Vatican

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts to Indigenous communities in Canada as part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday.

The items, including an Inuit kayak, are part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader museum debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.

Negotiations on returning the Vatican items accelerated after Pope Francis in 2022 met with Indigenous leaders who had traveled to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s role in running Canada’s disastrous residential schools. During their visit, they were shown some objects in the collection, including wampum belts, war clubs and masks, and asked for them to be returned.

Francis later said he was in favor of returning the items and others in the Vatican collection on a case-by-case basis, saying: “In the case where you can return things, where it’s necessary to make a gesture, better to do it.”

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Wednesday it has been working with Indigenous groups on returning the items to their “originating communities.” It said it expected the Holy See to announce the return. Vatican and Canadian officials said they expected an announcement in the coming weeks, and that the items could arrive on Canadian soil before the end of the year.

The Globe and Mail newspaper first reported on the progress in the restitution negotiations.

Doubt cast on whether the items were freely given

Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens that was a highlight of that year’s Holy Year.

The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.

But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time. In those years, Catholic religious orders were helping to enforce the Canadian government’s forced assimilation policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”

Part of that policy included confiscating items used in Indigenous spiritual and traditional rituals, such as the 1885 potlatch ban that prohibited the integral First Nations ceremony. Those confiscated items ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as private collections.

The return of the items in the Vatican collection will follow the “church-to-church” model the Holy See used in 2023, when it gave its Parthenon Marbles to the Orthodox Christian Church in Greece. The three fragments were described by the Vatican as a “donation” to the Orthodox church, not a state-to-state repatriation to the Greek government.

In this case, the Vatican is expected to hand over the items to the Canadian bishops conference, with the explicit understanding that the ultimate keepers will be the Indigenous communities, a Canadian official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are not concluded.

What happens after the items are returned

The items, accompanied by whatever provenance information the Vatican has, will be taken first to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. There, experts and Indigenous groups will try to identify where the items originated, down to the specific community, and what should be done with them, the official said.

The official declined to say how many items were under negotiation or who decided what would be returned, but said the total numbered “a few dozen.” The aim is to get the items back this year, the official said, noting the 2025 Jubilee which celebrates hope but is also a time for repentance.

This year’s Jubilee comes on the centenary of the 1925 Holy Year and missionary exhibit, which is now so controversial that its 100th anniversary has been virtually ignored by the Vatican, which celebrates a lot of anniversaries.

The Assembly of First Nations said some logistical issues need to be finalized before the objects can be returned, including establishing protocols.

“For First Nations, these items are not artifacts. They are living, sacred pieces of our cultures and ceremonies and must be treated as the invaluable objects that they are,” National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Canadian Press.

Gloria Bell, associate professor of art history at McGill University who has conducted extensive research on the 1925 exhibit, said the items were acquired during an era of “Catholic Imperialism” by a pope who “praised missionaries and their genocidal labors in Indigenous communities as ‘heroes of the faith.’”

“This planned return marks a significant shift in the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and perhaps the beginning of healing,” said Bell, who is of Metis ancestry and wrote about the 1925 exhibit in “Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — King Charles III plans to visit Pope Leo XIV next week in the Vatican as the first reigning English monarch since 1534 to pray in a service with the pontiff.

Charles, along with his wife, Queen Camilla, will visit the Vatican on Wednesday and Thursday. They will appear with the pope during a service on Thursday at the Sistine Chapel, where a special seat has been created for Charles.

The chapel was dedicated on Aug. 15, 1483. Michelangelo painted the ceiling from 1508 to 1512.

Henry VIII split from the Vatican 22 years later.

Buckingham Palace on Sept. 26 announced the state visit to the Holy See for late October in the church’s 25th Jubilee Year to “celebrate the ecumenical work by the Church of England and the Catholic Church, reflecting the Jubilee year’s theme of walking together as ‘Pilgrims of Hope.'”

The royal couple had a private meeting with Pope Francis on April 9 in celebration of their 20th wedding anniversary. It took place at Casa Santa Marta hospital in Rome, 12 days before he died.

In 1961, Queen Elizabeth II was the first British monarch since the Reformation to visit the Holy See. Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022, and Charles became king.

“It marks a historic moment in the journey of reconciliation between our Churches,” Archbishop Flavio Pace said in a Vatican press briefing Friday. “It celebrates how far we’ve come — and offers hope for the future.”

This gathering will bring together members of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, of which the king is the supreme governor.

“This will be the first state visit, since the Reformation, where the pope and the monarch will pray together in an ecumenical service in the Sistine Chapel, and the first time the monarch will have attended a service in St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, a church with an historic connection to the English crown,” a Buckingham spokesman told the Guardian.

They also will visit the adjacent Benedictine Abbey. This church, which contains the tomb of St. Paul, had been associated with the English monarchy dating to medieval and Anglo-Saxon rulers who helped with the upkeep.

King Charles will also be honored with the title of Royal Confrater, “recognizing the long-standing ties between the British Crown and the Benedictine abbey attached to the basilica,” Vatican News said.

During the service with the pope, there will be a hymn by Saint Ambrose of Milan sung in an English translation by Saint John Henry Newman, who was canonized in 2019. King Charles attended that event.

