Saint Joseph Catholic Church

Bishop Vitaliy Skomarovskyi of Lutsk told the Vatican newspaper that “prayer and fasting are a force that has a great impact on what happens, on history.”

“Throughout the war, we saw that placing our hope in people can lead to great disappointment,” Bishop Skomarovskyi continued. “On the contrary, hope in God never disappoints.”

The prelate mused:

When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, I remember the mood that prevailed then: great happiness that it had happened almost without bloodshed ... But as time has shown, independence is a very precious thing, and now we see how high the price to pay for independence is. ...

I think the war also taught us how important it is to appreciate peace. We have always prayed for peace, but I don’t think we were fully aware of how great a gift it is to live in peace, to live without war.

Pope Leo XIV encouraged moral theologians to follow the example of St. Alphonsus de Liguori, the patron saint of moral theologians.

“Issue one was published 164 years ago, on July 1, 1861,” recalled Andrea Monda, only the twelfth director in the newspaper’s history. The paper, he wrote, originally bore the subheading “Political-Moral Newspaper,” later be replaced by the current “Political-Religious Daily Newspaper”—and thus it is “a political and religious newspaper, aiming to narrate simultaneously the city of God and the city of man.”

From the first issue, L’Osservatore Romano has had two Latin phrases on its masthead: Ulpian’s “Unicuique suum” [to each his own], and “Non praevalebunt” [will not prevail], from Christ’s words to St. Peter, that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18).