Priest with Padre Pio connection leads special healing service #Catholic –

Father Pio Mandato, a Franciscan priest from Pennsylvania who personally knew St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, will lead a one-of-a-kind Padre Pio Conference and Healing Service on Monday, April 20, at St. Rose of Lima Parish in East Hanover, N.J., starting at 5 p.m. The evening will include a conference about experiencing God’s love, followed by a healing service with individual prayer and a blessing with St. Pio’s glove.

At 5 p.m., the Sacrament of Reconciliation will be available with Father Mandato. The rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet will be prayed during this time. The Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament will occur at 6:30 p.m., followed by a conference about “How can we experience God’s love?” by Father Mandato. He will also reflect on the life and spirituality of Padre Pio.

A healing service will take place after Father Mandato’s talk. Everyone will be invited to come forward for individual healing prayer, including the blessing with St. Pio’s glove.

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“This Padre Pio Conference and Healing Service will be a meaningful opportunity not only for our parishioners, but for the wider community as well, especially for those seeking spiritual renewal, prayer, and healing,” said Father Matthew Kranc, pastor of St. Rose. “All are warmly invited to attend this special evening of prayer, reflection, and healing,” he said.

St. Padre Pio was born Francesco Forgione on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, Italy. He became a Capuchin Franciscan priest known for his deep prayer life, spiritual wisdom, and extraordinary mystical gifts. Among the most remarkable of these gifts was the stigmata, the visible wounds of Christ, which he bore in his hands, feet, and side for more than 50 years.

St. Padre Pio died on Sept. 23, 1968, and was canonized by St. Pope John Paul II on June 16, 2002. Today, he is remembered as a powerful intercessor and a witness to God’s mercy and love.

Father Mandato is a Franciscan priest living as a missionary hermit. Born in Italy, he and his brother, Vincenzo, received their First Holy Communion from St. Padre Pio before coming to the United States. He later grew up in New Jersey and entered the Capuchin Franciscans at age 17.

Ordained to the priesthood in 1985, Father Mandato was accepted into the Diocese of Scranton in Pennsylvania in 1998. Today, he lives a life dedicated to solitude, prayer, and intercession. He also serves as chaplain to the Capuchin Sisters of Nazareth and assists in preaching missions.

Information: call St. Rose of Lima at 973-887-5572.

– Father Pio Mandato, a Franciscan priest from Pennsylvania who personally knew St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, will lead a one-of-a-kind Padre Pio Conference and Healing Service on Monday, April 20, at St. Rose of Lima Parish in East Hanover, N.J., starting at 5 p.m. The evening will include a conference about experiencing God’s love, followed by a healing service with individual prayer and a blessing with St. Pio’s glove. At 5 p.m., the Sacrament of Reconciliation will be available with Father Mandato. The rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet will be prayed during this time. The Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

Educators must help heal the human heart, especially in youth, bishop says in NCEA keynote #Catholic –

MINNEAPOLIS (OSV News) — Too many people have wounded hearts, and it is the job of Catholic educators to help heal them, Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston said April 7 in a keynote opening the National Catholic Educational Association convention.

NCEA 2026 marked the first time in 17 years the conference was held in Minneapolis. Catholic and religious educators from around the country gathered at the Minneapolis Convention Center to exchange ideas and research related to education.

Steven Cheeseman, president and CEO of the NCEA, helped welcome about 3,800 educators to the April 7-9 conference. He said what people learn at the 2026 conference is not meant to remain in a notebook, but is meant “to be lived, meant to be implemented. It’s meant to be shared.”

Bishop Cozzens stressed that like a spiritual director or pastor, a Catholic educator’s vocation is rooted in helping heal the heart. He shared a video recording of the singer Gracie Abrams during one of her concerts, singing her introspective song “Camden.”

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The video, Bishop Cozzens pointed out, showed a young woman who is talented, beautiful, successful and “seems to have everything going for her,” he said. But the lyrics Abrams sings speak to someone who is experiencing sorrow.

“The poetry that she sings about expresses the depth of pain that she carries in her heart, and what’s even more clear is that it resonates with tens of thousands of people in the stadium all her same age,” Bishop Cozzens said. “Many people in the stadium also feel like singing … . Brother(s), sisters, this is the height of popular culture. This is what our young people are singing about, the gaping wounds in their hearts.”

