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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 24, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York was named the Becket Fund’s 2025 Canterbury Medalist, an award that honors his career-long commitment to religious liberty.

“His Eminence has been a towering figure in the fight for religious liberty, not just for Catholics, but for people of all faiths,” Becket President Mark Rienzi said in a statement. “Cardinal Dolan’s leadership in the public square has shaped the national conscience on religious freedom and strengthened the resolve of those who defend it.”

Becket, a nonprofit law firm that represents clients who are defending their religious liberty in court, awarded Dolan the medal during its annual gala in New York. According to Becket, the honor recognizes individuals who demonstrate courage and commitment to defending religious liberty in the United States and globally.

Dolan said in an acceptance speech, which was provided to CNA by Becket, that he is “grateful” to receive the award. 

“I hardly deserve this high award,” Dolan added. “Yet, I readily admit that you are absolutely [spot on] to claim I am intensely devoted to the protection of our ‘first and most cherished liberty,’ religious freedom.”

In his speech, Dolan said he is in “good company” in defending religious freedom, along with the legal team at Becket and the founders of the United States. 

“They and their parents had come here precisely because they were frustrated in countries where religion was imposed or proscribed, nations where battles were waged to coerce religious conviction, where they were hounded and harassed for their beliefs,” he said. 

“Not here, they insisted!” Dolan said. “This was not the way they, or, most importantly, God intended it. Nothing is more free than creedal assent; nothing merited more protection than religious freedom; nothing deserved more top billing in our Constitution.” 

Dolan said religious liberty is “part of our very nature that cannot be erased” and necessary for the respect of “the dignity of the human person.” 

“Our passion for this primary liberty is not just because we happen to be a believer or a patriotic citizen, but because we are a person endowed with certain ingrained rights,” he said.

Dolan was recently appointed to serve on President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, which will create a report on threats to religious freedom and strategies to enhance legal protections to preserve those rights. It will also outline the foundations of religious liberty in the United States.

Previously, Dolan has served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and has led the USCCB’s Committee for Religious Liberty. According to Becket, the cardinal has also staunchly defended religious freedom through testimony before Congress and when engaging with the media.

“Religious freedom isn’t just about protecting what happens in church on Sundays — it’s about defending the right of every person to live their faith openly, every day of the week,” Dolan said. “It’s a gift from God — not from government — and it must be protected for people of all faiths.”

Other members of the Catholic clergy who have won this award from Becket include University of Mary President Monsignor James Shea and former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput.

Past medalists also include Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel; Orthodox rabbi of the oldest Jewish congregation in the U.S. Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik; and First Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Dallin H. Oaks.

ACI Prensa Staff, May 24, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Father Cristian Meriggi, an exorcist priest of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy, shared the five spiritual weapons he uses and recommends to combat the devil and his influence.

Meriggi, an exorcist for almost 20 years and a priest for 27, shared his recommendations on the website of the International Association of Exorcists (IAE), to which he has belonged since 2006.

In his text, the priest thanked his mentor, Father Mario Boretti; Father Francesco Bamonte, vice president of the IAE; and Father Gabriele Amorth, a famous exorcist of the Diocese of Rome and co-founder of the IAE. Amorth, who died in 2016, performed tens of thousands of exorcisms during his lifetime.

“I remember the advice Don Gabriele gave me before we said goodbye: ‘Remember, Don Cristian, that we are good for nothing!’” the Italian priest recounted.

Meriggi also thanked Cardinal Ernest Simoni, 96, who “practiced the ministry of exorcist even before the atheist communist regime of Albania arrested him on Christmas Eve 1963. Today he also exercises his beautiful ministry in Tuscany.”

1. Adoration and Communion

Meriggi, whose guide and teacher in exorcisms was Boretti, recalled something the late priest told him: “Without Communion, one cannot be healed.”

Thus, the 55-year-old priest emphasized that “an intense sacramental life, a love for the Eucharistic Christ is crucial because the Eucharist is the true path to healing and liberation. Adoration and Communion!”

2. Confession

The exorcist also emphasized that it is very important to “live with steadfastness the sacrament of confession. Through it, we find God’s mercy, which not only confirms the forgiveness of our sins but also, with his grace, penetrates deeply into the darkest areas of the soul where our sins have their roots.”

