in question has been recognized as teacher-of-the-year in a Catholic high school, where his record of service is surely now undergoing close scrutiny.

So what happens now? When will he be laicized, for example? You can read the details here.

And please allow me to say something I’ve now said many times — since 2021, The Pillar has warned that location-based hookup apps are a very serious danger, used frequently to exploit minors, and criminally. We’ve warned that there is evidence they’ve been used in many corners of the Church, including the Vatican, and that even if a person has no intention of contacting a minor — as this deacon almost certainly did — it can happen anyway, because minors use the apps, most of which do not externally verify their ages.

Those warnings are true, even if we messengers have been frequently candidates for cancelation, so to speak, just for bothering to speak patently obvious truths on the subject.

We’ve also warned that dioceses need strong technology policies to attempt to deter their possible use, but that the most important thing is initial and ongoing screening and formation of candidates to holy orders, and those who have been admitted to holy orders.

Those things also remain true, and yet, I also know that no policy or formation or screening is or will be enough.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I never want to report on a story like this again, because I never want something like this to happen again. And yet I feel morally certain that it will happen again, and I know that the reporting is of immense importance, to serve as an ongoing call to holiness, and to ensure that perpetrators face real accountability.

The technology we possess is immensely dangerous because — for whatever good it does — it also enables every possible temptation to vice, and it encourages those temptations, and in some cases renders them more demanding.

We’ve built a world where we expect to be able to order up even the most vile temptations with a couple of swipes, and the Church must now form people to live in that world with purity of heart and deep awareness of their own temptations. We are only beginning to unpack the moral and anthropological repercussions of the mortal sin machines we carry in our pockets. I do not mean to be alarmist, but we have already unleashed technology over which a great many people have almost no control, and confessors can tell you well the degree to which that is decimating families, and relationships, and hearts.

And I know that whenever something like this occurs, the response of the Church should be penance and mortification, offered for all those harmed by the scourge of abuse, which can have devastating life-long consequences. May God have mercy on those who might exploit people who are innocent or vulnerable, and thus closest to the Lord’s own heart.

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And finally in the news, the number of adult baptisms in Germany rose significantly last year, even while infant baptisms are declining, and overall baptism numbers continue to decline.

There are few ways to look at the rising number of adult baptisms. One is that there are effective evangelical initiatives and movements in Germany, bearing fruit. The other is that the numbers are perhaps confirmation of the reported trends toward adult confirmations around the world. But another lens is that with fewer infants baptized in the country, it’s reasonable to expect a certain number of people who have encountered Christ as adults, and might not have been in need of baptism if infant numbers were holding strong over recent decades. Those things are not mutually exclusive, and are lenses best understood in synthesis with each other.

Still, the numbers are of a piece with apparent trends in other European countries, and we’re working now on the kind of good reporting which might help the Church to make sense of the numbers.

Here’s the German data.

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Going mufti

You can read in the newspaper this morning a story about President Donald Trump being ferried clandestinely out of a summit in Turkey last month, amid threats from Iran against the president and his plane.

As the plane sat on the tarmac, the president was snuck out of the Air Force One he’d boarded, hidden in a catering container which had been lifted to the side of the plane. Once he was secure inside the container, Trump was taken to a military cargo plane, which took him safely to Great Britain, his original plane — packed with the White House Press Corps — serving as a decoy.

It’s worth noting that technically whatever plane the president boards uses the call sign designation Air Force One — and the container might have been entitled to it, too — but I suspect the main presidential aircraft used it for the duration of the decoy flight, to keep Iranian would-be attackers in the dark.

Whatever you think of Trump, it’s fun to read about some cool cloak-and-dagger ruses involving a sitting president, especially if he’s being ferried from plane to plane inside a plain old catering container, sitting next to heaps of “snack mix” or whatever.

But Trump’s covert adventure got me thinking about the propensity of modern popes to sneak out of St. Peter’s from time to time— Pope Francis and John XXIII dressed in black clerics to meet with the homeless, to make sick calls, or (supposedly) to grab a cocktail; Pope St. John Paul II sneaking past his guard detail to get in some skiing; Pius XII reportedly visiting Jewish ghettoes in the habit of a religious; Pius IX fleeing the Vatican in disguise amid Italian unification riots — there’s even a long-standing and unconfirmed urban legend that he left dressed as a woman.

It’ll be years before we know what the present pope is up to, but I won’t be surprised if the relatively young and active Pope Leo XIV is already thinking about ways he can enjoy a few hours outside the apostolic palace, especially given the pope’s penchant for a retvrn to the most storied of pontifical traditions, which would seem to include occasionally sneaking out through the window after the papal curfew.

But let’s be honest about something — even when a priest thinks he’s incognito, there are some tells.

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There were 2,650 adults and young adults baptized in Germany in 2025, according to statistics released last week by the German bishops’ conference.

This represents a 28% increase from the previous year.

While adult baptisms were high, they did not reach the record levels of 2017, when 3,376 adults were baptized in Germany.

Overall, the bishops’ conference said, there were 109,002 baptisms in 2025, down from 116,274 in 2024.

The surge in adult baptisms is not limited to Germany.

France saw 21,386 people baptized at this year’s Easter Vigil, up from 17,788 in 2025, which was itself a record-breaking year.

In Belgium, dioceses reported an almost 30% increase in candidates for baptism this year compared to last year.

Austria, Canada, and parts of the U.S. have also reported a rise in adult baptisms in recent years.

