Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan leads a Eucharistic procession inside a packed Louis Armstrong Stadium in Brooklyn, New York, on April 20, 2024. / Credit: Jeffrey Bruno

National Catholic Register, Apr 23, 2024 / 13:00 pm (CNA).

I’d never ridden the subway with a bishop before.

But then again, how many of us have? 

Bishop Robert Brennan from the Diocese of Brooklyn is not your typical bishop — and I mean that with the utmost respect for the men who hold the office. Each is unique, endowed with their own personalities, charisms, and abilities. So perhaps don’t go telling your bishop he needs to start riding mass transit just yet.

He’s striking in the way he carries himself: You can sense a deep spirituality and humility within him. He’s genuinely kind and attentive — a true pastor.

If there were a contest for “Most Likely to Ride the Subway With His Flock,” I believe Brennan would win hands down.

I first met him in 2021, upon his eventful reassignment to Brooklyn. He had barely settled into the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio, in 2019 — where the paint in his office was probably still drying — only to be moved, much to the sorrow of the Columbus flock.

On the bright side, he’s a Mets fan. Though their recent performance hasn’t been much of a consolation, maybe his prayers will give them a boost.

So, early on Saturday morning, in anticipation of the Eucharistic Revival at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Flushing Meadows, he boarded the 7 train with members of his flock in tow. With each stop, more of the faithful joined, filling the carriages.

And they did exactly what you would expect a group of Catholics on a subway to do: They sang, they chanted, “Viva Cristo Rey!” and they laughed with a joy so palpable it electrified the air.

By the time we rolled into Mets-Willets Point Station, it felt like a rolling celebration.

That would have been enough to fill our hearts, but it was just the warmup.

The day unfolded with thousands traversing the borough to join a daylong celebration of the diocese’s Eucharistic Revival.

I could speak volumes about the day, but there was one moment — a moment that shook me to the core.

It was during the Eucharistic procession, a winding path around the stadium’s exterior, mostly out of sight — until the point of entrance.

As Brennan, carrying Christ, became visible to the gathered crowd, applause erupted — not just any applause, but one of overwhelming joy.

It was the kind of spontaneous outpouring that occurs when words fall short and emotions soar.

They were applauding for Christ.

The sound wrapped around the stadium, penetrating hearts and souls, as evidenced by the smiling, tear-streaked faces turning toward him.

I’ll leave it at this: Something breathtaking happened in Queens that Saturday.

And in mid-July, that same breathtaking event will unfold at the heart of the United States.

In three weeks, the Catholic faithful will kick off four historic and unprecedented pilgrimages, each originating from one of the four compass points of our great land.

Together, they will travel more than 6,500 miles with more than 100,000 participants converging on the 10th Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis from July 17-21 — the first congress in 83 years.

Proclaiming Christ the King, the giver of all gifts, fully present in the Blessed Sacrament to the entire world.

What a beautiful time to be alive.

What an incredible gift to have faith.

What a breathtaking reality to know and love Jesus Christ.

But all of that pales in comparison to the truth that we are known and loved by him.

Praise God.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and is reprinted here on CNA with permission.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. / Credit: Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 23, 2024 / 11:45 am (CNA).

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is embracing a “massive subsidized day care initiative” to reduce abortions in the United States without restricting legal access to the procedure.

In a new webpage recently added to Kennedy campaign’s website, the candidate unveiled a policy platform the campaign is calling “More Choices, More Life.” 

The candidate’s plan is to redirect money that is currently used to support military aid to Ukraine and put it toward federal funding for day care to help families in poverty. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to provide $61 billion to Ukraine, with the government having already provided more than $110 billion in aid since Russia invaded the country. 

The campaign promises that a Kennedy presidency would “safeguard women’s reproductive rights.”

Kennedy, who is the son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, first launched his presidential bid in the Democratic primary in April 2023. In October he switched his party registration and declared he would run as an independent.

“This policy will dramatically reduce abortion in this country, and it will do so by offering more choices for women and families, not less,” the webpage states.

“A lot of women, when they get pregnant, feel they can’t afford to have a baby,” the campaign says. “There isn’t a lot of support to raise a child in this society. You can’t call yourself pro-life if you are concerned only with life before birth. What about after birth? We have to make our society as welcoming as possible to children and to motherhood.”

