Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass for the solemnity of Pentecost in St. Peter’s Square on June 8, 2025. In his homily, he emphasized the significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Jun 8, 2025 / 08:42 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the solemnity of Pentecost in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday with international pilgrims belonging to new Church movements, associations, and communities celebrating this year’s Jubilee Year of Hope in Rome.

Emphasizing the significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian, the Holy Father noted that it is the third person of the Blessed Trinity who anoints, heals, and strengthens followers of Jesus to “open borders” in hearts, in relationships with others, and between nations.

“Let us invoke the Spirit of love and peace, that he may open borders, break down walls, dispel hatred, and help us to live as children of our one Father who is in heaven,” the pope said on a hot Sunday morning.

“Brothers and sisters, Pentecost renews the Church and the world!” he said. “May the strong wind of the Spirit come upon us and within us, open the borders of our hearts, grant us the grace of encounter with God, enlarge the horizons of our love and sustain our efforts to build a world in which peace reigns.”

Approximately 70,000 people from more than 100 countries registered to take part in this year’s special Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations, and New Communities taking place over the June 7–8 weekend in Rome.

Celebrating Sunday Mass alongside cardinals, bishops, and other priests wearing red vestments to represent the fire of the Holy Spirit who descended upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Father invited those gathered in St. Peter’s Square and along Via della Conciliazione to also reflect on the words of his papal predecessors. 

“The Spirit opens borders... The Church must always become anew what she already is,” the pope said, quoting Benedict XVI. “She must open the borders between peoples and break down the barriers between class and race.” 

During his homily, Pope Leo reiterated Pope Francis’ pleas for the end of ongoing violence, including femicide, creating “much discord” and “such great division” in the world.

“The Spirit breaks down barriers and tears down the walls of indifference and hatred because he ‘teaches us all things’ and ‘reminds us of Jesus’ words,” he said, reflecting on the Gospel of St. John. 

“Where there is love, there is no room for prejudice, for ‘security’ zones separating us from our neighbors, for the exclusionary mindset that, tragically, we now see emerging also in political nationalisms,” he added.

The pope also prayed to God for his gift of unity and fraternity in the world.

Before concluding the celebration of the Mass with the Regina Coeli prayer in Latin, the Holy Father thanked his brother cardinals, bishops, and all representatives of ecclesial associations, movements, and new communities in Rome for their presence and witness of faith.

“Dear sisters and brothers, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, set out renewed from this jubilee of yours. Go and bring to everyone the hope of the Lord Jesus!” he said. “May the Spirit of the risen Christ open paths of reconciliation wherever there is war; may he enlighten governments and give them the courage to make gestures of de-escalation and dialogue.”

Pentecost painting. / Credit: Public domain

CNA Staff, Jun 8, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

This weekend, the Church celebrates Pentecost, one of the most important feast days of the year, which concludes the Easter season and celebrates the birth of the Church. 

Here’s what you need to know about the feast day.

Pentecost always occurs 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus and 10 days after his ascension into heaven. Because Easter is a moveable feast without a fixed date and Pentecost depends on the timing of Easter, Pentecost can fall anywhere between May 10 and June 13.

The timing of these feasts is also where Catholics get the concept of the novena — nine days of prayer — because in Acts 1, Mary and the apostles prayed together “continuously” for nine days after the Ascension leading up to Pentecost. Traditionally, the Church prays the novena to the Holy Spirit in the days before Pentecost.

The name of the day itself is derived from the Greek word “pentecoste,” meaning “50th.”

There is a parallel Jewish holiday, Shavu’ot, which falls 50 days after Passover. Shavu’ot is sometimes called the “Feast of Weeks,” referring to the seven weeks since Passover.

Originally a harvest feast, Shavu’ot now commemorates the sealing of the Old Covenant on Mount Sinai, when the Lord revealed the Torah to Moses. Every year, the Jewish people renew their acceptance of the gift of the Torah on this day.

In the Christian tradition, Pentecost is the celebration of the person of the Holy Spirit coming upon the apostles, Mary, and the first followers of Jesus, who were gathered together in the upper room.

