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The Holy See press office said Oct. 30 that the pope had approved three changes to the Regulations for the Staff of the Roman Curia during an Oct. 19 audience with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Vatican media presented the amendments as an effort to provide “clearer rules, more balanced procedures, and more effective safeguards” for Holy See employees.

Pope Leo XIV approved the amendments following an Oct. 5 audience with members of the Association of Vatican Lay Workers and the Women in the Vatican, though there is no indication of a causal connection.

In his address to the employee associations, founded respectively in 1979 and 2016, the pope called for a common effort to build “a working community where people are not exploited or sidelined, where we help one another, and where each person’s value and competence are recognized, thereby avoiding the generation of dissatisfaction and resentment.”

What’s the background? What’s changed? And what’s the wider context?

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What’s the background?

The Roman curia, which consists of the Vatican Secretariat of State, dicasteries, tribunals, and other offices, has around 2,000 employees.

Their working lives are governed by the Regulations for the Staff of the Roman Curia, which came into force on Jan. 1, 2026, replacing the General Regulations of the Roman Curia issued in 1999.

The updated regulations reflected the sweeping changes to the curia introduced by Pope Francis in his 2022 apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium.

Curial employees are just one part of a wider Vatican workforce that extends to around 4,500 people. More than a thousand of them serve under the Vatican City State’s administration — working, for example, in the Vatican Museums.

What’s changed?

The latest amendments — published as an attachment to a Vatican document known as a rescript — relate to articles 62 § 3, 68 § 2, and 68 § 4 of the Regulations for the Staff of the Roman Curia, which are found in the document’s disciplinary norms section.

The first change adds one phrase to Art. 62 § 3, which previously said: “For the determination of the disciplinary sanctions referred to in § 2, b) and c), the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia shall act, in accordance with its own Regulations.”

The new version says: “For the determination of the disciplinary sanctions referred to in § 2, b) and c), the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia shall act, except in the case of suspension of up to a maximum of 30 days (cf. Art. 64 § 2), in accordance with its own regulations.”

Vatican News explained that the amendment clarifies that suspensions of up to 30 days can be approved by the Head of Office (Capo Ente), while longer suspensions can only be imposed by the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia.

“This is more than just a formal clarification; clearly defining respective areas of authority helps to avoid overlapping responsibilities and potential disputes over interpretation,” it commented.

The second change adds a second sentence at the end of the first paragraph of Art. 68 § 2, which previously said: “The procedure for the application of the disciplinary sanctions referred to in Art. 62 § 2 is initiated by the Head of Office by notifying the person concerned of the failures of which he is accused and by allowing 10 days for him to submit his justifications.”

The added paragraph says: “If the Head of Office considers the alleged facts to be punishable by suspension of more than 30 days or by dismissal, 15 days are allowed for the person concerned to submit his justifications, and he may, if he wishes, also avail himself of a lawyer chosen from among the members of the Corps of Lawyers of the Holy See or from the Register of Lawyers of the Roman Curia.”

Vatican News said this change addressed an inconsistency in which curial employees might be given 10 days by their Head of Office to submit their defense, while the Disciplinary Commission allowed 15 days.

“This discrepancy created practical difficulties and, in some instances, even led to the nullification of proceedings due to the infringement of the right to a defense,” it noted.

The amendment brings the Regulations for the Staff of the Roman Curia into line with the Disciplinary Commission’s regulations. It also stresses the right to access legal help in more serious disciplinary cases.

The third change makes two additions to Art. 68 § 4, which previously said: “If the Head of Office considers that suspension or dismissal should be applied, he transmits the file to the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia, informing the person concerned.”

The new text reads: “If the Head of Office considers that suspension of more than 30 days or dismissal should be applied, he transmits the file to the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia, informing the person concerned of the measure adopted and of the possibility of being assisted by his own lawyer from among those indicated in § 2.”

The change means that a curial employee facing a suspension of more than 30 days or dismissal must be informed, at the moment their case is sent to the Disciplinary Commission, of the proposed measure and the possibility of legal assistance.

The amendments came into force with their Oct. 30 publication in L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican City’s daily newspaper.

What’s the context?

Vatican News argued that, taken together, the changes underlined the Holy See’s desire “to reconcile the demands of organizational structure and institutional accountability with the principles that inform the Church’s social doctrine.”

“In this context, the protection of the worker is not merely an ancillary aspect of administrative organization, but a concrete expression of the recognition of human dignity,” it said.

“It is an approach rooted in the magisterium of Pope Leo XIV, who, in the encyclical Magnifica humanitas, highlights the infinite and inalienable dignity of every human being, regardless of the circumstances or conditions in which they may find themselves.”

Pope Leo XIV has taken several steps to address the welfare of Vatican employees since he was elected pope in May 2025, adopting the name most closely associated with Leo XIII, who brought Catholic social teaching into the modern age with his 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum.

Leo XIV approved expanded family benefits for Vatican employees in July 2025.

He authorized the publication of revised statutes for the Labor Office of the Apostolic See, the body responsible for employment issues at the Holy See, in December 2025.

In September 2026, he repealed salary reductions for cardinals and senior Vatican officials introduced by Pope Francis to address financial problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In recent years, the Association of Vatican Lay Workers has become increasingly critical of the treatment of its members. In January 2026, it published the results of a survey which found 75.9% felt that employees were not sufficiently valued or motivated, while 56% said they had faced injustices or mistreatment by a superior.

