Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish

The Sisters of Bon Secours along with seven local Catholic congregations are launching a citywide advertisement campaign against gun violence in Baltimore. The ad features the message “Put the Guns Down, Let Peace Begin with Us” and a QR code linking to the campaign webpage. / Credit: Liz O’Neill

CNA Staff, May 29, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The Sisters of Bon Secours are launching a citywide campaign against gun violence with seven other Catholic congregations in Baltimore.

The advertisement campaign announced this week features ads inside and outside of city buses and in subway transit stations throughout the city that say “Put the Guns Down. Let Peace Begin With Us.”

The Bon Secours sisters are part of a coalition of religious sisters and others advocating for gun violence prevention called “Nuns Against Gun Violence.” Taking inspiration from a similar campaign by other sisters in Ohio, the Sisters of Bon Secours ultimately landed on an advertising campaign.

“The Sisters of Bon Secours have been involved in gun violence prevention advocacy efforts for many years and were looking for a way to bring more attention to the issue,” said Simone Blanchard, director of justice, peace, and integrity of creation for the Sisters of Bon Secours.

Bus advertisements will carry the message “all over the city instead of a few stationery billboards,” she said.

The advertisements feature a QR code that takes viewers to the sisters’ webpage, which has resources on combating gun violence, including a prayer for victims of gun violence and links to the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s gun buyback program. 

“The ads on Baltimore city buses reflect the commitment of my community and other Catholic sisters in Baltimore to say: There is another way,” said Sister Patricia Dowling of the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours. 

“We all deserve safe streets, a sense of peace, and the freedom to live without fear,” she continued. “Peace begins with each of us, and anything we can do to raise awareness about alternatives to violence and the sacredness of life is essential today.”

Dowling said the campaign aligns with the congregation’s charism and is also “deeply personal.” 

“As a Sister of Bon Secours living in West Baltimore, I hear gunshots regularly,” Dowling told CNA. “I’ve seen the faces of those who’ve been shot, and I’ve walked with neighbors carrying the pain and trauma that gun violence leaves behind.”

“Our charism — compassion, healing, and liberation — calls us to uphold the dignity of every person and to seek peace in every situation,” she continued.

“It’s not just about my neighborhood — it’s about all of us,” Dowling said. 

Baltimore is among the top 10 cities in the U.S. with the highest rates of gun homicides. According to a recent review by Pew Research, the states with the highest gun murder rates in the U.S. include Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and New Mexico as well as Washington, D.C.

Blanchard said the campaign has its roots in Catholic social teaching, “starting with the foundational principle of the sacredness of every human life from conception to natural death.”

“This teaching stems from the fact that we are all created in the image of God and have inherent dignity,” Blanchard told CNA. 

“As Catholics we are called to work for the common good towards a just and peaceful society where everyone’s needs are met, especially those living in poverty and violence,” Blanchard said. 

She noted that the campaign — and other efforts like it — is about having “solidarity with those who are suffering the most from the effects of gun violence.”

Other congregations that helped sponsor the new campaign include the Benedictine Sisters of Baltimore Emmanuel Monastery; the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Province of St. Louise; the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart; the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Atlantic Midwest Province; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, U.S. East-West Province; the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas; and the Oblate Sisters of Providence.

Springs of Love ministry founder Kimberly Henkel (right) speaks with “EWTN Pro-life Weekly” host Abi Galvan on May 28, 2025. / Credit: “EWTN Pro-life Weekly”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 29, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

A Catholic foster care ministry leader is calling for Catholic families to support vulnerable children and families by becoming foster parents. 

Springs of Love ministry founder Kimberly Henkel said many Catholics are unaware of the “huge crisis in our country” surrounding foster care, and people of faith are in a unique position to bring love to children in need of foster care. 

Henkel, who is a foster and adoptive mother herself, launched Springs of Love as a ministry to help other Catholic couples navigate the process of fostering. Henkel described the foster system as “very cyclical” and “difficult to break out of,” with children often passing from home to home. In the end, she said, children who age out of foster care with no family connections are often left increasingly prone to addiction, homelessness, and even trafficking.

“We have the answer,” Henkel said in an “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” interview with host Abi Galvan on Tuesday. “We can help these children to heal by loving them … We have Jesus, the healer, the divine physician who can heal all of our wounds.”

