Saint Joseph Catholic Church

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At their fall meeting in Baltimore (recap), the US bishops elected Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend as conference secretary. He succeeds Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, who was elected conference president.

The bishops also elected six committee chairmen, including Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia as chairman-elect of the Committee on International Justice and Peace.

OSV News and The Pillar offered extensive coverage of the November 10-13 gathering.

Addressing participants in a meeting organized by the Foundation for the Study and Research on Childhood and Adolescence, Pope Leo XIV warned against granting “premature, unlimited, and unsupervised digital access” to young people.

“Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to manipulation through AI algorithms that can influence their decisions and preferences,” Pope Leo said during the audience, which took place yesterday in Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace. “It is essential that parents and educators be aware of these dynamics, and that tools be developed to monitor and guide young people’s interactions with technology.”

“It is indeed important to draft and enforce ethical guidelines, but that is not enough,” the Pope added, as he called for “ daily, ongoing educational efforts ... Only by taking an educational, ethical and responsible approach can we ensure that artificial intelligence serves as an ally, and not a threat, in the growth and development of children and adolescents.”

Father Jean Julien Ladouceur, the national director of the Haitian episcopal conference’s Commission for Catholic Education, was freed earlier this week, the Vatican newspaper reported.

Father Ladouceur and three of his associates were kidnapped last month. The associates have also been freed.

In a message to participants in the 31st Argentine Industrial Conference, Pope Leo XIV paid recalled the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which Pope Leo XIII “denounced the unjust conditions of many workers” and emphasized “the right to a just wage, to form associations, and to live with dignity.”

“These teachings, born in a time of profound industrial transformations, continue to have surprising relevance in the globalized world we inhabit, where the dignity of the worker often continues to be violated,” Pope Leo XIV continued.

The Pope upheld the example of Ven. Enrique Shaw (1921-1962), an Argentine businessman who “demonstrated that Social Doctrine is not an abstract theory or an unrealizable utopia, but a path that is possible and transforms the lives of people and institutions by placing Christ at the center of all human activity.”

Addressing participants in a conference organized by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Leo XIV said that extraordinary mystical phenomena are not “indispensable conditions for recognizing holiness,” which consists in conformity to the will of God.

Such phenomena, the Pope said yesterday, are not “individual privileges,” but are “ordered to the edification of the whole Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.” The “Magisterium, theology and spiritual authors,” he said, “have also provided criteria for distinguishing authentic spiritual phenomena, which can occur in an atmosphere of prayer and sincere search for God, from manifestations that can be deceptive.”

“What is most important and most must be emphasized in the examination of candidates for sainthood is their full and constant conformity to the will of God, revealed in the Scriptures and in the living apostolic Tradition,” Pope Leo added. “It is therefore important to have balance: just as Causes of Canonization should not be promoted only in the presence of exceptional phenomena, care must be taken not to penalize them if the same phenomena characterize the life of the Servants of God.”

In an Italian-language chirograph dated November 6 and released November 13, Pope Leo XIV established the Apostleship of the Sea as a canonical legal entity to supervise the Opus Apostolatus Maris (Work of Apostleship of the Sea), which received Vatican approval in 1922.

Praedicate Evangelium, the 2022 apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, entrusted the Work of Apostleship of the Sea to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. The apostolate “provides for the specific pastoral care of the ‘people of the sea,’ that is, sailors, seafarers and their families, as well as other people whose lives are existentially linked to navigation and fishing on the seas, rivers and lakes,” the Pope wrote in his chirograph.

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Andrea Monda, the director of L’Osservatore Romano, has written an op-ed criticizing the Meritocracy Fellowship of the software company Palantir Technologies.

Recalling the palantir of J.R.R. Tolkien’s literature, Monda critiqued the fellowship’s goal of avoiding indoctrination in college: “the ‘Palantir’ in the novel is a tool (a kind of crystal ball that allows remote communication) that serves precisely this purpose: brainwashing! Just as the Fellowship, the Company Tolkien speaks of, is anything but meritocratic!”

Monda concluded:

The already disturbing meritocratic project taking hold in the most developed valley on the planet has absolutely nothing to do with the green valleys of the Hobbit Shire of Middle-earth. If “Palantir Technologies” intended to borrow Tolkien’s language, then behind it are not peaceful hobbits, but malevolent lords of evil who have already plundered this extraordinary novel, which, let’s face it, doesn’t deserve it!

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, paid tribute to Blessed John Paul I as he dedicated a rehabilitation center named after the Pontiff.

Pope John Paul I, who reigned for a month in 1978, “taught that we love God by loving our neighbor: the two loves are inseparable twins,” said Cardinal Parolin, who serves as president of the John Paul I Vatican Foundation. “His was a simple charity, manifested in everyday life; it was made up of small gestures. And it was also a smiling charity. The poor, he said, are the treasure of the Church.”

Cardinal Parolin invited the employees of the rehabilitation center, located in Rome’s Romanina neighborhood, “to draw inspiration continually from the figure of this great Pope, who left an indelible mark on the history of the Church despite his brief pontificate.”