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Despite the increase in adult baptisms, the Church in Germany has seen significant decline in recent years due to a high level of Church “exits.”

More than 300,000 people formally left the Church in Germany last year - a process that involves booking an appointment at a local registry office or court, providing official documents, and paying a fee of $33-$66.

While formal de-registration levels are high, they have been decreasing from previous years.

According to official statistics, 307,117 people formally disaffiliated themselves from the Catholic Church in Germany in 2025, down from 321,659 in 2024, 402,694 in 2023, and 522,821 in 2022.

The total number of Catholics in Germany currently sits at about 19.2 million, a decline of 549,636 from the previous year.

Despite the decline in registered members, Germany’s 27 dioceses received a year-on-year increase in church tax revenue in 2025, possibly due to rising taxable incomes among remaining registered Catholics, combined with the country’s progressive taxation system.

The German bishops’ conference said the Church in the country received 6.751 billion euros (around $7.72 billion) via the church tax system in 2025, up from 6.628 billion ($7.58 billion) in 2024 and 6.515 billion ($7.45 billion) in 2023.

Meanwhile, the percentage of German Catholics who attend Mass has risen for the last four years. In 2025, some 6.8% of Catholics in Germany attended Mass, an increase from recent years, but still below pre-pandemic levels, when about 9-10% of Catholics in Germany attended Mass.

Germany is also seeing an uptick in priestly ordinations this year, with 30 new priests being ordained, compared to 25 last year. Ordination levels are significantly below where they were a decade ago in the country, when more than 50 priests were regularly ordained each year.

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There has been significant tension in recent years between the Vatican and the leaders of the Church in Germany.

In 2019, the German bishops and the lay Central Committee of German Catholics launched a “synodal way” initiative intended to introduce sweeping changes to Catholic teaching and practice in the wake of a harrowing clerical abuse scandal.

Organizers of the initiative have ignored numerous Vatican attempts to intervene in the process. The Vatican has emphasized that the synodal body has no power “to compel the bishops and the faithful to adopt new ways of governance and new approaches to doctrine and morals.”

The Vatican and the German bishops averted a major showdown by launching a series of talks that resulted, in 2024, with a concession from the bishops that no permanent synodal body would be established without Rome’s approval.

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Already read the readings? Skip ahead to 9:05.

Reading 1 - Isaiah 56: 1, 6-7

Psalm 67: 2-3, 5-6, 8

Reading 2 - Romans 11: 13-15, 29-32

Gospel - Matthew 15: 21-28

Las causas detrás de la crisis no están del todo claras. La inmensa mayoría de migrantes indocumentados regresaron a Marruecos animadas por las autoridades españolas y ante la imposibilidad de cruzar a España continental. Pero alrededor de 7 mil siguen en Ceuta, incluyendo alrededor de mil menores.

La crisis ha causado confusión y caos en el mundo político y religioso español. Algunos en la Iglesia – incluyendo al presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal Española – han llamado la crisis una “invasión”, mientras que otros se han enfocado en la respuesta humanitaria.

The Pillar habló con Mons. Emilio Rocha, OFM, Arzobispo de Tánger, sobre la crisis de la semana pasada, la situación en el terreno en Marruecos hoy y la situación migratoria de la región.

La entrevista ha sido editada por motivos de extensión y claridad.

¿Qué pasó en la frontera entre Ceuta y Marruecos el 30 de julio? ¿Y cuál es la situación hoy, tanto en Ceuta como del lado marroquí de la frontera?

Lo que ocurrió el 30 de julio coincidió con la Fiesta del Trono, que es la fiesta civil más importante en Marruecos porque es el aniversario de la coronación del rey Mohammed VI. Esto que sucedió es algo que ha sucedido muchos años, pero a menor escala: la entrada masiva de personas desde la frontera marroquí en unas pocas horas. La mayoría de ellos marroquíes, pero también no pocos migrantes subsaharianos.

Las cifras últimas del gobierno español hablan de 72 mil personas que entraron en una ciudad de 80 mil. Por lo tanto, prácticamente doblaron la población de una ciudad que está limitada al sur por la frontera marroquí y al norte por el Mediterráneo. Es un enclave pequeñito que no tiene salida más allá del Mediterráneo o hacia Marruecos.

Entraron a la ciudad miles de personas en una marcha sorprendente porque fue un día en el que las carreteras estaban muy vigiladas en aquella zona. Ceuta está pegada a la ciudad marroquí de Medik que es donde el rey celebraba la Fiesta del Trono.

Pero por ahí pasaron miles de personas que pudieron acceder a través del espigón, la pequeña saliente de tierra entre Marruecos y España. Entonces, atravesando el mar, sales de Marruecos por nado muy corto.

En España se habla de que se aprovechó una decisión del Tribunal Supremo de España, que reconoce que así como quien entra atravesando fronteras físicas puede ser devuelto a su país de origen sin grandes trámites, si se hace por una frontera no física, como el mar, no son susceptibles de este tipo de devolución “en caliente”.

También se habla de que la propia regularización de migrantes del gobierno español de hace unos meses pudo ser una llamada. Lo cierto es que 72,000 personas entraron de manera irregular en una ciudad pequeñísima, creando una dificultad grande dentro de la ciudad, aparte del drama humano de quienes entraban.

Yo pienso que muchos de ellos no eran de la zona norte de Marruecos, sino del centro, y, por tanto, no sabían nadar. Es imposible ahogarse en un trecho tan corto si sabes nadar.

