The Austrian Catholic Women’s Movement called Sept. 15 for the statutes of the Austrian bishops’ conference to be amended so the office holder is no longer required to be a priest or bishop.

Angelika Ritter-Grepl, the group’s chairwoman, said: “It is time for the bishops’ conference to amend its own statutes so that this important office can also be held by lay people — both women and men.”

The appeal was prompted by the announcement that Fr. Peter Schipka, the general secretary of the Austrian bishops’ conference since 2011, will step down in November. Schipka chose to resign two years before the expiration of his latest six-year term to serve as a professor of education.

The Austrian Catholic Women’s Movement noted that canon law does not require a bishops’ conference general secretary — who plays an administrative and coordinating role within a national bishops’ conference — to be a priest.

But the phenomenon of appointing lay people to the top administrative role in a bishops’ conference is relatively new — and has a historical connection to the Church in the United States.

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Sr. Anna Mirijam Kaschner, C.P.S., is widely regarded as the first woman to serve as general secretary of a bishops’ conference. She became general secretary of the Nordic bishops’ conference in 2009, a post she continues to hold.

Sr. Hermenegild Makoro, C.P.S., became the general secretary of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2012, serving in the role until 2020.

The theologian Beate Gilles became the first woman who is not a religious to hold the post of general secretary of a bishops’ conference when she took up the role in Germany in 2021.

Other lay general secretaries in Europe include Bruno Spriet in Belgium, Luisa Campbell in Scotland, Davide Pesenti in Switzerland, and Anneke van der Kamp-van Saase in the Netherlands.

But the practice remains uncommon in many parts of Europe, where the general secretary is still a priest or bishop.

The U.S. bishops’ conference has never had a lay general secretary, although lay people have held senior executive positions within its general secretariat.

In fact, in 2000, the U.S. bishops’ conference asked the Congregation for Bishops if it was possible to install a woman religious — specifically a canon lawyer, Sr. Sharon Euart — as conference general secretary.

The congregation wrote back with a firm “no”, insisting the role had to be filled by a cleric. It is not clear when that insistence waned, but by 2009, such an installation had occurred for the Nordic episcopal conference.

—

The general secretary of the Austrian bishops’ conference is elected by the plenary assembly of bishops for a six-year term.

The bishops’ conference statutes currently state: “He need not be a bishop, but he must be a priest.” The statutes note that they can only be amended with the Holy See’s approval.

Schipka was first elected general secretary in March 2011 and was re-elected in November 2016 and November 2022.

Kathpress, the official Catholic news agency of the Austrian bishops’ conference, quoted Schipka as saying: “I have always greatly enjoyed this role. However, I have come to realize that it is not good — either for the office or for myself — for the two to become too closely intertwined over such a long period.”

Before he leaves the post, Schipka will take part in the Austrian bishops’ November plenary meeting in Salzburg.

The Austrian Catholic Women’s Movement argued that opening the position of general secretary to lay people would show the bishops’ commitment to synodality.

“Synodality that takes place only in roundtable discussions but never finds its way into structures and offices remains half-hearted. If the bishops’ conference wants to credibly follow the synodal way for itself, then the question of who should lead its general secretariat must be at the very top of the agenda,” the group said in a Sept. 15 press release.

It added: “In November, the plenary assembly of the bishops’ conference will meet in Salzburg, where the succession to Peter Schipka will also be on the agenda. We will actively bring this matter to the bishops’ attention and invite those in charge to engage in dialogue about opening up the office in a way that is in keeping with the times.”

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But the meeting is not a synod. And its thematic framework was originally published by the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life.

The now-leading role that the secretariat has taken on in preparing for the meeting is part of what seems to be a growing influence of the Secretariat of the Synod under Pope Leo.

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The Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops was created by Pope St. Paul VI in 1965, but it rose to greater prominence under Pope Francis, who convened several high-profile synods during his pontificate. In fact, before Francis’ 2022 reform of the curia, the Secretariat of the Synod was not even considered part of the curia, properly speaking.

Francis did not convene many extraordinary consistories of the College of Cardinals during his pontificate, but those he did convene were organized by the Secretariat of State, the traditional organizer of such events.

And when Francis held a special meeting — much like the one Leo is convening in October — on the protection of minors in the Church in 2019, he appointed a special committee of cardinals, bishops and experts to organize it.

In contrast, the Secretariat of the Synod has been involved in the organization of Leo’s two extraordinary consistories and is now behind the organization of the Amoris laetitia meeting, which will function much in the way a synod typically does, but without that label.

In fact, the October gathering did not originally appear to fall under the umbrella of the secretariat. The Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life was in charge of publishing the thematic framework for the meeting in July.

There has been since a lack of clarity as to how the meeting will proceed and who is in charge of it. But sources close to the dicastery told The Pillar that most of the organizational work for the meeting has been taken over by the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, which is in charge of the discussion’s logistics.

The gathering will use the small-group methodology used in the Synod on Synodality and in both of Leo’s extraordinary consistories so far.

A bishop appointed to the Secretariat of the Synod told The Pillar that the secretariat continues to be as significant under Leo as it was under Francis, and that there is “constant communication” with the pope regarding the secretariat’s work. The bishop also confirmed that the secretariat was mostly in charge of the October meeting.

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In January the Secretariat of the Synod played a significant role in the development of the first extraordinary consistory of Leo’s pontificate.

Journalist Diane Montagna reported in April that while the consistory would originally be held with plenary sessions, weeks before the consistory it was decided that it would use the small-group synodal methodology, with many pointing at Cardinal Mario Grech as a possible man behind the idea.

A spokesperson for the Secretariat of the Synod told Montagna that “the General Secretariat was not involved in the preparation of that important meeting.”

But several Vatican officials close to the Secretariat of the Synod told The Pillar that the secretariat has, indeed, been involved in both of Leo’s consistories.

At the same time, it’s possible that the involvement has not been official, much as with the October meeting, which is officially being prepared by the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life, while the Secretariat of the Synod is doing much of the actual organization.

While much of its work seems to be taking place quietly in the background, the new responsibilities being handed to the Secretariat of the Synod seem to suggest that Pope Leo wishes to offer the group greater influence in the Vatican.

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Show notes:

Rabat arc…

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Hey everybody,

I was off last week, and I’m grateful for all of you who support The Pillar and make that possible.

And before I start the news, I want to remind you that Ed and I have an awesome live show planned next week for 9 pm on Wednesday September 23 at the Schlafly Taproom, 2100 Locust Street, St. Louis.

I come back with my sleeves rolled up. The Pillar matters in the life of the Church. And we’ve got a lot of work to do.

So here’s the news.

The news

First, some resolution in Morocco, or a step toward it. Readers know that Morocco’s Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero is sidelined right now, as the prelate faces investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct, including three women who say the cardinal acted inappropriately in the confessional.

The Archdiocese of Rabat got a coadjutor bishop yesterday, who will take over governance of the diocese immediately whenever López Romero resigns, is removed, or retires. And while López Romero says he asked for the coadjutor before the allegations against him came forward, the appointment would seem to indicate that it’s unlikely the cardinal will return to active leadership ministry of his archdiocese.

Of course, the question is the perennial one: When an investigation into the cardinal is concluded, will the Church disclose what it found, or will it allow him to resign — should that be warranted — for “health reasons” of dubious veracity? Will the longstanding spoken commitment to transparency play out in the case, or will it just be the rhetoric-without-reality that has defined the “transparency promise” since 2018? How does Leo XIV want to handle a high profile investigation into a cardinal?

That all remains to be seen. In the meantime, here’s the latest development.

—
The Vatican announced Monday a major leadership transition in a small but historically significant community within the Catholic Church in Belarus.

The Belarusian Greek Catholic Church is one of the smallest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome. It has around 5,000 members in the Eastern European nation of Belarus, as well as thousands more living in the diaspora.

So why is a leadership change in a 5,000 member sui iuris Church significant? Well, Luke Coppen explains that deftly.

Прачытаць, as they say in Minsk.

—
The Diocese of Fall River, Mass., announced Friday that Msgr. Roger Landry has been restricted from public ministry after allegations of misconduct were made against the priest by “multiple individuals.”

There are no allegations involving minors, the diocese emphasized, but he has been accused of “violations of the Codes of Conduct for Priests for both the Diocese of Fall River and Archdiocese of New York.”

Landry, who was due to be a headliner at the beatification of Fulton Sheen next week, has said that the allegations do not involve sexual misconduct, and that he has not been suitably informed about what canonical crimes he may have committed.

Landry is a very well-known priest, and I am certain we’ll have more on this soon. In the meantime, here’s the story.

—
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced Thursday that the government will seek to end a ban on Catholics and Jews advising the British monarch on appointments to the established (state) church.

Why? Because Burnham is a Catholic, who has had to transfer part of his job responsibilities to a member of his cabinet.

Here’s the story.

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Pope Leo on Monday rolled back a 10% Francis-era pay cut to cardinals working in the Vatican and living in Rome, along with a standing pay-cut and freeze for senior curial officials.

The cut was very controversial when Francis made it in 2021, but the pontiff insisted it was financially necessary.

Now, from our read of things, the Vatican’s finances aren’t really in much better shape now than they were then. So why would Leo roll back the cut? Well, in the grand scheme of things, when your balance sheet isn’t great, sometimes a marginal expense is worth the morale and good will it will buy you.

At least that’s a good possibility. Ed Condon explores.

—

In a society where artificial birth control is widely available and accepted, having a large family is increasingly seen as a choice taken primarily by people outside the mainstream, often for religious reasons.

But is that actually the case?

Sociologist Ryan Burge recently took a look at the question on his site, Graphs About Religion, and concluded: “It’s fair to say that large families are more likely to go to church, but not by that much.”

He found that 33% of families with four or more kids went to church at least weekly, while among families with any number of children, 29% went to church that often.

So is the association of large families with religiosity a myth? What about the stereotype of the full-size van pulling up to Mass with a small army of children?

Our own Brendan Hodge — himself the father of a large family — took a good look at the numbers. And his findings are pretty damn interesting.

—

And, finally, Ed Condon had an interesting conversation recently with a particle physicist. If you’re not sure what that is, you’ll still be able to follow this. Listen up.

Big math

While I was on vacation last week, some stuff happened with AI.

First, may I assume you’ve heard about the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem?

If you haven’t, let me explain. Or — well, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Ok, so, for a long time mathematicians have been working on equations that describe how fluids move, and they’ve been trying to figure out whether those equations always produce smooth mathematical solutions, or whether — instead — the equations could get jammed in some situations into a “singularity” — proposing an infinite quantity in finite time.