According to Henkel, who founded Springs of Love in 2022, there are some 400,000 children in the foster care system. Approximately 20,000 will age out every year with no solid family foundation from which to embark on adulthood. 

“As my husband and I … started fostering and adopting, as we continued down the path, we just saw this need,” Henkel recalled. “So we started [Springs of Love] and are trying to No. 1, raise awareness, because so many Catholics have no idea” of the great need for foster families.

Springs of Love is currently working on releasing a new curriculum for prospective foster parents later this summer, Henkel said, noting that while much of it will touch on fostering from a pro-life perspective and the “joy of adoption,” it will also delve into more difficult aspects.

“A lot of the times when these kids are aging out,” she said, “they have no connections, they have nobody to look out for them.” Henkel noted that about 70% of young women who age out of the foster care system become pregnant within the first couple of years and either go on to “repeat the cycle” they experienced in their own lives or have an abortion.

“We’re really going in and trying to educate people,” Henkel said, “and doing it through the light of the Gospel to give people that hope that Christ can truly come into our hearts and bring the healing that we need.” 

Springs of Love has a video series on EWTN on Demand that tells the stories of foster families. The point, according to Henkel, is not only to raise awareness of the process of fostering a child but also to show that the aim of fostering is ultimately family reunification. 

“The goal of foster care is reunification, so if it is safe for a child to go back home, then we want to continue being a support to that family,” Henkel said. 

“This is how we can see a huge change, because when we’re dealing with these massive issues of homelessness, poverty, addictions, and trafficking, in order for people to break out of that, they need to be poured into,” she continued. “They need to know the love of Jesus [and] to have people to come alongside them and accompany them.”

Springs of Love is the sister organization of a ministry Henkel previously helped co-found called Springs in the Desert, which accompanies Catholic couples struggling with infertility and loss, “by offering a place of respite and solidarity,” as stated on its website.

Pope Leo XIV waves to pilgrims during his general audience on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 29, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

When the newly elected pontiff stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to address the Catholic faithful on May 8, his first decision as pope — to take the papal name Leo — signaled the direction he intends to take his papacy in handling certain social questions that need moral guidance, including artificial intelligence (AI).

In his first meeting with the College of Cardinals on May 10, the pope confirmed he took the name to honor Pope Leo XIII, who he said “addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution” with the encyclical Rerum Novarum at the tail end of the 1800s.

The encyclical, which set the foundations for Catholic social teaching, can help guide the Church as it seeks to offer moral insight on “developments in the field of artificial intelligence,” the new pontiff explained, adding that the rise of AI poses “new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.”

In the influential encyclical, Leo XIII eschewed both socialism and unrestrained business power, opting for cooperation between competing interests that is centered on the dignity of the human person. Pope Leo XIV’s comments suggest these same principles will shape the Holy Father’s approach to similar questions surrounding AI.

Foundations of Catholic social teaching

Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum on May 15, 1891, at a time when laborers were struggling with poor working conditions amid the industrial revolution and when Marxists were seizing on the discontent to promote radical changes to the social order.

Essentially, Leo XIII was “primarily concerned with laying out … a philosophical or theological anthropology” that focused on “the human person and the dignity of work,” according to Joseph Grabowski, the vice president of evangelization and mission at the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

In the encyclical, Leo XIII wrote that there is a need “in drawing the rich and the working class together,” which could be accomplished by “reminding each of its duties to the other” and “of the obligations of justice.”

These obligations to justice include a business owner’s duty to “respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character” and to never “misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain or to value them solely for their physical powers,” Leo XIII taught.

Grabowski told CNA that one of the problems of industrialization was that people were “kind of viewed mechanistically” when working in factories and that the pontiff was reminding factory owners that humans should not be treated as though they are simply “part of a machine.”

Leo XIII also defended the right to private property, which he wrote must “belong to a man in his capacity of head of family” and rebuked Marxist and socialist ideologies, which he thought would disrupt the social order by pitting humans against each other and turning private property into “the common property of all, to be administered by the state or by municipal bodies.”

“It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten,” Leo XIII wrote. “And similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life.”

Grabowski said if one were to summarize the encyclical in one line, it would be: “The economy is meant to serve man and not vice versa.”

