Happy Friday friends,
As we head into Holy Week, this is the traditional point at which many of us start expressing shock and dismay that Lent is almost over and we — me — have failed to make the most of it.
I had lofty ambitions just under 40 fasting days ago, to be sure, and a penitent’s sincere desire to live the season fully. But, not for the first time, I’ve found myself living Lent as a period of rather dry exercises, rather than clearing space and time, literal and metaphorical, to encounter God in the silence of the spiritual desert.
It’s not that I’ve been spiritually neglectful, especially, but if I am being honest there hasn’t been much special to my interior life this last month and change, either. As always, that’s an opportunity wasted.
But the good news — and the joy of the Gospel is there is always, indeed only, Good News — is that there is no such thing as “too late.” Conversion, changing direction and reorienting ourselves towards Christ, is of its nature a sudden occurrence: one moment we are heading one way, and the next pointed back towards the risen Christ at Easter.
There is, even now, all the time I want or need to turn and face the East, walking towards the light about to break over the horizon.
The Gospels are littered with parables of the workers late into the field, the son who thinks better at the last minute, and afterthought attendees at the wedding feast. I could still be any of these at the Easter vigil this year and, Christ assures me, I’ll be no less welcome for it.
In the economy of real progress through small sacrifices, this means for me beginning again today and tomorrow and turning away from the temptation of my private to-do lists. Instead, I’ve still got 48 hours to learn the lessons of the desert — that man does not live on bread alone, that my own efforts will neither save nor justify me, but that there is a God who knows well what I need and longs for me to receive it.
There’s still time for that. Mercifully, there always is.
But first, here’s the news.
The News
The Vatican announced Wednesday that Archbishop Fulton Sheen will be beatified on Sept. 24, nearly seven years after the archbishop’s originally scheduled beatification was delayed.
Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, the diocese promoting the cause, told The Pillar that the beatification Mass is expected to draw upwards of 70,000 pilgrims. As a result, The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis has been chosen as the venue.
Tylka spoke with The Pillar about the logistics of planning a major event in only half-a-year, how the effort will be funded, and what the diocese has in mind for the “Sheen Week” leading up to the beatification Mass.
Read the whole interview here.
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A Catholic archdiocese will appeal to India’s Supreme Court after a state high court issued a long-awaited ruling against its unique marriage rules.
The Syro-Malabar Archeparchy of Kottayam said March 23 that the high court judgment was unacceptable and it intends to appeal against it, because the ruling contradicted “the traditions, customs, and procedures followed for centuries” by the Knanaya Catholic community.
The archeparchy, founded in 1911, is solely for Catholics belonging to the Knanaya people, an ethnic group tracing its origins to Jewish Christians who migrated from Mesopotamia to India in the 4th century. Membership in the archeparchy is determined by birth into a family with a Knanaya Catholic father and mother.
As membership is linked to family lineage, if Knanaya Catholics a Catholic from another diocese, they relinquish their membership in the archeparchy. But a 181-page judgment by the Kerala high court, issued March 23, ruled the membership requirements legally unenforceable.
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In a message to the French bishops’ conference, Pope Leo XIV called for “concrete solutions” to permit the “generous inclusion” of Catholics attached to the Traditional Latin Mass.
A March 18 letter sent by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on behalf of Pope Leo encourages the French bishops’ conference to embrace liturgical diversity and find ways to include “those sincerely attached to the Vetus Ordo.”
“It is troubling that a painful wound concerning the celebration of Mass, the very sacrament of unity, continues to open in the Church,” Leo said, calling for a “new perspective that can allow brothers, enriched by their diversity, to welcome one another in charity and the unity of faith.”
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Pope Leo XIV appointed the Australian Bishop of Broken Bay Wednesday as head of the Vatican department charged with authoritatively interpreting canon law.
The pope named Bishop Anthony Randazzo as the prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts March 25, the feast of the Annunciation. Randazzo succeeds the Italian Archbishop Filippo Iannone, who was appointed as the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in September 2025.
The Dicastery for Legislative Texts deals with sensitive questions about the correct understanding of Church law, and has the power to authoritatively interpret canon law in response to questions from dioceses and religious orders around the world.
This is a big appointment. Read all about it here.
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The Institute for Works of Religion’s board has elected a new president, marking a turnover in leadership at the top of the Vatican bank for the first time in more than a decade.
The IOR announced March 25 that the long-serving president of the bank’s Board of Superintendence, Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, will step down on April 28 after a final meeting to approve the bank’s financial statements from the previous year. De Franssu presided over a period of significant regulatory reform at the bank.
De Franssu will be succeeded by François Pauly, a current board member, in what the bank described in a press notice as a “carefully managed succession process” aimed at “ensuring continuity in the governance of the Institute.”
The IOR has been at the center of almost every major Vatican financial story for the last half century, for better and for worse. This move matters.
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Two Vatican study groups associated with the synod on synodality released on March 24 their final reports, with one focused on polygamy and the other “the cry of the poor and the earth.”
The polygamy study group, composed of members of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, recommended that the Church cannot baptize men in polygamous unions.
This is a pastoral issue which we’ve covered before — and it is by no means as straightforward as you might instinctively expect.
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In a speech last week, Pope Leo XIV appeared to signal a change in how the Church should think about adult victims of abuse.
In an address to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, the pope — who is a proper canonist and understands the significance of such things — made a notable pivot in language from his predecessor and from the current law.
Instead of speaking about the abuse of “minors and vulnerable adults,” Leo instead referred exclusively to “minors and persons in vulnerable situations.”
While that might seem like distinction without difference, I argue in an analysis this week that it is actually a big deal, and could end up being welcomed by canonists and victims’ advocates alike.
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A Catholic school in Portugal has been accused of discriminating against poorer students by providing them with food of lower quality and variety than it serves to richer students.
But a review from The Pillar suggests the reality is considerably more complicated than suggested by initial headlines, such as the one run by the news agency Lusa, which kicked off the controversy last week: “Salesian school cafeteria has ‘food for the rich’ and ‘food for the poor.’”
George Weigel, one of America’s most important Catholic voices, and UDallas President Jonathan J. Sanford discuss the purpose of education, human flourishing, and why classical education is not a nostalgic luxury, but a cultural necessity. Watch Now.
The single life
M’collegue laid out his belief that “it would not be a tragedy to see alongside [the celibate priesthood] the emergence of a married secular presbyterate — or rather, more of a married presbyterate.” And that “a mixed community of married and celibate men might well lead to healthier secular clerical cultures — not because married men are de facto healthier or more functional than unmarried men, but because heterogeneous groups often avoid the neuroses and peculiarities which come from insulated homogeneity.”
“A mixed community of married and celibate priests might well even strengthen the (obviously) celibate episcopate, especially if it contributes to healthier clerical cultures in which celibate priests will be formed for episcopal orders,” argued JD.
Now, I’m all for the free expression of opinion and the frank exchange of ideas, and in that spirit I have some things I’d like to express and exchange in response. Because when it comes to the norm of clerical celibacy in the Latin Church, I’d describe myself as something of a die-hard, if not (for reasons of existing disciplinary exceptions) an absolutist.