Starting Seven: June 19, 2025
Welcome to Starting Seven, The Pillar’s daily newsletter.
I’m Luke Coppen and I aim to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and comment.
We’re sending Starting Seven to all Pillar subscribers, paid and free, for the rest of the week. (You can turn it off here).
😇 Today’s saint: St. Romuald (optional memorial).
📜 Today’s readings: Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time 2 Cor 11:1-11 ▪ Ps 111:1b-2, 3-4, 7-8 ▪ Mt 6:7-15.
🗞 Starting seven
1: Organizers have scaled back the closing events of the 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, scheduled to take place in downtown Los Angeles June 22, after discussions with police (catholicnewsagency.com, eucharisticpilgrimage.org, Wikipedia).
2: Cardinal Vincent Nichols has said that “the future of many care homes and hospices will be put in grave doubt” if the U.K. parliament approves an assisted suicide bill June 20 (full text, cruxnow.com, ncregister.com, biography, Wikipedia).
3: Colombia’s Augustinians have called for prayers after Fr. Carlos Saúl Jaimes went missing June 17 in the town of Viotá (Spanish report, full text, Wikipedia).
4: Argentine businessman Enrique Shaw (1921-1962) is reportedly one step away from beatification following the unanimous endorsement of his cause June 17 by a commission of theologians (Spanish report, enriqueshaw.com, Wikipedia).
5: Tehran-based Cardinal Dominique Mathieu describes the first week of the Iran-Israel war (vaticannews.va, biography, Wikipedia, Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari).
6: Juan Vicente Boo, Kevin & Theresa Burke, Gerard Jiménez Clopés, Michael Heinlein, Bishop Luis Marín de San Martín, O.S.A., Brian Roewe, and Brendan Towell reflect on Pope Leo XIV.
7: And Maria Tobolova recounts the life of Barbara Vasilievna, who helped create Yuri Gagarin’s spacesuit before becoming an Orthodox nun (Wikipedia).
🇻🇦 Today’s Bollettino
No Bollettino at press time.
Pope Leo XIV visited Vatican Radio’s shortwave transmission center in Santa Maria di Galeria, a town outside of Rome June 19, the anniversary of his priestly ordination.
+ Leo XIV praised the composer Palestrina in a June 18 address to participants in the event organized by the Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci Foundation (Italian full text, photos, short videos 1 & 2).
+ U.S. political commentator Ben Shapiro met with Pope Leo at the end of the June 18 general audience.
+ Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod, visited Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople June 17.
This week, Starting Seven is free for all Pillar readers courtesy of the Diocese of Gallup. Please support the V8s for Vocations Raffle to help educate seminarians for the poorest diocese in the U.S. — $25 a ticket for a chance to win the finest in American automotive engineering!
🏛️ Pillar catch-up
🔍 Stories to watch
🇺🇸 The Hmong Catholic community in Maplewood, Minnesota, is donating $100,000 to the Cathedral of St. Paul (Wikipedia 1, 2, & 3).
🇲🇽 Mexico’s bishops expressed solidarity with Nigerian Christians June 17, after a massacre in Benue State claimed around 200 lives (Spanish full text, English background, aciafrica.org, catholicherald.org.ng, dailypost.ng, nigeriacatholicnetwork.com, punchng.com).
🇮🇳 There are more than two attacks on Christians per day in India, the United Christian Forum, an ecumenical monitoring group, said June 18 (Wikipedia, licas.news).
🇵🇭 Filipino Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David said June 18 that online gambling is “wrecking the lives of poor people who get addicted to it” and causing “a new mental health crisis” (full text, biography).
🇮🇹 Influential Italian liturgist Andrea Grillo criticized Bl. Carlo Acutis’ focus on Eucharistic miracles in a June 17 blog post that described the soon-to-be-saint’s Eucharistic theology as “old,” “heavy,” “obsessive,” and “focused on the inessential” (Italian full text, Wikipedia).
🇩🇪 German Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki announced on June 17 that a celebration of the 750th anniversary of the world’s first Corpus Christi procession, held in Cologne in 1279, will take place in the city in 2029 (German report, press release, full text, background, biography, Wikipedia).
