The 64-year-old Dutchman was greeted at the airport June 15 by a delegation representing the German government, the bishops’ conference, and the diplomatic corps.

Van Megen, who previously served as the nuncio to Kenya, will formally assume the new post when he presents his credentials to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

He succeeds the Croatian Archbishop Nikola Eterović, who was nuncio to Germany from September 2013 to April 2026, a turbulent period in relations between the German bishops and the Vatican.

Who is van Megen? And what challenges await him at the nunciature in Berlin?

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Who is the new nuncio?

Hubertus Matheus Maria van Megen was born in Eygelshoven, a village near the border between the Netherlands and Germany, on Oct. 4, 1961.

“Germany was very close to my village,” he recalled recently. “Even as children, we would cross the border to get into Germany. To play or to go shopping with my parents. Or to go even to church there at times.”

Through his grandparents, van Megen’s family has roots in Aachen and Düsseldorf in Germany and in Eupen, in Belgium’s German-speaking region.

Van Megen, who is known to friends as Bert, is fluent in German, a skill he says he picked up from the radio, television, and the streets of Germany, rather than through formal study.

But while the archbishop is culturally familiar with Germany, he recognizes that his knowledge of the country is nevertheless limited.

“I have never lived in Germany. I have never experienced the Church from the inside out in that sense. This will be a new challenge,” he said in an interview with Vatican Radio.

Van Megen appears to be the first Dutchman to serve as apostolic nuncio to Germany. If that is the case, it’s interesting to consider why the Holy See has chosen this option now.

Historically, the Vatican has tended to opt for nuncios who were neither German nor from immediately neighboring countries. In practice, this has largely meant Italians.

But perhaps now — and this is speculative — the Holy See is looking for someone who already has a strong affinity with the country, yet isn’t linked to the German Catholic establishment. Why? Because van Megen is arriving at a delicate moment in Germany-Vatican relations, but won’t need years to familiarize himself with his host country.

Although van Megen grew up on Germany’s doorstep, he wasn’t shaped by German ecclesiastical culture. He was ordained a priest of the Dutch Diocese of Roermond in 1987, worked locally as a chaplain, and entered the Holy See’s diplomatic service in 1994.

After postings in Sudan, Brazil, Israel, Slovakia, the UN in Geneva, and Malawi, van Megen was appointed apostolic nuncio to Sudan in 2014 and raised to the rank of archbishop. He was named nuncio to Eritrea the same year.

In 2019, he was transferred to Kenya. As he left Khartoum for his new assignment, the Sudanese capital was gripped by tension, with tanks on the street and sporadic shooting. He had expected a modest reception in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Instead, he was greeted by a choir and a large contingent of bishops — a joyous scene that was caught on camera.

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Van Megen recently recalled that the large-scale welcome raised eyebrows in Kenyan government circles. One official jokingly noted that van Megen hadn’t yet presented his credentials to the president, “and here you came in like a pope.”

Later in 2019, van Megen was also named nuncio to South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation.

The archbishop has said that, after more than a decade in Africa, he will deeply miss the continent.

“I’ve always enjoyed being in Africa — perhaps because the continent is so full of color, so full of life, so full of children, so full of energy — in a way that we in Europe can hardly imagine anymore,” he told Vatican Radio.

He has characterized the Church in Germany as being “old and gray” — adding, with a touch of self-deprecation, that he is old and gray too.

Van Megen’s experience of a growing Church in the Global South may be another reason for his selection. Pope Leo XIV clearly wants to encourage a new missionary dynamism in the Church of Europe, partly by drawing in leaders from outside the continent. In November 2025, for example, he named an Indian-born Carmelite priest as Germany’s first non-European Catholic bishop.

Describing his approach as nuncio, van Megen said his task was not just to understand local theological outlooks, but to grasp the emotions that lay behind them.

“It’s about how people experience the Church and, above all, God — in their spiritual lives and in their daily lives,” he said.

“And I think I need to accompany them in that, and above all, I need to understand it first. Not so much rationally, but with my heart.”

“I think that if I can manage that, if I can walk alongside people in that — including within the Church in Germany — then I will have already fulfilled a large part of my mission.”

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What are the challenges?

The post of nuncio to Germany is considered one of the most senior Vatican diplomatic appointments. It is also one of the most challenging, because of the tense relations between German Catholic leaders and Rome.

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

The synodal way culminated in 2023 with 150 pages of resolutions that included appeals for women deacons, a re-examination of priestly celibacy, lay preaching at Masses, a larger lay role in selecting bishops, and a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding homosexuality.

Along the way, organizers breezed past multiple “stop signs” from the Vatican. Perhaps most significantly, they defied Rome by drawing up plans for a permanent synodal body, composed of bishops and select laity, that would have substantial decision-making powers over the Church in Germany.

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.

In March 2026, bishops’ conference chairman Bishop Heiner Wilmer handed the new body’s statutes in to the Vatican for consideration. The institution’s first meeting is already planned for November 2026, but Wilmer has cautioned that Rome may not follow the German timetable.

This is the point at which van Megen is entering the picture. Can he help guide the Vatican and the German bishops to a mutually satisfactory solution concerning the new body? What if there is too little common ground and Rome nixes the plan, or just lets the statutes gather dust on a musty Vatican shelf?

While the synodal body is arguably the biggest issue, it’s far from the only one. What will van Megen do about the German Church’s blessing guidelines, which remain in place despite the Vatican’s explicit rejection?

What will he make of the recent document from Germany’s largest Catholic women’s association, calling for abortions in Catholic hospitals? The kfd is subject to the oversight of the German bishops’ conference. Will van Megen press the conference to intervene?

How will he tackle the deep fissures within the German bishops’ conference, where a minority resists the synodal way agenda while the majority seeks to advance it to the maximum extent possible?

When advising on the appointment of new bishops, will he seek to bolster the minority, strengthen the majority, or try to forge a missing center?

Given these difficulties, you might forgive van Megen for booking an immediate return flight to Nairobi. But he insists he’s relishing the new role.

“I’m also looking forward to German culture, German music, German literature, German food, and, of course, the German language,” he told Vatican Radio.

So even if the next few years prove strenuous, van Megen will have the consolations of Brecht, Beethoven, and bratwurst.

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Jerseys can be good gifts. For example, Leo received a Chicago White Sox jersey - his favorite hometown team - with his papal name on it. That’s a very cool gift.

At least, it was a cool gift the first time he got it. By now, he has a few. Maybe he wears one of them when he watches a game once in a while. But he doesn’t need 12 of them.

And that doesn’t mean that every jersey is a good gift for the Roman Pontiff. In fact, many of the ones he has been given are downright absurd, having no connection to the teams (or even sports) the pope follows, and thereby wasting space in a presumably small papal closet.

The Pillar thought it would be nice to compile a list of the worst sports jerseys Pope Leo has received so far. And of course, the editors decided to assign Michelle – the least attuned to the world of sports – to write it.

So here you go. The definitive Pillar countdown of Pope Leo’s lamest sports jerseys.

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5. Giro d’Italia

This is an Italian bike race. Bikers wear different colored jerseys, but the leader wears pink for some reason, so that’s the jersey they gave to the pope. You can tell from his face that he’s less than enthusiastic about this gift. And who could blame him? That pink is not in the pope’s color wheel. Not even close.

And since he’s a boomer American priest, he’s probably obligated to insist jokingly to everyone within earshot that it’s “rose, not pink”

4. Philadelphia Flyers

This is a great jersey…if you like losing teams. Leo has not lived in a city with a professional hockey team for quite some time, but if he followed the sport at all, he’d surely cheer for his hometown Chicago Blackhawks. In the last five years, the Flyers have lost more games than they’ve won, and they’ve missed the playoffs 7 of the last 10 years.

The family who gave this to Leo is probably great. And it’s cool they wanted to share their enthusiam. If they’re Pillar readers, we’ll send them some t-shirts.

But still, this jersey would be cooler if it had been handed to Leo by the Flyers’ crazy-looking mascot. Otherwise, it’s a no for me.

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3. Chicago Cubs

I had to double check this one. Get this: Chicago has TWO professional baseball teams. In the same city. No idea how that came to be, but it seems greedy and superfluous given how many cities out there would surely be grateful to have a single professional baseball team. Like Denver, for example.

Anyway, apparently there’s a pretty big rivalry between the two teams — though Ed says Cubs fans don’t actually care about the White Sox at all, it’s just the South Siders who are obsessed.

Either way, people have an intense loyalty to one or the other, and not both. Of course, Pope Leo loves the White Sox, so a Cubs jersey seems like a lousy gift, if not an act of provocation. Obviously, it was given as a joke, by another Chicago native bishop and crosstown rival. But still, I bet Leo’s burned it by now.

2. Tennessee Volunteers

A volunteer is a great thing to be. It’s a horrible name for a sports team. Also, this jersey is so unattractive - it looks cheap and the colors are blah. And who wants a jersey for a college sports team they don’t follow? (And let’s be honest, for a league they couldn’t care less about).

And one more thing: If you’re going to get a jersey for a Peyton Manning-team (which these Volunteers apparently are?), it should be for his very best team, the Denver Broncos.

This one was lame.

1. French Bleus

Who knew France had a basketball team? Do the French people know? Do the French players know?

I hate to tell the French president this, but people outside of France definitely do not care about French basketball. And even if France was serious about basketball, I bet the very best French player probably couldn’t even win an NBA championship this year.

Pope Leo is known to play tennis, so that would have been a much stronger option. Or maybe a Tour de France jersey - that’s a cool sporting event (and they don’t wear pink).

But a French basketball jersey is lame. As a gift, it’s just insulting. Straight to the back of the papal closet. Because no one would buy this on ebay. Even from the pope.

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Bonus: The world’s tiniest crystal football

It’s not a jersey, but the U.S. State Department’s gift to Pope Leo deserves a special mention.

A crystal football could be a cool gift for the first American pope – a nod to a uniquely American sport is a great reminder of his roots in the US of A.

But for some reason, the State Department decided it was imperative that the football be roughly the size of an egg. Everything about this gift is absurd. The presentation on a tiny but very formal dish. The way Marco Rubio holds the miniature football delicately but awkwardly between his fingers. The way both Rubio and the pope look like they’re about to lose it.

There’s just no way to take this one seriously. In fact, it’s so bad, it’s great.

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

😇 Today’s saint: St. Hervé (Roman Martyrology).

📜 Today’s readings: Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time 2 Kgs 2:1, 6-14 ▪ Ps 31:20, 21, 24 ▪ Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

🗞 Starting seven

1: Pope Leo XIV reflected on his trip to Spain at his June 17 general audience (full text, photos, full video, video highlights).