In other words, can the equations keep describing the motion of a fluid forever, or do we eventually reach a point where the math goes nuts — “blowing up” in the technical parlance of super math nerds.

Did you understand that? It’s ok if you didn’t.

In fact, I read about this stuff for about an hour to write just those two sentences, and I fully expect some mathish Pillar reader will blow me up in the comments section for being an idiot.

High level mathematics are not easily grasped, but at least they’re not made up, like the “high level physics” in string theory.

Still, I don’t know if I explained Navier-Stokes correctly or not. But that’s not important right now.

What matters is that AI understands Navier-Stokes. So much so that OpenAI published last week a 165-page proof which it says proves that “the dynamics of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion can develop a singularity in finite time.”

It included models like this “snapshot of local incompressible motion.”

Basically, OpenAI proposed a theoretically spinning vortex of water that gets narrower and faster until its velocity blows up to infinity in finite time. Which is a problem for an equation that purports to model reality.

Got it? Me neither. But, again, that doesn’t matter. Because AI got it.

OpenAI suggested that it had, by solving the Navier-Stokes, resolved a question attached to a $1 million Millennium Prize — even while OpenAI says it doesn’t actually want the cash. In fact, Open AI spent millions in computing costs to do the math, tasking 10,000 AI agents over about 88 hours with finding the solution.

Now, whether the robots have won the prize is not clear. First, all the robot math has to be checked by humans, and the foundation giving the prize hasn’t said yet that OpenAI will get it. But also, an NYU mathematician, working with a mathematician employed at Anthropic, was himself very close to solving the same problem. And he has raised questions about whether OpenAI agents accessed his own AI queries to beat him to the punch — a move which would obviously be unethical, and which OpenAI denies.

So the big news is surrounded by some academic drama, and some allegations of stolen research, at least of a kind.

But the bottom line is this: on pure math, AI is spinning vortices ahead of where anyone expected it to be right now.

We don’t always realize that, because there are popular memes and twitter.com accounts which specialize in documenting when ChatGPT or Grok make some ridiculously stupid computational error. But we ain’t talking now about the free version of ChatGPT messing up a fifth-grade word problem a year or two ago. We’re now seeing that on the bleeding edge of pure mathematics — a discipline reserved for geniuses — AI is able to force its way to the seemingly correct solutions of really hard problems. And it got that way lightning fast.

All of that should have been a pretty big AI story last week. But it got swallowed up, because a guy who worked at Anthropic on alignment — making sure robots do what we want them to do — quit in a dramatic fashion, saying that AI designers are worried behind closed doors that AI is going to kill us. Then a bunch of high-level AI people all chimed in to agree with the guy — one of them pegged the prospect of our extinction at more than 10% — and a bunch of them urged that the government figure out some way to get us and China to slow down on the development of AI.

That happened because we found out AIs were hacking into companies to cheat at little games their designers made for them, and figuring out ways to create secret online message boards, and hiding all that pretty well, and generally having one hell of a Hot Robot Summer™ while we were all distracted by Trump putting his thumb on the World Cup.

Cynical people – in this case the ones who don’t think robots are going to kill us – figure this is all just coordinated PR stunting designed to drive up IPOs, or to take the pressure off execs to start turning profits.

But the optimistic(?) folks think that the emergence of robot hackers, coupled with the rise of recursive self-improvement among robots – their ability to build better versions of themselves without our help – has genuinely put some fear of God into AI developers.

Of course, the whole thing is a prisoner’s dilemma — if AI developers in the United States slow down to build more safeguards into their process, Chinese AI developers probably won’t. And the general consensus is that it’s better for the free market and DARPA to make and master this stuff than it is for the autocratic Beijing government to do so. I tend to agree, but the choice strikes me as almost akin to the dilemma of being killed by a horse-sized duck or by 100 duck-sized horses.

That means these companies have apparently got to keep building. And the stakes are the same as they’ve ever been. Don’t forget that OpenAI was founded to keep Google from winning the AI race, on the premise that it’d be better for better people to own the technology. And Anthropic was founded to keep OpenAI from winning the AI race, on the premise that it’d be better for better better people to own the technology.

And Musk, the planet’s richest man, has been ducking and weaving his way through that fight the entire time, all while digging tunnels and slinging Teslas and gutting the government and sending cool rockets into space.

Of course, many of these guys are asking that the United States Congress figure out a way to solve the complex vortex of moral and social problems in which we now find ourselves, and that’s a body which does not move at the pace of infinity in finite time. I have little hope that Congressional hearings are going to do anything to police this technology, especially if one aim is an agreement on self-regulation with Beijing. I have too much experience with bilateral China agreements to expect that Congress could enact one and see it enforced.

The extinction prognostication is more than a little bit over the top. But most of us understand what’s actually happening for humanity no better than I grasp the Navier-Stokes problem.

Consequential human moments are when the Church should be speaking. And Leo has. He promulgated Magnifica humanitas just a few months ago, and moral theologians and others are trying to do what Leo asked: to engage the technologists in a discussion about the meaning of their work for humanity.

Perhaps that’s animating part of the strange singularity we’re seeing right now, the one in which prominent AI figures are saying, at least, that they want to put humanity first. Perhaps the pope has helped to catalyze that. And if so, thanks be to God.

But I’ve been thinking lately about the power of moral witness. When the Church talks about the kind of social justice issues which emerged with Leo XIII — about the rights of workers and the dignity of labor — her credibility is measured by her conformity to the ideals expressed. And however much good Rerum novarum did, Catholics have often failed to make the dignity of laborers a principle that actually governs our own institutions.

Further, Catholics — myself included — have mostly failed to make the vision of Centesimus annus compelling in practice: an economy which sees human flourishing as the end of both commercial activity and the institutions which engage in it.

We have mostly not developed a way of robustly living our social teaching, and thus, we have mostly not attracted people to engage with it.

That raises the critical question about the Church and AI: Do we yet know how we, as the Church, want to engage with this new technology? Beyond a few bromides, have we really thought about when the Church should use it, when she shouldn’t, and why?

Do we have some compelling Christocentric answer to disincarnate intelligence, and how to engage with it?

The answer, I think, is no. As a journalist, I’d like to report a lot on the people trying to figure it out. But until we can be a witness to something, I’m not certain we’ll be especially effective as prophets.

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Prolonging the magic

My family boarded a plane bound for home Saturday afternoon. Kate and I got the kids settled with books, tablets, and the make-up homework assigned to them for the course of a week’s vacation outside of school.

Kate and I were four seats and an aisle from each other, and Pia, my immediate seatmate, was quickly engaged in a movie, and entirely uninterested in my attempts at conversation. My book was in the overhead compartment, and I wouldn’t be allowed to get it until we’d taxied and taken off.

I might have prayed the rosary. But I instead let my mind turn to a critical thought which occupies me every year around this time:

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I’m Luke Coppen and I seek to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and commentary.

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Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth Bailey

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Reading 1 - Isaiah 55: 6-9

Psalm 145: 2-3, 8-9, 17-18

Reading 2 - Philippians 1: 20c-24, 27a

Gospel - Matthew 20: 1-16a

Aaron talks about his time at the CERN laboratory and fields Ed’s questions about the relationship between faith and science, dark matter, and extraterrestrial life.

This conversation was recorded before Dominguez left his role as provost in August 2026.

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In a motu proprio dated Sept. 1 but published by the Vatican press office on Sept. 14, Leo wrote that “Those wage containment measures adopted by my Predecessor [...] which were also necessary to face the exceptional challenge of the pandemic [...] can now be overcome, in the certainty that the institutions of the Holy See and the Vatican City State will continue, with various instruments, in their commitment to guarantee economic sustainability.”

The pope’s decision, which also referenced a previous move to reverse another Francis-era cost-cutting measure of raising residential rents in Vatican City, is the latest signal from the Apostolic Palace that Leo is increasingly comfortable with the Holy See’s financial situation, and confident in its sustainability.

It is a remarkable change in both policy and outlook between popes.

The final years of the Francis pontificate were characterized by increasingly dire warnings from the pope about the state of Vatican finances, and continued policy shake-ups. By contrast, the first year-and-a-half of the Leonine pontificate have represented an effective liberalization of curial financial policy and a notably upbeat way of discussing the Holy See’s financial health.

But with only partial information on the current state of Vatican finances, it remains an open question whether this change is the result of new information, improving results, or merely a change of attitude.

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—

The Holy See’s Monday announcement that Pope Leo has reversed Pope Francis’ 2021 pay cut and freeze for curial cardinals and senior officials makes two important contextualizations.

The first linked the original 2021 pay cuts to fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and the global economic shock triggered. But it is worth noting that Leo’s motu proprio this month introduced a dangling qualifier — and with it, something of an ambiguity. The pope wrote that the 2021 pay cuts were “also necessary” because of COVID-19. But he did not explain the conditions to which that “also” referred.

While it is reasonable and understandable for the Vatican, as much as anywhere else, to move past extraordinary measures adopted in the wake of the pandemic five years ago, it is worth recalling that Francis himself said at the time that the move was first and foremost driven by “the deficit that has characterised the economic management of the Holy See for several years,” and “to ensure the sustainability and balance between income and expenditure in current economic and financial management.”

According to the Vatican’s most recently released budget statement, published in November last year, the curial structural budget deficit was almost halved between 2023 and 2024, dropping from €83.5 million to less than 44.5 million. External donations, financial investment performance, and operational income generation were all up over the same period.

Operational costs rose, too, but the report from the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy was eager to stress that, in the wider financial climate, this was something of a controlled rise, rather than runaway inflation. Taken narrowly in this context, Leo’s rollback of the 2021 cost-cutting measures might make sense.

However, last year’s report was actually very guarded on that exact subject, stating that, despite years of cost-cutting measures, operational costs still grew by nearly €40 million from 2023 to 2024. According to the report, the 2024 financial year “could be a turning point if [emphasis original], after years of stable or growing operating deficit, the Holy See [sees] the reduction of its operating deficit in the coming years.”

With that in mind, reversing cost-controlling measures — like Leo’s decision to rescind the cardinals’ pay cuts — will not strike many observers as an obvious way of reducing an ongoing operational deficit running in the tens of millions of euros.