Per the proposal, the federal government would fund 100% of day care costs for children who are under the age of 5 years old and living below the poverty line. For families living above the poverty line, their day care costs would be capped at 10% of the family’s income. 

Only single-location small businesses that provide day care services — or parents who stay home with their children — would be eligible for subsidies. The plan would not provide subsidies to corporate day care chains or hedge funds that own day care chains.

The campaign added that Kennedy supports strengthening adoption infrastructure and increasing the child tax credit. The website also noted that the candidate would fund organizations that support women in pregnancy and the months after birth. 

“There is a lot we can do to reduce abortions — by choice, not by force,” the campaign says. “As president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will make it easier for women to choose life. He will give them more choices than they have today, we will see a lot fewer abortions and a lot more flourishing families.”

Kennedy has not made abortion a major part of his campaign. When asked about a proposal to prohibit abortion at the federal level in August of last year, the candidate initially said he would back a three-month restriction. However, his campaign later claimed that he misunderstood the question and “does not support legislation banning abortion.”

Kennedy later voiced support for in vitro fertilization (IVF), which often discards human embryos, destroying human lives in the process. His running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has said she does not support “anyone having control over my body” but that she “would not feel right terminating a viable life living inside of me.”

The Washington Post reported this week that the Kennedy campaign said the candidate opposes former President Donald Trump’s plan to leave abortion policy to the states and that Kennedy further opposed an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that allowed a near-total abortion ban from the 1860s to go into effect in the state. 

Kennedy “makes his position plain but does not dwell on the subject,” the campaign said, according to the Post.

The Post said that Kennedy’s new day care plan was posted shortly after the paper’s reporters contacted the staff about the candidate’s abortion policies. 

Although Kennedy has generally supported legal access to abortion, a pro-abortion group called Reproductive Freedom for All recently launched a television advertisement in Michigan and Wisconsin that accuses the independent candidate of not supporting abortion strongly enough. 

“Kennedy Jr. and Shanahan mean we’d be less safe from dangerous abortion bans and get more attacks on IVF,” the 30-second advertisement claims. “Kennedy Jr. and Shanahan would put your reproductive freedom at risk.”

Although Kennedy is polling in a distant third place behind Biden and Trump, he is polling better than any third-party candidate since Reform Party candidate Ross Perot in the 1990s. According to poll averages between Jan. 22 and April 2 from RealClearPolling, Kennedy is averaging just under 12% in a three-way race.

Orvich said he wanted to share his experience with same sex attraction “so that the Lord might touch hearts and that people repent and try returning to a chaste life." / Credit: Fran Orvich

ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 23, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

For the last five years Fran Orvich, 30, has been living chastely following a conversion process that began after a traumatic childhood and years of sexual libertinism.

The young man shared his conversion process in a telephone interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, “for the glory of God and the salvation of souls and to give light, hope, and salvation to these poor brothers of ours who are in the Church and are very confused.”

Specifically, Orvich said he wanted to share his experience with same-sex attraction “so that the Lord might touch hearts and that people repent and try returning to a chaste life.”

A difficult childhood

While only five years have passed since his conversion, to explain what he has experienced Orvich referred back to his childhood. “I had to grow up with a father who beat my mother, an alcoholic, a womanizer always using foul language. It was a hostile, terrible environment.”

The young man related that he was “wounded within his mother’s womb” because his father mistreated his mother during her pregnancy. “He never said ‘I love you’ to me,” he related, so his father became an absent figure to him: “My father was there, but I have never had him as a father.”

Orvich described his mother as “a woman of unwavering faith, of prayer” who, due to the family situation, adopted a “protective” role. In addition, as he was the youngest of three brothers, he said, “they bullied me a little.”

As a child, he began looking at pornography — a habit that continued to increase — so that “when I was 8 or 9 years old, I was already doing things with three boys my age. Not deep into it, but it was already totally perverted,” he explained.

Orvich’s school years were difficult. A shy and quiet boy, his classmates ostracized him. He still recalls the day a teacher put him in front of the blackboard to do a simple addition problem. He didn’t know how to do it and the teacher encouraged his classmates to laugh at him. That left a deep wound that would only be healed years later during his conversion process.