It was significant, therefore, that Leo XIV met publicly with the association’s representatives in October 2026. According to the Zenit news agency, the meeting was unprecedented.

The changes to disciplinary procedures for curial employees appear to be part of a concerted effort by Pope Leo to make the Holy See a fairer and more humane place for its workers. The pattern of interventions suggests that these are not token gestures, but reflect priorities that lie close to the heart of Leo XIV’s pontificate.

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Happy Friday friends,

The wisest priest of my acquaintance is fond of reminding people in confession that pride is the great force multiplier of all sin. It is the underlying driver of almost every bad action to which I am disposed, and the great barrier between me and reconciliation with God at any given moment.

The opposite of pride, in every respect, is humility, which is always disposed to receive the love of God. But, he likes to note, the only way of receiving the grace of humility is to pray for humiliations — and one should be careful what one prays for, because the Lord has a tendency to listen to our prayers.

I was thinking about that this week, since I have attained the age at which doctors now like to schedule me for what they euphemistically call “procedures,” though I should state clearly there is no reason to believe there is anything seriously wrong with me.

I’ve been through all manner of procedures in adult life, following the necessary steps to, for example, buy a house, renew passports, register a business etc. Medical procedures are a thing apart, though, since none of the others require you to be stripped buck-nekked and sedated like an obstreperous zoo animal so they can insert surveillance hardware into your innards.

It is, in all senses, a humbling experience in that you have to surrender all forms of artifice and make a true and accurate account of your actions to the anesthetist. But I found it morally salutary, along with humiliating. Heaven has a narrow gate, the Church often reminds us, and one must stoop low to enter.

The constant temptation for me is to armor myself to walk tall, the better to defend myself and my family against the variables of the world. In fact, as I fought the urge to sass my wife for being (I thought) overly solicitous before and after my “procedure,” I realized that lying on a gurney utterly dependent on others is a far better encapsulation of my true state before God — and likely the closest approximation I can have to prepare for my own eventual encounter with Him face to face.

Getting a practical reminder of that is, I am sure, good for me in all sorts of ways. Quite apart from being a good remedy for the sort of pride my priest friend warns against, humility is itself an attractive quality in people. We know it when we see it in friends, coworkers, preachers, family and so on. It tends to make us want to spend more time with a person, listen to them more carefully, and value more what they say.

At the most basic level, one cannot proclaim the Gospel well except from a disposition of humility, since one can’t claim to have understood it well and remain personally prideful. All this by way of saying, schedule your annual check-ups, people. They are good for the soul.

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Here’s the news.

The News

Two things to start with.

Tomorrow will see the beatification of five Franciscan missionaries who were martyred in 1597 in the region known as La Florida, along the coast of modern-day Georgia.

You should not sleep on the heroic example of these early American witnesses to the faith, nor fail to apply to them for their intercession.

You can read our explainer who who they were right here.

—

Entirely predictable news emerged this week that Pope Leo XIV has registered to vote by absentee ballot in the coming mid term elections.

Apparently, that an American pope who took his name from the predecessor who wrote apostolic letters on American democracy would exercise his civic duty has caught some people by surprise.

Not us. In fact, we were looking ahead to this eventuality from the earliest days of Leo’s pontificate. So what are the implications of Leo’s American citizenship while being sovereign head of another country? Can he vote, does he have to pay taxes?

Well, yes, And it’s complicated. We’ve been charting it for a while.

You can read our explainer on it here.

—

And for those who wonder if it is workable for Leo to be both an American citizen and foreign sovereign, or if the complications might be a bit too much, well you’re not alone.

Back in the day, senior members of his own curia were quietly floating the idea he might be better off renouncing his US passport — though the pope himself was never going to go for that.

You can read our coverage of that here.

—

In an ongoing dispute over a traditionalist pilgrimage in Rome, a Vatican spokesman told The Pillar that he was not aware of letters published this week, which appear to call into question previous Vatican claims about the group’s requests for accommodation at St. Peter’s Basilica.

Last week, the Holy See Press Office told The Pillar that a request for the pilgrimage to process into the basilica had been rejected, but if the group wanted to have Eucharistic adoration or time for prayer within the basilica, as in other years, “they should’ve made a specific request to that end.”

Well according to the letters published this week, they did just that.

You can read the whole story here.

—

A Polish diocese said Thursday that it plans to appeal the conviction of its bishop for failing to report abuse allegations promptly to civil authorities. The ruling is the first of its kind against a bishop in Poland.

Bishop Andrzej Jeż was handed a non-custodial sentence for not swiftly notifying law enforcement after receiving credible information about alleged sexual offenses against children under 15 by two priests.

Prosecutors had requested a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for three years, and a fine of 20,000 złotys, while the defense argued for acquittal. The defense had called for Jeż’s acquittal, arguing there was legal uncertainty about whether the duty introduced in 2017 applied to offenses committed before the change took effect.

Read all about it here.

—

The U.S. bishops will meet in Baltimore next month for their annual fall plenary assembly, when they will vote for a conference secretary.

The current secretary, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, was elected last year to fill the role for the remainder of the term left by Archbishop Paul Coakley, who was chosen president of the conference.

