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Happy Friday friends,
And an especially happy birthday to the apostolic nuncio here in Washington, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who turns 80 today.
I gather he’s having a little celebration today, with Vatican sostituto Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra attending on behalf of Pope Leo, marking not just Pierre’s milestone of age but also his decades of dedicated service to the Holy See.
Cardinal Pierre has given over his entire life to serving the Church, and it is only right that, as his final departure from office looms, he enjoy the thanks of the institution he has served so faithfully for so long. He can, and should, look back with satisfaction on a full and impressive career.
But most importantly, and I have heard this consistently from many, many people who have worked closely with him over the last 10 years, Cardinal Pierre is a man who doesn’t just serve the Church, he loves the Lord.
For all his public duties and functions during his time as nuncio, and they have been constant and demanding on his stamina, he has been a tireless encourager of evangelization in the United States. So much so that I have often been left wondering if, laboring so long in the Vatican’s diplomatic service, he has not, in some way, missed the chance to devote himself fully to his first and true calling as a priest and bishop.
Pierre is a man who visibly thrives seeing the faith lived and loved, and I am sure he will recall his time in America with deep satisfaction — punctuated I hope by memories of the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, which manifested so powerfully the kind of collective outpouring of evangelizing zeal which I hear so often delights him.
Eighty years is a mighty number, and I wish Cardinal Pierre the very happiest of birthdays.
Now, here’s the news.
The News
“The answer to suffering is not death,” Cardinal Matteo Zuppi said this week.
The president of the Italian bishops’ conference delivered a pointed and punchy critique of a proposed euthanasia bill after it passed the committee stage in the country’s senate. The proposed law, which was called for by Italy’s constitutional court in 2019, has the backing of the governing conservative coalition, but not its Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has also condemned the proposed legislation.
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A student has accused the Jesuits in Britain of falsely stating he had withdrawn an allegation of misconduct against a former Jesuit provincial superior working as a chaplain at Oxford University.
While the Jesuit province says it handled the allegation correctly, the student told The Pillar he was shocked to see a communication between the Jesuits and a diocesan safeguarding team assuring them he had retracted his complaint.
Needless to say the alleged victim of a sexual assault is deeply upset by events, and there are a lot of unanswered questions for the moment.
You can read the whole story here.
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In the second in a two-part series on the renovated Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Nico Fassino explored this week the origin and history of freestanding altars and versus populum Masses at the cathedral.
This is a masterful deep-dive into something I didn’t know I wanted to know all about — but it turns out I did.
I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
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A community of Benedictine sisters in Atchison, Kansas has announced that it will discontinue its active sponsorship of and governing responsibilities with Benedictine College.
The Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, who co-founded Benedictine College more than 50 years ago, said in a Jan. 23 statement that they had discerned a call to focus on their “growing ministries” and care for their “aging community.” The sisters are also continuing to sponsor other local schools.
In recent years, the Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica and Benedictine College have had an at-times contentious relationship, most publicly following the college’s 2024 commencement speech by NFL placekicker Harrison Butker.
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For many years, Nacho Sanchez spent his Saturday evenings in a unique way.
While most men visiting the Camp Nou area of Barcelona on a weekend are heading to watch the city’s famous football team, Sanchez would look for prostitutes. When he found them — and they are apparently easy to find in that neighborhood — he had an interesting conversation starter.
He’d approach them with a picture of the Virgin Mary and ask: “Have you seen this woman?” This is just one of several Catholic outreaches to victims of the sex trade in Spain which, like everywhere else, is a mechanism for human trafficking.
There’s some proper old-time religion evangelizing going on here. Read all about it.
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As the United States falls into deeper division over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement mechanisms, bishops are beginning to speak out.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin this week called Immigration and Customs Enforcement a “lawless organization” and urged that it be defunded.
Momentum seems to be building among bishops criticizing federal immigration actions.
As it does, JD considered in an analysis this week if we should expect to see the resurrection of a 2018 proposal from Archbishop Edward Weisenberger — in which he called for “canonical penalties” to be considered against border agents involved in family separations.
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And finally, as I mentioned at the outset, today Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States turns 80 years old, rounding out a decade in the post.
The nunciature is hosting a little get-together for the cardinal in celebration today, and the announcement of his successor in office is expected any time now.
Who that might be is a keenly anticipated appointment by Pope Leo, since it will likely signal how he expects the role to prioritize and juggle diplomatic engagement with the White House and acting as a conduit for the pope to the Church in the U.S.
In an analysis this week, JD and I walked through the most discussed candidates for the job — and to us the choice seems obvious.
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End of an era
Whoever should replace Cardinal Christophe Pierre as apostolic nuncio in Washington, DC, when they arrive, it will signal a true changing of the guard.
The Church, as much as all other parts of human society right now, is living through not so much an era of change but a change of era, as Pope Francis used to say. And when Pierre goes it will, in some ways, turn the page on a remarkable and at times remarkably traumatic decade for the Church in this country.
On Pierre’s watch he has had to witness the Church in the United States undergo the traumas of the McCarrick scandal, and the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report — which in turn led to umpteen states’ attorneys general investigations, and the passage of so-called “look back legislation” carving out windows in the statute of limitations for civil litigation claims against the Church.
In the wake of all of this came the funereal march of diocesan bankruptcies, punctuated by the passage in Rome of new legislation, like Come una madre amorevole and Vos estis lux mundi, aimed at increasing institutional and personal accountability within ecclesiastical leadership.
The reckoning has been long and painful, and there has been the (perhaps inevitable) slow drip of new scandals and cases along the way.
This is the decade in which Pierre has served in Washington. And, coincidentally, he began his shift more or less exactly when I started making my way into the practice of Catholic journalism, so I have followed his term with close professional interest.
In many ways, I think he’ll be missed by American Catholics, or should be. While he has the tendency to come off as a bit patrician, even slightly hautain when out and about in this country, there’s no disputing the tireless travel schedule he kept up as nuncio. If Pierre has seen his job as, in large part, being present for American Catholics in persona Roma, he pretty much went anywhere and everywhere to do so.
Also, I think it is fair to say that in some ways Cardinal Pierre struggled in his role as a man caught between two worlds, and as a Churchman increasingly out of his time in the post-McCarrick era.
And, in some ways, but important ones, Pierre’s departure leaves me hopeful of change.