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But the celebration turned to sorrow, when Church officials said the priest had been tortured by criminals while in captivity, shocking many across the country.

The 67-year-old Morales, parochial vicar of Resurrected Christ Parish in the La Campiña district of Culiacán, was last seen at 4 p.m. on Oct. 24, driving his silver Toyota Hilux pickup truck in the Fraccionamiento Montebello area.

When he failed to return that evening and could not be reached by phone, his disappearance was reported to local authorities, and alerts were issued.

Members of his parish organized vigils and gathered to pray for him. On Oct. 27, three days later, Morales returned to his parish. He arrived in his own vehicle and appeared to be in relatively good condition, despite visible bruises and marks on his skin. News of his return was widely celebrated across Sinaloa.

On Nov. 1, however, the Diocese of Culiacán released a statement revealing that Morales had been violently interrogated during the three days he was held captive, suffering beatings and even burns.

“We can confirm that the priest was abducted by a group of unidentified individuals and taken to an undisclosed location. He was beaten and even suffered severe burns to his body,” read the statement, signed by Bishop Jesús José Herrera and Father Ramón Ibarra, the diocesan chancellor.

His captors, the statement said, “demanded information that he did not possess and therefore could not provide.”

“He was held for three days, during which he was repeatedly threatened with death, until he was released last Tuesday,” it continued.

The diocese explained that Morales received assistance from members of his parish, local doctors, and local authorities before being taken to a clinic for specialized medical care.

“Although his injuries were not immediately life-threatening, they required medical attention and follow-up care. The ordeal has also had psychological and emotional repercussions, stemming from the threats against his life that the priest reportedly received,” the statement said.

Morales remains under medical observation, and “his condition is improving, although his recovery will require time, care, and comprehensive support.”

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News of the priest’s torture surprised and shocked many in Sinaloa, according to Father Saul Norzagaray, a spokesman for the Diocese of Culiacán.

“It is an extraordinary event. We had never experienced a situation of this nature before. The figure of the priest is highly respected among our people,” he told The Pillar.

He said parishioners “have shown great solidarity and empathy in response to this situation,” but “uncertainty and fear continue to prevail among the population in general.”

“We have now endured two years of violence stemming from the dispute between the two factions involved,” Norzagaray said, referring to Los Chapitos and La Mayiza, the two factions fighting for control of the Sinaloa Cartel.

The priest said that, throughout several years of violence, priests have served as points of reference for their communities.

“We have stood by people, offered comfort, and consistently called for peace,” Norzagaray said.

But violence has eventually reached priests as well, Julieta Appendini, director of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) in Mexico, told The Pillar.

“Sinaloa, where this happened, is the state where organized crime is most powerful. Apparently, they wanted to obtain information about the rival criminal group through the priest. Violence certainly finds its way to priests, one way or another,” she said.

ACN reports have shown that Mexico is becoming an increasingly dangerous country for priests. Growing numbers of clergy members have been threatened, beaten, or even killed over the past couple of decades.

One of the most prominent cases was that of Father Marcelo Pérez, who was killed in October 2024 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. A human rights and environmental activist, Pérez had been receiving threats for years. Those responsible for his murder have yet to be identified, but evidence points to criminal groups that have been taking control of the region, harassing communities, and fueling a serious social crisis.

According to Oscar Loza Ochoa, head of Sinaloa’s State Human Rights Commission, “when violence reaches a certain level in society, no segment is exempt from suffering its consequences,” including the Church.

“We have been facing a terrible social crisis over the past two years [amid the infighting within the Sinaloa Cartel], with more than 4,000 people missing,” he said.

The Mexican Church launched a peace campaign in 2022, following the killing of two priests in the state of Chihuahua. Known as the National Dialogue for Peace, the initiative brings together hundreds of academics, activists, government officials, and Church representatives in a multifaceted effort to promote peace at every level of Mexican society.

“Despite the hardships, the work of the Church and civil society has been very important. We could be in a worse situation if it weren’t for them,” Loza said.

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Hungary’s…

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Happy Friday friends,

We had an election this week, you’ve probably noticed.

If I am being honest, I probably feel the same about democracy as I do about that other great American cultural institution now firmly in the grip of a corrupt cabal of unaccountable self-serving extremists, looting our cultural heritage and splitting our social fabric in the process: Baseball.

Like baseball, I cannot shake the raw emotional pull of polling day, the sense that I am being allowed to participate in something good, something other people wish they had, something which — if done right — can be ennobling and salutary for us all. And, like baseball, it seems to me that American democracy has been overrun by people who despise it, and despise those of us who love it, and who are hellbent on twisting it to perverse and corrupt ends.

Case in point, where I live ballots are now always a dozen or so pages long, with actual elections to office comprising barely the first page or two. The rest are a series of referenda on various amendments to the state constitution — usually amounting to less oversight for elected officials or permission to gerrymander at will — and a never-ending series of bond issues. The truth is that I scrutinize each of these carefully out of a sense of civic duty, but I vote straight ticket no. If you live where I live, and if you know that if the local county executive supports it, it ought to be illegal and probably already is.

Speaking of the county executive’s office, once again we were asked to elect to this enormously influential – and well-remunerated – post and there was only one candidate, running unopposed, as is apparently tradition around here. Ballots for the local legislature were similarly one-party affairs.

Meanwhile, my placet or non placet was sought for the continuance in office of a slate of state judges about whose judicial philosophy and record I could discover very little, despite my best efforts.

Indeed, below the governorship and congressional level, solid information is difficult to come by for almost all candidates, apart from on those issues about which I feel it is safe to take them at their word — if a person tells you they’re an antisemite, for example, I tend to believe them.

Anyway, all this being the case, I don’t think it is any wonder I continue my streak of writing in candidates for most offices. Despite what I am frequently told by acquaintances of both parties, I actually believe I am doing my bit to save democracy, rather than sabotage it.

I don’t pick my candidates unthinkingly, I name good lawyers for judgeships, competent moneymen for comptroller, and my wife for county executive — and not ironically. If democracy, and especially local democracy, is meant to mean anything, it is meant to mean you know who you are voting for and you trust them to do a good job and to do it in your name. I’ll start voting for major party affiliated candidates when any of them meet those basic criteria.