2: Leo XIV also welcomed the U.S.-Iran peace deal, scheduled to be signed June 19.

3: Italian bishops’ conference president Cardinal Matteo Zuppi has led tributes to Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who died June 16 at the age of 95.

4: The Archdiocese of Panama and the Archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico, have sent altar breads to Cuba amid a production shortage on the island caused by power cuts.

5: Hungary’s new Prime Minister Péter Magyar visited Cardinal Péter Erdő at the Primate’s Palace in Budapest June 16.

6: Edgar Beltrán assesses the challenges of a papal visit to Peru.

7: And Paul Kengor compares and contrasts Pope Leo XIV and Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

🇻🇦 Today’s Bollettino

• Papal audiences:

  • Members of the presidency of Colombia’s bishops’ conference.

  • Members of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Formation for the Protection of Minors (full text, vaticannews.va).

• General audience (Italian full text).

• Notice that Cardinal Camillo Ruini’s funeral will take place at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica June 18, at 4:30 p.m. local time.

• + Pope Leo XIV told journalists in Castel Gandolfo June 16 that he is “considering making another appeal” to the Society of St. Pius X (full video).

• + Patricia Leonor Comandari Zanotti, El Salvador’s incoming ambassador to the Holy See, presented copies of her credentials June 16 to Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States.

• + Archbishop Gallagher attended a June 16 event at Rome’s Casa Russa, organized by the Russian embassy to the Holy See.

• + The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and Ending Clergy Abuse held their first in-person meeting in Rome June 15-16.

• + The Dicastery for Culture and Education welcomed Taiwan’s bishops June 15 and Macao and Hong Kong’s bishops June 16, during their respective ad limina visits.

• + Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN in Geneva, said June 17 that the real cost of a global increase in arms spending and a reduction in aid “falls on the poorest and those in need.”

• + The Joint Coordinating Committee of the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church is meeting June 15-19 at Hungary’s Pannonhalma Archabbey.

🔍 Stories to watch

🇺🇸 Pauline Sr. Mary Augustine Nemer, who made a significant contribution to the creation of the African Bible, died in Boston, Massachusetts, June 16 at the age of 87.

🇨🇴 Colombia’s bishops have asked Catholics to observe June 19 as a day of prayer ahead of Sunday’s presidential runoff election.

🇨🇩 Priests in the Congolese Archdiocese of Kinshasa have deplored the rise in “organized crime directed against our parishes and other structures.”

🇪🇸 Organizers have estimated that around 2.5 million people took part in Pope Leo XIV’s June 6-12 visit to Spain, generating an economic boost of more than $174 million.

🇦🇱 In a June 9 statement, Albania’s bishops urged politicians to listen to citizens’ concerns amid protests over the country’s rapid touristic development, especially in protected natural areas.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 At a June 11 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland’s bishops reviewed responses to a consultation on diocesan boundaries and “discussed concrete proposals for the future.”

🇵🇱 The diocesan phase of the beatification cause of Fr. Paweł Kontny — who was killed while defending two girls from Red Army soldiers in 1945 — formally opened in Katowice, Poland, June 16.

🗓 Today’s anniversaries

Pope Martin I was arrested in 653; Pope Adeodatus II died in 676; Bl. Pietro Gambacorta died in 1435; English Cardinal Basil Hume died in 1999.

📅 Today’s events

Start of the inaugural Borgo Laudato Si’ Dialogues at the Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo.

📅 Coming soon

June 18 Cardinal Camillo Ruini’s funeral takes place at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica, at 4:30 p.m. local time.

June 19 Installation of Archbishop Guy Boulanger as the Archbishop of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, in the Saint-Michel Basilica-Cathedral, at 7 p.m. local time.

June 20 Papal visit to Pavia and Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy; 100th anniversary of the opening of the 28th International Eucharistic Congress in Chicago; Bishop Michael Sis ordains Francisco Camacho, Humberto Diaz, and Mauricio Romero as priests of the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas, at the Cathedral Church of the Sacred Heart in San Angelo, at 10:30 a.m. local time; Archbishop William Lori ordains five men to the priesthood at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland, Baltimore, at 10 a.m. local time; Bishop David Walkowiak of Grand Rapids, Michigan, ordains Deacons Charles Leidel, Logan McGahan, and Hunter Ostapowicz to the priesthood at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew, at 10 a.m.; Cardinal Robert McElroy ordains five priests for the Archdiocese of Washington at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, at 10 a.m.; Couples for Christ holds a 45th anniversary celebration at the New Clark City Athletics Stadium in Tarlac, Philippines; Lyon’s Archbishop Olivier de Germay ordains 12 members of the Community of Saint Martin as priests at the Notre-Dame de l’Épine Basilica in Évron, France.

June 21 Angelus; Installation of Bishop Heiner Wilmer as the new Bishop of Münster, Germany; Bishop Michael Pham celebrates Juneteenth Mass at St. Rita’s Church in San Diego, California, at 10 a.m. local time.

June 22 Pope Leo XIV visits the World Food Program’s Rome headquarters; Next hearing in the Vatican financial trial appeal process; Start of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences’ plenary assembly in Bali, Indonesia.

June 23 Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich presides at the annual Te Deum in Notre-Dame Cathedral, Luxembourg, at 4:30 p.m. local time.

June 24 General audience.

June 25 Zoom webinar on “AI, Media Literacy, and the Vision of Magnifica humanitas,” with speakers including Sr. Nina Krapić, deputy director of the Holy See press office, from 2:30 p.m. Rome time.

June 26 Start of a two-day extraordinary consistory of the College of Cardinals.

June 27 Final session of the Archdiocese of Adelaide Synod in Hahndorf, Australia.

June 28 Angelus.

June 29 Mass with the blessing and imposition of palliums upon new metropolitan archbishops at St. Peter’s Basilica at 9:30 a.m.; Angelus at noon; 10th anniversary of the publication of the apostolic constitution Vultum Dei Quaerere; Bishop Daniel Miehm is installed as the Bishop of London at St. Peter’s Cathedral Basilica in London, Ontario, Canada; Bishop Steven Lopes ordains Deacons Joseph DeCaria, Christian Francke, Brian Wehrle, and Andrew Yaremko to the priesthood for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston, Texas, at 6:30 p.m. local time.

June 30 Episcopal ordination and installation of Fr. John Gomez, the new Bishop of Laredo, Texas.

July 1 SSPX episcopal consecrations; Start of the Catholic Saints of America event, organized by the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion.

July 2 The beatification of Fr. Francis Xavier Truong Buu Diep (1897-1946); Installation of Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala as the 10th Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Wheeling, at 2 p.m. local time; The U.S. National Eucharistic Pilgrimage culminates at the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

July 3 Pope Leo XIV is awarded the Liberty Medal.

July 4 Papal visit to Lampedusa, Italy; Cardinal Ladislav Nemet, S.V.D., leads the Slovak Cyril and Methodius National Pilgrimage to Nitra.

July 7 Episcopal ordinations of new Washington auxiliaries Fr. Robert Boxie and Fr. Gary Studniewski at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, at 2 p.m. local time.

July 8 Pilgrimage to the Norwegian island of Selja in honor of St. Sunniva.

July 9 100th anniversary of the death of Mother Mary Alphonsa (Rose Hawthorne Lathrop).

July 11 Episcopal ordination of Fr. Emilio Biosca Agüero, O.F.M. Cap., the new Bishop of Venice in Florida; Episcopal consecrations of Fr. José Dionisio Gómez Gouveia and Fr. José Manuel León, C.P., new auxiliary bishops of Caracas, Venezuela.

July 18 Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, turns 80.

July 20 Start of the plenary assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences in Jakarta, Indonesia.

July 23 50th anniversary of the death of Bl. Basil Hopko.

July 24 Start of the We Believe Festival at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, England.

July 26 6th World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly; 10th anniversary of the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel.

July 28 Episcopal ordination of Fr. Michael Castori, S.J., the new Bishop of Honolulu, Hawaii, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus.

July 29 Brazil’s Archbishop Heitor de Araújo Sales turns 100.

Aug. 1 50th anniversary of the start of the 41st International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia.

Aug. 3 125th anniversary of the birth of Bl. Stefan Wyszyński.

Aug. 6 Papal visit to Assisi.

Aug. 11 Brazil’s Archbishop Pedro Antônio Marchetti Fedalto turns 100.

Aug. 15 Archbishop Jeffrey Grob ordains Deacons John-Magdalene, Isaiah, and Moses to the priesthood for the Immaculate Heart of Mary Province of Discalced Carmelites, at the Basilica of Mary, Help of Christians, at Holy Hill in Hubertus, Wisconsin.

Aug. 22 Papal visit to Rimini; Leo XIV visits San Marino.

Aug. 24 Ecuador’s Bishop Raúl Holguer López Mayorga turns 100.

Have a happy feast of St. Hervé.
-- Luke

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Both the Peruvian bishops’ conference and Alcázar have said the trip is expected to take place that month, with the president stating that it would likely occur between Nov. 10 and 16.

But a papal visit could be complicated by Peru’s fraught political climate and a series of scandals involving members of the country’s hierarchy, where Leo served as a missionary and bishop for nearly three decades.

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—

Conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of Peruvian autocrat Alberto Fujimori, is favored to win a razor-thin presidential run-off against Roberto Sánchez, a self-proclaimed social Christian, who has claimed to have been influenced by liberation theology and is supported by far-left parties.

Fujimori holds a lead of roughly 30,000 votes over Sánchez in an election that saw more than 18 million votes cast. Though she has not yet been officially declared the winner, she is widely expected to emerge victorious. Electoral authorities have said the final count could take up to a month.

If confirmed, the result would mark the third consecutive Peruvian presidential election decided by less than half a percentage point. Keiko Fujimori lost narrowly in 2016 and 2021, after also being defeated in 2011 by a margin of nearly 3%.

Peru has endured a decade of political instability, with nine different presidents taking office over the past 10 years. Six Peruvian presidents this century have ended up in prison, faced criminal investigations, or been implicated in self-coup attempts.

Moreover, Peru’s unusually permissive impeachment mechanism has exacerbated the crisis. The country’s parliament is consistently fragmented among small and often unstable parties, which frequently break into even smaller factions, fueling political confrontations, corruption allegations, and impeachment proceedings.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was elected as president of Peru for a five-year period, winning by 0.24% over Keiko Fujimori in 2016.

Kuczynski underwent a first impeachment attempt just a year and a half into his presidency. After defeating the impeachment, Kuczynski pardoned Alberto Fujimori, Keiko’s father, in prison since 2005 for his role in several massacres and corruption cases during his presidency.

