Benedictine monk finds priestly inspiration within Paterson Diocese community #Catholic – 
In his youth, Benedictine Brother Finnbar McEvoy prayed at Mass with the rest of the congregation for a much-needed increase in priestly and religious vocations. But as he prayed, the boy was actually thinking, “No, I’m not going to be a priest. I’m going to college and live a different life.”
As God would have it, Brother McEvoy, 34, graduated from college — several of them, in fact — on his way to a teaching career. But the path did not end there: this former member of Sussex County parishes of the Paterson Diocese, N.J., is now on track to be ordained as a Benedictine priest next year — a life he could not have imagined earlier.
BENEDICTINE BROTHER FINNBAR MCEVOY
Brother McEvoy, a monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Penn., was ordained a transitional deacon — the last step before priesthood — on May 23 in the archabbey’s basilica. Seven men were ordained that morning, either as priests or transitional deacons. Brother McEvoy anticipates being ordained a priest at the archabbey on May 29, 2027.
“As a transitional deacon, I am configuring myself to Christ, the servant. I will do whatever he tells me to do — with alacrity, holding nothing back,” said Brother McEvoy, who has five siblings. “On my last stop before the priesthood, I am embracing the diaconal ministry. I am assisting the priests, including at Mass, and serving my brother Benedictines,” he said.
Brother McEvoy’s faith took root while he was a member of Our Lady Queen of Peace (OLQP) Parish in Branchville, N.J., and later St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Sandyston, N.J. Years after, his vocation blossomed, in part, with the Benedictine monastic community in Morristown, N.J., located within the Paterson Diocese.
In 1991, Brother McEvoy was born as Tim McEvoy in 1991 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to Doreen Anne Binns of Hardyston, N.J., and the late Timothy Patrick McEvoy. The Benedictine-to-be started his early years in New York before moving with his family to Lafayette, N.J. He first attended OLQP, where he received his First Holy Communion.
Later, Brother McEvoy became associated with St. Thomas through Tom Costello, a St. Thomas parishioner and teacher at High Point Regional High School in Wantage, N.J., where the future priest graduated in 2009. Brother McEvoy received his confirmation after completing the parish’s Order of Christian Initiation of Adults.
Then, Brother McEvoy went to The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in math and physics in 2013. He is a member of the Knights of Columbus and served as the university council’s grand knight for a year. He is also belongs to Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Eta Sigma and received the President’s Award of Catholic University.
At Catholic University, Brother McEvoy was inspired to discern his vocation by several priests and other male friends, some of whom entered the seminary.
In 2015, Brother McEvoy earned a master’s degree in high school math education from the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind. From 2013 to 2017, he taught at Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville, Fla. Then, from 2017 to 2019, he taught at Delbarton School, an all-boys Catholic college-prep school run by the Benedictines in Morristown.
“I connected with the Benedictines because of their greater emphasis on common prayer, work, and community,” said Brother McEvoy, who lives with his fellow monks by the Rule of St. Benedict, which emphasizes mutual obedience, humility, and hospitality.
Brother McEvoy professed simple vows in 2021 as a monk of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown. He assumed the religious name Brother Finnbar, inspired by a 6th-century Irish monk who founded the city of Cork and was a famous teacher, especially of monks.
In 2022, Brother McEvoy began studies at Saint Vincent Seminary, where he earned a master’s in Catholic philosophical studies, summa cum laude in 2023, the year his father died. After transferring his vows in 2024, he made solemn profession in 2025 as a monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey.
Brother McEvoy’s appointments include assistant to the director of vocations and assistant to the prior, starting in 2024. He was named to the Archabbey Formation Committee in 2024. He has tutored Saint Vincent College students in physics and has assisted with retreats through College Campus Ministry and the Archabbey Vocations Office.
Brother McEvoy advises young men discerning a vocation to “talk to someone about it, particularly a priest. It will be a step in the right direction.”
PHOTO GALLERY
– In his youth, Benedictine Brother Finnbar McEvoy prayed at Mass with the rest of the congregation for a much-needed increase in priestly and religious vocations. But as he prayed, the boy was actually thinking, “No, I’m not going to be a priest. I’m going to college and live a different life.” As God would have it, Brother McEvoy, 34, graduated from college — several of them, in fact — on his way to a teaching career. But the path did not end there: this former member of Sussex County parishes of the Paterson Diocese, N.J., is now on track to
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![DePaul Catholic honors 129 graduates under sunny commencement skies #Catholic - On June 2, DePaul Catholic High School in Wayne, N.J., handed out diplomas to 129 graduates during commencement outside on the athletic field. The graduation followed a baccalaureate Mass in the school gym.
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Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney celebrated the Mass with several priests of the Paterson Diocese, N.J., and later helped distribute the diplomas at the outdoor ceremony. Administration, staff, and faculty members also participated.
Highlighting the achievements of the class, the valedictorian was Cassandra Jourdan, and the salutatorian was Jaidyn Watson. The Class of 2026 earned $57,131,505 in scholarships/financial aid.
BEACON PHOTOS | JOE GIGLI
[See image gallery at beaconnj.org]](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/depaul-catholic-honors-129-graduates-under-sunny-commencement-skies-catholic-on-june-2-depaul-catholic-high-school-in-wayne-n-j-handed-out-diplomas-to-129-graduates-during-commencement-outside.jpg)
![Monsignor Vaccari cites rising humanitarian strain as Middle East violence intensifies #Catholic Monsignor Peter Vaccari reported rising humanitarian needs during a recent Middle East visit, describing disrupted daily life as conflicts intensified.Vaccari, president of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), a papal agency that delivers humanitarian aid, described the realities facing those living amid ongoing regional tensions in an interview with “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Veronica Dudo, an excerpt of which was broadcast on June 8. Vaccari said about a visit to Jerusalem: “The day began with the sound of large sirens. Loud sirens going off, letting us know that rockets, drones, and missiles were on their way.” The situation, he said, dramatically altered the day’s plans for residents and aid workers alike.Despite the challenges, Vaccari continued his journey throughout the region, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a visible Church presence among suffering communities.CNEWA maintains offices throughout the Middle East, including in Jerusalem, Amman, and Beirut. According to Vaccari, the organization’s local presence enables it to respond quickly to changing circumstances and coordinate assistance directly with Church leaders on the ground.“The work that we do is on the ground,” Vaccari said, noting that local staff and Church partners remain deeply connected to the communities they serve.Much of CNEWA’s work focuses on humanitarian relief in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, and Lebanon. The organization provides assistance ranging from food and clean water to medicine, medical equipment, and emergency relief for families displaced by conflict.Beyond material aid, CNEWA has increasingly emphasized psychosocial and emotional support programs. Vaccari said such healing initiatives have become especially important as communities continue to endure the trauma associated with war and displacement.“To whatever extent we can work to try to provide clean water, medicine, food, medical relief, medical equipment, weʼre trying to do that,” he said. “Psychosocial healing, which as you can well imagine under the circumstances right now, is [also] a very needed entity.”Founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926, CNEWA works on behalf of the Holy See to support Eastern Catholic Churches and provide humanitarian assistance throughout the Middle East, Northeast Africa, India, and Eastern Europe. The organization partners closely with local bishops, religious communities, and lay leaders to deliver aid where it is most needed.“We work with the local Church,” Vaccari said. “We’re working with local bishops, lay leadership, consecrated religious, and the nuncios.”The organization’s work is funded largely through donations from Catholics and other benefactors around the world.“Never, in a typical mission, do we work alone,” Vaccari said. He expressed gratitude for local partners and donors whose support makes the organization’s humanitarian and pastoral outreach possible.