Meanwhile, the antithesis of the spirit of the American democratic experiment is our current pendulum swing of voting out first this sack of criminals and then that clatch of lunatics, while alternatingly empowering the other and investing them with delusions of a popular mandate for indulging their political ids for two, four, or six years, as may be the case.

I confess I wrote myself in for sheriff, and that may have been a moment of frivolity. But given the state of our public affairs, in which everything seems to be in existential danger and yet shot through with triviality, I am not going to reproach myself too harshly.

And anyway, I think I might take to the gig.

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Here’s the news.

The News

The Hungarian bishops’ conference asked for forgiveness this week on behalf of Church members who collaborated with the Communist state, following the release of secret police files.

Hungary’s new Prime Minister Péter Magyar ordered the publication of the secret police files in an online database Nov. 4. Magyar argued that he was fulfilling a promise made 36 years earlier, during the country’s transition to multi-party democracy in 1990.

But the bishops’ conference also called for recognition of the Church’s resistance to the regime that held power from 1949 to 1989, as well as for careful appraisal of the newly published documents.

It said: “The names of individuals associated with the Church who appear in the documents that have now been made public conceal a wide variety of stories. Some of them genuinely collaborated with the Communist regime, passing on confidential information about members of the community and others. On their behalf, we ask the victims and their families for forgiveness.”

Read the whole story here.

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Archbishop Joseph Li Shan of Beijing and Cardinal Stephen Chow of Hong Kong defended the controversial policy of sinicization at a conference in Rome yesterday, comparing it to the practice of synodality in the Latin Church.

The policy of sinicization has been a controversial aspect of the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with the Chinese government, which paved the way for unity between the state-sponsored and schismatic Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the underground Church and allowed the state to vet and propose candidates for episcopal office on the mainland.

The policy requires the Church, including bishops and priests, to recognize and accept the supremacy of state authority and Communist Party dogma over the Church’s hierarchy and teachings.

In his speech Thursday, Li said that “just as the most recent Synod of Bishops promoted ‘walking together,’ the affairs of the Church in China are entirely managed jointly by Chinese clergy, women religious and the faithful, and all of the Church’s holy works are flourishing.”

“The Church in China, which was once constrained by colonial forms, has an especially unforgettable experience of this. This is precisely the meaning of the sinicization of the Church that we propose today,” he said, calling it “not an external add-on to the Catholic Church, as if it were optional, something one could do or not do; rather, it is intrinsic to the Church’s catholicity.”

Read the whole story here.

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The head of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church has dissolved a controversial tribunal established to discipline priests accused of defying orders related to the introduction of a new “uniform” liturgy, after the Vatican’s supreme court suspended the tribunal’s proceedings.

Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil signed a decree approving the dissolution of the Special Tribunal for the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly, a jurisdiction in Kerala, southern India, that is the epicenter of a decades-long liturgical dispute within the Syro-Malabar Church.

The special tribunal was created amid rising tensions between Church authorities and members of the archeparchy over attempts to introduce a new form of the Syro-Malabar Eucharistic liturgy, which is known as the Holy Qurbana.

Most priests and lay people in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy favored the Holy Qurbana celebrated facing the congregation, a local custom adopted more than 50 years earlier.

Members of the archeparchy fiercely resisted a Vatican-backed effort to introduce the uniform liturgy, in which the priest faces the people during the Liturgy of the Word, turns toward the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and faces the people again after Communion.

Read all about it here.

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The Archdiocese of Turin filed on Saturday a complaint of fraud against a 25-year old Egyptian man who pretended for months to be a Coptic Catholic priest.

The man, who claimed to be named Salam Faragalla, served in three different Turin churches for four months, after presenting forged documents which claimed he was a Catholic priest in good standing, studying engineering at a local university.

Faragalla presented himself in June 2026 as a priest of the Coptic Catholic Church, saying that he had moved to Turin for engineering studies at the city’s Polytechnic University. He was assigned by the archdiocese to the Santa Rosa of Lima Parish as a parochial vicar where he started ministering to the local community.

The story raises some real questions about diocesan processes and due diligence, putting it mildly.

Read the whole thing here.

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Leaders at the campus ministry organization FOCUS told The Pillar that recent reports about a house purchased by the organization for its former CEO do not accurately reflect the circumstances of the purchase, and responded to recent criticisms of its missionary and workplace culture.

The organization has come under criticism for alleged instances of sexism, for its evangelizing methodology, allegations of unfair labor practices, and allegedly insufficient supervision of its founder and former CEO.

FOCUS leaders told The Pillar that the organization is committed to learning from the experience of missionaries and participants and improving its ministry, and is discussing internally new approaches to doing so.

OK, as John McCain used to say, let’s have some straight talk. This is one of those reports I am especially proud of us publishing and I will tell you for why.

If you even remotely orbit the American Catholic world, you know that FOCUS is a big deal and people have big feelings about it. You also know that the organization has been the subject of a lot, but a lot, of sotto voce criticism and rumour for a while now.

What we did is we simply put that criticism to the organization’s leaders, asked them for their response, and when necessary asked to see the paperwork to back up what they told us. Now, full disclosure, I do not have big feelings about FOCUS. In fact, I would describe myself as perfectly agnostic about the place.

But what I can tell you is that since we published this story, we’ve had people writing in to tell us — yell at us, in some cases — that our story is either clearly a hit job on the great people who work there, or the worst kind of cover-up for a clearly sinister operation.

That’s the reaction I want to our news, because that is what real journalism gets you.

You can read the whole thing right here.

And if you like reporting that doesn’t serve a side or cater to a viewpoint, the best way to say so is to pay for it.

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Two statements published this week by the current and former head of the German bishops’ conference show a stark difference in approaches to Rome.

While the current conference chairman stressed the need for “full communion with the Holy Father and in fidelity to the Magisterium” in the bishops’ push for reform, his immediate predecessor took aim at Leo XIV personally, calling the pope’s engagement with the German reforming plan in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis “inadequate and, in terms of its potential implications, deeply problematic.”

Read the whole story here.

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And finally, a sentence from the Roman Rota has been making the rounds this week after it was published in redacted form in an academic journal.

