Father Mike Schmitz and Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker at the Courage Under Fire Gala held in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 23, 2025. / Credit: EWTN Screenshot/Francesca Fenton/CNA

Nashville, Tenn., May 29, 2025 / 14:12 pm (CNA).

Catholic home schooling families from across the country joined popular Catholic speakers in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 23 for an evening of camaraderie supporting Regina Caeli Academy, an accredited pre-K–12 classical home school hybrid academy founded in 2003. 

The Courage Under Fire Gala featured popular priest and podcaster Father Mike Schmitz, Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker, political commentators and media hosts Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, actor Kirk Cameron, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.  

Regina Caeli Academy now has 28 centers in 17 states and offers home-schooled students the ability to attend in-person classes two days a week. The academy prides itself on its classical curriculum.

Butker joined the academy’s board of directors two years ago and said that before joining he was unaware of the program but now calls it “a beautiful model.”

“I didn’t know there was a hybrid model that home-schoolers could be a part of and they can have a community and be able to grow in the Catholic faith,” he told CNA in an interview on the red carpet at the gala.

“It’s just a beautiful model and I really do believe that if more children are made aware of Regina Caeli and more parents are empowered to be the primary educators so much so that they become the actual main educators and do that through home schooling — I think we will see a big change in our society for the better,” he added. 

Catholic couple Dina and Tony Heller have four children who attend the Regina Caeli Academy and will be entering their third year in the program this fall. The Hellers told CNA that they value the ability for their children to still have the “school experience” by attending class twice a week; however, they remain their primary educators at home. 

“The community, the support, the people … it really makes it such a special experience for our kids,” Tony Heller said. “It’s just so unique and so different compared to just traditional home schooling or traditional primary education.”

The couple added that the traditional Catholic values of the program greatly impacted their decision to enroll their children in the program as well as the realization that they are “a major driver in [their children’s] education,” he said. 

At the gala, Butker addressed the attendees on the topic of parents as the primary educators for their children. He encouraged parents to “make sure that they are taking ownership of laying that foundation for their child.”

“I think education starts in the home — whether you send them to a parochial school or traditional school, a public school or home school — regardless the schooling of the child begins in the home,” he said, adding: “I think we can shape society by shaping our children, one child at a time, one family at a time.”

Schmitz, who was also a featured speaker at the event, also offered parents advice to consider when thinking about their children’s education. The popular Catholic priest and podcaster gave the example of his own college experience. He shared that while it was a good school with good people, and it was Catholic, he thought that he could take in whatever they were teaching “in an unguarded way,” he told CNA.

“I didn’t realize that no, you have to be on your guard in some ways in some places,” he explained. “I think public schools are very similar. I think sometimes Catholic schools can be very similar as well where you can’t necessarily just assume the goodwill — not that people [have] evil intent — but also the fact that we don’t all have the same perspective or all the same way of looking at the world.”

He added: “I think that when parents are aware that we have well-intentioned people in a lot of different environments who aren’t necessarily advocates of truth as we understand it, objective truth, then a lot of bad ideas can get in and infect our minds and hearts. And so even to be aware of that goes a long way.”

In 2024, a report from the Johns Hopkins School of Education Homeschool Research Lab found an increasing number of students being home-schooled in the United States. Butker and Schmitz offered their perspectives as to why they believe society is seeing this trend. 

“I think really from COVID, I think people started to ask questions about all of the things that they are told,” Butker said. “And I think people are questioning like, ‘Yes, I’m told this. I’m told to do that. But do I feel comfortable doing that? Does that pass the gut test?’”

“I think a lot of people have looked at home schooling in the past and thought, ‘Wow, that’s weird. That’s different. I would never do that,’” he added. “But when you start thinking about parents as the primary educators and being able to really pour into your children and lay that foundation for them, it really becomes this attractive model that I think more people are looking into and they’re taking ownership of laying that foundation for their children.”

“I think it’s a beautiful thing and if we can get more parents that are taking pride in forming their children, educating them, I think we’re going to have a better society, we’re going to have better children, and ideally more virtuous and stronger soldiers for Christ.”

Schmitz pointed out that what was once a “nice alternative” has become “almost a necessity.”