On the other hand, close reading of the Vatican’s most recent financial statements suggest that the bulk of operational increases are located in asset and property maintenance and management, not staffing costs. And wherever the Vatican’s increased costs come from, its recently positive financial returns have depended upon one-off asset sales and investment realizations, not on the cultivation of stable and stably increasing returns from fixed income streams.

Similarly, results posted this year by APSA, the Holy See’s sovereign wealth and asset manager, hailed strong and stabilizing results for 2025 and what it called a “return to ordinary operating conditions” after a change in investment strategy yielded extraordinary returns the previous year.

However, the APSA figure likely to have the most impact on the Holy See’s next budget statement later this year isn’t the recorded uptick in value of its assets on paper but the sharp drop in its contribution to the curial operational budget, which went down year-on-year from €46 million to €22.7 million.

At the same time, a net increase of €89 million in value for APSA’s assets and investments — and it is a sizable figure, in and of itself — came largely from a passive revaluation of existing holdings.

Specifically, the two largest drivers of that increase in value came from revaluation of physical gold holdings, which APSA priced as having risen by €40.8 million since they were last priced, and their real estate book valuations, which they marked up by €39.2 million.

Of course, all of that information and analysis can only lead to partial predictions of what might be in the next Holy See budget statement, due out in the next two months. It is possible that extraordinary increases have materialized from other sources, including perhaps major donations made outside of the framework of Peter’s Pence.

It is equally possible, though, that no such new revenue has materialized and the 2025 budget report will record a similar or modestly improved reality to the 2024 edition put out last year. Indeed, those close to the Vatican’s various economic departments and bodies offer no reason to expect a sudden sea-change in the economic circumstances of the Vatican, or the sudden resolution of the structural budget deficit.

That being the case, the second piece of context included in Leo’s motu proprio on Monday becomes even more interesting: Leo cited “the certainty that the institutions of the Holy See and the Vatican City State will continue, with various instruments, in their commitment to guarantee economic sustainability.” It is worth recalling that no such certainty existed in the final years of the Francis pontificate.

On the contrary, the late pope initiated a number of reforms and issued a series of warnings to curial departments that the medium term economic viability of the Vatican was in direct jeopardy.

It is not exactly clear where Leo’s optimistic certainty comes from. His top team at the various Vatican financial bodies remains largely unchanged — the same team whose information and council informed Francis’ bleak outlook. And, while some financial results have trended upward, as noted previously these are of highly questionable impact on the Vatican’s actual budget issues.

For the moment, there is no obvious place to point to for either information or results which would justify Pope Leo’s bullish attitude about Vatican finances.

But, as the pope has himself previously said, he is not in favor of economic doom-mongering for its own sake; nor does he consider talking down the Vatican’s financial situation as a credible fundraising strategy. It is entirely possible that Monday’s announcement is a simple product of a particular papal cost/benefit analysis.

Like the Vatican City rent hikes announced, though largely unimplemented, by Francis and repealed by Leo earlier this year, it’s highly questionable how much the payroll measures actually contributed to the budget bottom line.

Cutting the monthly stipend for Roman cardinals by 10% made international headlines, but how much, really, did it manage to achieve by saving some €8,000 per Rome-based cardinal per year? Certainly no more than a few hundred thousand, at most. Similar criticisms were raised about the balance of the pay cuts and freezes instituted by Francis for senior curial officials — many of those affected noted that Vatican wages were already modest by any measure, and the impact of the cuts was felt far more by staffers than the benefit realized to overall staffing costs.

To a degree, this was known and intended, even, under Francis, who spoke often about the need to cultivate a mindset of personal sacrifice around Vatican expenditures.

By contrast, the best explanation — or at least the explanation that can be argued from known data — for Leo’s move on Monday may be as simple as the reverse intention. Even if the financial climate at the Vatican isn’t improving by much, Leo may have decided that reversing some of Francis’ most eye-catching but least effective reforms (in terms of euros saved or generated) can purchase him a lot of good will around Rome for not much money — especially compared to the size of his budget hole.

If that is the case, it may be a rare Vatican example of getting value for money.

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The Holy See press office said Sept. 14 that Pope Leo XIV had accepted the resignation of 77-year-old Archimandrite Jan Sergiusz Gajek, M.I.C., as head of the apostolic administration for Byzantine Rite Catholics in Belarus.

It added that the pope had appointed Fr. Liavoncij Tumouski, M.S.U., 53, as Gajek’s successor.

Who are the Byzantine Rite Catholics of Belarus? And what’s the significance of the leadership change?

Who are Belarus’ Byzantine Rite Catholics?

The Belarusian Greek Catholic Church is one of the smallest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome. It has around 5,000 members in the Eastern European nation of Belarus, as well as thousands more living in the diaspora.

Byzantine rite Catholicism has deep historical roots in Belarus. But the community today is a minority within a minority. Most of the country’s roughly 9 million people identify as Eastern Orthodox. Fewer than 10% of Belarusians are Catholics and most belong to the Latin Catholic Church.

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The estimate of 5,000 Eastern Catholics in Belarus was provided by the Holy See press office in 2023, when Pope Francis created a new structure known as the Apostolic Administration for Faithful of Byzantine Rite in Belarus.

The Argentine pope named Archimandrite Gajek as the apostolic administrator, or head, of the new jurisdiction. Gajek, a Polish-born member of the Marian Fathers, had served as apostolic visitor to Byzantine Rite Catholics in Belarus since 1993, two years after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union.

At the time of its creation, the apostolic administration comprised 16 parishes, served by 16 priests and three deacons, with four seminarians in formation.

The erection of an apostolic administration was seen as a way of strengthening the pastoral structures supporting Byzantine Rite Catholic life in Belarus. There was an expectation that the apostolic administration would ultimately be upgraded to the status of an eparchy, or diocese, led by a bishop, rather than an archimandrite, or senior priest.

But the structure is arguably more fragile today than it was when it was established in March 2023. In December that year, Belarus’ long-serving authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko signed a new law requiring religious organizations to re-register with the state.

When the law came into force in July 2024, the 16 Byzantine Rite Catholic parishes were required to seek re-registration within a year.

In 2025, authorities in the southwestern city of Brest rejected the re-registration of the three parishes in the region and applied to the courts to liquidate the structures. In April 2026, the Supreme Court of Belarus upheld the ruling. The liquidation orders meant the three communities could no longer legally operate as registered religious organizations.

Aside from the immediate impact on pastoral life, the orders held a symbolic significance. The Belarusian Greek Catholic Church traces its history to the Union of Brest in 1595-96, when Eastern Orthodox communities in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth united with Rome while preserving their liturgical practices. The liquidation orders therefore targeted the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church’s institutional structures in a region linked to its foundations.

Belarusian media reported in June 2026 that the authorities had denied the re-registration application of a fourth Byzantine Rite parish, in the city of Orsha in the northeastern Vitebsk region. This meant that the number of registered parishes had fallen by a quarter, from 16 to 12.

The tightening of restrictions on religious communities followed the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, in which Lukashenko controversially claimed victory amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud. When mass protests appeared to threaten his decades-long rule, Lukashenko turned to neighboring Russia for help. Moscow’s assistance stabilized the Lukashenko regime, while further strengthening Russia’s influence over Belarus.

The country’s links to Moscow extend to the ecclesiastical realm. The Belarusian Orthodox Church, to which the majority of the population belong, is under the aegis of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is closely associated with the Russian state.

Russian authorities historically sought to suppress Greek Catholicism, which offers an alternative Byzantine identity, in communion with Rome and outside of Moscow’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction. That history is relevant in today’s Belarus, given the state’s increasing alignment with Moscow.

That said, the apostolic administration for Byzantine Rite Catholics is not the only institution to feel the Belarusian authorities’ tightening grip.

At least 17 Polish-born priests serving the Latin Catholic community have been refused state permits to continue serving in the country, making the provision of pastoral care increasingly difficult, especially in the eastern region.

Even clergy belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate-linked Belarusian Orthodox Church have faced repression for expressing sympathy for pro-democracy protesters.

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What’s the significance of the change?

The most notable biographical difference between Archimandrite Jan Sergiusz Gajek, the outgoing head of the apostolic administration for Eastern Catholics in Belarus, and his successor, Fr. Liavoncij Tumouski, is nationality.

Gajek was born in Poland, while Tumouski’s place of birth is Polotsk, in Belarus’ Vitebsk region. In an environment in which Polish-born clergy are being required to leave Belarusian parishes after decades of service, this is not a mere detail.

Pope Leo XIV’s choice of Tumouski was made during the tenure of Archbishop Ignazio Ceffalia, the apostolic nuncio in Belarus since 2025. Ceffalia belongs to another of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church, which may have given him particular insight into the needs of Byzantine Rite Catholics in Belarus.

At 53, Tumouski could have a good two decades in charge of the apostolic administration. The Studite monk brings considerable experience. He has served as the prior of a monastery in Polotsk (2003-2008) and vice dean of the parishes of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church (2004-2006). His most recent post, held since 2022, was head of pastoral care of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church in Poland.

Tumouski faces a delicate task as apostolic administrator. He must ensure that Catholic life flourishes in the re-registered parishes, while finding creative ways of sustaining communities whose parishes have lost their legal registration. To do that, he will need to maintain an effective working relationship with the authorities. It would make sense, too, to try to nurture ties with the majority Orthodox Church.

It would also be helpful to maintain close links with the Latin Catholic Church, drawing on the larger community’s resources where possible, while preserving the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church’s distinctive identity.

For Byzantine Catholics in Belarus, Tumouski’s nomination marks a generational change. Gajek has led the community for more than three decades, since his appointment as apostolic visitor by Pope John Paul II in 1993. Now he is passing the responsibility to a younger man, who is called to build on Gajek’s legacy and encourage new expressions of Belarussian Eastern Catholicism within parameters tightly defined by the state.

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López Romero announced in July that he had temporarily stepped down while a Vatican investigation against him was underway and that León - already serving as the apostolic prefect of Western Sahara - would serve as apostolic administrator sede plena of the Archdiocese of Rabat in August.

In a Sept. 12 letter to the clergy and members of the Archdiocese of Rabat, López Romero announced León Dorado’s appointment by Pope Leo XIV as coadjutor. López Romero added that he had made a request for the appointment of a coadjutor to both Pope Francis and Leo.

“At the end of 2024 I had already raised the appointment of a coadjutor bishop with Pope Francis, who had accepted the idea. Following his death, I repeated the same request to Pope Leo in October 2025, who has thus [now] welcomed and responded to the request I had presented to him,” he said.

