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Happy Friday friends,
Six years ago this week, Seattle became the first U.S. Catholic diocese to suspend public celebration of the Eucharist in the face of the coronavirus.
Announcing the move at the time, Archbishop Paul Etienne called it “an extreme measure of caution,” and said that “out of an extreme caution, we want to do our part to prevent the spread of this virus.”
The diocesan dominoes fell fast thereafter, with churches closing nationwide, often in response to government orders, but as often in anticipation of them, and even culminating in the indefinite suspension of baptisms in some places.
The death toll eventually taken by the pandemic sits north of a million lives in the United States. And the Covid effect on our society and politics may eventually become one of the great moments of speculation and argument by historians.
But to date there has been no systematic reflection on the long-term effects of voluntary ecclesiastical lockdown nor, as best I have seen, any substantive discussion among Church leaders to assess with hindsight the posture of “extreme caution” the bishops adopted.
For myself, I look back on how the Church confronted the pandemic with distinctly mixed emotions.
Pope Francis’ famous Eucharistic benediction urbi et orbi is a defining image of the 21st century Church, and one of the most powerful and direct announcements of faith to a wounded world I can think of.
And I know personally dozens of priests who sincerely believed that their entire formation and ministry were in preparation for spiritual service during the pandemic — ministering to the dying, the isolated, the abandoned — and quite literally willing, to the point of signing papers to this effect with hospitals, to risk their own death to minister the sacraments.
But alongside those heroic examples and moments, many of the Church’s leaders offered a catechesis as clear as it was unintended: that, in the end, the sacraments were not ultimately a matter of life and death.
This is not to say the bishops should have opted for open defiance of all precaution, or acted with reckless disregard for human life. I am not saying that.
But as clearly as I remember the beginning of the lockdown in March of 2020, I remember the public pressure and the private opprobrium and even direct abuse heaped by some, some of their brother bishops even, on those bishops who broke ranks in the months that followed, leading themselves or authorizing celebrations like drive-in Masses in church parking lots.
The pandemic was for the Church a moment of truth; amid a visceral, global confrontation with the reality of death, the Church was asked what answer she had to give in response to it — what Gospel did she preach, what power had her sacraments to save?
The answers were by no means unanimous, and I hope the lessons of that time can one day be learned and understood.
Anyway, that was then, here’s the news.
The News
Pope Leo has appointed Bishop Luis Marín de San Martín, OSA, as the new papal almoner, succeeding the Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who will return to lead his home Archdiocese of Łódź.
The now-Archbishop Marín, who has been serving as the undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod, is a published authority on St. John XXIII’s vision for Vatican Council II, leading to role as an organizer of the global synodal process launched by Pope Francis in 2021.
But before that, as an Augustinian, he was first called to Rome by the then-prior general, Robert Prevost, to serve as general archivist, living in the same community house as Prevost. They enjoyed what Marín recalled as “five years of wonderful coexistence.”
So who is Marín, and what kind of role has the pope given him now? Read all about it here.
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Vatican officials will investigate allegations of psychological and spiritual abuse in the Sisters Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus, women formerly in formation with the religious community say they’ve been told.
The community is connected to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, a society of priests known for its use and promotion of preconciliar liturgical texts.
While a number of former postulants of the women’s group allege a culture of intimidation and fear, manipulative spiritual practices, and disordered governance in their community, the community’s superior says that women who have raised complaints about the community “were unable to adapt” to religious life, and that their concerns were “exaggerations or misunderstandings of our rules and of different situations.”
But an expert on abuses in religious life and the Church told The Pillar that the women flagged issues that could constitute “spiritual abuse,” and which merit more examination from Church officials.
This is a long read, with some deep and clearly painful experiences recounted. And it raises important questions about what makes for a healthy Christian experience of religious life.
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The excommunicated Poor Clares of Belorado have left their convent just ahead of a scheduled March 12 eviction, putting an end to a nearly two-year legal battle with the Archdiocese of Burgos in Spain.
The sisters announced their split from the Catholic Church in May 2024, leading to their excommunication a month later. Since then, they have faced allegations of financial misconduct, leading to the brief arrest of the community’s superior in November 2025.
In December, Spanish police transferred to another Poor Clares’ convent five older sisters who were neither excommunicated nor included in the eviction proceedings. The Archdiocese of Burgos also recently announced that two former nuns who had fled the convent have reconciled with the Catholic Church.
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The Vatican released a new document this week presenting a theological rationale for expanding women’s access to leadership positions in the Catholic Church.
The 74-page text, on “women’s participation in the life and leadership of the Church,” was produced by the fifth of the 10 study groups formed by Pope Francis following the 2023 session of the synod on synodality.
The document is particularly significant because women’s role in the Church was one of the most hotly discussed topics at the synod on synodality. The meeting’s final document mentioned women almost 50 times, calling for “increased participation of laymen and laywomen in Church discernment processes and all phases of decision-making processes.”
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Parishioners in South Africa are planning to appeal against a decision to reassign their pastor, which they believe was taken because the priest reportedly engages in traditional African healing practices.
Fr. Sifiso Ndlovu, who has served as pastor of the Pinetown church since 2021, is one of two clerics in the Durban archdiocese who have been dubbed “the poster priests for syncretism” by the local newspaper.
The personnel moves in the Durban archdiocese follow a joint pastoral letter issued in September 2025 by eight KwaZulu-Natal bishops that cautioned priests against syncretism, which they defined as “the blending of Catholic beliefs and practices with traditional African practices (esp. ubungoma) in ways that contradict the Gospel.”
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What makes a lord
Back home in London, this week saw the final agreement to expel the remaining 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
Having previously worked in Parliament, and having had some things to do with the workings of the upper house, I’m sad to see them go.
This final severing of a link to the kingdom’s history, dating back past the Magna Carta and to the Witan of the Saxon kingdom of England, is a loss to the institutional and cultural continuity of the country.
Though it’s not especially fashionable to say so, I happen to think that continuity, especially now, is of infinitely more importance than any absurd political posturing about democratic values — values which will be as alien to membership in the House of Lords with or without the presence of the Dukes of Norfolk for another 1,000 years, and most of the House of Commons too, come to that.
When I was still in the game back in Westminster, the remaining hereditaries counted among themselves some of the most dedicated people in politics, and a fair few entitled chancers as well. As I say, they are a wonderfully representative mixed bag in their way.
But I have been a little charmed and more than a little amused to see a number of Americans — m’collegue JD among them — pining wistfully about noblesse oblige and the Platonic virtues of aristocracy with a smattering Bridehead-ish anemoia.
I think most Americans’ idea of a lord is largely imagined from the affectations of East Coast Americans like William Buckley and George Plimpton — faultlessly mannered, impeccably dressed, slightly eccentric, and dependably patrician. A Charles Dance character, of one stripe or another.
In reality, properly landed English aristos tend to wear trousers louder than an AC/DC concert, swear like stevedores and smell like damp spaniel — not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you, this could describe some of my best friends. But few if any of these have set foot in the House of Lords for decades, and that is the real loss, and misapprehension of the current reform.