Pero se lanzaban con elementos de flotación muy precarios, viendo que era muy poca la distancia. Estamos en el Estrecho de Gibraltar, con corrientes muy fuertes que van del Mediterráneo hacia el Atlántico. Entonces uno quiere ir en línea recta, pero el mar te empuja hacia el Atlántico. Se habla de más o menos 100 fallecidos: 72 cuerpos, como mínimo, se han encontrado en España; otros 12 o 15 que han contabilizado las autoridades marroquíes y luego varios desaparecidos.

Es un drama humano muy importante. La situación hoy está ya más tranquila. Hubo un regreso masivo de los marroquíes de nuevo a Marruecos, voluntariamente, pero animados por las autoridades españolas. Creo que muchos entendieron que Ceuta, siendo una ciudad tan pequeña, sin frontera terrestre con el resto de España, no ofrece mayores posibilidades.

No es como si entraras por el sur en Andalucía y puedes llegar a otras partes de España o Europa, en Ceuta solo tienes Mediterráneo adelante. Por lo tanto, la mayoría entendió que esa ciudad no les permitía desarrollar mínimamente el proyecto de vida con el que habían salido, y regresan.

Se habla de que quedan unos 2000 según el gobierno central, 6000 según el gobierno de Ceuta. Yo entiendo que muchos de ellos son migrantes subsaharianos, de países y situaciones políticas en las que es posible tramitar el estatuto de refugiado político, como Sudán. Estos son los que en su mayoría se han quedado en Ceuta, mientras que los marroquíes que siguen en Ceuta son un número muy pequeño.

Hay quien habla de invasión, por los precedentes de la Marcha Verde y de la otra ola masiva de 2021. Hay quien habla de gente desesperada huyendo del hambre, y también de la necesidad de recibir más migrantes en Europa. ¿Cuál es la realidad aquí, y por qué 70 u 80 mil personas deciden cruzar la frontera en un solo día?

Usted me está preguntando por un misterio. Se han dado varias opiniones que corren por los medios de comunicación europeos. Se habla de posts en redes sociales que decían de que la frontera estaba abierta y es muy curioso que siendo la fiesta del Rey, había una gran vigilancia pero la gente pasaba como si nada.

Hay quien habla de invasión, si vamos a lo etimológico, lo fue, una gran masa de personas entrando en el territorio de otro país. En lo político, no lo sé. Hay una reivindicación de hace mucho tiempo de Marruecos sobre Ceuta y Melilla y puede ser que algunos lo interpreten así.

Para todos esto ha sido una sorpresa. Yo participé en la Fiesta del Trono porque, según el protocolo real, el obispo de la diócesis donde se celebra el acto es parte del grupo de 50 personas que saludan al Rey ese día.

Volviendo del acto, veíamos subir a cientos de jóvenes corriendo por la carretera hacia el norte. Y pensábamos: ¿será la salida de un partido de fútbol? ¿un concierto? Porque eran todos jóvenes corriendo a las tres de la tarde con un sol impresionante y no entendíamos.

Allí había policía pero nadie hacía nada. Entonces, ¿qué hay detrás? Pues no sé. ¿Hambre? Ciertamente no. En Marruecos no hay hambre. Marruecos es un país donde hay una gran desigualdad social, es un país en crecimiento, pero cuyos beneficios económicos no repercuten en toda la población.

Hay situaciones de pobreza y de precariedad pero no de hambre. Yo puedo entender que muchos de estos jóvenes ven pasar la prosperidad delante de sus caras, yendo siempre en otras direcciones mientras que a ellos no les alcanza. Eso les puede animar a tirar hacia Europa, que por parte nuestra los europeos vendemos como un paraíso, como una maravilla.

¿No cree que haya habido participación de mafias de tráfico de migrantes, como se ha dicho en redes sociales?

No lo creo, porque las mafias se mueven por dinero. Estos jóvenes pasaban sin dinero, muchas veces sin camiseta, apenas con unas chanclas, muchos siquiera sin una mochila sin pertenencias, entonces no parece ser gente que haya pagado a una mafia para cruzar la frontera. Las mafias están involucradas en los pasos con pateras y cosas por el estilo.

Entonces sigue siendo una sorpresa y un misterio. Todas estas interpretaciones tienen un punto de razón, pero creo que en este punto no sabemos la causa concreta.

¿Cuál ha sido el papel de la diócesis y de la Iglesia en Marruecos en atender a los retornados, y qué más se puede hacer en ambos lados de la frontera?

Primero habría que dar algo de contexto sobre la Iglesia en Marruecos. Este es un país grande, de unos 450 mil kilómetros, como España, dividido más o menos en dos diócesis que se corresponden con los antiguos protectorados español y francés previos a la independencia: La diócesis de Rabat que ocupa 80% del territorio y la diócesis de Tánger, que ocupa el antiguo protectorado español, que es justamente el norte hasta Argelia. Es una diócesis pequeña, unos 30,000 kilómetros cuadrados.

Por otra parte, el Sahara Occidental, está a cargo de un prefecto apostólico, también español, el Padre Mario León, OMI. A nivel político, esta región es peculiar: en la práctica funciona como una provincia marroquí —la policía es marroquí, las autoridades son marroquíes, la sanidad es marroquí—, pero hay un conflicto en cuanto al reconocimiento jurídico.