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/monsignor-vaccari-cites-rising-humanitarian-strain-as-middle-east-violence-intensifies-catholic-monsignor-peter-vaccari-reported-rising-humanitarian-needs-during-a-recent-middle-east-visit-describin.png "Monsignor Vaccari cites rising humanitarian strain as Middle East violence intensifies #Catholic Monsignor Peter Vaccari reported rising humanitarian needs during a recent Middle East visit, describing disrupted daily life as conflicts intensified.Vaccari, president of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), a papal agency that delivers humanitarian aid, described the realities facing those living amid ongoing regional tensions in an interview with “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Veronica Dudo, an excerpt of which was broadcast on June 8. Vaccari said about a visit to Jerusalem: “The day began with the sound of large sirens. Loud sirens going off, letting us know that rockets, drones, and missiles were on their way.” The situation, he said, dramatically altered the day’s plans for residents and aid workers alike.Despite the challenges, Vaccari continued his journey throughout the region, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a visible Church presence among suffering communities.CNEWA maintains offices throughout the Middle East, including in Jerusalem, Amman, and Beirut. According to Vaccari, the organization’s local presence enables it to respond quickly to changing circumstances and coordinate assistance directly with Church leaders on the ground.“The work that we do is on the ground,” Vaccari said, noting that local staff and Church partners remain deeply connected to the communities they serve.Much of CNEWA’s work focuses on humanitarian relief in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, and Lebanon. The organization provides assistance ranging from food and clean water to medicine, medical equipment, and emergency relief for families displaced by conflict.Beyond material aid, CNEWA has increasingly emphasized psychosocial and emotional support programs. Vaccari said such healing initiatives have become especially important as communities continue to endure the trauma associated with war and displacement.“To whatever extent we can work to try to provide clean water, medicine, food, medical relief, medical equipment, weʼre trying to do that,” he said. “Psychosocial healing, which as you can well imagine under the circumstances right now, is [also] a very needed entity.”Founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926, CNEWA works on behalf of the Holy See to support Eastern Catholic Churches and provide humanitarian assistance throughout the Middle East, Northeast Africa, India, and Eastern Europe. The organization partners closely with local bishops, religious communities, and lay leaders to deliver aid where it is most needed.“We work with the local Church,” Vaccari said. “We’re working with local bishops, lay leadership, consecrated religious, and the nuncios.”The organization’s work is funded largely through donations from Catholics and other benefactors around the world.“Never, in a typical mission, do we work alone,” Vaccari said. He expressed gratitude for local partners and donors whose support makes the organization’s humanitarian and pastoral outreach possible.")
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![Pope Leo XIV builds on teachings of prior pontiffs with apology for slavery, Church’s role – #Catholic – Pope Leo XIV built on teachings laid out by his predecessors when he apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in slavery in his May 15 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, but the Holy Father also critiqued papal bulls issued in the late Middle Ages on the subject.“It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord,” Leo XIV wrote of the institution of slavery.“For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon,” he wrote.The Holy Father explained that in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Catholic individuals and some ecclesiastical institutions participated in slavery. Though the Church never taught doctrinally that slavery was morally good or neutral, he wrote about popes who “intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation” at the request of political leaders.Leo XIV wrote that “a formal, absolute, and universal condemnation of slavery” was not issued until Pope Leo XIII’s 1888 encyclical on the abolition of slavery. Leo XIV added that “we [cannot] deny or diminish” the Church’s delay in its denouncement.“In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues,” Leo XIV wrote.Church’s role in slaveryIn a footnote in the encyclical, Leo XIV cited four papal bulls from the 1400s as his examples for when the Holy See sought to “regulate and legitimize” subjugation: Pope Eugenius IV’s Sicut Dudum and Etsi Suscepti, and Pope Nicholas V’s Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex.“Political and, at times, even economic needs overcame the demands of the Gospel,” the footnote reads. “The need for evangelization was frequently compromised or at least misunderstood with regard to the needs of worldly powers, thus relativizing the problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience.”Nicholas V’s bulls, for example, authorized the Portuguese to impose slavery on specific non-Christians, particularly Muslims and pagans, related to specific conflicts. Eugenius IV condemned the enslavement of converts to Christianity without condemning the institution of slavery as a whole.Tom Nash, a staff apologist for Catholic Answers, told EWTN News that St. John Paul II apologized for Christian participation in slavery as well and many popes condemned slavery (including when it was ongoing) but did not critique specific papal bulls on the subject in the way Leo XIV does.Although Leo XIV’s comments on slavery are substantial, the topic only takes up a few paragraphs of the encyclical, which mostly deals with the Church’s social doctrine in the modern world and technological developments such as artificial intelligence.Nash emphasized that the faithful should not interpret these paragraphs as a change in Church doctrine, however, because in spite of Catholic participation in slavery, “the Church has never definitively taught that chattel slavery was morally just.”Although Leo XIV cited Sicut Dudum as an example, one of Eugenius IV’s main priorities was to “oppose the mistreatment of all African natives,” according to Nash. He quoted the bull: “They have deprived the natives of the property, or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery, sold them to other persons, and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them.”The bull did not sanction slavery but instead excommunicated anyone who enslaved Christians or those seeking baptism. The punishment could only be lifted if the person freed the slaves and returned their property.Nicholas V’s bulls were different because they explicitly authorized enslavement in certain cases, but Nash said the directives on slavery in Dum Diversas “are not an attempt to teach definitively,” are not pronouncements on doctrinal matters, and they “are certainly up for questioning and criticism.”“They are prudential judgments and don’t even attempt to invoke the specific doctrinal criteria of a definitive teaching, let alone an ‘ex cathedra’ pronouncement,” Nash added. “And thus the Church’s teaching on infallibility is not [in] play and therefore not in doubt.”One condition for infallible doctrinal pronouncements is that they must apply to all people at all times. The bulls from Nicholas V apply only “in a particular geographical situation in a particular time in history,” he said, and emphasized that “we cannot treat every papal statement as if it’s an infallible declaration.”Papal condemnations of slaveryAlthough Leo XIII delivered one of the strongest condemnations of slavery in the late 1800s, Nash noted Pope Paul III’s papal bull Sublimis Deus in 1537 strongly rebuked enslavement of Indigenous Americans more than three centuries earlier.The 16th-century pontiff blamed Satan for chattel slavery and for the mindset that Indigenous Americans “should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service.” He urged evangelization of the people and said they should not be enslaved or deprived of liberty or property.Paul III’s bull expressly stated that this prohibition on enslavement of the Indigenous Americans applies regardless of anything that has been issued before, effectively superseding Nicholas V’s papal bulls from a century earlier.Other popes in between Paul III and Leo XIII issued similar antislavery statements, with Pope Gregory XIV issuing an apostolic brief in 1591 demanding an end to the enslavement of people in the Philippines and Pope Urban VIII writing the 1639 papal bull Commissum Nobis, which condemned the enslavement of South Americans.In the early 1800s, Pope Pius VII wrote to government leaders to urge the abolition of the slave trade and Pope Gregory XVI in 1839 issued the papal brief In Supremo Apostolatus, which was the first to condemn the slave trade in its entirety.Nash noted that Christian opposition to slavery, however, is rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ, who “reaffirms the inherent dignity of every human person in a Roman-Empire milieu that had chattel slavery as a societal institution.”