‘I opened doors to evil’ through the occult

When he turned 12, he fell into daily masturbation. During high school he continued viewing pornography and entered the world of the occult. “I opened the door to evil,” he acknowledged, through various esoteric practices.

The high-school Orvich wasn’t like the grade-school Orvich: “I was the rebel, the bully, the class clown, the good-looking dude.” At that time he had five girlfriends and the homosexual acts of his childhood were just a memory of misdirected curiosity. 

At one point, however, he began to become interested in a boy at the school. “I started to notice a boy in the classroom next door. He started to get my attention and something awakened in me. I started fooling around and I kind of liked that fooling around,” but it didn’t reach the sexual level.

Some time after that, at age 16, Orvich said, “I was with the first boy.” He hid this relationship from his family and carried on the liaison in secret until, at the age of 18, there was a big fight at home between his parents. “My father wanted to hit my mother and at 18 I wasn’t going to allow it,” he recounted.

His father called him a “faggot” — “he was always using that word” — and Orvich responded: “Yeah, what’s up!” His father’s reaction was very aggressive: “He wanted to kill me with a sickle, he threw a chair at me and I dodged it,” he said, describing the incident.

Abandoned by his family, he fell into prostitution

“Having just turned 18, my soul was at rock bottom,” he said, and he was terribly lonely. “I didn’t have a Christian friend, a good friend to tell me: ‘Don’t worry, come to my house.’” He said he had faith, because his mother had instilled it in him, but “I didn’t go to Mass, I didn’t do anything, I didn’t pray.”

Given the difficult situation at home, the boy with whom he had a relationship at the time took him in: “He is the only one who didn’t fail me, because my whole family failed me, they left me stranded.” However, that relationship ended badly and Orvich was forced to look for a room to rent.

He was just a kid who had barely left his parents’ home. “What do I do with my life now?” he thought. He tried a door-to-door sales job that didn’t go well until he made a dramatic decision: “I prostituted myself.”

“It was something very painful, very humiliating and terrible. I don’t wish anyone to go through that situation. Now I can talk about it, because the Lord is healing me, but before I couldn’t,” Orvich told ACI Prensa.

Fortunately, that only lasted a week, because a cousin of his called and offered him a place to live with his aunt and uncle. In the family it was already known as “official” that Orvich was homosexual.

Out of rage toward his father — “I hated him and wanted him dead” — he participated in a television program. “I made the biggest fool of myself in history and the devil deceived me in such a powerful way,” he said of the program, where he acknowledged his homosexuality in front of the cameras.

Orvich regrets the episode, especially because of the scandal it caused, particularly for his parents. “I ignored the commandment to honor your father and mother,” he said.

‘I knew this wasn’t normal’

At the time, through social media, Orvich was “totally involved in the gay world.” However, in retrospect, he emphasized that he was always uncomfortable with the lifestyle.

“I was not pro-LGBTQ. I wasn’t, because I knew this wasn’t normal. I said to myself: This is what happened to me, because it is what it is. But I wasn’t okay with it.”

Despite this, the young man frequented Chueca (a gay haunt in Madrid, Spain) because “when you are so full of demons, of lust, well in the end the body demands from you for what it demands from you.”

He had a series of toxic relationships and was emotionally dependent. “In the end, in men I was looking for the figure of my father, but I sexualized it,” he recalled.

Baptized at age 22 

Despite his mother’s faith, various family circumstances led to Orvich not being baptized during his early years. At age 22, however, he sought the sacrament: “Despite being ‘stuck in a bad situation,’ I told my mother that I wanted to be baptized.”

Finally, without much formal preparation due to his parents’ business activities, he was baptized.

Despite this, Orvich continued with his esoteric practices: “They dealt me cards and I loved the whole subject of spirits.” Deep down, he recognized “it was a God tailored to me, because I believed, but I did whatever I felt like.”

Three years went by in which Orvich spent a lot of time cultivating his outward image and going to the gym, which led him to work as a model making good money.

The spiritual turnaround in his life came at age 25, when a newborn nephew was on the verge of death. It came as a powerful jolt to his soul that led him to pray fervently for the child’s life. “The Lord told me in my interior: ‘This is the last chance.’ He said it to me like that,” Orvich related.

“I understood what I was doing wrong, the condition of my soul. I realized all of it and said: It’s over, I renounce this.” 