“Let us give thanks to the Lord for this gift given to us in the person of Father Mario… whom I thank for having accepted this mission; I know how attached he is to the Sahara, where he has served for more than 20 years, nearly his entire priestly life,” López Romero added.

While López Romero did not mention the allegations against him in the letter, he said that he still waited “to be heard by the Dicastery for the Evangelization of Peoples, on which our diocese depends, so that I may explain myself in the investigation concerning me, which is the reason I had stepped back from diocesan life.”

In a subsequent letter the same day, León Dorado said he received the news “with joy, but also with “fear and trembling”... I accept it with confidence in the Lord who has called me and with a sense of humility.”

“If I have accepted this appointment, it is because I firmly believe that it is God and his Church who are asking this service and this ministry of me,” he added.

León Dorado was born in Madrid in 1974. He took his perpetual vows as a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary in 1996 and was ordained a priest for the same congregation in 2001. He started working as a priest in the Spanish Diocese of Jaén, and has served as a missionary in Western Sahara since 2004.

In 2009, he became the administrator of the apostolic prefecture of Western Sahara. In 2013, Pope Francis appointed him as apostolic prefect but he was not ordained a bishop. The territory has around 350 Catholics spread throughout 165,000 miles, served by four priests in two parishes.

In an article published in the magazine of the Spanish bishops’ conference commission for migrants in Sept. 2022, León Dorado reflected on friendship with Muslims, saying that “It is hard for someone who cares about us — who is our friend — to later look down on who we are: Christians, people of faith, followers of the Messiah… even if they do not understand that we believe that this Jesus-Messiah is, for us, the Son of the Most High God.”

In the article, while praising interreligious dialogue, León Dorado criticized the structure of many interreligious meetings.

“When large-scale ‘interfaith’ gatherings are organized, I am… the most skeptical of the attendees… I’m referring to meetings of ‘experts’ organized to discuss tolerance, which are often tools of the current political agenda,” he said.

“The imams I know see no need for dialogue because they have received divine revelation. On the other hand, ordinary people see no need to theorize, nor do they feel capable of doing so. Another ‘handicap’ is the way the Quran or religion is learned—by ‘memorization’—so not even a comma can be changed; so, what are we going to discuss?”

In the article he also spoke of reciprocity in religious freedom, saying that “Christian leaders in Muslim countries are calling for religious freedom and freedom of conscience. Dialogue seems to require that both parties listen to one another as equals. At present, this is neither evident nor a reality in our Muslim societies. How should we respond? Should I renounce my evangelical principles and values simply because this reciprocity does not exist?”

“Learning to live on a small scale, with simplicity and humility. Living a life of selflessness. A Mass with just a few parishioners—and often just me. Catechesis for a single catechumen. And it takes effort: traveling 330 miles for a catechumen, to find a Christian community of five parishioners, to visit one or two Muslim friends. Is it worth it?... Absolutely!” he added.

Shortly after his appointment as apostolic administrator earlier this summer, León Dorado announced on Aug. 4 an apostolic visitation to the Archdiocese of Rabat, just two days after his appointment as apostolic administrator.

“The Dicastery for the Evangelization of Peoples has decided to conduct an Apostolic Visitation of the diocese beginning this Wednesday, August 5, in order to take the time to investigate the allegations made against Archbishop Cristóbal, our archbishop, as well as to assess the proper management of the diocese in economic, pastoral, and liturgical matters.”

The visitation was conducted by Msgr. Hyacinthe Dione and Fr. Augustin Chako-Yodi, officials of the Dicastery for Evangelization.

“Members of the bishop’s advisory councils, as well as priests, religious, and laypeople involved in the management of the diocese, may be interviewed. Please make yourself available if you are called upon by the Visitors. However, you may also take the initiative to be heard, in which case we will inform them,” León Dorado added in his statement.

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—

While Cardinal López Romero has said he made requests for a coadjutor prior to the publication of allegations against him earlier this summer, León Dorado’s appointment as administrator and now coadjutor was timed to coincide with the Holy See’s investigation of allegations of sexual misconduct against the cardinal.

Five women have made allegations about López Romero’s conduct during his tenure in the archdiocese, including accusations that three women experienced inappropriate behavior from the cardinal during the sacrament of penance.

López Romero, who has been archbishop of Rabat since 2017 and was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2019, announced July 6 that he would temporarily step down from his post while the investigation proceeds. He has denied committing “any acts of sexual aggression, violence or harassment.”

The complaints against López Romero were first filed before the summer in the Moroccan nunciature by a retired diocesan collaborator and another woman offering written testimony, AFP has reported.

The woman reportedly accused the cardinal of “physical gestures” such as “particularly insisting and prolonged hugs” and “something similar to an attempt at kissing her,” from which the woman “escaped.”

AFP said that according to diocesan sources, three other women had also experienced “similar episodes” during confession.

Using the sacrament of penance to incite a penitent into sins against the sixth commandment is known canonically as solicitation. As a canonical crime, it is reserved to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Spanish outlet Religión Digital reported that sources at the DDF said they were unaware of any investigation involving the cardinal currently before the dicastery. However, it is possible that the investigation has not arrived at the dicastery yet, since it is still in its preliminary stages as the first stage of the apostolic visitation was conducted five weeks ago.

If found guilty, López Romero could lose his ecclesiastical offices, be suspended from exercising his priestly ministry, or be laicized.

López Romero told AFP on July 6 that he had “answered to his ecclesiastical superiors,” and that he had not “committed any acts of sexual aggression, violence or harassment” and would “fully cooperate with the investigation.”

Spanish publication La Razón said that López Romero is in Spain while he awaits the results of the investigation.

López Romero, 74, was born in Almería, Spain and ordained a priest for the Salesian order in 1979, serving as a missionary and provincial superior for decades in Latin America.

He was a missionary in Morocco between 2003 and 2010, and Salesian provincial in Bolivia from 2011 to 2014. He briefly returned to Spain before Pope Francis appointed him to lead the Rabat archdiocese in Morocco.

His 2019 elevation as cardinal surprised Church watchers, given that the Archdiocese of Rabat serves just 20,000 Catholics in 18 parishes, and that Morocco had not previously had a cardinal.

The cardinal was known as a strong advocate of the synod on synodality. Days after the synod had ended, he said that Catholics disagreeing with the synod’s decisions are “morally obligated” to support it, and that synodality is a “prophetic sign that may illuminate the world, because it’s not just about bringing democracy to the Church… but goes much further.”

As then-president of the Northern Africa bishops’ conference, López Romero defended Fiducia supplicans, publishing a short essay called “Is homophobia the issue?”

In an interview during the general congregations before last year’s conclave, López Romero also said that “respecting the norms of canon law” was a “peripheral” issue in the life of the Church. “It’s important, but it’s always in the service of the mission [of the Church],” he added.

Hours after the investigation against the cardinal was made public, Fr. Alfons Gea, a Catalonian priest claiming to be the cardinal’s cousin, published a column entitled “My Cousin Cristóbal, the cardinal with feet of clay” in which he seemed to suggest that there was at least some truth to claims of sexual misconduct by the cardinal.

“Nor him, nor me, nor the family, will try to hide from the truth. It is what it is. He’s not the first nor the last to fall short of the sixth commandment,” Gea wrote.

Gea argued that the allegations against the cardinal “should spark a debate about celibacy.”

“Sacrifice, self-giving, austerity, living the Gospel naturally, being a neighbor and a voice for the weak—all of this is going to be blown apart over a romantic entanglement,” he said.

A day later, Gea published a second column which appeared to backtrack some of his comments.

“What were merely my own biases or interpretations regarding the ‘scandal’ have been used by some media outlets as a preliminary accusation. I must say that what was intended to be an apology… has turned into a conviction without a trial,” he said.

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I’m Luke Coppen and I aim to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and commentary.

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Show notes:

Motion to dismiss delays trial of English bishop accused of rape of a minor

‘Someone has to roll up their sleeves’: Meet the 23-year-old Catholic restoring France’s statues

Andorran PM says abortion to be legal by April, with or without Vatican approval

Where is the Torreciudad shrine dispute headed?

Papal synodality: Why Pope Leo gave Eastern Churches the power to remove patriarchs

French victims ask Pope Leo to take action on spiritual abuse

There are no allegations involving minors, the diocese emphasized, but he has been accused of “violations of the Codes of Conduct for Priests for both the Diocese of Fall River and Archdiocese of New York.”

Landry, 55, is a widely respected and influential figure in the Church in the United States.

The priest serves as the national director of the Pontifical Missions Societies. He was appointed to the role in 2024, at which point he was also granted the title of Monsignor. He previously served for seven years as an attaché to the Holy See’s diplomatic corps as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York and he is a regular speaker, media commentator and contributor to Catholic publications on Church news and events.

A priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Landry was educated at Harvard before entering seminary and trained for the priesthood at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He was ordained in 1999.

A September 11 statement from the Fall River diocese said “Following an initial investigation conducted by the Archdiocese of New York, where Monsignor Landry’s ministry is based, the Diocese of Fall River, after consultation with the archdiocese and canonical advisors, has determined that sufficient evidence exists to restrict him from the public exercise of priestly ministry, pending the resolution of this matter.” Although Landry lives and works in New York, he remains a priest of the diocese and ultimately subject to the local bishop’s authority.

According to the diocesan statement, Landry “has requested to take a leave of absence from his post at the Pontifical Mission Societies and is entitled to the presumption of innocence while the investigation continues.”

In a public statement published online, Landry said that “The Diocese of Fall River has verbally communicated to me that the accusations involve alleged violations of prudence, pastoral boundaries, and diocesan codes of conduct with adults. There are no allegations of sexual activity whatsoever or of misconduct of any kind with a minor.”

“I maintain my innocence of any canonical violation or crime and will continue to defend my reputation to the best of my ability under the law of the Church,” the priest stated Friday. “Those who have raised concerns deserve to be heard. I am grateful that canon law respects my natural human right to be presumed innocent and the right to protect the good reputation I have enjoyed throughout the many years the Lord has given me the privilege to serve Him and His holy people.”

Msgr. Landry did not respond to a request for comment by The Pillar by time of publication.

In a statement circulated privately by Landry and forwarded to The Pillar, the priest said while he did not expect the diocese to disclose the nature of the allegations, “basically it involves boundary violations between spiritual direction and friendship.”

“There are no accusations of [any] sexual activity at all, or, according to the canon lawyer I’ve had to hire, nothing that seems to be a violation of canon law.”