“He did so in giving the doctrinal command, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt 22:39),” he said. “Indeed, ‘neighbor’ includes everyone (see Gn 1:26-27), including the heretical Samaritans and other despised persons (Lk 10:25-36). Similarly, ‘the least of these my brethren’ unmistakably includes chattel slaves within a Roman-Empire milieu (Mt 25:40, 45).”St. Paul wrote about slavery several times. In Ephesians 6, he told slaves to “obey your human masters” and for masters to “stop bullying,” adding that both have the same Master in heaven, before whom “there is no partiality.” In 1 Corinthians 7, he told slaves to “make the most of it” if they gain freedom but not to be concerned about it because “the slave called in the Lord is a freed person in the Lord, just as the free person who has been called is a slave of Christ.”In contrast to norms of the time, Paul wrote about the equal human dignity of slave and master in Galatians 3, saying “there is neither slave nor free person” because “you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In the Epistle to Philemon, Paul writes to St. Philemon on behalf of the runaway slave, St. Onesimus, asking Philemon to receive him “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother.”At least one pope — St. Callistus I, who reigned from A.D. 218 until he was martyred in A.D. 222 — was a former slave. Nash noted that although slavery existed in the Roman Empire and within Europe under Christendom, the practice was reduced significantly when Christianity replaced paganism.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/pope-leo-xiv-builds-on-teachings-of-prior-pontiffs-with-apology-for-slavery-churchs-role-catholic-pope-leo-xiv-built-on-teachings-laid-out-by-his-predecessors-when-he-apologized-for-the-scaled.jpg "Pope Leo XIV builds on teachings of prior pontiffs with apology for slavery, Church’s role – #Catholic – Pope Leo XIV built on teachings laid out by his predecessors when he apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in slavery in his May 15 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, but the Holy Father also critiqued papal bulls issued in the late Middle Ages on the subject.“It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord,” Leo XIV wrote of the institution of slavery.“For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon,” he wrote.The Holy Father explained that in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Catholic individuals and some ecclesiastical institutions participated in slavery. Though the Church never taught doctrinally that slavery was morally good or neutral, he wrote about popes who “intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation” at the request of political leaders.Leo XIV wrote that “a formal, absolute, and universal condemnation of slavery” was not issued until Pope Leo XIII’s 1888 encyclical on the abolition of slavery. Leo XIV added that “we [cannot] deny or diminish” the Church’s delay in its denouncement.“In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues,” Leo XIV wrote.Church’s role in slaveryIn a footnote in the encyclical, Leo XIV cited four papal bulls from the 1400s as his examples for when the Holy See sought to “regulate and legitimize” subjugation: Pope Eugenius IV’s Sicut Dudum and Etsi Suscepti, and Pope Nicholas V’s Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex.“Political and, at times, even economic needs overcame the demands of the Gospel,” the footnote reads. “The need for evangelization was frequently compromised or at least misunderstood with regard to the needs of worldly powers, thus relativizing the problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience.”Nicholas V’s bulls, for example, authorized the Portuguese to impose slavery on specific non-Christians, particularly Muslims and pagans, related to specific conflicts. Eugenius IV condemned the enslavement of converts to Christianity without condemning the institution of slavery as a whole.Tom Nash, a staff apologist for Catholic Answers, told EWTN News that St. John Paul II apologized for Christian participation in slavery as well and many popes condemned slavery (including when it was ongoing) but did not critique specific papal bulls on the subject in the way Leo XIV does.Although Leo XIV’s comments on slavery are substantial, the topic only takes up a few paragraphs of the encyclical, which mostly deals with the Church’s social doctrine in the modern world and technological developments such as artificial intelligence.Nash emphasized that the faithful should not interpret these paragraphs as a change in Church doctrine, however, because in spite of Catholic participation in slavery, “the Church has never definitively taught that chattel slavery was morally just.”Although Leo XIV cited Sicut Dudum as an example, one of Eugenius IV’s main priorities was to “oppose the mistreatment of all African natives,” according to Nash. He quoted the bull: “They have deprived the natives of the property, or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery, sold them to other persons, and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them.”The bull did not sanction slavery but instead excommunicated anyone who enslaved Christians or those seeking baptism. The punishment could only be lifted if the person freed the slaves and returned their property.Nicholas V’s bulls were different because they explicitly authorized enslavement in certain cases, but Nash said the directives on slavery in Dum Diversas “are not an attempt to teach definitively,” are not pronouncements on doctrinal matters, and they “are certainly up for questioning and criticism.”“They are prudential judgments and don’t even attempt to invoke the specific doctrinal criteria of a definitive teaching, let alone an ‘ex cathedra’ pronouncement,” Nash added. “And thus the Church’s teaching on infallibility is not [in] play and therefore not in doubt.”One condition for infallible doctrinal pronouncements is that they must apply to all people at all times. The bulls from Nicholas V apply only “in a particular geographical situation in a particular time in history,” he said, and emphasized that “we cannot treat every papal statement as if it’s an infallible declaration.”Papal condemnations of slaveryAlthough Leo XIII delivered one of the strongest condemnations of slavery in the late 1800s, Nash noted Pope Paul III’s papal bull Sublimis Deus in 1537 strongly rebuked enslavement of Indigenous Americans more than three centuries earlier.The 16th-century pontiff blamed Satan for chattel slavery and for the mindset that Indigenous Americans “should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service.” He urged evangelization of the people and said they should not be enslaved or deprived of liberty or property.Paul III’s bull expressly stated that this prohibition on enslavement of the Indigenous Americans applies regardless of anything that has been issued before, effectively superseding Nicholas V’s papal bulls from a century earlier.Other popes in between Paul III and Leo XIII issued similar antislavery statements, with Pope Gregory XIV issuing an apostolic brief in 1591 demanding an end to the enslavement of people in the Philippines and Pope Urban VIII writing the 1639 papal bull Commissum Nobis, which condemned the enslavement of South Americans.In the early 1800s, Pope Pius VII wrote to government leaders to urge the abolition of the slave trade and Pope Gregory XVI in 1839 issued the papal brief In Supremo Apostolatus, which was the first to condemn the slave trade in its entirety.Nash noted that Christian opposition to slavery, however, is rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ, who “reaffirms the inherent dignity of every human person in a Roman-Empire milieu that had chattel slavery as a societal institution.”“He did so in giving the doctrinal command, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt 22:39),” he said. “Indeed, ‘neighbor’ includes everyone (see Gn 1:26-27), including the heretical Samaritans and other despised persons (Lk 10:25-36). Similarly, ‘the least of these my brethren’ unmistakably includes chattel slaves within a Roman-Empire milieu (Mt 25:40, 45).”St. Paul wrote about slavery several times. In Ephesians 6, he told slaves to “obey your human masters” and for masters to “stop bullying,” adding that both have the same Master in heaven, before whom “there is no partiality.” In 1 Corinthians 7, he told slaves to “make the most of it” if they gain freedom but not to be concerned about it because “the slave called in the Lord is a freed person in the Lord, just as the free person who has been called is a slave of Christ.”In contrast to norms of the time, Paul wrote about the equal human dignity of slave and master in Galatians 3, saying “there is neither slave nor free person” because “you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In the Epistle to Philemon, Paul writes to St. Philemon on behalf of the runaway slave, St. Onesimus, asking Philemon to receive him “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother.”At least one pope — St. Callistus I, who reigned from A.D. 218 until he was martyred in A.D. 222 — was a former slave. Nash noted that although slavery existed in the Roman Empire and within Europe under Christendom, the practice was reduced significantly when Christianity replaced paganism.")
![Pope Leo scores goal for the Gospel at soccer stadium - #Catholic - Before a packed Santiago Bernabéu stadium and a crowd fully swept up in the moment, a figure dressed in white made his entrance. Yet it was neither Mbappé nor Cristiano Ronaldo nor any other Real Madrid soccer team legend but Leo XIV.It was a particularly significant moment for the pope at the arena where the team he loves — though, as pontiff, he’s for everyone — has achieved its greatest sporting feats. No match was being played, but the faithful of the Archdiocese of Madrid, together with the suffragan dioceses of Alcalá de Henares and Getafe, welcomed Leo with a euphoria comparable to that of a decisive goal in a World Cup final.