‘I no longer want other loves’

So Orvich decided to go to confession “to a good priest.” He describes what it was like receiving the sacrament of forgiveness.

“I have always wanted to find love and peace. I didn’t find it in men, nor in money, nor in fame, because I was always empty. I made my confession and told all my sins, because I had incredible enlightenment from the Holy Spirit,” he recounted.

“When the priest gave me absolution, I felt so much love!” he continued. “I felt God’s forgiveness, his mercy. That was something incredible for me. I was on cloud nine, with a weight lifted off my shoulders.”

“I couldn’t stop crying and asking the Lord for forgiveness. I felt so loved, so loved! And when I knew this love of God, I said: I no longer want other loves, because I have been unhappy, nothing more, I have suffered a lot. I want to be with this love, I want to be with Jesus.”

Thus began a process of faith formation, including devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and divine mercy. Orvich had “an incredible thirst for God, to love him, to worship him, to serve him, to make amends, to do penance.”

And, following that path of conversion, he participated in an Ephphatha (“Be opened,” cf Mk 7:34) Retreat where, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, “face to face with the Lord, I cried a lot and asked for forgiveness for what I did,” he said.

Forgiving his mother

He also felt the need to ask forgiveness from his mother. She had been praying for seven years and told him: “Son, the Lord finally heard my prayers. He has already taken out the dagger that I had in my heart for you. Blessed be the Lord.”

For Orvich, it’s important to explain how his mother related to him. “She didn’t agree with my sin, but she loved me. She didn’t tell me ‘bring your boyfriend whenever you want and introduce him to me,’ no. She told me twice ‘I don’t agree with this, with your life,’ but always with a lot of love and a lot of mercy.”

Some time later, after a process, he was able to ask his father for forgiveness. “He also asked for my forgiveness and I experienced a very powerful release, a weight was taken off my shoulders.”

‘The Holy Virgin is key’

Orvich has been living chastely for five years. “I don’t want to be with anyone, I want to be with Jesus Christ, I want to be in his Church. The things of God are what make me truly happy and give me peace.”

Despite his determination, he recognizes that he has temptations, “attacks from the devil,” which he understands are “part of the purification” he must undergo. To combat them he tries to go to daily Mass and receive Communion, pray the rosary, and do penances.

He has also consecrated himself to the Virgin Mary in accord  with the 33-day process advocated by St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort.

“The Holy Virgin is key in my fight against the demon that will always try to set me back. I have to be in a constant struggle. The Lord gives you perseverance.”

As part of this spiritual battle, in addition to his work, Orvich is a “missionary on social media,” through his Facebook and TikTok profiles, where he tries to “witness to young and old, giving the Word of God, a breath of peace and joy.”

Spiritual and psychological help

In order to live this new life, Orvich needed significant spiritual and psychological help, beginning with closing the doors he had opened through the occult.

“If St. Mary Magdalene had seven demons, imagine me,” said Orvich, who has undergone “deliverance” prayer. In fact, he assumes he is “still in the process.”

In other areas, he is aware that “the psychological part and the spiritual part go together,” which is why he looked for “a good psychologist priest, who will not lead me to evil but who will lead me to God” and has found him. “The Lord has given me an excellent psychologist priest who addresses all these issues of same-sex attraction.”

Fiducia Supplicans

Near the end of the extensive conversation with ACI Prensa, Orvich did not hesitate when asked about his impressions of the Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans, which approves of blessings for same-sex couples.

“It caused me a lot of pain and sadness,” he said, because the document “is very confusing, very ambiguous, it doesn’t give light. It can confuse many souls.”

“What is being said a lot is ‘God loves you’ and, in fact, God loves us a lot. But what is being omitted is that you have to convert,” Orvich emphasized, recalling the words of Jesus: “Whoever wants to follow me, let him deny himself.”

Along these lines, he added: “If we want to be in communion with the Lord, we have to try to do things right. We’re sinners and we fall, but you have to be on the road to conversion, every day. The Holy Curé of Ars already said there is no greater charity than saving a soul from hell by telling the truth.”

Message to parents of children with same-sex attraction

Finally, ACI Prensa asked Orvich to freely say anything he would like to share about his experience and that he considers essential. He had a twofold message for parents of children who experience same-sex attraction.