The bishops will also vote for the chairman of six standing committees. Winners will serve one year as chairman-elect, followed by a three-year term as chairman of the committee.

You can read our preview of the elections and who is standing right here.

—

The bishops will also elect a new general secretary to lead the conference’s administrative offices.

As JD pointed out in an analysis this week, while that election will come under decidedly less urgent stakes than last time, it does come as the USCCB faces several significant challenges that will require real leadership.

And at the same time, the election comes as perceptions about the role of general secretary might themselves be changing among the U.S. episcopate.

You can read his whole analysis right here.

—

At least 60 people were killed in attacks on Christians in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church said this week.

The Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church announced Oct. 26 that more than 20 others were seriously injured in the attacks and 20 homes burned to the ground.

What’s the background to the massacres? And who is responsible? Read all our coverage right here.

—

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has been in Rome this week, meeting with Pope Leo XIV before meeting with Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

The relatively low profile, or at least muted reception, of the two audiences itself speaks volumes about the tenure of Bartholomew, who has served as patriarch for 35 years, over the course of which major ecumenical gestures between East and West have gone from historic to almost quotidian.

At 86 years old, he shows no signs of slowing down and, with the Russian Orthodox Church continuing to drive a wedge in the Eastern communion, his leadership remains very much in demand. But what are the prospects and options for a big breakthrough with the patriarch? And can the momentum he has built continue past his reign?

You can read my whole analysis right here.

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If you love reading The Pillar, you should be listening to Sunday School, our weekly readings podcast. Each week, Scripture scholar Scott Powell breaks down the Sunday readings. Whether you’re a priest preparing your homily, or a Catholic wanting to go deeper with Scripture, Sunday School is worth a listen. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

A liturgical Rorsach report

The bishops of Panama were in Rome last week for their ad limina visit. It is not, you would think, an event to generate much in the way of international discussion. And yet…

And yet the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments released a pro forma statement following the Panamanian visitation which managed to get a lot of people worked up. All things being equal, and whatever the drafters’ own intentions, I thought it read like a very neutral rundown of the issues discussed, many of which would be familiar to Catholics discussing the liturgy in American dioceses.

The bishops and the dicastery talked about, inter alia, that “the need was emphasized to prevent any instrumentalization of the sacraments: in the case of Marriage, a certain commercial logic; in the case of Reconciliation, individualism and a tendency towards psychologizing the sacrament, which risk obscuring its nature as an encounter of the penitent with the Father of Mercies.” So far, so self-explanatory, I hope we can all agree.

“The Bishops also stressed the importance of formation, particularly in relation to the parallel information circulating through blogs and opinions of various kinds, acknowledging the difficulty of developing adequate formation programs.”

“The discussion then turned to liturgical singing, which must be authentically in keeping with the criteria of sacred music, without expressing individualism, mere emotionalism, or local folklore. The need was also recalled for the texts of hymns to contain doctrinally sound content, free of concepts borrowed from other religions.”

This one brought a “hell yeah” to my lips, having just recently been subjected to a rendition of “All Are Welcome” during a Sunday Mass, despite the USCCB branding the obnoxious little ditty as doctrinally unsound years ago.

But then the DDW readout got a bit spicy:

“The dialogue also brought to light the danger of extremism in the liturgical sphere and of the instrumentalization of the Eucharistic celebration by certain groups of the faithful. These groups tend to provoke division and confusion by raising issues such as receiving Communion kneeling and in the hand, or the use of the veil by women. It was reaffirmed that the Eucharist is the sacrament of unity and cannot become an object of contention.”

That’s when just about everyone who read the DDW release appears to have gone full tonto. So let’s talk about it.

Everyone I have seen reacting to the report seems to have taken these passages very personally indeed, especially if their tastes tend towards the traditional. “How dare the dicastery,” I have seen and heard it asked, “brand the wearing of a veil as ‘extremism’?” … “A Vatican department thinks taking Communion kneeling is an act of division? We must be in the end times!”

I think everyone needs to just take a breath and re-read what the report actually said, look at how people have reacted, and consider that maybe, just maybe, the DDW have a point here.

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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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The head of the Scottish bishops’ conference will step back, citing medical advice. The Archdiocese of Vienna is on track to celebrate its second highest annual number of adult baptisms this year.

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The remarks point to an ongoing dispute over the Vatican’s decision not to allow the pilgrims to conduct a procession or adoration liturgy inside the basilica.

—

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told The Pillar Oct 29 that he was unaware of letters published Oct. 28 by an Italian traditionalist blog, which appear to show that the Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Basilica provided details, which the Vatican had previously claimed were missing when the group requested to process into the basilica.

The release of the letters is part of an ongoing exchange in the past few months between the pilgrimage organizers and the Vatican, in which organizers requested to celebrate Mass or process into Saint Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 24 — as they had in some prior years — but saw their requests rejected.

Last week, the Holy See Press Office told The Pillar that a request for the pilgrimage to process into the basilica had been rejected, but if the group wanted to have Eucharistic adoration or time for prayer within the basilica, as in other years, “they should’ve made a specific request to that end.”

But a Sept. 8 letter, published Wednesday by Italian blog Messa in Latino — first reported by Vatican journalist Diane Montagna — shows that the organizers asked the Secretariat of State for accommodation to “pray for the pope at the Altar of confession, and adore the Blessed Sacrament at the Altar of the Chair,” in addition to their procession, seemingly contradicting that the request was not specific enough.