3. An intense life of charity

Another important spiritual weapon in the fight against the devil is “to live, as St. Paul says, as far as it depends on us, at peace with all. An intense life of charity where we think not only of our own needs but also of those of others, praying and working for their good, seeking and giving forgiveness.”

“Live everything, every moment of our life, as a gift, aware that everything works for the good of those who love God, even the most difficult moments,” the exorcist exhorted.

4. Devotion to the Virgin Mary and the rosary

Meriggi also emphasized that it is essential “to nurture a faithful and loving devotion to the Virgin Mary. Let us make the prayer of the Church our own: in addition to holy Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, also the holy rosary. And then there is devotion to the saints and the blessed souls in purgatory.”

5. Use of sacramentals

“In addition to the sacramental life, the use of sacramentals is of great benefit. They are like medicines that, together with the sacraments, help us bring God’s grace into every area of ​​our lives,” the Italian priest noted.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sacramentals “are sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments. They signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church.” 

Sacramentals can include crucifixes, holy water, medals, and blessed salt, among others.

Finally, Meriggi emphasized that “the entire life of the Church is medicinal; it is a path of liberation, healing, and consolation, leading to resurrection in Christ, to living our days in love and peace, to ward off or expel from our lives the enemy and his influence.”

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

CNA Staff, May 24, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

When Anne Frank was hiding in a secret annex for more than two years in Amsterdam during World War II, she would peer out a small window in the attic at a horse chestnut tree in the yard.

Long after the young teenager’s death in the Bergen-Belson concentration camp in 1945, a Catholic Holocaust education center in Philadelphia has planted a tree grown from a sapling of that very tree in her honor.

The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University — founded by two Catholic sisters in 1987 — held a ceremony to plant the small tree at the beginning of May.

James Paharik, director of the education center and a Seton Hill professor of sociology and behavioral health, told CNA that “it means a lot for us to have this tree.” 

“It’s a living testimony to the memory of Anne Frank and what she experienced,” Paharik said.  

Donated by the Anne Frank Center USA, the 6-foot-tall tree sits at a “prominent place on campus.” 

“In her diary, she writes several times about the tree and how much it meant to her to see it,” Paharik said. “It bloomed in the springtime, and it was a sign of hope.”

Journey of the heart

The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education — one of the first of its kind in the nation — is “very unique,” Paharik said. Sister Gemma Del Duca and Sister Mary Noel Kernan, both Sisters of Charity, founded the center in the late 1980s to counter antisemitism, provide education on the Holocaust, and honor Holocaust victims.

Sister Gemma, now 93 years old and unwell, managed to attend the ceremony of the planting earlier in May in spite of her illness, where she was able to see her life’s work culminate in the planting of a tree that will remain for years to come.   

When asked what inspired her to found it, Paharik simply said: “Sometimes, sisters get an inspiration and they follow it.”

The center has its roots in the interreligious work that Sister Gemma did. Early on, she began to work with Father Isaac Jacob, a monk from St. Vincent College, a historic Benedictine college down the road from Seton Hill, who was similarly interested in interreligious dialogue.

Sister Gemma and Jacob traveled to Israel in the 1970s where they established Tel Gamaliel, a Christian community in Israel “that promoted understanding between Jews and Catholics,” according to Paharik. There, they translated the rule of St. Benedict into Hebrew and worked with the local community until Sister Gemma’s eventual return to the U.S. 

Sister Gemma’s passion to found the center was a surprise to some in her order.

“I don’t think Sister Gemma had a great deal of support at the beginning from her community, and people weren’t quite sure why this was so important to her,” Paharik reflected. 

But Sister Gemma thought it was “a moral necessity” for Catholics not only to not demean or stereotype “but, in fact, to learn more about Judaism,” Paharik said.  

This was a task she took “quite seriously,” Paharik noted. 

She learned to speak Hebrew while in Israel, even attending services at synagogue, while “at the same time, being totally immersed in Catholicism and being a Sister of Charity.” 

“I think that for her, it’s a journey of the heart,” Paharik said.

The sisters also took inspiration from the Vatican II document on religious dialogue, Nostra Aetate, which was promulgated about two decades before the founding of the center.  