The move was widely decried as a quid pro quo after Fujimori’s party voted against the impeachment.

Just three months later, Kuczynski’s party became embroiled in a corruption scandal that ultimately led to his resignation, shortly before the Peruvian Congress was set to vote on a second impeachment attempt.

He was succeeded by his vice president, Martín Vizcarra. Vizcarra was himself impeached in November 2020 amid allegations of corruption during his time as a governor between 2011 and 2014, becoming the second Peruvian president in less than three years to be removed from office. He was replaced by Manuel Merino, then president of Congress.

Vizcarra’s impeachment led to massive protests, as many in the country saw his dismissal as a legislative coup. The protests led to Merino’s resignation just five days later. Manuel Sagasti, who had replaced Merino as president of the Peruvian Congress, was then appointed as president.

Sagasti led the country until July 2021, when Pedro Castillo took power after defeating Fujimori again by just 0.26%.

Castillo’s presidency was also short-lived. He faced two separate impeachment trials in December 2021 and February 2022. He was set to face a third impeachment trial in December 2022, which was largely expected to succeed.

Castillo responded by announcing the dissolution of Congress, the installation of a state of emergency, and a curfew.

Castillo’s actions were widely condemned as a self-coup. Most of his cabinet resigned, Congress impeached him, and he was arrested hours later while attempting to reach the Mexican embassy to seek asylum.

Castillo was succeeded by his vice president, Dina Boluarte, whose presidency was marked by extraordinarily low approval ratings, with some surveys showing support at virtually 0%. Although she survived six impeachment attempts, Congress ultimately removed her from office in October 2025 by a vote of 121–9.

She was replaced by the president of the Peruvian Congress, José Jerí, who would himself be impeached in February 2026 for several corruption and sex scandals. He was replaced by Alcázar, who will presumably serve as president until July 28, the date in which his successor, presumably Fujimori, will start her presidency.

Fujimori is therefore likely to assume the presidency in a country that remains deeply divided, much as it was when she narrowly lost the previous election. Her party holds only a minority of seats in both chambers of Congress and appears to have few viable options for building a stable legislative coalition.

Fujimori won the first round of the presidential election with just 17.19% of the vote in a field of more than 30 candidates. As in 2021, Peru’s fragmented political system produced a dispersed result, with nine candidates winning at least 3% of the vote. In the 2021 election, nine candidates likewise received at least 4%.

While Fujimori has acknowledged her father’s authoritarian tendencies, she has generally stopped short of condemning specific human rights abuses committed during his presidency, including the forced sterilization of Indigenous women, massacres linked to the government’s counterinsurgency campaign against the terrorist group Shining Path, and the persecution of political opponents.

Given that backdrop, and Fujimori’s relatively limited political base, it is conceivable that by the time Pope Leo XIV visits Peru in November, her administration could already be facing impeachment proceedings or another major political crisis.

While such a scenario remains speculative, Peru’s recent political history suggests that it cannot be entirely ruled out that Fujimori may no longer be president by the time Pope Leo XIV visits the country in November.

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—

With such a divided and complicated political environment, Pope Leo emerges as perhaps the sole potentially unifying figure in the country, of which he retains citizenship from his time as bishop there.

In some South American countries facing severe political crises, the Catholic hierarchy has at times provided a focus of national cohesion. Venezuela’s bishops, for example, have often acted as a moral and institutional reference point amid the country’s prolonged political and humanitarian crises.

In Peru, however, the hierarchy has often found itself drawn into the same political battles that have divided the country. In fact, Leo might reasonably consider the recent litany of ecclesiastical controversies and scandals to be barely less messy than the country’s recent political history.

The Church has also been shaken by corruption and abuse scandals, while the fallout from the dissolution of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), a now-dissolved religious community founded in Peru, continues to generate local controversy.

In fact, the pope himself has previously been accused of mishandling an abuse case during his time as Bishop of Chiclayo — though those accusations did not appear to be borne out.

Three sisters - Ana María, Aura Teresa and Juana Mercedes Quispe - claim that Prevost failed in 2022 to open an investigation into the accusations of sexual abuse dating back to 2007. They said that any documentation that may have been sent to Rome was purposely designed to look inadequate so as to prevent action on the case.

The Diocese of Chiclayo has maintained that the accusations had been handled according to canonical norms and in line with Church policy — and that the then-Cardinal Prevost had met with the young women in April 2022, and encouraged them to take their case to the civil authorities, while opening an initial canonical investigation.

The diocese further said that the results of their initial investigation were sent to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), along with notice that the civil investigation had been shelved for lack of evidence and because the statute of limitations had expired.

The priest accused of abuse eventually was laicized, but the sisters have objected to the fact that he was allowed to petition for laicization instead of undergoing a canonical trial — a resolution routinely deployed by the dicastery in Rome.

The pope was also involved during his time as a bishop in the investigation against the SCV.

Criticism of the movement emerged in the early 2000s, with allegations that founder Luis Figari had committed sexual, physical, and psychological abuse within the community, and charges that Figari’s conduct had impacted the ethos of the community.

In 2011 and 2013, allegations that Figari had sexually abused minors and adults had been received by the Archdiocese of Lima. The publication of a 2015 book, “Half Monks, Half Soldiers,” sparked broader criticism of the organization, with more allegations against Figari, and the claim that the group’s approach to formation and obedience was coercive, manipulative, or abusive.

Then-Bishop Prevost met with alleged victims of the group in 2018, at a time not many took their claims seriously. The alleged victims also credit him with arranging a meeting with Pope Francis in 2022 that triggered another Vatican investigation that eventually resulted in the suppression of the group.

In August 2024, the Vatican formally expelled Figari — by then long prohibited from contact with the community he founded. Over the next two months, more than 10 additional members of the community were expelled, among them Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren, the former archbishop of Piura and Tumbes in Peru.

Several former members and associates of the SCV have questioned the actions of its apostolic commissary, Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu, an official of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith who became one of Pope Francis’ most trusted lieutenants on clerical abuse cases.

Some former members have accused Bertomeu of acting out of ideological prejudice rather than genuine concern for victims, and have challenged the canonical validity of several of his decisions.

While Bertomeu has moved forward in his role as commissary, and has led a process of financial reparation for some of the alleged victims, the pope appointed three adjunct commissaries in November 2025.

Other controversies in the local Church have also taken place. In April of this year, the Peruvian bishops’ conference announced that its secretary general, Bishop Antonio Santarsiero OSJ, would temporarily step down from his position while an investigation is conducted following the emergence of abuse allegations against him concerning several alleged victims, including a minor.

Last year, The Pillar broke the news in June 2025 that the Archdiocese of Lima was accused of mishandling an investigation into Fr. Nilton Zárate Rengifo, who had been accused of harassing a religious sister, solicitation in the confessional, and attempted absolution of an accomplice in a sexual sin, but had not been subject to a formal canonical process.

After the allegations against Zárate broke, the priest sent a letter to Lima’s Cardinal Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio, formally requesting his dismissal from the clerical state.

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In 2020, Castillo appointed Fr. Luis Sarmiento as rector of the archdiocesan seminary, despite the fact that he had in 2018 been dismissed as a formator, because of a pattern of inappropriate behavior with seminarians. About a year after his 2020 return to the seminary as rector, Sarmiento was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of seminarians. Instead of opening a canonical investigation against the rector, Castillo opted to dismiss the seminarians who came forward with the allegations, keeping Sarmiento in his post until 2023.

Spanish outlet El País reported in January 2025 that Castillo’s predecessor in the Peruvian capital, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, was the subject of a Vatican-imposed penal precept restricting his ministry following accusations of sexual abuse dating back to the early 1980s, first raised in 2018.

Cipriani originally claimed in a January 2025 statement that the precept was imposed only verbally, but he later admitted that he did receive — and sign — written notice of a penal precept which imposed formal restrictions on his public ministry and living arrangements in 2019, shortly after his resignation was accepted at the age of 75.

However, Cipriani claims that Pope Francis verbally lifted the restrictions on his ministry in a Feb. 4, 2020 private audience that was not recorded in the Vatican’s daily bulletin. Francis reappointed Cipriani as a member of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints the following year.

In September 2025, Bishop Ciro Quispe López of the Territorial Prelature of Juli resigned after an apostolic visitation in his diocese, which investigated allegations of corruption and misconduct against him.

Several media reports claimed that Quispe had 17 different female romantic partners, including religious sisters and novices. The bishop was also accused of stealing $25,000 intended for a UN-funded social program in the city of Juli.

Additional allegations include awarding inflated contracts from the prelature to some of his romantic partners, including an architect hired for several diocesan projects.

According to local media reports, Quispe is also said to have removed furniture from a diocesan retreat center and transferred it to a chicken barbecue restaurant he owned in another city.

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If Pope Leo’s trip to Peru is confirmed, he will arrive amid a complicated political and ecclesial landscape — but one that is nevertheless deeply familiar to him.

Peru was once one of the epicenters of liberation theology in Latin America. In response, Pope St. John Paul II sought to reshape the country’s episcopate, a project closely associated with Cardinal Cipriani and marked by the appointment of a number of theologically conservative bishops, several of whom had ties to Opus Dei.

That trajectory shifted under Pope Francis, who appointed bishops more associated with liberation theology, including Cardinal Castillo in Lima and other prelates generally regarded as more theologically progressive.

The result has been an episcopal conference marked by significant internal divisions, both over how the bishops should respond to Peru’s recurring political crises and over the broader direction of the local Church.

During his time as a bishop in Peru, Bishop Prevost was largely seen as a bridge-builder in the episcopate. Now, as pope, Leo XIV has an opportunity to shape a new generation of Church leadership in Peru. Several major dioceses are currently led by bishops past retirement age, including the Archdiocese of Lima.

Ironically, the prospect of a papal visit may have temporarily delayed that process of renewal. For months, rumors have circulated that Cardinal Castillo could be replaced, but the pope appears reluctant to make major personnel decisions before the trip or before the country’s political situation becomes clearer.

The visit is widely expected to be a moment of national unity. Yet it will also require careful navigation. Leo remains one of the few figures capable of commanding respect across Peru’s political and ecclesial divides, but any intervention on public affairs will be scrutinized. If he avoids discussing the country’s political tensions, he may be accused of silence. If he addresses them directly, his words will inevitably be interpreted as an intervention in the political process.

For many Peruvians, the visit of a pope they consider as one of their own would be among the most positive national events in years. For a few days, it may even eclipse the country’s political and ecclesial conflicts.

But Leo XIV is likely to find that the success of the trip will depend on his ability to walk a political and ecclesial tightrope.

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Poland’s Catholic information agency KAI reported that 130 of the candidates will be diocesan priests and 66 will serve within religious orders.