In response to the publication of the letters, a Holy See spokesman told The Pillar that he was “not aware of any relevant correspondence.”

The circumstances around the event have become contentious after images of the Oct. 24 event on the Via della Conciliazione went viral on social media, with online commentators alleging the group had been “blocked from entering the Vatican.”

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The Diocese of Tarnów made the announcement Oct. 29 after the local district court gave Bishop Andrzej Jeż a non-custodial sentence for not swiftly notifying law enforcement after receiving credible information about alleged sexual offenses against children under 15 by two priests.

The court ordered that 25% of Jeż’s monthly salary be donated to a children’s foundation for two years. It also said he must pay 20,000 złotys (around $5,000) to a Polish government fund supporting crime victims and their families.

Prosecutors had requested a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for three years, and a fine of 20,000 złotys, while the defense argued for acquittal.

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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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During the meeting, the bishops will vote on the conference budget, a new edition of the lectionary, and updates to conference guidelines on socially responsible investments and diocesan financial reporting, as well as an annual Day of Prayer for Racial Justice.

They will also hear updates from the committees on migration, cultural diversity, and the newly created task force on artificial intelligence. They will hold a canonical consultation on two sainthood causes – Maria Middleton, a young woman in Pennsylvania known for her holiness despite developing a fatal brain cancer in her late teens; and Thomas Vander Woude, a Virginia man who died in 2008 while saving the life of his son with Down syndrome who had fallen into a septic tank.

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In addition, the bishops will vote for a conference secretary. The current secretary, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, was elected last year to fill the role for the remainder of the term left by Archbishop Paul Coakley, who was chosen president of the conference.

Rhoades is on the ballot for a new term as secretary. Running against him is Bishop Earl Fernandes of Columbus. Although Fernandes has only been a bishop for four years, he has experience as a Missionary of Mercy during the jubilee year, working as secretary for the nuncio to the United States, and serving on a diocesan marriage tribunal.

The bishops will also vote for the chairman of six standing committees. Winners will serve one year as chairman-elect, followed by a three-year term as chairman of the committee. The committees up for a vote, and their respective candidates, are as follows:

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Committee on Catholic Education

Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, a vocal advocate of classical Catholic education, whose diocese is known for its affordable Catholic schools.

Bishop Edmund Whalen, an auxiliary bishop of New York, who has more than 15 years of experience teaching at both the high school and seminary level, and has also served as the principal of a Catholic high school.

Committee on Communications

Bishop Daniel Felton of Duluth, who holds a master’s degree in social communications from the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, who spearheaded logistics for the recent beatification of prominent media personality Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church

Bishop Steven Maekawa, O.P., of Fairbanks, a fourth-generation Japanese American whose expansive diocese includes numerous indigenous communities and immigrant populations.

Bishop Michael Pham of San Diego, a refugee who fled Vietnam as a child and last year became the first Vietnamese American bishop to lead a U.S. diocese.

Committee on Doctrine

Bishop William Joensen of Des Moines, who has a master’s degree in moral theology.

Bishop Steven Lopes of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, who holds a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University and spent a decade serving on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.

Committee on National Collections

Bishop Mark Eckman of Pittsburgh, who has more than four decades of experience in parish administration and service on diocesan boards.

Bishop Jerry Vincke of Salina, who has a background in public relations and marketing, as well as experience as the director of a retreat house.

Committee on Pro-life Activities

Bishop John Folda of Fargo, a vocal pro-life advocate who noted pro-life work as one of his prominent priorities when he was appointed to head the diocese 13 years ago.

Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, where the state Supreme Court last year invalidated a 175-year-old abortion ban, prompting strong objections from the state’s bishops.

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While the election will come under decidedly less urgent stakes than it came last time, it does come as the USCCB faces several significant challenges that will require real leadership.

And at the same time, the election comes as perceptions about the role of general secretary might themselves be changing among the U.S. episcopate.

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In July 2021, USCCB general secretary Msgr. Jeff Burrill resigned abruptly from his position, after the conference was sent questions on the priest’s use of location-based hookup apps, his apparent visits to an adult “bathhouse” in Las Vegas during the height of the Theodore McCarrick scandal, and other alleged conduct which raised concerns about both his integrity and his ability to lead.

The resignation, and subsequent reporting from The Pillar on the reason for that resignation, threw the conference into some degree of chaos, as officials scrambled to respond to the situation and as it became a national flash point of controversy about both the morality of priests and the ethics of the reporting itself.

Into that chaos, Msgr. Michael Fuller was appointed immediately as the conference’s interim general secretary, and elected to a five-year term of conference leadership thereafter.

While Fuller, a former professor at Mundelein Seminary, had four years of experience working in the conference at that point, he came into the general secretary role without the customary term as an apprentice in the associate general secretary role.

From the beginning, Fuller faced the task of crisis management, while also navigating challenges occasioned more broadly in the life of the Church amid the Francis papacy, taking up the conference’s unexpected role of coordinating synodality across the country, and with the conference involved in the first National Eucharistic Congress in the Church in the United States in decades.