Pope Leo blessing a child at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid, June 8, 2026. | Credit: Daniel Ibañez/EWTN News
“For a soccer player, scoring a goal in this stadium is a moment that leaves a bit of a mark on your life. Today, the Church in Madrid has scored a spectacular goal for all time," the pope said before beginning his address.The event brought together representatives from parishes, movements, and consecrated life, as well as priests and pastoral workers, with a special presence from parish pastoral councils. Young people performed a short play for the pope modeled after a soccer match, and David Bustamante, a famous Spanish singer, also performed. There were also deeply moving personal testimonies, such as that of a 33-year-old man who shared with the gathering that he had been baptized last year and is now preparing to get married.
The event brought together representatives from parishes, movements, and consecrated life, as well as priests and pastoral workers, with a special presence from parish pastoral councils. | Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News
When he addressed the priests, consecrated persons, and bishops of Madrid, the pope told them: “Your joy will be contagious if, moving from being just a fleeting emotion, it becomes a stable way of being, a deep sentiment that renews individuals, groups, and the diocesan community.”“Baptism truly changes one’s life ... thereʼs no need to fear the fact that it never produces uniformity,” the pontiff stated during his second to last gathering in the Spainʼs capital city, prior to beginning the second leg of his journey, which will take him to Barcelona on Tuesday, June 9.To illustrate this idea, he referenced the New Testament as an antidote to uniformity, thanks to the “testimony of the variety of its voices.” He also drew attention to the episode of the Tower of Babel, where, according to the biblical account, people in a "totalitarian and merely human project ended up unable to understand their neighbor.”In contrast to this, and in line with the proposals in his recent encyclical Magnifica humanitas, he presented the figure of Nehemiah who involved the entire community in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.
“Seeking and following him is the condition for proclaiming him,” said the Pope about the task of evangelization. | Credit: Vatican Media
The pope used this gathering with some of the faithful of the diocesan community in the Madrid region to outline the keys to effective evangelization in the twenty-first century. He emphasized the importance of “not scattering or shutting ourselves away in the group or environment where we already feel secure among people who always sing the same tune.”“To reach the heart of the city, we must cultivate the awareness that truth is symphonic and always transcends us, and cultivate the desire to encounter the Risen One, who always goes ahead of us, preceding us and perhaps already present where we have not yet sought him,” he noted.Therefore, he continued, “seeking and following him is the condition for proclaiming him; otherwise, there is no evangelization, and today we can understand this better than in the past.”Quoting St. Teresa of Avila, he said, “‘Let nothing trouble you, let nothing frighten you!’ Together, as a diocesan Church, you can offer the Gospel witness that unleashes the best strengths of a humanity bombarded by images and words, yet hungry for justice and thirsty for truth,” he added.He also highlighted the special relationship between the Church and the city, which, as he explained, takes shape “among flesh-and-blood people, in workplaces and close relationships, but also within the different communities, associations, and neighborhood organizations,” and which gains even greater significance “amidst the change of epochs we are currently experiencing.”“When we reduce ecclesial life to a routine where everyone remains locked within their own habits and roles, what we lack is the Spirit,” he stated.His words seemed to resonate in the testimony of Sister María San José of the Congregation of the Daughters of Holy Mary of the Heart of Jesus. She is an educated, independent woman with two careers and two masterʼs degrees who left a comfortable life at Santander Bank to consecrate herself to religious life, demonstrating how God’s call reaches into every walk of life.“I realized that there was something more that fulfilled me — beyond everything I had and everything I had built — and that was this consecrated life, this total dedication to the Lord,” she explained to EWTN News while on her way to the gathering.“God knows the hearts of his people individually. He knows them as only he can — that is, in love and, therefore, in freedom,” the pope said, underscoring that God is “infinite mercy and wants everyone to be saved.” “He desires this to the point of becoming flesh and taking upon himself all the sin, evil, and negativity of the world,” he emphasized.Among those present at Bernabéu stadium was Father Antonio Sánchez, a priest of the Diocese of Getafe ordained last October. He shared with ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, the deep emotion he felt participating along with the pope in the Corpus Christi procession following the Mass celebrated in the Plaza de Cibeles on Sunday, June 7.
Father Antonio Sánchez at Bernabéu Stadium on June 8, 2026. | Credit: Courtesy of Father Antonio Sánchez.
It was, in his words, “a privilege to be selected without any merit; all they said was that the priests of the ecclesiastical province should be at the procession,” he explained.“With an attitude of adoration, seeing the pope who was a great witness, because being close to the procession during such a unique moment was truly special. We were on the same [ground] level as the pope, and seeing him in the procession, adoring and focused on Christ ... it was a moment of realization: amidst all the commotion, we were focused on Christ, to whom we have consecrated our lives,” he told ACI Prensa shortly before the pontiff entered the stadium where he was welcomed with tremendous enthusiasm. Prior to this gathering, the pope visited Santa María la Real de la Almudena Cathedral, which became the setting for one of his most touching moments in Madrid.The Holy Father placed the Golden Rose at the feet of the image of the Virgin of Almudena as a symbol of his filial love, a gesture reflecting the pope’s deep Marian devotion. This marks the fourth Spanish image of the Virgin to receive this gift; the other three are the Virgin of Hope Macarena, the Virgin of La Cabeza and the Virgin of Montserrat.
Pope Leo XIV at the Almudena Cathedral on June 8, 2026. Credit: Vatican Media
This pontifical distinction is a recognition of the popular piety and Marian devotion of Madrid. It has ancient roots and symbolizes the papal blessing.The tradition dates back to Pope Leo IX, who established it in 1049. Over the centuries, it has been bestowed upon monasteries, shrines, sovereigns, and prominent figures in recognition of their commitment to the faith and the common good. In the past, the Golden Rose was also awarded to queens, including Isabella the Catholic Monarch, who was the first queen to receive it in 1493, granted by Innocent VIII.In the solemn act, Pope Leo climbed the steps leading to the base of the image to lay the floral offering and pray. His most notable previous visit to the Almudena Cathedral took place on the occasion of the 2002 canonization of Alonso de Orozco, an Augustinian who died in Madrid, in the convent that occupied the site of the current Senate building. The saint’s remains now rest in the chapel of the Contemplative Augustinian Nuns’ convent on La Granja street.This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/pope-leo-scores-goal-for-the-gospel-at-soccer-stadium-catholic-before-a-packed-santiago-bernabeu-stadium-and-a-crowd-fully-swept-up-in-the-moment-a-figure-dressed-in-white-made-his-entrance-yet-scaled.jpg)
![Golf Invitational funds give disadvantaged students ‘swing’ at learning #Catholic - More than 130 supporters of the Tri-County Scholarship Fund (TCSF) gathered at Morris County Golf Club in Morristown, N.J., on June 1 for the organization’s 34th Annual Golf Invitational. The event raised $200,000 to provide scholarships for financially disadvantaged students seeking access to a quality, values-based education.
Under sunny skies, the event welcomed 116 golfers, along with participants in pickleball and Mahjong, for a day of fellowship, friendly competition, and philanthropy. Trustees, sponsors, and friends of the organization came together to support Tri-County’s mission to expand educational opportunities for children and families throughout Morris, Passaic, and Sussex counties. The funds enable recipients to attend accredited K-12 independent schools that best meet their educational needs.
Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney of the Paterson Diocese, N.J., joined fellow golfers in support of Tri-County’s mission. He has been a TCSF board member since 2020.
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A highlight of the event was hearing from Christopher, a graduating senior at DePaul Catholic High School in Wayne, N.J., and a Tri-County scholarship recipient. He will attend Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., this fall to study business and finance.