“If I’m actually going to keep my child in a place rooted in truth and rooted in Christ then in some ways — and I don’t want to be overdramatic about this — but in some ways, I can be kind of feeding them to the wolves if I send them out in a way that’s unguarded,” Schmitz said.  

“Now, again, there’s plenty of well-intentioned and good people in public education as well, but at the same time I can’t count on everyone being in that place. So I think parents are more aware than ever that this alternative option is going to be more than just an option but maybe even essential.”

Through the fundraising done at the Courage Under Fire Gala, Regina Caeli Academy is able to expand its mission and bring its curriculum to more students across the country. Its centers can currently be found in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.

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CNA Staff, May 29, 2025 / 13:42 pm (CNA).

The Catholic bishops of Washington state filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a new law that requires priests to report child abuse learned during the sacrament of confession or face jail time and fines. 

The suit, filed by the Archdiocese of Seattle and the dioceses of Spokane and Yakima, argues that the law violates the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment by infringing on the sacred seal of confession. The suit also claims the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as well as the Washington Constitution.

Signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson on May 2, the law goes into effect July 27 and adds clergy to Washington’s list of mandatory reporters for child abuse but explicitly denies them the “privileged communication” exemption granted to other professionals, such as nurses and therapists. 

Priests who fail to report abuse learned in confession could face up to 364 days in jail and a $5,000 fine. Ferguson, a Catholic, defended the measure earlier this month, saying he is “very familiar” with confession but deemed the law “important legislation” to protect children.

In the lawsuit, filed in federal district court, the bishops emphasize the Catholic Church’s commitment to child protection while defending the inviolability of the confessional seal. 

“Consistent with the Roman Catholic Church’s efforts to eradicate the societal scourge of child abuse, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle and the dioceses of Yakima and Spokane have each adopted and implemented within their respective dioceses policies that go further in the protection of children than the current requirements of Washington law on reporting child abuse and neglect,” the lawsuit states. 

It notes that these policies mandate reporting suspected abuse by Church personnel, including clergy, except when information is learned solely in confession, which is protected by “more than 2,000 years of Church doctrine.”

Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly in a statement earlier this month vowed that clergy would not break the seal of confession, even if it meant jail time. “I want to assure you that your shepherds, bishops and priests, are committed to keeping the seal of confession — even to the point of going to jail,” Daly said in his message to the faithful. “The sacrament of penance is sacred and will remain that way in the Diocese of Spokane.”

Seattle Archbishop Paul D. Etienne echoed this stance, citing canon law, which forbids priests from betraying a penitent’s confession under penalty of excommunication. Etienne referenced St. Peter’s words in Acts 5:29 — “We must obey God rather than men” — to underscore the Church’s position.

The Washington State Catholic Conference affirmed its commitment to child safety while defending the sanctity of confession, urging Catholics to trust that “their confessions remain sacred, secure, confidential, and protected by the law of the Church.”

The U.S. Department of Justice, under President Donald Trump, launched an investigation into the law on May 6, calling it an “anti-Catholic” measure. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon described it as a “legislative attack on the Catholic Church and its sacrament of confession,” arguing it singles out clergy by denying them privileges afforded to other professionals.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the nonprofit First Liberty Institute, and the WilmerHale law firm are representing the Washington bishops.

As of the time of publication Ferguson’s office had not responded to CNA’s request for comment.

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CNA Staff, May 29, 2025 / 13:12 pm (CNA).

A California consulting firm that handles data of some clergy abuse cases says it paid hackers a ransom to delete data involving abuse survivors after a security breach earlier this year. 

The Emeryville, California-based Berkeley Research Group (BRG) offers corporate finance and economic consulting, including to Catholic dioceses in bankruptcy proceedings. In March the company suffered an incursion that exposed data of Catholic clergy abuse survivors in nearly a dozen bankruptcy lawsuits. 

Regulators were only informed of the breach at the end of April. The U.S. government earlier this month demanded the company provide information on each affected case as well as clarify why the company “delayed two months” before notifying trustees and whether or not the company has contacted federal law enforcement over the breach. 

In a letter last week, attorneys representing the Berkeley group responded to the government’s query, stipulating that the company “takes this matter very seriously” and that its response “has been robust and remains ongoing.”

Among other disclosures in the letter, the attorneys said that after the hacking incursion BRG “reached a settlement with the threat actor after careful consideration and with a primary focus on protecting the subjects of any implicated data.” 