Según el Anuario Pontificio, en Tánger hay 3,000 católicos, pero yo estoy convencido de que son más. Tanto Rabat como Tánger son diócesis particularmente vivas por la presencia importante de jóvenes subsaharianos, muchos de ellos becados por el gobierno marroquí

Sin embargo, la mayoría de estos jóvenes regresan a sus países de origen al terminar sus estudios. Entonces tienes una población estable en la diócesis, en su mayoría europea y de edad avanzada y luego gente más joven que son estudiantes, diplomáticos o empresarios, que suelen pasar acá entre tres y cinco años.

Esto hace que la diócesis sea muy cambiante. Tanto en Rabat como en Tánger perdemos cada año el 25% de los católicos y ganamos otro 25%. Por tanto, el plan pastoral es muy difícil de mantener con tan poca estabilidad. Pero estos jóvenes, mientras están, son verdaderamente una fuente de vida y de alegría para nuestras comunidades parroquiales.

Es una diócesis pequeña en la que, desde hace 12 o 15 años —ahora en menor medida—, ha habido un asentamiento muy fuerte de la migración, porque al estar ya en el límite de Marruecos con el Mediterráneo y, por tanto, con Europa —14 kilómetros de Tarifa, en España— es una especie de tapón: llegan aquí, y los que pueden pasar, pasan, y los que no, se quedan aquí.

Ahora es menos, porque la presión ha tirado hacia otras partes, pero aun así sigue habiendo una fuerte presión migratoria, que se atiende a través de la Delegación Diocesana de Migraciones, que tiene sede en Nador —junto a Melilla—, en Tetuán, en Tánger, y una pequeña delegación en Alhucemas y en Castillejos, justamente junto a Ceuta.

Ahí hay una ayuda que queremos que sea integral, con proyectos financiados por la Unión Europea, que tienen que ver con sanidad, psicología, trabajo social, ayuda al regreso al propio país si lo desean —para aquellos que están en detención o en situación irregular, que también hay un buen número—. Durante muchos años la pastoral social se ha centrado fundamentalmente ahí y la atención a los marroquíes pasaba a través de Cáritas.

Los que han retornado no necesitan una ayuda particular. Es más: las familias están esperando en la parte marroquí, y el drama es que muchos esperan a sus hijos y familiares y no vienen. Entonces no saben si están entre los muertos, entre los desaparecidos, o se han quedado en Ceuta, y por alguna razón no logran contactar por teléfono.

Pero no necesitan ayuda particular para el regreso; vuelven a su casa, poco a poco, pero vuelven a casa. A la ida sí fue necesario un apoyo por parte de la comunidad javeriana que hay en Fnideq, que fue desbordada totalmente, porque aquello era una avalancha imposible de sostener para una pequeña comunidad en una ciudad pequeña, con los recursos que tiene la Iglesia, que son mínimos.

Usted comentó que hay que separar la realidad de los migrantes subsaharianos que cruzan por Marruecos de la de los migrantes marroquíes. ¿Por qué?

Los subsaharianos que llegan hasta la diócesis han atravesado buena parte del desierto del Sáhara. No se sabrá nunca cuántos hay sepultados entre las arenas del Sáhara. Aquí hay una atención por parte de las Misioneras de la Caridad, a mujeres embarazadas y muchos de esos embarazos son fruto de violaciones o de encuentros sexuales en el desierto. Por tanto, es una realidad muy dramática. Cuando llegan aquí, su deseo es saltar a Europa como sea.

Marruecos es un lugar de paso, prácticamente nadie desea quedarse en Marruecos. Vienen huyendo del hambre, de la violencia, de la guerra, de la sequía: dramas auténticos. La realidad marroquí es diversa, como decía antes. Marruecos es un país en expansión económica, con muchas inversiones extranjeras. Es un país con posibilidades, con recursos, donde están haciendo muchas inversiones en infraestructuras.

Por ejemplo, el puerto de Tánger es un puerto comercial, uno de los mejores del Mediterráneo, pero se está terminando uno semejante en Nador, junto a Melilla, y otro en Dajla, en el Sáhara Occidental, al sur. Por tanto, el comercio marítimo del Mediterráneo, y en buena medida también del Atlántico con África, lo va a capitalizar Marruecos. Esto supone un crecimiento, incluso en estructuras llamativas: en Casablanca se está terminando el mayor estadio de fútbol del mundo.

Con lo cual, esto habla de un país que tiene recursos. Ahora, esos recursos no llegan a todo el mundo. Hay una parte de la población que vive con notables carencias. Son estos los que intentan saltar a Europa, no tanto por hambre, sino porque es muy fuerte la atracción de la publicidad y también de la cantidad de inmigrantes marroquíes que ya están en Europa, y que les hablan de las posibilidades que hay.

Cuando vienen aquí de visita, vienen con unos relojes impresionantes —algunos de ellos alquilados— para hacer ver que les va muy bien. Todo esto es un atractivo grande, que hace que aquí haya marroquíes pensando que Europa puede ser una solución para sus vidas.

No es tanto el hambre, sino este deseo importante de progresar, de salir de una situación de muchas carencias para ir a un destino que se les presenta como mucho más rico y abundante. Pero son dos perfiles diferentes.

