We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

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.”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 29, 2025 / 11:42 am (CNA).

This week a national education nonprofit group revealed the results of a survey conducted with parents across the country about issues in higher education in the United States. Defending Education polled parents of teen and young adult children ages 15–21, asking them their views on hot-button topics related to colleges and universities today. 

“This new poll shows that parents believe colleges and universities have lost focus,” Paul Runko, the director of strategic initiatives at Defending Education, told CNA. “They are expressing concern about campus climates and calling for environments free from political extremism and ideological agendas.”

The survey, conducted from May 9–15, queried 1,000 randomly selected participants from across the country. Of the participants, 34% reported they are located in the South, 20% in the Northeast, 23% in the Midwest, and 23% in the West.

The majority of respondents classified themselves as white (66%) and most said they practice some form of Christianity (65%). More than half (56%) said they voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 general election. The group surveyed was made up of 43% Republicans, 34% Democrats, and 21% independents. 

Parents were asked how they would characterize political leanings on the typical American college campus and 41% said it is moderate, 28% said left leaning, 25% said right leaning, and 6% responded nonpolitical. 

While the respondents reported different political views, the majority (69%) said they support disciplining students for disrupting campus events they disagree with. 

The survey asked the participants a number of questions about higher education within the categories of sex and gender, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), antisemitism, freedom of speech, foreign funding in schools, foreign and out-of-state students, academic instruction, and student loans.

“Parents with children aged 15–21 are the very families that colleges and universities are trying to attract,” Runko told CNA. “These parents are having real conversations with their students right now about where they will attend college … If a university’s values are in conflict with their own, particularly on issues of faith and morals, they will look elsewhere.”

Defending Education found that 60% of survey participants oppose schools allowing biological males who identify as female to participate in women’s collegiate sports. Of self-identified Catholic parents, 54% said they oppose the practice.

The study also found that 61% of parents oppose colleges allowing biological males who identify as females to use female restrooms on campus. Just under half (48%) of parents said they “strongly oppose” it and 57% of Catholic parents said they oppose it.

Of the participants, 59% said they support students being paired with other students for on campus housing based on the same “biological sex” rather than “gender identity.” The survey showed that 58% of Catholic parents support this.

The survey also examined parents’ views on DEI policies at universities and found that a slight majority of the respondents overall disagree with DEI initiatives. 

More than half (54%) of parents oppose universities prioritizing race when awarding scholarships. Catholic parents are split on the issue, with 49% opposed and 49% in support.

The majority (57%) of parents oppose the practice of universities holding graduation ceremonies for students of a particular race, such as a Black-only or Hispanic-only student commencements. 

Participants were also asked about antisemitism on campuses today. The survey found that 67% of parents support universities offering or requiring training for faculty to properly address and identify antisemitism and Jewish discrimination.

The survey asked about foreign funding and policies and found the vast majority of parents (82%) agreed that universities should be required to disclose when they accept money from foreign governments.

A total of 79% of parents also said they agree that American students should be prioritized in the admissions process over foreign students and 76% agree that at public universities, in-state students should be prioritized over out-of-state students. 

Most participants (87%) said a university’s core curriculum or required classes that are not specifically related to a student’s career path are important to consider. The majority of Catholic participants (91%) reported that this is important. 

The survey stated that Ivy League schools are launching “remedial math” courses since high school graduates are not prepared for college level math and 84% responded that this is “concerning.” 

Almost all survey participants (95%) agreed that the cost of tuition is an important factor when deciding on a college. More than half (65%) of parents responded that they or someone in their family has completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form to determine eligibility for student financial aid. 

Participants were also asked their opinions regarding student loan debt. Over half (53%) responded that they believe “student loan debt puts a financial burden on borrowers and relieving that burden could boost economic growth.” 

Of Catholic parents, 68% said they agree that colleges should be responsible for loans that students do not pay off because their college experience and degree did not adequately prepare them for a career after graduation.

In a statement about the survey’s results, Runko said: “It’s no surprise that American parents and students expect a college experience that is academically rigorous, open to diverse viewpoints, and focused on preparing graduates for meaningful careers.”

“Historically, colleges were viewed by the public, including parents, as places of academic excellence and character formation,” he continued. “Ten years ago, higher education as an institution had broad public confidence.”

