Saint Robert of Newminster, an exemplary figure in the 12th century, remains a profound inspiration for the Catholic faithful. Born in Gargrave, England, around 1100, Robert grew up with a deep religious inclination. After completing his studies in Paris, he returned to England and was ordained a priest. Eager to live a life of greater […]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 17:57 pm (CNA).

On Wednesday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., seven Dominican brothers were ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Anthony Fisher, OP, who leads the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia.

“We are overjoyed at the ordination of seven of our brothers to the priesthood of Jesus Christ,”  Father Allen Moran, OP, prior provincial of the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph, told CNA.

“I, and all the friars of the Province of St. Joseph, look forward to the good work that God will do through them in our parishes, campus ministries, intellectual apostolates, hospital chaplaincies, and digital evangelization efforts.”

The newest Dominicans joining the community as priests are Louis Mary Bethea, Gregory Marie Santy, Bertrand Marie Hebert, Basil Mary Burroughs, Titus Mary Sanchez, Nicodemus Maria Thomas, and Linus Mary Martz.

“May God bring the good work he has begun to completion,” Moran said at the June 4 ordination. “Thanks be to God for the gift of these seven new priests!"

Fisher ordained the priests in a three-hour-long Mass and ordination ceremony. “Now seven of Dominic’s sons will become the fantastic seven,” Fisher said. “All part of a team of 400,000 priest presbyters sanctifying our world.”

Fisher served as the ordaining bishop and was joined by Archbishop James Green, who ordained Pope Leo XIV a bishop in 2014. 

Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala of Washington and Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the metropolitan archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, also concelebrated the Mass.

At the end of the liturgy, Fisher asked for “a word of thanks” for all “who have influenced and supported the priests on their vocational journeys” and those “who have helped them in discernment and formation.”

“Seven is a very Catholic number,” Fisher continued.

“Not just for clergy but for sacraments, virtues, hills of Rome, and deadly sins,” he joked.

“You can work out which of our new priests is best identified as Father Baptism or Father Confession, and the rest. And who is Father Prudence, or Father Temperance, Father Hope. Which is more aventine or escaline. But of course none of them would be Father Gluttony or Father Sloth,” he continued.

“Dominican Province of St. Joseph and the Church universal rings out with joy today; the Church has seven new priests,” Fisher said. “Yet the flock of Jesus Christ needs many new shepherds if we are to fulfill Christ’s injunction to lead the sheep and nurture the lambs. So I ask you all to pray for more like these.”

Fisher offered a message to the young men of America: “People are crying out for words of life and sacraments of grace to transfigure their hearts and lives. You might be the very one by God’s grace to offer them this as a Dominican priest.”

“May our new priests inspire you to give yourself over to God’s plan for you,” Fisher said. 

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 17:57 pm (CNA).

On Wednesday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., seven Dominican brothers were ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Anthony Fisher, OP, who leads the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia.

“We are overjoyed at the ordination of seven of our brothers to the priesthood of Jesus Christ,”  Father Allen Moran, OP, prior provincial of the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph, told CNA.

“I, and all the friars of the Province of St. Joseph, look forward to the good work that God will do through them in our parishes, campus ministries, intellectual apostolates, hospital chaplaincies, and digital evangelization efforts.”

The newest Dominicans joining the community as priests are Louis Mary Bethea, Gregory Marie Santy, Bertrand Marie Hebert, Basil Mary Burroughs, Titus Mary Sanchez, Nicodemus Maria Thomas, and Linus Mary Martz.

“May God bring the good work he has begun to completion,” Moran said at the June 4 ordination. “Thanks be to God for the gift of these seven new priests!"

Fisher ordained the priests in a three-hour-long Mass and ordination ceremony. “Now seven of Dominic’s sons will become the fantastic seven,” Fisher said. “All part of a team of 400,000 priest presbyters sanctifying our world.”

Fisher served as the ordaining bishop and was joined by Archbishop James Green, who ordained Pope Leo XIV a bishop in 2014. 

Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala of Washington and Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the metropolitan archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, also concelebrated the Mass.

At the end of the liturgy, Fisher asked for “a word of thanks” for all “who have influenced and supported the priests on their vocational journeys” and those “who have helped them in discernment and formation.”