A “strong, driving” wind filled the room where they were gathered, and “tongues as of fire” came to rest on each one of them (Acts 2:13). They were suddenly able to speak in different languages and be understood. It was such a strange phenomenon that some people thought the Christians were drunk — but Peter pointed out that it was only “9 in the morning” and said the phenomenon was caused by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit also gave the apostles the other gifts necessary to fulfill the great commission — to go out and preach the Gospel to all nations. This fulfilled the New Testament promise from Christ that the apostles would be “clothed with power” before they would be sent out to spread the Gospel (Luke 24:46-49).

It was right after Pentecost that Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, preached his first homily to Jews and other nonbelievers in which he opened the Scriptures of the Old Testament, showing how the prophet Joel prophesied events and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

He also told the people that the Jesus they crucified is the Lord and was raised from the dead, which “cut them to the heart.” When they asked what they should do, Peter exhorted them to repent of their sins and to be baptized. According to the account in Acts, about 3,000 people were baptized following Peter’s sermon.

For this reason, Pentecost is considered the birthday of the Church — Peter, the first pope, preaches for the first time and converts thousands of new believers. The apostles and believers, for the first time, were united by a common language and a common zeal and purpose to go and preach the Gospel.

Typically, priests will wear red vestments on Pentecost, symbolic of the burning fire of God’s love and the tongues of fire that descended on the apostles.

However, in some parts of the world, Pentecost is also referred to as “Whitsunday,” or White Sunday, referring to the white vestments that are typically worn in Britain and Ireland. The white is symbolic of the dove of the Holy Spirit and typical of the vestments that catechumens desiring baptism wear on that day.

An Italian Pentecost tradition is to scatter rose leaves from the ceiling of the churches to recall the miracle of the fiery tongues, and so, in some places in Italy, Pentecost is sometimes called “Pascha Rosatum” (“Easter roses”). One of the most famous locations for the rose petal dropping is the Pantheon.

In France, it is tradition to blow trumpets during Mass to recall the sound of the driving wind of the Holy Spirit.

In Asia, it is typical to have an extra service, called genuflexion, during which long poems and prayers are recited.

In Russia, Mass-goers often carry flowers or green branches during Pentecost services.

This story was first published on June 2, 2017, and has been updated.

Pope Leo XIV greets the faithful at a Pentecost prayer vigil in St. Peter's Square, Saturday, June 7, 2025 / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Saturday urged Catholics to embrace the Holy Spirit as a source of freedom and grace, addressing a crowd of tens of thousands during his first Pentecost as pope and calling on the faithful to adopt “the way of the Beatitudes” to spread the Gospel message.

The pontiff addressed a massive crowd, estimated by the Vatican at around 70,000, in St. Peter’s Square on June 7 during a prayer vigil there as part of the festivities for the Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations, and New Communities.

He told the faithful that “tonight, we sense the fragrance of the chrism with which our foreheads have been anointed.”

“Dear brothers and sisters, baptism and confirmation united us to Jesus’ mission of making all things new, to the kingdom of God,” the pope said. “Just as love enables us to sense the presence of a loved one, so tonight we sense in one another the fragrance of Christ.”

“This is a mystery; it amazes us and it leads us to reflect,” he said.

The pontiff said the concept of synodality “demands that we each recognize our own poverty and our riches, that we feel part of a greater whole, apart from which everything withers, even the most original and unique of charisms.”

“All creation exists solely in the form of coexistence, sometimes dangerous, yet always interconnected,” the pope said, citing the late Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’. “And what we call ‘history’ only takes place as coexistence, living together, however contentiously, but always together.”

Leo noted that “where there is the Spirit, there is movement, a journey to be made.” The Holy Spirit, he said, “teaches us to walk together in unity.”

“We are a people on the move. This does not set us apart but unites us to humanity like the yeast in a mass of dough, which causes it to rise,” he said.

Evangelization, the pope said, is “not our attempt to conquer the world”; it is rather “the infinite grace that radiates from lives transformed by the kingdom of God.”

“It is the way of the Beatitudes, a path that we tread together, between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet,’ hungering and thirsting for justice, poor in spirit, merciful, meek, pure of heart, men and women of peace,” he said.