This is expected to be the first year in the 21st century with fewer than 200 priestly ordinations in Poland. There were 208 new priests in 2025 and 235 in 2024.

The drop in priestly ordinations is likely to be felt far beyond Poland, because the country has traditionally supplied priests to other European countries, both East and West. Poland has also long been an important source of missionary priests to Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Despite the ongoing decline, Poland remains the European country with the most priestly vocations. In France, for example, there were 90 new priests in 2025. In Germany, there were 25.

Poland has a smaller overall population than France or Germany, but it has a larger number of baptized Catholics and a significantly higher Mass attendance rate than either country.

The new priests in 2026 will be spread unevenly among Poland’s dioceses. Tarnów, commonly described as the country’s “most religious” diocese because it has the highest level of Mass attendance, will have 14 ordinations in 2026, one more than in 2025.

The next highest figures are found in the two dioceses in the capital, Warsaw. The Diocese of Warsaw-Praga, covering the east of the city, will have nine new priests. The Archdiocese of Warsaw, in the west, will have eight, five of whom studied at the Redemptoris Mater seminary, linked to the Neocatechumenal Way.

The Archdiocese of Kraków, which is strongly associated with St. John Paul II and was once a hotbed of vocations, will only have four new priests in 2026, down from seven in 2025 and 13 in 2024.

KAI reported that the number of Latin Catholic dioceses with no ordinations has risen from six in 2025 to seven in 2026. Poland’s three Greek Catholic eparchies — which only serve a fraction of the population compared to the Latin Catholic dioceses — had no new priests in either year.

KAI noted that some dioceses will have no ordinations this year because of a change to seminary formation, which now lasts seven years rather than six due to the addition of a propaedeutic (preliminary) year.

In May, the Military Ordinariate of Poland had its first priestly ordinations for 14 years.

According to the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae in Polonia, a yearly numerical overview published by the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics, almost all of Poland’s 42 Latin Catholic dioceses saw a decline in incardinated priests between 2018 and 2024.

The total number of diocesan priests nationwide fell between 2018 and 2024 from 24,876 to 23,274, a drop of 6.4%. The sharpest fall was in the Diocese of Łomża, in northeastern Poland, where the figure decreased from 588 to 512, an almost 13% reduction.

The biggest outlier was the Warsaw archdiocese, where priest numbers rose from 855 to 909, a more than 6% increase.

Commenting on the steady overall decline in priestly numbers, Fr. Jan Frąckowiak told KAI that it could be seen as a return to normality for the Church in Poland.

“The systematically declining number of newly ordained priests is caused by the fact that we are now descending from the peak of vocations in the entire 1,060-year history of the Church in Poland,” said Frąckowiak, a seminary rector in Poznań and chairman of the country’s Conference of Rectors of Diocesan and Religious Major Seminaries.

“Never before in history did we have more than 40 dioceses, almost every one of which had its own seminary — usually very large — and, moreover, a full seminary. This happened only once in history, and at present it seems that we are returning to the historical norm.”

Addressing the causes of the decline, he said: “I would point, for example, to demographic decline, a lower proportion of believers and practicing Catholics in society, and a reduced ability among the younger generation to make definitive commitments.”

Poland’s fertility rate fell to a new low of 1.068 in 2025, well below the replacement level of 2.1. The country’s state statistics agency has projected that the population could fall from around 37.3 million currently to 29.4 million by 2060, a decline of more than 20% over the next 35 years.

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Before we get started, a quick FYI.

Ven. Fulton Sheen will be beatified Sept. 24 in St. Louis, Missouri. It will be a singular moment in American Catholic history. It will also be a lot of logistics: hotels booked up fast, the process for getting individual tickets has not yet been announced, and there are a lot of unknowns.

Ed and I are leading a pilgrimage for the occasion. We’ll go to the beatification, we’ll spend some time together, we’ll venerate Sheen’s tomb in Peoria, Illinois. And the best part is this: We (and our pilgrimage partners, actually) will handle all the logistics, the hotel reservations, the tickets, the bus trip. All you have to do is show up. Trust me, for an event like this, that makes a world of difference.

So come with us. You’ll be glad you did.

Ok, with that announcement done, let’s get started:

Hey everybody,

Today’s the Feast of St. John Francis Regis, and you’re reading the Tuesday Pillar Post.

Regis was a Jesuit missionary, who lived as a priest for only 10 years before he died in 1640 at the age of 44, one year older than me, as it happens.

His story is this: Regis was born in southern France to wealthy parents, and entered the Jesuits when he was 19. Jesuit formation is long, especially if you’re a teenager when you enter, and he was ordained more than a decade later, in 1630.

His ordination was supposed to be in 1631, but Regis petitioned for early admission to orders, because there was a plague on, and he wanted to provide the sacraments to people dying near the city of Toulouse.

While he was in hospital ministry, he began to realize a broader web of spiritual needs. First, he started getting to know prostitutes, and he saw how they’d become trapped into lives of sex work. So he convinced wealthy people to give him money, and he set up homes where women could escape that life, find a supportive community, and learn a trade: Lacework, in their case.

As he ministered to the dying, he saw also the spiritual damage being wrought in France by the Protestant Reformation. So, he started developing sermons meant to call people back to the faith — the New Evangelization, as it were, a couple centuries before JPII started using the term.

He preached those sermons where they were effective — village squares, often — and they actually did make a difference. He moved people to return to the practice of the faith, and he heard their confessions as they returned.

People talked about the sermons. Having heard them once, people would travel to other villages or neighborhoods to hear them again. He was young, dynamic, increasingly well-known, and effective — in that sense, this guy was, perhaps, the Fr. Mike Schmitz of seventeenth century southern France.

He was invited by one bishop to preach missions across his diocese, where Protestantism was in mountain villages taking a particular hold. The only way to get to those villages was on steep roads. So Fr. Regis walked to them, one after another — and then from that diocese to the next, and then to another.

He didn’t have a big city stage; he had a series of tiny platforms in tiny places, where people needed what he had to say. And it worked. With the Holy Spirit, the guy was somewhat singularly responsible for helping Catholics remain in the Church in village after village. He reportedly helped save vocations of discouraged and isolated local priests. And everywhere he went, he heard confessions for hours.

Here’s how he died. In December 1640, he was giving a mission in a place called Montregard. He was struck one morning by a strange thought — an overwhelming sense that his death was near. He wasn’t sick, he didn’t have any reason to think this, but he did. So he went to a Jesuit house and made a retreat for three days. I presume he did the Ignatian exercises on the Cross itself.

Then he got back on the road. He had to walk about 40 miles to the town where he was going. On the way, he got caught in a winter storm, and spent a night sheltered in a shack, mostly open to the elements. He got to the Lalouvesc the next day, Dec. 23. People were already gathered to hear him, so he didn’t even have a coffee (although in fairness, it wasn’t very popular in Europe yet). He just started preaching his first sermon, and then sat in the confessional until about midnight.

He was in the confessional for the next two days. There was a broken window letting in a draft, which he endured for those two days.

Then on Dec. 26, in the late afternoon, feeling weak, he collapsed. He was carried to the rectory bedroom. He had a fever.

And then — guys, this part is crazy — people heard he was there, and lined up outside the rectory for Fr. Regis to hear their confessions, from his deathbed. And he did. He hung on for a few more days, suffering pneumonia, and hearing confessions when he was conscious.

He died on Dec. 31, 1640.

Two things stand out to me:

One: He gave himself whole-heartedly to the mission to which he was called. For his whole priesthood, he wanted to go to Canada. He was absolutely on fire for a mission there. But French bishops kept asking for him, and his superiors kept confirming that, so he did that thing. He did it well. He embraced it with his whole personality, and did so unto death — in obedience, well-lived, and offering up his own desires.

Two: Apparently a lot of people didn’t like him. Some of his superiors. Some priests. Some local bishops. Regis was … confident. Some people say he was arrogant and obnoxious. Others say he wasn’t liked because he convicted consciences. By one account, one Jesuit rector was so suspicious of Regis that he kept him basically confined to the Jesuit house for 10 weeks. Regis said it was the greatest trial of his life.

Maybe he was misunderstood. Maybe he was a jerk, and God used him anyway. We don’t know. But we see the fruits of his ministry. I guess I don’t have a conclusion to that, but I’m going to be thinking about it for a while.

Here’s the news.

The news

The Vatican published on Saturday revised statutes for the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

The new statutes recognize an expanded mandate given to the commission by Pope Francis’ 2022 Praedicate evangelium, an apostolic constitution that reorganized the Roman curia.

The new statutes came after extensive consultation with “victims/survivors, to safeguarding experts, and to the experience of local Churches,” according to the commission’s president.

What do they say? Read it here.

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We talked last week with the Korean bishop serving as the general coordinator for World Youth Day 2027.

“We will be giving the space for Jesus to work, and he will be drawing [young people] to himself, in a sacramental way,” said Bishop Kyung-Sang Lee, auxiliary of Seoul.

“There is never a moment that God doesn’t love his children, so I invite the pilgrims to give him the chance, to let them experience how he is, how he’s loving and how he is inviting all of them to take courage and have hope,” said the bishop.

Read all about it.

You are called to grow in your Faith and to evangelize. Deepen your understanding of the biblical roots of Catholicism and confidently share your Faith with others by becoming a St. Paul Center Member. Encounter Christ. Share Christ. Visit https://stpaulcenter.com/memberships to get started for free.

Cardinal Baldassare Reina, vicar of the Diocese of Rome, denied last week being part of a criminal investigation against his brother, in a scandal which involves several Sicilian politicians and businessmen, and a pay-for-access scheme.

But the Italian press have some phone transcripts which suggest that Reina might well have known about an organized patronage scheme involving his brother, and might have given some advice about it.

Or maybe it was just fraternal advice. To be clear — nothing yet is clear.

But the investigation is sure to raise more questions in the months to come.

Here’s the story.

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Speaking of Italian arrests — Italian police have arrested a woman on suspicion of playing a major role in laundering around 61 million euros (approximately $70 million) embezzled from Caritas Luxembourg.

Fraudsters are believed to have extracted an estimated 61 million euros from the charity in more than 100 transactions of less than 500,000 euros ($579,000) between February and July 2024.

The suspect, identified as Clarissa La Porta, was wanted under a European Arrest Warrant issued by judicial authorities in Luxembourg on suspicion of forging documents, fraud, criminal association, and money laundering.

This is an absolutely fascinating situation, which we’ve been reporting on for a while. And here’s the latest.

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Investigators in Mozambique have arrested three people in connection to the June 6 killing of Bishop Osório Citara Afonso, leader of the Quelimane diocese.