“Seven is a very Catholic number,” Fisher continued.

“Not just for clergy but for sacraments, virtues, hills of Rome, and deadly sins,” he joked.

“You can work out which of our new priests is best identified as Father Baptism or Father Confession, and the rest. And who is Father Prudence, or Father Temperance, Father Hope. Which is more aventine or escaline. But of course none of them would be Father Gluttony or Father Sloth,” he continued.

“Dominican Province of St. Joseph and the Church universal rings out with joy today; the Church has seven new priests,” Fisher said. “Yet the flock of Jesus Christ needs many new shepherds if we are to fulfill Christ’s injunction to lead the sheep and nurture the lambs. So I ask you all to pray for more like these.”

Fisher offered a message to the young men of America: “People are crying out for words of life and sacraments of grace to transfigure their hearts and lives. You might be the very one by God’s grace to offer them this as a Dominican priest.”

“May our new priests inspire you to give yourself over to God’s plan for you,” Fisher said. 

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 17:27 pm (CNA).

The U.S. Department of State (DOS) plans to destroy a reserve of artificial contraceptives that was previously set aside for distribution in developing countries through foreign aid programs.

The stockpile, including birth control pills, condoms, and long-term implantable contraceptives, is worth more than $12 million.

A senior State Department official confirmed to CNA that officials had concerns that some of the nongovernmental organizations previously contracted to distribute contraceptives may have participated in programs that performed coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.

According to the official, the DOS is destroying the products to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order to reinstate the Mexico City Policy, which bans taxpayer funding of organizations that promote abortion and forced sterilization abroad.

Destroying the products will cost DOS about $167,000, but rebranding the products to resell them would have cost taxpayers several million dollars, according to the official.

“There is no reason that U.S. taxpayers should be footing the bill for contraception domestically or abroad,” the official added.

Rebecca Oas, the director of research for the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) told CNA that funding of “the international family planning movement” has been “inextricably tied to the abortion lobby” ever since the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) formed the Office of Population in 1969.

“There are a lot of reasons why we should want to support global maternal health separately from family planning in order to ensure a pro-life foreign policy,” said Oas, whose organization lobbies for pro-life policies in the United States’ international relations.

Oas said the movement has also had a “coercion” problem for the last half-century even though current advocates of international contraception funding “insist that contraceptive use must be voluntary.”

“Their metrics unfortunately lay the groundwork for potential coercion by regarding contraceptive uptake and continuation as an unfettered good by falsely conflating a purported ‘need’ for contraceptives with lack of access, and by regarding things like concern about side effects, openness to having more children, and religious and moral objections as ‘barriers’ to increased contraceptive use,” Oas added. “Family planning groups will admit that their problem is not a lack of supply but a lack of demand.”

In one recent example of coercion, Oas noted that several Rohingya Muslim women who are refugees in Bangladesh reported they were forced to get long-term contraceptive implantations if they wanted to receive food rations for their newborn children. These accounts were reported by The New Humanitarian last month, which also cited sources complaining that such coercion against refugees is widespread throughout the country.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, referred to the prior U.S.-backed international family planning programs as “pro-abortion and anti-family imperialism.”

“If those countries want to obtain contraceptives, let their own governments set up contracts directly with the manufacturers of these morally-problematic items and drugs, and pay for them on their own,” he told CNA. “The U.S., and U.S. aid agencies, should not be serving as middle men, underwriters, or imperialist brokers for any of this.”

The moral problems of contraception

Although the Trump administration is preventing tax money from funding contraceptives abroad, it has not taken any actions to discourage or restrict contraceptive use. The administration, along with an overwhelming majority of Americans across the ideological spectrum, support access to contraception.

The Catholic Church, however, opposes artificial contraception when used to prevent pregnancy as intrinsically immoral. Pacholczyk said contraceptives do not “heal or restore any broken system of the human body” but rather break the reproductive system “often by means of disrupting the delicate balance of hormonal cycles regulating a woman’s reproductive well-being and fecundity.”

“Unspoken ideological agendas which propagate permissiveness and various other false notions regarding our human sexuality should not be allowed to undermine the duty to exercise moral responsibility and to develop the discipline needed to live in a state of sexual restraint and order,” Pacholczyk added.