“Economics and productive work and things like that are all really about man’s nature and serving the highest end of man,” he said, which is to “get to heaven” and live in a “harmonious community.”

Social teachings and AI

Pope Leo XIV’s predecessor Pope Francis already incorporated some elements of Catholic social teaching into the Church’s approach to questions surrounding AI.

In December 2023, Francis urged global leaders to regulate AI toward “the pursuit of peace and the common good” and emphasized that innovations must avoid a “technological dictatorship” and instead be used to serve “the cause of human fraternity and peace.”

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in January released a 30-page “note” that explained that AI lacks “the richness of corporeality, relationality, and the openness of the human heart” and that innovation should spur “a renewed appreciation of all that is human.”

Grabowski told CNA that, as AI continues to advance and the Church formalizes its teachings on the new technology, Leo XIV will be contending with some of the same issues that Leo XIII wrestled with at the turn of the 20th century.

“It’s still a question of: How do we use machinery within economic production in a way to serve man [that] does not subvert man to servitude of the machine?” he said.

AI is already being incorporated into many workplaces, such as the fields of marketing, banking, health care, and coding. The adoption of AI can sometimes improve accuracy and efficiency but is yielding concerns that the technology could replace humans in certain activities.

A May 25 New York Times article noted that some software developers at Amazon are complaining that their work is becoming routine and thoughtless as much of the coding has been automated with AI, while other workers are cheering the increased productivity.

Alternatively, in health care, an October 2024 Forbes article noted that AI is helping doctors find anomalies in patients and link symptoms together to boost the speed and accuracy of medical diagnoses.

Speaking to the AI assistance in the field of medicine, Grabowski said: “There can be benefits there” with the technology helping doctors “look through symptoms and maybe come up with things a human doctor isn’t going to catch onto.”

“We would have no objection to that, but like with everything, a balance is called for,” he said.

In line with some complaints reported at Amazon, Grabowski said “increasingly mechanized work” poses a concern, and with AI, there’s a lot of outsourcing of “the creative process” and “the idea generation process” with the ability of AI to produce art and novels, which he called “somewhat alarming.”

“There is a notion of a right to a meaningful employment for a person [in Leo XIII’s writings],” he added. “To be fulfilled.”

Another principle of Rerum Novarum that can help guide teaching on AI is the concern about a “respect over property, over productive property,” Grabowski noted, highlighting that one issue with AI is “respect for intellectual property rights.”

“There’s great concern over the fact that [AI] isn’t really producing anything itself, so therefore it’s recycling the words and images created by other real people and usually doing so without credit,” he said.

Grabowski said the pontiff’s choice to pick the name Leo is “exciting,” given that the world is in a “very critical point in economic history.” He expressed hope that people will be amenable to the expected moral guidance from the Holy See and referenced a line from G.K. Chesterton’s book “What’s Wrong With The World.” 

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting,” Chesterton wrote. “It has been found difficult and left untried.”

The case containing the body of St.Teresa of Ávila after an extraordinary public exposition in 2025. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Discalced Carmelites Iberian Province

Madrid, Spain, May 28, 2025 / 18:11 pm (CNA).

Approximately 93,000 faithful venerated the body of St. Teresa of Jesus (Ávila), which was publicly exhibited May 11–25 for the third time in four centuries in the small town of Alba de Tormes, Spain.

The saint’s remains were returned to the silver case placed at the center of the altarpiece of the Basilica of the Annunciation in the Castilian city where the Carmelite reformer died.

Eight Discalced Carmelite friars from different convents carried the case, preceded by others holding the 10 keys required to open it, to the accompaniment of the municipal band.

Pilgrims of different nationalities streamed in for this rare occasion to venerate the saint following Pope Francis’ canonical recognition of the body, which took place in its first phase in August 2024.

In February, the body was transferred to a temporary case until it was transferred to the one that contained the saint’s body during the public exposition, which had only previously taken place in 1760, for seven hours, and in 1914, for one day.

The Discalced Carmelites order explained from the outset that the intention behind this extraordinary occasion was “to bring pilgrims closer to Jesus Christ and the Church, to evangelize all visitors, and [to foster] greater knowledge of St. Teresa of Jesus.”