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The priest also stated that he had not been granted access to the complaint file, nor to know the identity of his accusers.

“As a result of the accusations, I have to take a leave of absence as National Director of the Pontifical Missions Societies and return to the Diocese of Fall River and submit to all of the restrictions that bishops normally put on any priest accused of anything whatsoever: no public Masses, no preaching, asking permission any time I leave the diocese, not being able to hear confessions or give spiritual direction,” he said.

Landry also said that he had been permitted to continue to wear clerics during this time and said he had been told to expect the investigative and disciplinary process to last between 6 months and a year, during which time he would have to step back from previously agreed public ministries and engagements.

“I ask for your prayers during this time,” said Landry in the privately circulated statement.

“I know the Lord is with me, risen from the dead, seeking to bring good out of every situation. I know that I follow the Crucified One who himself was accused of being a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners, and a blasphemer. From my study of the lives of the saints, so many, like St. John Vianney and St. Vincent de Paul, were publicly condemned (falsely) [...] but eventually the truth came out to the edification of others. I’m invoking their intercession.”

The announcement from Fall River comes just weeks before the priest was set to take center stage at the beatification of Fulton Sheen in St. Louis on September 24.

In addition to being slated to serve as a key coordinator for the liturgy of the beatification, Landry had been scheduled to provide live television commentary on events around the beatification for EWTN, and was listed as a guest of honor at a gala dinner the Diocese of Peoria for the 2026 Sheen Awards in honor of Fulton Sheen. His listing for the event has now been removed from promotional websites.

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Burnham, the first lifelong Catholic to serve as prime minister, said Sept. 10 that he had transferred his constitutional responsibility to advise King Charles III on ecclesiastical appointments to the Lord Chancellor, Alex Norris.

Burnham was obliged to take the step because the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 says that no Catholic may advise the monarch on appointments to offices in the Church of England and Church of Scotland. The Jews Relief Act 1858 has a similar prohibition relating to members of the Jewish faith.

Burnham said it was “unacceptable for there to be a legislative bar against people of any faith performing all the functions of my office.”

“The government will therefore introduce a bill at the earliest possible opportunity to correct this antiquated and archaic anomaly,” he said.

The National Secular Society, which seeks the complete separation of Church and state, noted that Burnham’s announcement came after it wrote to Cabinet Office minister Louise Haigh in August calling for an end to the “discriminatory provisions.”

The religious restrictions only apply to Catholics and Jews. They did not apply to Rishi Sunak, a Hindu who served as prime minister from 2022 to 2024, or Keir Starmer, an atheist who held the office from 2024 to July 2026.

The prime minister’s involvement in ecclesiastical appointments is a peculiarity of the British constitutional system rooted in the Reformation.

After King Henry VIII’s break with Rome, the Act of Supremacy 1534 declared him supreme head of the Church of England. Related legislation affirmed the monarch’s power over episcopal appointments, without the requirement of papal assent.

The Church of England emerged as an established church during the English Reformation, while the Scottish Parliament established the Reformed faith in Scotland in 1560. Unlike the Church of England, the Church of Scotland is not led by bishops but by elders and ministers.

The Act of Settlement 1701 barred the monarch from being or marrying a Catholic, insisting that they be in communion with the Church of England.

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The relief acts of 1829 and 1858 lifted certain restrictions on Catholic and Jewish participation in public life. But they continued to prohibit members of either faith from advising on established church appointments. The ban applies not only to prime ministers, but also to their advisers.

According to a Sept. 10 briefing by the House of Commons Library, the ban on involvement in Church of Scotland appointments may no longer be relevant as its nominations today are made independently of the monarch.

Until 2007, when an Anglican diocese fell vacant, a Church of England body called the Crown Nominations Commission selected two candidates, usually in order of preference, and sent them to the prime minister. The prime minister would select one of the names and advise the monarch to appoint the candidate. The prime minister could also reject both candidates and ask for more names, though this is believed to have rarely happened.

But in 2007, the then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown significantly reduced the prime minister’s role in the appointments process. Only one name is now presented to the prime minister, which is then forwarded to the monarch. The Crown Nominations Commission keeps a second name in reserve, in case the first is rejected.

Benjamin Disraeli was the U.K.’s first and so far only Jewish prime minister, holding the office in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. But he was baptized into the Church of England at the age of 12, an act that later enabled him to advise the Crown on ecclesiastical appointments.

Two recent U.K. prime ministers have been linked to Catholicism. Tony Blair was an Anglican when he held the office from 1997 to 2007, but was later received into the Catholic Church.

Boris Johnson was baptized a Catholic as a child, but confirmed in the Church of England. He was viewed as an Anglican when he became prime minister in 2019, but married in a Catholic ceremony in 2021, a year and a half before he left office.

The wedding at Westminster Cathedral prompted debate about whether Johnson had transferred his responsibility to advise the monarch on appointments to the Lord Chancellor, as Burnham has done.

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But is that actually the case?

Sociologist Ryan Burge recently took a look at the question on his site, Graphs About Religion, and concluded: “It’s fair to say that large families are more likely to go to church, but not by that much.”

He found that 33% of families with four or more kids went to church at least weekly, while among families with any number of children, 29% went to church that often.

So is the association of large families with religiosity a myth? What about the stereotype of the full-size van pulling up to Mass with a small army of children?

The Pillar looks at the numbers.

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Burge pulled his data from the 2024 Cooperative Election Survey, a large survey primarily for political analysis but which also asks demographic and religious questions.

The survey is very large, interviewing about 60,000 people every two years. This is helpful, as analyzing small portions of the population requires as large a sample size as possible.

To get the maximum power in our analysis, we used the most recent three CES surveys – 2024, 2022, and 2020 – and combined them into one dataset.

Our goal with this analysis is to look at the characteristics of large families, and in order to tell larger families from smaller ones, we need to look at the age at which people are unlikely to have more children. However, we also want people from roughly the same generation. If we mixed people born in 1980 with people born in 1940, we’d be thrown off by the fact that larger families were more common 40 years earlier, and also that the generation born in the 1940s was generally more religious than those born in the 1980s. This would artificially make larger families look more religious when we’d actually be seeing that older families were both larger and more religious.

So to get a consistent group of people to focus on in the CES survey, we looked at people who were aged 40-55 when surveyed. These were people who were likely to be done having children, but also were not yet too far from their childbearing years. Since the surveys were taken in 2020 through 2024, this means we are looking at people born between 1965 and 1984.

In those three survey years, there were a total of 38,300 people aged 40-55 who provided answers on their number of children, and the breakdown in the number of children they had is as follows:

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One factor which seemed important in this analysis was to take marriage into account. When people envision the “big religious family,” what they tend to think of is a single couple who have had a large number of children together. However, there are other ways to get to a large family – there might be two people who each had children from prior relationships, or a single person who had multiple children with various people.

The CES survey does not ask questions that distinguish between children the respondent had with their current spouse and children from other relationships, but it does ask questions about marital status, so it is possible to break down the number of children people have by their current relationship status.

Unsurprisingly, people who are currently unmarried (never married, domestic partnered, divorced, or separated) are more likely to have no children than married couples. Among married couples, the most common number of children is two. When it comes to large numbers of children, 5.1% of married couples have five or more children, while 2.9% of those who are not married have that many.

Of the 1476 survey respondents who had five or more children, 65% were married or widowed, while 35% were currently unmarried.

Looking at people who regularly attend religious services, married people and unmarried people have very different trends.

Among married people aged 40-55 who have no children, 17% attend religious services at least once a week, a rate virtually identical to unmarried people with no children (16%).

However, according to the CES dataset, married people with children were more likely to attend religious services at least weekly the more children they had. Those with five or more children were the most likely, with 44% attending religious services once a week or more.

For unmarried people, however, the rate of religious attendance did not increase with the number of children. Among those with five or more children, 16% attended services at least once a week, the same as the rate among unmarried people with no children.

This tells us that going to church often is more common among married people with larger numbers of children. But the absolute number of families with large numbers of children is still small overall. Is it true that one could expect to see significantly more large families at church than in a secular context?

The answer is mixed. Among married people aged 40-55 who attend religious services at least weekly, parents with five or more children make up only 8% of the total. However, that is twice as many as among similarly aged married people who seldom or never attend religious services, among whom parents of five or more children make up just under 4%.

This is also true of people with three or four children. If we look at people who have three or more children, they make up 39% of married people aged 40-55 who attend religious services at least once a week, but only 23% of those who seldom or never attend.

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What about differences between adherents to different religious traditions?

The groups at times called the “nones” (atheists, agnostics, and people describing themselves as “nothing in particular”) are the largest groups within our analysis sample. About a third – 32% – of married people between 40 and 55 in the sample were atheists, agnostics, or describe themselves as “nothing in particular.”

However, while these different “nones” were alike in almost never going to religious services, they are different in terms of the number of children they had.

Atheists were the people in our analysis group most likely to have no children at all, with 35% of married atheists aged 40-55 being childless. They were also some of the least likely to have five or more children, at just 0.86%.

Agnostics were somewhat less likely to have zero children – 30% – and more likely to have five or more – 2% – but still had significantly fewer children than the average.

People who describe themselves as “nothing in particular” closely resemble the average population, with about 5% having five or more children, 22% having no children, and the most common number of children being two.

When analyzing Catholics, there were significant differences based on the frequency with which Catholics reported going to Mass.

Catholics who go to church at least once a week were more likely than others to have larger families, with 8% having five or more children. Similarly, Catholics in our analysis group who attended Mass at least once a week were some of the least likely of any group we looked at to have no children.

But interestingly, Catholics who seldom or never attend Mass were the next most likely to have larger families, with 5% having five or more children. They were, however, more than twice as likely than others to have no children. Catholics who reported going to church monthly or yearly were somewhat less likely than the average person in our analysis to have five or more children.

This split, with the larger families among both the most frequently church-going Catholics and the least, suggests there may be a dynamic in which there are many ways of reaching large family status: one showing up in the larger families of the Catholics who do not often attend Mass, while another perhaps very different model showing up among the most frequent churchgoers. In the middle, we seem to have smaller families and churchgoing when convenient.

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Results for Evangelical Protestants were very similar to those among Catholics, with those who go to church most often being the least likely to have no children and more likely to have five or more. Among Evangelicals, the numbers for those who go to church monthly were almost the same as those who go weekly or more, while those who reported going less than once a month had fewer children.

Mainline Protestants had a different pattern, with no association between more frequent church attendance and the rate at which they had families of five or more.

