We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

Feast date: Jun 15

June 15 is the feast day of St. Germaine Cousin, a simple and pious young girl who lived in Pibrac, France in the late 1500s. Germaine was born in 1579 to poor parents. Her father was a farmer, and her mother died when she was still an infant. She was born with a deformed right arm and hand, as well as the disease of scrofula, a tubercular condition.

Her father remarried soon after the death of her mother, but his new wife was filled with disgust by Germaine's condition. She tormented and neglected Germaine, and taught her siblings to do so as well.

Starving and sick, Germaine was eventually kicked out of the house and forced to sleep under the stairway in the barn, on a pile of leaves and twigs, because of her stepmother’s dislike of her and disgust of her condition. She tended to the family's flock of sheep everyday.

Despite her hardships, she lived each day full of thanksgiving and joy, and spent much of her time praying the Rosary and teaching the village children about the love of God. She was barely fed and had an emaciated figure, yet despite this she shared the little bread that she had with the poor of the village.

From her simple faith grew a deep holiness and profound trust in God. She went to Mass everyday, leaving her sheep in the care of her guardian angel, who never failed her. Germaine’s deep piety was looked upon with ridicule by the villagers, but not by the children, who were drawn to her holiness.

God protected Germaine and showered his favor upon her. It was reported that on days when the river was high, the waters would part so that she could pass through them on her way to Mass. One day in winter, when she was being chased by her stepmother who accused her of stealing bread, she opened her apron and fresh summer flowers fell out. She offered the flowers to her stepmother as a sign of forgiveness.

Eventually, the adults of the village began to realize the special holiness of this poor, crippled shepherdess. Germaine's parents eventually offered her a place back in their house, but she chose to remain in her humble place outside.

Just as the villagers were realizing the beauty of her life, God called her to Himself. Her father found her body on her bed of leaves one morning in her 22nd year of life.

Forty-three years later, when a relative of hers was being buried, Germaine’s casket was opened and her body was found incorrupt. People in the surrounding area began praying for her intercession and obtaining miraculous cures for illnesses.

St. Germaine was canonized by Pope Pius IX in 1867 and inscribed into the canon of virgins.

Vatican City, Jun 15, 2025 / 11:46 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV presided over the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday and invited Catholics to enter the “dynamism of God’s inner life” and be open to encounter with others.

Celebrating the solemnity, which coincided with the June 14–15 Jubilee of Sport, in the Vatican on the morning of June 15, the Holy Father asked pilgrims who belong to sports teams and associations to glorify God through their daily training.

“Dear athletes, the Church entrusts you with a beautiful mission: to reflect in all your activities the love of the Triune God, for your own good and for that of your brothers and sisters,” the Holy Father said in his Sunday homily.  

Though the “juxtaposition” of celebrating the Trinity and sport may seem “somewhat unusual” at first, Leo said the relationship between the two reveals God’s infinite beauty is reflected in “every good and worthwhile human activity.”

“For God is not immobile and closed in on himself, but activity, communion, a dynamic relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which opens up to humanity and to the world,” he said. 

“Sport can thus help us to encounter the Triune God, because it challenges us to relate to others and with others, not only outwardly but also, and above all, interiorly,” he explained.

Sport as a school of virtue, encounter, and sanctity

According to the Holy Father, in a society marked by solitude, digital communications, and competition, sports are “a precious means for training in human and Christian virtues.”

He said families, communities, schools, and workplaces can be places where genuine encounters among people can take place. 

“Where radical individualism has shifted the emphasis from ‘us’ to ‘me,’ resulting in a deficit of real concern for others, sport — especially team sports — teaches the value of cooperating, working together, and sharing,” Leo said. 

“These, as we said, are at the very heart of God’s own life,” he added. 

Comparing healthy and unhealthy attitudes toward sport, the Holy Father emphasized that sport is more than an “empty competition of inflated egos” and is also a means of sanctification and evangelization. 

“St. John Paul II hit the mark when he said that Jesus is ‘the true athlete of God’ because he defeated the world not by strength but by the fidelity of love,” he said.