Fuller’s tenure at the conference has received mixed reviews. On the one hand, the priest is generally regarded with some sympathy for the circumstances under which he inherited the job, and his willingness to take it while the conference labored under a microscope. On the other hand, there have been moments of tension between Fuller and the bishops — including a 2024 incident in which an archbishop accused Fuller of being “somewhat duplicitious” on a critical issue. And some staffers say that the priest has a style that can leave the conference staff lacking for clear leadership.

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Finding the right balance for a general secretary is not easy. There is constant anxiety at the bishops’ conference about staffers who exceed their mandate — who give the impression that the USCCB is a “staff-driven” bureaucratic organ, instead of a tool of the bishops themselves. On the other hand, the conference is a natural nerve center of the Church in the U.S., and one in which an astute leader, with the ability to forge relationships of trust among the bishops, can help them to accomplish things, both inside and outside of the formal conference structure.

The general secretary can become, in short, as much a leader in the U.S. Church as he works to become — and while Fuller is seen to have kept mostly to internal conference affairs, some general secretaries, like Msgr. Ron Jenkins, became much more often seen as a critical confidante and consultor to a broad swath of bishops, lending his role a gravitas as a center of activity in the Church.

There was a time when the general secretary role, by virtue of the front row seat it gave to the work of bishops, had the reputation of being a bishop-maker — and it was widely perceived that priests who occupied it would soon after be elevated to the episcopacy.

But that is more myth than reality. In the 1970s and into the ‘80s, the conference’s general secretary was an auxiliary bishop. Since then, fewer than half of the men to occupy the role have become bishops. Even exempting Burrill, given the circumstances under which he resigned, there are more non-bishops than bishops to have held the role.

Still, the role has been important in the Church’s life, and for the next five years may be especially important to the bishops’ conference itself: The conference headquarters is increasingly occupied by empty real estate, layoffs have occurred with the collapse of federal refugee resettlement programs, and signs from the conference are that a more significant downsize may soon be coming.

The task of the next general secretary may be to guide the bishops’ conference through a shifted understanding of its own role, and the tools it has with which to undertake it.

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So who will be the next general secretary of the USCCB?

All signs point to associate general secretary Fr. Paul Hartmann, a canon lawyer from Milwaukee (and noted Brewers fan), who has the same amount of service time in the executive offices of the conference as does Fuller, and is known to have a considerably more outgoing and decisive personality than the incumbent. For staff, that may be seen as a mixed blessing, reflecting on the one hand a clear line of internal authority, and the other hand, a possible loss of some autonomy among departments doing disparate kinds of work under the USCCB’s mantle.

Hartmann’s elevation to the position is not formally certain: General secretaries must be elected by the body of bishops. Generally, an “opponent” is selected from among the clerical conference staffers — in this case, doctrinal secretary Fr. Ron Kunkel seems the most likely candidate — but it is nearly unimaginable that the associate general secretary would not be seen at least to start on third base relative to his opponent.

Assuming Hartmann is elected, he will take the job without the aura of crisis surrounding him. But he will certainly not lack for things to do.

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Neither meeting received much fanfare or publicity, despite the seemingly objective significance of the head of global Orthodoxy coming to Rome to both see the pope and meet with the head of the largest Eastern Catholic Church.

The relatively low profile, or at least muted reception, of the two audiences itself speaks volumes about the tenure of Bartholomew, who has served as patriarch for 35 years, over the course of which major ecumenical gestures between East and West have gone from historic to almost quotidian.

Bartholomew has cemented a reputation as a mainstay of Catholic-Orthodox relations and a perennial driving force for closer, more personal relations between Rome and Constantinople, speaking frequently of his hopes for full communion between the two Churches.

At 86 years old, he shows no signs of slowing down and, with the Russian Orthodox Church continuing to drive a wedge in the Eastern communion, his leadership remains very much in demand.

But what are the prospects and options for a big breakthrough with the patriarch? And can the momentum he has built continue past his reign?

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The Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church announced Oct. 26 that more than 20 others were seriously injured in the attacks and 20 homes burned to the ground.

“The continued and escalating attacks, displacement, loss of life, and destruction of property against innocent Orthodox Christians in the Arsi Eparchy and in various parts of our country is a deeply distressing reality,” it said.

What’s the background to the massacres? And who is responsible?

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Hey everybody,

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

He was not, as you might have surmised, a wealthy man.

He was born in Egypt around the turn of the fourth century, a period in Christian Egypt’s history which seemed to oscillate between persecution and heresy, and sometimes both at the same time. He heard the Gospel, was baptized, and moved out to the desert, where he lived for about 20 years in a kind of early religious community, and then another 20 as a cave-dwelling hermit.

He was poor in spirit, and thus blessed. So be like Abraham. And may he intercede for us.

Now before the news, let me mention something else.

A Pillar reader wrote to me this week to cancel his Pillar subscription. He was quite polite, but explained that mostly, while he likes the news reporting, he doesn’t enjoy reading the Tuesday and Friday Pillar Posts. He just doesn’t find them interesting, and fair enough — he needn’t.

We write The Pillar Posts because we think you should know the people who are making your news as people, because some readers enjoy them, and because, frankly, we’re grateful for the chance to do so.

But this guy wanted “pure Catholic news.” And whether you like The Pillar Post or not, you might want that too. So I’m taking the opportunity to tell you about Starting Seven, our daily news roundup, which puts the top seven Catholic news stories — and a whole lot more news — in your inbox, every single morning.