Paharik called Nostra Aetate a “landmark” Catholic document that “encouraged a deeper understanding between Catholics and those of other faiths.”

This coming fall marks the 60th anniversary of the document.

Paharik recalled Sister Gemma’s reflections on deepening her own knowledge of Judaism.

“She said, ‘It’s a journey of the heart. It’s a journey of faith,’” Paharik recalled.

“It’s a mission, really, to unite Catholics and Jews in a positive way instead of continuing the animosity that has marked our relationship for so many centuries,” he continued.

What it means for Seton Hill and beyond 

The center, now more than 35 years old, has grown in its influence on the local community and beyond over the years. The center was a founding organization of the Council of Christian-Jewish Relations (CCJR), an association dedicated to interreligious dialogue between Christians and Jews in the U.S., Canada, and overseas.

The center hosts conferences, bringing speakers from around the country, and also does ecumenical outreach, bringing together Catholics and Protestants to pray, learn, and remember.

“We pray together for the victims of the Holocaust but also of other acts of violence and mass murder that have happened and are still happening around the world today,” Paharik said.

“It’s a way for us to affirm our common belief in the sanctity of human life and to pray for peace,” Paharik said. 

The center also supports Holocaust education in classes at Seton Hill and at local schools, especially grades six through 12. Students will now be able to visit the tree on campus after reading “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

“It will make it all the more meaningful and vivid to them to see what this tree actually looked like, that was so important to Anne, and that she wrote about so beautifully in her diary,” Paharik said. 

Responding to continuing antisemitism 

The center also responded to a local act of antisemitic violence known as one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks in the United States. The Tree of Life shootings in Pittsburgh in 2018 — in which an assailant opened fire in a crowded synagogue, killing 11 people — was only about 30 miles from Greensboro, where the center is based.

“All of us knew people who were in one way affected by that terrible event,” Paharik recalled.

Under Paharik’s leadership, the center began to interview victims of the Holocaust, recording the stories of eight survivors who live in the area. 

“Those documentaries are resources for the schools that we work with, so they can tell the stories of these local people who actually lived through the Holocaust,” he said. 

Being with the survivors is “profound,” Paharik reflected, and “seeing the impact of these documentaries on young people is also very moving.”

One of the Holocaust survivors they interviewed — a member of the Tree of Life Synagogue — had been in the parking lot when the Tree of Life shooting began and only “just managed to escape it,” Paharik said.  

“We don’t ever want anything like that to happen again,” he said. 

“Scripture teaches us about the importance of respecting all human life, from birth until natural death,” Paharik continued. “To stereotype, to discriminate, to show hate towards people just because who they are or where they grew up or the faith that they have is actually sinful. It’s a violation of our Christian teaching.”

Feast date: May 24

Donatian and Rogatian were brothers who were martyred for their faith in the third century.

Donatian was the first to convert to Christianity, becoming an ardent witness to the faith after receiving baptism.  His witness was said to be so inspiring that his brother, Rogatian, who had been indifferent at first, was moved by his example to convert.

However, the persecution of Diocletian was heavily underway at this time.

Both of the brothers were arrested before the bishop was able to baptize Rogatian. The brothers spent the night in jail together in prayer. The next day, after refusing to deny their faith, they were tortured on the rack, and then beheaded. Thus the baptism of Rogatian was a baptism of desire, that is, by the blood of martyrdom.

In the fifth century a church was built over the tomb where they were buried together. In 1145, the bishop transferred their relics to the Cathedral of Ostia.

Feast date: May 24

The Feast of the Ascension is the fortieth day after Easter Sunday, which commemorates the Ascension of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

In the Eastern Church this feast was known as analepsis, "the taking up", and also as the episozomene, the salvation, denoting that by ascending into His glory, Christ completed the work of our redemption. The terms used in the West, ascensio and, occasionally, ascensa, signify that Christ was raised up by His own powers. Tradition designates Mount Olivet near Bethany as the place where Christ left the earth. The feast falls on Thursday. It is one of the Ecumenical feasts ranking with the feasts of the Passion, of Easter and of Pentecost among the most solemn in the calendar. The feast has a vigil and, since the fifteenth century, an octave which is set apart for a novena of preparation for Pentecost, in accordance with the directions of Leo XIII.

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