This very different pattern among Mainline Protestants suggests that whatever connection there is between active participation in Catholic or Evangelical faith and having larger families does not exist within the mainline denominations.

Two final groups represent a small enough percentage of the U.S. population that their results have some uncertainty, but they are nonetheless interesting because they are such outliers.

Among Mormons who attend religious services at least once a week, we saw the highest rates of people with five or more children (and the lowest rates of those with zero) of any group within our analysis. Twenty-seven percent of married people aged 40-55 had five or more children, while only 2.8% had zero. Among Mormons who reported never or seldom attending religious services, the number with five or more children was below the general average, just 1.3%, though they did have an unusually high percentage of people with four children.

Another interesting result was among Jews. Forty-five percent of Jewish respondents described themselves as seldom or never attending religious services, and among these the level of childbearing was similar to atheists, with only 0.7% of married people aged 40-55 having five or more children, and 31% having none at all.

However, among those Jews who did attend religious services weekly or more, 16% had five or more children, a rate about twice that of Catholics who attended religious services at a similar frequency.

We did not have a sufficient number of people in the survey dataset who were Muslim, Hindu, or Orthodox to provide results for those groups.

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Among the most difficult questions to answer from survey data is what the people who responded to this study looked like in terms of practice. We have a response telling us which Catholics say they go to church at least once a week, but which people go to confession frequently? Which ones believe in the Real Presence? Which ones believe that the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception is authoritative? The answers to these questions are unknowable from a generalized survey like this.

One small window that is available into these families regards demographic questions the survey does ask.

Some commentators suggest that the emphasis on theology (including John Paul II’s Theology of the Body) is something which appeals more to educated Catholics than others, so we looked at Catholics with at least a four-year college degree to see if the difference between those who attended Mass at least once a week and those who attended least would be greater than for Catholics in general.

However, the opposite was true. While for the broader Catholic population, 8% of those who go to church at least once a week have five or more children, among Catholics with at least a four-year college degree, that number was a little lower: 7%.

Another occasional line of commentary suggests that having a larger family is a luxury status symbol in which only higher earning families can indulge. So we broke down the rates at which Catholics in the data had different numbers of children according to whether they had an annual family income above or below $100k.

The less affluent Catholics actually turned out to be more likely to have large families than those making over $100k.

They were also more likely to have no children, while married Catholics making over $100k who go to church at least once a week were more likely to have two or three children.

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To get a look at more details about the marriage histories of people in relation to their number of children, it is necessary to turn to another dataset, the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) from the U.S. CDC. This is a smaller survey, so it can be harder to zero in on some smaller groups (such as specific religious traditions), but it does allow us to understand more about the marriage and family history of the respondents.

One limitation with the NSFG, which creates some differences in how we had to analyze data, is that the survey is designed to look at growing families. As such, it’s primarily a survey of people still in their childbearing years. Since we’re trying to look at people with larger families, that’s a group which is easier to identify as people near the end of those years. In the CES data we were able to do that easily by looking at people aged 40-55.

The NSFG has changed over the years. From 2011 to 2014 it surveyed adults up to 44 years old. From 2015 to 2019, it surveyed adults up to 49 years old. Due to the sizes of the surveys in different years, the largest consistent analysis group we could get was looking at men and women aged 35-44 from 2011 to 2019. Clearly, people who are 35 years old might go on to have more children, but we wanted to have at least a 10-year age range, and 35 is at least old enough that our analysis group should be near the maximum number of children they will have. However, we did also look at the smaller group of respondents who were aged 35-49 from just 2014 to 2019 in order to confirm our findings, and we found both analysis groups to be directionally similar.

Because the NSFG is designed to look at family structure and history, we were able to make what turned out to be a very important distinction. When we looked at large families in the CES survey, we could identify people who were married and had a certain number of children, but we did not have data on whether they had those children with their current spouse, or if the children came from prior relationships. The NSFG allows us to separate those two groups.

For married people with 0-3 children, 65% to 75% of the time, the respondent had had all of their children with their current spouse, and that current spouse had entered the marriage with no children from previous relationships.

However, for married people with four children, this dropped to 56%. And among married people with 5 or more children, in only 39% of cases had the respondent had all of their children with their current spouse, while the spouse also had no outside children.

This is a different model of family than people may initially imagine when they picture six kids piling out of the van to go to Mass. In the wider U.S. population represented by this survey, people who have five or more children are more likely to have gotten to that point because they have had multiple relationships which resulted in children over the course of their lives.

However, when we looked at how often people attended religious services at least weekly, the rates diverged dramatically between those who were in marriages where both spouses had only had children with each other, and those where one or both spouses had children from previous relationships.

Using the CES data, we were able to find that there were different rates of religious service attendance between unmarried and married people with large families. With this data, we are able to further separate married people into those who had all their children with their spouse (who also had children exclusively with them) and married people who had children from prior relationships and/or whose spouse had children from prior relationships.

The church attendance rates for married people where both spouses have only had children with the other spouse is much higher than any group we have analyzed up to this point.

We narrowed the analysis to look specifically at Catholics and found a similar pattern.

In addition, with this level of relationship detail it becomes clear that regardless of the type of family, Catholics with more children are more likely to attend Mass frequently than those with fewer.

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Listen to Ed read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR

Happy Friday friends,

Today is of course the 25th anniversary of the 2001 September 11 attacks. It is a good moment to pause for thought and prayer for the thousands who lost their lives that day. And of course for the many thousands more who have fallen in the more-or-less unceasing conflicts since. Most especially, I try to remember the men and women, both here stateside and back in the UK, who responded to that changed world by enlisting to serve.

Though it is old hat to say it, it remains the case that 9/11 was the day the world began to self-sort, at least in my eyes, between those willing to die for what they held dear, and those willing to kill to further their demands. There are, the Didache opens by reminding us, only two ways, the way of life and the way of death, and great is the distance between them.

For me and people of my vintage, it was also the big dividing line drawn across our lives.

Almost literally and legally, my transition from child to adult coincided with that day. Before that was a different time, and in many respects a different world.

Since then, we’ve become accustomed, at least to a degree necessarily, to our now ubiquitous security culture. We have all grown used to carrying photo IDs, removing our shoes and discarding bottled water before entering public spaces and airports. Crash barriers, some artfully disguised, some not so much, are now the defining decoration of prominent buildings and squares.

After 25 years, the memory of the before time, when loved ones could see you all the way to the airplane gate to waive you off and lost bags didn’t trigger lockdowns, has dimmed a lot, for those of us who remember it at all. Increasingly I have begun to accept that there might not be any going back, ever. After all, there is now an entire generation of adults walking the working world who have never known any different.

That’s kind of a shocking realization, for me, anyway. What does it do to us as a civilization to have a slow generational turnover which, in another 25 years, will mean the whole of society has only ever experienced life in a state of constant vigilance against spontaneous mass attack?

I have to think that a quarter of a century in which we approach public life and gatherings with a quasi-siege mentality has had real consequences for how we treat each other, and how we conceive of ourselves as “a people” — if we still can. Perhaps that is the hermeneutical key we are all reaching for to decode the drum beat of anger, suspicion, and resentment which defines so much of our culture now, and has done for… well, about 25 years.

Of course, diagnosis doesn’t produce a prescription, ipso facto. And it isn’t as if the world has become a safer place since 2001. I guess the closest I come to any kind of inchoate answer to all we see is this: there are still only two kinds of people, deep down, those who will lay down their lives and those who would kill. Perhaps the only thing we can do is to repeatedly ask ourselves, in the shadow of all that has been and is, “which one am I?” And, perhaps more importantly, which do we wish to be?

Anyway, here’s the news.

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The News

Lawyers for an English bishop have filed a motion to dismiss the charges of rape of a minor, with a new hearing set for January.

Bishop David Oakley of Northampton appeared in court at the Old Bailey in London on Sept. 10. He had been expected to enter a plea in the case, in which he is charged with two counts of rape of a minor, as well as indecent assault charges. The bishop appeared in lay clothes and is not currently in ministry, although he remains bishop of the diocese

Read the whole story here.

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Temperatures climbed so high in France this summer that wildfires forced mass evacuations, Champagne grapes were harvested exceptionally early, the Louvre closed in the afternoons, and the field at the historic Parc des Princes stadium turned brown.

With the mercury peaking at 111 degrees Fahrenheit, only the brave would consider embarking on a month-long tour involving hours of manual labor in direct sunlight. But that is exactly what Raphaël Castex did.

Castex spent August engaged in what he called a Tour de France du Patrimoine, or heritage tour of France. This involved traveling thousands of miles on a Honda motorcycle, stopping in towns and villages with the goal of renovating a total of 20 dilapidated religious statues over the month.

Castex, a calmly spoken figure with a fighter pilot mustache, is a co-founder of Rénove une Statue (Renovate a Statue), an association created in 2024 to restore the crumbling images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints that can be found all over France.

Read all about their work here.

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The Andorran Prime Minister has announced a plan to decriminalize abortion in the microstate by April next year “whether the Holy See likes it or not,” despite a Catholic bishop serving as co-head of state.

Xavier Espot, the Andorran PM, announced the plan in a Sept. 8 interview, saying that after years of tense talks between the Vatican and the government on the issue of abortion dialogue with the Holy See will continue but “with our sights set on the upcoming parliamentary session and, therefore, with the assurance that we can pass legislation to decriminalize abortion.”

The country’s government has been in negotiations with the Holy See for years in an attempt to secure at least tacit approval for decriminalizing abortion, as the country’s co-head of state is the Bishop of Urgell, Bishop Josep Lluís Serrano Pentinat, the territory of which covers Andorra.

Read the whole story here.

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This week a Spanish newspaper published alleged letters from Pope Francis, suggesting the late pope supported the bishop of Barbastro in a dispute with Opus Dei about the Marian shrine in his diocese.

The publication of the leaked letters comes just days after Bishop Ángel Pérez Pueyo, SOD, of Barbastro threatened to resign – for a second time – over the dispute. The leaking of the letters — which many are blaming on the bishop himself — adds another layer of complication to the already complex situation.

But what is Bishop Pérez Pueyo hoping to accomplish at this point, and is he likely to succeed?

You can read Edgar Beltran’s whole analysis about it right here.

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Just over a week ago, Pope Leo issued a major change to the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, the body of law governing the 23 Eastern Churches in full communion with Rome.