A great evil that comes from social media, Bishop Cozzens said, is that a person’s value comes from their social media likes, and their identity is tied to how they are seen. At the center of his life, Bishop Cozzens said, are three words: relationship, identity and mission. The order is important, he said.

“The most fundamental thing in any person’s life is their relationship, and my identity comes from my relationship,” Bishop Cozzens said. “I’m meant to know who I am, and I’m meant to experience my goodness, because I know I am loved by God. And then my mission comes from my identity. The problem is we get the order all messed up. We learn to take our identity from what we do, not from who we are. We start to take our value from our success and what other people think of us.”

Artificial intelligence can’t help heal the human heart, Bishop Cozzens said. Neither can technology, popular culture or politics. “In fact, it seems to be making it worse,” he said.

Bishop Cozzens asked, “How can we speak to that wound in their hearts?”

“Brothers and sisters, this is why Jesus came,” Bishop Cozzens said. “He cares about those tens of thousands of people in that stadium. He wants to speak to the wound in their hearts. He understands that wound because he created the human heart, and he knows why it’s wounded. He has an answer for it. In fact, brothers and sisters, this is why he opened his own heart.”

It is the job of Catholic educators to invite people to let their hearts be healed by an encounter with the heart of Christ, the one who reveals what it means to be human, the “God who became human to heal our humanity,” Bishop Cozzens said.

Bishop Cozzens said his talk was inspired by a quote from Pope Leo XIV when he spoke to Catholic educators in October 2025 during the Jubilee of the World of Education. Bishop Cozzens said Catholic educators need to know the truth of their own hearts in encounters with the Lord to be able to invite other people to encounter Christ.

“This first must begin with you,” Bishop Cozzens told the crowd. “(The heart) is the place where our deepest longings live, our deepest hopes live, and also our deepest fears. It’s the place where we are meant to know ourselves.

“It can be the place where we love ourselves or the place where we experience shame or even embarrassment. … It can be the place of truth, where we see our dignity, who God created us to be, but it can also be the place where lies live about myself, half-truths, and based on how my heart is, what I believe about myself.”

Bishop Cozzens said there are three practical steps to teach young people that might lead to the healing of their hearts. The first is to understand that hearts are broken. The second is to open young people to the truth that love can heal their hearts. The third is to teach that “when their hearts are healed, they’ll find joy in making a gift of themselves,” Bishop Cozzens said.

Our hearts, Bishop Cozzens explained, are broken because they are affected by sin.

“Healing of the human heart has to happen by experience and it happens primarily through the experience of being loved,” Bishop Cozzens said. “We call it mercy: unearned love. It restores. It regenerates. It reveals the truth about ourselves. This is the love that our young people are longing for, that you and I are longing for, and that God is longing to give.”

To be redeemed is to discover “that I am loved, to discover my own value, because God found me valuable, and thinks I’m valuable, valuable enough to die for,” Bishop Cozzens said.

“You have the opportunity to teach your young people the value of their hearts,” Bishop Cozzens said.

Josh McGovern is a reporter at The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. This story was originally published by The Catholic Spirit and is distributed through a partnership with OSV News.

– MINNEAPOLIS (OSV News) — Too many people have wounded hearts, and it is the job of Catholic educators to help heal them, Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston said April 7 in a keynote opening the National Catholic Educational Association convention. NCEA 2026 marked the first time in 17 years the conference was held in Minneapolis. Catholic and religious educators from around the country gathered at the Minneapolis Convention Center to exchange ideas and research related to education. Steven Cheeseman, president and CEO of the NCEA, helped welcome about 3,800 educators to the April 7-9 conference. He said what people

Vilnius’ hospice stands as a living work of Divine Mercy as city prepares to host global congress #Catholic –

(OSV News) — Thousands of pilgrims are expected to gather in June in the Lithuanian capital for the sixth World Apostolic Congress on Mercy, or WACOM, a five-day event that has previously been held in cities such as Rome, Kraków, Bogota and Manila.

But in Vilnius, the theme “Building the City of Mercy” is not only a slogan — it is a living heritage.

The June 7-12 congress, organized by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, is expected to draw up to 5,000 participants from around the world. The choice of Vilnius as host city is not accidental.