Reflecting on his educational journey from Paterson public schools to St. Gerard Majella School in Paterson, N.J., and DePaul, Christopher credited Tri-County with helping make those opportunities possible.
“I am eternally grateful to my mom, my teachers, and all the donors of Tri-County for believing in me,” Christopher told attendees. “You gave me the chance to become the best version of myself,” he said.
Prudence Pigott, TCSF president, said, “The Golf Invitational is one of our favorite days of the year because it brings together so many members of the Tri-County family.”
“Whether they joined us on the golf course, pickleball courts, or around the Mahjong tables, our supporters came together to invest in students and strengthen our community,” said Pigott. She especially thanked Bank of America and PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose longstanding leadership as Tournament Sponsors helped make the Golf Invitational possible.
The TCSF celebrates its 45th Anniversary in 2026 under the theme, “Freedom Through Education.” The late Bishop Frank J. Rodimer of Paterson co-founded Tri-County in 1981 with corporate executive Edward L. Hennessy, Jr.
Since then, the organization has awarded more than 39,000 scholarships, helping students access safe, quality, values-based educational environments that empower them to reach their full potential. TCSF provided 1,000 scholarships during the upcoming 2026-2027 school year, helping continue its mission of breaking the cycle of poverty through education.
Mike Mund is the office manager and scholarship fund administrator for the Tri-County Scholarship Fund.
BEACON PHOTOS | JOE GIGLI
[See image gallery at beaconnj.org]](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/golf-invitational-funds-give-disadvantaged-students-swing-at-learning-catholic-more-than-130-supporters-of-the-tri-county-scholarship-fund-tcsf-gathered-at-morris-county-golf-cl.jpg)
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![A quarter of Irish Gen Z will have no children, new report says #Catholic One in 4 members of Ireland’s Gen Z demographic are expected to be childless by age 45, according to a new report from Dublin’s Iona Institute, which promotes marriage, freedom of conscience, and religion in society. Gen Z generally refers to people born between 1997 and 2012.Drawing on cohort-level data from the Human Fertility Database (HFD), as well as using demographic modeling, the instituteʼs "Choice or Circumstance? Rising Childlessness in Ireland" report, released in May, charts a huge increase in the number of Irish women who are childless.Among those born in the late 1950s, only 30.9% were childless by age 30, rising to 63.6% for those born in the early 1990s. This trend suggests 25% of women born in the late 1990s will be childless when they reach age 45.Breda OʼBrien of the Iona Institute told EWTN News that “a huge question is whether this will be by choice or circumstance.""Much will be unplanned and forced by circumstance, such as the cost of living," she said. "It’s worrying and weʼre sliding into it without too much discussion. Before the 1930s, we had similar rates of childlessness in Ireland, but that was because of extreme poverty, late marriage, and low marriage rates. Weʼre supposed to be in an era where women have every possible choice.”She continued: “The choice to have children, which is fundamental, is being taken away from young women. Itʼs being painted as a kind of freedom. I donʼt think young women themselves consider it to be a type of freedom, and I think a lot of them are worried about it."According to Central Statistics Office data, the average man’s age at marriage is now nearing 38 and the average womanʼs age is almost 36. A 2022 Amarach Research poll for Iona showed that 85% of people want to have at least two children and only 2% expressed a wish for no children. Births in Ireland have fallen by almost 18% in the last decade, according to Central Statistics Office.With clear indications that the longer a person delays having children, the less likely he or she will have any, O’Brien said “itʼs part of the whole growth of individualism and this idea for kids, from the time theyʼre tiny, [that] you get your education, you travel, you have your career in order, you have fun, you donʼt tie yourself down, and then sometimes in your 30s, you think about settling down. But a lot of women in their mid-30s realize that it is increasingly difficult to conceive.”She added: “The fertility industry is booming, which does show us that people are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to have children, but the life script theyʼve been presented with is actually working against their best interests. Nature has no knowledge of this life script that young people are being presented with.”“The longer you leave it, the more chances there are of miscarriage, of complications in labor, and of medical intervention during birth, if you get that far. So itʼs not consequence-free,” she said.O’Brien told EWTN News that there needs to be debate about why this is happening as a society. "It is a phenomenon we should discuss far more widely if our aim is to help people achieve their eventual life goals. I think among people of faith, they are still prioritizing children and family, and marriage. The Catholic Church needs to support those young families in every way possible.”She pointed out that having fewer children “has very significant social and economic consequences because of the effects of an aging population and growing loneliness.”The report highlights a series of demographic issues related to childlessness and to Ireland’s already-aging population. Lower fertility rates, combined with rising childlessness, mean that the ratio of working-age adults to elderly dependents is set to worsen. Fewer births today mean fewer workers in 20 to 30 years.O’Brien said: “In Ireland, thereʼs still a degree of respect for older people, but one of the awful possible consequences is that younger people will start to resent older people.” The Iona report highlights the situation where a smaller working-age population will be asked to support a larger elderly population, putting pension sustainability, healthcare, and long-term care provision under growing financial pressure.The instituteʼs findings also highlight the effect on housing and household-formation patterns. A rise in the proportion of adults who never have children increases demand for smaller dwellings and single-person households. Additionally, in recent decades, inward migration to Ireland has been an effective and economically rational response in periods of strong demand. However, it is not a response to childlessness.O’Brien pointed to other countries and the demographic shifts they are facing with an increasing aging population. “Other countries are further along the road than we are. South Korea, or even Japan, where theyʼre repurposing childcare facilities for eldercare facilities, moving from baby formula to fortified drinks from the elderly, and from producing diapers for children, to producing incontinence products for the elderly — this is not a good road that weʼre on,” she said.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/a-quarter-of-irish-gen-z-will-have-no-children-new-report-says-catholic-one-in-4-members-of-irelands-gen-z-demographic-are-expected-to-be-childless-by-age-45-according-to-a-new-report-from-scaled.jpg "A quarter of Irish Gen Z will have no children, new report says #Catholic One in 4 members of Ireland’s Gen Z demographic are expected to be childless by age 45, according to a new report from Dublin’s Iona Institute, which promotes marriage, freedom of conscience, and religion in society. Gen Z generally refers to people born between 1997 and 2012.Drawing on cohort-level data from the Human Fertility Database (HFD), as well as using demographic modeling, the instituteʼs \"Choice or Circumstance? Rising Childlessness in Ireland\" report, released in May, charts a huge increase in the number of Irish women who are childless.Among those born in the late 1950s, only 30.9% were childless by age 30, rising to 63.6% for those born in the early 1990s. This trend suggests 25% of women born in the late 1990s will be childless when they reach age 45.Breda OʼBrien of the Iona Institute told EWTN News that “a huge question is whether this will be by choice or circumstance.\"\"Much will be unplanned and forced by circumstance, such as the cost of living,\" she said. \"It’s worrying and weʼre sliding into it without too much discussion. Before the 1930s, we had similar rates of childlessness in Ireland, but that was because of extreme poverty, late marriage, and low marriage rates. Weʼre supposed to be in an era where women have every possible choice.”She continued: “The choice to have children, which is fundamental, is being taken away from young women. Itʼs being painted as a kind of freedom. I donʼt think young women themselves consider it to be a type of freedom, and I think a lot of them are worried about it.\"According to Central Statistics Office data, the average man’s age at marriage is now nearing 38 and the average womanʼs age is almost 36. A 2022 Amarach Research poll for Iona showed that 85% of people want to have at least two children and only 2% expressed a wish for no children. Births in Ireland have fallen by almost 18% in the last decade, according to Central Statistics Office.With clear indications that the longer a person delays having children, the less likely he or she will have any, O’Brien said “itʼs part of the whole growth of individualism and this idea for kids, from the time theyʼre tiny, [that] you get your education, you travel, you have your career in order, you have fun, you donʼt tie yourself down, and then sometimes in your 30s, you think about settling down. But a lot of women in their mid-30s realize that it is increasingly difficult to conceive.”She added: “The fertility industry is booming, which does show us that people are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to have children, but the life script theyʼve been presented with is actually working against their best interests. Nature has no knowledge of this life script that young people are being presented with.”“The longer you leave it, the more chances there are of miscarriage, of complications in labor, and of medical intervention during birth, if you get that far. So itʼs not consequence-free,” she said.O’Brien told EWTN News that there needs to be debate about why this is happening as a society. \"It is a phenomenon we should discuss far more widely if our aim is to help people achieve their eventual life goals. I think among people of faith, they are still prioritizing children and family, and marriage. The Catholic Church needs to support those young families in every way possible.”She pointed out that having fewer children “has very significant social and economic consequences because of the effects of an aging population and growing loneliness.”The report highlights a series of demographic issues related to childlessness and to Ireland’s already-aging population. Lower fertility rates, combined with rising childlessness, mean that the ratio of working-age adults to elderly dependents is set to worsen. Fewer births today mean fewer workers in 20 to 30 years.O’Brien said: “In Ireland, thereʼs still a degree of respect for older people, but one of the awful possible consequences is that younger people will start to resent older people.” The Iona report highlights the situation where a smaller working-age population will be asked to support a larger elderly population, putting pension sustainability, healthcare, and long-term care provision under growing financial pressure.The instituteʼs findings also highlight the effect on housing and household-formation patterns. A rise in the proportion of adults who never have children increases demand for smaller dwellings and single-person households. Additionally, in recent decades, inward migration to Ireland has been an effective and economically rational response in periods of strong demand. However, it is not a response to childlessness.O’Brien pointed to other countries and the demographic shifts they are facing with an increasing aging population. “Other countries are further along the road than we are. South Korea, or even Japan, where theyʼre repurposing childcare facilities for eldercare facilities, moving from baby formula to fortified drinks from the elderly, and from producing diapers for children, to producing incontinence products for the elderly — this is not a good road that weʼre on,” she said.")