Music will be provided by the Sistine Chapel Choir, alongside choristers from the Chapel Royal at St. James’ Palace and the Choir of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

The king and queen will also meet Vatican officials.

The Vatican said the “two central themes of the Royal visit are Christian unity and care for the planet.”

The Roman Catholic Church has approximately 1.4 billion members with 20.4% in Europe, including 6.2 million baptized Roman Catholics in England and Wales, and 676,000 in Scotland.

The Church of England is the largest Christian denomination in Britain with 13.3 million followers. The church originated in the break from the Vatican and features Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

ROME — The Vatican took the unusual step on Monday of announcing that it had named judges to decide the fate of a famous ex-Jesuit artist, whose mosaics decorate basilicas around the world and who was accused by more than two dozen women of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse.

The case of the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik badly tarnished the legacy of Pope Francis, given suggestions that the Jesuit pope, the Jesuit religious order and the Jesuit-headed Vatican sex abuse office protected one of their own over decades by dismissing allegations of misconduct against him.

The Vatican office that manages clergy sex abuse cases, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the five judges named to hear the Rupnik case in a canonical court include women and priests who don’t hold jobs in the Vatican bureaucracy.

It said that such a composition was “done in order to better guarantee, as in any judicial process, the autonomy and independence of the aforementioned court.”

The statement suggested an implicit recognition that prior to now, the Vatican’s handling of the Rupnik file had been anything but autonomous or independent.

Famous artist accused

Rupnik’s mosaics grace some of the Catholic Church’s most-visited shrines and sanctuaries around the world, including at the shrine in Lourdes, France, in the Vatican, a new basilica in Aparecida, Brazil, and the chapel of Pope Leo XIV’s own Augustinian religious order in Rome.

The Rupnik scandal first exploded publicly in late 2022 when Italian blogs started reporting the claims of nuns and other women who said they had been sexually, spiritually and psychologically abused by him, including during the production of his artwork.

Rupnik’s Jesuit religious order soon admitted that he had been excommunicated briefly in 2020 for having committed one of the Catholic Church’s most serious crimes — using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity. But he continued working and preaching.

The case continued to create problems for the Jesuits and Francis, though, since more women came forward saying they too had been victimized by Rupnik, with some of their claims dating back to the 1990s.

The Jesuits eventually kicked him out of the order after he refused to respond to allegations by about 20 women, most of whom were members of a Jesuit-inspired religious community that he co-founded in his native Slovenia, which has since been suppressed.

The Vatican initially refused to prosecute, arguing the women’s claims were too old. The stall exposed both the Vatican’s legal shortcomings, where sex crimes against women are rarely prosecuted, and the suggestion that a famous artist like Rupnik had received favorable treatment.

Trial about to start

While Francis denied interfering in a 2023 interview with the Associated Press, he eventually caved to public pressure and waived the statute of limitations so that the Vatican could open a proper canonical trial.

Two years later, the Vatican statement on Monday indicated that the trial was about to start. The judges, appointed on Oct. 9, will use the church’s in-house canon law to determine Rupnik’s fate, though it’s still not even clear what alleged canonical crimes he is accused of committing. The Vatican statement didn’t say. He hasn’t been charged criminally.

To date, Rupnik hasn’t responded publicly to the allegations and refused to respond to his Jesuit superiors during their investigation. His supporters at his Centro Aletti art studio have denounced what they have called a media “lynching.”

Some of Rupnik’s victims have gone public to demand justice, including in a documentary “Nuns vs. The Vatican” that premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. They welcomed word on Monday that the trial would finally start, attorney Laura Sgro said.

“My five clients requested 18 months ago to be recognized as injured parties in the proceedings, so we hope that their position will be established as soon as possible,” Sgro said in a statement. “They have been waiting for justice for too many years, and justice will be good not only for them but also for the church itself.”

The Catholic Church’s internal legal system doesn’t recognize victims of abuse as parties to a canonical trial but merely third-party witnesses. Victims have no right to participate in any proceedings or have access to any documentation.

At most, they are entitled to learn the judges’ verdict. Unlike a regular court, where jail time is possible, canonical penalties can include sanctions such as restrictions from celebrating Mass or even presenting oneself as a priest, if the judges determine a canonical crime has occurred.

Legal hurdles to justice

But it’s not even clear whether the Vatican considers the women to be abuse “victims” in a legal sense. While the Holy See over the last 25 years has refined the canonical rules to prosecute priests who sexually abuse minors, it has rarely prosecuted sex-related abuse cases involving women, contending that any sexual activity between adults is consensual.

The Rupnik case, though, also involves allegations of spiritual and psychological abuse in relations where there was an imbalance of power. It’s one of many such #MeToo cases in the church where women have said they fell prey to revered spiritual gurus who used their power and authority to manipulate them for sexual and other ends.

The Vatican, though, has generally refused to prosecute such cases or address this type of abuse in any canonical revisions, though Francis authorized a study group to look into allegations of “false mysticism” before he died.

Leo has expressed concern in general that accused priests receive due process. But he had firsthand experience dealing with an abusive group in Peru that targeted adults as well as minors, including through spiritual abuse and abuse of conscience.