Starting Seven is only available to paying Pillar subscribers, and if you ask me, it’s worth 8 bucks a month all by itself. If you’re already a paying subscriber, you can set it to come in your inbox every day just by clicking here. And in fact, if you want to, you can turn The Pillar Post off in the exact same spot, and never have to deal with our chatty meanderings in your inbox again.

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The news

If you’ve looked at the Catholic internet in the past couple of days, you’ve probably seen a lot of posts about a traditionalist pilgrimage to Rome, which was apparently prevented from having a Mass, procession, or adoration at St. Peter’s Basilica.

What we noticed about those posts was that they seemed to be populated entirely with breathless misinformation, from all sides and at all times.

So Edgar Beltran did what he does best. He talked with the Vatican, he talked with the organizers, he nailed down the facts, and he wrote the definitive report on a controversial subject.

When you read it, you can reach whatever conclusion you like. But if you read it, you’ll reach that conclusion with facts separated from fiction.

Here’s the story.

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On another controversial topic: A group of U.S. bishops prayed over President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, after they were invited to a meeting by Heritage Foundation exec Mario Enzler.

It was a spontaneous blessing, seemingly requested spontaneously, which is the kind of thing that clerics do these days, in fact.

But there were just fewer than two weeks until midterm elections in this country, which led to a lot of concern about the timing and optics of the meeting, and the sense among many that the bishops were manipulated for political purposes.

In the fallout, some bishop attendees have defended the meeting, while one has apologized for going at all.

And whatever you think of the meeting, you can be sure it will be discussed at next month’s USCCB fall assembly — and, as I write in an analysis on the subject, the bishops might hear then what Pope Leo thinks of the gathering.

You can read that here.

Meanwhile, there has been a minor dispute playing out in the news coverage surrounding the meeting about the degree of involvement from Mario Enzler, a former Swiss Guard who has long claimed a friendship with Pope St. John Paul II, claims to have dated two of Pope St. John XXIII’s nieces, and who was dismissed from a university position when it was discovered that he had fabricated entirely his academic degrees.

Enzler has said he was only a “participant” at the meeting, and the Heritage Foundation has denied he played any key role in the planning.

We’ve confirmed with several bishops that invites to the meeting — repeated invites, in some cases — came directly from Enzler. Again, Enzler’s camp insists the guy was just there. When he denied it, we confirmed it again just to be sure.

It matters to the story because it raises a question about whether bishops could have known that the meeting was going to be an especially political affair, and how they should approach such things in the future.

It also matters to us, because Enzler and his camp have challenged the veracity of our reporting — either we’re not being truthful, or he isn’t. We hope we have a demonstrated track record of being scrupulously truthful in our reporting. And I hope that’s enough said.

In any case, here’s the analysis.

If you love reading The Pillar, you should be listening to Sunday School, our weekly readings podcast. Each week, Scripture scholar Scott Powell breaks down the Sunday readings. Whether you’re a priest preparing your homily, or a Catholic wanting to go deeper with Scripture, Sunday School is worth a listen. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Remember that video online a week or so back, of a priest in Ecuador who was killed by a falling crucifix? His name was Father Patricio Sánchez Molinari, he was 53 years old, and may God rest him.

Well, The Pillar talked with Ecuador’s Cardinal Luis Gerardo Cabrera, who told us that the accident points to a critical problem of deferred maintenance in the historical churches of the country.

If you’re a parish pastor, that might sound familiar. And actually, it’s a problem in many places with centuries-old churches, and one that will require a significant investment across Latin America in the decades to come.

Here’s what Cardinal Cabrera had to say.

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Poland’s bishops announced Saturday that they had approved the revised statutes of a long-delayed independent commission investigating abuse in the Church and named a historian to lead it. The bishops have said they want the commission to proceed methodically and thoroughly.

Here’s why.

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The Synod of Bishops of the Chaldean Catholic Church has agreed on a new procedure for electing bishops, which will give its members more time to study candidates before voting, Patriarch Paul III Nona said last week.

Nona, new to the patriarch’s chair, is apparently eager to bring good governance to the embattled Chaldean Catholic Church.

Here’s the story.

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A Ukrainian priest made headlines this month after he was drafted into the Ukrainian army and now faces the prospect of front line military service.

But while there has been a great deal of outcry about his being detained Oct. 12 by recruitment officers and taken to military training camp, his own diocese says the priest’s situation was caused by his failure to follow the steps required for clergy draft deferment.

The diocese also pushed back directly on news reporting which it said inaccurately portrayed the situation.

You can read about that here.

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And finally, you doubtlessly saw an outcry last week over an announcement from the Bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, that he would curtail the recitation of the St. Michael prayer at the conclusion of Mass in parishes in his diocese.

The Pillar talked with Bishop Mark Beckman about his decision, which the bishop said was made to ensure respect for Catholics wishing to pray silently in parish churches after Mass.

You can read my report on the subject here.

But I’ll mention two other things I’ve since been told. At least one Knoxville Catholic told me that Beckman seems to be trying to curtail congregation-led prayers at the conclusion of Mass that take place in some parishes during the recession, rather than when Mass has formally come to an end — though the bishop didn’t mention that. Another Knoxville Catholic told me that in many places in the diocese, the St. Michael prayer after Mass has association with Bishop Rick Stika, Beckman’s predecessor who resigned in disgrace, and that for some people that association itself has made the public recitation of the prayer seem a bit more nuanced than it might be in other places — though again, Beckman didn’t mention that.