On the one hand, he advised parents to “love their children, but do not accept their sin. Because if you accept it, it will be useless for you to pray.” Driving that point home, he emphasized: “By confirming them in sin we are not helping them, we are condemning them.”

The second essential idea he wants to convey to parents is to “never tire of praying for your children, because prayer has a lot of intercessory power.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When Jesus called himself the "good shepherd," he was telling people not only that he was their guide, but that they were important to him and "that he thinks of each of us as the love of his life," Pope Francis said.

"Consider this: for Christ, I am important, he thinks of me, I am irreplaceable, worth the infinite price of his life," which he laid down for the salvation of all, the pope said April 21 before reciting the "Regina Coeli" prayer with visitors in St. Peter's Square.

Jesus was not just saying something nice, the pope said. Each believer should recognize that "he truly gave his life for me; he died and rose again for me. Why? Because he loves me, and he finds in me a beauty that I often do not see myself."

Many people think of themselves as inadequate or undeserving of love, he said. Or they believe their value comes from what they have or are able to do.

In the day's Gospel reading, Jn 10:11-18, "Jesus tells us that we are always infinitely worthy in his eyes," the pope said.

To understand and experience the truth of that statement, Pope Francis said, "the first thing to do is to place ourselves in his presence, allowing ourselves to be welcomed and lifted up by the loving arms of our good shepherd."

The pope asked people in the square to consider if they find or make the time each day "to embrace this assurance that gives value to my life" and "for a moment of prayer, of adoration, of praise, to be in the presence of Christ and to let myself be caressed by him."

That time in prayer, he said, will remind a person that "he gave his life for you, for me, for all of us. And that for him, we are all important, each and every one of us."

After reciting the "Regina Coeli," Pope Francis told the crowd that he continues to follow the tensions in Israel, Palestine and throughout the Middle East "with concern and also with grief."

"I renew my appeal not to give in to the logic of vengeance and war. May the paths of dialogue and diplomacy, which can do so much, prevail," he said. "I pray every day for peace in Palestine and Israel, and I hope that these two peoples may stop suffering soon."

He also asked Catholics to continue to pray for peace in Ukraine and for the people who are suffering because of the war.

ROME (CNS) -- The Catholic Church in the United States is grappling with a tendency to become more "auto-referential" and withdraw itself from the international stage and universal church, Pope Francis' representative to the United States said.

Speaking with Catholic News Service before formally taking possession of his titular church in Rome April 21, Cardinal Christophe Pierre described the reality of the church in the United States as a "paradox." He said that while the U.S. church has "always been very faithful to the Holy Father," he also noted that "the difficulty in America, like in every country in a world which is globalized but becomes more and more individualistic, (is) to receive the message of the pope, especially to work together."

"The pope feels that if we don't work together, we are not a church," he stressed.

Cardinal Pierre pointed to a growing "tendency to withdraw, to be more auto-referential," both in the United States and worldwide.

"We have to share our riches, our goods," particularly in an increasingly individualistic world, he told CNS. "And I see that as a challenge for the church."

The cardinal was in Rome to take possession of his titular church -- the Church of St. Benedict Outside St. Paul's Gate -- to seal his cardinal's identity as a member of the clergy of Rome. In ancient times, the cardinals who elected popes were pastors of the city's parishes.

The cardinal celebrated Mass in the Rome church joined by local parishioners, members of the Roman Curia, U.S. Cardinal James Harvey, ambassadors he has worked with over the course of his 47-year diplomatic career representing the Holy See and some 15 members of his family from the Brittany region of France.

Joe Donnelly, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, attended the liturgy and told CNS that Cardinal Pierre "has been a bridge that has helped to break down differences" between the United States and the Vatican, praising the cardinal for "trying to connect the American church with the Vatican."

At the beginning of the Mass, French Xavière Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, read aloud Pope Francis' formal declaration from Sept. 20, 2023, granting Cardinal Pierre the title and privileges of a cardinal and assigning him his titular church.

Four U.S. seminarians and two deacons studying at the Pontifical North American College in Rome served at the Mass.

In his homily, Cardinal Pierre recalled how as a seminarian he initially thought his vocation was to remain a pastor in the diocese of his native Rennes, France, but that after almost 50 years of traveling the world in diplomatic service "the pope called me to give me a parish, the parish I never had."