In a letter earlier this year to a Peruvian journalist who exposed the group’s crimes, Leo called for a culture of prevention in the church “that does not tolerate any form of abuse — whether of power or authority, conscience or spiritual, or sexual.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

Carlo Acutis, a digital pioneer, used his computer skills to spread Catholic teaching globally.

A London-born Italian teenager, known as “God’s influencer”, who was an early adopter of the internet to spread Catholic teachings, has been made the church’s first millennial saint at a ceremony led by Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.

Leo canonised Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 aged 15, in a ceremony attended by thousands on Sunday in St Peter’s Square. At the Mass, the pontiff also canonised Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in 1924 but was widely recognised for his charitable work.

During a speech at the event, Leo credited Acutis and Frassati for making “masterpieces” out of their lives, warning congregants that the “greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan”.

Often seen photographed in his casual outfits, with scruffy hair, T-shirts and sunglasses, Acutis cuts a different figure from the church’s saints of the past who were often depicted in solemn paintings. This has built a global following for Acutis, with the church intending him to be a more relatable saint for digitally-focused young people today.

Leo said Acutis and Frassati’s lives are an “invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces”.

Acutis was born in London in 1991 but moved early on in his life to the northern Italian city of Milan with his family, where he lived until he died of leukaemia in 2006.

As a teenager, Acutis taught himself coding and programming, using the skills he had acquired to document recognised church miracles to spread Catholic teaching globally. His pioneering digital efforts took place at a time when literacy around those subjects was not widespread.

He was also believed to have regularly attended church services, been kind to the homeless and children who suffered bullying, which endeared him to Catholic youth globally.

Shortly after he died, Antonia Salzano, Acutis’s mother, began advocating globally for her son to be recognised as a saint, which requires that he carry out miracles during his life.

Pope Francis, whose death in April this year led to a delay in the saint-making ceremony for Acutis, said the teenager carried out two miracles during his life. According to the Catholic News Agency, Acutis healed a boy who had a birth defect affecting his pancreas and a girl who sustained an injury in Costa Rica.

In a 2019 letter to Catholics, Pope Francis acknowledged Acutis’s efforts, saying, “It is true that the digital world can expose you to the risk of self-absorption, isolation and empty pleasure.” He added, “But don’t forget that there are young people even there who show creativity and even genius. That was the case with the Venerable Carlo Acutis.”

Acutis’s body, encased in wax, lies in a glass tomb in Assisi, a medieval town in central Italy, which is a pilgrimage site visited by hundreds of thousands of people annually. Our Lady of Dolours Church in London, where he was baptised, has also attracted growing numbers of visitors. A part of his heart has been removed from his body as a relic and has been displayed at churches globally.

Vice President Joe Biden, who has traveled to some America’s leading medical centers in recent weeks as part of what he has called his moonshot to cure cancer, will soon take his quest to the Vatican.

Biden will address a major conference on the progress of regenerative medicine in Vatican City on April 29, the vice president’s office said Wednesday.

The gathering, hosted by the Stem for Life Foundation and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, will also draw leading physicians, ethicists and philanthropists to discuss the potential of emerging research to treat cancer and other diseases. The initiative has been championed by Pope Francis, who worked as a chemist before he entered the priesthood and has written in support of scientific progress.

Biden will be the latest leading U.S. political figure to attend a major gathering at the Vatican. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, will travel there this week to address a separate summit on social, economic and environmental issues.

Other details on the vice president’s three-day trip to Rome and the Vatican, including a possible meeting with Francis, had not yet been determined, his office said.

Biden, the nation’s first Catholic vice president, attended Francis’ papal inauguration in 2013 and attended multiple events during the Catholic leader’s visit to the U.S. last fall, including his address to Congress and departure from Philadelphia after the World Meeting of Families there.

Biden has praised Francis’ message of inclusion, writing in Time magazine that the pope “put a welcome sign on the front door of the Church.” Biden has also spoken of Francis’ personal empathy toward him and his family since the death last May of Biden’s eldest son, Beau, and the role of his faith in coping with personal tragedy.

The vice president’s effort to cure cancer, first announced by Biden as he said last fall that he would not run for president, was formally launched this year in President Obama’s State of the Union address. Biden has since traveled to Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and other research centers as part of his effort to bring stakeholders together in search of a cure.

Follow @mikememoli for more news out of Washington.

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Southern Europe struggles with soaring heat as temperatures hit 40C, sparking fears of wildfires and health risks.

Europeans are braced for the first heatwave of the Northern Hemisphere summer, as climate change pushes thermometers on the world’s fastest-warming continent further into the red.

With temperatures expected to rise to 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Italian capital, Rome, on Saturday, the Eternal City’s many tourists and Catholic pilgrims to the Vatican alike have been converging around the Italian capital’s 2,500 public fountains for refreshment.

In France, with residents of the southern port city of Marseille expected to have to cope with temperatures flirting with 40C (104F), authorities ordered public swimming pools to be made free of charge to help residents beat the Mediterranean heat.