Los que quedan ahora mismo en Ceuta son en su mayoría subsaharianos. Muchos de ellos están siendo examinados para ver la posibilidad de que haya un proceso de refugio político, porque hay situaciones que lo requieren. Mientras que prácticamente jamás le van a dar a un marroquí el estatuto de refugiado, porque no ha lugar. Hay quizá casos individuales donde se pueda, pero en general la situación de Marruecos no prevé un estatuto de refugiado.

Tanto en el viaje a España como Magnifica humanitas, el Papa León XIV habla del “derecho a permanecer en la propia tierra”. ¿Qué puede hacer la Iglesia también para promover esta realidad? Se advertía de un “efecto llamada” por la regularización extraordinaria de migrantes del gobierno español a comienzos de año y por la decisión del Tribunal Supremo que usted mencionó.

La Iglesia en Marruecos es pequeña, de mucha tradición, pero es pequeña. Y en la pequeñez, tenemos nuestros proyectos para ayudar a la gente que está acá. Dentro del edificio del obispado tenemos un proyecto que lleva tres años funcionando con niños en situación de calle. Hay un grupo importante de niños que viven en la calle, con todo lo que esto conlleva a nivel físico, biológico, sexual, de salud—enganchados ya desde muy pequeños a esnifar disolvente, y luego pasando a drogas más fuertes.

Se empezó con un trabajo de calle con los niños, en sus lugares, y después con un centro de día, y hay una pequeña casa-familia donde viven 11 niños, todos escolarizados, todo pensado para que estos chavales puedan enlazar luego con la formación profesional y alguno con estudios superiores de tal manera que en Marruecos tengan una capacitación que les permita, dentro del propio país, gestionar la vida y vivir con dignidad.

Es un modelo similar al que aplicamos con las mujeres: se trabaja muchísimo con las mujeres —marroquíes también— en un centro de corte y confección, de formación, que les permite, por una parte, socializar entre ellas en el centro, y luego poner pequeños talleres de corte y confección, o trabajar en las empresas de confección que hay en torno al puerto de Tánger, donde hay una gran demanda de mano de obra. Nuestras escuelas de corte y confección trabajan con las mismas máquinas que las empresas, así que es mucho más fácil que puedan acceder a un trabajo en esas empresas.

Son cosas pequeñas a nivel numérico, pero muy importantes. Cristo se hubiera encarnado por una sola persona. Entonces, si logramos sacar adelante a un niño, a una mujer, a una persona en dificultad, habrá valido el esfuerzo. Vamos haciendo lo que podemos, sin ponernos expectativas estadísticas espectaculares, porque no es posible, pero reconociendo cada éxito como algo que justifica toda nuestra labor caritativa y social con la población marroquí.

¿Y cree que se ha politizado la crisis, de un lado y del otro?

La crisis es política en su naturaleza. Lo que sucedió la semana pasada, ha sucedido antes dependiendo de las relaciones entre los dos gobiernos de España y Marruecos. Cuando hay problemas, los migrantes se convierten en una especie de aviso.

Si las relaciones van mal, como en el 2021, se abre la puerta y se dejan pasar a miles de migrantes. Esta vez la cosa es mucho más extraña, no está claro el móvil detrás de la operación. Pero que se ponga más o menos rigor en la contención de la migración del lado marroquí siempre depende de las relaciones entre los dos países.

Aunque hay muchas más razones. Creo que en este caso no se puede simplificar, lo político tiene que ver, pero hay que analizar todas las variables como en un gran rompecabezas.

¿Qué hacer de aquí en adelante, desde la Iglesia, en diálogo con las autoridades civiles de ambos países, ante este tipo de situaciones?

Nuestro diálogo con las autoridades españolas es nulo más allá de la embajada española y los consulados con los que tenemos una muy buena relación.

Con las autoridades marroquíes hay una excelente relación, que se fundamenta también en la lealtad mutua: nosotros somos leales a las leyes marroquíes, tratamos de respetar la ley, y dentro de ese respeto podemos conversar con el gobierno. En lo religioso, tenemos libertad para actuar dentro de nuestros propios templos y con reconocimiento de ciertos derechos.

Es importante cultivar esta libertad religiosa que nos permite vivir, y al mismo tiempo movernos entre la población marroquí con mucha normalidad. Por tanto, este es un dato a tener en cuenta. Ahora, nosotros no somos interlocutores políticos, porque no nos corresponde. Podemos tener nuestras opiniones y nuestra sensibilidad, y esa la podremos compartir con las autoridades españolas en Marruecos, por si quieren tomar en cuenta algo. Pero entrar en ese juego nos deslegitimaría a nivel religioso.

Y la Iglesia, en primer lugar, lo que intenta es ser una presencia de Cristo, anunciar a Jesucristo. Aquí lo hacemos fundamentalmente con las obras, pero también dando la formación católica, sosteniendo y alimentando la fe. Pero no nos corresponde entrar en un discurso político. Lo nuestro en ese ámbito es lo social y tenemos una respuesta y una acogida bastante favorable por parte del gobierno marroquí.

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A lot of European groups come to ride the waves in Portugal’s surfing hotspot. But there is something different about this group.

Adults, teenagers and children gather on the sand with their boards and listen to the final advice from the Hope Zones Foundation instructors, but before entering the water they stand in a circle and bow their heads for a blessing from one of the members.

The man giving them the blessing is Fr. Andrew Torrey, 36, who has been for the past three years chaplain of Surf & Pray, an annual formation trip that’s part vacation, part retreat.