🇮🇶 More than 450 children made their first Communions in June in Qaraqosh, an Iraqi town occupied by ISIS in 2014-2016 (Wikipedia).
🗓 Today’s anniversaries
St. Juliana Falconieri died in 1341; Bl. Thomas Woodhouse was martyred in 1573; Blaise Pascal was born in 1623; St. John Neumann was canonized in 1977; Pope Leo XIV was ordained a priest 43 years ago in 1982; Pope John Paul II canonized 117 Vietnamese Martyrs in 1988; Fr. Ignacy Kłopotowski was beatified 20 years ago in 2005.
📅 Today’s events
Corpus Christi is celebrated in countries including Germany and Poland; Around 50,000 people expected to attend Corpus Christi Mass at Brasília’s Esplanada dos Ministérios; Juneteenth; The Footsteps of Mother Seton pilgrimage begins at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption in Baltimore, Maryland; Iraq’s Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako presides at the funeral Mass of Bishop Thabet Al Mekko at St. George’s Church, Alqosh (background).
📅 Coming soon
June 20 The Jubilee of Governments begins; Inauguration of the Shrine of Mary, Mother of the Persecuted, at Our Mother of Perpetual Help Cathedral in Astana, Kazakhstan.
June 21 55th anniversary of St. Óscar Romero’s episcopal ordination; Baltimore’s Archbishop William Lori ordains five men to the priesthood at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, at 10 a.m. local time; Cardinal Robert McElroy ordains five new priests — Deacon Marco Cerritelli, Deacon Gerard Gayou, Deacon Louis McHale, Deacon Daniel Morrison, and Deacon Chukwuma Odigwe — for the Archdiocese of Washington at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, at 10 a.m. (adw.org); The International Academy of Catholic Leaders hosts the “Discerning the Present, Building the Future” virtual conference at 11 a.m. ET.
June 22 Corpus Christi; Angelus; Pope Leo XIV presides at Mass in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran at 5 p.m. local time and takes part in a Eucharistic procession to the Basilica of St. Mary Major; Cardinal Mykola Bychok, C.Ss.R., takes possession of his Rome titular church Santa Sofia a Via Boccea, at 5 p.m. local time; Bishop Peter Brignall of Wrexham, Wales, leads a national pilgrimage of thanksgiving at the Shrine of St. Winefride, Holywell; Annual Walk with Christ, organized by Australia’s Sydney archdiocese; Start of the 2025 Religious Freedom Week.
June 23 The Jubilee of Seminarians begins.
June 24 Third anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision.
June 25 The Jubilee of Bishops; Start of the Jubilee of Priests; Actor Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in “The Chosen,” due to meet with Leo XIV at the Wednesday general audience.
June 27 The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus; Pope Leo celebrates Mass in St. Peter’s Square, at 9 a.m. Rome time; Concluding celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, at the Sanctuary of Paray-le-Monial, France; Annual global rosary relay for the sanctification of priests.
June 28 Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk celebrates a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy in Rome, at the start of a Jubilee pilgrimage of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to the tomb of St. Peter; Bishop David Zubik ordains two men to the priesthood for the Diocese of Pittsburgh at St. Paul Cathedral, at 10 a.m. local time; Bishop Edward Lohse ordains two men to the transitional diaconate at Holy Rosary Church in Steubenville, Ohio, at 9 a.m. local time; Archbishop Laurent Ulrich ordains 16 priests at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France; Cardinal Vincent Nichols ordains two men to the priesthood for the Diocese of Westminster, England.
June 29 Sts. Peter and Paul; Annual Peter’s Pence collection worldwide; Pope Leo presides at Mass with the imposition of the pallium in St. Peter’s Basilica at 9:30 a.m. Rome time; Start of the Church in Benin’s national pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire.
June 30 Special parliamentary commission in Luxembourg due to adopt final report on the Caritas Luxembourg embezzlement scandal.
July 1 The Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit begins in Menlo Park, California.
July 2 No general audience as Wednesday general audiences are suspended in July.
July 4 80th birthday of Poland’s Cardinal Stanisław Ryłko.
July 5 Episcopal ordination of Fr. Beat Grögli, the new Bishop of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
July 6 Pope Leo XIV begins a period of rest at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.