“It is no coincidence that sport has played a significant role in the lives of many saints in our day,” he continued. 

Reflecting on the life of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, the patron saint of athletes who will be canonized on Sept. 7 alongside Blessed Carlo Acutis, Leo told the congregation — several of whom belong to sport teams and associations — “just as no one is born a champion, no one is born a saint.” 

“It is daily training in love that brings us closer to final victory and enables us to contribute to the building of a new world,” he said.  

First Angelus address

In spite of 95-degree summer heat, thousands of pilgrims spilled into St. Peter’s Square after Mass to listen to Leo’s first Angelus address delivered in front of the basilica.

Continuing his message of sports as a means to foster a “culture of encounter and fraternity,” the Holy Father emphasized the “great need” for peace and an end to “all forms of violence and aggression” in the world.

The Holy Father asked for the intercession of Our Lady Queen of Peace before praying his first Angelus in the square in Latin and urging his listeners to pray for the end of conflicts in different parts of the world.

Calling for the end of conflicts in countries including Myanmar, Ukraine, and the Middle East, the Holy Father gave particular attention to the persecution of Christians in the African countries.

“Some 200 people were murdered, with extraordinary cruelty,” the pope said, referring to a massacre that took place in the village of Yelwata in Nigeria overnight.

“Most of the victims were internal refugees who were hosted by a local Catholic mission,” he lamented.

The Holy Father also appealed for the end to the civil war in Sudan, which began in 2023 and has since claimed thousands of lives, including the life of parish priest Father Luke Jumu, who died from his wounds after a bomb attack in El Fasher.

“I call on the international community to intensify efforts to provide at least basic assistance to the people affected by the grave humanitarian crisis,” he continued.

CNA Staff, Jun 15, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

At 8 years old, Minnesota native Joe Masek was exposed to pornography for the first time and went on to struggle with an addiction to it for 23 years. Through a series of actions he finally gained freedom and after experiencing a calling to help other men, he founded a ministry called The Freedom Group in 2023.

About 100 men have gone through the ministry’s program each year since then. The group uses  a 12-month training system as well as additional courses and retreats to help men break free from porn addiction.

The Porn Free training system includes weekly coaching calls with a Freedom Coach, group coaching calls, performance and mindset coaching, simple daily habits to build discipline and rhythm, access to an app to connect and track progress, and more. There are also several courses that help individuals understand the neurological aspect of addiction and how to rewire the brain.

Based in the Twin Cities, The Freedom Group also offers individuals the opportunity to attend nature retreats, where they are encouraged to encounter God and themselves in a deeper way. Through guided reflections, group sessions, time alone, and physical adventure, participants learn how to live free from their addiction and become grounded in their true purpose. 

Masek, now 32, said he was first exposed to porn while using Limewire, an audio file downloading program used during the early 2000s. Believing he was downloading a music file, he ended up downloading a video file that contained pornographic images.

Around the same time, Masek was also sexually abused by an older peer. 

“​As a young 7-, 8-year-old kid, I experienced all the symptoms [that] now that I understand and we understand as adults trying to help other people in that same sort of way — a lot of sort of disconnection in my own experience of who am I and feeling dirty and worthless, but also looking for it and starting to have seeking behavior,” he told CNA in an interview.

He shared that the rest of his upbringing was “really good.” He grew up in a middle-class family who attended church every Sunday and he was very involved in youth group. But as he got older, he began to experience an “ever-increasing sort of dichotomy through faith life and this hidden life.”

It wasn’t until college that Masek found himself in a men’s group that was addressing sexual issues and was able to share his story in depth, releasing the “10,000-pound gorilla off my back.”

“So this was my first introduction to shame flowing out the front door of the house of my heart and it was massive for me,” he recalled. 

Soon afterward he went on a retreat and had his first confession in years, which he said was “a powerful experience.”

However, Masek continued to struggle — experiencing periods of sobriety and then turning back to his addiction. After years of trying everything he could, he started to piece together everything he was learning and experiencing into what is now the approach used in The Freedom Group. 