It was here, in 1934, that St. Faustina Kowalska received visions that led to the painting of the first image of Divine Mercy, created by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski. Since then, numerous versions of the image have been painted by other artists, including a popular interpretation by Adolf Hyla in Kraków — both images are now found in churches across the globe.

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The WACOM program will include conferences, testimonies, concerts and daily moments of prayer held across the city. “While in Vilnius, WACOM participants can explore the Way of Mercy — a pilgrimage route linking 14 sacred sites, St. Faustina’s house and the Gate of Dawn chapel, home to a 17th-century icon of the Mother of Mercy,” said Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius.

At the Hospice of Blessed Father Michal Sopocko — named after St. Faustina’s confessor — the message of Divine Mercy takes concrete form in daily care for the sick and dying. In fact, the hospice is an indispensable part of the Way of Mercy itself.

The building now housing the Sisters of Merciful Jesus was once the studio of painter Kazimirowski, where he created the first Divine Mercy image. It was also a place associated with Blessed Sopocko, and St. Faustina would come here often.

Sister Michaela Rak, the founder of the hospice, told OSV News — speaking ahead of April 12 Divine Mercy Sunday — that the continuity is clear: The message that began in this place is now lived out daily through care for the over 300 sick and dying patients.

The image of Merciful Jesus “came out of Vilnius and went to the whole world,” she said. “But it is not a decoration on a wall. It is a call: Experience my mercy and bring it where you are sent.”

“For many people, hospice is still something they are afraid of,” Aneta Górniewicz, deputy director of the facility, told OSV News. “But what we try to give here first of all is a sense of safety, dignity and daily care.”

Górniewicz did not plan such a path. She arrived in 2013, just after finishing her studies. “I was looking for work that would have a deeper sense — not just a source of income,” she said. A meeting with Sister Michaela changed everything. “I thought, ‘It’s worth trying.’ And I’ve been here 13 years.”

Sister Michaela, a Polish nun from the Congregation of the Sisters of Merciful Jesus, arrived in Vilnius in early 2000s with the idea of creating the country’s first hospice, which opened in 2009. Sister Michaela built the institution from the ground up, turning it into a place that now serves both adults and children at the end of life.

Inside the hospice, mercy is often expressed in small, almost invisible moments, such as a physiotherapist helping a woman, weakened by cancer, achieve a simple goal: to sit up on her own.

“It may seem like a small thing,” Górniewicz said, “but for that patient it was a huge success, a great achievement.” Other days bring different forms of care — reading books to patients who can no longer hold them, organizing shared moments of music, or even laughter therapy for a young woman with lung cancer. “It looked unusual,” Górniewicz recalled, describing a room filled with staff and patients laughing together. “But it really helped her — both physically and emotionally.”

The hospice also cares for children, some only a few years old. When possible, they are taken outside for walks. Volunteers sit with them, read stories or simply remain present. “Sometimes you don’t need words,” Górniewicz told OSV News. “You hold a hand, you pray, you just are with the person.” She described this as a “language of the heart.”

“We often tell volunteers that not every meeting will be about talking,” she said. “Sometimes it is about silence, about presence.” That presence extends to families as well. Górniewicz remembers one family thanking her simply for a kind welcome. “For me, it felt like something completely natural,” she said. “But for them it was very important — that someone received them with kindness and empathy.”

Moments like these have convinced her that mercy is not abstract. “Mercy is love of the heart,” she said. “Giving your time, your attention, your care to another person.”

Her work has also deepened her faith. Accompanying people at the end of life brings both difficulty and clarity. “From a human perspective, it is hard — especially when young people die,” she said. “But I believe that life does not end, it changes. That gives hope.”

Górniewicz recalled a patient who initially refused any spiritual care: “She said, ‘I don’t want a chaplain, I don’t need confession.’” But as her condition worsened, something shifted. “In the end she asked for the sacraments,” she said. “It was like she took hold of a lifeline.”

For Sister Michaela, this connection between faith and action is essential.

“Jesus looks at everyone with the same gaze — with a gaze of mercy,” she told OSV News. “At the one who loves him and at the one who rejects him.” That gaze, she said, defines what mercy truly is. “To look with the same love at the one who hurts me as at the one who loves me — that is mercy,” she said.

She pointed to another key element: initiative. “Jesus takes the first step,” she said, referring to the Gospel account of the risen Christ entering the room where the disciples were hiding. “He does not accuse them. He says, ‘Peace be with you.’” For Sister Michaela, this movement outward is at the heart of Christian life. “Mercy is to take the first step toward another person,” she told OSV News.

