Happy Friday, Friends.
As you’re getting this, I am on a bus with the rest of our Pillar pilgrimage group, heading up from St. Louis to Peoria for a Mass of thanksgiving in the cathedral there, after yesterday’s beatification of Fulton Sheen.
You can read our coverage of the Mass right here. It was quite the event. I don’t know what the exact official headcount for the Mass of beatification was, but while I was somewhat incredulous at the predictions of an attendance of 50,000, by the time the liturgy began I’d say it was closer to that number than to 40,000.
Of course, an only slightly smaller crowd was to be found at the Pillar live show the previous evening. Guys, all of you who came, thank you. It wildly exceeded my hopes for the evening and was easily the biggest podcast show we’ve done since the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. Hats were given and received, there was a jingle competition, and we even had a bishop — an actual successor of the apostles — emerge from the crowd to face off against JD in the trivia round. And beat him.
These live shows have become a serious lesson in Providence for me. Of my nature, I have a tendency to catastrophize. I assume, as an active thought exercise, that no one will come, that the venue will fall through and, worst of all, that the handful of people who do come will have a terrible time. The reverse is always the case.
It’s kind of a scaled-down version of my whole experience of The Pillar, really. I’m perpetually unsure how much good we are actually accomplishing, how long we can keep it going, and if we are, in fact, serving the Church in the way we intend. And yet the Lord continues to provide for and sustain the work.
And the most powerful way this happens is through you guys, getting to meet each other at the live shows and events like the beatification. It’s disorienting and humbling to hear stories of how The Pillar has somehow played some part in people’s vocations, marriages, conversions. All I can tell you is: it ain’t us. That a community of people has grown up around this thing is as unexpected for us to see as it is undeniable. That community — you guys — are what keep The Pillar going.
So to all of you who came out on Wednesday, thank you guys so much. For all of you who weren’t there, you missed it, and you were missed. See you next time.
Here’s the news.
The News
The patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church told The Pillar this week that a Vatican cardinal and one of his own bishops have conspired to foment a ‘rebellion’ in the Eastern Church.
In possibly the most candid interview I’ve ever seen from a Churchman of this rank, Patriarch Ignatius Youssef III Younan told us directly that Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, has set out to undermine the patriarchs of the different Churches.
“He has spread the news for the past two years that he is trying to get several patriarchs dismissed, and he says that openly,” the patriarch said.
This is already a big story, and it is just ramping up.
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Archbishop Adam Szal of Przemyśl appealed for prayers Thursday after a priest died following a knife attack at a Benedictine abbey complex in southeastern Poland that left four others wounded.
Police arrested a 31-year-old Ukrainian man on suspicion of carrying out the attack, which took place before a scheduled Mass at the abbey’s Church of St. Nicholas and St. Stanislaus the Bishop in the town of Jarosław. The church is attached to a formation and culture center on the grounds of the historic abbey.
“May these events not give rise to hatred or animosity,” said the archbishop. “May this event be an opportunity for reflection, for solidarity, and for praying together for those who are affected by events that are often very brutal and incomprehensible.”
You can read the whole story here.
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Pope Leo XIV is in France today, kicking off his fifth international trip since his papacy began.
The papal itinerary includes an address to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and numerous events at the Marian shrine in Lourdes.
You can read our preview of the trip right here.
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The U.S. government has deplored a drone strike on a truck in Ethiopia carrying humanitarian aid supported by Catholic Relief Services.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs called Sept. 22 for a probe into the strike on the convoy carrying 45.2 tons of food assistance to internally displaced people in Sheraro, a town in Ethiopia’s strife-torn northern Tigray Region.
The bureau did not identify who was responsible for the strike, which came amid rising tensions between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Ethiopia’s federal government. The TPLF and the federal government fought a two-year war that ended with a peace agreement in 2022.
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Scotland’s bishops presented seven options this week for the future of the country’s eight dioceses. The bishops outlined the possible scenarios for changes to Scotland’s diocesan structures after a months-long consultation process announced in March.
The bishops launched the consultation following a request from the Vatican to explore whether the current situation of eight dioceses is still suited to the Church’s needs.
In their introduction to the seven options, the bishops wrote: “This is not simply a question of boundaries, administrative adjustments or the sharing of resources more effectively.”
“Primarily it is about how we can better proclaim the Gospel, support our clergy, religious and lay people, and strengthen our parishes and communities for evangelization.”
Read the conclusions of that report, and the options, right here.
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On the day of now-Blessed Fulton Sheen’s beatification, Bishop Louis Tylka, of Sheen’s home diocese of Peoria, guest wrote for us on the bishop’s enduring witness for our own time.
“Sheen knew the anxieties of his age, yet he never surrendered to despair. That may be among the most important things he can teach us,” the bishop wrote.
“Sheen could look directly at what was wrong with the world without losing sight of what was right with God. He could speak about sin without abandoning the sinner… His was not an easy optimism that pretended everything would somehow work itself out. His was Christian hope, rooted in the conviction that Jesus Christ had entered into the deepest darkness of human existence and conquered it. For Sheen, the Cross changed everything.”
You can read the whole thing here.
Every month, My Catholic Library curates a Catholic classic and crafts it in a stunning hardcover edition. Our October selection is Treasure in Clay, the autobiography of Blessed Fulton Sheen. Through its pages, he weaves together humor and profound reflections, showing how God turns frailty into an instrument of grace.
One thing, well
I have thoroughly enjoyed the event of the beatification of Fulton Sheen, both the liturgy itself yesterday but also the pilgrimage I am still in the middle of, along with about 25 others, as we head to Peoria today.
I was a little concerned before heading out to St. Louis this week, and I wondered if the Church in America’s patron saint of the small screen would be able to draw people out of their homes and onto the road to attend in person. I needn’t have been. It was a moment of genuine vitality for the Church in America, not — as I think some reasonably worried it could become — a sepia-tinted nostalgia show.
The week has been full of people sharing what Fulton Sheen has meant to them, or in some cases what he did for them, personally. And that’s an essential part of his story, I think. Because he left such a unique and deep imprint on the history of American media, there can be a tendency to see the bishop as a character, or a meme.