The firm “received a destruction log and a representation by the threat actor that any data exfiltrated during the incident was deleted and will not be disclosed,” the letter states. 

The company said it has further utilized “experts” to monitor the internet, including the “dark web,” in order to “detect the dissemination of impacted data.” 

“Those experts have not identified any information suggesting that the threat actor has breached its representation,” the letter says. 

The company said there was no indication that clergy abuse victims were specifically targeted by the hacker. 

“The incident affected data across BRG, including many clients and data having nothing to do with the subject cases, or any bankruptcy matter,” the letter states. 

Addressing the delay between the discovery of the data breach and the notification of affected clients, the letter states that there were “numerous actions required before BRG could fully define the extent of the incident and understand its impact,” including a cataloging of the data stolen by the hackers. 

Among the bankruptcy cases affected by the data breach include those of the archdioceses of Baltimore and New Orleans as well as the dioceses of Albany and Rochester, among others.

The company is also handling cases involving the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, the Diocese of Wilmington, the Diocese of Camden, and several others, though it said in its letter this month that based on its review, “no data was exfiltrated [in those cases] that would warrant disclosure.”

The Berkeley group “does not intend to seek recovery of costs of the incident investigation or ransom payment” from its clients, the letter states.

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CNA Staff, May 29, 2025 / 12:42 pm (CNA).

A leaked draft from Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Michael Martin, OFM Conv, shows the prelate’s far-reaching and highly detailed intent to crack down on what he describes as “older liturgical practices” in order to bring about “a more uniform celebration of the Mass” in the diocese. 

The lengthy letter was first published by the blog Rorate Caeli; officials with the diocese subsequently confirmed the authenticity of the letter to the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner.

The letter, which references Pope Francis in the present tense, appears to have been written prior to the late pontiff’s death last month. 

Its leak, meanwhile, comes after the Charlotte Diocese announced that it would significantly restrict the practice of the Traditional Latin Mass, limiting it to a single chapel in what Martin said was a bid to “promote the concord and unity of the Church.”

Regulations on altar candles, women’s veils, and more

The document details an extensive list of behaviors and practices that Martin said would be tightly regulated or else abolished going forward in an effort at “purifying and unifying the celebration of the Mass.”

Among the directives: Celebrants are to place candles “arranged around the altar” during Mass “since placing them on the altar will always obstruct the vision of the faithful.”

As well, priests are directed to not offer “vesting or devesting prayers” either before or after Mass, as there is “no option given in the current liturgical books” for such practices. Rather, “prayerful preparation before Mass and thanksgiving after Mass is to take place in some other way.”

Women who choose to wear veils during Mass “are not to do so when they are assisting in any official capacity,” such as when lectoring or cantoring, the document states. 

Parishes will be forbidden from using bells to signal the start of Mass, the directives say; rather, a “verbal welcome” by the lector “followed by an indication of the hymn to be sung and an invitation to stand” should be normative at all Masses. 

At times the document seems to run afoul of other, authoritative Church directives. Martin at one point writes that the Church “does not … call for the Latin language to be used widely in the liturgy,” and that the ancient language “diminishes the role of the laity in the Mass.” Yet guidance from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explicitly states that “care should be taken to foster the role of Latin in the liturgy,” with the bishops even going so far to state that singers and choir directors should “deepen their familiarity with the Latin language.” 

The bishop’s order that candles are “always to be arranged around the altar,” meanwhile, explicitly cites the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM), but the relevant portion of that document does not forbid placing candles at the front of the altar. 

The intensively detailed list has drawn criticism and backlash from some commentators. Matthew Hazell, a British liturgy scholar, told the Register that Martin’s perspective was consistent with what Pope Benedict XVI famously described as a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” 

“Rather than allow the novus ordo to be celebrated in a manner in keeping with its own rubrics and with the Church’s tradition, Bishop Martin seems to see it as an entirely new creation that cannot even be seen to have anything in common with what came before,” Hazell told the Register.

Father Paul Hedman, a priest from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, similarly criticized the directives, writing on X that the document appears to be “banning things explicitly allowed in the GIRM and explicitly called for in Vatican II.”

