Posted on 11/19/2025 19:23 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
The Vatican did not release any details about what was discussed during the Nov. 19, 2025, meeting Pope Leo XIV held with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Office of Gov. JB Pritzker
CNA Newsroom, Nov 19, 2025 / 14:23 pm (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV met with the governor of his native Illinois, JB Pritzker, on Wednesday at the Vatican. The first lady of the U.S. state known as “The Land of Lincoln,” MK Pritzker, accompanied the governor during his visit.
“It was an honor for MK and me to meet with @Pontifex — a son of Illinois — to express the pride and reverence of the people of this great state,” Pritzker, who is Jewish, said following the meeting in a social media post.
A statement from the governor’s office said: “As the first American pope, a native Illinoisan, and an advocate for the poor and less fortunate, Pope Leo XIV serves as a true inspiration to people of all faiths. His message of hope, unity, compassion, and peace resonates in his home state of Illinois and across the globe.”
In an interview with NBC Chicago following his audience, Gov. Pritzker said that during the meeting he presented Pope Leo with an invitation to return to his hometown of Chicago. While the pope didn’t express a timetable for the prospective visit, Pritzker said the pope “was optimistic that he would be coming to Chicago.”
“We share a great love of the state and the city,” Pritzker said, adding that the pope “seems like he carries his heart on his sleeve and of course he carries Chicago on his sleeve, too.”
During the 40-minute meeting, which Pritzker said was arranged by Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, the governor said that he and the pontiff also discussed the immigration enforcement actions that have been taking place in the city, with Pritzker saying that he expressed his gratitude for the pope’s “moral leadership on this issue.”
Pritzker offered the pope several gifts including a framed piece of art made from an incarcerated woman at Logan Correctional Facility, the book “Lincoln: The Life and Legacy that Defined a Nation” by Ian Hunt, the book “A House That Made History: The Illinois Governor’s Mansion, Legacy of an Architectural Treasure” written by Illinois First Lady MK Pritzker, and a pack of Burning Bush Breweries’ “Da Pope” American mild ale.
The Vatican itself did not release any details about what was discussed during the visit. The Democratic governor currently has before his desk the decision on whether to either sign into law or veto assisted suicide legislation that was recently approved the Illinois Legislature.
The Illinois Catholic Conference is urging Gov. Pritzker to veto the bill. In an Oct. 31 statement, the conference said that “rather than signing this bill, we ask the governor to expand and improve on palliative care programs.” Such programs, the conference maintains, “represent a compassionate and morally acceptable alternative to assisted suicide.”
This story was updated on Nov. 19, 2025, at 4:30 p.m. ET with additional details of the conversation provided by Gov. Pritzker.
Posted on 11/19/2025 18:53 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Pope Leo XIV listens to reports from seven representatives around the world about the implementation of synodality on their continents during the jubilee of synodal teams and participatory bodies at the Vatican on Oct. 24, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media
Vatican City, Nov 19, 2025 / 13:53 pm (CNA).
Reports from the Synod on Synodality published this week reveal that expert groups continue to discuss women’s participation in the Church but not the specific question of a possible female diaconate, which has been turned over to a newly-revived 2020 commission.
The reports also show that a new group on the liturgy, requested by Pope Leo XIV, is not addressing the Vatican’s controversial restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass.
According to a report published Nov. 17, during the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024, Pope Francis “reactivated the work” of a papal commission on the female diaconate first created in 2020.
“All synodal contributions related to this subject have been forwarded to that commission for its consideration,” a one-page report from a study group on Church ministries says.
The interim report on the group’s progress, published ahead of full reports, which are due at the end of the year, was signed by Father Armando Matteo, secretary of the doctrinal section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is overseeing the highly-watched expert panel.
Matteo confirmed to CNA that the synod is no longer examining a possible female diaconate and the question is in the hands of the now-revived 2020 commission, whose members “respond to the Holy Father.”
In April 2020, Pope Francis created a 10-person theological commission to study the question of a female diaconate, the second commission he formed on the topic during his pontificate.
An original member of the 2020 commission, permanent deacon and seminary professor James Keating, told CNA that “the commission still exists ‘until Pope Leo discerns its dissolution.’”
