Saint Joseph Catholic Church

Thirty-one deacons and 26 priests were ordained in Brazil for Virgo Flos Carmeli, the clerical branch of Heralds of the Gospels, after the Vatican lifted a seven-year moratorium on ordinations.

The Heralds were founded in 2001 in Brazil. The Vatican ordered an apostolic visitation of the association in 2017 and named Cardinal Raymundo Damasceno Assis as pontifical commissioner. Ordinations were halted in 2019.

“The interruption directly affected candidates who had completed their formation but were unable to proceed to ordination,” The Catholic Herald reported. “No detailed public explanation was given at the time for the suspension, and the situation persisted for several years without a clear timeline for resolution.”

The prelate who served as relator general for the synod on synodality said in an interview that he could “imagine a subdiaconate for women.”

“While this would not involve ordination, it would still represent participation in the liturgy and assist with the Church’s diaconal ministry,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., of Luxembourg.

In his 1972 apostolic letter Ministeria Quaedam, Pope St. Paul VI noted that the subdiaconate was a major order, along with the diaconate and the priesthood.

“The functions heretofore assigned to the subdeacon are entrusted to the reader and the acolyte; consequently, the major order of subdiaconate no longer exists in the Latin Church,” St. Paul VI declared. “There is, however, no reason why the acolyte cannot be called a subdeacon in some places, at the discretion of the conference of bishops.”

Following President Donald Trump’s social media post blasting Pope Leo, The Pillar compiled reactions from bishops and political figures in the United States and abroad.

President Donald Trump told reporters that he will not apologize for a social media post blasting the Pope.

“He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran. Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result,” the president said on April 13. “I think he’s very weak on crime and other things.”

In an interview with Fox News (transcript), Vice President JD Vance downplayed President Donald Trump’s decision to post an AI-generated image of himself on social media that appeared to depict him as Jesus.

The president “was posting a joke” and removed the post because he “recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case,” the vice president said.

Vice President Vance also weighed in disagreements between the Trump administration and the Pope, following President Trump’s social media post blasting the Pope.

“Stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church,” Vance said of the Pope. “And let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”

“When they are in conflict, they are in conflict,” he added. “I don’t worry about it too much. I think it’s a natural thing. I’m sure it will happen in the future and it’s not that big of a deal that it happened in the past.”

In a reflection on Pope Leo’s April 11 Rosary for peace in St. Peter’s Basilica, a Vatican spokesman said that “God cannot be with those who massacre civilians.”

“Faced with massacres and wars caused by the idolatry of power—by those who even presume to ‘enlist’ God on their side, offering religious justification for the killing of innocents—Pope Leo XIV has appealed to the overwhelming majority of people throughout the world who want peace, believe in peace, pray for peace, and build it day by day,” wrote Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication.

Tornielli added:

The words of the Pope, who has made peace the hallmark of his magisterium, are unequivocal both in identifying the ultimately diabolical root of war and in rejecting outright any revival of the claim that “God is with us.” No, God cannot be with those who massacre civilians. God is with those who suffer, with those who die beneath the rubble.

The prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity marked the 40th anniversary of Pope St. John Paul II’s historic visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome.

“The visit of Saint John Paul II to the Rome synagogue on April 13, 1986, was an extraordinary event,” said Cardinal Kurt Koch. “For the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome entered a synagogue to bear witness before the world to his appreciation for the Jewish religion and the Jewish people.”

“The Pope emphasized that the Catholic Church has a relationship with Judaism unlike that with any other religion,” Cardinal Koch added. “In particular, through this visit to the Rome synagogue forty years ago—as well as through many of his other important statements on Catholic–Jewish dialogue, various eloquent gestures, and the personal friendships he maintained with members of the Jewish people—Pope John Paul II charted a significant course for the future of reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Judaism.”

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A Vatican spokesman described the Pope’s apostolic journey to four African nations as that of a missionary of peace.

“How can one fail to reflect on the resentment being generated among younger generations by the massacres of civilians in Gaza and now in Lebanon?” asked Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication. “And how can the same question not be asked with regard to the war in Ukraine and the many other regions scarred by hatred and violence?”

Tornielli added:

The voice of peace of the Successor of Peter, the Vicar of the defenseless Son of God who chose the nonviolent path of self-sacrifice on the Cross, resonates even more powerfully when it rises from this land [Algeria], where the Church is an absolute minority and where the witness of the very few Christians is all the more essential—grounded in service and in sharing the joys and sufferings of all.

In a message for an Easter Saturday festival attended by 85,000 in Madrid, Pope Leo XIV recalled the martyrs slain out of hatred for the faith in Spain in the 1930s.

The martyrs were “witnesses of Jesus; in them, Christ’s victory over death became fidelity, strength and surrender,” Pope Leo wrote in his message, dated April 8 and released on April 11.

“You are called not only to remember them, but to draw strength from their example so that Christ may walk your streets once more, so that the Church may regain her zeal, so that the truth of the Gospel may open those tombs into which so many hearts have turned, and thus Easter may become present here and now through Christian lives that are light, courage, and a joyful proclamation,” the Pope added.