One of the arrested suspects is a priest of the diocese. But many local Catholics are crying foul, claiming that the priest’s arrest doesn’t match up with the facts of the case, and that he’s being framed.

Read all about it.

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The Archdiocese of Chicago won last week a court ruling that will allow it to proceed with a lawsuit against participants in a scheme to make false claims of clerical sexual abuse.

But the archdiocese has also warned that it expects to see an increase in historical abuse claims following a “change in the legal environment.”

This is a bizarre situation, and one worth reading about.

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Soldiers, and the one-armed bandits

Mrs. Flynn has taken our youngest son Daniel on a bit of a pilgrimage this week, to the friendly confines at Clark and Addison, Wrigley Field. This trip was a Christmas present for him, and part of something we’ve taken up as a custom — we try to give each kid at least a day or two away with just one parent, by themselves, each year.

While they’re having the time of their lives, that means I’m flying solo on the parenting front — so I regret that I can’t give you quite as much newsletter as I prefer to. But I’ll offer a couple of thoughts to round us out, if you don’t mind.

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First, in my ongoing series of summertime parenting suggestions, let’s talk about tv.

I’m not the sort of parent who thinks kids should spend the entire summer without the magic of television. This is probably because I work at home, and I don’t want to have to send my kids back outside every five minutes when they come to complain they’re bored, again. Sometimes a bit of the tube is exactly the break everybody needs.

But I do think summer tv should have at least the thinnest veneer of educational value, so that you can tell yourself that you’re not like other parents letting their kids just veg out on Bluey all day.

So let me recommend two things that will make you feel better about turning on the tv.

For little kids, the Sesame Street version of “Peter and the Wolf” is so entertaining, you’ll find yourself sitting to watch most of it. And Oscar is delightful as a cat:

For older kids, the Crunchlabs series is surprisingly informative, even if it’s really a protracted commercial for the company’s subscription boxes.

But if, like me, you have only a tenuous grasp yourself on certain scientific and engineering realities, Crunchlabs is a decent place to start:

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Next:
Like a lot of Americans, I get into soccer for approximately six weeks every four years, when the World Cup rolls around.

I was, like most of you, on the edge of my seat when the United States drubbed Paraguay on Friday, and I’ve decided the victory is sweetest if I embrace a certain level of ignorance — rather than getting a sense for whether Paraguay is any good, I’ve chosen to the believe they’re one of the most formidable soccer nations on Earth, and that our victory was a near miraculous improbability.

Of course, I couldn’t live in that imaginative construct if I were a sports gambler, and had to follow the odds religiously.

But I don’t gamble on sports, because it’s a vice with very little upside, and because — while many people are undeterred by this stubborn reality — I can’t actually afford to throw money out the window.

Still, this World Cup is expected to be the biggest sports gambling event in history, and some users on the betting site Polymarket are doing their part to guarantee it.

Postings on the site indicate that one user has lost already $4.2 million on this World Cup — he bet the Dutch would beat Japan, and the Belgians would defeat Egypt. Losing both bets, he flushed away an amount that would set up most families for life, with plenty of cash left over.

Not to be outdone, another user laid down $8.6 million on a Belgian victory against history’s most successful African soccer club — having learned nothing from the abysmal failures of Belgium’s actual forays onto that continent.

In all, experts say that betting on the World Cup could total some $50 billion in wagers, which is so much money it usually takes Elon Musk a couple of days to generate it.

But I don’t feel bad for people who have millions to bet and lose them.

I feel instead for people with much less, who get sucked in by gamified apps designed by neurologists and psychologists to create addiction, who place small bets they can’t afford, and chase their losses with ever worsening propositions.

I know some such people, and the results aren’t pretty.

Gambling is a vice among the very wealthy, but not only them. And its marketing to people further down the food chain is often downright predatory — but we’ve nonetheless jumped headlong into gamified betting on everything here in the U.S.

Marriages and credit scores and families and lives can be ruined quicker than you think, through the gambling apps promoted everywhere as good clean fun.

Which is why I was surprised to learn recently that a small-but-significant-player among America’s gambling moguls is the U.S. Department of Defense.

Read more

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This episode is brought to you by the 2026 Amazing Parish Leadership Summit.

This August, join leaders like you from across the Church for three days of inspiration, encouragement and equipping.

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Reading 1 - Jeremiah 20: 10-13

Psalm 69: 8-10, 14, 17, 33-35

Reading 2 - Romans 5: 12-15

Gospel - Matthew 10: 26-33

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

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The document, issued only in Italian on June 13, replaces statutes released in 2015, a year after Pope Francis established the Vatican safeguarding body. The new statutes have been approved for a three-year experimental period, after which they will be amended or made permanent.

Why does the PCPM need new statutes — and what are the main changes?

The Pillar takes a look.

Why new statutes?

A great deal has changed in the world of Catholic safeguarding since 2015. Back then, the PCPM was a small, rather shaky new body created to advise the pope on child protection.

Some Roman curia officials appeared to view the new institution with suspicion or condescension, though it was led by the respected U.S. Cardinal Seán O’Malley. It would be another three years before the Cardinal Theodore McCarrick abuse scandal would rock the Vatican to its foundations, underlining the need for the PCPM.

In the early years, the body’s scope gradually expanded, as it evolved from something that resembled a think tank to a global safeguarding standards body, facing pushback from the curia at several turns.

Its transformation was formally recognized in March 2022, with the publication of Praedicate evangelium, Pope Francis’ apostolic constitution reorganizing the Roman curia. The document embedded the PCPM within the curia, specifically within the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees clerical child abuse cases.

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Praedicate evangelium also acknowledged that the PCPM was more than a papal advisory body. It could also propose new safeguarding measures, and help dioceses and religious orders establish up-to-date child protection policies.

These developments needed to be reflected in the PCPM’s statutes. A draft was prepared as early as April 2022, but underwent revisions for the next three years. The Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s powerful coordinating body, was consulted on the document, as were other dicasteries whose work overlaps with the PCPM’s.

In May 2025, the month that Pope Leo XIV was elected as Pope Francis’ successor, O’Malley approved a final draft of the new statutes. The Boston cardinal personally presented the text to Pope Leo and the Secretariat of State.

In March 2026, Leo XIV gave an address to participants in the PCPM’s plenary assembly that was interpreted as expressing his support for the body’s expanded mandate.

During a meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on May 20, 2026, the pope approved the new statutes for three years, on an experimental basis, and ordered their publication in the official gazette.

What’s changed?

The most significant change between the 2015 and 2026 statutes is the recognition of the PCPM’s new status, as set out in Praedicate evangelium.

In 2015, the body was defined as “an autonomous institution attached to the Holy See.” The 2026 text says it is “established within” (presso, in Italian) the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The new statutes offer greater clarity on the relationship between the PCPM and DDF, which remained ill-defined even after Praedicate evangelium.

Article 3 § 2 says the two institutions will collaborate on a broad range of areas, including the PCPM’s annual report, preparations for ad limina visits, training programs for bishops and canon lawyers, and safeguarding standards in local Churches.

The two bodies will also be connected at a personnel level. The PCPM’s president, French Archbishop Thibault Verny — or secretary, Colombian Bishop Luis Manuel Alí Herrera — will be a member of the DDF for the duration of his term of office.

Meanwhile, the DDF’s prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, can nominate one or more observers to the PCPM’s plenary assemblies.

It’s worth noting that the new statutes do not say that a DDF official will also serve as a PCPM member, which would mirror the PCPM president’s membership of the DDF. No reason has been given for this asymmetry. Any attempt to explain it is therefore speculative.

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Perhaps the arrangement is intended to achieve two goals: giving the PCPM significant access to the DDF, while ensuring it retains its independence from the much older body. But that’s just one possibility.

The new statutes also confirm the PCPM’s shift from a mere “advisory body at the service of the Holy Father” in 2015 to an advisory body with safeguarding monitoring, reporting, and training functions in 2026.

While the 2015 text limited the PCPM to 18 members serving three-year terms, the 2026 statutes say the body can have up to 23 members serving five-year terms. The longer term duration arguably gives the PCPM more stability.

The body’s organizational chart also becomes noticeably more complex in the 2026 statutes, with not only a president, secretary, and members, but also an executive council, regional groups, and regional consultants.

The new statutes set out mechanisms through which the PCPM can encourage local Churches to raise their safeguarding standards. They recognize that the body has a role in ensuring that “stable and publicly accessible systems for reporting abuse are established in all dioceses and eparchies.”

They note that “in cases of repeated violations of the norms or serious deficiencies in local systems for the reporting of allegations and complaints, the commission may submit its assessments and recommendations to the competent dicasteries of the Holy See, so that they may exercise their respective responsibilities.”

The new statutes also cover the PCPM’s annual report, first issued in 2024. This document is unlike a company’s annual report that offers a glossy overview of the previous 12 months. It is rather an accountability tool that assesses safeguarding policies and suggests improvements, not only within local Churches but also the Roman curia.

The new statutes explain how the reports are produced in collaboration with Vatican dicasteries, bishops’ conferences, and religious orders, before they are submitted to the pope, whose approval is necessary before publication.

Overall, the new statutes reflect the deepening understanding of abuse that has arguably taken place in the Church (or parts of it) over the past decade. They stress that the PCPM’s remit now extends well beyond abuse prevention. It also includes promoting ongoing care for abuse survivors worldwide. These survivors, the statutes say pointedly, must be treated everywhere with “dignity and respect.”

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But the archdiocese has also warned that it expects to see an increase in historical abuse claims following a “change in the legal environment.”

In a June 12 statement from Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archdiocese announced that an Illinois judge had ruled against efforts to have the case dismissed.

“We are determined to press ahead with our defense against these false claims and the affront they represent to true survivors,” said the cardinal. “These individuals sought to take advantage of the archdiocese’s pastoral response to claims, which is to trust claimants, settle cases with compassion, and support survivors of abuse in their healing.”

The lawsuit was filed in March last year, in response to a 2024 lawsuit from a group of supposed victims of known abuser and laicized Chicago priest, Daniel McCormack. According to the archdiocese, the group of more than two dozen men, including incarcerated convicts, known gang members and murders, conspired for more than a decade to make false accusations of sexual abuse, including recruiting and coaching prospective fake victims.

The plan, which the archdiocese has called a “a racketeering enterprise among a web of connected individuals,” came to light when one of the men involved discussed the plan on a recorded phone call from an Illinois prison, saying inventing accusations against McCormick would get them “on the lick” with the archdiocese, and was a path to “free-ass money.”

Ringleaders of the fraud told friends, family members and criminal associates to claim falsely that they had met McCormack at a parish or through the basketball team he coached. And, in exchange for coaching on presenting fake allegations of abuse to a settlement, the men took a cut of the funds.