“The concept of Surf & Pray is very simple really: to enjoy God’s creation, to go out together as a group, do something that’s a little challenging that you don’t often get to do on vacation, learn something new, and to do that in a community, with moments of prayer, adoration, daily mass and the presence of a priest who is constantly available for confessions,” said Torrey, who makes a point of saying that he is an avid Pillar reader, in a good way.

Torrey is a priest of the Legion of Christ, and the project is an outgrowth of its affiliated Regnum Christi communities in Germany, where the American-born priest is assigned.

For the most part, the participants are very Germanic looking Germans and Austrians. But one man stands out.

Markus Pereira Orlob, a married father of six, is the group organizer. He is shorter than most of the other men, has darker hair and complexion — and he’s built like a tank, from years of practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Orlob is half-Portuguese but grew up in Frankfurt. He speaks fluent Portuguese, making it much easier to coordinate things for the group.

“I love the ocean, I love the waves,” he told The Pillar.

Orlob learned to surf when he was 15 and spent a year living in Portugal. It would be several more years before he learned to pray.

“I found God when I was 28 years old, and I thought that to combine the ocean and faith would be a good way to get young people closer to God.”

“The one thing that was very important when I started was to get them to leave their comfort zone. Paddling into the water is tough. A wave comes and knocks you off your board, then another, and another, and you paddle again. And after you have done this, when you are finally in the ocean, you can see the beauty of God, the ocean, what He gave to us,” he explained.

“It’s like life,” he added: “You fall, you stand up; you fall, you stand up; you fall, you stand up and then, in the end, you will see all the graces God has for you.”

Torrey has been through that cycle himself. “I only learned to surf as a priest. It was really cool, not something I’d ever thought would happen or that I thought I would be a part of. It’s obviously a big challenge. The first week my goal was to be able to stand up on the board, and I managed on the very last day. I’m not particularly athletically inclined, but you can learn.”

“And it’s amazing, that feeling when you’re standing on the board. And just being out there in the sea, you see God’s incredible, majestic creation. In Germany, especially in Bavaria and in Austria, we have the Alps, it’s very beautiful there, but there’s something also so beautiful about seeing a sunset on the beach, praying together on the beach, hearing the waves. God bringing peace into your soul through the world that he created. And we’re the crown of his creation.”

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‘Swell’ evangelization

That being in the ocean is a spiritual experience is something that most wave riders would agree on, but on the other hand surfing is a very individualistic sport and not the sort that one immediately associates with Church.

In the case of Surf & Pray, however, community spirit is a central pillar.

“There isn’t a common goal in surfing as there is with team sports, that’s definitely true, it is more focused on the individual. But. at least in our experience, we’re not nearly good enough to get to that individual level. We’re all beginners and we’re all together in a group. We all cheer each other on when we see somebody getting a wave; we help the little kids in our group to paddle out; it’s fun to celebrate each other’s successes and also to laugh when people fall. And to not give up; we’re doing it together. So yes, it’s true that surfing does have an individual bent to it, but the way that we live it is very communitarian,” Torrey said.

And Orlob sees their presence on the beach as an opportunity:

“The good thing is that surfers are always open. Of course, sometimes they believe more in this energy, cosmos stuff, but they are open. And I see this with the surfing coaches; they listen to us. They see happy Christians and they start to ask questions.”

“People who are open to something are easier to bring close to Jesus than people who are not open to anything.”

The group — with its joy, family atmosphere and willingness to make public displays of faith, like prayer on the beach — does make an impression.

Francisco Cosme is one of the Hope Zones coaches who has worked with Surf & Pray for the past four years. “We are especially fond of this group, we share a strong connection. We always pray before we go into the ocean, and they make us feel a part of that,” he explained.

“It certainly gives us a different perspective of faith and Catholicism. I really like seeing the younger children here, growing in the faith and managing to connect with nature and with God,” he added

Torrey sees his role not only as accompanying the group, but also as a chance to reach out to those who they meet, and the best way to do that is by building on a relationship of friendship and trust.

“Most of the surf teachers, I would say, are spiritually inclined. Being in contact with the beautiful nature does that to you, right? The challenge for me is how do I bring Jesus to these people?”

“There is one of the coaches in particular, he’s a great guy, he has such a good heart, but he’s sort of distant from the church, and my challenge is how do I get him back? What do I do? I can’t just say you need to come back to the church right away. So my goal this time is to say, ‘hey, why don’t you join us for a Mass?’ Or, just ask what’s keeping him away.”

But the work of evangelization also takes place inside the group. Surf & Pray runs two camps per year, one for young people and one for families. While the young people are generally practicing Catholics — often members of Regnum Christi — many of the families have more complicated situations: One member of the couple might be a practicing Catholic, but not the other, and in some cases the children don’t practice either.

“Having them all here together is a chance for a fun summer holiday activity, but also a way of drawing them closer to God,” Orlob explained.

A standard day at Surf & Pray involves a surf class which can last up to three hours, time for leisure and games, but also morning prayer, a spiritual talk by the chaplain – often at the beach – adoration, and daily Mass. Torrey generally picks one topic for the week’s spiritual talks, and another to explore during mass. The youth camps will include moments for them to break into smaller groups and discuss the topics.

‘There’s a lot of good’

Torrey acknowledged that an apostolate like Surf&Pray is not the impression most people have of Catholicism in Germany — or of his own religious order, the Legionaries of Christ.