“We look at each person as we look at the image of Jesus — with love,” she said of her hospice. “We take the first step to relieve their suffering.”

Pope Francis made a surprise stop to bless patients of the Blessed Father Sopocko hospice during his 2018 apostolic trip to Vilnius.

“We feed the body, but also care for the soul,” Sister Michaela told OSV News, pointing to the role of the sacraments and spiritual support. If that dimension is lost, she warned, the consequences extend far beyond one institution. “When people lose the source of mercy, the world becomes a place of war, hatred and exploitation,” she said.

The June congress is expected to highlight not only Vilnius’ key religious sites — including the Shrine of Divine Mercy and the Gate of Dawn — but also the lived experience of mercy in the city.

“I would encourage everyone to come and see Vilnius,” she said. “Not only for its beauty, but to discover this spirit of mercy.” She pointed to the congress program, which will include not only conferences but also testimonies and opportunities to encounter works of mercy directly — also at the hospice.

“People today need mercy — even if they don’t always realize it,” she said. “We need to return to its source.”

Katarzyna Szalajko writes for OSV News from Warsaw, Poland.

– (OSV News) — Thousands of pilgrims are expected to gather in June in the Lithuanian capital for the sixth World Apostolic Congress on Mercy, or WACOM, a five-day event that has previously been held in cities such as Rome, Kraków, Bogota and Manila. But in Vilnius, the theme “Building the City of Mercy” is not only a slogan — it is a living heritage. The June 7-12 congress, organized by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, is expected to draw up to 5,000 participants from around the world. The choice of Vilnius as host city is not accidental. It was here,

Pope Leo praises ceasefire as ‘genuine hope,’ presses for dialogue, peace #Catholic –

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Leo XIV welcomed the newly announced ceasefire in the Middle East as “a sign of genuine hope” after what he described as “hours of extreme tension,” while urging a return to negotiations and calling the faithful to prayer.

“Only by returning to negotiations can the war be brought to an end,” he said in remarks in Italian following his April 8 general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

His comments came just hours after a two-week ceasefire was reached between Iran and the United States, narrowly averting further escalation. The agreement followed a stark warning from U.S. President Donald Trump late April 7, when he threatened to destroy Iran’s critical infrastructure, saying “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil and gas tankers. The ceasefire was announced roughly two hours before the White House’s deadline.

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The pope’s appeal for dialogue echoed remarks he made the previous evening at Castel Gandolfo, where he urged leaders to return to the negotiating table even before the ceasefire was announced.

“Today, as we all know, there has also been this threat against the entire people of Iran, and this is truly unacceptable,” he told journalists April 7. “There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole.”

Expanding on the broader implications of the conflict, he warned of a global economic crisis marked by “great instability,” which he said risks fueling further hatred, and he called on ordinary citizens to contact their political leaders to advocate for peace.

The pope also invited the faithful to join him in a prayer vigil for peace on April 11 in his general audience address. As flowers lined the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica during the Easter season, he used his main talk to reflect on holiness, emphasizing that it is a calling shared by all believers.

“Every baptized person is called to be holy; to live in God’s grace, to practice virtue and to become like Christ,” he said in his address to English speakers.

Continuing his series on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, he described charity as the foundation of holiness, “the fullness of love towards God and towards one’s neighbor,” and said its highest expression is martyrdom, calling it the “supreme witness of faith and charity.” He added that the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, sustain believers in this call.

He continued his analysis of the Dogmatic Constitution “Lumen Gentium,” specifically, the important role of consecrated life. “Indeed, signs of the Kingdom of God, already present in the mystery of the Church, are those evangelical counsels that shape every experience of consecrated life: poverty, chastity and obedience.

Poverty demonstrates “complete trust” in God — free of self-interest, obedience follows Christ’s “self-giving” offered to God, and chastity is the “gift of a heart that is whole and pure in love, at the service of God and Church.” The pope called these virtues a form of “radical discipleship.”

“These three virtues are not rules that shackle freedom, but liberating gifts of the Holy Spirit, through which some of the faithful are wholly consecrated to God,” he said.

Closing his main address, the pope said that Christ’s sacrifice makes holiness possible even in suffering.