The sentence is a big deal because it is an excoriating rejection by the Vatican court of the practice of publishing lists of clergy “credibly accused” of “substantiated allegations” despite no legal process, not actual finding of guilt, and no recognizable right of defence.

Rome, through various departments, has been condemning these lists for years, though scant attention has been paid by most dioceses and religious orders in North America. the question now, though, is if a wave of lawsuits might finally get the attention of bishops.

Anyway, we wrote about the decision and its significance more than a year ago, when it was issued. You can read that coverage here.

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Canonical bull

Those anarchic weirdos at PETA have once again tried to fling themselves onto the Vatican’s radar, like bugs on the windscreen of an 18 wheeler.

We’ve covered before the militant vegans’ strange obsession with getting the Holy See to accept personal responsibility for bullfighting. And their tragic little practice of diving in front of the popemobile at every available opportunity has proven about as effective and endearing as their billboard campaign comparing milk drinking to child abuse.

While you or I might think it is not a winning strategy to hurl yourself across prayerful families at papal audiences, to vault the barricades and charge the Bishop of Rome in matching t-shirts, I suppose we should remember that these are the same people who think cheese is a war crime. So it’s possible the lack of animal proteins does something to the cognitive-evaluative process.

To their credit, though, the PETAists have now decided to try a different tack, and lawyer up.

I read this week that they have retained a Rome-based canonist to take their money and bring a case to the Vatican.

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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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The Archdiocese of Denver is celebrating record enrollment at its seminary this year.

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But the bishops’ conference also called Nov. 4 for recognition of the Church’s resistance to the regime that held power from 1949 to 1989, as well as for careful appraisal of the newly published documents.

It said: “The names of individuals associated with the Church who appear in the documents that have now been made public conceal a wide variety of stories. Some of them genuinely collaborated with the communist regime, passing on confidential information about members of the community and others. On their behalf, we ask the victims and their families for forgiveness.”

The bishops’ conference said that others had been tortured or blackmailed.

“Some produced reports that contained little or no meaningful information. And among the names on the list are also people whom the authorities merely attempted to recruit, but who refused; nevertheless, a 6-os karton [a type of index card] was created for them too,” it said.

“Moreover, some of the documents were destroyed, meaning that the surviving archival material does not give us a complete picture.”

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In his speech at a Nov. 5 conference commemorating the centenary of the consecration of the first Chinese-born Catholic bishops at the Urbaniana University, run by the Dicastery for Evangelization, Li said that the Communist Party’s regulation “sets the legal boundaries for religious activity and fully guarantees the Church’s normal evangelization and pastoral care, as well as the legitimate rights and interests of the faithful.”

Cardinal Chow also addressed the conference, saying that the main challenge for Chinese Catholics is how to be both “loyal to our government and loyal to our faith.”

The policy of sinicization has been a controversial aspect of the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with the Chinese government, which paved the way for unity between the state-sponsored and schismatic Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the underground Church and allowed the state to vet and propose candidates for episcopal office on the mainland.

The policy requires the Church, including bishops and priests, to recognize and accept the supremacy of state authority and Communist Party dogma over the Church’s hierarchy and teachings.

In his speech Thursday, Li framed the policy of sinicization within the history of the Chinese Church, claiming that the idea predates the Communist regime in China, as the National Council of Shanghai in 1924 had already “rejected the mistaken practice of the Church relying on the political power of the Western powers, and… put forward many ideas and proposals that remain beneficial to this day, once again opening the process of the sinicization of Catholicism.”

“In order to provide for the missions in a manner suited to the times and to establish the Church in China more fully, including diocesan and religious clergy, religious vocations in China must be fervently attended to and fostered,” Li said, quoting the National Council’s final document.

Li added that the local Church “loudly proclaimed the urgency of building a [local] Church and forming native clergy: ‘The Church of China to the Chinese!’”

The Beijing bishop then called the Chinese revolution, a 22-year long civil war that caused an estimated 8 million deaths, “the founding of a New China” that “completely changed the situation in which the Church in China depended on Western political forces.”

“While remaining faithful to the essence of the faith and keeping its basic doctrine and canonical discipline unchanged, how the Church could better adapt — under the Chinese government’s policies and laws on freedom of religious belief — to a new type of Church-State relationship with Chinese characteristics became a question that all Christians had to resolve,” Li added.

He also said that Chinese Catholics “embraced the newborn socialist China and set out on the path of development of loving the country and loving the Church, of independence, self-governance and self-administration.”

The bishop also connected the project of sinicization of China to the synod on synodality, saying that “just as the most recent Synod of Bishops promoted ‘walking together,’ the affairs of the Church in China are entirely managed jointly by Chinese clergy, women religious and the faithful, and all of the Church’s holy works are flourishing.”

“The Church in China, which was once constrained by colonial forms, has an especially unforgettable experience of this. This is precisely the meaning of the sinicization of the Church that we propose today,” he said, calling it “not an external add-on to the Catholic Church, as if it were optional, something one could do or not do; rather, it is intrinsic to the Church’s catholicity.”

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In 2025, the CCP’s National Religious Affairs Administration banned foreign nationals from common worship with Chinese citizens, and required all visitors to affirm the national independence of Chinese Churches and faith communities.

According to the regulations, “foreigners who engage in religious activities in China must abide by Chinese laws, regulations, and rules, abide by the principle of China’s religious independence and self-management, and accept the legitimate management of the Chinese government.”

The rules also require all liturgies take place in officially sanctioned places of worship and be presided over by authorized Chinese ministers. Only in extraordinary circumstances and with official permission can a foreign national preside at a liturgy or worship in an unsanctioned space, and common worship between Chinese and non-Chinese faithful is prohibited.

Before the conference this week, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State and chief architect of the 2018 Vatican-China deal and noted defender of the policy of sinicization, took questions from the press.

The cardinal was asked about the current status of the Vatican-China deal, saying that one of the main challenges was reconciling “being Chinese, with all the specific features that this entails, but at the same time being in profound communion with the pope and with the universal Church. The fact that today, on this occasion, there are two Chinese bishops here fills us with joy, precisely because it goes in this direction.”