The 12 synod study groups, 10 of which were formed by Pope Francis, were established to examine topics Francis took off the table for discussion at the second session of the Synod on Synodality, held in October 2024.
The committees, made up of cardinals, bishops, priests, and lay experts from both in and outside of the Vatican, have until Dec. 31 to submit the final results of their studies to Pope Leo.
The brief reports published this week give a few insights into what to expect in some of the final reports next year, should they be made public.
While not considering women deacons, the highly-watched study group on Church ministries is drafting a report on “the participation of women in the life and leadership of the Church,” including the personal accounts of women in Church leadership, theological perspectives on men’s and women’s roles, and the contributions of Pope Leo XIV and Pope Francis on the topic.
Another group, focused on Church law, is also discussing what roles women, and the laity in general, can hold in particular Church offices, including liturgical functions and in Church tribunals.
An update from an expert panel on “controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues” said its final document will clarify the current paradigm shift in the Church following the Second Vatican Council and the “emerging synodal experience.” It will include “procedural” proposals for the paradigm shift, such as how to conduct conversation in the Spirit, and how to manage cognitive, emotional, and cultural “resistance” to the shift.
The document will also address homosexuality, which the report says it prefers to call an “emerging issue” rather than controversial.
Another potentially fraught topic being examined by the study group on ecumenical practices is intercommunion, also known as Eucharistic hospitality — the idea to allow the reception of holy Communion to people in non-Catholic Christian denominations. The topic is tied to ecumenism, the relationship between Christian churches, and is especially relevant in couples and families with members of both Catholic and non-Catholic Christian faiths.
The study group on ecumenism said its mandate includes “deepening the question of Eucharistic hospitality from theological, canonical, and pastoral perspectives.”
A new group on liturgy in synodal perspective, requested by Pope Leo, gave insight into what it says are the first questions it intends to address, which focus on how to make the liturgy more synodal and the Mass “better configured as the source and summit of the synodal missionary life of the Church.”
Other questions the group intends to study is the increased participation of all baptized Catholics in the liturgy, liturgical formation, “the role of women in the history of salvation,” the reinterpretation of liturgical preaching in a synodal perspective, and a “healthy decentralization of liturgical authority … also with a view to the inculturation of the rites.”
The report said other “relevant issues” may be added later. The study group is overseen by the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
Victoria Cardiel, Vatican reporter for ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, contributed to this report.
Posted on 11/19/2025 18:23 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Pope Leo XIV answers questions from journalists as he leaves the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. / Credit: Video capture/Vatican Media
ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 19, 2025 / 13:23 pm (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV told reporters he would love to travel and that his top destinations are the Marian shrines of Fátima in Portugal and Guadalupe in Mexico. He also said he would “of course” like to return to Peru as well as visit Argentina and Uruguay.
The pope shared his hopes during an impromptu press conference as he left the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo on Tuesday evening, Nov. 18.
When asked when he would return to Peru and Latin America, the Holy Father explained that in 2025, “during the jubilee year, we’re going ahead living each day with activities, and next year we will gradually begin planning.”
“I love to travel,” Leo XIV shared, according to Vatican News. “The problem is scheduling it with all the commitments,” he added.
The Jubilee Year of Hope began on Dec. 24, 2024, and will conclude on Jan. 6, 2026, with the closing of the Holy Door.
The first — and so far only — confirmed trip of Pope Leo XIV is to Turkey and Lebanon, Nov. 27–Dec. 2 of this year.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Posted on 11/19/2025 17:53 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Pope Leo XIV holds his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Nov. 19, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media
Vatican City, Nov 19, 2025 / 12:53 pm (CNA).
At his Nov. 19 general audience, Pope Leo XIV urged Catholics to “connect faith with reality,” saying that the death and resurrection of Christ form the foundation of an integral ecology and the Christian call to care for creation.
“The death and resurrection of Jesus, therefore, are the foundation of a spirituality of integral ecology, without which the words of faith remain unconnected to reality and the words of science remain outside the heart,” he said.
