This Pillar Post is available entirely for free to all readers through a sponsorship from St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry.
Hey everybody,
Today’s the feast of St. John Ogilvie, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
John was born in 1580 in Scotland, the son of a baron, who was a prominent Calvinist landowner. His mom was a Catholic, but she died when John was three, and he was raised Protestant.
When he was 13, John was sent abroad, to Germany, where he studied at Lutheran boarding school.
We don’t know exactly what happened at the boarding school — what John studied and who he met — but four years later, when he was 17, John went to Louvain (now in Belgium), and was received into the Catholic Church.
He also entered the Scots College, and then the Society of Jesus.
You’ve got to understand the weight of that. Scotland was in the throes of its Reformation, and Catholics faced real persecution in the country. Becoming a Catholic would mean difficulties at home; becoming a Jesuit would mean maybe never going home at all. Or it would mean going home, and facing prison, and most likely death.
But John chose it anyway. He was ordained a priest in 1610, when he was 30 years old. He was sent to France.
But John didn’t want to be in France. He wanted to be in Scotland. By then, Catholics were being martyred by the dozen. Those who lived abandoned the faith, or abandoned the country — except for a faithful remnant, an underground Church. John wanted to be their priest.
For three years, John asked for a transfer. He tried to convince his superiors that his own noble birth would mean that Catholic nobles support him if he ministered secretly in Glasgow.
Finally, they let him try. But John found that the Catholic nobles he had hoped would support him weren’t keen on housing an underground priest. So instead, he snuck into Scotland posing as a horse trader named John Watson.
He went to Edinburgh, and then Glasgow, quietly reconciling people to the Church, hearing their confessions, and offering secret Masses.
But he had only about 11 months of active ministry, before an underground Catholic betrayed the priest— telling the Protestant archbishop of Glasgow about Fr. John.
Ogilvie was arrested, and led to Archbishop John Spottiswoode, the Church of Scotland primate who was also Scotland’s Lord Chancellor.
According to the accounts of people who were there, the difference between the two men was immediately apparent.
Fr. John was scruffy — he’d been sleeping rough — and weatherworn, while Spottiswoode presented himself ensconced in fine clothing, and surrounded by the regal trappings of office.
But Ogilvie apparently stood silent, his hands bound, while Spottiswoode accused him of betraying crown and country. The priest’s silence apparently enraged his interrogator, who is said to have punched the priest in the face.
Ogilvie was then beaten, thrown in a fetid cell, and tortured. He was interrogated again, and refused to recant the faith — that choice saw him tortured with nine days of sleep deprivation, driving him nearly mad.
A few days before Christmas, 1614, Ogilvie was interrogated again. He was starving. He hadn’t slept. His cell was filled with vermin. But when he was asked to give the names of the Catholics who’d come to his Masses, he sat silent.
Grace abounded in his cell that day.
The priest was nearly silent again in January 1615, when he was presented with a document he was supposed to sign, renouncing the faith. Ogilvie looked at his interrogators coolly. Perhaps his life of 35 years played out across his mind — the trials he’d already faced, and God’s enduring faithfulness.
The pope is the supreme authority of the faith, he said, and the pope has the authority to excommunicate the king.
The answer was a death sentence. King James I — VI in Scotland — ordered a trial on March 10, 1615. Ogilvie was ready. He stood accused of high treason, and he was convicted. The sentence was death.
Ogilvie had three hours, while the court officials took a lunch break. He prayed a deep meditation on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Then he was led to the scaffold, where he held a rosary in his hands — it was forbidden in Scotland, but the executioner let that pass.
It took him a few minutes to die when he was hung from the scaffold — finally the executioner had to pull tight on his legs to see the job finished. His body was dumped in a field for criminals.
And John Ogilvie entered, that day, into eternal beatitude.
May we have his courage. May God grace us with his clarity of conviction. And may he intercede for us.
The news
This morning brought very big news in the Chaldean Catholic Church, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic sui iuris Churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
Pope Leo accepted this morning the resignation of Bishop Emanuel Shaleta, who is facing embezzlement and money laundering charges in California. The pope also accepted the unexpected and surprise resignation of Chaldean patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, who had given no indication of his plans to step down from office.
The Pillar began reporting in mid-February that Shaleta was under criminal investigation for charges of stealing hundreds of thousands from his own eparchy, and using money taken from charity accounts to cover up the theft.