“All agreements are imperfect, and so is the one on China,” Parolin said. “All the more so since it was not such an easy agreement, given the complexity of the situations and conditions in which we found ourselves acting, in which we find ourselves acting. But the path is open… So let us go forward, trying to perfect what is imperfect. But perfection is not of this world.”

Also at the conference in Rome this week, Cardinal Stephen Chow, S.J., of Hong Kong also gave an address, in which he claimed that one of the challenges of the Chinese Church is to reconcile being “both Chinese patriots, nationals, but also loyal people of God.”

Chow defended the idea that sinicization is a form of inculturation.

“Inculturation is the Gospel transforming a culture, while a culture, with its own values and expressions, enriches our faith and our Church life,” Chow said.

“Under President Xi, there is the sinicization of religion. Actually, sinicization happens in different domains of life in China, not just religion, and definitely not just for the Catholic Church. It doesn’t target the Catholic Church, but all religions. It’s about aligning [religion] with the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology, socialist values and the spirit of patriotism,” he added.

He said the Chinese government’s main concern was that religion might be used as a “vehicle for foreign intervention.”

“Religions and other sectors should have that patriotic spirit. For President Xi, all religions in China should be aligned with Chinese politics and culture, and that’s the only way to keep religion in China stable,” he said.

While the Diocese of Hong Kong does not fall under the terms of the Vatican-China deal, Chow’s predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Zen, was arrested in 2022 under national security laws for the crime of collusion with foreign powers. He was eventually convicted of failing to properly register a humanitarian relief fund of which he was a trustee.

In recent months, local clerics have reported an increase in harassment of Catholic officials in the Special Administrative Region.

Chow said that the main question under sinicization was how to be both “patriotic and faithful believers.”

“How do we live that out? How do we understand each other? That’s the main point we need to work on: Being loyal to our government and being loyal to our faith, the universal faith,” he said.

This echoed a 2023 statement by Chow during a five-day visit to Beijing, in which he prayed “that the Holy Spirit will guide us so that we can learn how to love our country and our Church at the same time.”

Chow then proposed “interculturality” as a model for the relationship between Church and state in China and for the relationship between Chinese and Catholic culture.

“When we come together, like today, we try to form a new meaning of what it is to be a Christian, to be Catholic, in China… This co-construction is not like the past, and it is mutually influencing… It’s not that I only talk to you because I need to influence you; it’s mutual,” he said.

Chow finished his speech by comparing interculturality with synodality.

“When we look at this intercultural dynamic, it shares a lot with synodality… when we encounter one another, we need to see how we can become Christian, true Christian, and true Chinese,” he added.

“It is through genuine sharing and through respectful and active listening that we can come to meet each other. We have come to identify convergences, and we can also appreciate the divergences,” he concluded.

The Vatican-China deal was last renewed in 2024 for a four-year period.

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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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Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil signed a decree on Sept. 30, 2026, approving the dissolution of the Special Tribunal for the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly, a jurisdiction in Kerala, southern India, that is the epicenter of a decades-long liturgical dispute within the Syro-Malabar Church. The decree was published in the November edition of Ernakulam Missam, the archeparchy’s official monthly bulletin.

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The Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy, which serves around 500,000 Catholics, is the most populous eparchy in the Syro-Malabar Church, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the pope.

Thattil established the special tribunal on Dec. 18, 2024, to address “ongoing disciplinary issues” relating to clergy of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy. As Major Archbishop, Thattil is also the Metropolitan Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly. Day-to-day administration of the archeparchy is entrusted to his vicar, Archbishop Joseph Pamplany, and previously to apostolic administrators.

The special tribunal was created amid rising tensions between Church authorities and members of the archeparchy over attempts to introduce a new form of the Syro-Malabar Eucharistic liturgy, which is known as the Holy Qurbana.

Most priests and lay people in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy favored the Holy Qurbana celebrated facing the congregation, a local custom adopted more than 50 years earlier.

Members of the archeparchy fiercely resisted a Vatican-backed effort to introduce the uniform liturgy, in which the priest faces the people during the Liturgy of the Word, turns toward the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and faces the people again after Communion.

The uniform liturgy is seen as a compromise between the Holy Qurbana facing the people throughout (versus populum) and facing the altar throughout (ad orientem), harmonizing celebrations in the 35 Syro-Malabar eparchies worldwide.

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The archeparchy announced in December 2024 that disciplinary measures against Fr. Varghese Manavalan, Fr. Joshy Vezhaparambil, Fr. Thomas Valookaran, and Fr. Benny Palatty would be referred to the special tribunal.

The four priests were referred to the tribunal by Bishop Bosco Puthur, the then-apostolic administrator of Ernakulam-Angamaly, following disciplinary action against them. Puthur had appointed administrators to oversee the parishes associated with the four priests, provoking protests by local lay people.

The archeparchy said the priests were ordered to leave their residences, where they were “staying illegally,” and move to other locations, where they would be permitted to celebrate the Holy Qurbana in a private chapel.

The archeparchy said the priests were no longer permitted to celebrate the liturgy elsewhere or hear confessions. The cases against the four clerics were referred to the special tribunal for penal proceedings.

The Sept. 30 decree said that Archbishop Mathew Moolakkatt, the General Moderator of the Administration of Justice of the Syro-Malabar Church, received a complaint alleging that two proceedings before the special tribunal had procedural defects.

Moolakkatt responded by temporarily suspending the proceedings. Fr. James Mathew Pampara, the special tribunal’s presiding judge, disagreed with the suspension and appealed to the Apostolic Signatura, the Catholic Church’s supreme tribunal.

The Apostolic Signatura examined the allegation of procedural irregularities as well as “questions concerning the competence and functioning of the special tribunal,” the decree said. On Oct. 1, 2025, the Apostolic Signatura ordered the suspension of all cases before the tribunal, prohibited the opening of further cases, and requested the records of pending cases.

The Apostolic Signatura sent the remaining two pending cases back to the ordinary ecclesiastical court in Ernakulam-Angamaly, rather than allowing the special tribunal to continue dealing with them. It instructed the Metropolitan Tribunal of Ernakulam-Angamaly to first consider whether the cases should be abandoned. It also indicated that the special tribunal could be formally abolished if the cases were brought to an end.