Continuing his catechesis series on the Resurrection and the challenges of the contemporary world, the pope rooted his reflection in the Gospel of John, which recounts that Mary Magdalene did not immediately recognize the risen Christ at the empty tomb, mistaking him for the gardener. That detail, he said, highlights the continuous “turning” of conversion.
“The fact that Mary turned that Easter morning is a sign of this: Only through conversion upon conversion do we pass from this valley of tears to the new Jerusalem,” he said.
Cultivating and caring for the garden, the pope added, is the original task brought to fulfillment by Jesus. “His last word on the cross — ‘It is finished’ — invites each one to rediscover that same task, our task.” If the human person is not a caretaker of the garden, he warned, “he becomes its destroyer,” citing Laudato Si’ on the need for a contemplative gaze upon creation.
The pope said Christian hope responds to the ecological and social challenges facing humanity, recognizing the Crucified One as the seed “placed in the garden” to rise and bear abundant fruit. Many people today, he observed, including young people, “have heard the cry of the poor and of the earth, allowing their hearts to be touched.”
“These challenges cannot be faced alone,” he said, adding that tears “are a gift of life when they purify our eyes and free our sight. Paradise is not lost, but found.”
During the same audience, Pope Leo issued a strong appeal for concrete Church-wide support for communities of contemplative life, calling their mission “silent, fruitful, and irreplaceable.”
He recalled that on Nov. 21, the memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Italy will celebrate “Pro Orantibus” Day dedicated to those who consecrate their lives to prayer.
He urged Catholics not to let contemplative men and women lack “the concrete solidarity and effective help of the ecclesial community to ensure the survival and continuity of their silent, fruitful, and irreplaceable apostolate.”
The pope also noted that World Fisheries Day will be celebrated Friday, entrusting all who work at sea to Mary: “May Mary, Star of the Sea, protect fishermen and their families.”
Looking to the future, he highlighted a Vatican event for children scheduled for Sept. 25–27, 2026, saying he looks forward to “the joy of meeting them.”
As he concluded the audience, the pope greeted young people, the sick, and newlyweds. He reminded the faithful that the Church will celebrate the solemnity of Christ the King this Sunday, urging newly married couples to place Christ “at the center of your matrimonial journey.”
This story was first published in two parts by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Posted on 11/19/2025 17:23 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
null / Credit: Joe Belanger/Shutterstock
CNA Staff, Nov 19, 2025 / 12:23 pm (CNA).
The Maine State Supreme Court is considering whether to give a mother the right to take her daughter to church amid a dispute between the mother and her daughter’s father.
Liberty Counsel, an Orlando, Florida-based legal group, said in a press release that the Portland District Court ruled it was “psychologically unsafe” for Emily Bickford to take her 12-year-old daughter to a Christian church called Calvary Chapel in the Portland area.
The girl’s father, Matthew Bradeen, had objected to his daughter’s being taken to the institution; in a broad order, the state district court had awarded him “the right to make final decisions regarding [the daughter’s] participation in other churches and religious organizations” as well.
The ruling “completely stripped” Bickford of the right to make decisions over her daughter’s religious upbringing, Liberty Counsel said in a filing with the state Supreme Court.
Bradeen is “demonstrably and openly hostile” to his daughter receiving instruction about the Bible, the filing said, and has evinced “wholesale objections to the Old Testament and the New Testament.”
Precedent elsewhere, the filing said, holds that the “religious beliefs of one parent cannot be the basis for preferring one parent over the other” in custody disputes.
News Center Maine reported that Bradeen was reportedly moved to seek the custody order when his daughter “started having severe panic attacks and [exhibiting] alarming psychological signs” after she began attending the church, including allegedly “leaving notes around the house that said ‘the rapture is coming.’”
Attorney Michelle King argued that precedent says courts “don’t have to wait for it to be so severe that a child suffers irreparable emotional harm” before issuing a custody order in such disputes.
Liberty Counsel, meanwhile, asked the state Supreme Court to reverse the lower court’s order.
The district court decision is “a direct infringement on [Bickford’s] right to direct the religious upbringing of her child,” the group said.
Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said the court order violates the First Amendment.