We also reported that Shaleta is accused of other misconduct, including allegedly frequent trips to a Tijuana brothel, with his transit to the club observed by a former FBI special agent, working as a private investigator in the case.
The Pillar also reported that Sako, meanwhile, had attempted to see the bishop transferred rather than removed from office, and Sako admitted to The Pillar some version of that last month. But our most recent reporting confirmed that Sako was trying as recently as last month to see the bishop transferred to a high-ranking position in Baghdad.
While Sako says he resigned freely to spend more time in prayer, that lobbying seems to be the straw which saw his term as patriarch come to an end.
The bishop’s lawyer said her client would be shown innocent, and argued that he was not a flight risk and should be given bail without monitoring — while prosecutors pointed out that when the bishop was arrested, he was literally waiting to board a flight for Europe, and that he had more than $9,000 cash in his bag.
The bishop’s bail was set at $125,000, and a judge ordered that he wear a monitor, so that he would have no opportunity to flee the country.
The next court hearings will take place in early April — if Shaleta doesn’t reach a plea bargain first.
If you want to read Monday’s courtroom drama, here’s our report.
—
That wasn’t the only big news in recent days.
The Pillar reported earlier this year that Caccia, a veteran Vatican diplomat, was the front-runner to succeed the French Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who turned 80 in January.
Caccia has served since 2019 as the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations in New York, a role that has given him a degree of familiarity with the U.S. Church.
If you ask me, the archbishop’s got a job ahead of him.
While outgoing nuncio Cardinal Pierre has been celebrated in some corners, victims’ advocates have a different version of the diplomat: They recall that Pierre is the cardinal who famously declined to respond when Knoxville priests wrote to him accusing their bishop of covering up allegations of abuse against a favored seminarian, and they recall that Pierre made the choice to implement Vos estis lux mundi — designed to transparently assure justice for bishops accused of abuse and negligence — with maximum commitment to secrecy, declining even to acknowledge when Vos estis investigations were underway.
Pierre had the unenviable job of presiding over the U.S. Church’s 2018 moral reckoning — but while that moment seemed to move ordinary Catholics towards a desire for justice, accountability, and transparency in governance, Pierre implemented practices which seemed to thwart those things, or to suggest the “McCarrick crisis” was a mere flash-in-the-pan.
And, the thing is, he obviously didn’t need to take that approach: At the same time, nuncios in other nations developed systems to make Vos estis transparency simple and available. That those things did not happen in the United States shattered confidence in many corners that the Church would take abuse and neglect complaints seriously, or that Pope Francis’ words on the subject would match reality.
Caccia, therefore, moves to Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. with the challenge of reading the room, and deciding for himself whether the approach of the last few years is ready for a shake-up.
But my guess is that Pope Leo himself will offer no objections if Mass Ave. adopts a different way of doing things — and neither will advocates for the reform and renewal of the Church in the United States.
Here’s our report on Caccia’s appointment.
St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry is a Catholic graduate school that seeks to reunite theology, prayer, and sanctity by providing a true formation of mind and heart, led by a personal encounter with Christ, while studying theology and philosophy in and from the heart of the Church. Through the generosity of the Knights of Columbus, you can audit one summer course for free! Learn more here!
The brief was widely criticized by Catholics who said it argued that birthright citizenship is a requirement of morality for nations — a position which critics said exceeds the norms of Catholic social teaching.
Well, The Pillar obtained an internal memo last week, in which the USCCB told bishops that its legal brief did not claim that “that every democratic polity must adopt” a birthright citizenship policy “to satisfy moral standards.”
Instead, the conference said, its brief aimed to argue that revoking birthright citizenship in the U.S. would leave some children born here potentially stateless — a genuine problem which, the conference argued, should be considered in the judicial fight over Trump’s executive order.
“[T]he brief does not urge the Court to decide the case on the basis of Catholic doctrine. It urges the Court to apply the Constitution in light of its text, history, and precedent, and to recognize how the executive order threatens to produce de facto statelessness for children born here, an outcome inconsistent with the Citizenship Clause as interpreted by the Court,” the USCCB told bishops in the internal memo.
“References to Catholic teaching do not supply a rule of decision for the Court; they explain the Conference’s reasons for participating and highlight the consonance between the American constitutional tradition and a broader moral understanding of the dignity of the child and the integrity of the family.”
