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Happy Friday friends,
And a happy first anniversary to our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, long may he reign.
Thinking back to the moment last year when Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost was announced from the loggia with the regnal name Leo XIV, I remember a definite mix of emotions.
I was pleased, superficially, to have my final pre-conclave pick come through. In our business it never hurts to be able to predict the weather on a big day.
But if I wasn’t surprised by the man, I do remember being wrongfooted completely by his choice of name. Prevost I may have predicted, Leo I most certainly did not — I had him pegged for a Paul VII.
Three hundred and sixty-five days later I suppose I still feel some version of the same mixture of reassurance and surprise at Pope Leo.
I have read a lot of commentary since the conclave touting the pope as the supposed beneficiary of a bunch of horse trading and political jockeying between rival camps of conservatives and progressives in the conclave.
Entire books have been written about who the next pope was “supposed to be” for this or that constituency of cardinals and that Prevost was a kind of pragmatic compromise between the two. Having had a year to digest and talk to people, I am not sure I subscribe to any version of that narrative.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think Leo’s appeal was far broader and more instinctive in the Sistine Chapel than popular narratives understand.
To be sure, there were discernable camps and candidates to the left and right. But my overarching sense heading to Rome on Easter week last year was that the conclave was a capable centrist’s election to lose, and that Cardinal Parolin was the man starting in that lane.
What happened during the general sessions of the cardinals over the following two weeks was the gradual realization that, on a range of issues and for a host of reasons, Parolin was not the man the cardinals were looking for. Meanwhile, it became apparent that the quiet American from Peru was a man of considerable spiritual and intellectual depth and personal charisma.
Prevost wasn’t a formally or informally brokered option, but a truly organic choice. And a year on, I think the wisdom of that choice is ever clearer. We have a pope who has brought clarity and charity to the most divisive issues in the Church and looks a good way towards fostering ecclesiastical unity - not a mood and vibe, but concrete communion in faith and discipline.
I’m encouraged enough by what I have seen so far that I might be tempted to doubt my own dispassion and suspect myself of mere enthusiasm. But I am in a way reassured that I can see some issues on which I remain genuinely concerned — like the state of the Vatican’s financial and judicial affairs. No pope can please everyone about everything, and any that tried would sow chaos in the attempt.
What I would say, looking ahead, is much what I felt this same day last year. I may not be able to tell you what Pope Leo will do next, but I think we have a decent sense of the man who took the name. And there’s a lot there to find reassuring.
Here’s the news.
The News
The Vatican has ordered an investigation in the Diocese of Baton Rouge, over allegations that the Bishop Michael Duca discouraged a whistleblower from calling the police, after a local priest allegedly admitted to sexual contact with minors.
The priest denies the allegation against him, while the Baton Rouge diocese has not responded to questions about the case.
News of the Vos estis investigation comes after The Pillar reported last week that the Vatican had not yet responded to a whistleblower report filed more than two months ago, despite canonical norms requiring Vatican action within 30 days of receiving a complaint.
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Two Vatican study groups tied to the synod on synodality released final reports on Tuesday, with one focused on “emerging issues,” including homosexuality, and the other on the selection of bishops.
The “emerging issues” group offered no concrete proposals, but included testimonies from two Catholic men in same-sex relationships. By contrast, the group on episcopal selection presented some of the most concrete proposals yet among the study groups.
You can read all about that proposal in our busy readers’ guide to the reports right here.
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Vatican doctrinal chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández cranked up the pressure on Germany’s bishops Wednesday with a new statement on the country’s guidelines on blessings for unmarried and same-sex couples.
Fernández told Vatican News May 6 that his November 2024 letter criticizing a draft of the German blessings guidelines — published earlier this week with Pope Leo XIV’s agreement — also applied to the final text issued in April 2025.
The Argentine cardinal explained that the 2024 letter was the doctrinal dicastery’s “one and only final response” to the German blessings document, in both its draft and final forms.
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In 1938, a young French couple approached their parish priest, Fr. Henri Caffarel, asking for advice on how they could grow together spiritually within their marriage.
After praying about the request, Caffarel – who had only been a priest for eight years — went on to form a group of four couples who committed to regular meetings where they would talk and pray together. The “Caffarel groups” multiplied as the word spread, eventually developing into Teams of Our Lady (TOL), a Catholic movement to provide spiritual growth to couples within their marriages.
This is a fascinating story from Filipe D’Avillez, read all about it right here.
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Azerbaijan and the Vatican signed an agreement on April 30 for the renovation of four statues at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, weeks after the Azerbaijani regime demolished an Armenian cathedral in an occupied region under dispute between both countries.
The announcement was made during a presentation at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Rome, in which a foundation widely considered to be a wing of the Azerbaijani regime’s “caviar diplomacy” showcased the various projects it has funded in the Vatican since 2012.