In the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, St. Paul VI notes that “each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life,” adding that one cannot take “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse is specifically intended to prevent procreation.”

“The fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life — and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman,” the Holy Father wrote. “And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called.”

The Church permits natural family planning (NFP), which uses the body’s natural cycle to know when the wife will be fertile and when she will not be fertile, which can assist a married couple in family planning.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 17:27 pm (CNA).

The U.S. Department of State (DOS) plans to destroy a reserve of artificial contraceptives that was previously set aside for distribution in developing countries through foreign aid programs.

The stockpile, including birth control pills, condoms, and long-term implantable contraceptives, is worth more than $12 million.

A senior State Department official confirmed to CNA that officials had concerns that some of the nongovernmental organizations previously contracted to distribute contraceptives may have participated in programs that performed coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.

According to the official, the DOS is destroying the products to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order to reinstate the Mexico City Policy, which bans taxpayer funding of organizations that promote abortion and forced sterilization abroad.

Destroying the products will cost DOS about $167,000, but rebranding the products to resell them would have cost taxpayers several million dollars, according to the official.

“There is no reason that U.S. taxpayers should be footing the bill for contraception domestically or abroad,” the official added.

Rebecca Oas, the director of research for the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) told CNA that funding of “the international family planning movement” has been “inextricably tied to the abortion lobby” ever since the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) formed the Office of Population in 1969.

“There are a lot of reasons why we should want to support global maternal health separately from family planning in order to ensure a pro-life foreign policy,” said Oas, whose organization lobbies for pro-life policies in the United States’ international relations.

Oas said the movement has also had a “coercion” problem for the last half-century even though current advocates of international contraception funding “insist that contraceptive use must be voluntary.”

“Their metrics unfortunately lay the groundwork for potential coercion by regarding contraceptive uptake and continuation as an unfettered good by falsely conflating a purported ‘need’ for contraceptives with lack of access, and by regarding things like concern about side effects, openness to having more children, and religious and moral objections as ‘barriers’ to increased contraceptive use,” Oas added. “Family planning groups will admit that their problem is not a lack of supply but a lack of demand.”

In one recent example of coercion, Oas noted that several Rohingya Muslim women who are refugees in Bangladesh reported they were forced to get long-term contraceptive implantations if they wanted to receive food rations for their newborn children. These accounts were reported by The New Humanitarian last month, which also cited sources complaining that such coercion against refugees is widespread throughout the country.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, referred to the prior U.S.-backed international family planning programs as “pro-abortion and anti-family imperialism.”

“If those countries want to obtain contraceptives, let their own governments set up contracts directly with the manufacturers of these morally-problematic items and drugs, and pay for them on their own,” he told CNA. “The U.S., and U.S. aid agencies, should not be serving as middle men, underwriters, or imperialist brokers for any of this.”

The moral problems of contraception

Although the Trump administration is preventing tax money from funding contraceptives abroad, it has not taken any actions to discourage or restrict contraceptive use. The administration, along with an overwhelming majority of Americans across the ideological spectrum, support access to contraception.

The Catholic Church, however, opposes artificial contraception when used to prevent pregnancy as intrinsically immoral. Pacholczyk said contraceptives do not “heal or restore any broken system of the human body” but rather break the reproductive system “often by means of disrupting the delicate balance of hormonal cycles regulating a woman’s reproductive well-being and fecundity.”

“Unspoken ideological agendas which propagate permissiveness and various other false notions regarding our human sexuality should not be allowed to undermine the duty to exercise moral responsibility and to develop the discipline needed to live in a state of sexual restraint and order,” Pacholczyk added.

In the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, St. Paul VI notes that “each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life,” adding that one cannot take “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse is specifically intended to prevent procreation.”

“The fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life — and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman,” the Holy Father wrote. “And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called.”

The Church permits natural family planning (NFP), which uses the body’s natural cycle to know when the wife will be fertile and when she will not be fertile, which can assist a married couple in family planning.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Washington has announced plans to “cut spending, reduce its workforce, and restructure departments” to combat “crippling economic challenges.”

In a June 5 letter sent to archdiocesan staff members, Cardinal Robert McElroy indicated that the archdiocese has had an annual operating deficit of $10 million for the past five years, leading the archdiocese “to draw from financial reserves to cover shortfalls.”