“He denigrates the practice of using water and wine for purification of the vessels,” Hedman wrote, but the GIRM “explicitly allows this.” 

The bishop “presumes the ability to regulate the private prayer of the priest before Mass,” the priest wrote further. “This is simply ridiculous and — I do not use this [word] lightly — tyrannical.”

Though the guidelines have generated intense debate and criticism, the diocese told the Register that the document was “an early draft” and is still being debated by diocesan leadership. 

“It represented a starting point to update our liturgical norms and methods of catechesis for receiving the Eucharist,” a diocesan spokeswoman said, adding that the directives will be “thoroughly reviewed” prior to their official promulgation.

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Vatican City, May 29, 2025 / 12:12 pm (CNA).

The Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Caritas Internationalis joined forces this week to address the impact of an “unjust global system” that makes rich nations wealthier at the expense of poorer nations.

The two Catholic organizations hosted an online “town hall” event on Wednesday titled “Pilgrims of Hope: Jubilee Inspiration for Action on Debt, Climate, and Development” to raise awareness of Pope Francis’ and Pope Leo XIV’s visions for dismantling economic structures impoverishing both people and the planet.  

Guest panelist Sister Alessandra Smerilli, an economist and secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, insisted that the “commercial imbalance” between global north and global south nations is a two-pronged issue that should not be ignored by the Church and wider society.

“The poorest countries are paying twice,” Smerilli said at the May 28 webinar. “Through debt obligations and again through environmental degradation and loss of futures.”

“Addressing debt and sustainability is not just a financial issue [but] it has a moral, spiritual imperative,” she added. “The Catholic Church has long been engaged in this mission since the Jubilee Year of 2000 to today’s Jubilee of Hope.”

More than 200 people attended the virtual meeting, which brought together Vatican officials, international economic experts, religious leaders, and civil society representatives to discuss potential solutions to the debt crisis affecting 3.3 billion people living in developing nations.

During the hourlong online meeting, Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, said the Church’s holy year dedicated to hope is an opportunity for global solidarity to support the world’s poor.

“The concept of ‘jubilee’ is deeply rooted in Scripture as a time of restoration when debts are forgiven and relationships are reconciled,” Caccia explained. “In our time, this tradition speaks directly to the lived experience of millions across the globe.”

More than 50 nations are currently in or at high risk of bankruptcy and around half of the world’s population are living in countries where debt payments exceed spending on services such as health care and education, the Holy See representative highlighted during the Wednesday meeting.    

Describing the current debt crisis as a “profound failure of our global economic system,” Caccia expressed hope for a “renewed vision of multilateralism” at the United Nations’ upcoming fourth International Conference on Financing for Development to take place from June 30 to July 5 in Seville, Spain.

“No one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable,” Caccia said, quoting Pope Leo’s May 16 speech to diplomats accredited to the Holy See.

“Together we can turn the jubilee vision of hope into a tangible action, ensuring that no one is left behind,” he shared with webinar participants.

To open the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, Pope Francis made a plea in his papal bull Spes Non Confundit for more affluent nations to “forgive the debts of countries that will never be able to repay them.”

The Paderborn Cathedral in Germany / Credit: By A.Savin / Wikimedia Free Art License

CNA Deutsch, May 29, 2025 / 10:48 am (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Paderborn in western Germany expressed regret that the staging had “hurt religious feelings” and has since initiated internal reviews.

Cyclists during an earlier edition of the Giro d’Italia. / Credit: filip bossuyt, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Vatican City, May 29, 2025 / 10:09 am (CNA).

World-class cyclists will greet Pope Leo XIV and circle Vatican City on Sunday before embarking on the final lap of the Giro d’Italia, a multistage bicycle race that concludes in Rome.

The professional race, which started in Albania on May 9, is among the top three most important international multistage races in the world, together with the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana. It includes 21 stages, mostly in Italy.

The last stage of the 108th edition of the race will take place on June 1, starting from the Caracalla Baths, just south of the Coliseum, and proceeding toward the Vatican.

The 1.8-mile noncompetitive ride through the Vatican will start from the Petriano Square, just south of St. Peter’s Basilica inside the city state, where Pope Leo XIV will greet the athletes at the starting line.  

The path of the race will then follow the Vatican walls past the basilica to climb toward the Vatican Gardens and arrive at the heliport, the highest, westernmost point of the territory.