The scheme operated successfully for years, according to the archdiocese, taking advantage of a “pastoral” presumption of credibility for alleged victims, especially when the allegations concerned a known and notorious abuser.

In 2025, at the time the countersuit was filed, the archdiocese’s general counsel said that “We trust and believe people when they come forward with abuse claims. These individuals have violated that trust and have attempted to take advantage of it… False claims make it necessary to investigate all claims more aggressively, which places a greater burden on true survivors.”

“We have a duty to oppose claims we know are false to protect and stand up for real survivors of abuse who ultimately are the ones harmed by fraud,” the general counsel said at the time.

But while the archdiocese hailed the progress of their countersuit in the June 12 statement, Cupich also warned that changes in the legal climate had left the local Church anticipating an uptick in historical abuse claims, even though the archdiocese has already paid out more than $400 million to survivors of clerical sexual abuse over the last several decades.

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“Over the past 18 months, we have seen a significant change in the legal environment, including widespread attorney advertising and an inflow of private equity financing supporting the law firms soliciting and bringing claims,” Cupich said. “This has resulted in an unprecedented and marked rise in the number of abuse claims, largely stemming from events alleged to have occurred decades ago.”

While pledging “transparency and compassion for those truly harmed,” the cardinal said that “this development risks undermining our ability to provide a just and equitable resolution of genuine claims and increases the likelihood of more false claims.”

The archdiocese has also said it has an obligation to be a good steward of the Church’s resources set aside for abuse claims, and exercising that stewardship is likely part of the reason why the archdiocese filed its countersuit in the first place.

In a statement following Cupich’s June 12 announcement, Chicago’s archdiocesan development officer Brendan Keating acknowledged to donors that the cardinal’s statement “may raise questions about how the archdiocese funds settlement of abuse claims.”

“As a reminder, parishioner donations, parish funds and proceeds from the sale of parish property are the assets of parishes and are not used to fund settlements,” Keating explained.

“Proceeds from archdiocesan fundraising campaigns, such as the Generation to Generation campaign and the Annual Catholic Appeal, are held in separate, restricted accounts, and may only be used for the restricted purposes specified in the campaign materials.”

“Settlement costs are funded by long-held unrestricted archdiocesan assets that have grown in value over many years. These assets include proceeds from the sale of excess archdiocesan real estate and returns on unrestricted investment funds.”

Whatever the eventual outcome of the archdiocese’s lawsuit, the fraudsters’ years of apparent success in receiving awards for bogus accusations points to a known vulnerability in American dioceses as they grapple with the historical sexual abuse claims.

Since the first wave of clerical sexual abuse scandals broke across the Church in the United States 25 years ago, dioceses and archdioceses have had to reckon with decades of mishandled, and in some cases maliciously ignored, historical instances of sexual abuse.

Further cycles of scandal have followed, most notably in 2018 after the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the passage of so-called “look back laws” carving exceptions in state statutes of limitations for victims to sue the Church.

Facing enormous public outrage and the legitimate claims of victims, Church authorities set aside vast amounts of ecclesiastical money — including through the liquidation of Church assets and parish properties — and set up funds to compensate victims of historical crimes.

But the efforts to settle a flood of historical claims often led to expedited consideration of claims and, some canonists, lawyers, and priests’ advocates have repeatedly warned, allowed through sometimes malicious and false accusations.

Practices are often highly inconsistent across different dioceses, but the Chicago suit demonstrates that in some dioceses there has been at least an implicit practice of accepting and settling some historical claims with little examination.

While McCormack was a notorious abuser with a long list of proven victims, canonists have warned in recent years that other similar apparently vexatious claims may have been laid against the names of innocent priests, both living and deceased.

At the same time, priests across the U.S. have reported a low level of trust in their diocesan bishops. Many have said they believe their bishop sees their clergy as expendable liabilities when confronted with an accusation of abuse.

That sense is often compounded by institutional disparities in how accusations of abuse, including historical accusations, are treated when they concern either a bishop or a priest — with the episcopate often appearing to benefit from more solid institutional support, procedural due process rights, and a more reflexive presumption of innocence.

In response to those concerns, the bishops of the United States voted last week to include a new commitment to due process and to respecting the legal and canonical rights of accused clerics in the text of the USCCB’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

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

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“We are waiting and expecting the Holy Spirit to work on each pilgrim, so they can interact with the Holy Father and, in a mysterious way, experience something about God,” Bishop Kyung-Sang Lee told The Pillar.

Asked about his hopes for the upcoming World Youth Day, the bishop said he does not want to impose his own expectations on the event, but rather, he wants to make room for the Holy Spirit to work.

Unlike at school, he said, where teachers prepare their classes with specific expectations of what their students will learn, “we will be giving the space for Jesus to work, and he will be having them drawn to himself, in a sacramental way.”

Lee spoke with The Pillar during the June gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Orlando.

He also addressed the bishops at the conference, inviting them to send the youth of their dioceses to World Youth Day in Seoul next year. South Korea, he said, is a powerful witness of the ability to rebuild after devastation, even as the country still bears the wounds of the Korean War and ongoing division between north and south.

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While Lee wants to leave room for the Holy Spirit to work in unique ways in the lives of World Youth Day participants, he does hope that they come away from the experience with a renewed sense of hope.

He said organizers are planning to highlight the unique history of the Catholic Church in Korea, which was founded not by foreign missionaries, but almost entirely by Korean laity who discovered Catholic texts from Beijing.

While the Church initially grew, terrible century-long persecutions threatened to wipe out the faith in the country, and some 10,000 believers were martyred.

“From a numerical perspective, we would be a devastated Church, because most of the first believers were killed,” he told The Pillar.

“It is very mysterious how God worked in the Church of Korea, how he rebuilt it, and made it flourish and yield fruit,” he reflected. “We would like to show the young people the history of Korea, so they might be able to find hope in the sufferings and difficulties they are facing.”

The bishop hopes World Youth Day will be an evangelizing moment for Korea as well as the international youth who attend. Catholics are a minority in South Korea, making up only some 11% of the population.

But Lee thinks there is fertile ground for encounter between the Church and the broader culture, particularly surrounding the subjects of technology and artificial intelligence, which have been heated topics in the country.

While many countries are pursuing advancements in AI with little concern for the implications of doing so, many scholars and authorities in Korea – including the president — agree with the concerns voiced by Pope Leo in his recent encyclical about the need to ensure that AI supports human values instead of threatening them, he said.

“In this way, the Church and the society are coming to a meeting point,” he said, adding that cooperation for World Youth Day could be a further chance for encounter.

Lee invited World Youth Day participants to prepare spiritually by reflecting on the theme selected for this year’s event – the words of Christ: “Take courage, for I have conquered the world.”

He said he has seen the consistent loving hand of God throughout his own life, and he hopes the pilgrims at the upcoming World Youth Day are similarly able to recognize God’s providence, especially through the inevitable difficulties of a global pilgrimage.

While practical preparations are well in hand, the bishop said, inevitable difficulties and suffering were an essential part of any pilgrim experience and something he hoped travellers would embrace as a moment to rely on providence.

“I would invite them to face the hardships with courage,” he told The Pillar. “We also have fears in preparation, but I am not afraid. Every night I sleep well because I have experience throughout my life that God miraculously works.”

“There is never a moment that God doesn’t love his children, so I invite the pilgrims to give him the chance, to let them experience how he is, how he’s loving and how he is inviting all of them to take courage and have hope,” said the bishop.

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This episode is brought to you by the Benedict XVI Institute’s Reverent Liturgy Project, offering the practical wisdom of priests who have successfully adopted classically Catholic worship practices to priests who want to embark on the same journey but need a roadmap to get started.

To learn more, visit ReverentLiturgy.org

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Dassault Falcon 900B Spanish Royal Air Force. Credit: Papas Dos via Wikipedia (CC BY 2.0)

The 41-year-old suspect was detained in northwestern Rome, Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper reported June 5, in connection with the scandal, which led to the effective dissolution of the Catholic charity founded in 1932.

Fraudsters are believed to have extracted an estimated 61 million euros from the charity in more than 100 transactions of less than 500,000 euros ($579,000) between February and July 2024.

The suspect, identified as Clarissa La Porta, was wanted under a European Arrest Warrant issued by judicial authorities in Luxembourg on suspicion of forging documents, fraud, criminal association, and money laundering.

Investigators allege that she created shell companies and bank accounts in countries including Austria, Italy, Portugal, and Sweden, and falsified accounting and corporate documents to help launder funds embezzled from Caritas Luxembourg. They consider her to be a trusted associate of a leader of an unnamed criminal organization.

La Porta, who is originally from Turin, has not publicly responded to the allegations.

Corriere della Sera said that investigators believed she was preparing to leave for Dubai when Italy’s State Police and Financial Police arrested her at an apartment in Rome’s Trionfale district.

Following the arrest, she was taken to the city’s Rebibbia prison ahead of possible extradition to Luxembourg, a small, prosperous country bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany.

Her detention is the latest twist in a scandal that emerged in July 2024, prompting anger among government officials in Luxembourg and a national debate about oversight of charities receiving state funds.

After Caritas Luxembourg filed a criminal complaint for the misappropriation of funds, the public prosecutor’s office requested the opening of a judicial investigation into suspected forgery, fraud, breach of trust, and money laundering.

The office said in July 2024 that an individual — widely reported to be the chief financial officer — had appeared for questioning and was arrested. The person was later released from custody.

In August 2024, it emerged that two banks had approved tens of millions of euros in loans to the charity while the suspected fraud was occurring.

Also in August 2024, Luxembourg’s public prosecutor’s office said Caritas Luxembourg may have fallen victim to “fake president fraud,” in which a fraudster impersonates a senior figure within a company and demands that employees arrange urgent international payments.

In September 2024, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden denounced what he called “a horrible fraud” and indicated that a new organization would replace Caritas Luxembourg. The charity announced it would be forced to close its overseas aid projects because of the embezzlement scandal.

In October 2024, the newly established non-profit Hellëf um Terrain (Help on the Ground) took over much of Caritas Luxembourg’s work within the country.

Also in October 2024, investigators began to focus on a Bulgarian crime organization suspected of duping the chief financial officer into transferring funds with the help of a fortune teller, who allegedly passed on information that the employee had confided about her workplace.

In January 2025, the public prosecutor’s office announced the arrest of eight suspects after a joint police operation in Bulgaria, France, and Britain. A ninth person, from Bulgaria, was detained later that month.

In July 2025, two men from Bulgaria were given jail sentences for helping to launder money taken from the charity, after they opened bank accounts in Spain and made them available to the fraud scheme’s organizers. The men’s attorney argued that they were “money mules,” or people unwittingly used by criminals to transfer illegally obtained funds.