The canonical recognition of the saint’s remains made possible a reconstruction of her face based on anthropomorphic and forensic study, historical testimonies, and descriptions of her from the time in which she lived.

The scientific team that studied the body of St. Teresa of Jesus noted in a report that it is in an “extraordinary state of preservation” despite the passage of time. They also observed that the nun may have suffered from osteoporosis, bilateral osteoarthritis of the knee, and a bone condition below both heels associated with pain.

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

The Catholic bishops backed a suit by a coalition of Apache Stronghold, a coalition of Native Americans and their supporters, in their lawsuit against the federal government. The lawsuit argued that their freedom of religion was violated when the federal government announced its intention to sell formerly protected land in Arizona to a mining company. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Becket

CNA Staff, May 28, 2025 / 17:41 pm (CNA).

A Native American group whose attempt to halt the transfer of a sacred land site received backing from the U.S. bishops was dealt a blow to that effort when the U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to stop the sale from taking place. 

The high court denied the request from the coalition group Apache Stronghold to consider halting the sale of the Oak Flat site to a copper mining corporation. The religious liberty law group Becket represented the group in the case.

The federal government several years ago moved to transfer Oak Flat to Resolution Copper — a British-Australian multinational company — after having protected the site for decades for the use of the Apaches. 

The proposed mining operations would largely obliterate the site, which has been viewed as a sacred site by Apaches and other Native American groups for hundreds of years and has been used extensively for religious rituals.

Apache Stronghold argued that the transfer would violate both the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and an 1852 treaty protecting Apache territory. A U.S. district court ruled earlier this month to halt the sale of the site while the Supreme Court considered the question. 

On Tuesday the court declined to take up the case. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision, with Gorsuch arguing that the Supreme Court “should at least have troubled itself to hear [the] case” before “allowing the government to destroy the Apaches’ sacred site.”

A lower court had decided that though RFRA generally prohibits the government’s “substantial burdening” of religion, that guidance does not apply in cases of “disposition of government real property.” That decision, Gorsuch said, was “far from obviously correct.” 

He noted that the novel interpretation of RFRA law could have much wider implications than the Apache case. The justice pointed to a legal dispute involving the Knights of Columbus, who in 2023 were denied permission to celebrate a long-held Mass in a Virginia federal cemetery, with the government citing the new RFRA standard. 

The government eventually relented and allowed the Knights to hold the Mass, but, Gorsuch argued, “seemingly nothing would prevent it from trying its hand again” so long as the newly revised law is allowed to stand. 

After the court’s decision on Tuesday, Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, said it was “hard to imagine a more brazen attack on faith than blasting the birthplace of Apache religion into a gaping crater.” 

“The court’s refusal to halt the destruction is a tragic departure from its strong record of defending religious freedom,” he said. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that the Apaches can continue worshipping at Oak Flat as they have for generations.”

Last year the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) joined an amicus brief with the Christian Legal Society and the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, arguing that the lower court decisions allowing the sale represent “a grave misunderstanding of RFRA that fails to apply its protections in evaluating that destruction.”

The transfer of the land “jeopardizes Native American religious practice and religious liberty more broadly,” the groups argued.

The Knights of Columbus similarly filed a brief in support of the Apaches, arguing that the decision to allow the property to be mined “reads into RFRA an atextual constraint with no grounding in the statute itself.”

The decision is devastating not just to the Apaches but to “the myriad religious adherents of all faiths and backgrounds who use federal lands every day for their religious exercise,” they said.

Pope Leo XIV smiles during his general audience on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

CNA Staff, May 28, 2025 / 17:11 pm (CNA).

Those attending the June 14 celebration honoring Pope Leo XIV at Rate Field in Chicago will hear directly from the new pontiff.

The Archdiocese of Chicago announced that recently installed Pope Leo will deliver a “special video message” to the world’s youth at the event at the Chicago White Sox’s home stadium.

The celebration will also include a Mass, music, a film, and in-person testimonials about Pope Leo XIV, a South Side native and lifelong White Sox fan. 

The public is invited to attend the upcoming “celebration of the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first pope born and raised in the Chicago area.”

The event is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. on June 14 with Mass at 4 p.m. Gates open at 12:30 p.m., according to the archdiocese. Ticket details are forthcoming. 