“In a three-month span, I went from basically a two- to three-week cycle where I felt like I hit a wall and couldn’t keep going to the point where I didn’t even have an inclination to use anymore when familiar triggers would come,” he said.

He then began leading a national marriage and family ministry and the more time he spent with young husbands and fathers, the more he saw this as a “core issue” and decided to leave that ministry to start The Freedom Group.

Masek shared that roughly 85% of the men his group works with are believers — either Catholic or evangelical. Therefore, faith does play a role in the program but “is really lived out in the experience.”

He explained that “any addiction is an intimacy disorder.” So The Freedom Group talks about intimacy in four dimensions: me and God, me and myself, me and others, and me and nature, or creation. These connections of intimacy then begin to shift as the brain begins to shift.

Masek gave the example of one man that he worked with who “had lived the model Christian life.” He worked in campus ministry, got married young, and had a family. However, he was suffering from anxiety, was disconnected from himself, and was not experiencing connections in any of the four dimensions of intimacy. Three months into the process, this man shared with Masek that he had gone for a walk and sat down for 30 minutes in total stillness and felt God’s presence.

“To me, that’s like the greatest testimony I could ever get because I know the difference between ‘I’m trying to do the right thing, go to church, or participate in the life of the church, and try to pray,’ and to just be frazzled and out of control, and anxious, and avoidant through all of it. And then I know what it feels like to know how to slow down and to calm myself, to center myself, and connect to the living God. And I know how much that can change the way you show up then to your family, to others, the way that you see yourself then out of that connection.”

A motto of The Freedom Group is “Pain is the path. Discomfort is your teacher.” Masek explained how this highlights that life is hard but we are called to pick up our crosses.

“We only experience the Resurrection on the other end of our embrace of the suffering that’s handed to us uniquely, and that’s the invitation of our life — to be able to,” he said. 

He added that true healing and transformation begins to be made visible when the individual also embraces the suffering he has been given and sees the good in it.

“That’s our desire for this whole process is for men to, at the end of their journey with us, however long that they spend time with us, is to get to that point in their own lives. It goes from attraction or desire for something disordered to the point where they want to choose the good in good times and in bad,” he said.

“I always tell guys, this is the worst possible year — if you’re in our coaching process — to have the best year of your life because you won’t learn very much,” Masek added. “The goal is to have hard things happen to you and to stay in them and to welcome them as purposeful and see what happens because Jesus said, ‘Pick up your cross and follow me.’ And he promised that it would change us and even that it would bring us to freedom.”

Ethiopia was the host of the first Pan-African International Conference of the Focolare Spiritual Movement, held from June 5–11, 2025. The conference took place at the Don Bosco Conference Center in Addis Ababa and brought together African Focolare delegate bishops along with the movement’s international coordinators.

Read all

 

CNA Staff, Jun 15, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

The last four popes of the Catholic Church — John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and our new pope, Leo XIV — had hardworking fathers who instilled in each of their sons important traits and values, many of which can be seen in the way they lived out their priesthoods and carried out their papacies.

Here’s a look at the dads behind the last four Holy Fathers:

Pope Leo XIV’s father: Louis Marius Prevost

Louis Marius Prevost was born in Chicago on July 28, 1920, and was of Italian and French descent. Soon after graduating from college, he served in the Navy during World War II and in November 1943 became the executive officer of a tank landing ship. Prevost also participated in the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, as part of Operation Overlord. He spent 15 months overseas and attained the rank of lieutenant junior grade before the war finally ended. 

After coming home, Prevost became the superintendent of Brookwood School District 167, an elementary school district in Glenwood, Illinois. In 1949 he married Mildred Agnes Martinez, another Chicagoan and a school librarian. Prevost died on Nov. 8, 1997, at the age of 77 from colon cancer and atherosclerotic heart disease.  

According to the New York Times, in a 2024 interview on Italian television, the future pope recalled a time where he confided in his father about leaving the junior seminary he was attending to get married and have a family. 

“Maybe it would be better I leave this life and get married; I want to have children, a normal life,” then-Cardinal Prevost recalled saying to his father at the time.