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![‘You are so loved’: New film reveals enduring power of the Sacred Heart #Catholic A new movie called “Sacred Heart: His Reign Has No End” will be hitting theaters across the United States this month after experiencing tremendous success in France and other countries.Directed and produced by Steven and Sabrina Gunnell of KREA Film-Makers, “Sacred Heart” was released in Europe in October 2025 and became a box office success selling nearly 1 million tickets.The docudrama retells Christ’s apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque — the 17th-century French nun who received the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.Through testimonies, accounts of Eucharistic miracles, historical analysis, and reenactments, the film explores the moment when Christ revealed his heart to the world and its burning love for humanity.The film will be in U.S. theaters June 9–11 and June 14.The Gunnells spoke to EWTN News and shared that the inspiration for the film came from personal testimonies they heard from two Missionaries of the Sacred Heart while at Notre-Dame du Laus (Our Lady of Laus), a Marian sanctuary located in the Hautes-Alpes region of France. That same evening, the married couple, along with their extended families, discovered the consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the first time and consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart.The French filmmakers began to think about the possibility of making a documentary about the Sacred Heart. They began seeing the image of the Sacred Heart appear everywhere around them in their daily lives, which they took as a sign from God to make the film.“In the moment where we said yes [to Jesus], in an instant, we had the story of the movie. We knew exactly what we would make for the movie,” Steven said.Steven, 51, had his own powerful conversion story — thanks in part to the Sacred Heart of Jesus — when he was in his 20s.Born in Annecy in southern France, he was raised solely by his mother — his father was in a rock band that toured most of the year. Despite the fact that his mother had been baptized a Catholic, she fell away from the faith and became part of a demonic sect, which she was a part of for roughly 25 years. This caused Steven to have a strained relationship with his mom, and at the age of 21, he left his home and moved to Paris in hopes of becoming an actor.When he arrived in Paris he started to audition for roles, and during one he was asked if he could sing. It was this audition that landed Steven in the popular French boy band Alliage for three years. He soon became wealthy and famous with many fans. But eventually a shift in musical trends left boy bands as an outdated fad and life as he knew it came to an end — no more concerts, no more albums, and he was out of a job.Steven went to London to escape his problems but became depressed, began to drink excessively, and started thinking about suicide.One day, after years of not speaking, he called his mother from a phone booth. He told her he was going to do something bad because he couldn’t handle life anymore. Much to his surprise, his mother told him to go into a church and just take a moment before he did anything else. So he did. He went into the first church he saw, sat down, and ended up falling asleep. About four hours later, he woke up and was no longer suicidal.Looking back on it now, he said he knows this was thanks to “resting in the Holy Spirit.” He recalled waking up and feeling “light, restored, and peaceful.”
Steven and Sabrina Gunnell. | Credit: KREA Film-Makers
Steven went back to this church every day for weeks. He ended up finding a job, and after about five months he called his mother again and asked her if could move back home.“My mom said, ‘Your bedroom is waiting for you,’” he shared.Once he arrived home, his mom took him to a small chapel dedicated to St. Rita, the patron saint of impossible causes. He was shocked to see his mother join about 400 other people in praying a rosary held in the chapel. Steven began to walk around the chapel and came face to face with a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.“I’m kneeling at this moment, and I begin to cry with all my soul, all my blood, all my everything,” he said. “I met Jesus that day.”Moments later a priest walked up to him from behind, put his hand on his shoulder, and asked him if he was Steven Gunnell.“I said, ‘Yes. How do you know me, Father?’”The priest responded: “Your mother has come here for one year now, every single day, because she has been praying for you … She prayed the rosary for you every day at 4 o’clock. And now you’re here — first miracle. Second miracle, you are here in the Chapel of St. Rita, the saint of impossible causes — welcome to the club.”The priest went on to remind Steven of the sacraments he received as a child.“‘You may have forgotten everything, but you are Catholic and God didnʼt forget you,’” the priest told him.At that moment, Steven made his confession with the priest and after the rosary ended, he attended the Mass. The reading for that day? The story of the prodigal son.“This story happened 26 years ago now and itʼs changed my life,” he said.From there, Steven went on to meet his wife and together they began to create films “for the kingdom,” he said.Now, he said he hopes this movie on the Sacred Heart will inspire others to realize how short their lives are and the importance of returning to Christ.“Today we are here; tomorrow weʼre gone. Itʼs ridiculous when you think about it. You have no time to lose ... Go to church and just take a moment to give a few minutes in front of the tabernacle, the presence of the holy Eucharist, and take a few moments with him to say to him you love him and just hear in the silence, inside, the love he has for you.”Sabrina added that she hopes viewers will leave knowing “that the love of God is more powerful than every evil thing in the world.”“We have this heart, this God, who came as a human being and he has a heart of a human being and he can understand all our moods, all our difficulties, and we are so loved. You are so loved,” she said. “Everyone is so loved by God and we just want the people who come out of the cinema to feel full of love, burn about this love, and go out into the world to spread that.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/you-are-so-loved-new-film-reveals-enduring-power-of-the-sacred-heart-catholic-a-new-movie-called-sacred-heart-his-reign-has-no-end-will-be-hitting-theaters-acros.png)
!['Witness to the whole world': Families gather for Eucharistic procession in Washington, D.C. - #Catholic - Along K Street in Washington, D.C., amid a humid morning on June 6, Catholics from across the area gathered to adore the Eucharist as it processed through the nationʼs capital. Despite the heat and humidity, many parents and grandparents packed their little ones into strollers or baby carriers and brought them out to view the Eucharistic pilgrimage as it made its way through D.C. The local procession was a partnership between the Catholic Information Center and the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage.