He said that while a cardinal is a "universal figure" who can "float" between many roles, "the pope says 'no,' you should not float, quite the opposite, you should have deep roots in the church."

While representing the Holy See in nine countries on five continents, Cardinal Pierre said he always found "a local church, a local country, a local culture."

"We encounter Christ in the church, and the church is not an idea, it is not a structure outside of our lives," he said. "The church is the presence of God in our existence."

The cardinal also reflected on the role of a nuncio as a missionary, and he said that the two words that highlight Pope Francis' mission for the church are "encounter" and "conversion."

"The work of a priest, of a missionary, is precisely to create this encounter, but not the encounter of myself with another person -- the encounter of Christ through me or through the other person," he said, which "helps us make a conversion."

Prior to being sent to the United States in 2016, Cardinal Pierre had postings as apostolic nuncio in Mexico, in Uganda and Haiti. He also served at Vatican diplomatic missions in Switzerland, Brazil, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and New Zealand.

WASHINGTON - Pope Francis has appointed Rev. Reynaldo Bersabal as auxiliary bishop of Sacramento. Bishop-elect Bersabal is a priest of the Diocese of Sacramento and currently serves as pastor of Saint Francis of Assisi parish in Sacramento, California. The appointment was publicized in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2024, by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

The following biographical information for Bishop-elect Bersabal has been drawn from preliminary materials provided to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

Father Bersabal was born October 15, 1964, in the Philippines. He was ordained to the priesthood on April 29, 1991.

Bishop-elect Bersabal’s assignments in the Philippines after ordination include: parochial vicar at Our Lady of Snows parish (1991); parish administrator at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish (1992); and parish priest at St. Francis Xavier parish (1995). Father Bersabal was incardinated into the Diocese of Sacramento on April 7, 2004. His assignments in the diocese include: parochial vicar at St. James parish in Davis (1999-2001); parochial vicar at St. Anthony parish in Sacramento (2002-2003); pastor at St. Paul parish in Sacramento (2003-2008); pastor at St. John the Baptist parish in Folsom (2008-2016); and pastor at St. James parish in Davis (2016-2022). Since 2022, he has served as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi parish in Sacramento.

Bishop-elect Bersabal’s priestly ministry in the Philippines has included: assessor of marriage cases for the metropolitan tribunal of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro City (1996); chancellor of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro City (1998); and archdiocesan director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the Philippines (1998). Since his incardination into the Diocese of Sacramento, Bishop-elect Bersabal’s ministry has included: interim director of the Newman Catholic Center in Davis (2000); assistant diocesan vocation director (2000-2002); dean of the southern suburbs/city deanery (2004-2008); member and treasurer of the diocesan presbyteral council  (2007-2010); dean of the Gold Country deanery (2011-2014); dean of the Yolo Deanery (2020-2022); member of the diocesan priests personnel board (2023-present); liaison for the Filipino presbyterate (2012-present); member of the diocesan liturgical commission (2023-present); and a member of the diocese’s independent review board (2023- present). He speaks English, Spanish, and Tagalog.

The Diocese of Sacramento is comprised of 46,597 square miles in the State of California and has a total population of 3,786,209 of which 1,056,698 are Catholic.

###

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Every important journey should be preceded by adequate preparation, and the run-up to the Holy Year 2025 is no exception.

Pope Francis asked Catholics to get ready for the jubilee journey with a Year of Prayer and now, a few months after the year was officially announced, a kind of prayer prep-school is in session.

Every jubilee asks pilgrims to come to Rome ready, not just with lodging and logistics, but, most of all, with the right spiritual disposition, which is a heart ready to welcome the gifts of grace and forgiveness the jubilee offers.

"I ask you to intensify your prayer to prepare us to live well this event of grace and to experience the strength of God's hope," the pope said when he formally announced the Year of Prayer at his Jan. 21 Angelus. The year is "dedicated to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer in personal life, in the life of the church and in the world."

"Teach Us to Pray" is a resource available online in English and other languages from the Dicastery for Evangelization's section for new evangelization, which is coordinating the Holy Year.

The 75-page booklet, it said, "is intended to be used by the faithful during this time of preparation for the opening of the Holy Door."