Two-thirds of Portugal will be on high alert on Sunday for extreme heat and forest fires with 42C (108F) expected in the capital, Lisbon.

Meanwhile, visitors to – and protesters against – Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos’s Friday wedding in Venice were likewise sweltering under the summer sun.

“I try not to think about it, but I drink a lot of water and never stay still, because that’s when you get sunstroke,” Sriane Mina, an Italian student, told AFP news agency on Friday in Venice.

Meanwhile, Spain, which has in past years seen a series of deadly summer blazes ravaging the Iberian peninsula, is expecting peak temperatures in excess of 40C (104F) across most of the country from Sunday.

Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment, with Europe’s ever-hotter and increasingly common blistering summer heatwaves a result of the long-term warming.

With peaks of 39C (102F) expected in the cities of Naples and Palermo, Sicily has ordered a ban on outdoor work in the hottest hours of the day, as has the Liguria region in northern Italy.

The country’s trade unions are campaigning to extend the measure to other parts of the country.

In Greece, the first heatwave of the summer arrived on Thursday when a fast-moving wildfire engulfed holiday homes and forest land on a section of the Greek coastline just 40km (25 miles) south of the capital, Athens.

More than 100 firefighters, supported by two dozen firefighting aircraft, battled the wildfire that tore across the coastal area of Palaia Fokaia. The flames were whipped up by high winds as temperatures approached 40C (104F).

The heatwave comes hot on the heels of a series of tumbling records for extreme heat, including Europe’s hottest March ever, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitor.

As a result of the planet’s warming, extreme weather events including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves like this weekend’s have become more frequent and intense, scientists warn.

Catholic pontiff says international rules have been ‘replaced by the presumed right to overpower others’.

Pope Leo XIV has lamented what he described as the rise of blunt power over the rules of international law as conflicts rage around the world and global institutions continue to fail to end abuses and war crimes.

“It is disheartening to see today that the strength of international law and humanitarian law no longer seems binding, replaced by the presumed right to overpower others,” the pontiff said in a social media post on Thursday.

“This is unworthy and shameful for humanity and for the leaders of nations.”

Leo did not elaborate on his remarks, but his statement comes amid growing calls for ending the Israeli assault on Gaza, which leading rights advocates and United Nations experts have described as a genocide.

Israel has faced growing accusations of violating international humanitarian law, a set of rules meant to protect civilians in conflict, during its conflict with Palestinians.

Backed by the United States, the Israeli military has levelled large parts of Gaza, displaced nearly its entire population and killed at least 56,156 in the territory, according to health officials.

Earlier this month, former US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller, who spearheaded Washington’s defence of Israel’s conduct during the Joe Biden administration, acknowledged that the Israeli military has “without a doubt” committed war crimes in Gaza.

Israel stands in defiance of several international resolutions, including rulings by the International Criminal Court, the top UN tribunal, against the Israeli blockade and killings in Gaza.

Last year, the ICJ also declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory – East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – unlawful and called for its end “as rapidly as possible”.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over possible war crimes in Gaza, including using starvation as a weapon of war.

But most members of the ICC, especially in Europe, have maintained their deep trade and military ties to Israel despite the charges.

After succeeding the late Pope Francis in May, becoming the first pontiff from the US, Leo pleaded for an end to the war on Gaza.

“Ceasefire now,” Leo, the top spiritual authority for about 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, said in May.

“From the Gaza Strip, we hear rising ever more insistently to the heavens, the cries of mothers and fathers who clutch the lifeless bodies of their children, and who are continually forced to move about in search of a little food and water and safer shelter from bombardments.”

As the war in Gaza continues, deadly conflicts and reports of abuses in Sudan and Ukraine have also persisted.

ROME — Arnaldo Pomodoro, one of Italy’s most prominent contemporary artists whose bronze spheres decorate iconic public spaces from the Vatican to the United Nations, has died at age 98, his foundation said Monday.

Pomodoro died at home in Milan on Sunday, the eve of his 99th birthday, according to a statement from Carlotta Montebello, director general of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation.

Pomodoro’s massive spheres are instantly recognizable: shiny, smooth bronze globes with clawed-out interiors that Pomodoro has said referred to the superficial perfection of exteriors and the troubled complexity of interiors.

In a note of condolences, Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli said Pomodoro’s “wounded” spheres “speak to us today of the fragility and complexity of the human and the world.”

The Vatican’s sphere, which occupies a central place in the Pigna Courtyard of the Vatican Museums, features an internal mechanism that rotates with the wind. “In my work I see the cracks, the eroded parts, the destructive potential that emerges from our time of disillusionment,” the Vatican quoted Pomodoro as saying about its sphere.

The United Nations in New York received a 3.3-meter (10 foot, eight inch) diameter “Sphere Within Sphere” sculpture as a gift from Italy in 1996. The U.N. sphere has refers to the coming of the new millennium, the U.N. said: “a smooth exterior womb erupted by complex interior forms,” and “a promise for the rebirth of a less troubled and destructive world,” Pomodoro said of it.

Other spheres are located at museums around the world and outside the Italian foreign ministry, which has the original work that Pomodoro created in 1966 for the Montreal Expo that began his monumental sculpture project.