Leo gave the synods of those churches headed by patriarchs the power to impeach their heads for failing to preserve or severely damaging the Church’s communion. As you probably remember, JD and I wrote about it at the time and we were both pretty skeptical of the new law — its intentions, drafting, and likely implementation.

But we like people who are smarter than us, know more, and disagree with us. And we especially like it when they write for The Pillar. So, this week, I am really chuffed we get to bring you this commentary on Leo’s law for the Eastern Churches by the professor who taught me about the Eastern Code in canon law school, Chorbishop John Faris.

He thinks the reform is right over the target and addresses a clear problem. Read the whole thing here.

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A group of more than 200 victims of spiritual abuse and their relatives is asking Pope Leo XIV to take concrete steps to prevent and respond to instances of spiritual abuse within the Church.

In a Sept. 7 letter, published in La Croix, the group asked the pope to clearly define spiritual abuse in canon law, establish independent bodies to receive reports of spiritual abuse, and ensure that new postulants in religious communities receive training about their own rights and responsibilities.

Making spiritual abuse a defined crime in canon law has been the particular priority of Cardinal Fernandez as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and I have to say I’ve agreed with him about the need, for years.

Read the whole story here.

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The waiting game

Rome is back from summer vacation and, I think it is fair to say, expectations are beginning to mount around the Vatican.

No one, at least no one reasonable, expected Pope Leo to come out of the conclave hard and fast last year and make a slew of changes at the very top of his curia, however urgently they might be wished for by some people in some cases. But now into the pope’s second September, expectations are mounting, and increasingly reasonably so.

By my count, six of the current heads of curial dicasteries are past the nominal Vatican retirement age of 75, with one more to hit the milestone before Christmas. That number is actually a bit higher in terms of departmental heads when you consider the oldest of the cadre, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, actually has multiple jobs.

And, while the most senior curial figure, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, is still a few years off from 75, it’s the standard expectation that a change at the top of the Secretariat of State is in the offing, too.

All this points to a major reshuffle coming soon to the Vatican’s top table. But when, exactly, is anyone’s guess. The rumor mill in Rome is in full swing. Some claim Leo is still privately sussing out his preferred promotions and deciding what he thinks of some of the cardinals he’s inherited from Pope Francis. Others are putting it about that key appointments have been held up because some papal picks have actually said “no thanks” to the offer of a big job and a red hat.

At best, it’s a bit of informed guesswork parsing where, exactly, in the process of reimagining his team the pope is. And I am not sold there’s much mileage to speculating, other than for entertainment value. But it is fair to say that when it comes to papal governance, personnel is policy, as much or more than any motu proprio which Leo might sign or speech he might give.

So, I along with a lot of other people are waiting with baited breath to see what the pope will do and when. Until we know whom he is trusting to implement it, it’s very hard to say exactly what direction Leo is charting for his pontificate.

This isn’t even about the specifics of individual personalities, necessarily.

Robert Prevost was when elected, and to a degree remains as Leo XIV, something of an unknown quantity, in as much as he is many things as a man. He’s an American by birth, obviously. He’s an Augustinian by priesthood and spirituality, and a Latin American, in terms of his experiences as a diocesan bishop. He had a few years under his belt in Rome, too, as a curial cardinal. It’s reasonable to expect all these influences to show in his picks to work closest with him, but how and where will color a lot of perceptions about how Leo sees himself.

We are, I think, still within the boundaries of “new pope taking his time” and not into the realm of an apparent paralysis — either of indecision or for want of good choices. But I think this Autumn term is about the limit of that period.

What can be said is that, whatever the reason is for Leo taking his time over making major new appointments, one option is increasingly off the table — one I’d have thought Leo would have preferred above all else — the chance to make incremental change. The benefit of incremental change is that it makes it harder to read too much into any one appointment, and gives the pope a chance to manage expectations and reactions. Even if, for example, Leo wanted to appoint a very slanted (ecclesiologically or geographically) set of cardinal prefects, spacing them out would allow him to balance perceptions with, for example, lower level appointments of a different kind.

Maybe Leo does, in fact, want to make one big clean sweep and reset his Vatican in his own image. But having to replace seven or eight red heads all at once is a very different exercise than flipping them one at a time over a period of a year or more. It means that, whenever the change comes, the big picture will be a lot more visible all at once.

This is equally true regarding some senior episcopal replacements coming, in fact now long overdue, in major archdioceses around the world — Chicago, Barcelona, Milan being three of the most obvious, which Edgar and I talked about on the show this week.

All this gathering expectation and accumulating pressure for one big set of appointments is, by no means, necessarily a bad thing, if that’s what Leo wants. It is worth noting, though, because with every week and month that goes by, the changes become more and more significant, whenever they come.

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Out of time

Next month, the General Conference on Weights and Measures will meet in Versailles. I presume we are all familiar with the important work of the GCWM? No?

OK, well it is an international body for setting global standards on, obviously, weighing and measuring things. That might not sound like glamorous work but it is actually phenomenally important for keeping the global economy and general human civilization ticking along together. As such, it’s one of those rare international bodies that pretty much everyone actually shows up for and agrees to abide by, unlike the International Criminal Court or the UN.

When they get together in the grand palais next month, a very important motion will be on the table — the abolition of leap seconds.

Most people are familiar with leap years, which we use to account quadrennially for the reality that our plant doesn’t complete a solar orbit in exactly 365 days. For those otherwise unaware, we’ve been doing the same with seconds for over 50 years now because, as you might expect, the earth doesn’t turn around in exactly 24 hours, either.

In fact, the earth’s rotation on its axis is something like a planetary heartbeat, it tends to speed up and slow down for all kinds of reasons linked to factors like the state of the outer planetary core, the moon’s gravitational pull, and solar activity.

Apparently, back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth a solar day was more like 23 hours and 30 mins long.

Now, for pretty much all of human history, this variance has been a note of scientific curiosity and nothing more. Up until about a minute ago, in terms of human history, people kept time in their own ways in different parts of the world, though right up until the 1960s, everyone set their watches by Greenwich Mean Time, where the world’s preeminent observatory set the standard for what we in the time game call “observed solar time,” exactly pinpointing the moment the sun in exactly halfway between rising and setting and calling it noon.

Since 1963, though, the world has adopted what we call Coordinated Universal Time, which is a globally broadcast signal aggregated from the precise decay of several atomic clocks which provides a kind of hyperacurate “theoretical time,” as opposed to “observed time.”

UCT (we allow the French the concession of ordering international acronyms) has been essential for all kinds of aspects of our globalized world, and gone from serious convenience to absolute necessity in the digital age. And here’s where the problems set in.

It became pretty obvious early on that OST and UTC were not ticking along at the same rate. In fact, the atomic clock pretty handily outpaced the real world, to the point that in 1972 a sort of mini-reset was needed in the form of a “leap second.” Atomic time was paused for a slow count of ONE-MISSISSIPPI at the stroke of midnight and pretty much no one not directly involved in it was any the wiser, or had reason to take an interest. In total we’ve done this 27 times since ‘72.

But, thanks to the internet age, leap seconds have become progressively harder to manage. In fact, they are getting downright hazardous to try. You might think it’s no big deal to pause “the system” for a second. But, as anyone who understands these things will tell you, we don’t have “a global system” so much as a system of hopelessly intertwined and enmeshed systems. None of them have the capacity to freeze time — that would break them — and the ones that have coping mechanisms don’t all do it in the same ways.

Some insert an extra second at 23:59:60, others count the stroke midnight twice, and some digital frameworks would be so freaked out by the introduction of an extra second that it has to be “smeared” across several hours so they don’t crash, kind of like dragging your finger on a vinyl record to slow the rotation.

None of this is easy, or fool-proof. It goes wrong, and that’s when the rest of us start to notice. Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, and a load of other big brand tech companies bugged out with the leap second in 2015, and several major international exchanges just shut everything down for an hour, to be on the safe side. In 2012 and 2017, leap seconds caused New Year’s power outages in New York.

As you might expect, as interconnectivity becomes more deeply embedded in everything we buy and use, thanks to the “internet of things,” the risks have gradually escalated from real, to serious, to downright potentially calamitous. So, back in 2023, the GCWM adopted the policy of getting rid of leap seconds by 2035. Unfortunately for them, times have changed since then.

What’s gone on since 2023 is two things. First, the proposed fix for abolishing leap seconds was to move to leap minutes which, as you’d expect, wouldn’t need to be nearly so common. The problem was, some countries — notably Russia — were dead against it because their tech simply doesn’t have the capacity to absorb a leap minute, whenever it might come. You can imagine why a belligerent nuclear power would be touchy about this.

The second issue is that, for the first time in a while, the earth is speeding back up, to the point that a kind of reverse leap second, subtracting rather than adding one to UTC, is needed. Simply put, no one has any ideas about how to create a reverse gear for the systems we have now.

What’s the answer? Basically to just ignore the problem altogether, at least that is the GCWM’s plan.

Instead of sweating the seconds and minutes, the motion next month proposes to move to leap hours, which would only need adjustment every 1,000 years or so, by which point humanity will either have moved away from earth as the center of time, in much the way we already have from Greenwich, or AI will have killed us all and it can figure the problem out for itself.

For me, I have always hated UCT, and the drift between the theory and reality of time the leap hour plan proposes seems monstrous and dehumanizing to me.

The point of time is to mark the progress and decay of our created world — days, solarly speaking, seasons and years are our measure of life’s march. The idea that there is a kind of “perfect time” apart from and above the messy imperfections of the world we live in is a kind of rejection of reality, it seems to me.

I like the idea that our years and months and days and even seconds aren’t perfectly divisible or regular, yet remain the chart we plot ourselves against. It is the best possible reminder that we, all of this universe, were created by a God who saw that it was good, but it is very much not perfect as only He is.

Imperfection is the watermark of reality, of existential authenticity, and ultimately a call to seek the one who alone is perfect. Attempting to manufacture our own standards of perfection and then sit back and watch our world drift away from them because we can’t actually accommodate their demands seems to me like a towering metaphor for the Babelish era we live in.

Anyway, when the GCWM motion is adopted, as it seems certain to be, I’m buying a sextant. Whatever world the computers live in, the difference between that and the one I live in is rapidly becoming day and night.

See you next week,

Ed. Condon
Editor
The Pillar

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If you want to elevate the liturgy in your parish in the 2027 liturgical year, now is the time to consider a missal upgrade. The Source & Summit Missal is a beautiful, faithful pew resource designed to help your parish sing the Mass. See the difference: get your free sample copy today.