The racers will then pedal through a green space dotted with Marian images, including a replica of the Lourdes grotto and a mosaic of Our Lady of Good Counsel — a favorite devotion of Pope Leo. After descending toward the Vatican Museums and the “Square Garden,” the cyclists will double back along the rear of St. Peter’s Basilica to exit out a side gate on the south side of Vatican City.

The history of the cycling competition dates back to 1909. The annual race has taken place over three weeks between May and June every year since its beginning, with interruptions only for the First and Second World Wars. In 1946 and 2020 it was postponed but still took place.

Among the storied winners of the Giro d’Italia is Italian cycling champion Gino Bartali, a devout Catholic who helped save more than 800 Jews during World War II.

Bartali, who was declared “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in 2013, won the Giro d’Italia twice between 1936 and the outbreak of the Second World War. He was also a twice winner of the Tour de France.

Using cycling training as a cover, during World War II, the road cyclist transported photographs and forged documents between Florence and Franciscan convents in the surrounding regions where Jews were hidden. He also carried messages and documents for the Italian Resistance.

Bartali also assisted the Assisi Network, an underground network of Catholic clergy who hid Jews in convents and monasteries during World War II by taking Jews from the hiding places to the Swiss Alps in a wagon with a secret compartment attached to his bicycle. If he was stopped, he said that the wagon was for training.

The champion’s reputation and popularity as Italy’s top cyclist meant that he was largely left alone by the Fascist police and German troops, who did not want to risk upsetting his numerous fans by arresting him.

The cyclist used to say: “Good is done, but not said. And certain medals hang on the soul, not on the jacket.”

The husband and father of three children died in 2000 at the age of 85. His cause for beatification was opened in 2018.

Pope Leo XIV waves to pilgrims during his general audience on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 29, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

When the newly elected pontiff stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to address the Catholic faithful on May 8, his first decision as pope — to take the papal name Leo — signaled the direction he intends to take his papacy in handling certain social questions that need moral guidance, including artificial intelligence (AI).

In his first meeting with the College of Cardinals on May 10, the pope confirmed he took the name to honor Pope Leo XIII, who he said “addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution” with the encyclical Rerum Novarum at the tail end of the 1800s.

The encyclical, which set the foundations for Catholic social teaching, can help guide the Church as it seeks to offer moral insight on “developments in the field of artificial intelligence,” the new pontiff explained, adding that the rise of AI poses “new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.”

In the influential encyclical, Leo XIII eschewed both socialism and unrestrained business power, opting for cooperation between competing interests that is centered on the dignity of the human person. Pope Leo XIV’s comments suggest these same principles will shape the Holy Father’s approach to similar questions surrounding AI.

Foundations of Catholic social teaching

Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum on May 15, 1891, at a time when laborers were struggling with poor working conditions amid the industrial revolution and when Marxists were seizing on the discontent to promote radical changes to the social order.

Essentially, Leo XIII was “primarily concerned with laying out … a philosophical or theological anthropology” that focused on “the human person and the dignity of work,” according to Joseph Grabowski, the vice president of evangelization and mission at the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

In the encyclical, Leo XIII wrote that there is a need “in drawing the rich and the working class together,” which could be accomplished by “reminding each of its duties to the other” and “of the obligations of justice.”

These obligations to justice include a business owner’s duty to “respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character” and to never “misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain or to value them solely for their physical powers,” Leo XIII taught.

Grabowski told CNA that one of the problems of industrialization was that people were “kind of viewed mechanistically” when working in factories and that the pontiff was reminding factory owners that humans should not be treated as though they are simply “part of a machine.”

Leo XIII also defended the right to private property, which he wrote must “belong to a man in his capacity of head of family” and rebuked Marxist and socialist ideologies, which he thought would disrupt the social order by pitting humans against each other and turning private property into “the common property of all, to be administered by the state or by municipal bodies.”

“It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten,” Leo XIII wrote. “And similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life.”

Grabowski said if one were to summarize the encyclical in one line, it would be: “The economy is meant to serve man and not vice versa.”

“Economics and productive work and things like that are all really about man’s nature and serving the highest end of man,” he said, which is to “get to heaven” and live in a “harmonious community.”