“The breadth of this court order is breathtaking because it even prohibits contact with the Bible, religious literature, or religious philosophy,” he alleged in the group’s press release. “The custody order cannot prohibit Bickford from taking her daughter to church. The implications of this order pose a serious threat to religious freedom.”
Bickford, meanwhile, told reporters after the state Supreme Court ruling that the dispute “affects not only our family but the families of all Christian children.”
Posted on 11/19/2025 16:15 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Vatican City, Nov 19, 2025 / 11:15 am (CNA).
Following the reaction to the new Vatican document Mater Populi Fidelis (“Mother of the Faithful People”), Father Maurizio Gronchi, a Christology expert and consultant to the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, warned that considering the Virgin Mary as “Co-Redemptrix” or “Mediatrix” distorts the Christian faith and leads to a superstitious view.
“It is superstition to think that the Virgin Mary has the role of holding back God’s wrath. Whoever thinks this way is not in accordance with the Gospel,” Gronchi told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.
The expert spoke about the new document this week alongside Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In the text, the Vatican urges the faithful against using the titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix” to refer to the Virgin Mary.
“To think that Mary has to mediate and convince God to be merciful undermines the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he explained.
The document has raised questions in some sectors of the Church, although it is not the first time the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has ruled out proclaiming this as dogma.
According to the Vatican doctrinal note also signed by Pope Leo XIV, St. John Paul II asked the then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 1996 to study whether it could be considered a truth of faith that the Virgin Mary is “co-redemptrix” and “mediatrix.”
“He asked Ratzinger for clarification on the matter. He had used this term from a spiritual and devotional perspective,” Gronchi explained.
But as soon as “Ratzinger said it was inappropriate, John Paul II never used it again,” Gronchi added. John Paul II did not use it in his 1987 encyclical Redemptoris Mater (“Mother of the Redeemer”), which deals precisely with the Virgin Mary and her role in the life of the Church and in the history of salvation.
Neither Pius XII, St. John XXIII, nor St. Paul VI ever used that expression, nor did the Second Vatican Council, said Gronchi, who noted that currently “it does not seem that new truths [about Mary] ought to be affirmed.”
According to the priest and academic, the Catholic Church has already dedicated all possible attention to the figure of the Virgin and the latest proclaimed dogmas are about her: the dogma of the Divine Motherhood, which affirms that Mary is the Mother of God (Theotokos) in 431; the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity in 649; the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854; and the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in 1950.
The drafting of the new document had a striking feature, according to Gronchi, who explained that the work of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has historically been “collegial.” For each topic studied, this Vatican department draws on the input of internal consultants and external experts, among other sources.
However, in the case of this doctrinal note on certain Marian titles, “no collaborating Mariologists could be found,” according to Gronchi.
The priest pointed out that neither those who teach at the Marianum Theological Faculty nor the members of the Pontifical International Marian Academy (PAMI by its Italian acronym) participated in the presentation of the document at the Jesuit Curia (administrative center), which in his opinion can be interpreted as a “silence” that “can be understood as dissent.”
The Christology expert said PAMI has a history of active participation in discussions regarding potential dogmatic definitions. He cited as an example the XII International Mariological Congress in Czestochowa in 1996, which emphasized that it was inappropriate to proceed with defining Mary as “mediatrix,” “co-redemptrix,” or “advocate.”
ACI Prensa reached out to PAMI, but it declined to comment.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Posted on 11/19/2025 14:45 PM (Catholic News Agency)
Pierre Louvrier (center) speaks during the “Schuman Plan 2.0 — Europe’s Role in a Fragmented World” debate at the European Parliament, Nov. 11, 2025. / Credit: Maria Grazia Ricciardi
EWTN News, Nov 19, 2025 / 09:45 am (CNA).
A peace plan inspired by Venerable Robert Schuman was proposed at the European Parliament, envisioning cooperation across the Northern Hemisphere.
Posted on 11/19/2025 14:00 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Archbishop Thibault Verny. / Credit: Florian Pépellin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Vatican City, Nov 19, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).
The challenge of addressing abuse within consecrated life — in all its dimensions: sexual, power, conscience, and also economic — was the focus of an international meeting organized by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors held at the Maffei Marescotti Palace in Rome.