The cardinal archbishop of Washington said “our situation has only been exacerbated by the present economic uncertainty that is impacting so many, both locally and globally.” 

“I have come to the painful realization that the only way forward is to take drastic measures to achieve a balanced budget by July 1 of this year,” McElroy wrote. “This means that the archdiocese will need to cut spending, reduce its workforce, and restructure departments to accommodate a more streamlined pastoral center.”

McElroy explained that “the financial impacts of the pandemic and the fallout of the [former cardinal and leader of the archdiocese Theodore] McCarrick scandal, coupled with an extended period of inflation and volatile financial markets” are among the causes of the “crippling economic challenges” facing the archdiocese.

“The most difficult decision that I have had to make in order to achieve a balanced budget was to authorize a reduction in force to eliminate approximately 30 positions of pastoral center staff. Several vacant positions will be left unfilled, and a number of dedicated, hardworking employees will lose their jobs,” McElroy wrote. 

“I apologize profoundly to those who will be losing their jobs,” McElroy wrote. “This process is not a reflection on the quality or importance of your work.” 

The majority of layoffs will be from the archdiocese’ pastoral center in Hyattsville, Maryland. Prior to the layoffs approximately 120 people worked in the building, but the restructuring plans will reduce the staff by about one-fourth.

“I am sensitive to the reality that there are many people and families who will be impacted by this process — whether it be a devoted employee who loses his or her job, a remaining co-worker who must take on additional responsibilities, or the ripple effect on the many who are served by an important ministry that can no longer be funded at past levels.”

McElroy said the archdiocese will be “offering severance, extended benefits, and outplacement services” to the eliminated employees. 

“I pray the Lord will accompany all of you in these days, understanding that it is God’s service that unites all of us who work for the archdiocese, and your commitment to God’s service that makes our current situation all the more difficult,” McElroy said.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Washington has announced plans to “cut spending, reduce its workforce, and restructure departments” to combat “crippling economic challenges.”

In a June 5 letter sent to archdiocesan staff members, Cardinal Robert McElroy indicated that the archdiocese has had an annual operating deficit of $10 million for the past five years, leading the archdiocese “to draw from financial reserves to cover shortfalls.”

The cardinal archbishop of Washington said “our situation has only been exacerbated by the present economic uncertainty that is impacting so many, both locally and globally.” 

“I have come to the painful realization that the only way forward is to take drastic measures to achieve a balanced budget by July 1 of this year,” McElroy wrote. “This means that the archdiocese will need to cut spending, reduce its workforce, and restructure departments to accommodate a more streamlined pastoral center.”

McElroy explained that “the financial impacts of the pandemic and the fallout of the [former cardinal and leader of the archdiocese Theodore] McCarrick scandal, coupled with an extended period of inflation and volatile financial markets” are among the causes of the “crippling economic challenges” facing the archdiocese.

“The most difficult decision that I have had to make in order to achieve a balanced budget was to authorize a reduction in force to eliminate approximately 30 positions of pastoral center staff. Several vacant positions will be left unfilled, and a number of dedicated, hardworking employees will lose their jobs,” McElroy wrote. 

“I apologize profoundly to those who will be losing their jobs,” McElroy wrote. “This process is not a reflection on the quality or importance of your work.” 

The majority of layoffs will be from the archdiocese’ pastoral center in Hyattsville, Maryland. Prior to the layoffs approximately 120 people worked in the building, but the restructuring plans will reduce the staff by about one-fourth.

“I am sensitive to the reality that there are many people and families who will be impacted by this process — whether it be a devoted employee who loses his or her job, a remaining co-worker who must take on additional responsibilities, or the ripple effect on the many who are served by an important ministry that can no longer be funded at past levels.”

McElroy said the archdiocese will be “offering severance, extended benefits, and outplacement services” to the eliminated employees. 

“I pray the Lord will accompany all of you in these days, understanding that it is God’s service that unites all of us who work for the archdiocese, and your commitment to God’s service that makes our current situation all the more difficult,” McElroy said.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Christians must not attempt to live out the promises of Christ alone, Pope Leo XIV told a delegation of 250 people in Rome for the Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations, and New Communities.

