Saint Joseph Catholic Church

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The presidents of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM), and the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) issued a “Manifesto of the Churches of the Global South for our Common Home,” subtitled “Towards peace with creation: an urgent call for a just transition beyond fossil fuels.”

Following a preamble (“The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”), the manifesto has four sections:

• The treaty: A necessary complement to the Paris Agreement
• Principles for a just transition without false solutions
• Financial justice: Debt and reparations
• Call to governments and world leaders

“Time is short, but hope mobilizes us,” the prelates concluded. “A world free of fossil fuels, just and at peace, is possible and necessary.”

The manifesto was also signed by the vice presidents of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) and the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO).

Patriarch Ilia II, who led the Georgian Orthodox Church (CNEWA profile) from 1977 until his death, died on March 17 at the age of 93.

“He is a man of God; this man moved me,” Pope Francis said in 2016, after meeting the Patriarch during his apostolic journey to Georgia. “The times that I met him, I came away deeply moved, and with the feeling of having found a man of God. Truly, a man of God.”

Vatican News, the news agency of the Dicastery for Communication, and L’Osservatore Romano highlighted the presence of students from the Chesterton Schools Network at Pope Leo’s March 18 general audience.

The network, which has grown to 100 schools in the U.S. and abroad, offers a Catholic classical high school curriculum.

Ten of the 82 students in Pope Leo XIV’s class at St. Mary’s School in Riverdale, Illinois, met with the Pontiff at his March 18 general audience.

The young Robert Prevost attended the parish school through the eighth grade, when he entered the Order of Saint Augustine. The Pope’s mother, Mildred Agnes Prevost, was a “librarian, and was also deeply involved in school life as well as in parish life,” a classmate recalled.

The future Pontiff then attended St. Augustine Seminary High School in Michigan (1969-1973) and Villanova University (1973-1977).

The president of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences called for a rereading of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) in light of the synodality that gained prominence in the decade since its publication.

Amoris Laetitia applies the Second Vatican Council’s legacy “to the synodal process of exercising a clear-sighted discernment regarding the state of marriage and the family in today’s world,” Msgr. Philippe Bordeyne wrote in article published in the March 18 edition of the Vatican newspaper. “It invites us not to shy away from confronting the diversity of family situations, but rather to ground ourselves in the Bible.”

“Giving thanks for the manifold fruits of Amoris Laetitia, let us pray to the Master of the harvest to send laborers capable of discerning what the grace of God is preparing in the hearts of the men and women of our time,” Msgr. Bordeyne concluded.

Founded by Pope St. John Paul II in 1981, the Institute was refounded by Pope Francis in 2017.

Continuing a tradition that dates back to 1603, King Felipe VI of Spain will become proto-canon of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major.

The ceremony will take place tomorrow, following a papal audience.

Asked by a reporter what he would say if he were in a face-to-face meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, Cardinal Pietro Parolin said that he would tell him “to put an end to it [the Iran war] as soon as possible, because the real danger is that an escalation is just around the corner. I would say: leave Lebanon alone.”

In the exchange with the reporter, which took place at a book presentation, the Secretary of State of His Holiness said that the same message should be “addressed to the Israelis,” to “resolve any problems that may exist—or that they believe exist—through the peaceful paths of diplomacy and dialogue.”

The Church in the Amazon region is called to pastoral conversion, synodal conversion, and ecological conversion, Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., emphasized at the opening of the Sixth General Assembly of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA).

In his March 17 homily, delivered at the headquarters of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM) in Bogotá, the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development also “invited the participants to ask the Lord for three gifts: contemplation to recognize God’s presence in creation, discernment to make decisions guided by the Holy Spirit, and missionary courage to defend life, the peoples, and our Common Home,” according to CEAMA.

Pope Leo XIV also addressed the CEAMA assembly via a video message and called upon participants to proclaim the Gospel and safeguard life.

Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See described the Iran war as the “most just war conceivable.”

“It’s the most just war conceivable, because when you say that every loss of human life is a tragedy, that includes the nearly, if not over, 40,000 Iranian lives [that] were massacred by their own regime,” Ambassador Yaron Sideman said in an interview with Elise Ann Allen of Crux.

“If the Iranian regime can do that to its own people, and if you see how casually they’re firing missiles indiscriminately at civilian populations all over the place, all over Middle East, Israel, Europe,” Ambassador Sideman added. “You realize how dangerous this regime is and that at the minimum, it has to be deprived of its ability to cause malice to other countries and individuals.”