Families participate in the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage as it makes its way through downtown Washington, D.C., on June 6, 2026. The pilgrimage began in Florida and will finish in Philadelphia later in the summer. | Credit: Gemma Flores/EWTN News
“I really like taking my kids to the Eucharistic processions for Corpus Christi,” Theresa Cambell said while pushing Augustine, three years old, and Rowena, nine months, in a stroller in the procession. “I think practical things really help them understand the significance of what is going on.” Campbell, who lives in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, took her children to the Catholic Information Center procession last year. Though she wasn’t raised going to processions or adoration regularly with her family, Campbell said the tradition was important to her as she raises her own children so that they can better come to understand the Church. A big part of this, she said, was her own active participation.“Children have a very natural orientation towards liturgy, and I think that the reverence that everyone has in the tradition actually does most of the teaching,” Cambell said. “And then, you know, we do explain that it is the body and blood of Christ and that the procession is for Corpus Christi, and we try to tie that into the liturgical year.”Maria and Pedro Estrada of Reston, Virginia, practice similar worship habits with their four children. The couple moved to the United States from Argentina six years ago and grew up attending similar events with their families. Estrada said she and her husband take their children to adoration regularly and practice family prayer to get them interested in Jesus and the Church.“At home, we pray a lot,” Estrada explained. “We pray the rosary in front of our kids, and they see us and they try to imitate us. They’re very interested in Jesus and His love for us, and we explain that all the things we have, and the way we are, is because of Jesus, and because He loves us. And it’s nice to Him that we, you know, give Him some of the love He gave us.”Julie Enzler of Alexandria, Virginia, helped take her 15-month-old granddaughter through the procession while her daughter volunteered with the Catholic Information Center.“What I appreciate about the procession through the city is the witness that we can give to the whole world of our Eucharistic Lord present in the midst of us, and to bring the power of his love to the streets,” Enzler said. “It’s something we try to do in person every day, hopefully, but just to make Him present in the lives of people who wouldn’t necessarily find Him.”Enzler said that all her grandchildren are being raised in the Catholic Church and attending Corpus Christi processions, even though she herself did not growing up. This, she hopes, will help them to orient their lives toward God.Enzler said she knows how valuable it is to bring Christ with you wherever you go, whether that be spiritually or in actuality.“Because the Church is the body of Christ, we all need each other,” Enzler explained. “We all need the witness of new life in the body. And the children need the witness of adults doing things that might be uncomfortable.” “For old people, it’s uncomfortable on your knees,” she continued. “And for other ages, maybe it’s uncomfortable to be seen practicing your faith or witnessing to your faith in the Eucharist, which is something that’s not obvious without faith.”Enzler said that she feels the United States is poised to accept Christ at this moment, and that showing the next generation of Catholics what faithful adoration looks like can help spread this.“I’m really grateful to the [Catholic Information Center] for offering this opportunity and for the word of hope that this event brings to the streets of Washington, D.C. at a time where the country seems particularly open to the practice of faith and the witness of faith,” she said. “I know there’s a lot of prayers begging more and more graces, so I’m grateful,” she said. “There’s always the grace that we can count on, but we can’t see or quantify.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/witness-to-the-whole-world-families-gather-for-eucharistic-procession-in-washington-d-c-catholic-along-k-street-in-washington-d-c-amid-a-humid-morning-on-june-6-catholics-from-across-t.jpg)
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![Educators weigh benefits and challenges of AI in the classroom – #Catholic – Educators are weighing the benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence (AI) and exploring how to successfully integrate the technology into the classroom.As Pope Leo XIV laid out in Magnifica Humanitas, AI must be used in a way that furthers human development, especially in the formational years of education.Educators are using AI tools to help them grade papers and offer extensive research capabilities, but they are simultaneously noting the need for community and connections that no technology can provide.Fernanda Psihas, a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, said the technology tools have not replaced human instructors and human connection is still the key to success in the classroom.Concerned about the ethical use of AI, Psihas said it is necessary to preserve the “human element” to enhance the future of education.“We obviously need to prepare the students for a world with AI,” she told EWTN News. “That means learning tools, but that also means practicing proper discernment.”The data science and physics professor said it would be “dangerous” for teachers to keep teaching as if nothing had changed.“If instructors are not AI-literate, then classrooms are going to run the risk of drifting into having students faking competence and avoiding the actual learning,” she said.Taking a “values-first approach” to AI, Psihas said she tries to keep herself and her students accountable when it comes to its use.“Use it to increase efficiency so you can focus on the learning, but if you do any more than that, youʼre actually destroying the learning process,” she said.Protecting academic integrityAware that “cognitive offloading” to AI tools could disrupt the learning process of students, Psihas said certain AI tools can be useful to protect academic integrity.“I even use AI to AI-proof my own assignments,” she said. “Iʼll run my assignments through AI to see an example of an AI response … if something in my classroom is AI-generated, my students know about it, and I kind of expect the same for my students.”While AI helps Psihas accurately grade multiple-choice tests and produce datasets, she said it cannot replace her ability to engage with students through mentorship.“Education is a lot more than just skills and information-transfer, but itʼs actually the formation of the whole person,” she said. “There’s guidance. You guide and nurture the students’ curiosity and their skills.”It “is about turning knowledge into wisdom and turning skills into virtue and character,” she said.Similarly, Notre Dame Law School professor and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences member Paolo Carozza said we must ensure technology “is orienting us towards the fundamental understanding of reality, including the reality of ourselves and what weʼre made for or not,” Carozza told EWTN News.Pope Leo makes this clear in Magnifica Humanitas, that at the root it is “an integrated problem of cooperating with one another to rebuild our city that we want to live in, in the future together.”Education “plays a central role in this cooperative enterprise because weʼre forming the individuals that are then going to be putting the bricks together in the future,” he said.Advantages and disadvantages are ‘well mapped’AI’s “advantages and disadvantages are pretty well mapped,” Carozza said. AI can “positively enhance the reach of peopleʼs research and the knowledge that they can draw.”In contrast, “every educator, at every level, is seeing the really potentially drastic negative consequences of cognitive offloading and de-skilling of students' basic capacities to write and to think critically.”The “deeper challenge” for educators is “providing our students with a fundamental human formation that allows them to really think about what their personal relationship to technology is in their lives and how it affects it.”The positive and negative impacts of AI in education also differ based on age and must be addressed accordingly, said An Chih Cheng, professor at DePaul Universityʼs College of Education.“The pope warned about the danger of early exposure to digital technology,” Cheng told EWTN News.Children spending time watching screens “is not particularly conducive” for their “mental and cognitive development.”A lot of screen time for children “is passive learning” and is “devoid of social aspects that are critical for communal development,” he said.“Communality is a critical part of the pope’s idea that we are not by ourselves” and “we are all interconnected as one,” he said. Going “to the screen and being isolated” is “harmful for your own internality, your own individual growth, and also bad for communal development.”There are also risks of “digital harm” for teenagers, especially with social media use, which has “caused harm to individual teenagers in particular, even suicide,” Cheng said.Then in higher education, new technologies are often being used with “little guidance.”“For example, California [State University] signed a $13 million contract with Open AI to allow students and teachers to use ChatGPT,” he said. “But … if you just have the chatbot open there, it is absolutely not helpful for meaningful learning.”The universities are “kind of just buying these tools, convinced or led by the tech industry, thinking that they could deliver some kind of learning.”“But learning, as the pope has always said, is an inquiry, a truth-seeking endeavor that requires patience. You cannot just have an immediate answer like the prompt that gives an immediate answer,” he said.