Under the theme “Building Communities that Safeguard Dignity,” representatives of religious institutes from some 20 countries are gathering Nov. 17–19 to share experiences, examine structural shortcomings, and work on the preparation of the third annual report, which will involve 40 communities.
The commission’s president, Archbishop Thibault Verny, thanked the nearly 60 participants from various countries for their presence and emphasized that preventing abuse “is not a local task but a universal commitment of the Church.”
The third report on abuse, the archbishop clarified, “is not intended to add a burden” but rather to be “an opportunity” to promote “attention to the most vulnerable members” and strengthen “the quality of formation.” This journey “cannot be traveled alone,” Verny pointed out.
One of the most significant moments was the intervention of Sister Véronique Margron, president of the Conference of Religious Men and Women of France, who clearly outlined the initial steps for supporting a consecrated woman who reports abuse.
Her first recommendation was direct and unequivocal: “The first words must be: I believe you, you are not alone, I will help you and do everything necessary,” she stated, according to Vatican News.
“We must speak honestly; otherwise, it’s impossible to build dialogue and trust,” she added.
For the religious, reparations are a broad process that cannot be reduced to a mere procedure: They demand justice, support, and the genuine involvement of those who suffered violence. She therefore pointed out that the second step is “to work toward all forms of justice,” involving the victims at every stage, without “minimizing” the cases or diminishing responsibilities.
The meeting addressed head-on the panorama of abuse within religious life, including its less visible forms. In convents and monasteries, there have been not only cases of a sexual nature but also abuses of power and conscience, practices that can give rise to “conflicts, asymmetries in power, marginalization, and unbalanced relationships,” as Verny noted in his address.
Providing an analysis, Claretian Father Krzysztof Gierat, head of the office of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life, emphasized that “every measure taken for protection comes with a face, with a story that demands listening, truth, and care,” clarifying that “protection cannot be treated as an added technical element; it’s not a protocol appended to consecrated life.”
Gierat listed structural factors that foster abuse even in communities with seemingly exemplary regulations, such as the absence of a “healthy system” of relationships. A community, he noted, may have “impeccable protocols” but then ambiguous authorities, “informal” hierarchies based on geographic origin, aggressivity, unhealthy relationships, missed warning signs, and ignored conflicts emerge. “Even without malicious intent, all of this becomes fertile ground for abuse,” he warned.
“Protection begins with the quality of the environment we breathe,” the priest emphasized.
Gierat also addressed a particularly sensitive topic: the impact of the digital world. Consecrated life, he reminded everyone, can no longer be considered exempt from social media, chat rooms, or online exposure. The risks are numerous: public image, privacy, and digital grooming. “Protection isn’t just a matter of convent corridors but also of virtual spaces,” he pointed out.
And he pointed to a key aspect: the need for “comprehensive, spiritual, and psychological formation” for religious superiors. “A transparent, evangelical, and service-oriented authority is the first line of defense,” he said.
“Many abuses stem from authorities left to themselves and not adequately trained. And all abuse stems from a lack of communal discernment,” he added.
The meeting made it clear that the issue of abuse is not confined to church walls. For Stefano Mattei, policy director of Tutela Minorum (“Protection of Minors”), the goal is also to “drive change” in society: “It’s about putting the weight of the Church at the service of cultural change to protect children and the vulnerable,” he explained.
This commitment, he said, is possible thanks to the Church’s widespread presence, wealth of charisms, and its integration into very diverse contexts.
The discussions were complemented by international experiences. From Germany, Franciscan Andreas Murk, provincial of the order, presented particularly revealing figures: According to a 2019 survey, 1,412 people contacted the Conference of Superiors to declare: “I have been abused.”
Murk also detailed the work of the Independent Commission for Recognition, which manages compensation for victims of clerical abuse, with compensation of up to 20,000 euros ($23,160).
When asked about the risk of false accusations, he responded emphatically: “For decades, victims were ignored; now we must focus on them.”
In his province, he explained, “one or two accusations turned out to be unfounded; 40 others were not, and of those, only five asked for money. Not everyone comes for money; they just want recognition.”