Last week, the White Sox unveiled a graphic installation honoring Pope Leo on the lower-level concourse near the seat from which he watched Game 1 of the 2005 World Series against the Houston Astros. The White Sox internal design services team designed the mural, which is not a painting. 

Brooks Boyer, the White Sox executive vice president and chief revenue and marketing officer, told MLB.com last week that the pope “has an open invite to throw out a first pitch” at any White Sox game.

Downtown Wilmington, Delaware. / Credit: Real Window Creative/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 28, 2025 / 16:41 pm (CNA).

The Diocese of Wilmington’s Catholic Business Network launches next month, connecting Delaware’s Catholic business leaders for networking and collaboration.

The Catholic Business Network (CBN) “will unite professionals who are not only driven in their industries but also guided by their faith, offering a space where success is measured not just by profit but by impact, service, and witness to the Gospel in the workplace,” Sheila McGirl, CBN founder and development director for the diocese’s newspaper, The Dialog, told CNA. 

McGirl and Joseph P. Owens, The Dialog’s editor and general manager, are spearheading the effort. McGirl previously launched a similar campaign in New Jersey when she worked for the Diocese of Camden.

“After founding the Catholic Business Network in South Jersey, I witnessed firsthand the power of connecting faith and enterprise, where relationships rooted in shared values led to collaboration, mentorship, and a deeper sense of purpose. It is our hope to bring that same vision to Wilmington,” McGirl said. 

“We have so many Catholics who do great work in their businesses in the diocese and we believe they can help each other grow while engaging with other Catholics in business,” she said.

Owens and McGirl intend to help attendees promote their businesses by providing them with print and digital advertising packages to grow their networks. They have invited interested businesses to apply online for the upcoming event. 

The initiative will kick off June 4 with a breakfast at the parish center at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Church in Greenville, Delaware, with keynote speaker Bishop William E. Koenig of Wilmington, who will speak on “The Vocation of the Business Leader.”

After the first event, McGirl plans to hold future meetings around Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland to include other business centers in the diocese. 

Similar efforts are taking place across the United States.

Earlier this year, the Diocese of Toledo held a breakfast event with a talk titled “Bringing Your Christian Faith into Your Business” with the intent “to engage and empower northwest Ohio business leaders and professionals to promote Catholic values in the workplace.”

On June 18, the Catholic Business Network of Northern Virginia will hold an evening event to help individuals network and create “fellowship with like-minded Catholic business professionals and owners.”

In addition, Baltimore businesses will also have the chance to participate with other Catholics at a “leadership breakfast” hosted by the Catholic Business Network of Baltimore. The gathering is set to take place at the end of June.

Portland Archbishop Emeritus John Vlazny. / Credit: Courtesy of Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

CNA Staff, May 28, 2025 / 16:11 pm (CNA).

Portland, Oregon, Archbishop Emeritus John Vlazny, who led the northeastern U.S. archdiocese from 1997 to 2013, died this month at his home near the city. He was 88 years old. 

The archdiocese announced the prelate’s passing on Sunday. The retired archbishop passed away at his home in Beaverton, just a few miles from St. Mary’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Portland. A funeral is scheduled for Friday, June 6. 

In a statement, Portland Archbishop Alexander Sample described Vlazny as a “great spiritual father” who led the archdiocese “through some of its most challenging days.”

“He was a man who always fully exhibited the joy of the Gospel,” Sample said. “He was truly one of the kindest and most thoughtful men I have ever known.”

Ordained in Chicago on Dec. 20, 1961, he was appointed an auxiliary bishop of that city on Oct. 18, 1983. He then served as bishop of Winona, Minnesota, before being appointed the archbishop of Portland, where he was installed on Dec. 19, 1997, and served for just over 15 years. 

Vlazny was archbishop of the Portland Archdiocese when it declared bankruptcy in July 2004 as a result of sex abuse cases, becoming the first U.S. diocese of any size to do so. 

“This is not an effort to avoid responsibility,” the prelate said at the time. “It is in fact the only way I can assure that other claimants can be offered fair compensation.”

Vlazny was adjacent to another U.S. first when Oregon in 1998 allowed the first-ever physician-assisted suicide to take place, that of a woman with breast cancer. 

The archbishop said at the time that he was “deeply saddened” by the death.