Also in July 2025, a special parliamentary inquiry into Caritas Luxembourg concluded with a report making 12 recommendations, including improving employee supervision and promoting the professionalization of the charitable sector.

In a July 2025 update, the public prosecutor’s office said: “It must be acknowledged that the vast majority of the assets have disappeared through a combination of money-laundering techniques and a cascade of transfers carried out worldwide, involving increasingly smaller amounts, each subsequently invested in cryptocurrencies.”

“The arrangements put in place to shield the funds embezzled from the [Caritas] Foundation from the authorities point to the existence of a network of professional money launderers, using company incorporation and bank account-opening techniques, primarily through nominees or money mules recruited from disadvantaged and low-income backgrounds.”

It added: “Such a network is likely to provide its services to one or more fraudsters seeking to conceal illicit proceeds from law-enforcement authorities. These services encompass a broad range of money-laundering methods. As the operations progress, the trail of the embezzled funds is lost, particularly because of the fungibility of money.”

In December 2025, the office announced that the investigation had entered a new phase, focused on “alleged recruiters who may have provided instructions for the establishment of Spanish bank accounts.”

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One of the arrested suspects is a Catholic priest. The others are a guard and a gardener who worked in the bishop’s residence.

The priest is incardinated in the Quelimane diocese, according to local media reports, but has not been named in the press statement issued by SERNIC, the country’s national investigative force.

The prospect that the killing was perpetrated by insiders at the bishop’s residence is a new turn in the case. Statements made on the day of Afonso’s killing detailed that suspects had reportedly scaled the walls of the building to disable the security system — which would not appear necessary if the culprits had easy access to the bishops’ residence.

Initial statements also said that Afonso had been shot in the chest with a modernized Kalashnikov (AK-M), an assault rifle widely used by government forces in the country.

In light of those reports, the arrest of the priest has been met with skepticism by local Catholics, according to a source close to the diocese, who spoke on condition of anonymity for the sake of safety.

The source — employed by a charity which works closely ecclesial leaders in Mozambique — said there is strong local suspicion that if the arrested priest is involved, a plot to kill the bishop might have involved a larger group of collaborators.

“The bishop had been restructuring the diocese, and that may have rubbed some people the wrong way, but to murder him? And in this way? According to initial reports, this was clearly the work of a death squad,” the source told The Pillar, referring to groups of well-organized criminals who have carried out dozens of assassinations in Mozambique, including of opposition politicians.

According to the source, there is widespread local perception that if the initial reports about the crime are true, “this murder could not have taken place, in this way, without the involvement of somebody at a government level.”

“Even if the order didn’t come from the top, somebody at the local level would have been involved. And this points to the increasing fragmentation of the state in Mozambique, which has led to a spike in criminality.”

“The murder of a bishop was very bad press for the government. There may well have been pressure to solve the case quickly, deflecting attention away from the state,” the source added.

The Church in Mozambique has been critical of the country’s government in recent years, especially after 2024 elections saw widespread claims of ballot-stuffing. Crackdowns on political protests killed dozens.

Church leaders have also complained about the government’s inability to solve the Jihadist insurgency in Cabo Delgado, in the country’s northern region.

In 2021 Bishop Fernando Luiz Lisboa, then serving in the country, was moved back to his native Brazil following threats to his life. He later admitted that the threats had come from government figures.

“Arresting a priest is a perfect way of deflecting the negative attention back at the Church,” said the charity worker.

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Afraid to speak

The Pillar also spoke with a former lay missionary who spent years in Mozambique and remains in contact with friends there.

Requesting anonymity for safety, he told The Pillar: “Mozambicans are used to keeping quiet, because of the persecution they suffered during the civil war. It is difficult to get them to speak openly on the phone or in text messages. For the past two years or so, they have been afraid that their communications are being monitored.”

The local Catholic bishops have been guarded in their statements about the murder of Osório Citara Afonso, but have described it as “an attempt to silence the voice of faith, justice and peace,” in a June 8 pastoral note

The bishops called for a swift and thorough investigation, saying that failure to do so on the part of the government “would amount to complicity in violence and a further assault on the nation’s moral conscience.”

Osório’s funeral was being held Friday in Quelimane.

Pope Leo has named the bishop of Upper Molócuè as apostolic administrator of Quelimane.

Bishop António Manuel Bogaio Constantino, of Caia, was named apostolic administrator of Beira, a diocese that was also being overseen by Bishop Osório at the time of his death.

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The denial came as media reports in Italy questioned whether the cardinal had knowledge on his brother’s alleged dealings.

Domenico Reina, the cardinal’s brother, was accused by the Caltanissetta prosecutor’s office of receiving a public contract worth 128,000 euros, which was allegedly arranged by operatives linked to the Forza Italia political party, in an effort to curry favor with the cardinal and shore up support among Catholic voters in Sicily’s regional elections.

While the cardinal denied all knowledge of his brother’s dealings, Italian newspaper La Repubblica published an article June 9 citing alleged transcripts of phone conversations between the cardinal and his brother, in which the cardinal discussed and encouraged his brother to accept the contract and appeared aware of political links to the job.

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A statement issued to the Italian news agency ANSA on Jun. 8 by Cardinal Reina’s attorney stressed that the cardinal “is not under investigation nor formally involved in the criminal proceedings in question,” after prosecutors in Caltanissetta announced an investigation into Domenico Reina, the cardinal’s brother, and 11 others over an alleged scheme involving corrupt hiring and contract-award practices at a Sicilian public healthcare agency aimed at securing political favors.

The statement said that the cardinal is “completely uninvolved in the facts being investigated and, according to the prosecution’s own hypothesis, is completely unaware of his brother’s actions and the intentions of his interlocutors.”

“Any reference to the cardinal in the investigation documents pertains exclusively to the assessments or intentions of third parties, not supported by any agreement or pact with the same, and does not imply any responsibility, not even moral, on the part of the cardinal himself,” the statement concluded.

Cardinal Baldassare Reina served as auxiliary bishop of Rome between 2022 and 2024. He was in October 2024 appointed cardinal vicar of Rome – the day-to-day leader of the Diocese of Rome, acting on behalf of the pope. He was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in December 2024.

The Caltanissetta’s prosecutor office alleges that Reina’s brother was approached as a way to curry favor with the cardinal, and to secure influence with the Catholic vote in the south.

However, La Repubblica published a report on Tuesday that raised questions abouts about the extent to which Cardinal Reina knew of his brother’s dealings.

The article cited a partial transcription – without explaining its source – of a November 2023 phone call between then-Bishop Reina and his brother, in which his brother expressed was deciding between taking job offers in a private clinic and or a 15-month project at Cefpas, the Center for Continuing Education and Professional Development of Health Service Personnel, a public agency for training healthcare personnel in Sicily — the role under investigation.

According to La Repubblica, Cardinal Reina reportedly insisted on the call that his brother should choose Cefpas because “it’s a well established organization” and that “Margherita [La Rocca Ruvolo] might be upset” if he didn’t choose the role at Cefpas, making reference to a local Forza Italia Member of Parliament.

While the prosecutor did not open an investigation against La Rocca Ruvolo, the prosecutor’s office said that “”the sole purpose pursued by the suspects was to curry favor with Reina’s brother, Cardinal Baldassarre, known as Baldo, in order to channel Catholic voters to Margherita La Rocca Ruvolo.”

During the call, according to La Repubblica, then-Bishop Reina pushed his brother to accept the Cefpas offer, because of its prestige: “Anyone who has been fortunate enough to get in there has never had their job put in question. That’s the point.”

The reported sections of the transcripts do not mention the amount or nature of the contract, nor do they refer to the prosecution’s allegation that the arrangement was intended to curry favor with Cardinal Reina and influence Catholic voters in Sicily.

Domenico Reina eventually accepted the Cefpas offer in January 2024. According to La Repubblica, he then sent a text message to La Rocca Ruvolo, saying “I’m forwarding the contract I received. I’ll read it carefully, but I hope there aren’t any clauses that could get me into trouble.”

According to La Repubblica, Roberto Sanfilippo, former director of Cefpas and one of the 12 men being investigated, publicly boasted because of helping “the pope’s deputy’s brother” because “Margherita La Rocca asked me to give this young man a hand.”

According to the prosecutor, the group managed hiring and the awarding of consulting contracts at Cefpas by implementing a system of cronyism, partially to gain electoral support, including among Catholics through the awarding of contracts to figures such as Domenico Reina.

“The use of Cefpas for purely personal purposes… also came to light in the corruption case involving the direct negotiation of the contract for the creation of a digital library for Cefpas, for which a sum of €128,000 was contemplated for Domenico Reina, an individual with no previous experience in multimedia documentation networks or in general.”

Riccardo Gallo Afflito, a politician described as La Rocca Ruvolo’s “political ally” in the proceedings, is one of three people for whom prosecutors have requested pre-trial detention. Prosecutors requested house arrest for five others, but did not seek any precautionary measure against Domenico Reina.

The investigation also alleges that Cefpas was used to award 75 temporary contracts to the wives, children, sons-in-law, and political associates of members of the same party, for “no show” or “no work” roles for which they lacked the necessary qualifications. The contracts were mostly awarded in February this year, just three months before local elections, which were held on May 24 and 25.

According to Il Fatto Quotidiano, Gallo Afflito was accused in the past by Daniele Sciabica, a mafia informant, of being involved in several mafia-related murders between 1985 and 1988 but the Palermo prosecutor’s office later closed the investigation without pressing charges against him.

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Bishop Heinz Josef Algermissen said June 11 that a new policy paper on abortion adopted by the Catholic Women’s Association of Germany was “not Catholic.”

“That a Catholic organization is seriously demanding that the killing of children before birth ‘must also be possible in Catholic hospitals’ is completely unacceptable and downright intolerable,” said Algermissen, the emeritus bishop of Fulda and chairman of the pro-life group Seelsorge für das Leben.

Members of the Catholic Women’s Association of Germany ― known by its German initials kfd ― adopted the policy paper by a large majority at the organization’s June 4-6 national assembly in Mainz.

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The text argued that there were significant regional variations in the provision of abortion across Germany and that the gaps “must be urgently closed.”

It said: “Catholic-run hospitals are subject to Catholic labor law, a special ecclesiastical law that allows for deviations from state law when Church principles are at stake. Doctors in Catholic hospitals are not permitted to perform abortions. This includes abortions performed for medical reasons. The exception is an acute threat to the mother’s life. The kfd demands that abortions must also be possible in Catholic hospitals.”