The Metropolitan Tribunal examined and disposed of both cases at first instance, following the Apostolic Signatura’s instructions. This paved the way for Thattil to dissolve the special tribunal.

The archeparchy’s published clergy listings show that the four priests whose cases were initially referred to the tribunal remain listed among its clergy. The listings alone do not make clear how each case was resolved.

Fr. Varghese Manavalan is described as being on medical leave. Fr. Joshy Vezhaparambil is designated as vicar of St. Mary’s Forane Church, Muttam, Cherthala. Fr. Benny Palatty is named as vicar of Lourde Matha Church, Perumanoor. Fr. Thomas Valookaran is listed as vicar of St. Joseph’s Church, Nayathode, and chairman of the People’s Dairy Development Project charity in Kalady.

The Sept. 30 decree was published above a separate notice from Fr. Antony Vazhakkala, chancellor of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy, stating that suspensions imposed on two priests — Fr. Jacob Pozholipparambil and Fr. Varghese Manavalan — in 2024 were revoked in April 2026 and June 2026 respectively.

The notice said that “both priests are free to administer the sacraments and sacramentals anywhere to any Catholic faithful as the general law of the Catholic Church prescribes.”

Fr. Pozholipparambil is listed in the clergy directory as pro-vicar of Infant Jesus Church, Karimugal, and St. Jude Church, Ambalamedu.

The November edition of Ernakulam Missam also published a Sept. 10, 2026, letter from Thattil to his vicar, Archbishop Pamplany, highlighting a declaration in August by the Syro-Malabar Synod of Bishops.

The statement reaffirmed the terms of a June 2025 agreement that permitted parishes in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy to continue celebrating the Holy Qurbana with the priest facing the congregation throughout, provided they also offered at least one celebration in the uniform mode on Sundays and other holy days of obligation.

The declaration could be submitted to civil courts as the synod’s official statement of the Church’s position in cases concerning disputes within the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy.

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The man, who claimed to be named Salam Faragalla, served in three different Turin churches for four months, after presenting forged documents which claimed he was a Catholic priest in good standing, studying engineering at a local university.

According to La Repubblica, Faragalla presented himself in June 2026 as a priest of the Coptic Catholic Church, saying that he had moved to Turin for engineering studies at the city’s Polytechnic University.

He was assigned by the archdiocese to the Santa Rosa of Lima Parish as a parochial vicar. He also attempted the celebration of Mass and confession in two other parishes in the area.

According to testimonies cited by La Repubblica, the man’s way of celebrating the Mass was “peculiar,” but Faragalla brushed off questions with reference to the differences between the Alexandrian liturgical rite used in the Coptic Church and the Latin rite.

The man’s documents indicated that he had been ordained in January 2025.

After he was assigned to St. Rose of Lima, he began concelebrating Masses at other local parishes during parish events, and then began taking Masses himself during the summer months, with a brief pause during Italy’s early August slowdown.

According to La Repubblica, a parishioner became suspicious after seeing the man in a photo unbecoming of a priest — The Pillar has not yet confirmed details about the photo’s content — and contacted his parish pastor.

Diocesan officials then spoke with Copic Catholic leaders in Egypt, and then realized that the documents certifying Faragalla did not actually belong to him — and that even his enrollment at the Polytechnic University of Turin was forged.

Diocesan officials say they are not certain whether the man’s name is actually Salam Faragalla.

The chancery of the Archdiocese of Turin did not respond to a request for comment from The Pillar.

It is unclear whether Faragalla presented a certificate indicating bi-ritual faculties or whether the Archdiocese of Turin permitted him to offer Mass according to Latin Catholic rubrics — a move which would have seemingly fallen afoul of Vatican directives on the subject.

It is also not clear why archdiocesan authorities initially permitted Faragalla to engage in ministry without contacting his supposed ecclesiastical authorities in Egypt — especially because his claim of falling under an “Egyptian vicariate” is spurious. The only Catholic vicariate in Egypt is Latin Catholic; the Coptic Catholic Church is organized in ten eparchies in Egypt, without any vicariates.

But archdiocesan officials have not answered questions about their own obligations in the case, instead focusing with La Repubblica on questions about the pretend priest’s potential purposes.

“The reason can’t be economic, because he received room and board and a small fee for each Mass, so these questions can only be answered by an investigation after the complaint [filed by the diocese],” Alberto Riccadonna, spokesman of the Archdiocese of Turin said.

“He seemed honest, he spoke Italian well. Perhaps he truly feels a calling to the priesthood, but wasn’t able to pursue it through the usual channels,” he added.

The parish priest of Santa Rosa de Lima, Fr. Davide Pavanello ,told the press that he “hoped [Faragalla] finds the courage to change his life. He’s young and has time to convert.”

“He came across as a sociable, affable person who was good at connecting with people: we all got along well with him—or at least with the side of him that he showed. His mother even came to visit him from Egypt,” he added.

Pavanello said that when he confronted Faragalla, he told him that “‘If it’s a made-up story, just tell me. I’ll help you out anyway.’ But he simply denied it. Perhaps he wanted to become a priest and failed, or perhaps he served in a non-canonical church. Or maybe he just wanted to get away from Egypt.”

Several parishioners expressed concern about having gone to confession with Faragalla, which would not constitute a valid exercise of the sacrament.

Fr. Giuliano Naso, a local parish priest, told reporters that: “This situation could cause a scandal among God’s people, given the grave breach of trust. But I believe that clear communication has helped: people have thanked us for telling the truth, even if it was painful.”

While unconfirmed by the diocese, there is no indication that Faragalla attempted the celebration of any weddings or baptisms in his brief time in the parish.

If found guilty of fraud, Faragalla could face between six months and three years in prison.

Impersonating a member of the clergy was its own criminal offense in Italy until 2000, when it became an administrative offense punishable with a fine of up to 929 euros.

Faragalla could also be liable to canonical penalties, including excommunication for the simulation of sacraments. It is not clear whether Faragalla is a baptized Catholic.

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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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The organization has come under criticism for alleged instances of sexism, for its evangelizing methodology, allegations of unfair labor practices, and allegedly insufficient supervision of its founder and former CEO.

