Catholic Church

EVERY 25 YEARS the global Catholic Church celebrates a Jubilee — and this is one of those years. Jubilee years are rooted in the biblical tradition from Leviticus, in which God mandates that slaves and prisoners be freed, debts forgiven, the land and creatures given rest, and relationships with our neighbors and with God set right. Pope Francis’ chosen theme for 2025 is “Pilgrims of Hope.” What does this mean for all of us, Catholic or not, who stand in the biblical tradition? Many of us, myself included,feel anxiety about what the next four years will bring. President Trump’s rhetoric and policies will likely result in attacks on immigrants, restrictions on LGBTQ+ people, heightened racial tensions, increased economic chaos, and dismantling advances in slowing climate change. Not just Americans are anxious. These actions impact people around the world.

I GOT TO spend a couple of days this autumn at the 25th annual Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice — it was the first time I’d been there, and it cheered me immensely. Formed in the 1990s in response to the murder of Jesuit priests and lay leaders in El Salvador, it was originally held outside the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia, where the officer corps of often-repressive armies trained (including the Salvadoran military who murdered the Jesuits). Civil disobedience was often a feature of the Teach-In.

Now, it’s held in D.C., and mainly young people attend: a couple of thousand students at Jesuit high schools and colleges across the nation. This year’s participants were a diverse bunch, and extraordinary in the quality of their attention and engagement. I came away heartened, even amid the political chaos of the moment.

Pope Francis said that while the Vatican’s secret and contested agreement with China on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops is not ideal, he hopes it can be renewed in October because the church takes the long view.

Farmworkers in Palm Beach, Fla. are set to march five miles in protest of Wendy’s treatment of farmworkers, and their protest has received a blessing from the Archbishop Thomas Wenski.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Tuesday asked victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for forgiveness but rejected allegations that he was involved in any cover-up. The retired pontiff was responding to an independent report, released on January 20, which chronicles decades of alleged abuse and misconduct in the archdiocese of Munich, which he led as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1977 and 1982.

Former Pope Benedict XVI failed to take action against clerics in four cases of alleged sexual abuse in his archdiocese when he was archbishop of Munich, a report found on Thursday.

FOR ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ Gomez of Los Angeles, social justice movements are “pseudo-religions.” In a November speech, Gomez said that “today’s critical theories” are “profoundly atheistic,” that they spring from a “Marxist cultural vision,” and that they “resemble” heresies in church history. He even blamed social justice movements for “causing new forms of social division, discrimination, intolerance, and injustice.”

Black Catholic theologians and others responded to Gomez’s remarks with a petition that read, in part, “Your speech was particularly painful and offensive to Black Catholic advocates in the United States who have organized for racial justice in the face of indifference and even hostility from many white Christians.” The National Black Sisters’ Conference pointed out that “BLM is not a pseudo-religion; nor is it a ‘dangerous substitute for true religion.’ It is a movement very much in the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching.” And someone ought to introduce Archbishop Gomez to Pope Francis who, in his message for World Youth Day this fall, encouraged young people to “Arise! Uphold social justice, truth, and integrity, human rights. Protect the persecuted, the poor and the vulnerable, those who have no voice in society, immigrants.”

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a bid by a Catholic hospital in California to avoid a lawsuit over its refusal to let its facilities be used to perform a hysterectomy on a transgender patient who sought the procedure as a part of gender transition from female to male.

The justices turned away an appeal by Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a Sacramento-area hospital owned by Dignity Health, and let stand a lower court ruling that revived Evan Minton’s lawsuit accusing it of intentionally discriminating against him in violation of California law because he is transgender.

The justices on Monday also bolstered a Roman Catholic-led challenge to a New York state requirement that health insurance policies provided by employers cover abortion services. The justices told a lower court to reconsider its decision to throw out a bid by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and other plaintiffs to widen an existing religious exemption to a 2017 state regulation that requires health insurance policies to cover “medically necessary” abortions.

Pope Francis on Sunday launched a two-year worldwide consultative process that could change the way the Roman Catholic Church makes decisions and leave its mark long after his pontificate is over.

Proponents see the initiative called “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission” as an opportunity to change the church’s power dynamics and give a greater voice to lay Catholics, including women, and people on the margins of society.

Conservatives say the three-stage process is a waste of time, may erode the hierarchical structure of the 1.3 billion member church, and in the long run could dilute traditional doctrine.