However, he warned, even today “some communities refuse to confront the issue of abuse; they still lack the necessary sensitivity. Our duty is to be active in this area, even if it makes [people] uncomfortable.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Posted on 11/19/2025 14:00 PM (U.S. Catholic)
A Bible verse that lodged itself in my adolescent mind was Romans 9:13, a passage in which Paul references the book of Malachi: “As it is written, ‘I [God] have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.’ ” Although I was a cradle Catholic, Calvinist ideas such as predestination seeped into my understanding of Christianity. […]
The post Heed the parable of the talents and embrace your identity appeared first on U.S. Catholic.
Posted on 11/19/2025 13:00 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Ruth Pakaluk with her husband and five of their children. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Pakaluk family
National Catholic Register, Nov 19, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
To kids in the neighborhood east of Interstate 290 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Ruth Pakaluk was the mom who baked brownies and blondies for everyone after school and whose home was the starting point for games and fun.
“She was like the ‘block mom,’” her husband, Michael Pakaluk, an author and professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America, told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner.
To the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Ruth Pakaluk’s life merits further investigation to see whether someday the Church should declare her a saint.
The pro-life activist, Catholic convert, mother of seven, and Harvard graduate died of breast cancer in 1998 at 41. Now, the Diocese of Worcester, where she was living at the time of her death, has the approval of the Vatican’s saints’ dicastery to undertake a formal inquiry into her life, the next step along the path to a possible canonization.
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the dicastery, referred to Pakaluk as a “servant of God” in a letter to the diocese dated Sept. 29 authorizing the inquiry.
The dicastery’s “nihil obstat” (“nothing stands in the way”) means that supporters of her cause have established her “reputation for sanctity” and “the importance of the cause for the Church,” as set forth in the 1983 Vatican document Normae Servandae In Inquisitionibus Ab Episcopis Faciendis In Causis Sanctorum.
Canonization, in which the Church solemnly declares that a person is in heaven, is likely a long way off, if it happens, and would eventually require two miracles attributed to her intercession. The next step is for the U.S. bishops to vote on her cause. If they approve it, the formal diocesan inquiry can begin.
Ruth Van Kooy was born on March 19, 1957, in northern New Jersey and grew up there, mostly in Norwood, near the New York state line. Half Dutch, half Scottish, she attended a Presbyterian church as a child.
She went to Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, where she was, according to a website about her life, a straight-A student who played the oboe, violin, and bass drum. She also played field hockey, sang in regional choirs, and “and produced, directed, and acted in numerous plays and musicals,” the website says. She graduated in 1975.
She was an atheist (“or near to it,” her husband writes) and an enthusiastic supporter of legal abortion when she met Michael Pakaluk, a fellow sophomore at Harvard College, during the fall of 1976. He had been raised in a nominally Catholic home but also considered himself a nonbeliever.
Even so, both were committed to pursuing the truth, which led them eventually to Christianity.
They married the summer after their junior year, at a Presbyterian church. But by their last semester at Harvard, they had begun attending Mass at a Catholic church. Ruth entered the Church on Christmas Eve in 1980, while Michael went to confession and took up life as a Catholic again. A few years later, both became supernumeraries of Opus Dei.
In 1982, while Michael was studying for a doctorate in philosophy at Harvard, Ruth — by then a young mom with a baby boy — helped start a pro-life group at Harvard. She joined the board of directors of Massachusetts Citizens for Life in 1984, and she eventually served as its president from 1987 to 1991.
Admirers remember her as an effective debater on college campuses, giving what Boston College philosophy professor and Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft called, in his introduction to a 2011 book of her letters that her husband edited called “The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God,” “the most persuasive, irresistible, and winsome pro-life talks I have ever heard.”
During the early 1990s, Ruth organized opposition to a Planned Parenthood sex-education curriculum proposed for Worcester public schools, which helped persuade the Worcester School Committee, the locally elected board that oversees the school district, to reject the curriculum. In 1993, a year after the committee vote, she also recruited a like-minded mom to run for a school committee and managed her successful campaign.
Dwight Duncan, a friend of the family who is the postulator of her cause, responsible for conducting what the Vatican calls “thorough investigations” into her life, said Ruth rarely put herself forward.