What he did mention, and what he thinks about post-liturgy prayers, you can read right here.

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Chicago prizes

By all accounts, the Milwaukee Brewers seem set to win the World Series tonight. And if they don’t do that, they’ll probably win it tomorrow night.

That means that by Thursday night, you might be free to attend the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Rerum Novarum Banquet, an annual event involving the seminary, and offering a “salute to labor, business, and government.”

The Archdiocese of Chicago announced recently that it will confer at the banquet the Nostra Aetate Award on Michael Sacks, who it has identified as “a well-respected leader in Chicago and in the Jewish community.”

Sacks, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of investment firm GCM Grosvenor, has given some $600,000 in donations to the Prairie State Access Fund, which is meant to offset abortion providers’ loss of federal funding — providers including Planned Parenthood.

That might sound familiar to you. It was just a year ago that another office in the Archdiocese of Chicago was set to give a lifetime achievement award to abortion-supporting Senator Dick Durbin, before the senator declined amid controversy, and — if you will recall — I was briefly and mysteriously detained by the Chicago PD, in one of the strangest nights of journalism I have yet engaged in.

Well, just like last year, 2026’s Cupich-gives-award-to-abortion-supporter plan has generated some controversy.

But the cardinal has been content to defend his plans. In fact, Cupich released a statement Monday defending his plan to give Sacks the award.

But the cardinal’s statement was focused on anti-Semitism.

“Some have voiced criticism that a Catholic group would honor a person who does not hold to core beliefs of the Catholic Church, primary among them being the divinity of Jesus Christ,” the cardinal wrote.

“As a Catholic community in Chicago, we recognize that now more than ever we need to find ways to reinforce the special relationship between the Catholic community and the Jewish people. Refusing to honor or engage with Jews solely because they hold conflicting religious or political positions can risk mimicking historic patterns of antisemitism through exclusion and bigotry, which, frighteningly, is on the rise. Nostra Aetate urges us to be proactive in separating personal and community respect from doctrinal agreement, ensuring that disagreement does not regress into hostility or social ostracization. This we cannot tolerate.”

I am, I must admit, befuddled.

It seems there are a few possibilities. And I don’t like any of them.

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Few, it seems, expected that the meeting would become the subject of widespread media attention, or that at least one of their number would be apologizing for even attending in the first place. In fact it’s not even clear how many of them were expecting to meet the President of the United States, or to pray over him in the White House.

But the propriety of the meeting has become the subject of fierce debate among some Catholics. And even what exactly happened is still up for debate, with the bishops themselves offering somewhat conflicting accounts of how they got in the room in the first place.

Discussion of the gathering is not on the agenda for next month’s fall plenary meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. But it does seem certain to be discussed in hallways and behind closed doors — with at least some questions raised about the bishops’ conference itself. And the bishops’ conference also seems the most likely forum at which Pope Leo’s views on the matter will be expressed.

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Video of a group of bishops praying over President Donald Trump emerged on social media Thursday afternoon, published first by communications personnel in the White House.

The prayer offered by Archbishop James Golka of Denver was not specific to Trump. It prayed in general for the United States and its government, and for national protection against evil, without offering any kind of endorsement for Trump personally.

In fact, the words appeared to be carefully chosen to avoid the appearance of partisanship or endorsement of the president as a political candidate. And clerics watching the video probably had a sense of what was going on — that the bishops suddenly found themselves asked to offer a public prayer in a potentially volatile situation, and were aiming to do so without offering words that might be misinterpreted or misunderstood.

On the whole, that seems to track with the most likely account of what happened on Oct. 22: A group of bishops went to the Executive Office Building for a meeting with high-level administration officials. At the end of the meeting, they were invited to meet with Trump in the Oval Office. From there, the idea of some prayer seemingly emerged, and then camera phones came out. And while the bishops were still probably being ushered through the de facto Oval Office gift shop, the video was cut and posted on social media by Trump staffers.

But the question being asked is whether the bishops should have been in the room in the first place.

And however much the assembled bishops wanted to avoid controversy, they didn’t. The video was posted and promoted by members of the Trump administration, two weeks ahead of a midterm election that does not look likely to go well for Trump’s party. It came out the same day that JD Vance appeared on the Raymond Arroyo television program — a moment when the Trump administration was apparently aiming to reactivate Catholic support for the president’s party.

And indeed, it was taken in some corners as at least an implicit endorsement of Trump’s GOP. Some Catholics asked online whether bishops would have allowed themselves to be similarly filmed surrounding Biden with prayer two weeks before a major party election. Some strong Trump critics said that the bishops simply allowed Trump within the Overton window of acceptable political choices, a move they felt inappropriate for a political leader they oppose strongly. And some Catholics from the MAGA side of the aisle took the opposite tack, arguing that the bishops were — of course — meeting with Trump because his agenda most aligns with Catholic social teaching.

It seemed soon apparent that near everyone would have an opinion on that particular nexus of Church and state.

Some Catholics — and indeed, at least one bishop in attendance — emphasized that praying with people is good, and that a cleric should choose an opportunity to pray with a national leader whenever he’s offered it.