His father responded by telling him that “the intimacy between him and my mom” was important, but so was the intimacy between a priest and the love of God.

“There’s something to listen to here,” the future pope recalled thinking.

Pope Francis’ father: Mario Jose Bergoglio

Mario Jose Bergoglio was born on April 2, 1908, in Turin, Italy. In 1929, he and his family emigrated from Italy to Argentina to flee from the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini. In Argentina, he worked as an accountant and was employed by the Argentine railways, a stable and respected position at the time. He married Regina María Sívori in 1935 and they had five children — the eldest being the future Pope Francis. Mario Jose Bergoglio died at the age of 51 in 1959. 

The Bergoglio family lived in a working-class area of Buenos Aires where the senior Bergoglio’s line of work undoubtedly shaped his own view of fatherhood and family life. Although the late pope did not say much publicly about his relationship with his own father, he often spoke about the importance of fathers and the need for them to be present in their children’s lives, exhorting them to be patient and forgiving and to correct their children without humiliating them. Francis often cited St. Joseph as a role model for all fathers.

Pope Benedict XVI’s father: Joseph Ratzinger Sr. 

Joseph Ratzinger Sr. was born on March 6, 1877, in Winzer, Germany. Beginning in 1902, he worked as a policeman. In 1920, at the age of 43, he married Maria Peintner. Joseph Alois Ratzinger, who grew up to become Pope Benedict XVI, was the third and youngest child in the family.

Ratzinger Sr. was a devout Catholic and strongly opposed the Nazi regime. He often refused to obey their orders to persecute opponents and as a result was harassed by the Nazi hierarchy. In order to avoid sanctions, he frequently had to change posts. On Aug. 25, 1959, he died at the age of 82.

During the World Meeting of Families in 2012, Pope Benedict spoke about memories he had of his father and his family growing up.

“The most important moment for our family was always Sunday, but Sunday really began on Saturday afternoon,” he recalled. “My father would read out the Sunday readings from a book that was very popular in Germany at that time, which also included explanations of the texts. That is how we began our Sunday, entering into the liturgy in an atmosphere of joy.” 

Pope John Paul II’s father: Karol Wojtyla Sr. 

Karol Wojtyla Sr. was born on July 18, 1879, in Bielsko-Biała, Poland. He was a tailor by trade but in 1900 was called up for the Astro-Hungarian Army in which he spent a total of 28 years. After Poland regained its independence, he was admitted to the Polish Army where he served as a lieutenant until he retired in 1928. 

Wojtyla Sr. married Emilia Kaczorowska and together they had three children — Edmund, Olga (who died in infancy), and Karol, who would later become Pope John Paul II. In 1929, Emilia died due to heart and kidney problems and three years later Edmund died from scarlet fever. This left Wojtyla Sr. to care for his son Karol on his own. In 1938, he and Karol moved to Kraków so that the boy could attend Jagiellonian University. Wojtyla Sr. died on Feb. 18, 1941, at the age of 61.

Pope John Paul II frequently spoke about his father’s faith and how it inspired his vocation to the priesthood. 

The Polish pope once said of his father: “Day after day I was able to observe the austere way in which he lived. By profession he was a soldier and, after my mother’s death, his life became one of constant prayer. Sometimes I would wake up during the night and find my father on his knees, just as I would always see him kneeling in the parish church. We never spoke about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary.”

Marking Britain and Ireland’s “Day for Life”, Pope Leo XIV called everyone in society to “defend rather than undermine a civilization founded on authentic love and genuine compassion.”

At the Sunday Angelus, Pope Leo prays for victims of conflicts in Nigeria, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, and the Middle East.

Read all

 

Three expats, part of the Rome Hibernia Gaelic Athletic Association, present the Pope with a special Jubilee jersey during the audience for the Jubilee of Sport.

Read all

 

On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the Pope closes the Jubilee of Sport with a Mass, reminding everyone that sports can be a “means of reconciliation and encounter.”

Read all

 

In a telegram for the Day of Life observed by the Church in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, Pope Leo calls on Catholics to continue to bear witness to the God-given dignity of every person without exception.

Read all