To walk this path, the pope said, requires “no need of powerful patrons,” or compromises, or “emotional strategies.”

“Evangelization is always God’s work. If at times it takes place through us, it is thanks to the bonds that it makes possible,” he said.

He urged the faithful to be “deeply attached” to their own parishes and Church communities so that the entire Catholic Church can “work together harmoniously as one.”

“The challenges facing humanity will be less frightening, the future will be less dark and discernment will be less complicated, if together we obey the Holy Spirit!” he said.

Pope Leo XIV greets participants of the symposium “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity” in Rome, Saturday, June 7, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 11:45 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Saturday said the Catholic Church is open to establishing a common date of Easter among all Christian churches, echoing one of the aims of the Council of Nicaea that met 1,700 years ago.

The pope spoke to participants of the symposium “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity,” which took place this week at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

The Holy Father called the 325 Council of Nicaea “foundational for the common journey that Catholics and Orthodox have undertaken together since the Second Vatican Council.”

This week’s symposium focused on the themes of faith, synodality, and “the date of Easter,” Leo said. The lattermost issue was “one of the objectives” of the ancient council.

“Sadly, differences in their calendars no longer allow Christians to celebrate together the most important feast of the liturgical year, causing pastoral problems within communities, dividing families, and weakening the credibility of our witness to the Gospel,” the pope said.

“Several concrete solutions have been proposed that, while respecting the principle of Nicaea, would allow Christians to celebrate together the ‘feast of feasts,’” the Holy Father said.

“In this year, when all Christians have celebrated Easter on the same day, I would reaffirm the openness of the Catholic Church to the pursuit of an ecumenical solution favoring a common celebration of the Lord’s resurrection,” the pope said.

On April 20, Easter landed on the same day for both the East and the West. Easter will fall again for both the East and the West on April 16, 2028, April 13, 2031, and April 9, 2034.

Leo on Saturday said that Christian unity, when it is ultimately achieved, “will not be primarily the fruit of our own efforts, nor will it be realized through any preconceived model or blueprint.”

“Rather, unity will be a gift received ‘as Christ wills and by the means that he wills,’” he said.

Lois McLatchie Miller and Chris Elston were arrested by Belgian police June 5, 2025, while advocating for child protection from transgender medical treatments. / Credit: ADF International

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 11:00 am (CNA).

The demonstrators were surrounded by an angry mob as they held signs that read “Children are never born in the wrong body” and “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.”

Pastor Rick Warren speaks to EWTN Vatican Bureau Chief Andreas Thonhauser on “EWTN News Nightly” on Friday, June 6, 2025. / Credit: EWTN News

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 10:30 am (CNA).

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren this week said the upcoming 2,000th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus highlights the Lord’s “unanswered prayer” of unity in the Christian world, a unity he said will help bring the message of salvation to the world.

Warren, the founder of the Baptist Saddleback Church in California, spoke to EWTN Vatican Bureau Chief Andreas Thonhauser in Rome on attending a gathering of Global 2033, a Catholic evangelization initiative working to spread the Gospel message ahead of the 2,000-year observance of Christ rising from the dead.

Asked by Thonhauser why he was speaking at a Catholic event, the Protestant minister claimed that “no single denomination can complete the Great Commission on their own.”

“There are 2.5 billion people in the world who claim to believe in Jesus Christ,” Warren said. Of those, “1.3 billion are Catholic. About half of the Christian Church is Catholic.”

Dismissing potential criticisms that his intent is to convert Catholics to Protestantism, Warren pointed to Christ’s prayers in John 17, in which he prayed to God: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

That plea “is still the unanswered prayer of Jesus,” Warren said.

“We’re never going to have cultural unity. We’re never going to have structural unity,” Warren pointed out.

“We’re never going to have unity in doctrine,” he further claimed. “But we can all agree on one thing. Every Christian understands we’re called to go [and evangelize].”

On praying alongside Catholics in Rome, Warren said: “I pray with anybody who believes Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life. These are brothers and sisters in Christ.”

Looking forward to 2033, Warren said: “What the world needs now is hope.”

The Baptist pastor further shared that EWTN has been a “great ministry in [his] life.” He pointed to the 2013 death of his son, who took his own life that year after struggling with mental illness.