In the 1960s, he taught at Stanford University, UC Berkeley and Mills College. “Rotante dal Foro Centrale,” part of Pomodoro’s “Sfera con Sfera” series, can be found at the west entrance of the Berkeley campus. In 1988, Italian Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita presented the sculptor’s “Colpa d’ala (Wing Beat)” as a gift to Los Angeles to mark the 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. It is installed downtown at the Department of Water and Power (now the John F. Ferraro Building).

Pomodoro was born in Montefeltro, Italy, on June 23, 1926. In addition to his spheres, he designed theatrical sets, land projects and machines.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

Pope Leo XIV is a huge Chicago White Sox fan.

It’s a good thing too — otherwise the event being thrown in his honor at the team’s home stadium this weekend might be a little awkward.

While the White Sox play the Rangers in Texas on Saturday afternoon, the Archdiocese of Chicago will be at Rate Field celebrating the new leader of the Catholic Church — who was born and raised on the city’s South Side — with a Mass by Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich and other festivities.

While the man once known as Robert Prevost won’t be there in person, he will appear in what event organizers describe as “a video message from Pope Leo XIV to the young people of the world.”

Leo will also be represented in mural form. The White Sox unveiled a graphic installation featuring his likeness on a concourse wall before a May 19 game against the Seattle Mariners, less than two weeks after Leo was selected as the first U.S.-born pope. He replaced Pope Francis, who died on April 21 at age 88.

The Chicago White Sox have commemorated the fandom of Pope Leo XIV with a graphic installation at Rate Field.

(Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)

The graphic was installed next to Section 140, where Leo sat in Row 19, Seat 2 for Game 1 of the 2005 World Series between the White Sox and Houston Astros. As remarkable as it might sound, there is footage from Fox’s national broadcast of that Oct. 22, that shows the man then-known as Father Bob in the stands at the stadium then-known as U.S. Cellular Field.

Hosting a World Series game for the first time since 1959, the White Sox led by two runs with one out in the top of the ninth inning. Chicago closer Bobby Jenks had just thrown a 95-mph fastball past Houston’s Adam Everett for an 0-1 count and was preparing for his next pitch.

That’s when the camera panned to a nervous-looking Father Bob, who appears to be wearing a team jacket over a team jersey.

Viewers never got to see the future pope’s reaction to what happens next, but he must have been ecstatic as Jenks strikes out Everett in two more pitches for a 5-3 Chicago win. The White Sox would go on to sweep the Astros for their first World Series win since 1917.

“That was his thing. He liked to get out and go to a game once in a while,” Louis Prevost told the Chicago Tribune of his brother, the future pope. “Eat a hot dog. Have some pizza. Like any other guy in Chicago on the South Side.”

His favorite team may have fallen on harder times since then — the White Sox are an American League-worst 23-45 and 20.5 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers in the Central Division — but Leo is still willing to put his fandom on display for the world to see.

On Wednesday, he wore a White Sox hat along with his traditional papal cassock while blessing newly married couples in St. Peter’s Square outside the Vatican.

Kelly and Gary DeStefano, who live in Haverhill, Mass., and are Boston Red Sox fans, gave him the hat. Kelly DeStefano told Boston.com they were just trying to get the new pope’s attention.

“I just wanted to make sure everyone at home knew that we did not turn on our team,” she told Boston.com. “It was all in joke and good fun.”

Chicago White Sox fans dress up like fellow White Sox fan Pope Leo XIV to watch a game against the Cubs on May 17 at Wrigley Field.

(Paul Beaty / Associated Press)

It worked, with Boston.com reporting that Leo gave the couple a good-natured ribbing once he found out where they are from.

“You’re going to get in trouble for this,” he told them, in a video of the meeting.

“Don’t tell anyone in Massachusetts,” Kelly DeStefano replied.

While Leo might be a little too busy to attend a game anytime soon, White Sox executive vice president, chief revenue and marketing officer Brooks Boyer said last month that the pope is welcome to return to Rate Field whenever he wants.

“He has an open invite to throw out a first pitch,” Boyer said. “Heck, maybe we’ll let him get an at-bat.”

June 13 (UPI) — An Italian teenager dubbed “God’s Influencer” is to become the first saint from the millennial generation Sept. 7, after Pope Leo XIV announced the date of his canonization in the Vatican on Friday.

British-born Carlo Acutis, a keen computer gamer who died of leukemia in 2006 at age 15, will be declared a saint by Leo in a St. Peter’s Square ceremony, after the Holy See verified two miracles attributed to him and in recognition of his use of Internet technology to spread the Catholic faith.

Approved back in July under the previous pontificate of the late Pope Francis, Acutis will be canonized along with another candidate recognized by Francis, Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in 1924 at age 24.

“This morning, Pope Leo XIV presided over the Ordinary Public Consistory for the Canonization of the Blesseds, announcing that these Italian young men will be inscribed in the Register of Saints on the first Sunday of the month [of September],” the Vatican said in a social media post.

Acutis, a typical jeans and sneakers-wearing teen who has emerged as a poster boy for the church and helped to attract a new generation of younger adherents, was beatified in 2020 after a Brazilian boy unable to eat normally due to a birth defect was allegedly cured after his mother prayed to Acutis.