Social teachings and AI

Pope Leo XIV’s predecessor Pope Francis already incorporated some elements of Catholic social teaching into the Church’s approach to questions surrounding AI.

In December 2023, Francis urged global leaders to regulate AI toward “the pursuit of peace and the common good” and emphasized that innovations must avoid a “technological dictatorship” and instead be used to serve “the cause of human fraternity and peace.”

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in January released a 30-page “note” that explained that AI lacks “the richness of corporeality, relationality, and the openness of the human heart” and that innovation should spur “a renewed appreciation of all that is human.”

Grabowski told CNA that, as AI continues to advance and the Church formalizes its teachings on the new technology, Leo XIV will be contending with some of the same issues that Leo XIII wrestled with at the turn of the 20th century.

“It’s still a question of: How do we use machinery within economic production in a way to serve man [that] does not subvert man to servitude of the machine?” he said.

AI is already being incorporated into many workplaces, such as the fields of marketing, banking, health care, and coding. The adoption of AI can sometimes improve accuracy and efficiency but is yielding concerns that the technology could replace humans in certain activities.

A May 25 New York Times article noted that some software developers at Amazon are complaining that their work is becoming routine and thoughtless as much of the coding has been automated with AI, while other workers are cheering the increased productivity.

Alternatively, in health care, an October 2024 Forbes article noted that AI is helping doctors find anomalies in patients and link symptoms together to boost the speed and accuracy of medical diagnoses.

Speaking to the AI assistance in the field of medicine, Grabowski said: “There can be benefits there” with the technology helping doctors “look through symptoms and maybe come up with things a human doctor isn’t going to catch onto.”

“We would have no objection to that, but like with everything, a balance is called for,” he said.

In line with some complaints reported at Amazon, Grabowski said “increasingly mechanized work” poses a concern, and with AI, there’s a lot of outsourcing of “the creative process” and “the idea generation process” with the ability of AI to produce art and novels, which he called “somewhat alarming.”

“There is a notion of a right to a meaningful employment for a person [in Leo XIII’s writings],” he added. “To be fulfilled.”

Another principle of Rerum Novarum that can help guide teaching on AI is the concern about a “respect over property, over productive property,” Grabowski noted, highlighting that one issue with AI is “respect for intellectual property rights.”

“There’s great concern over the fact that [AI] isn’t really producing anything itself, so therefore it’s recycling the words and images created by other real people and usually doing so without credit,” he said.

Grabowski said the pontiff’s choice to pick the name Leo is “exciting,” given that the world is in a “very critical point in economic history.” He expressed hope that people will be amenable to the expected moral guidance from the Holy See and referenced a line from G.K. Chesterton’s book “What’s Wrong With The World.” 

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting,” Chesterton wrote. “It has been found difficult and left untried.”

The case containing the body of St.Teresa of Ávila after an extraordinary public exposition in 2025. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Discalced Carmelites Iberian Province

Madrid, Spain, May 28, 2025 / 18:11 pm (CNA).

Approximately 93,000 faithful venerated the body of St. Teresa of Jesus (Ávila), which was publicly exhibited May 11–25 for the third time in four centuries.

Pope Leo XIV prays with pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for his general audience on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, May 28, 2025 / 15:41 pm (CNA).

At the end of Wednesday’s general audience, Pope Leo XIV turned his attention to the people suffering the devastating consequences of war, especially in Ukraine and Gaza.

During his greeting to the Italian-speaking faithful, the Holy Father lamented that the Ukrainian people are being hit by “serious new attacks” against civilians and infrastructure.

He also assured them of his closeness and prayers for all the victims, particularly the children and families of that nation, which has lived under the constant threat of bombs since the Russian army invaded in February 2022.

“I strongly reiterate my appeal to stop the war and to support every initiative of dialogue and peace,” he continued.

He also urged the faithful to join “in prayer for peace in Ukraine and wherever there is suffering because of war.”

Pope Leo XIV also referred to the Gaza Strip, where “the cry of mothers, of fathers who clutch the lifeless bodies of children … rises ever more intensely to heaven.” 

He also lamented those “who are continually forced to move in search of a little food and safer shelter from bombing.”

“I renew my appeal to the leaders: [implement a] ceasefire, release all hostages, fully respect humanitarian law. Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us!” the Holy Father exclaimed.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.