"Let us immerse ourselves through prayer in an ongoing dialogue with the Creator, discovering the joy of silence, the peace of abandonment and the power of intercession in the communion of saints," it said.

To help the faithful "renew the spirit of prayer in all those situations in which we are called to live in daily life," it said, there are different sections focused on different facets of life.

"Each part -- from the meaning of personal prayer to its practice in community life -- offers reflections, guidance and advice for living more fully in dialogue with the Lord present in our relationship with others and in every moment of our day," it said. There are also sections dedicated to young people, sanctuaries and spiritual retreats.

The booklet is just one of the materials the dicastery is sharing online at evangelizatio.va and on the Holy Year website, iubilaeum2025.va.

The "Notes on Prayer" series, produced by the dicastery, is on sale in Italian, but as of April 17 there was no date for when the eight booklets will be ready in English. The bishops of Spain have translated the first two volumes and made them available with many other materials at haciaeljubileo.com.

The texts carry titles such as "Praying today. A challenge," "The Parables of Prayer," "Praying with Saints and Sinners," "Mary's prayer," and "The Prayer Jesus Taught Us: The 'Our Father.'"

The plan is to make them available to the world's bishops' conferences and dioceses.

In the meantime, there is no shortage of other study material.

There are 38 talks dedicated to prayer Pope Francis gave during his Wednesday general audiences between May 2020 and June 2021. While they are not organized in a cohesive format, readers can scroll through the Vatican's archive at vatican.va to find them in nine languages.

The dicastery is also sharing links to resources and initiatives organized by others and open to everyone.

For example, the Canadian bishops' conference is offering a series of eight free-access webinars on prayer in English and French.

Titled, "A Great Symphony of Prayer," the webinars run in April and October to "delve deeper into the themes highlighted in the 'Notes on Prayer' series," it said. "The meetings will be recorded and made available, with a commentary, on the website of the Canadian Episcopal Conference www.cccb.ca at the end of the series."

The pope inaugurated his own "School of Prayer" in April when he met with about 200 children attending their catechism class in a Rome parish. The "school" is a series of encounters where the pope will meet with different groups of people to pray together and discuss the various forms of prayer such as thanksgiving, intercession, contemplative prayer, consolation, adoration and supplication.

The pope's lesson with the children preparing for their first Communion was on the theme of prayers of thanksgiving. He said, "It is important to say thank you for everything."

Even when there are difficulties and conflicts in the world, Pope Francis told them there is always something to thank God for, encouraging them to think before they go to sleep, "'What can I thank the Lord for?' And give thanks."

He gave them a special prayer of thanks composed for the occasion; the prayer thanked God for the gift of life, the gift of parents, the gift of creation, the gift of Jesus, who is "our brother and savior, friend of the small and the poor" and the gift of his love.

As usual, the pope hopes his initiatives inspire others.

In the preface to the first book in the "Notes on Prayer" series, the pope wrote, "I am certain that bishops, priests, deacons and catechists will find in this year appropriate ways to place prayer at the heart of the proclamation of hope that the 2025 Jubilee will make resound in this troubled time."

Prayer is not a "magic wand," the pope has said, but it is through prayer that "a new incarnation of the Word takes place."

"We are the 'tabernacles' where the words of God seek to be welcomed and preserved, so that they may visit the world," he said Jan. 27, 2021, during an audience talk on prayer.

"The Word inspires good intentions and sustains action; it gives us strength and serenity, and even when it challenges us, it gives us peace," he said.

WASHINGTON - “No employer should be forced to participate in an employee’s decision to end the life of their child,” Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee for Religious Liberty said today, in response to newly released regulations by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The regulations implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which itself provides helpful accommodations to pregnant women in the workplace. The EEOC, however, has defied Congress’s intent and added a mandate for employers, including religious employers, to provide accommodations, such as leave time, for abortion.

Said Bishop Rhoades, “The bipartisan Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, as written, is a pro-life law that protects the security and physical health of pregnant mothers and their preborn children. It is indefensible for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to twist the law in a way that violates the consciences of pro-life employers by making them facilitate abortions. No employer should be forced to participate in an employee’s decision to end the life of their child.”

The USCCB submitted formal comments to the EEOC in September 2023 (available here) when the federal agency proposed these regulations.

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- At its most basic level, a vocation is a call to happiness, said Korean Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik, prefect of the Dicastery for Clergy.