“It was the worst day of my life,” Warren said. “One of the things that helped me through was on EWTN, they were praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. And the Chaplet of Divine Mercy ministered to me and to my wife.”

“It was a healing balm in my heart,” he said.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat speaks to “EWTN News in Depth” anchor Catherine Hadro on Friday, June 6, 2025. / Credit: “EWTN News in Depth”

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Americans could be on the cusp of a religious revival, according to Ross Douthat, an author, Catholic convert, and New York Times columnist. 

Douthat, who often writes on the intersection of faith, culture, and public life in his column, shared his thoughts on all things American and Catholic — from Pope Leo XIV to Vice President JD Vance to the American religious landscape — in an interview with anchor Catherine Hadro on “EWTN News in Depth” on Friday, June 6.

Douthat described the U.S. religious situation as a “a very unsettled but curious landscape,” particularly after a yearslong decline in religious interest that plateaued during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s not that America is having a religious revival. It’s more that we’re considering whether to have a religious revival,” he said.

Interest in religion has moved beyond the hardline atheism of the early 2000s characterized by figures like Richard Dawkins, Douthat said. He observed that there has been “a surge of interest in religion,” especially among Generation Z. 

Sometimes the interest is traditional, as reflected in rising numbers of converts to Catholicism in some dioceses, from Los Angeles to Dublin. Other times it takes on an alternative tone.

“You have a surge of interest in religion, and some of that shows up in traditional faith. Some of it shows up in anything from UFOs to psychedelics,” Douthat said.

Atheism, he indicated, has failed to keep its promises. In the early 2000s “there was a sense that once we get rid of these hidebound Bronze Age superstitions, everyone will get along better: Politics will be less polarized, science will be held in higher esteem, and sociologically people will be happier. Kids won’t be afraid of going to hell, things like that.”

“And obviously none of that has happened.”

Douthat cited rising division, polarization, and “existential angst” in the nation in recent years as setting the groundwork for a resurgence of religion.

“You have a lot of people, some of whom are coming into the Church, others who are exploring around the edges, who are reacting to that environment,” he said.

First impressions of Pope Leo: A unifying figure

When asked to describe the new pope, Douthat called him “unifying,” “charming,” and “mildly inscrutable.”

Douthat said inscrutability is “part of the reason he was elected pope in the first place.”

“There is still a hint of mystery to who the pope definitively is and what he definitively thinks,” he said. “And there may be a long period of time where that mystery gradually unfolds in the life of the Church.”

Douthat noted that Leo was a “dark horse” figure “who’s very good at making different groups of people feel heard and understood.”

Leo’s episcopal motto is one of unity: “In Illo Uno Unum,” meaning “in the One, we are one.” Douthat said he hopes Leo will bring about this unity. 

“Obviously there were a lot of conservative and traditionalist Catholics who were frustrated or anxious at various moments in the era of Pope Francis,” he said.

“[Leo] hasn’t really done all that much — it’s been one month — but there’s so far this sense of just sort of relief at a feeling of kind of stability and normalcy in the papal office,” Douthat said.  

Pope Leo XIV chose his name because the last pope with that name, Pope Leo XIII, “was pope at a time of huge industrial and technological transformation and offered a distinctively Catholic witness for that age,” Douthat noted. 

“There is this landscape that people live in online, disconnected or connected in new ways,” he said. “That is, I think, clearly perilous to the soul in various ways.” 

The digital and AI realms have “deep effects on family and marriage and community,” especially for parents raising kids in this environment. 

“There are fundamental questions of morality and spirituality that are bound up in how you relate to your phone,” he continued. “And I think it is really important for the Church to figure out what to say about it.”

JD Vance interview

Douthat recently interviewed Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, about how faith shaped his politics among other topics.

Reflecting back on a part of the interview where he asked Vance about the Church’s teachings on immigration, Douthat said he was “pressing” the vice president because he believed there were “real tensions” in the dispute, citing deportations by the Trump administration.

Vance and Pope Francis had publicly disagreed on politics earlier in the year. In February, Pope Francis sent a pastoral letter to the U.S. bishops calling for the recognition of the dignity of immigrants after Vance, a Catholic convert, publicly advocated applying “ordo amoris,” or “rightly-ordered love,” to the immigration debate.