July 12 Installation of Bishop Dominique Blanchet as head of the Territorial Prelature of the Mission de France at Pontigny.
July 13 Pope Leo celebrates Mass at Castel Gandolfo’s Church of St. Thomas of Villanova, at 10 a.m. local time, and recites the Angelus in the Piazza della Libertà at noon.
July 14 Bishop Mark Eckman is installed as Bishop of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at St. Paul Cathedral.
July 17 Bishop Michael Pham is installed as the Bishop of San Diego, California.
July 19 Diaconate ordinations for the Archdiocese of Chicago at Santa María Del Popolo Church, Mundelein, at 10 a.m.
July 20 Pope Leo celebrates Mass at Albano Cathedral, at 9:30 a.m., and recites the Angelus in Castel Gandolfo’s Piazza della Libertà, at noon, returning to the Vatican in the afternoon.
July 21 80th birthday of Pakistan’s Cardinal Joseph Coutts.
July 25 Cardinal Robert Sarah serves as special envoy at the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the apparitions of St. Anne to Yvon Nicolazic, at the Shrine of Sainte-Anne-d’Auray, France.
July 27 Bishop Robert Barron receives the Josef Pieper Prize in Münster, Germany.
July 28 Jubilee of digital missionaries and Catholic influencers begins; Start of the Jubilee of Youth.
July 29 Episcopal ordination of Fr. Glenn Corsiga, the new Bishop of Ipil, Philippines.
July 30 Pope Leo resumes Wednesday general audiences.
August 2 Diaconate ordination for the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, at Sacred Heart Cathedral, at 10 a.m. local time.
August 4 Mladifest international youth festival begins in Medjugorje.
August 6 The Transfiguration of the Lord.
August 15 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Pope Leo celebrates Mass at Castel Gandolfo’s Church of St. Thomas of Villanova, at 10 a.m., followed by the Angelus in Piazza della Libertà at noon; Opening of the diocesan phase of the cause of Brazil’s Maria Milza dos Santos Fonseca (1923-1993).
August 17 Pope Leo delivers an Angelus address in Castel Gandolfo’s Piazza della Libertà at noon local time, before returning to the Vatican.
August 21 Start of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales’ Walsingham Walking Pilgrimage 2025.
August 22 80th birthday of Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, O.P.
September 1 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.
September 3 26th International Mariological Marian Congress begins in Rome.
September 5 Start of the Camino of St. Joseph, Australia’s largest annual men’s pilgrimage.
September 6 Christians who identify as LGBT+ take part in a Jubilee pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Basilica, organized by the Tenda di Gionata association.
September 7 Canonization of Bl. Carlo Acutis and Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati; Episcopal ordination of Msgr. Jean Pelletier as the Bishop of Mende, France.
September 8 80th birthday of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Cardinal Vinko Puljić.
September 10 35th anniversary of the consecration of the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast.
September 11 Installation of Bishop Shane Mackinlay as the Archbishop of Brisbane, Australia; Composer Arvo Pärt turns 90.
September 13 Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa speaks at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, Austria.
September 14 The Exaltation of the Holy Cross; Pope Leo XIV turns 70.
September 15 Jubilee of Consolation; Swiss bishops begin plenary assembly in Lugano.
September 18 Conference hosted by Belgium’s Mechelen-Brussels archdiocese marks the centenary of the end of the Malines Conversations.
September 20 Jubilee of Justice.
September 26 Jubilee of Catechists begins.
September 28 World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
September 29 175th anniversary of the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales.
Have a happy feast of St. Romuald.
-- Luke
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This week, Starting Seven is free for all Pillar readers courtesy of the Diocese of Gallup. Please support the V8s for Vocations Raffle to help educate seminarians for the poorest diocese in the U.S. — $25 a ticket for a chance to win the finest in American automotive engineering!
Ridiculous comments by Grillo.
I would love for a catechesis of the good shepherd class or some high schoolers who have encountered Jesus in the Eucharist or one of the perpetual adorers at my parish to give Fr. Grillo the best theological education he could hope to receive. Henri de Lubac comes to mind where he proclaims how his uneducated mother is a much better theologian than he. Bl. Carlo, Bl. Pier Giorgio and Bl. Bartolo, pray for us!