The order was plunged into crisis in the early 2000s, following revelations that its founder, Fr Marcial Maciel, had perpetrated or enabled the abuse of dozens of minors, abused drugs and alcohol use, and fathered at least six children with four different women.

The news almost led to the suppression of the Legionaries, and led to Vatican efforts aimed at reforming the institute, with new governing and formation policies and a period of direct Vatican oversight.

Torrey told The Pillar that he joined the community with eyes open.

“I joined after high school, in 2009, actually right after the scandal about the founder came out,” he said. “I loved how they were so joyful, men of deep prayer, fun, intelligent, and friendly. They showed how attractive the priesthood was and I wanted to try it out for myself.”

Impressed by priests he knew, “I wasn’t deterred by the scandal at all, none of us in the summer candidacy program were. Since then, everything that I’ve experienced as a Legionary and Regnum Christi member has been the fruit of spiritual renewal.”

Some observers have argued that the community should have been suppressed, and raised questions about whether the Vatican’s intended reforms have yet had their intended effect.

For his part, Torrey pointed to projects like Surf & Pray as a sign of some renewal in his religious community. And the priest told The Pillar that he believes the order’s history is “a story of redemption.”

He also acknowledged that few Catholics expect to hear stories of evangelization about the Church in Germany.

But various ecclesial movements in Germany, including Regnum Christi, “have been growing as the Church in Germany is becoming smaller, being purified. We are a part of the small, creative, Jesus-centered communities that people are looking for, because they aren’t getting it from the parishes,” Fr Andrew says.

“Most, if not all, of the coverage about the Catholic Church in Germany in the English-speaking world is negative, but that’s not the whole story – there’s a lot of good! Jesus really is accompanying His Church.”

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Both the Diocese of Rome and the Diocese of Ventimiglia-San Remo intervened in unconnected cases, after Italian Masonic authorities announced the memberships of two recently deceased men scheduled to be given Catholic funerals in local churches.

The Church has forbidden Catholics from joining Masonic lodges or affiliated groups and organizations since 1738. The interventions by the two Italian dioceses are the latest moves by Church authorities to reiterate and enforce the Church’s disciplinary norms on Masonic membership by Catholics.

Cardinal Baldassarre Reina, papal vicar for the pope’s own Diocese of Rome, intervened on August 7 to halt a funeral planned for later that day at Santa Maria in Montesanto in the Piazza del Popolo.

The funeral was scheduled for Bruno Battisti d’Amario, a well-known musician most famous for his collaborations with the Italian filmmaker Ennio Morricone — Santa Maria in Montesanto has customarily served as the “artists’ church” in Rome. D’Amario died August 5 at the age of 88 and the rector of the church had no initial indication that there would be any difficulty with the funeral when it was scheduled.

However, the Grand Orient of Italy — the national Masonic body which dates back to the immediate post-War years when American invading forces resurrected Italian Masonic institutions — issued a press release immediately following d’Amario’s death. The statement not only made public his Masonic affiliation but also listed a number of senior positions he had held over the course of his life, including President of the District College of the Venerable Masters of Lazio.

According to public statements from the church’s rector, Monsignor Antonio Staglianò, upon learning of the Masonic issue, he “called Cardinal Baldassarre Reina, vicar general of His Holiness for the Diocese of Rome and my immediate superior, and after consulting the legal office of the Diocese of Rome, he had no choice but to deny authorization for the funeral Mass.”

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A similar situation unfolded just days later in the Diocese of Ventimiglia-San Remo, when the diocese announced on August 8 that Bishop Antonio Suetta had intervened to cancel a funeral scheduled for that day in a local church in Camporosso. Suetta intervened in the plans for the funeral of Mario Tarducci after having learned “only after the funeral arrangements had already been made, through both a local news outlet and public death notices of Mr. Tarducci’s affiliation with a Masonic lodge, of which he had served as Worshipful Master.”

According to a diocesan statement, the bishop had consulted with both the family of the deceased and the pastor of the parish before making his decision.

“In light of a similar case that arose concurrently in the Diocese of Rome—and aligning with the directives issued there by the Vicar of His Holiness, Cardinal Reina—the Bishop, pursuant to Canon 1184, has decided that the ecclesiastical funeral scheduled for today at the parish church of San Marco in Camporosso shall not take place,” the diocesan statement said.

Canon 1184 of the Code of Canon Law provides that “notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics” are to be deprived of an ecclesiastical funeral, as well as “other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful.”

It is not clear, from the statements of either diocese, whether Masonic membership was deemed to come under the heading of apostasy or heresy — the full and partial repudiation of the faith, respectively — or if the two men were being denied a funeral as “manifest sinners” who would have caused public scandal had they been granted a church funeral.

From the 1700s until the promulgation of the first universal Code of Canon Law in 1917, eight popes issued encyclicals or papal bulls denouncing Freemasonry and imposing a penalty of automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See for any Catholic who joined. The canon of the 1917 Code of Canon Law on those to be denied Christian funeral rights specifically included Freemasons alongside heretics, apostates, and schismatics.

The 1983 Code of Canon removed specific mention of Freemasonry, which was treated by name in more than a dozen canons in the 1917 code. While this was widely misinterpreted by some as a liberalization of the Church’s attitude towards Freemasonry, successive decrees from the Holy See, including the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, have made it clear that the Church continues to enforce an absolute bar on Catholic membership of the Freemasons.

Since the promulgation of the 1983 code, the Vatican, together with several bishops’ conferences around the world, have reiterated the canonical penalties and prohibitions which remain in force for Catholics who join Masonic lodges.