Here’s our exclusive report on the USCCB’s internal birthright citizenship memo.
—
Meanwhile, a report from Switzerland, where bishops agreed last week that mandatory psychological assessments of future pastoral workers, including laity, should continue past an initial trial period, following a positive assessment of their effectiveness.
There’s controversy, though, between those who say the tests are helpful to prevent abusive situations, and those who say they’re not well-administered, or well-proven.
Here’s why — and how the tests work.
—
And a report from Bavaria, where — in a custom from another time — three Benedictine monks were re-elected to their seats on the local municipal council.
Why? What gives? And isn’t this against canon law?
Here’s the story.
—
Finally, Cardinal Dominique Mathieu, OFM Conv. of Tehran-Isfahan announced on March 9 that he had fled to Rome, along with the staff of the Italian embassy to Iran, “not without regret and sorrow.”
There remain Christians in Iran, prompting pushback from some who ask why the cardinal opted to leave.
On the other hand, it’s possible the decision was a prudential one about geopolitics — leaving a cardinal to be taken into Iranian custody could dramatically impact the direction of the conflict there — and (possibly) leave Christians in a place of more exposure to danger.
I myself am eager to get the rest of this story, if we can. But for now, here’s what we know.
—
Let’s go back to the Chaldeans for a minute, because we’ve been getting questions about the reports, and about what happens next.
First, if you’re wondering, the Chaldean synod of bishops is now expected to convene for the election of a new patriarch, whose election must be confirmed subsequently by the Roman Pontiff.
In an election that will be a referendum on Sako, I have some ideas on who the front-runners are, but I want to do some more reporting before I put my cards on the table, if you don’t mind.
Next, the USCCB said this morning that Shaleta’s resignation was accepted “in February,” but not announced until today. That’s a bit curious, and not conveyed in the Vatican’s bollettino. So what’s going on?
Well, here’s what I think: When we began reporting this story in mid-February, sources said that while Shaleta’s resignation had been sent to Rome, there was debate between the dicastery for Eastern Churches and Patriarch Sako, over what should happen next. After The Pillar’s public reporting about the scandal, especially, the debate seemed to boil down to two things: Whether Sako would nominate an administrator, as is typically the patriarch’s right, and what would happen to Shaleta.
As recently as last month, Sako was consulting with Chaldean bishops about the prospect of transferring Shaleta to Baghdad, and there was no clarity about what would happen to the San Diego eparchy.
So I think what’s being said about the resignation’s acceptance in February is basically something like: “Yes, we knew Shaleta was going to be out, but we didn’t know when or what was going to happen to him.”
Interestingly, the USCCB said the delay was over the San Diego County Sheriff’s investigation — that the Holy See was waiting until the police investigation was over, so as not to interfere with it.
If that’s true, they might have been waiting quite some time, as our sources in San Diego tell us that the investigation had been slowgoing, or more-or-less dormant, until The Pillar’s Feb. 22 reporting, after which investigators accelerated their review of the complicated story, which required some specialized knowledge of how the Church works to untangle, and began re-interviewing witnesses and seeking clarification on documents.
But whatever the situation with delay on Shaleta’s resignation, the fact is that the bishop was arrested, criminally charged, and then relieved from office. This is a sign of good papal governance, if you ask me.
But an even more telling sign is the resignation of Sako. The cardinal patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church is a fascinating figure, and has been controversial for quite some time. Internally, he’s gotten lots of pushback from Chaldeans, because of liturgical and cultural tendencies they see as both liberalizing and Latinizing.
He’s gotten pushback from bishops who say he was autocratic and unwilling to govern synodally — that led to a high-profile conflict with five bishops who refused to attend a synod Sako convened in 2024, in some part because the cardinal wouldn’t listen to their interventions or concerns, they say.
He’s gotten pushback more broadly for a bizarre post-conclave incident, in which the cardinal went on Middle Eastern TV talking about the papal conclave, and then later said it wasn’t him.
He suggested to The Pillar that an Iranian-backed militia somehow created the appearance of an interview with him, to “publish false information about the conclave.”
That’s an unusual suggestion, to be sure.