FOCUS leaders told The Pillar that the organization is committed to learning from the experience of missionaries and participants and improving its ministry, and is discussing internally new approaches to doing so.

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While the current conference chairman stressed the need for “full communion with the Holy Father and in fidelity to the Magisterium” in the bishops’ push for reform, his immediate predecessor took aim at Leo XIV personally, calling the pope’s engagement with German conclusions in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis “inadequate and, in terms of its potential implications, deeply problematic.”

On a superficial level, Bishop Georg Bätzing and his successor as conference chairman, Bishop Heiner Wilmer, appear to have a lot in common. They are both theologically progressive German bishops born in April 1961.

But look more closely, and the contrasts appear. Bätzing is stocky, Wilmer thin. Bätzing speaks with a lilting western German accent, Wilmer with a nasal northern German twang.

Beyond the physical differences, there are dissimilarities in their backgrounds. Bätzing was a diocesan priest, Wilmer a religious. Bätzing was shaped predominantly by German ecclesiastical culture. Wilmer studied in Paris and Rome, and taught in the Bronx.

But the two men’s latest comments suggest the biggest contrast of all is not to be found in their physiques or formation, but in their leadership styles. Wilmer emerges as a painstaking mediator between the German Church and the wider Catholic world, Bätzing as a fiery defender of Germany’s singular “synodal way.”

Let’s take a look at the two statements, then consider what they tell us about the transition from Bätzing’s leadership to Wilmer’s that took place in February 2026.

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Hey everybody.

It’s Election Day, and this is the Tuesday Pillar Post.

But this is not JD Flynn. This is Michelle La Rosa, managing editor here at The Pillar.

Don’t worry. JD’s fine. I just decided to take a stab at a Tuesday newsletter while JD is pursuing some other reporting.

This Sunday, of course, was the Solemnity of All Saints, and I hope you celebrated robustly, with litanies and maybe a party or parade of costumed children.

But, however you celebrated, it was probably not as elaborate or as colorful as the celebrations in parts of Guatemala, where All Saints Day has long been celebrated with massive – I mean really massive – kite parades.

It’s an ancient tradition, with roots stretching back more than 3,000 years. The indigenous belief was that kites were a means of communicating with dead loved ones. Over time, the idea got combined with the Catholic celebration of All Saints Day, and in some places All Souls Day too. Today, it is celebrated in certain Guatemalan towns by people of all religions as a major cultural observance.

The building of the kites is itself an elaborate ritual that traditionally takes 40 days and begins with the community’s bachelors embarking on a quest to acquire the bamboo that will serve as the frame. From there, paper or cloth are used to fill in the kite, which is secured with yucca-based glue and string.

Traditionally, the kites are octagonal, but modern kites take on all kinds of other shapes as well. Some of them are more than 60 feet in diameter – larger than many of the balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! – and require a whole team of people to fly them.

Decorations are bright and festive. Traditionally, kites honor deceased loved ones, although some people today put a more modern spin on their kites, labeling them with slogans for their preferred political or social causes.

People dress us festively for the occasion as well. The kite parade can draw more than 100,000 people, including both those participating and those coming to watch – sometimes from other countries.

If you ever happen to find yourself in Guatemala in early November, it’s a tradition worth checking out.

Hey everybody, JD here.

Some of you know that I’m on the board of FIRE Denver, a non-profit which gives grants to Catholic schools so that kids with profound disabilities — kids like mine — can be enrolled in Catholic school.

Well, there’s a wholesale baker we’re friends with, and he donates a LOT of Thanksgiving pies to us, which we can sell, and use every single dollar to fund the inclusion of kids with disabilities.

If you live in Colorado, you could buy a pie and put it on your Thanksgiving table. If you don’t, you could buy one or more, and we’ll donate the pie to families in need through Catholic Charities and other apostolates. And you’ll support kids like mine. This is important. Do us a solid. Buy some pies, and if you want, choose “donate” from the pick-up options.

And Michelle says they’re delicious.

Buy pies. Help kids.

And now, here’s the news.

The news

Pope Leo XIV has approved changes to disciplinary procedures for employees of the Roman curia.

The three amendments to regulations regarding Roman curia staff are meant to provide “clearer rules, more balanced procedures, and more effective safeguards” for Holy See employees, according to Vatican Media.

What exactly changed? Luke Coppen explains.

—
Sunday marked the conclusion of a six-day humanitarian ceasefire in the Ukrainian city of Oleshky, which has been occupied by Russia since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four and a half years ago.

The ceasefire allowed for much needed food and medical supplies to reach the people of Oleshky.

What was the Vatican’s role in bringing about the ceasefire? How much did Pope Leo contribute? You can read all about that here.

—
Recently released financial statements from the U.S. bishops’ conference provide a window into an organization in transition.

What will the USCCB look like as it leaves behind the era of providing government contracting for refugee and migrant services?

Brendan Hodge breaks down the numbers.

—
Pope Leo XIV appointed last week Fr. Giacomo Costa SJ and Sr. Elena Massimi FMA as undersecretaries of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.

Though the appointments went largely unreported, they offer some insight into the pope’s vision for the Secretariat on the Synod.

While Costa and Massimi are complicated personalities, and not necessarily representative of a consistently progressive theological persuasion, they come from the synodal establishment.

Edgar Beltran offers an analysis of the situation. He says the appointment suggests that Pope Leo does not want the secretariat’s influence to wane during his pontificate.

Read Edgar’s whole analysis.

—
And finally, news broke last week that Pope Leo XIV has, under his prepontifical name of Robert Francis Prevost, registered for an absentee ballot to vote in the United States midterm elections.

The news has prompted a wave of objections, from the practical to the conceptual.

Do those objections hold water? Ed takes a look at the situation from all angles.

If you love reading The Pillar, you should be listening to Sunday School, our weekly readings podcast. Each week, Scripture scholar Scott Powell breaks down the Sunday readings. Whether you’re a priest preparing your homily, or a Catholic wanting to go deeper with Scripture, Sunday School is worth a listen. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Born again, again

I had the opportunity last week to attend a unique event at the intersection of faith and politics, just a few days before the mid-term elections.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, but I was fascinated by what I found. So here’s a little firsthand reporting, so you can share in the experience too:

I arrived at Brave Church just a few minutes late.