He added: “This poll is not just a small sample of public opinion, this is a wake-up call for university leaders across the country. Parents are demanding universities restore transparency, protect free expression, and refocus on academic excellence.”

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

A German archdiocese has distanced itself from the controversial performance “Westfalen Side Story” in Paderborn Cathedral and told CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, that it had no prior knowledge of the specific content of the performance. 

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

The controversial performance by the ensemble Bodytalk on May 15 triggered a wave of outrage and led to a petition with more than 20,000 signatories. Under the title “Against the Desecration of Paderborn Cathedral: For the Protection of Our Sacred Sites,” the faithful call for a clear response from the Church.

The high-profile event was attended by Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister President Hendrik Wüst, CNA Deutsch reported. 

The performance was intended to be part of official celebrations marking the 1,250th anniversary of Westphalia. It featured a woman and a half-naked man wielding scythes followed by a second shirtless man who entered with a bowl full of plucked chickens wrapped in diapers. 

The performers made the dead animals “walk” by their hands through the altar area while they sang “Fleisch ist Fleisch” (“Meat is meat”) to the tune of the 1984 pop song “Live is Life” by Austrian band Opus. 

The official statement further noted that the cathedral had “frequently been the site of high-level cultural events in the past.”

Regarding the controversial performance, the archdiocese stated: “The specific content and design of this program segment was not known in advance to those responsible either on the organizers’ side or at the venue.” Looking ahead, the archdiocese announced: “We take the reactions to the performance very seriously and have already begun reviewing our internal procedures.”

At the same time, the statement expressed “explicit regret that the performance hurt religious feelings.”  

The archdiocese further emphasized that such an effect was "never intended at any point” and also “does not reflect our expectations for this place with its special religious, historical, and cultural significance.” 

The petition hosted on the platform CitizenGo is addressed to Paderborn’s Archbishop Udo Bentz. The signatories call not only for a public apology but also for an “act of penance and reparation with a reconsecration of the cathedral in Paderborn, which was desecrated by this performance.”

The collected signatures will be submitted not only to the archbishop but also to the apostolic nuncio in Germany, Archbishop Nikola Eterović.

The petition states: “Catholic churches are sacred spaces, built for worship and oriented toward the veneration of God. The use of our churches should always point to God’s presence and lead to adoration.”

This story was first published by CNA Deutsch, CNA's German-language news partner, and has been translated and adapated by CNA.

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.

CNA Staff, May 29, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The Sisters of Bon Secours are launching a citywide campaign against gun violence with seven other Catholic congregations in Baltimore.

The advertisement campaign announced this week features ads inside and outside of city buses and in subway transit stations throughout the city that say “Put the Guns Down. Let Peace Begin With Us.”

The Bon Secours sisters are part of a coalition of religious sisters and others advocating for gun violence prevention called “Nuns Against Gun Violence.” Taking inspiration from a similar campaign by other sisters in Ohio, the Sisters of Bon Secours ultimately landed on an advertising campaign.

“The Sisters of Bon Secours have been involved in gun violence prevention advocacy efforts for many years and were looking for a way to bring more attention to the issue,” said Simone Blanchard, director of justice, peace, and integrity of creation for the Sisters of Bon Secours.

Bus advertisements will carry the message “all over the city instead of a few stationery billboards,” she said.

The advertisements feature a QR code that takes viewers to the sisters’ webpage, which has resources on combating gun violence, including a prayer for victims of gun violence and links to the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s gun buyback program. 

“The ads on Baltimore city buses reflect the commitment of my community and other Catholic sisters in Baltimore to say: There is another way,” said Sister Patricia Dowling of the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours. 

“We all deserve safe streets, a sense of peace, and the freedom to live without fear,” she continued. “Peace begins with each of us, and anything we can do to raise awareness about alternatives to violence and the sacredness of life is essential today.”

Dowling said the campaign aligns with the congregation’s charism and is also “deeply personal.” 

“As a Sister of Bon Secours living in West Baltimore, I hear gunshots regularly,” Dowling told CNA. “I’ve seen the faces of those who’ve been shot, and I’ve walked with neighbors carrying the pain and trauma that gun violence leaves behind.”

“Our charism — compassion, healing, and liberation — calls us to uphold the dignity of every person and to seek peace in every situation,” she continued.

“It’s not just about my neighborhood — it’s about all of us,” Dowling said. 