Organized by the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life, the annual meeting of moderators of associations of the faithful, ecclesial movements, and new communities comes as more than 70,000 pilgrims are expected to arrive in Rome for the jubilee this weekend, June 7–8.

“The Christian life is not lived in isolation,” the Holy Father said in his Friday address to the delegation, representatives of several lay associations and ecclesial movements. “It is lived with others, in a group and in community, because the risen Christ is present wherever disciples gather in his name.”

Confirmed movements and associations set to attend this weekend are the Neocatechumenal Way, Catholic Action, Communion and Liberation, the Shalom Community, Charis International, Sant’Egidio, Focolare, Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo, Opera di Maria, and the Parish Cells of Evangelization, according to the Dicastery for Evangelization.

Pope Leo received Neocatechumenal Way founder Kiko Argüello in a private audience on Thursday.

In his Friday address, the Holy Father noted the presence of institutional groups “founded to carry out a common apostolic, charitable, or liturgical project, or to support Christian witness in specific social settings,” and of those born out of “charismatic inspiration.” 

“All are important to the Church,” Pope Leo said, citing a passage from the Second Vatican Council, which stated that with ecclesial movements, “a much richer harvest can be hoped for from them than if each member were to act on his or her own.” 

Pope Leo said such groups should be understood in reference to grace. “Without charisms, there is a risk that Christ’s grace, offered in abundance, may not find good soil to receive it,” he continued. “That is the reason why God raises up charisms: to awaken in hearts a desire to encounter Christ and a thirst for the divine life that he offers us.” 

‘Leaven of unity’

Unity and mission are essential to the life of the Church and of the Petrine ministry, the pope emphasized to the delegation, urging them to be “a leaven of unity” and to always keep “missionary zeal” alive among themselves.

“​​We have one Head, one grace that fills us, we live on one Bread, we walk on one path and we live in the same house... We are one, in both the spirit and the body of the Lord. If we separate ourselves from that One, we become nothing,” Pope Leo said, quoting a letter from St. Paulinus of Nola to St. Augustine. 

Recalling his own experience as a missionary priest in Peru, Leo noted that the Church’s mission has “shaped my spiritual life.” He further urged those gathered to place their talents in service of the Church “in order to reach those who, albeit distant, are often waiting, without being aware of it, to hear God’s word of life.”

In his concluding remarks, the pope encouraged the delegation to “always keep the Lord Jesus at the center!” 

This, he said, is the essential purpose of charisms. 

“All of us are called to imitate Christ, who emptied himself to enrich us,” he said, concluding: “Those who join with others in pursuing an apostolic goal and those who enjoy a charism are called alike to enrich others through the emptying of self. It is a source of freedom and great joy.”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 6, 2025 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Christians must not attempt to live out the promises of Christ alone, Pope Leo XIV told a delegation of 250 people in Rome for the Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations, and New Communities.

Organized by the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life, the annual meeting of moderators of associations of the faithful, ecclesial movements, and new communities comes as more than 70,000 pilgrims are expected to arrive in Rome for the jubilee this weekend, June 7–8.

“The Christian life is not lived in isolation,” the Holy Father said in his Friday address to the delegation, representatives of several lay associations and ecclesial movements. “It is lived with others, in a group and in community, because the risen Christ is present wherever disciples gather in his name.”

Confirmed movements and associations set to attend this weekend are the Neocatechumenal Way, Catholic Action, Communion and Liberation, the Shalom Community, Charis International, Sant’Egidio, Focolare, Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo, Opera di Maria, and the Parish Cells of Evangelization, according to the Dicastery for Evangelization.

Pope Leo received Neocatechumenal Way founder Kiko Argüello in a private audience on Thursday.

In his Friday address, the Holy Father noted the presence of institutional groups “founded to carry out a common apostolic, charitable, or liturgical project, or to support Christian witness in specific social settings,” and of those born out of “charismatic inspiration.” 

“All are important to the Church,” Pope Leo said, citing a passage from the Second Vatican Council, which stated that with ecclesial movements, “a much richer harvest can be hoped for from them than if each member were to act on his or her own.” 