“The suicide of this elderly woman can only bring anguish to those who have resisted the public policy initiatives that changed the law in Oregon,” he said. 

Sample said that Vlazny “has left a lasting and remarkable legacy in this local Church in western Oregon.” 

“He will be missed very deeply by all of us,” the archbishop said. “We now commend him to the mercy of the Lord, whom he served so well.”

Pope Leo XIV prays with pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for his general audience on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, May 28, 2025 / 15:41 pm (CNA).

At the end of Wednesday’s general audience, Pope Leo XIV turned his attention to the people suffering the devastating consequences of war, especially in Ukraine and Gaza.

During his greeting to the Italian-speaking faithful, the Holy Father lamented that the Ukrainian people are being hit by “serious new attacks” against civilians and infrastructure.

He also assured them of his closeness and prayers for all the victims, particularly the children and families of that nation, which has lived under the constant threat of bombs since the Russian army invaded in February 2022.

“I strongly reiterate my appeal to stop the war and to support every initiative of dialogue and peace,” he continued.

He also urged the faithful to join “in prayer for peace in Ukraine and wherever there is suffering because of war.”

Pope Leo XIV also referred to the Gaza Strip, where “the cry of mothers, of fathers who clutch the lifeless bodies of children … rises ever more intensely to heaven.” 

He also lamented those “who are continually forced to move in search of a little food and safer shelter from bombing.”

“I renew my appeal to the leaders: [implement a] ceasefire, release all hostages, fully respect humanitarian law. Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us!” the Holy Father exclaimed.

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

Pope Leo XIV addresses pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for his general audience on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, May 28, 2025 / 15:21 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV held the second general audience of his pontificate today in which he reflected on the parable of the good Samaritan.

At the beginning of his catechesis, addressed to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father recalled that the parables of the Gospel offer an opportunity “to change perspective and open ourselves up to hope.”

The lack of hope, the pontiff explained, is sometimes due “to the fact that we fixate on a certain rigid and closed way of seeing things,” and the parables “help us to look at them from another point of view.”

He then recalled that Jesus proposes this parable to “a doctor of the law,” who asks him: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 10:25-37), and then Jesus invites him to love his neighbor.

‘The practice of worship does not automatically lead to compassion’

The scene of the parable of the good Samaritan is a road “as difficult and harsh as life itself,” the pope said. In fact, the man who crosses it “is attacked, beaten, robbed, and left half dead.”

“It is the experience that happens when situations, people, sometimes even those we have trusted, take everything from us and leave us in the middle of the road,” the pontiff emphasized.

Leo XIV then added that “life is made up of encounters, and in these encounters, we emerge for what we are. We find ourselves in front of others, faced with their fragility and weakness, and we can decide what to do: to take care of them or pretend nothing is wrong.”

He recalled that the priest and the Levite went down that same road and didn’t stop to help him. “The practice of worship does not automatically lead to being compassionate. Indeed, before being a religious matter, compassion is a question of humanity! Before being believers, we are called to be human,” he emphasized.

Haste as an obstacle to compassion

The pope pointed out that “haste, so present in our lives, very often impedes us from feeling compassion. One who thinks his or her journey must be the priority is not willing to stop for another.”

However, the Samaritan, who belonged to a despised people, decided to stop to help the man. Thus, Leo XIV emphasized that “religiosity does not enter into this. This Samaritan simply stops because he is a man faced with another man in need of help.”

He also affirmed that compassion “is expressed through practical gestures,” recalling that the Samaritan “approaches, because if you want to help someone, you cannot think of keeping your distance; you have to get involved, get dirty yourself, perhaps be contaminated.”

“One truly helps if one is willing to feel the weight of the other’s pain,” Pope Leo XIV noted.

“When will we, too, be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each one of us. And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care of us will make us more capable of compassion,” he said.

Finally, Pope Leo invited the faithful to pray to “grow in humanity, so that our relationships may be truer and richer in compassion.”

“Let us ask the heart of Jesus for the grace to increasingly have the same feelings he does,” he concluded.

After greeting the pilgrims from different countries, the Holy Father intoned the Our Father in Latin and imparted his blessing to the faithful present, who listened attentively despite the high temperatures and intense Roman spring sun.

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