“One of the things about Ruth that strikes me in retrospect is that she was kind of low-key. She wasn’t assertive in personal dealings. She wasn’t showy or aggressive. She wasn’t flashy,” Duncan said. “But if she was front and center, like a debate or a speech or something, she was a strong, powerful woman.”
In 1988, the couple and their then-four children moved from Cambridge to Worcester, about 45 miles to the west, where Michael had gotten a job teaching at Clark University. They lived “in a poor neighborhood in a home with 40-year-old carpets and no hot running water,” as Michael describes it in an online timeline of Ruth’s life.
Max Pakaluk, her second child, now 42, told the Register that his family’s house was a magnet for children in the neighborhood, many of them living in single-mother homes, who were drawn by the baked goods Ruth made and liberally distributed.
Michael Pakaluk said Ruth was disturbed by the learning gap she saw developing between her own children, who read often, and the neighborhood children, who didn’t, so she required kids who visited the home to read a book before they could go outside.
In summertime, she’d cram 10 or so kids into an Oldsmobile station wagon for the less-than-a-mile trip to Bell Pond in Worcester, where the kids would play, Max recalled.
Grace Cheffers, a friend who met Ruth at a pro-life parish event during the early 1990s, said Ruth was approachable and friendly but also creative in figuring out ways young moms and their families could meet.
Ruth organized gatherings of mothers and children at Notre Dame Cemetery in Worcester, where the families would say the rosary and the kids would run around while the moms went on walks and talked.
Cheffers recalled that the prevailing culture at the time suggested that women should be out working and having a career rather than just being a stay-at-home mom, but Ruth dismissed such ideas.
“Even though she was very well-educated and highly intelligent, she found joy in staying at home and taking care of her kids. And she was very unapologetic about it,” Cheffers said.
Cheffers, who has 11 children, said she learned parenting tips from Ruth.
“She was never scandalized by anything her children did. She was clear-eyed about the human condition,” Cheffers said. “Kids can do all sorts of things, and it doesn’t help to act shocked and upset. That just makes it worse for them.”
Cheffers said she also learned from Ruth how to articulate better why she did what she did.
“She was a deep thinker. She chose her words carefully. She was a natural teacher. She had great formation, and she really knew her faith,” Cheffers said.
One example: When Cheffers once asked Ruth why she went to daily Mass, Ruth immediately offered two reasons: one personal, related to the crib death of her infant son Thomas in November 1989, and one universal.
“She told me that going to Mass and receiving daily Communion was the closest she could be to Thomas while she was still on this earth,” Cheffers said.
The second reason: “She said that the two most important events in human history — the Incarnation and redemption — occur at every Mass. Why would you want to be anywhere else?”
Ruth often went to the 12:10 p.m. daily Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul, after which she would stay up to an hour praying, said Bishop Richard Reidy, who now leads the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, but at the time was rector of the Worcester cathedral and the Pakaluk family’s pastor.
Ruth served as director of religious education for the cathedral parish. While Catholic religious education at the time was notoriously light on substance, Ruth made sure the kids learned doctrine, and she made it fun. She developed what she called “Quiz Game,” a parish-wide competition for kids in the program that eventually drew students from outside the parish.
“She ran a dynamic program, emphasizing the substance of the faith and the joy of living it,” Reidy said.
She led parish trips on the cheap for up to 30 kids to New York City and New Hampshire, among other places, combining culture, hiking, and religion.
Max Pakaluk described his mother as “someone who wanted to do things.”
“She didn’t have a lot of tolerance for laziness. I don’t think she understood laziness. We’re all here for so much time. There’s so many good things you could be doing. Why would you be wasting time?” Max said. “She was always trying to get people to do things.”
Admirers of Ruth say that while many of her pursuits might seem ordinary — wife, mother, volunteer — she lived them in an extraordinary way.
Saints not killed for the faith as martyrs are those who “give outstanding testimony to the kingdom of heaven … by the heroic practice of virtues,” according to St. John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister.
So what were Ruth Pakaluk’s virtues?
Friends and family describe, among other things, an intense prayer life, trust in God through difficulties, interest in the welfare of others, gratitude, and a refusal to complain about her troubles.