It added: “Clear political and institutional framework conditions are needed to ensure nationwide medical provision for abortion, and to reduce discrimination and stigmatization within the healthcare system. Equally important is the assurance that health insurance will cover the costs of abortions.”

Algermissen, who retired as Bishop of Fulda in 2018 at the age of 75, said: “The killing of an innocent and defenseless child in the womb does not constitute a medical service. Nor is an unwanted pregnancy an illness. Attempting to shift the costs of the killing of children before birth onto the community of insured individuals trivializes and undermines the prohibition against killing.”

The kfd, which traces its origins back to 1856, is a private association of the faithful subject to the oversight of the German bishops’ conference.

The group, which describes itself as Germany’s largest Catholic women’s organization, with around 265,000 members, adopted the policy paper amid a nationwide debate over Section 218 of the German Criminal Code, which generally criminalizes abortion, except in specified circumstances.

Abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is permitted, provided a woman undergoes mandatory counseling, observes the required waiting period, and the abortion is performed by a physician.

In 2024, a cross-party group introduced a bill in the German parliament seeking to remove abortions in the first 12 weeks from the scope of Section 218, making them lawful, rather than simply exempt from punishment. The bill failed to advance.

It was against this background that the kfd adopted the text entitled “Between the Protection of Life and Self-Determination: The kfd’s Positions and Perspectives on Section 218 of the German Criminal Code.”

The policy paper acknowledged that life begins at conception. But it argued that the unborn child’s right to life “stands in tension with a woman’s right to self-determination.”

As well as calling for Catholic hospitals to provide abortions, the paper advocated free access to contraceptives, “early and continuous” sex education, and the appointment in every diocese of “a contact person for sexual education.”

The document also criticized prominent German pro-life initiatives, arguing that they were associated with far-right networks.

It said: “At gatherings of the ‘pro-life’ movement, not only are anti-feminist, authoritarian, and Christian fundamentalist views and positions disseminated, but they are also at times ethno-nationalist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic, or they relativize the Holocaust.”

In his critique of the kfd paper, Bishop Algermissen highlighted the document’s reference to conscience as a possible justification for opting for abortion.

He said: “If conscience were to offer such advice, it would merely reveal that the conscience in question has not been sufficiently formed. A properly formed conscience will regard the teaching of the Catholic Church, both on this and on other matters, as binding and personally obligatory.”

The bishop cited Pope Leo XIV’s June 8 address to the Spanish parliament, in which he said that human life must be safeguarded from conception to natural death, and a nation’s moral greatness is shown “in its capacity to accompany, protect, and love those lives that are most fragile.”

Algermissen commented: “A Catholic organization that distances itself from this concept distances itself from the Church as the mystical Body of Christ — and thus from Christ himself.”

Cornelia Kaminski, the national chairwoman of Action Right to Life for All, said the kfd paper was marred by “a glaring lack of knowledge.”

She said: “The claims made in the position paper on the German pro-life movement are completely absurd. Not only do the language and tone lack any sense of solidarity, but they also exude precisely the kind of aggression that the pro-life movement is accused of.”

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Happy Friday friends,

The bishops of the United States yesterday consecrated the country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I think there can be a tendency to give events like these only a passing and even slightly patronizing notice. How many times has the country been consecrated to one or other title of Christ and Our Lady over the years? Isn’t it just a bit of liturgical re-branding, really?

I get that way of looking at things. But it’s a mistake.

We, our country, us as a people, need these moments. We need to be constantly rededicating ourselves to God, constantly returning to Him, begging Him to conform us in mind, heart, and soul, to His Son.

I find the Sacred Heart to be an especially apt manifestation of the divine love for this country at this time. Amid the pageantry of the 250th anniversary of American independence, there is — or should be — a desire to recollect, and if necessary relitigate, what this country is, and who we as a people are.

Most especially, what animates us, defines us, and lends us purpose?

There is much in our history to encourage and inspire. But there is also just as much that should prompt us toward conversion.

That is not, at its root, an intellectual endeavor, nor a labor first and primarily of politics. The true fulfillment of human freedom, and its ultimate purpose and expression, is love — the consuming, fiery love of Christ for us which is held out to us in the image of the Sacred Heart and which can, if we draw close to it, set us alight in turn.

If there is a truth which we can all hold to be self-evident of America today, it is the desperate need for love, this love, which can be brought only by those who first receive it from its source and willingly bear it to our neighbor.

Here’s the news.

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The News

We’ve been in Orlando this week for the USCCB’s annual June meeting. And it kicked off with a true changing of the guard.

The conference opened its public sessions on Wednesday by sending a message of loyal greeting and thanks to the first American pope, and then heard from Archbishop Paul Coakley, taking his first term at the helm as the new conference president, and then from the new apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia.

You can read our report on those addresses right here.

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For myself, Caccia’s address was the real point of interest. Indeed, the nuncio’s speech was an almost perfect study in contrast — of style and substance — with his recently departed predecessor, Cardinal Christophe Pierre.

I think the U.S. bishops are being offered a very different kind of relationship with the nunciature than they have been used to. And from what I have heard from bishops here this week, they really like what they see so far.

You can read my analysis of that here.

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For us, the main story of this meeting has been the process to update the text of the Dallas Charter, the bishops’ moral commitment on combating the abuse of minors and dedicating themselves to creating a culture of prevention.

The bishops discussed revisions to that document this week, with the chair of the conference’s committee on child protection — who also helmed a revision working group — saying that drafters followed the instructions of consulted bishops to keep the scope of the document very narrowly defined.

As we have been covering, this self-imposed narrowness has been contentious among experts and groups consulted on the document, with bishop-drafters receiving feedback that a revision to the charter should take up a broader rethinking.

One bishop, Archbishop Shawn McKnight, previously proposed a much broader approach to the revision process. In Orlando this week he asked the bishops to consider pausing before approving the revised text, noting that since last the bishops had been able to feed into the process, “we [bishops] haven’t seen the kind of consultation that, behind closed doors, the committees have been dealing with.”

Bishop Barry Knestout, chair of the conference’s child and youth protection committee, responded that “I’m not sure what it would add to extend that consultation.”

That was Wednesday.

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On Thursday, the bishops got the chance to discuss amendments proposed to the revised charter text, though the actual amendments themselves were not released to the press.

In the course of that debate Archbishop McKnight proposed delaying the vote until the bishops met in November, and there was a conversation from the floor and podium about that, and the merits of more consultation among groups like diocesan review boards, before the bishops voted overwhelmingly to carry on as planned.

You can read all about who said what, and how the vote went here.

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The bishops this week also offered their consultative vote in favor of advancing the local causes of two prospective saints.

One was a Slovenian priest who built up the Church in northeastern Minnesota in the early 20th century. The other was a 21st-century New York businessman who helped inspire several nations to consecrate themselves to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

And yet, as Luke Coppen explained this week, Msgr. Joseph Buh and John Rick Miller arguably share at least one trait: an exceptional zeal that prompted those around them to wonder if they were in the presence of a saint.

Here’s a brief look at their lives.

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Catholic colleges and universities are failing to fulfill their mission, and the bishops have an important role to play in correcting the problem, the provost of Dartmouth College told the bishops this week.

Santiago Schnell, who is also a renowned mathematical biologist, spoke to the bishops Wednesday, offering them his reflections on the state of Catholic higher education 25 years after the conference implemented Pope John Paul II’s apostolic constitution on education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

You can read all about that right here.

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Getting out of Orlando, as national squads begin to arrive in the U.S., Canada and Mexico for the 2026 World Cup, the Iraqi national team is already making headlines.

Two of the team’s members – a player and the team photographer – were held and questioned at the Chicago airport for several hours before being released.

But as Felipe D’Avillez reports this week, Iraq’s team is noteworthy for another reason as well: Among the 26 players on the roster are four Christians. That means 15% of the team is Christian, in a country where Christians currently account for less than 1% of the population.

Read that story right here.

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Moving to the other side of the world entirely, you probably have never heard of the Diocese of St. Clement at Saratov, though it covers a territory larger than Texas and California combined. But the bishop there thinks it’s the most beautiful diocese on the planet.

It isn’t without its complications though, since it covers most of southern Russia. And Bishop Clemens Pickel has a lot on his plate, serving his second term as president of the bishops’ conference of Russia.

Luke Coppen had a long talk with him this week about his jobs, his ministry, and how he got there.

Read the whole thing right here.

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The Moral of the Message

The bishops this week debated briefly a proposal to delay voting on updates for the Dallas Charter until the bishops meet next in November.

You can, and I would recommend you do, read our coverage of the charter revision process, and the back and forth which led up to the vote not to delay.

It’s an interesting x-ray of how things move through the conference at the committee and assembly levels, but for me the issue of the charter specifically is sui generis — though it is not my sense that this was widely appreciated among the bishops in Orlando. And that is a shame.

Earlier this week, ahead of the bishops’ meeting, I wrote an analysis asking what the charter is for, exactly, nearly 25 years on from its initial adoption. It was, at least in my mind, an open question when I asked it. And I was interested to hear the committee’s thinking on it this week.

For myself, the last few days have crystalized something for me which I think I had felt without being able to articulate perfectly.

I think the most important thing to understand is that the Dallas Charter is purely a set of moral commitments by the bishops, a statement of principles and values and priorities. It has no binding force, in a technical or legal sense, and its scope is whatever the bishops want it to be.

If the scope of the charter is narrowly to deal with the clerical abuse of minors, as has been exhaustively reiterated during this review phase, it should be understood clearly that this is only because the bishops wish to keep it so.

Equally, the point and purpose of the revision process is itself only and exactly what the bishops wish it to be. And that, to me, is where it seems there has been a disconnect this week.

There has been considerable concern from victims’ advocates, survivors themselves, canonists, and more local interests like the priests of dioceses, that the revision of the charter has been very narrow, largely behind closed doors, and apparently aimed at keeping changes to the minimum necessary.

As observations, I think those have been proven to be accurate. The question has become: should this be concerning, and to whom?

For sure, these observations are of concern to the survivors, their advocates, canonists and clergy. I know this because they tell me so. The bishops, at least going on the votes and what was said this week do not, it seems clear, share those concerns.

When a motion to delay the approval of the charter updates was proposed and debated briefly on Thursday, Bishop Barry Knestout, the conference committee chair, noted that the idea seemed superfluous.

Even if, as some bishops requested, extra months were devoted to allowing bishops in their dioceses to consult with and hear from their local review boards, meet with survivors, and consult with other experts, he said, he could not foresee any especially substantial changes to the proposed revisions coming from that.

That, to me, was the crux of the misapprehension among the conference about what the point of the Dallas Charter is — what good it can do — a quarter of a century on from its adoption.

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