Saint Joseph Catholic Church

Archbishop Gilbert Garcera of Lipa said that the nonviolent revolution, which led to the removal of authoritarian President Ferdinand Marcos from office, was “not simply people power; it was people power sustained by prayer: Rosaries in hand, hymns in the air, flowers offered to soldiers, and ordinary people standing unarmed before tanks.”

“Brothers and sisters, the greatest danger today is not only historical distortion, but moral fatigue,” Archbishop Garcera warned. “When freedom is treated merely as a memory and not a duty; when faith is reduced to devotion without moral courage; when peace is sought without justice—the spirit of [the revolution] slowly dies.”

Bishop Erik Varden, OCSO, of Trondheim, Norway, reflected on “Becoming Free” and “The Splendor of Truth” in his February 24 Lenten retreat conferences to the Pope and the Roman Curia.

A leading Anglo-American publishing firm, HarperCollins Publishers, published a book by Pope Leo XIV under its HarperOne imprint.

The Pontiff made the donation, valued at over €1 million ($1.18M), in response to a plea from Bishop Pavlo Honcharuk, the Latin-rite bishop of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia. Vatican News reported that a gift from the Banco Farmaceutico ETS Foundation paid for most of the assistance.

“I would like to encourage everyone to support Ukraine, above all in a spiritual sense,” Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas said in an interview with Vatican News. “This means prayer, humanitarian assistance, solidarity, and heartfelt closeness.”

Archbishop Kulbokas added, “I believe that the greatest help the Church can offer the Ukrainian people is above all spiritual help: to assist everyone—including myself—to broaden our gaze, so as not to focus solely on the evil we see and experience every day, but to maintain a gaze filled with hope.”