The second miracle in May 2024 involved a Costa Rican student with a severe, life-threatening head trauma from a cycling accident in Florence, which resolved after her mother prayed to Acutis at his tomb in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis.

The Pontiff’s Office for Liturgical Celebrations also named seven other candidates, who are to be be canonized on the third Sunday of October.

Ties with China remain sensitive within the Catholic Church over a 2018 deal between the Holy See and Beijing.

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV has asked for prayers for China’s Catholics in his first reference to one of the most contentious issues that the Catholic Church and his papacy face in the arena of geopolitics.

Speaking on Sunday from the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the pontiff recalled the World Day of Prayer for the Church in China, which falls each May 24 – a feast initiated by Pope Benedict XVI.

“In the churches and shrines of China and throughout the world, prayers were raised to God as a sign of concern and affection for Chinese Catholics and their communion with the universal church,” Leo said to about 35,000 faithful.

The pope hoped the prayers “obtain for them and for us the grace to be strong and joyful witnesses of the Gospel, even in the midst of trials, to always promote peace and harmony”, he said.

Pope Benedict XVI, who headed the church from 2005 until 2013, established the feast as part of his efforts to unify China’s estimated 12 million Catholics, who were divided between an official, state-controlled church that didn’t recognise papal authority, and an underground church that remained loyal to Rome through decades of persecution.

Ties with China remain a deeply sensitive issue within the church as some clergymen reject a 2018 deal between the Holy See and China that gave Beijing a say in the appointment of Catholic bishops there, since Catholics were repressed by the Communist Party. 

The agreement was aimed at uniting the flock, regularising the status of seven bishops who weren’t recognised by Rome, and thawing decades of estrangement between China and the Vatican.

While details of the agreement were never released, Pope Francis insisted he retained veto power over the ultimate choice.

Critics, particularly on the Catholic right wing, believed Francis had caved to Beijing’s demands and sold out the underground faithful in China. The Vatican has said it was the best deal it could get, and it has been renewed periodically since then.

Pope Leo will have to decide whether to continue renewing the accord. There have been some apparent violations on the Beijing side, with some unilateral appointments that occurred without papal consent.

The issue came to a head just before the conclave that elected Leo, when the Chinese church proceeded with the preliminary election of two bishops, a step that comes before official consecration.

The Vatican has been working for years to try to improve relations with China that were officially severed over seven decades ago when the Communists came to power.

Relations had long been fraught over China’s insistence on its exclusive right to name bishops as a matter of national sovereignty, while the Vatican insisted on the pope’s exclusive right to name the successors of the original Apostles.

VATICAN CITY — Throughout President Biden’s life, his religion has been a refuge. He fingers a rosary during moments of stress and often attends Mass at the church in Delaware where his son Beau is buried.

But as Biden and Pope Francis prepared for a tete-a-tete Friday at the Vatican — the president’s first stop while traveling in Europe for two international summits — both the flocks they lead, the American people and the Roman Catholic Church, are beset by divisions and contradictions that at times seem irreconcilable.

“They preside over fractured communities,” said Massimo Faggioli, a theology professor at Villanova University who wrote a book about Biden and Catholicism. “They face situations with many similarities.”

The two leaders met for 90 minutes early Friday afternoon, according to the White House, which was longer than expected. Later in the day, Biden said they prayed together for peace and that Francis blessed his rosary.

The president said the conversation focused on the “moral responsibility” of dealing with climate change — the topic of an upcoming summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The president added that they did not discuss abortion. Biden supports abortion rights, a contradiction of Catholic doctrine that is common among Democrats.

“We just talked about the fact that he was happy I was a good Catholic,” Biden said, adding that Francis told him he should continue to receive Communion.

It was a significant statement from the pope on an issue that has stirred political and spiritual controversy over the relationship between politicians who support abortion rights and the church.

Conservative Catholic bishops in the United States are arguing that political leaders who support abortion rights should not receive Communion — the ritual where a priest consecrates bread and wine and then shares it with believers — and the issue is slated for debate during an upcoming episcopal meeting in Baltimore. Because the proposal gained steam after Biden’s election, it’s been viewed as a rebuke of the president.

The controversy reflects an internal debate over whether the Catholic Church should broaden its appeal or adhere more strictly to its core tenets. George Weigel, a distinguished senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, said some people “claim to be Catholic and yet want to turn Catholicism into a version of liberal Protestantism.”

“What the bishops are discussing is whether Catholic political leaders who are not in full communion with the church because they act in ways that contradict settled Catholic teaching should have the integrity not to present themselves for Holy Communion,” he said.

The Vatican, however, has been wary of a debate that mixes politics and one of the church’s holiest rituals. Francis said last month that he has “never refused the Eucharist to anyone.” Since becoming pope eight years ago, he has sought to distance himself from divisive topics such as same-sex marriage while focusing on more ecumenical issues.

John K. White, professor of politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, said the pope’s meeting with Biden “sends a message to the American bishops that denying Communion is not something that he approves of.”