Pope Leo said such groups should be understood in reference to grace. “Without charisms, there is a risk that Christ’s grace, offered in abundance, may not find good soil to receive it,” he continued. “That is the reason why God raises up charisms: to awaken in hearts a desire to encounter Christ and a thirst for the divine life that he offers us.” 

‘Leaven of unity’

Unity and mission are essential to the life of the Church and of the Petrine ministry, the pope emphasized to the delegation, urging them to be “a leaven of unity” and to always keep “missionary zeal” alive among themselves.

“​​We have one Head, one grace that fills us, we live on one Bread, we walk on one path and we live in the same house... We are one, in both the spirit and the body of the Lord. If we separate ourselves from that One, we become nothing,” Pope Leo said, quoting a letter from St. Paulinus of Nola to St. Augustine. 

Recalling his own experience as a missionary priest in Peru, Leo noted that the Church’s mission has “shaped my spiritual life.” He further urged those gathered to place their talents in service of the Church “in order to reach those who, albeit distant, are often waiting, without being aware of it, to hear God’s word of life.”

In his concluding remarks, the pope encouraged the delegation to “always keep the Lord Jesus at the center!” 

This, he said, is the essential purpose of charisms. 

“All of us are called to imitate Christ, who emptied himself to enrich us,” he said, concluding: “Those who join with others in pursuing an apostolic goal and those who enjoy a charism are called alike to enrich others through the emptying of self. It is a source of freedom and great joy.”

ACI MENA, Jun 6, 2025 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

The future of St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula remains a source of controversy, with tensions rising after a recent court ruling that transferred the site to state ownership while granting the Church only usage rights.

The decision was met with strong opposition from the monastery’s monks, who have now closed its doors to visitors in protest.

Despite reassurances from Egyptian authorities, the ruling has alarmed the Orthodox Church, which described it as a “dangerous precedent.” 

The opposition has extended far beyond Egypt.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople along with the Orthodox Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Alexandria, the Churches of Greece and Cyprus, and the Greek Union of Theologians have all voiced apprehension. Meanwhile, other churches have chosen to remain silent — a stance that has only complicated the situation further.

Greece has emerged as the strongest political voice in defense of the monastery, issuing formal statements and engaging in high-level diplomacy to protect the sacred Orthodox site. Greece’s minister of foreign affairs, Georgios Gerapetritis, met with Egypt’s minister of foreign affairs, Badr Abdelatty, in Cairo on Wednesday where they discussed the status of St. Catherine’s.

Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, Pharan, and Raitho described the situation as “judicial manipulation.” He explained that since 1980, the monastery has submitted ownership documents for 71 sites and retained official receipts as proof. However, the state has consistently refused to recognize these claims, even as similar cases were fully acknowledged elsewhere. He expressed frustration that the monks are now being treated as if they’ve illegally seized land and are being asked to pay to use it.

He added that a previous agreement had been reached between the Church and Egyptian authorities, with Greek government representatives present. However, the deal was recently altered unilaterally.

“We have protected this treasure since the sixth century,” he said. “And now we’re told we can use it — but we don’t own it.” With sorrow, he continued: “I am 91 years old, and I have lived here since I was 27. Imagine how great the pain is!”

The monastery’s legal representative, Christos Kompiliris, explained that negotiations over the agreement lasted nine months and were nearly finalized when talks abruptly ended just before the signing. A court ruling was then issued that contradicted the core of that understanding. He warned that the ruling allows the state to reclaim the property if the monks ever leave — for any reason — placing their continued presence at the mercy of unpredictable political or administrative decisions.

“This new legal status puts the monastery’s entire future at risk,” he said.

Kompiliris also expressed concern that the ruling not only affirms state ownership but also permits the confiscation of 25 of the 71 properties belonging to the monastery.

Behind the scenes, some believe the controversy stems from the “Great Transfiguration” project, launched in 2021 by the Egyptian president to turn the St. Catherine area into a fully integrated tourist destination. Critics argue that the plan threatens the site’s sacred monastic character. Others, however, view the ruling as a matter of Egyptian sovereignty, intended to prevent the monastery from evolving into an independent entity, something akin to a “new Vatican.”

This story was first published by ACI MENA, CNA's Arabic-language news partner, and has been translated for and adapted by CNA.