"Vocation is essentially the call to be happy, to take charge of one's life, to realize it fully and not waste it," the cardinal told the Vatican newspaper in an interview published ahead of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations April 21.

God wants each person to be happy and to live life to its fullest, he told the newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

In Jesus, he said, God "wants to draw us into the embrace of his love; thus, thanks to baptism, we become an active part of this love story and, when we feel that we are loved and accompanied, then our existence becomes a path to happiness, to a life without end."

The path to happiness, he said, "is then embodied and realized in a life choice, in a specific mission and in the many situations of every day."

Insisting that the "first vocation" of all people is the call to happiness, Cardinal You said that it is wrong to think that an individual's desires have no role to play.

In discerning God's call, he said, "the first road signs to follow are precisely our desires, what we sense in our hearts may be good for us and, through us, for the world around us."

At the same time, the cardinal said, everyone knows how their desires can sometimes lead them astray "because our desires do not always correspond to the truth of who we are; it may happen that they are the result of a partial vision, that they arise from wounds or frustrations, that they are dictated by a selfish search for our own well-being or, again, sometimes what we call desires are actually illusions."

At that point, discernment is necessary, which, he said, "is basically the spiritual art of figuring out, with God's grace, what we should choose in our lives."

Prayer is essential for discernment because "a vocation is recognized when we bring our deep desires into dialogue with the work that God's grace does within us," Cardinal You said. Through that dialogue of prayer, clouds of doubt and questions gradually clear, and "the Lord makes us understand which path to take."

"We must not run the risk of thinking that the spiritual aspect can develop apart from the human one, thus attributing to God's grace a kind of 'magical power,'" he said. "God became flesh and, therefore, the vocation to which he calls us is always embodied in our human nature."

The cardinal said he has devoted much of his life to priestly formation, and he knows that in many parts of the world many priests are experiencing hardships, trials, exhaustion and, especially, profound loneliness.

Priests and the people they minister with need to learn to share duties and responsibilities, he said, and diocesan priests need to learn to rely on and support each other.

But even more, the cardinal said, "there is a need for a new mentality and new formation paths because often a priest is educated to be a solitary leader, a 'one man in charge,' and this is not good for him."

"We are small and full of limitations, but we are disciples of the Master. Moved by him we can do many things. Not individually, but together, synodally," he said, reminding readers of what Pope Francis has said: "You can only be missionary disciples together."

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Exercising the virtue of temperance is not a recipe for a boring life, Pope Francis said, but rather it is the secret to enjoying every good thing.

If one wants "to appreciate a good wine, savoring it in small sips is better than swallowing it all in one go. We all know this," the pope said April 17 at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.

Continuing a series of audience talks about vices and virtues, the pope focused on temperance, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines as "the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods."

Temperance is "the virtue of the right measure" in what one does and what one says, the pope said. "In a world where so many people boast about saying what they think, the temperate person prefers instead to think about what he or she says."

"Do you understand the difference?" Pope Francis asked people in the square. It means "I don't say whatever pops into my head. No, I think about what I must say."

A temperate person does not allow "a moment’s anger to ruin relationships and friendships that can then only be rebuilt with difficulty," the pope said. Temperance with words is especially important in families to keep "tensions, irritations and anger in check."

"There is a time to speak and a time to be silent, but both require the right measure," he said.

Being temperate, he said, does not mean never getting annoyed or frustrated, Pope Francis said, but he kept repeating the phrase with "the right measure" and "the right way."

For example, "a word of rebuke is at times healthier than a sour, rancorous silence," he said. "The temperate person knows that nothing is more uncomfortable than correcting another person, but he or she also knows that it is necessary; otherwise, one offers free reign to evil."

A temperate person "affirms absolute principles and asserts non-negotiable values," the pope said, but he or she does so in a way that shows understanding and empathy for others.

In other words, he said, a temperate person has the gift of balance, "a quality as precious as it is rare" in a world given to excess.

"It is not true that temperance makes one gray and joyless," Pope Francis said. On the contrary, it increases "the joy that flourishes in the heart of those who recognize and value what counts most in life."

Pope: Temperance means acting thoughtfully

Pope Francis continued his catechesis series on virtues and vices by discussing the virtue of temperance.