It’s the most recent in a growing line of projects in Rome funded by the Azerbaijanis, even — perhaps especially — as they continue to persecute Armenians in the occupied territory.
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While the fate of the Vatican’s criminal prosecution over the infamous London property deal appears to hang in the balance in the city state’s court, a number of legal developments in Rome and abroad suggest the case could be on the verge of collapse.
While that result would be a near-nightmare scenario for prosecutors in the Vatican, with a six-year legal process ending in humiliation, it could also leave the Holy See open to more financial losses stemming from a deal which has already cost the Vatican hundreds of millions.
Such a result seems like something the Vatican should be straining to avoid at all costs, but recent developments suggest the Secretariat of State is itself sabotaging its own legal efforts to claw back losses, potentially leaving itself exposed to millions more in liabilities in the process.
I cannot for the life of me understand the Secretariat of State’s game plan here, but I’ve done my best to unpack the what — and the consequences — while still trying to puzzle out the why of it all.
You can read that analysis here.
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India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party has failed to gain a foothold in the Syro-Malabar Church’s heartland in a closely watched election in the southern state of Kerala.
Despite fielding Christian candidates, the Bharatiya Janata Party failed to win in four pivotal constituencies in an area known as the Syro-Malabar Belt, though it made incremental gains elsewhere in the state.
The outcome marked a setback for the BJP’s strategy of reaching out to Christian voters in hopes of expanding beyond its Hindu base to make a major electoral breakthrough in a state dominated by the Left Democratic Front and the United Democratic Front.
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Why Rome wins
As Luke observed in his analysis this week, for years the Vatican’s dealings with the German bishops has followed a predictable slow spiral: the Germans do something they shouldn’t (or can’t), Rome eventually tells them they may not, and cannot, and the Germans respond by saying things have already moved on and the Vatican’s nicht-nicht has been heard, but sadly ignored because it no longer accords with facts on the ground.
This has been the case for some seven years now, and under Pope Francis it developed into a kind of careful choreography in which the Germans carried on doing more or less as they liked while the Vatican was seen to say all the right things in response but, like ecclesiastical ships in the night, they just sadly kept passing each other.
As Luke noted, things have changed under the first year of Leo. What’s changed is Rome has become much more reactive, and much more willing to tell them nay in real time, essentially closing the time lag by which the bishops were able to claim they weren’t exactly ignoring or defying the Holy See, just unable to accommodate them in time.
Now, at the DDF Cardinal Fernandez suddenly seems to be feeling his oats a bit, publishing letters previously kept private and issuing real-time correctives to German obfuscations. Shortly after Luke’s analysis, things escalated still further, with Cardinal Parolin telling a press gaggle that it was “premature” to speak of some kind of direct Roman intervention in Germany.
“We have already for some time begun a dialogue, on this point expressing each our own points of view,” the Secretary of State said. “Let us see what happens.”
Whatever the result, Parolin said, “any decision must be in agreement with Canon Law, with the Second Vatican Council, with the tradition of the Church.”
While expressing his “hope” that the standoff will “never to have to reach sanctions, that problems may be resolved in a peaceful manner, as should be the case in the Church,” the cardinal said it would ultimately be up to Pope Leo to make the decision.
This is an absolute quantum leap by the Holy See in terms of strength of statement. In fact, in terms of Vatican messaging, I would say we should treat it as on par with, say, Marco Rubio saying something like “I think it’s premature to talk about invading Cuba, but it’s up to the president.”
Cardinal Parolin talking about it being “premature” to discuss “sanctions” against the German bishops — and official Vatican media making sure the world read the remarks — is the clearest and least ambiguous way possible to make it clear that Pope Leo is not prepared to tolerate the German bishops’ project, explicitly articulated, to federalize the Catholic Church in doctrine and discipline, and that the pope is absolutely willing to take previously unthinkable actions.
Indeed, I would argue the cardinal’s chosen wording suggests there is already advanced thinking about how this would be done.
Obviously, just saying the word “sanctions” out loud is something in itself — and calling the idea “premature” rather than “unthinkable” is simply not a sentence I could conceive of hearing during the last pontificate.
Pope Francis was, to be clear, demonstrably not shy about defenestrating bishops he thought were out of line. But the general wisdom around Rome under the previous pope was that the German bishops, as a conference, were simply too big a beast to go to open war with. The stakes were too high — a schismatic German Church is the stuff of nightmares, almost impossible to game out, and Francis had neither the plan nor the stomach for the fight.
The thinking here seems to have changed. And I think rightly so. In fact, while there are serious systemic challenges to bringing the Church in Germany into line (and into proper communion) my considered estimation has long been that, in an ultimate standoff with the Vatican for the highest stakes, Rome is holding all the cards and the German bishops will prove to be all mouth and no trousers.
Let me explain.