The news media were not allowed into the meeting or to catch a glimpse of Biden and Francis together. The Vatican released video of part of an encounter that appeared affectionate, even chummy. At one point, Biden handed the pope a commemorative coin.

“The tradition is, and I’m only kidding about this, the next time I see you and you don’t have it, you have to buy the drinks,” said Biden, who joked that he’s probably the only Irishman that Francis has ever met who doesn’t drink.

The president bid farewell to the pope with a phrase that has become something of a trademark for him — “God love you.”

Biden and Francis have met several times before, starting with a brief encounter when Biden, then vice president, attended Francis’ papal inauguration in 2013.

Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden leaves a church in Wilmington, Del., last year after attending a confirmation Mass for his granddaughter.

(Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

Two years later, Biden welcomed Francis to the U.S. and brought his family to a private meeting with him shortly after Beau died.

“I wish every grieving parent, brother or sister, mother or father would have had the benefit of his words, his prayers, his presence,” Biden said the following year during a visit to the Vatican, where he met Francis again.

Biden is only the second Catholic president after John F. Kennedy, who was elected in 1960. At that time, the church was still viewed with suspicion by some Americans, and Kennedy assured voters that he believed in the separation of church and state — another way of saying that he would follow the Constitution, not the pope, while in office.

Now, Catholics are represented in the highest levels of American public life. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, is Catholic, as is one of her predecessors, John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio. The majority of Supreme Court justices are Catholic.

Biden keeps a photo of him with Francis in the Oval Office among an assortment of family photos.

The president attends Mass once a week, even when traveling. He made a point of visiting a church during a 2001 trip to China while he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I’m going to be there on a Sunday — can I go to church somewhere?” Biden said, according to Frank Januzzi, one of the future president’s staff members at the time.

Although there were large Catholic churches in Beijing where Biden could have attended Mass, he ultimately visited what Januzzi described as a “tiny, hole-in-the-wall” parish in a village outside the Chinese capital. Biden took Communion from an elderly priest there.

“This was an opportunity to make a statement about the importance of freedom of religion and demonstrate his own faith as well,” said Januzzi, who now leads the Mansfield Foundation, an organization dedicated to fostering U.S.-Asia relations.

White, the university professor, recalled attending Mass at a church in Bethesda, Md., in 2015 when Biden and his wife slipped in. It was unexpected, because it was not Biden’s usual parish, but Beau was hospitalized nearby with brain cancer and was near death.

Even from a distance, White said, “You could tell they were in distress.” They received Communion and exchanged the sign of peace — when parishioners shake hands and exchange greetings — and left.

“It wasn’t like he was there to shake a lot of hands,” said White, who later worked on Catholic outreach for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “It wasn’t about that at all.”

Beau’s death was just one of the tragedies that have shaped Biden’s life. In 1972, his first wife and daughter were killed in a car accident shortly after he was first elected to the Senate.

“When people have tragedy, sometimes their faith goes away, or is forged in steel,” White said. “All the tragedies that have beset Biden have reinforced his faith and who he is.”

ROME — U.S. Vice President JD Vance extended an invitation to Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States during a meeting at the Vatican on Monday ahead of a flurry of U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to make progress on a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Vance gave the first American pope a letter from President Trump and the first lady inviting him. The Chicago-born pope took the letter and put it on his desk and was heard saying “at some point,” in the video footage of the meeting provided by Vatican Media.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, also gave the Augustinian pope a copy of two of St. Augustine’s most seminal works, “The City of God” and “On Christian Doctrine,” the vice president’s office said. Another gift: A Chicago Bears T-shirt with Leo’s name on it.

“As you can probably imagine, people in the United States are extremely excited about you,” Vance told Leo as they exchanged gifts.

Leo gave Vance a bronze sculpture with the words in Italian “Peace is a fragile flower,” and a coffee-table sized picture book of the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace. Leo noted that Francis had chosen not to live in them and added, “And I may live in, but it’s not totally decided.”

Vance led the U.S. delegation to Sunday’s formal Mass opening the pontificate of the first American pope. Joining him at the meeting on Monday was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also a Catholic, Vance spokesperson Luke Schroeder said. The two then also met with the Vatican foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.

“There was an exchange of views on some current international issues, calling for respect for humanitarian law and international law in areas of conflict and for a negotiated solution between the parties involved,” according to a Vatican statement after their meeting.

According to the photo of the visits released by the Vatican, Leo’s brother, Louis Prevost, a self-described “MAGA-type,” and his wife, Deborah, joined the delegation during the visit.

The Vatican listed Vance’s delegation as the first of several private audiences Leo was having Monday with people who had come to Rome for his inaugural Mass, including other Christian leaders and a group of faithful from his old diocese in Chiclayo, Peru.

The Vatican, which was largely sidelined during the first three years of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has offered to host any peace talks while continuing humanitarian efforts to facilitate prisoner swaps and reunite Ukrainian children taken by Russia.

After greeting Leo briefly at the end of Sunday’s Mass, Vance spent the rest of the day in separate meetings, including with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He also met with European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni, who said she hoped the trilateral meeting could be a “new beginning.”

In the evening, Meloni spoke by phone with U.S. President Trump and several other European leaders ahead of Trump’s expected call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Monday, according to a statement from Meloni’s office.