“[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens,” Vance said at the time, while acknowledging that the principle “doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders.”

In the letter, Francis tacitly rebuked Vance’s remarks, arguing in part that “the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution, or serious deterioration of the environment damages the dignity of many men and women.”

Douthat noted that Vance’s situation is a “tremendous challenge,” especially because he is vice president, not president.

“There’s always a certain kind of tension between being an elected politician in a pluralist, non-Catholic society and trying to be faithful to the teachings of the Church,” he said.

Sam Brownback. / Credit: Albert H. Teich/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

In a recent interview with the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe), former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback discussed how Christian organizations are increasingly being deplatformed and debanked when engaging in public debate and offered ways to address these challenges and uphold religious freedom. 

“The typical technique in the West is a suffocation technique on religion,” Brownback told OIDAC Europe Executive Director Anja Hoffmann in an interview released June 4. OIDAC Europe is a nongovernmental organization that researches, analyzes, documents, and reports on cases of intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe. 

According to Brownback, examples of this technique include pro-life pregnancy centers being dropped by their insurance companies and organizations being taken off of social media platforms. 

Brownback’s own National Committee for Religious Freedom had its bank account canceled without explanation by Chase Bank in 2022 after 45 days of it being opened. 

“You see these techniques and it’s all a suffocation effort. We’re not going to throw you in jail — we can’t throw you in jail — but we can try to strangle you as much as possible so that you can’t operate as a group. And that’s why we’ve got to push back against it in the West more and more,” he said.

In 2018, Brownback — who previously served as a U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1996–2011 and as the 46th governor of Kansas from 2011–2018 —  was sworn in as the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. He became the first Catholic to serve in the role.

During his tenure, he promoted religious freedom as a means of promoting individual and economic flourishing and reducing religion-related violence. He also highlighted China’s persecution of Uyghurs and strongly condemned the Xinjiang internment camps. At the 2020 Ministerial to Advance Freedom of Religion or Belief in Poland, Brownback also spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on religious freedom.

In the interview, Brownback pointed out that now with the use of social media, issues of religious persecution happening around the world have become more visible and need to continue to be brought to light.

“We’re not powerless now … we used to be just dependent upon the media to surface and to get these things out and for us in the United States; if it didn’t get on CBS, NBC, or ABC it didn’t happen, we didn’t know about it,” he explained. “That’s not the case now. You’ve got all these social media outlets that are out there … and you can put it out there and you need to get it out there.”

Brownback also encouraged individuals to not only share content about the issues taking place but also to include ways that individuals can help. He said he thinks many might be surprised to see how much people actually care about these issues once they find out they’re happening.

“You’re seeing more support for religious freedom in the United States and other places and a lot of it has been a long-term awareness building. These things are going on and then as people look at them and say, ‘Is that really happening?’ you say, ‘Yes, that’s really happening.’”

He added: “Changes rarely happen until people actually have to smell and feel something and see that something actually is going on here that’s wrong.” 

Psychologist Greg Bottaro, who once discerned a religious vcocation with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, founded the Integrated Daily Dialogic Mentorship program to give a new take on traditional therapy. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Greg Bottaro

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

After years of therapy with certain patients, Catholic psychologist Greg Bottaro felt “stuck.” 

“I had poured myself into them for seven or eight years, but despite all that effort, we weren’t reaching real breakthroughs,” Bottaro explained. “Deep down, I knew there had to be a better way.”

During a subsequent sabbatical, Bottaro had an idea: therapy inspired by Christ’s “model of accompaniment.” It wouldn’t be a week-to-week check-in, where Bottaro said clients often forgot the problems they meant to ask about, or run up against the session time constraints. 

Instead, Bottaro’s vision involved 24-hour access to a therapist — not through paragraph-long texts or late-night phone calls but through voice messages.

After testing the process out with some clients using a voice message app, Bottaro found that “within weeks, we started seeing breakthroughs.” So he launched a program called Integrated Daily Dialogic Mentorship to provide a new take on traditional therapy. 