But the Shaleta controversy reveals even more issues in Sako’s governance — that he seemingly blamed the allegations, even those backed by documents or unimpeachable sources — on a misinformation campaign, with suggestions that, too, was coming from Iran. And that he advocated to find a place in Church governance for Shaleta, with whom he has a long-time friendship, and whom he backed for appointment to San Diego several years, despite misgivings from many Chaldean bishops.
I think in the pontificate of Pope Francis, Shaleta’s resignation would have probably been accepted. But I don’t know if Sako’s would have been (seemingly) requested and accepted, as it seems likely to have been here. (Though Sako says the resignation says the resignation came freely, so the cardinal would have more time for prayer.)
Francis was resistant to the idea of being backed into a corner, and frequently demonstrated reflexive support to prelates under fire, even if they were accused, as Sako was in recent weeks, of serious cover-ups.
But Leo’s swift action demonstrates — to me at least — that the pontiff has a primary concern for good governance, and will not be slow to act if situations unfold conveying the opposite.
Of course, there was already a big file on Sako at the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, given the controversies mentioned above. But the pope made no hesitation in his clear removal of the patriarch this week.
And more to the point, the Vatican appointed to lead temporarily the San Diego eparchy one of the bishops who had refused to attend Sako’s 2024 synod — a bishop whom Sako himself had attempted to excommunicate, in a case that was until today still active at the Dicastery for Eastern Churches.
In other words, Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop was in the Chaldean doghouse with his patriarch as recently as yesterday, and is now chosen by the Vatican to lead a diocese in turmoil.
That’s a very clear sign from the Apostolic See, one which Leo would have understood, and one which speaks volumes.
What’s the lesson?
There’s a new sheriff in town. Buckle up, buttercups.
Varia
Today was the funeral Mass for Bishop Richard Stika in Knoxville, Tennessee, who died last month, just a few years after his resignation from leadership in the Diocese of Knoxville.
I had hoped to attend the funeral, but both family and professional obligations made it impossible. But I wanted to go because I wanted to pray for Stika’s soul, and to pray for those who were impacted — positively and negatively — by his ministry.
After years of covering Stika, I felt a kind of connection to the man, and I now feel a special obligation to pray for his soul, which I’ll try and meet today in our parish adoration chapel.
The Church is composed of human beings, all of us beloved by God, all of us baptized and called to holiness, and, here on earth, all of us sinners in need of ongoing sanctification.
It’s easy, if you pay attention to Church news, to reduce the whole thing to a kind of soap opera, or to frame the actors who make headlines as “good guys” and “bad guys,” white hats and black ones.
The reality is more complicated. And nothing — no matter how heinous, or how much it disqualifies for governance or leadership — can separate any of us from the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, the love which holds us in existence.
I say this because I covet your prayers for Stika, too. And I covet your prayers for everyone we cover. I think it matters for our own souls — Pillar readers. If we’re paying attention to the news, we have to be so careful not to reduce the people we read about to only two dimensions, or to an assessment of personal dignity which forgets that each of us is equal in our sonship or daughterhood of the King himself. Praying for the people we read about makes a difference. Trust me. I need to do it, or I lose perspective fast.
The Church is a society, but a mystical one, in which we’re called to help one another grow closer in intimacy with the Lord. Public accountability is part of that. But so is intercessory prayer — on this side of the veil, and on the other.
May Richard Stika rest in the sort of peace which each one of us longs for in this vale of tears. May perpetual light shine upon him.
—
And before we go, take a moment to watch Sky Brown, who became at 17 years old this week the world skateboarding champion.
After she won, Brown told reporters that there are more important things in the world than skateboarding, and that she wanted to encourage people to “pray for peace for the world.”
She’s right. There are more important things than skateboarding. But it’s still impressive to watch the best in the world at her craft:
I couldn’t do that. In fact, I don’t stand up straight on a skateboard without falling over, nor do I wish to.
But I’m pretty sure I could beat Brown at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. In college, I practically minored in that game. And I’m almost done paying off the loans which made it possible.
Please be assured of our prayers, and please pray for us. We need it.
Yours in Christ,
JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar
I like to think that the "former FBI special agent" is just JD's dad.
A sincere congratulations and thanks to JD, Ed, and everyone at the Pillar. If not for you guys, it seems a bishop very well may have gotten away with stealing upwards of $1 million - not just from his parish and diocese, but specifically from the poor - and gotten rewarded for it with a promotion.
Also, I have great admiration for the Holy Father flat-out dropping the hammer.