In June, the Nordic bishops’ conference issued a pastoral letter reiterating that Catholics are absolutely barred from joining Masonic lodges, in response to “decades of speculation” that the situation in Scandinavia was a special case for Catholic affiliation with Freemasonry.

The Nordic bishops’ letter listed four “pastoral and sacramental provisions” for Catholics who need to sever a Masonic affiliation — including the ban on their receiving Communion and the other sacraments until they do so.

In 2023, a doctrinal note signed by Pope Francis and DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez called for “a coordinated strategy among the individual bishops” of the Philippines to address “very significant” Masonic membership and sympathy in the country.

The DDF note also identified “a large number of sympathizers and associates who are personally convinced that there is no opposition between membership in the Catholic Church and in Masonic lodges.”

That note was issued as a correction to a public statement on the same issue earlier that year from the Philippine bishops’ conference doctrinal commission, which expressed “openness to the situation of individual Catholics (on a case-to-case basis)” who had joined Masonic lodges, while reiterating the Church’s canonical and theological opposition to Masonic association as a whole.

The Vatican response offered no accommodation or openness to Catholics who have joined Masonic lodges, even on a case-by-case basis, and instead reminded the bishops that “those [Catholics] who are formally and knowingly enrolled in Masonic lodges and have embraced Masonic principles fall under the provisions in the [1983 CDF] Declaration.”

That declaration, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was issued shortly before the 1983 Code of Canon Law came into force and stated that “the faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.”

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—

Masonic lodges began as trade guilds of stoneworkers in Medieval England and Scotland.

Despite historical fictions pretending to find links to ancient Egypt and the construction of Solomon’s Temple, the modern iteration of Freemasonry as a club for alchemists, pseudo-philosophers, political dissidents, and religious non-conformists began in a London pub in 1717.

Shortly thereafter, Masonic lodges spread throughout Europe. In the beginning, Catholics could join as members, too — Francis I of Austria was a patron — since the Church had as yet made no pronouncements about it, one way or another.

That changed in 1738, when Pope Clement XII banned Freemasonry as promoting religious indifferentism — the idea that it didn’t matter what you believed about God, as long as you were a good Mason, because everyone in the lodge was serving a higher notion of natural virtue.

From Clement until the promulgation of the first universal Code of Canon Law in 1917, eight popes issued encyclicals or papal bulls denouncing Freemasonry and imposing a penalty of automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See for any Catholic who joined.

The Church has continuously condemned the idea of Freemasonry because it removed Catholics from legitimate ecclesiastical oversight while they were being, effectively, catechised into a new philosophy — a different way of looking at the world.

When the Church’s leaders first spoke about Masonry as “plotting against the faith,” they meant that the Masonic worldview was subverting the teaching of the Church for Catholics who joined, and teaching them that it was equally valid to be a Catholic, a Protestant, some other religion entirely, or nothing at all — and that it was becoming a Mason, not being baptized, which would lead to a person’s spiritual and moral fulfillment.

In 1821, Pius VII’s apostolic constitution Ecclesiam a Iesu Christo repeated the papal ban on Masonic societies, including those attempting to violently overthrow the papal states. But, the pope taught that the true threat came from the Masonic philosophy of religious indifferentism, and promotion of what would today be called “secularism.”

In one of several encyclicals condemning Freemasonry, Leo XIII explained the secularist agenda of Masonry which, he said, included “the State, which [Masonry believes] ought to be absolutely atheistic, having the inalienable right and duty to form the heart and the spirit of its citizens,” as well as the treatment of marriage as a merely civil contract which could be dissolved at will.

Freemasonry often says of itself that it isn’t a religion, that it’s just a society of men who value fellowship, cooperation, natural virtue, “that religion in which all men agree,” according to Leo. However, the pope explained, there are a lot of Masonic rituals which the Church considers to be religious in tone, even quasi-sacramental.

The first ritual of initiation in Freemasonry, to become an “entered apprentice,” involves the applicant stripping down and removing any articles he may be wearing, like a wedding ring or crucifix. Then he’s told to get half dressed, wearing a shirt on his right side, one trouser leg rolled up, one slipper and blindfold.

Then a noose is placed around his neck and he’s led into the lodge hall where he’s announced as “Mr. X, who has long been in darkness and now seeks to be brought to light.” The candidate is then told to embrace the “principle of Freemasonry that the natural eye cannot perceive of the mysteries of the Order until the heart has embraced the deep spiritual and mystic meanings of those sublime mysteries.”

For his part, the aspiring apprentice also affirms that he is in search of “the light” which only Masonry can give him. The rest of the ritual involves moments where the candidate is made to process through the hall blindfolded (sometimes at swordpoint), kneel, be prayed over, and eventually be admitted to the lodge.

Higher degrees of Masonic initiation involve explicitly anti-Catholic rituals. In the thirtieth degree of the Scottish Rite (which is actually American), the Mason is presented with a skull wearing a papal tiara and told it “represents the tiara of the cruel and cowardly pontiff” and “is therefore the crown of an imposter.”

At one point in the ritual, a senior Mason stabs the skull with a dagger, while the candidate yells “Down with imposter, down with crime,” before stamping on it.

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Then, Ed plays a round of papal travel trivia.

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This episode is brought to you by Christendom College Graduate School of Theology, where the Sacred Science is pursued with uncompromising fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church.

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