“You need to put in all the effort to seek out the truth. Thatʼs how we mentally develop — acquiring the truth.”Reimagining education in the age of AITo help students understand both the risks and benefits of AI, Carozza and Cheng are incorporating AI into their students' studies.In his seminar on law and technology, Carozza had his students take a new approach when studying their weekly scholarly works.“In addition to reading it directly and engaging in their own critical analysis of it, I actually required them to upload those papers into an AI tool and use the tool to analyze it,” he said.Then “they had to write … an essay comparing their analysis to the AI analysis, reflecting on what the use of AI was doing to their own cognitive abilities and processes.”This allowed the students “to reflect every week” and ask: “Is this displacing my ability to think? Is it helping it? How can I make it more the latter than the former?”“It was great because by the end of the semester they really had thought very deeply, in a continuous way, about their relationship to technology, what the appropriate limits were for themselves, and what to be cautious about,” he said.“That sort of reflection on who we are as knowing subjects, as free people — thatʼs exactly what the encyclical is asking us to do,” Carozza said.Cheng is also incorporating the technology into studies in his research method class where “AI can be used to help brainstorm some research questions,” he said.“More importantly,” AI “can help make things more accessible, because some of the statistical software is very expensive to purchase,” he aid. “I incorporate … statistical analysis that they can do at home. These tools are much [more] affordable than the super-expensive commercial software."Cheng also utilizes visual AI simulations so students “can see these virtually enriched environments,” which is “beneficial for preservice teachers [student teachers] to understand child development."The pope’s call is correct, that it is “not about using AI to replace teachers or professors but rather to incorporate AI in a way that can further human development and in a way that delivers … spiritual attainment,” Cheng said.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/educators-weigh-benefits-and-challenges-of-ai-in-the-classroom-catholic-educators-are-weighing-the-benefits-and-drawbacks-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-and-exploring-how-to-successfully-integra.jpg "Educators weigh benefits and challenges of AI in the classroom – #Catholic – Educators are weighing the benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence (AI) and exploring how to successfully integrate the technology into the classroom.As Pope Leo XIV laid out in Magnifica Humanitas, AI must be used in a way that furthers human development, especially in the formational years of education.Educators are using AI tools to help them grade papers and offer extensive research capabilities, but they are simultaneously noting the need for community and connections that no technology can provide.Fernanda Psihas, a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, said the technology tools have not replaced human instructors and human connection is still the key to success in the classroom.Concerned about the ethical use of AI, Psihas said it is necessary to preserve the “human element” to enhance the future of education.“We obviously need to prepare the students for a world with AI,” she told EWTN News. “That means learning tools, but that also means practicing proper discernment.”The data science and physics professor said it would be “dangerous” for teachers to keep teaching as if nothing had changed.“If instructors are not AI-literate, then classrooms are going to run the risk of drifting into having students faking competence and avoiding the actual learning,” she said.Taking a “values-first approach” to AI, Psihas said she tries to keep herself and her students accountable when it comes to its use.“Use it to increase efficiency so you can focus on the learning, but if you do any more than that, youʼre actually destroying the learning process,” she said.Protecting academic integrityAware that “cognitive offloading” to AI tools could disrupt the learning process of students, Psihas said certain AI tools can be useful to protect academic integrity.“I even use AI to AI-proof my own assignments,” she said. “Iʼll run my assignments through AI to see an example of an AI response … if something in my classroom is AI-generated, my students know about it, and I kind of expect the same for my students.”While AI helps Psihas accurately grade multiple-choice tests and produce datasets, she said it cannot replace her ability to engage with students through mentorship.“Education is a lot more than just skills and information-transfer, but itʼs actually the formation of the whole person,” she said. “There’s guidance. You guide and nurture the students’ curiosity and their skills.”It “is about turning knowledge into wisdom and turning skills into virtue and character,” she said.Similarly, Notre Dame Law School professor and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences member Paolo Carozza said we must ensure technology “is orienting us towards the fundamental understanding of reality, including the reality of ourselves and what weʼre made for or not,” Carozza told EWTN News.Pope Leo makes this clear in Magnifica Humanitas, that at the root it is “an integrated problem of cooperating with one another to rebuild our city that we want to live in, in the future together.”Education “plays a central role in this cooperative enterprise because weʼre forming the individuals that are then going to be putting the bricks together in the future,” he said.Advantages and disadvantages are ‘well mapped’AI’s “advantages and disadvantages are pretty well mapped,” Carozza said. AI can “positively enhance the reach of peopleʼs research and the knowledge that they can draw.”In contrast, “every educator, at every level, is seeing the really potentially drastic negative consequences of cognitive offloading and de-skilling of students' basic capacities to write and to think critically.”The “deeper challenge” for educators is “providing our students with a fundamental human formation that allows them to really think about what their personal relationship to technology is in their lives and how it affects it.”The positive and negative impacts of AI in education also differ based on age and must be addressed accordingly, said An Chih Cheng, professor at DePaul Universityʼs College of Education.“The pope warned about the danger of early exposure to digital technology,” Cheng told EWTN News.Children spending time watching screens “is not particularly conducive” for their “mental and cognitive development.”A lot of screen time for children “is passive learning” and is “devoid of social aspects that are critical for communal development,” he said.“Communality is a critical part of the pope’s idea that we are not by ourselves” and “we are all interconnected as one,” he said. Going “to the screen and being isolated” is “harmful for your own internality, your own individual growth, and also bad for communal development.”There are also risks of “digital harm” for teenagers, especially with social media use, which has “caused harm to individual teenagers in particular, even suicide,” Cheng said.Then in higher education, new technologies are often being used with “little guidance.”“For example, California [State University] signed a $13 million contract with Open AI to allow students and teachers to use ChatGPT,” he said. “But … if you just have the chatbot open there, it is absolutely not helpful for meaningful learning.”The universities are “kind of just buying these tools, convinced or led by the tech industry, thinking that they could deliver some kind of learning.”“But learning, as the pope has always said, is an inquiry, a truth-seeking endeavor that requires patience. You cannot just have an immediate answer like the prompt that gives an immediate answer,” he said.“You need to put in all the effort to seek out the truth. Thatʼs how we mentally develop — acquiring the truth.”Reimagining education in the age of AITo help students understand both the risks and benefits of AI, Carozza and Cheng are incorporating AI into their students' studies.In his seminar on law and technology, Carozza had his students take a new approach when studying their weekly scholarly works.“In addition to reading it directly and engaging in their own critical analysis of it, I actually required them to upload those papers into an AI tool and use the tool to analyze it,” he said.Then “they had to write … an essay comparing their analysis to the AI analysis, reflecting on what the use of AI was doing to their own cognitive abilities and processes.”This allowed the students “to reflect every week” and ask: “Is this displacing my ability to think? Is it helping it? How can I make it more the latter than the former?”“It was great because by the end of the semester they really had thought very deeply, in a continuous way, about their relationship to technology, what the appropriate limits were for themselves, and what to be cautious about,” he said.“That sort of reflection on who we are as knowing subjects, as free people — thatʼs exactly what the encyclical is asking us to do,” Carozza said.Cheng is also incorporating the technology into studies in his research method class where “AI can be used to help brainstorm some research questions,” he said.“More importantly,” AI “can help make things more accessible, because some of the statistical software is very expensive to purchase,” he aid. “I incorporate … statistical analysis that they can do at home. These tools are much [more] affordable than the super-expensive commercial software.\"Cheng also utilizes visual AI simulations so students “can see these virtually enriched environments,” which is “beneficial for preservice teachers [student teachers] to understand child development.\"The pope’s call is correct, that it is “not about using AI to replace teachers or professors but rather to incorporate AI in a way that can further human development and in a way that delivers … spiritual attainment,” Cheng said.")