“By contemplating this event, we know that there is no human experience that God does not redeem,” he said. “Even suffering, lived in union with the passion of the Lord, becomes a path of holiness.”

– VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Leo XIV welcomed the newly announced ceasefire in the Middle East as “a sign of genuine hope” after what he described as “hours of extreme tension,” while urging a return to negotiations and calling the faithful to prayer. “Only by returning to negotiations can the war be brought to an end,” he said in remarks in Italian following his April 8 general audience in St. Peter’s Square. His comments came just hours after a two-week ceasefire was reached between Iran and the United States, narrowly averting further escalation. The agreement followed a stark warning from

‘Les Misérables’ and the Moral Questions Behind Migration #Catholic –

On a recent vacation, I read Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.”

Hugo was truly a poet and philosopher. “Les Misérables” became one of his most popular works through its musical presentation on Broadway and later as a film. It tells various stories about life with distinct and complicated moral issues that need resolution.

The words ‘les misérables’ appear only once in the whole book. It is a description of the poor who were seeking justice, not necessarily a revolution, but just the basics of life. ‘Les misérables’ is hard to translate, but it means those in difficult straits; the French dictionary explains the word more.

When I was a young boy, I asked my paternal grandfather why he had come to America from Italy, and he answered me in two words — “la miseria.”

I understood the meaning from my grandparents’ description of life in Italy at the beginning of the last century.

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There was no work, no education, and little food. That is why the Great Migration at the beginning of the last century brought les misérables to America from across Europe. The flow of the unwanted was stopped by the racist Immigration Act of 1924.

The new immigrants of today come for the same reasons as did those in the Great Migration.

There are few opportunities to work in their countries, little opportunity for education for their children, as well as other deprivations. The scenes of roundups of immigrants in Minneapolis and other cities in the U.S. certainly remind us of the food riots depicted in “Les Misérables.” The new migrants integrate quickly by working. This is why they have come to America: to work, contribute, and find a new life for themselves and their children. Accessing social benefits, which are few for the undocumented, is only justice for low-wage earners.

If we had policed the workplace as was promised in the legalization program of 1986, we would not have needed border enforcement. The workplace is where the problem begins and where it can be solved. Undocumented workers will continue to fill labor gaps as long as our economy depends on low-wage jobs.

The brutal tactics displayed by ICE in Minneapolis and other places, which ended in the killing of two innocent protestors, are unnecessary.

They were in the wrong place at the wrong time with a gun and in a car because they saw it as just cause. They did not merit the death penalty.

In a previous article, I mentioned the immigration roundups and workplace invasions of the 1970s, which caused harm to immigration agents as well as migrants. There are better ways to control our unknown population. Unknown legally, although most pay social security and taxes. In the workplace, some have become les misérables, and sometimes they are treated unjustly.

What we learned from the 1986 legalization is that it is possible to regularize the workers among us and to give them the justice that comes from their contributions earned by hard work.

The enormous amount of money being spent on enforcement could easily be turned into a massive legalization program.

We could register all those working and, more easily, detect the criminal element. In the book “Les Misérables,” the revolutionary elements who participated in demonstrations did not even understand the causes for which they risked their lives. But they did see injustice that needed a solution.

The American way of protesting comes from our constitutional rights. We believe in justice as defined by our laws.

And if we do not like the laws in a constitutional democracy, we can peacefully change the laws.

We cannot suppress opposition with brutality against the undocumented or those who choose to defend them.

If we take time to understand the root causes of our working immigrant population, we will understand better solutions. In 1924, racially biased laws blocked certain groups of migrants, namely, from southern and eastern Europe.

Today, the unwanted are being penalized by the cancellation of their previous legal status and deportation.

Every social issue has some moral content, but it seems that only the poets and philosophers can discern possible solutions to our human problems, while lawmakers are reluctant to collaborate in finding them.

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who served as the seventh bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn, is continuing his research on undocumented migration in the United States.

– On a recent vacation, I read Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” Hugo was truly a poet and philosopher. “Les Misérables” became one of his most popular works through its musical presentation on Broadway and later as a film. It tells various stories about life with distinct and complicated moral issues that need resolution. The words ‘les misérables’ appear only once in the whole book. It is a description of the poor who were seeking justice, not necessarily a revolution, but just the basics of life. ‘Les misérables’ is hard to translate, but it means those in difficult straits; the French dictionary