I was sent back to my car twice – first for trying to bring a water bottle inside, then because I had a small purse. Neither are allowed, the security officials told me when I approached the metal detectors.

The heightened security was understandable. This event, in the tiny suburb of Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, was being held by TPUSA Faith, an offshoot of Turning Point USA, the conservative non-profit group founded by Charlie Kirk.

This event, “Make Heaven Crowded,” was part of a nationwide tour, with almost 30 stops around the country this year. It was inspired, organizers say, by the number of people who were moved by watching Charlie Kirk’s memorial and reported a conversion or deepening of their own faith.

The head of TPUSA Faith said he believes Kirk’s assassination sparked a spiritual awakening in this country, and the goal of “Make Heaven Crowded” is to fan that spark into flame.

I was curious about this burgeoning religious movement, which seems to be gaining real traction. That’s why I was there.

As I entered the building, the first thing I saw was a basketball court to one side. I’d never been in a Protestant megachurch before. Maybe that’s normal.

Following the signs down a hallway to the main part of the church, I stepped into the main room.

I was met with blinding flashes of light from five giant TV screens. Stadium-style seating surrounded a large stage, with a full sound system blaring. It was unlike any church I had ever seen before, but a little bit like a few concerts I’ve attended.

My bewilderment must have been evident, because a kindly usher approached to tell me that I looked lost, and could he help me find my group?

I didn’t have a group. Were these people my group? I really didn’t know.

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Costa and Massimi replace Archbishop Luis Marín de San Martín OSA, who was appointed as papal almoner last year, and Sr. Nathalie Becquart XMCJ, whose five-year term expired some months ago.

The undersecretaries of the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops are relatively minor positions within the Roman curia, and the appointments mostly flew under the radar over the weekend. But the Secretariat of the Synod grew significantly in prominence under Pope Francis, and its influence hasn’t waned under Leo, nor does it seem likely to.

Synodality was one of the many issues left open during Francis’ pontificate, with many of his closest advisors and even the organizers of the Synod of Synodality struggling to define what synodality was or what the synod was meant to achieve.

To many critics, the Synod on Synodality was often framed as a kind of excuse to propose potential doctrinal and disciplinary changes in the Church.

Many of those same critics hoped the Leonine pontificate would help clarify or even correct some of the excesses they saw in the synodality process. And as it happens, whenever Pope Leo has spoken about synodality, he has taken a relatively conservative interpretation of the notion, while publicly supporting the project initiated by Pope Francis.

But Friday’s appointments suggest that Leo seems inclined to maintain a dynamic that was common under Francis: making restrained public comments on synodality and criticizing excesses, while promoting personnel who seem more open to overtly far-reaching positions on synodality or other doctrinal matters.

Last week’s appointments seem to suggest that the Catholics expecting that the Secretariat of the Synod would eventually fall into oblivion – or that Leo would rein in the post-synodal committees established by Pope Francis – will likely be left disappointed.

While Costa and Massimi are complicated personalities, and not necessarily representative of a consistently progressive theological persuasion, they come from the synodal establishment which grew into prominence under Pope Francis — and seem likely to represent business-as-usual for the secretariat.

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Moves in the synodal office began when Leo took Archbishop Marín from the synod secretariat last year. While Marín is now a curial prefect, his transfer meant the Secretariat of the Synod lost one of its most moderating voices — and one that is known to be close to the pope.

Vatican officials have told The Pillar that Marín, while generally supportive of the synodal project, found himself frequently a dissenting voice, as he urged moderation within the secretariat.

On the other hand, Marín is being replaced by Costa, one of the steering hands of the recent meeting on Amoris laetitia, and who had been a special secretary at both the 2018 synod on the youth and the 2021-2024 synod on synodality.

Costa joined the Society of Jesus in 1992 and was ordained a priest a decade later, after studies in political and moral sociology in Paris. He led the journal Aggiornamiento Sociali from 2010 and 2021, when he became a consultor to the Secretariat of the Synod.

However, while technically just a consultor, Costa has been one of the leading voices within the Secretariat of the Synod, taking on a public role on the Synod on Synodality from its early stages, and also becoming one of the main organizers of the recent Amoris laetitia meeting.

At the same time, he’s steered clear of some of the most radical interpretations of synodality.

For example, in a 2026 conference he clarified that “synodality itself is not the main focus [of the synodal process], but the mission, that is, how the Church today can proclaim and bear witness to Christ and the Good News. At the center, therefore, is the joy of the Gospel.”

Costa also said in a 2024 conference that the “The Synod is not a parliament, where reaching consensus or a common agreement requires negotiation, bargaining, or compromise. But the only method of the Synod is to open oneself to the Holy Spirit.”

At the same time, he has caused controversy for some of his comments on doctrinal matters.

Costa wrote an article in 2016, after the publication of Amoris laetitia, in which he questioned the idea that norms or the natural law could guide accompaniment for people in irregular relations because “the risk to be avoided is abstractness, which ends up obscuring the very beauty of the value of marriage and the family.”

In a 2021 article, Costa also said that the expression “intrinsically disordered” to describe homosexual relations “ends up taking on tones that sound disparaging, particularly to those who already suffer discrimination.”

“This vocabulary today constitutes an obstacle that prevents many people, especially young people, from gaining access to the richness and beauty of Christian anthropology, including with regard to sexuality... Therefore, seeking an alternative is urgent,” Costa added.

After the 2019 Synod on the Amazon, Costa said that if an Amazon Rite was established “with its own rights, it could also include the ordination of married priests, as other rites do. But these are just speculations, and the final decision rests with the Holy Father.”

Still, Costa was also one of many Vatican officials to put a stop to attempts to forward the diaconal ordination of women during the second session of the synod on synodality in October 2024, supporting a previous statement made by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández against the possibility: “It seems to me that the prefect clearly outlined the perspective when he said that it is not yet the time to make a decision. The matter needs to be examined more deeply.”

Moreover, in a 2022 press conference, Costa listed Catholics identifying as gay and “those who want to celebrate Mass with the pre-conciliar rite” among those who felt “exiled within the Church.”