“I knew that it could be shared and that some might use it for political purposes,” Denver’s Golka said recently. “But as I prayed about it, I thought that this is what Catholics do. We pray for people. No matter whether we agree or disagree on anything, we always pray for our country and leaders.”

“I was being a Catholic priest,” Golka said. “We pray for people.”

But others — including at least one bishop in attendance who apologized for going — have said that the prelates at the meeting were “manipulated” into giving a “political photo opportunity” that might imply endorsement.

The prudence of the meeting itself might be debated ad nauseam.

So might be the provenance of the meeting. The Pillar confirmed, with bishops in attendance and others close to the meeting, that invitations for prelates came from Mario Enzler, a former Swiss Guard and disgraced former academic who is now an official at the pro-Trump Heritage Foundation.

After The Pillar broke the news of Enzler’s involvement, the Heritage Foundation denied that Enzler organized the meeting, and one bishop-attendee offered that his invitation came from (unnamed) “officials connected with the White House Faith Office.”

After that denial, The Pillar again confirmed that several attendee bishops were invited to the gathering directly by Enzler.

Indeed, however it’s finessed or framed by Heritage, some — if not all — bishops were invited to the White House meeting by Enzler, a high-ranking staffer from a political think tank.

And to some observers, that ought to have increased the bishops’ awareness that the meeting would be politicized, and was not only a synodal conversation with administration officials.

Still, while bishops are Americans — and offer plenty of commentary on the world of American electoral politics — they don’t live entirely in that world either, and most don’t see the world through its lens. Some attendees were doubtlessly warned that the meeting could be an attempt to politicize them, and seemingly felt the presence of prayer in the White House was worth that possibility, or decided not to allow the risk of being politicized to deter them from an opportunity to raise issues of concern to the Church, to find areas of common ground with the administration, or to spread the Gospel.

It is obvious that some of the debate on the subject is obvious posturing, including a great deal of opportunistic faux outrage from commentators with clearly stated political priorities. Some defenses of the bishops have been no less nakedly partisan, often breathlessly so.

In short, the internet’s gonna internet.

But whether the meeting was imprudent, two weeks ahead of an election, is actually a matter for legitimate conversation. But debating it intelligently does require understanding that many bishops are less actually focused on the political process, and the way the game is played, than they’re usually presumed to be. Whether that’s a signigicant liability on their part, however, and what could be done about it, is again a reasonable subject for discussion.

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To sum up: The meeting has become the subject of some debate among Catholics, and of international media coverage, but agreement on its meaning, and on whether bishops should have attended, seems unlikely.

Amid that speculation are questions about how Pope Leo, who has had sharp exchanges through the media with the Trump administration, might perceive the meeting.

That topic will likely generate questions among closed-door episcopal conversations next month, and is likely to see questions put to the bishop-attendees about why they chose to attend the meeting.

It is likely to be especially noted that as a matter of protocol, bishops ordinarily engage with the federal executive through the government affairs office of the bishops’ conference, which was not in attendance at the meeting, and not involved in its planning.

But The Pillar has confirmed that at least some senior officials of the conference were aware of the meeting with administration officials before it took place, and some had concerns about how it might be used politically. And in November, at least some prelates are likely to ask conference leadership whether they could, or should, have intervened to dissuade bishops from attending.

All of that is laden with long-standing disagreement among the U.S. bishops about how to engage with recent presidential administrations — how bishops should engage with the pro-abortion Biden White House, and how they should engage with a Trump White House that has been critical of Pope Leo and the USCCB itself on immigration, and at odds with the bishops on the death penalty, in vitro fertilization, marriage, and several other issues.

Any criticism about whether prelates ought to have attended last week’s meeting is likely to draw comparison with the calls from corners of the episcopate to “dialogue” and finding “common ground” with the Biden administration — especially if the bishops criticizing attendance at the Trump meeting are the same ones who called for that dialogue in the last administration.

Still, it seems almost certain that questions will be raised about whether there were internal USCCB staff discussions about their approach to the Oct. 22 White House meeting. Staffers will likely emphasize that the USCCB is not an authoritative body, staffers do not tell bishops what to do, and that its protocol for engaging with civic officials is at the level of an implied moral agreement, at best, between American bishops.

And actually, most bishops in the room will know that whatever the views of USCCB staffers, there is little power at the conference to dissuade bishops from doing what they choose to do. If there is discussion about whether conference staffers ought to have intervened in some way, it is most likely best understood as a polite proxy pretext by which to have disagreement about whether bishops should have gone to the meeting in the first place.

To the extent it happens, that discussion will shake out behind closed doors. But far more public will be the second address to the bishops of new apostolic nuncio Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, whose very job at these meetings is to communicate to the bishops the pope’s priorities and the manner in which he’d like to see them addressed.

When Caccia takes the microphone, Pope Leo XIV’s views on the meeting could well be spoken or implied. And on all sides of the issue, U.S. bishops will certainly be listening.

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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.

There will be no Starting Seven tomorrow, Oct. 28, because of a vacation day. The next Starting Seven will be on Thursday, Oct. 29.

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Already read the readings? Skip ahead to 6:20.

Reading 1 - Revelation 7: 2-4, 9-14

Psalm 24: 1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6

Reading 2 - 1 John 3: 1-3

Gospel - Matthew 5: 1-12a