Baltimore is among the top 10 cities in the U.S. with the highest rates of gun homicides. According to a recent review by Pew Research, the states with the highest gun murder rates in the U.S. include Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and New Mexico as well as Washington, D.C.

Blanchard said the campaign has its roots in Catholic social teaching, “starting with the foundational principle of the sacredness of every human life from conception to natural death.”

“This teaching stems from the fact that we are all created in the image of God and have inherent dignity,” Blanchard told CNA. 

“As Catholics we are called to work for the common good towards a just and peaceful society where everyone’s needs are met, especially those living in poverty and violence,” Blanchard said. 

She noted that the campaign — and other efforts like it — is about having “solidarity with those who are suffering the most from the effects of gun violence.”

Other congregations that helped sponsor the new campaign include the Benedictine Sisters of Baltimore Emmanuel Monastery; the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Province of St. Louise; the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart; the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Atlantic Midwest Province; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, U.S. East-West Province; the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas; and the Oblate Sisters of Providence.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 29, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

A Catholic foster care ministry leader is calling for Catholic families to support vulnerable children and families by becoming foster parents. 

Springs of Love ministry founder Kimberly Henkel said many Catholics are unaware of the “huge crisis in our country” surrounding foster care, and people of faith are in a unique position to bring love to children in need of foster care. 

Henkel, who is a foster and adoptive mother herself, launched Springs of Love as a ministry to help other Catholic couples navigate the process of fostering. Henkel described the foster system as “very cyclical” and “difficult to break out of,” with children often passing from home to home. In the end, she said, children who age out of foster care with no family connections are often left increasingly prone to addiction, homelessness, and even trafficking.

“We have the answer,” Henkel said in an “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” interview with host Abi Galvan on Tuesday. “We can help these children to heal by loving them … We have Jesus, the healer, the divine physician who can heal all of our wounds.”

According to Henkel, who founded Springs of Love in 2022, there are some 400,000 children in the foster care system. Approximately 20,000 will age out every year with no solid family foundation from which to embark on adulthood. 

“As my husband and I … started fostering and adopting, as we continued down the path, we just saw this need,” Henkel recalled. “So we started [Springs of Love] and are trying to No. 1, raise awareness, because so many Catholics have no idea” of the great need for foster families.

Springs of Love is currently working on releasing a new curriculum for prospective foster parents later this summer, Henkel said, noting that while much of it will touch on fostering from a pro-life perspective and the “joy of adoption,” it will also delve into more difficult aspects.

“A lot of the times when these kids are aging out,” she said, “they have no connections, they have nobody to look out for them.” Henkel noted that about 70% of young women who age out of the foster care system become pregnant within the first couple of years and either go on to “repeat the cycle” they experienced in their own lives or have an abortion.

“We’re really going in and trying to educate people,” Henkel said, “and doing it through the light of the Gospel to give people that hope that Christ can truly come into our hearts and bring the healing that we need.” 

Springs of Love has a video series on EWTN on Demand that tells the stories of foster families. The point, according to Henkel, is not only to raise awareness of the process of fostering a child but also to show that the aim of fostering is ultimately family reunification. 

“The goal of foster care is reunification, so if it is safe for a child to go back home, then we want to continue being a support to that family,” Henkel said. 

“This is how we can see a huge change, because when we’re dealing with these massive issues of homelessness, poverty, addictions, and trafficking, in order for people to break out of that, they need to be poured into,” she continued. “They need to know the love of Jesus [and] to have people to come alongside them and accompany them.”

Springs of Love is the sister organization of a ministry Henkel previously helped co-found called Springs in the Desert, which accompanies Catholic couples struggling with infertility and loss, “by offering a place of respite and solidarity,” as stated on its website.

Pope Leo XIV sends a message to mark the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement, and invites Catholics and Mennonites to employ “honesty and kindness” in reflecting on our common history.

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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.”

In this week's News from the Orient, produced in collaboration with L'Œuvre d'Orient: The Church marks the International Day of Eastern Christians, Pilgrims visit a prison in Romania, and Syria honours St Rita.

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Pope Leo XIV travels to Castel Gandalfo, where he pays a visit to the Borgo Laudato Sì, an area of the papal residence converted by Pope Francis into a space for formation and raising awareness about the care for our common home.

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