Saint Joseph Catholic Church

“Let us fast and pray to implore the Lord for the gift of peace,” Pope Leo continued. “Let us pray together that hearts may be freed from hatred, that we may move beyond the logic of division and retaliation, and that a shared vision inspired by the common good may prevail.”

Carriquiry, now Uruguay’s ambassador to the Holy See, was the first lay undersecretary of a Vatican dicastery (the Pontifical Council of the Laity). Pope Benedict XVI appointed him secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

“Carriquiry certainly doesn’t depict an idealized Vatican,” journalist Lucio Brunelli wrote in his review of the book. “He recalls what a wise German monsignor told him at the beginning of his work in the Curia: ‘here there are 10% saints, 10% demons, and 80%—’like you and me,’ he told me—poor sinners begging for God’s mercy.’ ‘But be careful,’ he concluded, ‘the saintly 10% are great saints, and the [other] 10% are terrible demons.’”

Pope Leo XIV received members of the International Catholic Legislators Network on August 23 and encouraged them to learn from St. Augustine’s The City of God, in which the “Church Father taught that within human history, two ‘cities’ are intertwined: the City of Man and the City of God.”

Jesus “tells us that it is not enough to profess the faith with words, to eat and drink with him by celebrating the Eucharist or to have a good knowledge of Christian doctrine,” Pope Leo told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Angelus address. “Our faith is authentic when it embraces our whole life, when it becomes a criterion for our decisions, when it makes us women and men committed to doing what is right and who take risks out of love, even as Jesus did.”

“Jesus is the true measure of our faith; he is the gate through which we must pass in order to be saved (cf. Jn 10:9) by experiencing his love and by working, in our daily lives, to promote justice and peace,” the Pope continued. “There are times when this involves making difficult and unpopular decisions, resisting our selfish inclinations, placing ourselves at the service of others, and persevering in doing what is right when the logic of evil seems to prevail, and so on.”

The Pontiff concluded, “Let us ask the Virgin Mary to help us find the courage to pass through the ‘narrow gate’ of the Gospel, so that we may open ourselves with joy to the wide embrace of God our loving Father.”

“I express my closeness to the people of Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, who have become victims of an unsecure and violent situation that continues to cause death and displacement,” Pope Leo said to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square. “In asking you not to forget these brothers and sisters of ours, I invite you to pray for them, and I express my hope that the efforts of the country’s leaders will succeed in restoring security and peace in that territory.”

The Pope added:

This past Friday, 22 August, we accompanied with our prayers and fasting our brothers and sisters who are suffering because of wars. Today, we join our Ukrainian brothers and sisters who, with the spiritual initiative “World Prayer for Ukraine,” are asking the Lord to grant peace to their tormented country.

“There is an aspect that unites many of you: the desire to live and to transmit to others the values of the Holy Family of Nazareth, the hearth of prayer, forge of love and model of holiness,” Pope Leo told the religious sisters, who had gathered in Consistory Hall of the Apostolic Palace. “More than ever, the family needs to be supported, promoted and encouraged, through prayer, example and attentive social action.”

“Continue the works entrusted to you by ‘being family’ and by remaining close to those you serve—with prayer, listening, counsel, and assistance—so as to cultivate and spread, in the various contexts where you work, the spirit of the home of Nazareth,” the Pope added.

“It will be of utmost importance that any person detained in the federal immigration detention center... can also access regular and ongoing pastoral care,” the bishop said, saying that access to pastoral care is “fundamental to the dignity of every human person.”

A National Catholic Register report on the trend notes that in 1980, 70% of the country’s Catholics lived in dioceses of the northeast or midwest. That figure is now below 50%, and evidently still falling.

Of the American dioceses reporting the largest population gains in the past 20 years, six are in either Texas or California, and only one (New York) in the north. Of the ten dioceses that have lost the most, all are in the traditionally Catholic bastions of the northeast and midwest, with the single exception of Miami.