In October 1991, Ruth was diagnosed with breast cancer, which eventually spread to other parts of her body. She lived with it about seven more years.
But her son Max said he doesn’t remember life changing much until his mother became bedridden not long before she died.
“Mostly I think she tried not to make a big deal about it. She just tried to act like there was nothing wrong,” Max said.
Along with her kids, she climbed Mount Washington, the steep, 6,000-foot-plus highest peak in New England notorious for its sudden weather changes, with a metal rod in her leg.
“But almost as remarkable as that, about two months before she died, she climbed down Mount Washington,” Michael Pakaluk said by text. “She took the shuttle up, but she climbed down via the Lion Head Trail. This is a very rugged, difficult trail. When I climbed it two years ago, I was scratching my head and wondering how she ever did it.”
She continued making trips with the family to the March for Life in Washington, D.C., in January, including one in 1998, the year she died, not long after a round of chemotherapy.
Fran Hogan, now 79, a commercial real estate lawyer and former president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, walked with Ruth during the march that year. Hogan, who was carrying a heavy pocketbook, didn’t know about Ruth’s debilitating treatment.
“It was over my left shoulder. And I complained bitterly about how heavy that pocketbook was,” Hogan said. “Ruth just laughed. She never complained. Never said a word.”
“And we got to the Supreme Court building and she collapsed.”
Ruth was hospitalized.
People who knew her say Ruth accepted her suffering without questioning it.
“When she knew she had terminal cancer, it’s amazing how calmly they took all of that, and I guess that’s the faith behind it,” said her mother-in-law, Valerie Pakaluk, 92, who is planning to serve as secretary-treasurer of the nonprofit foundation that will direct Ruth’s cause of canonization.
“I think there’s no question that the way she handled her illness was extremely heroic,” her son Max said.
Her attitude, Max said, can be summed up this way: “I am not going to give any indications that I’m sick. I am not going to be the center of attention here. I am not going to be causing difficulties here. Most of all, I am not going to be the reason my kids don’t have a normal life.”
She was unsentimental about her status, realizing that with six children, the youngest of whom was 5 years old, her husband would soon need help.
About a month before she died — on Sept. 23, 1998 — Ruth encouraged her husband Michael to remarry after she departed, and she even focused on a likely candidate — “calmly suggesting,” as The Catholic Free Press of the Diocese of Worcester put it in May 2019, that Harvard graduate student Catherine Hardy, whose parents were family friends — and whose middle name is Ruth — “might be the one to raise her children.”
Here’s how Michael describes it: “She took a deep breath and said, ‘I have for a long time thought that Catherine Hardy would make a good wife for you, and now I see that she has moved to Cambridge.’”
Catherine Pakaluk, as she is now known, married Michael in August 1999. She is an economist and associate professor at The Catholic University of America, where Michael, 67, is a full professor of political economy. Catherine and Michael, an occasional contributor to the Register, now have eight children of their own.
Michael and Ruth currently have 32 grandchildren.
So was Ruth Pakaluk a saint?
Supporters of her cause who spoke to the Register were careful to say that they don’t want to declare her one before the Church decides through its formal process.
But they drop hints.
At her wake, her husband took a box of funeral prayer cards for Ruth and touched them to her body — which, in the event she is canonized, would make the prayer cards third-class relics.
“I always had this conviction — it’s strange — that she would be a canonized saint,” Michael Pakaluk, who said he is cooperating with Ruth’s cause but purposely not directing it, told the Register. “Obviously you can’t presume the judgment of the Church.”
Reidy also stopped short of calling her a saint without denying that she might be.
“I’m very delighted at the recent steps that have gone on, and we trust in Holy Mother Church,” Reidy said. “But she’s a great example, somebody to be held up.”
“If Ruth Pakaluk isn’t in heaven,” he said, “I am a little discouraged for the prospects of the likes of me.”
Twenty-seven years after Ruth’s funeral Mass, which Reidy celebrated before about 1,000 people, he recited from memory during a recent interview with the Register his description of her during his sermon: “To give life and to defend it. To have faith and to spread it. To be gifted, and to freely give of those gifts.”
This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.