Pope Leo XIV will have a private meeting with seven abuse survivors…

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Bishop David Oakley of Northampton appeared in court at the Old Bailey in London on Sept. 10. The bishop had been expected to enter a plea in the case, in which he is charged with two counts of rape of a minor, as well as indecent assault charges. The bishop appeared in lay clothes and is not currently in ministry, although he remains bishop of the diocese.

Instead, the court heard that a new hearing would be held on January 4 next year to consider a motion to dismiss the case. No details about the motion’s argumentation were read in court.

The bishop is currently free on conditional bail, after having been arrested in June and charged with rape of a minor, a female, 15, on two occasions in February of 2000 and February of 2001. Oakley, who was serving as a priest at the time, allegedly kissed the girl on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, with the instances of alleged rape taking place in presbytery and a canal boat.

While charges were announced in June, Oakley, 70, was under investigation for months before that, and the bishop began a leave of absence in October 2025, which he and his diocese announced was taken for “personal reasons.”

At the time it was announced that Oakley was taking the “personal reasons” leave of absence, the bishop was considered a possible contender to become the Archbishop of Westminster and effectively the leader of the Catholic Church in the country.

Oakley was in ministry as a seminary rector before his 2020 appointment as a diocesan bishop. Sources close to the case have told The Pillar that the Archdiocese of Birmingham, where Oakley was incardinated, was first informed in 2006 of possible sexual misconduct on the priest’s part, and failed to notify law enforcement officials or initiate canonical proceedings.

Both the Birmingham archdiocese and a spokesman for Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who led the Birmingham archdiocese at that time, told The Pillar that because of the active criminal case against Oakley, they were unable to comment.

Oakley’s Northampton diocese, which serves around 180,000 Catholics in central England, is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Westminster in London.

Pope Leo named Archbishop Richard Moth as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Northampton June 30.

Leo XIV specified that Moth will remain apostolic administrator sede plena at the discretion of the Apostolic See, which means that Oakley retains the title of Bishop of Northampton as he undergoes criminal proceedings.

The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales explained June 30 that Moth’s appointment was “a temporary role, by which the Holy See ensures that the pastoral governance of a diocese will continue, when it is not possible for a diocesan Bishop to exercise his office.”

“Therefore, the governance of the Diocese of Northampton is now canonically entrusted to Archbishop Moth,” it said.

The diocese added that while Oakley’s prosecution and trial would be “very distressing for all concerned” the diocese “cannot comment further on an active legal process.”

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Oakley’s departure last year was one one of several unexplained cases involving bishops and episcopal appointments in England and Wales which raised questions about unannounced allegations and the vetting of candidates.

In December 2022, Bishop Robert Byrne of Hexham and Newcastle resigned abruptly, saying “the office of the diocesan bishop has become too great a burden.”

The following month, a safeguarding review in the diocese revealed that errors during Byrne’s tenure had “undermined the work of safeguarding professionals and left people at potential risk.”

The review raised concerns about what is described as Byrne’s inappropriate friendship with a cleric who was a registered sex offender, and his decision to appoint as dean of the diocesan cathedral Canon Michael McCoy, who was accused of inappropriate interactions and grooming behavior with teenage boys.

Bishop Philip Moger, an auxiliary bishop of Southwark archdiocese, was due to be installed as the 10th bishop of Plymouth on Nov. 9, 2024. But he announced Nov. 6 that the ceremony would be delayed due to concerns of a “personal nature.”

In February 2025, never having formally taken possession of the diocese, Moger announced that “just before I was to begin my ministry in Plymouth, I let it be known that concerns of a personal nature had been raised, to which I had to attend immediately. This has taken longer than I anticipated.”

“All things considered,” the bishop said, “I have come to the decision to present to the Holy Father a request to step down from my appointment as Bishop of the Diocese of Plymouth. The Holy Father has accepted my request. For the immediate future, I will be taking a sabbatical: a time of prayer and personal reflection, the next stage on the journey of my ministry.”

Official Church records refer to Moger as “emeritus Bishop of Plymouth,” and no further details have been given.

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With the mercury peaking at 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees Celsius), only the brave would consider embarking on a month-long tour involving hours of manual labor in direct sunlight. But that is exactly what Raphaël Castex, a 23-year-old recent graduate, decided to do.

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Castex spent August engaged in what he called a Tour de France du Patrimoine, or heritage tour of France. This involved traveling thousands of miles on a Honda motorcycle, stopping in towns and villages with the goal of renovating a total of 20 dilapidated religious statues over the month.

Castex, a calmly spoken figure with a fighter pilot mustache, is a co-founder of Rénove une Statue (Renovate a Statue), an association created in 2024 to restore the crumbling images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints that can be found all over France.

Today, the group has local chapters in Bordeaux, the Drôme, Paris, Toulouse, and the Vendée, meaning its youthful members can cover a substantial part of a country whose Catholic patrimony is vanishing at an alarming rate. (You can see them at work in this video, which shows the restoration of six statues in Thiviers, southwestern France, in 2025.)

In an email interview with The Pillar, Castex discussed how Rénove une Statue was born, the challenges he faced during his August tour, and how the initiative fits into the broader revival of faith among French youth.

Where did you grow up, and how did you develop the skills needed to restore statues?

I grew up in the Gers, in southwestern France. My parents worked in manual trades for about 10 years, so I was always surrounded by DIY projects and craftsmanship at home. From a very young age, I learned to work with my hands, starting with wood, which is still the material I enjoy working with the most.

Over time, I wanted to try working with other materials. I started by doing some restoration work on old buildings, and then I became interested in statues.

As I traveled around, I realized just how widespread this heritage is across France, and how much help it needs if it is not to disappear. I felt there was a real role to play, and I wanted to get directly involved on the ground to help preserve it.

What led you to co-found Rénove une Statue?

It came from a very simple observation while looking at the French countryside. In almost every village in France, whether at the end of a street or by the side of a road, you come across statues or roadside crosses. Over time, with rain and frost, many of them deteriorate and eventually fall into ruin if no one takes care of them.

We felt that we couldn’t simply stand by and watch. Someone has to roll up their sleeves, and young people have every reason to take part in this adventure. It’s a very direct way of taking care of our villages and our history.

In addition to restoring statues, you also designed and built a wooden chapel by yourself in the Gers. Could you explain how and why you undertook this project?

Two years ago, I built a 40-square-meter (430-square-foot) wooden chapel at my parents’ home in the Gers, with their permission. I already had this love of wood and carpentry, and I wanted to go further and challenge myself with a genuinely large project in order to improve my skills.

Alongside my studies, which were very intellectual and theoretical, I had a real need to work with my hands and create something tangible. It was also a very meaningful project for me spiritually: to offer this manual work, this time and this energy to a beautiful cause, to God, and to leave behind a place of prayer that would have meaning for the family.

Do you consider these projects to be an expression of your faith, or even a form of prayer?

Yes, absolutely. For me, restoring a statue or carving wood is a discreet, implicit form of prayer. When you do meaningful manual work, you physically give shape to what you carry in your heart. You use the talents and energy you have been given and put them at the service of what you believe in.

I think that is very important for young people today: faith should not remain purely intellectual. It also has to be expressed through action, and that strengthens it enormously.

Do you see Rénove une Statue as part of a renewal of faith among young people in France?

Yes, because it is something very concrete. Many young people need simple actions like these to awaken something within themselves and to remember that they are children of God.

Today, you can sense among quite a few young people a desire to rediscover solid foundations and roots, and that often goes hand in hand with a return to the Catholic faith. Getting involved directly on the ground to bring these statues back to life is a very healthy and living way of responding to that need for rootedness.

How did the idea for the Tour de France du Patrimoine come about?

The idea was to combine a great human adventure with restoration work. We wanted to spend a month traveling around France by motorcycle, enjoying the beauty of the French countryside, and being welcomed by local people in the villages we visited.

People often talk about “small heritage” [petit patrimoine, or everyday historical treasures, in contrast to grand patrimoine, or major monuments]. But for us, it is above all the heritage of our villages, the heritage that gives them their character and beauty every day. Traveling by motorcycle with our tools, restoring these statues while living day by day alongside local people, seemed like the most beautiful way to do it.

Could you describe the process of restoring a statue from the moment you arrive on site? How do you decide what work needs to be done?

Do you always have all the necessary tools and skills, or do you sometimes need help from other people?

Before we come, we always contact the owner of the statue, whether that is the local government, the parish, or a private individual. Often, these are statues that people have reported to us through our website, although sometimes we have spotted them ourselves while traveling.

When we arrive, we look at how the statue has aged: rust, cracks, deposits caused by rain and exposure to the weather. They are often made of stone or cast iron, materials designed for outdoor use. Depending on the condition of the statue, the work can take half a day or as much as one or two full days.

After restoring a number of them, you quickly learn to identify what needs to be done: brushing, cleaning, stripping old paint, repainting, or reinforcing damaged areas. Whenever the material is more fragile or complex, we ask craftsmen or conservation professionals for advice to make sure we use the right products without damaging the statue.

Most of the time, however, the work involves relatively simple techniques. That is really one of the principles behind the association: showing that almost anyone can lend a hand, even without being an experienced craftsman, provided they receive a little guidance.

What was the greatest difficulty during your journey across France to restore statues? Was the heat particularly difficult?

The hardest part was the pace. We had around 20 statues to restore during the month, so we spent very little time at each stop. We had to keep moving from the road to the worksite and then back on the road again.

As for the heat, I come from southwestern France, so I’m fairly used to it. And honestly, you forget the fatigue very quickly when local people stop to talk to us, encourage us, or simply thank us with a big smile when they see the statue getting its colors back.

Did you have any memorable encounters with local residents? Were there any unexpected events during the tour?

The people we met were really at the heart of the journey. Whether in the Drôme or the Vendée, local residents gave us an incredible welcome. They often gave us somewhere to stay and fed us as though we were part of the family.

As for unexpected events, when you travel that many miles by motorcycle carrying equipment, you inevitably have a few breakdowns along the way. But every time, local people or volunteers came to give us a hand, repair the bike, and help us get back on the road.

Those are the moments when you realise that the project creates bonds between people and brings communities together, far beyond the restoration work itself.

What are your ambitions for the future of Rénove une Statue?

We want to develop the association throughout France. There are thousands of statues in the French countryside that deserve to be cared for, and we simply cannot be everywhere at once.

The idea is to help create small local teams in other departments, provide them with the right tools and guidance, and enable them to carry out restoration work easily and quickly close to where they live.

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