“As long as there’s no path forward together, no one can feel comfortable, not even those within,” he added.

Becquart’s departure – without a new Vatican post, at least so far – will likely be welcome by Catholics critical of the synodality project, considering Becquart’s many doctrinally controversial statements, and considering the way she had become in popular imagination a symbol for the version of synodality which would call for a “new way of being Church.”

However, Massimi, her replacement, remains a question mark in many regards.

Massimi’s career has mostly been as a professor of liturgy. She made her perpetual profession in the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians – also known as Salesian Sisters – in 2009, and earned a doctorate in theology in the Santa Giustina Institute, affiliated with the Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm.

She teaches both liturgy and sacramental theology at the Pontifical Salesian University, serves as president of the Italian Association of Professors and Scholars of Liturgy, and works in the music department of the liturgical office at the Italian bishops’ conference.

Massimi is also part of the study group 11 of the Synod on Synodality, called “the liturgy in a synodal perspective.”

In a 2024 article, Massimi signaled support for the idea that female deacons in the early Church were ordained ministers.

Massimi also wrote a 2018 book with controversial liturgist Andrea Grillo, in which the authors claim that “‘Reduction to the lay state’ is a classic threat/sanction against the ministry of male clerics. But ‘reduction to the lay state of women’ is a sort of unspoken curse rooted in the entire ‘ministerial machinery’ of the last two centuries.”

“The addition of ‘Attempted ordination of a woman’ to the list of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary… speaks volumes about the profound institutional and ministerial misunderstanding of the issue of women, often reduced to a disciplinary issue, to the logic of abuse, and often echoed by a theology as complacent as it is empty,” the book’s introduction adds.

In a September 2022 audience with Pope Francis, Massimi called Traditionis custodes, Francis’ motu proprio restricting access to the traditional Latin Mass, as “indicating a safe path to follow.”

At the same time, Massimi has been critical of the “secularization” of liturgical music, saying that it is not “an addition to the liturgy simply to make it more festive and joyful, to engage the faithful, or to solve the problem of potential ‘boredom’ caused by ritual repetitiveness. If music is an integral part of the liturgy, it means that it itself is liturgy, that it is not something external added to the rite, but rather contributes to the realization/manifestation of the Mystery of salvation.”

In a 2025 interview, Massimi criticized overtly emotional liturgical music because “the risk—as Saint Augustine observes in the ‘Confessions’ —is that what is sung could distance one spiritually from the mystery being celebrated… Another example is that of acclamations: if I were to associate a melody that is not acclamatory with the Alleluia, I risk destroying its meaning (I am thinking of those who perform [Leonard] Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah,’ which has nothing to do with what is being celebrated).”

“The Liturgical Reform was received as if the liturgy could incorporate everything that’s most quotidian into its ritual to make it meaningful, and so we see songs inspired by pop music, liturgical vestments of questionable beauty, churches that resemble garages... We should ask ourselves whether all this hasn’t actually led to a secularization of the liturgy, distancing itself, without careful discernment, from what came before,” she added in the same interview.

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Costa and Massimi’s previous public statements don’t show them to necessarily be rabid progressives. In fact, many theological and liturgical conservatives will find some of Massimi’s previous statements praiseworthy.

However, it is hard to think of any reason why they might become a sort of corrective to the current direction of the Secretariat of the Synod. Costa was already one of the secretariat’s most public faces and, arguably, one of its main organizers, while Massimi has been involved in a post-synod on synodality study group.

Therefore, the appointments can seemingly only be understood as a confirmation of the current work of the secretariat and as further confirmation of the importance Pope Leo plans to give to the Secretariat of the Synod during his pontificate.

While the organization of the meeting on Amoris laetitia last month was officially conducted by the Dicastery for the Laity Family and Life, with the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops taking on a methodological role, the secretariat took a growingly significant role. Sources close to the dicastery told The Pillar in September that most of the organizational work for the meeting had been taken over by the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.

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

A spokesperson for the Secretariat of the Synod said back in April 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.

While much of the secretariat’s work seems to be taking place in the background, the appointment of new undersecretaries that won’t change the theological orientation of the secretariat suggests that Pope Leo does not want the secretariat’s influence to wane during his pontificate.

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The 2025 audited financial statements show an organization which saw its annual revenue decrease by one-third in 2025, a decrease which would ordinarily be taken as a sign of an organization in crisis.

Is that true of the USCCB?

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This episode is brought to you by the St. Timothy Fellows, an initiative from FOCUS that helps priests and deacons build a culture of missionary discipleship through fraternity, formation, and real-time application in parish life.

To learn more, visit focus.org/st-timothy-fellows

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Already read the readings? Skip ahead to 5:10.

Reading 1 - Wisdom 6: 12-16

Psalm 63: 2-8

Reading 2 - 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18

Gospel - Matthew 25: 1-13

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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The news triggered a wave of surprised commentary, most of it arguing against the notion that a reigning pontiff could or should participate in the civil affairs of his country of citizenship.

Objections to the idea of a pope voting have ranged from the practical, that it opens Leo and the petrine office up to a host of legal complications, to the conceptual that he has failed to grasp the full personification of his office as a universal figure and global leader of the Church.

The thrust of the criticism of Robert Prevost’s decision to vote mostly boils down to the argument that Robert Prevost, the man and private citizen, no longer exists. From the moment he spoke the word accepto in the 2025 conclave and announced his regnal name, there is only Pope Leo XIV, and he, as pope, is, and must be, a citizen of nowhere.

But, in an age where the sovereignty of the Vatican City State is increasingly being distanced from the person of the pope, and after Benedict XVI’s historic decision to resign the Petrine office and live for nearly a decade in retirement, is there a case to be made that Prevost the man and Leo the pope can legally coexist?

The pope seems to be attempting, more than any of his predecessors, to draw a line between Pope Leo XIV and the man Robert Prevost, even joking about it in the low-stakes (to some) context of college basketball this weekend.

Whether the pope’s approach can work may hinge less on legalities, and more on the ability of the pope to maintain a truly private thought, preference, or judgment in the era of obsessive papal news coverage.

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