‘Every effort’

Leo, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost, is a Chicago-born Augustinian missionary who spent the bulk of his ministry in Chiclayo, a commercial city of around 800,000 on Peru’s northern Pacific coast.

In the days since his May 8 election, Leo has vowed “every effort” to help bring peace to Ukraine. He also has emphasized his continuity with Pope Francis, who made caring for migrants and the poor a priority of his pontificate.

Before his election, Prevost shared news articles on X that were critical of the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations of migrants.

Vance was one of the last foreign officials to meet with Francis before the Argentine pope’s April 21 death. The two had tangled over migration, with Francis publicly rebuking the Trump administration’s deportation plan and correcting Vance’s theological justification for it.

Winfield and Martin write for the Associated Press.

Pope Leo XIV met with US Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Vatican, a day after his inaugural Mass. Vance, whose hardline immigration stance has drawn past criticism from Leo, invited the US-born pontiff to visit the US.

Pontiff calls for peace and unity at the service, which attracts dignitaries from around the world.

Pope Leo XIV has met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after his inaugural Mass in the Vatican, where he delivered a message of love and unity to a crowd of 200,000 pilgrims.

“We thank the Vatican for its willingness to serve as a platform for direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. We are ready for dialogue in any format for the sake of tangible results. We appreciate the support for Ukraine and the clear voice in defense of a just and lasting peace,” Zelenskyy posted on X.

No statement has been issued by the Vatican yet regarding Sunday’s meeting.

Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, was officially installed as the head of the Catholic Church at an outdoor Mass in St Peter’s Square with world leaders and European royalty in attendance.

In his sermon, Leo, the first American pope, called for unity within the church, saying he wanted it to act as a force for peace in the world.

“I would like that our first great desire be for a united church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world,” he said.

“In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest.”

Leo said he was assuming the role as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics “with fear and trembling” and insisted he would not lead like “an autocrat”.

“It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving, as Jesus did,” he said, in an apparent nod to the split between conservative and liberal factions within the church.

‘The rich heritage of the Christian faith’

The 69-year-old pope, who was born in Chicago and spent years as a missionary in Peru, succeeds the late Pope Francis, whose 12-year tenure was marked by tensions with traditionalists within the church. In an apparent nod to conservatives, Leo said he was committed to protecting “the rich heritage of the Christian faith” and repeatedly used the words “unity” and “harmony”.

Before the ceremony, Leo took his first popemobile ride through St Peter’s Square, waving to crowds cheering, “Viva il Papa.”

Dignitaries in attendance included the presidents of Israel, Peru and Nigeria; the prime ministers of Italy, Canada and Australia; German Chancellor Friedrich Merz; and Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia.

The United States delegation was led by Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic who had clashed with Francis over the White House’s approach to immigration. Vance shook hands with Zelenskyy at the start of the ceremony, in contrast to the previous meeting between the two men and President Donald Trump in a fiery encounter in front of the world’s media at the White House in February.

Leo prayed for the victims of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza in his sermon, saying Ukraine was being “martyred” and lamenting that Palestinians were being “reduced to starvation”.

Pope Leo XIV condemned hatred, prejudice and exploitation of the earth and poor, during his inauguration mass at the Vatican. World leaders were among the hundreds of thousands who attended, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who was seen shaking hands with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The first US pontiff arrived at St Peters Square riding his popemobile for the first time.

Recently elected Pope Leo XIV is the first pontiff from the United States, just as the country’s president is shaking up the global order. With both the US and the Catholic Church deeply divided, what does Pope Leo’s selection mean for Catholics in the US and worldwide?

The new pontiff talks of witnesses ‘who report on war even at the cost of their lives’.

Pope Leo XIV has called for the release of journalists imprisoned for doing their work while affirming free speech.

Leo, who was elected pontiff on Thursday after the death of Pope Francis, gave his first news conference at the Vatican on Monday.

Addressing some of the thousands of journalists who travelled to Rome to cover his election as the first American pontiff, he said journalists jailed “for seeking and reporting the truth” must be released.

“The church recognises in these witnesses – I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives – the courage of those who defend dignity, justice and the right of people to be informed because only informed individuals can make free choices,” he said.

“The suffering of these imprisoned journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press.”

The new pope also reiterated his message of peace that he had communicated to large crowds on Sunday as well.

“Peace begins with each one of us – in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others,” he told assembled journalists at the Vatican’s vast Paul VI Audience Hall.

“In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance. We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images. We must reject the paradigm of war.”

Leo, who was active on social media before becoming pope, cautioned against  “communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred”.

“Let us disarm words, and we will help to disarm the world,” he said, urging reporters to favour a path of communication for peace.

During his first Sunday blessing as pontiff, Leo advocated for genuine peace in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere.

He said he carries in his heart the “suffering of the beloved people of Ukraine” and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and release of all people held by the Palestinian group Hamas in the enclave.

Pope Leo XIV urged the release of imprisoned journalists across the world, saying their work is essential in defending “dignity, justice, and the right of people to be informed.” He also affirmed the “gift” of free speech and free press.