“This is how Jesus actually accompanied people,” Bottaro explained. “He walked with his disciples daily, immersed in their lives and available.”

Mental health and Catholicism 

As a psychologist himself, Bottaro sees an opportunity to bring the Catholic understanding of the human person into the realm of mental health. 

“The mental health space is crying out for a deeper vision of the human person — and Catholics are uniquely positioned to offer it,” he said. 

“We have a tradition that sees every person as made in the image of God, created with reason, will, emotion, and the capacity for communion,” he continued.

He noted that the field of psychology “often reduces people to diagnoses or data.” In this atmosphere, Catholic anthropology is “desperately needed.” 

Bottaro sees a deep connection between Catholicism and mental health. 

Catholics are “called to love,” Bottaro said simply. “Love means presence. It means walking with people in their pain, not from a place of superiority but from solidarity,” he said.

Mentorship is only possible with this “accompaniment.”

Bottaro said he hopes the app “draws people into deeper connection with God, with others, and with themselves.”

“My hope for this app — and this movement — is that it becomes a bridge,” he said. “A bridge between faith and psychology. Between suffering and healing. Between isolation and relationship.”

“I hope it raises the standard — not just for mental health care but for what it means to truly care for the human person,” he added.

Inspiration from Francsican friars

Bottaro spent four years discerning with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. He credits the experience for giving him the strength to launch the program.

Living with the friars trained Bottaro in “daily practice of trustful surrender to divine providence,” he said.

“There is no food unless God provides it through the generosity of another person. That’s hard,” Bottaro said.

The friars take a vow of poverty and work closely with the impoverished and the homeless of New York City. Living with them helped Bottaro “to leap with a faith that all things work for the good of those who love the Lord.”

“There is no way I would have taken the leap and launched a whole new method of accompaniment without that trust,” he said. 

The Integrated Daily Dialogic Mentorship program is more than just 24-hour access to a therapist. Therapists are formed and trained through Bottaro’s mentorship program, which has roots in his own “deeply ingrained” Franciscan spirituality.

Central to that worldview is “reverence for the individual human person and a love for the suffering soul,” Bottaro said. 

Most of all, Bottaro credits the “life, teaching, and friendship” of the late Father Benedict Groeschel, the Franciscan friar who mentored him.

As part of the certification process, soon-to-be mentors read Groeschel’s book “Spiritual Passages.”

“My students get to read his brilliant way of communicating the integration of spirituality and psychology, its importance, and how it can lead to human flourishing,” Bottaro said.

Centered on relationship 

With the rising use of AI chatbots for everything from grocery lists to therapy, Bottaro said it’s important to remain centered on “human connection.” 

Many are turning to AI chatbots when they need help, using it as a journal or treating it like a therapist. But Bottaro noted that AI lacks the essential human element of relationship.  

“AI can simulate answers — it can’t simulate relationship,” Bottaro said. “It can’t know you, hear the inflection in your voice, or pray with you. It can’t love.” 

Through the app, Bottaro hopes to provide that element of relationship.

“It’s a community of people who are formed together, who grow together, and who are invited to heal together,” Bottaro said.

“Everything we do is about building real human connection — rooted in faith, formed by truth, and carried out through relationships,” he added.  

Bottaro’s ministry, CatholicPsych Institute, will host its second annual conference this month, gathering together spirituality and mental health experts to discuss a Catholic response to the mental health crisis. Keynote talks will be led by various experts, including Francsican Friar of the Renewal Father Columba Jordan, at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, from June 20–22. 

“In a world increasingly tempted to turn to algorithms for meaning and direction, we are trying to offer something radically countercultural,” Bottaro said. “Real people, trained and formed in the truth about the human person, who show up to walk with you toward healing, growth, and purpose.”

Seven Dominican brothers were ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Anthony Fisher, OP, who leads the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia. The newest Dominican priests are Louis Mary Bethea, Gregory Marie Santy, Bertrand Marie Hebert, Basil Mary Burroughs, Titus Mary Sanchez, Nicodemus Maria Thomas, and Linus Mary Martz, pictured here with the archbishop at their ordination at the the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2025. / Credit: Jeffrey Bruno

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.