The so-called “Rorschach test” stage of the papacy – in which people can project whatever they want onto the Pope in this early period – continues and will likely last for some time, as Leo seems to be easing his way into his reign.

With just four weeks at the helm, Pope Leo has demonstrated a sense of calm and restraint, preferring to get the lay of the land and understand how things work before making any big decisions. However, he has also wasted no time in getting down to business on certain lingering issues from the Francis papacy related to personnel and some matters of reform.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) – the largest Protestant denomination in the United States – is convening its annual meeting in Dallas this week and will vote on a series of resolutions addressing contentious moral and social issues. 

Chief among these is a measure urging efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalised same-sex marriage nationwide. While the SBC has long opposed same-sex unions, this marks the first time the denomination is formally calling on representatives of its tens of thousands of member churches to work towards ending legally recognised same-sex marriage. 

The rainbow flag, flown everywhere in “Pride month”, is not what it pretends to be. Its ubiquitous success feeds off our naivety and gullibility. It presents us with the challenge of distinguishing God from evil.

Jesus never took it for granted that the Church would find this task easy. His own experience was set in the context of a desert confrontation with the Devil at the beginning of his public ministry. During these confrontations, evil lied to him under the pretence of offering good outcomes. Jesus was to later warn his followers not to take people and their mission at face value, since evil could be expected to masquerade as good.

St Paul begged the early Christians to “test the spirits”. The presumption is that we will be faced with different strategies of evil presenting itself as good.

Pope Leo XIV has marked Pentecost Sunday by describing how the Holy Spirit “is the Gift that opens our lives to love” and opens borders in people’s hearts. This is in sharp contrast to what he discussed as the isolating impact of social media and modern communication platforms that leave people “confused and solitary travellers” overwhelmed by the crowd.

“The Spirit accomplished something extraordinary in the lives of the Apostles,” said the Pope, speaking on the Solemnity of Pentecost that marks the day when the Holy Spirit came down on the 12 Apostles, ten days after the Ascension of Jesus.

Cosima Gillhammer’s new book about the liturgy may well foster a renewed appreciation for what has, for many, become routine; Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy has certainly taken its place on my list of books to recommend to anyone curious to learning more about the Christian Faith.

Whether to a cradle Catholic who never really had the rigorous formation that a catechist receives, or someone just star ting their journey, Gillhammer’s work will sit alongside George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic as one to highlight the riches to be found in Christianity, and which Christianity has given to wider culture.

Pentecost was a feast when the Jews offered burnt sacrifices of animals and bread made from new grain at the harvest (Leviticus 23:15-20). So when the flames of the Holy Spirit appeared on that feast day upon the twelve apostles, it seemed that they too were being offered up as burnt sacrifices.

The burning of offerings was a way to give them to God completely, and when the Holy Spirit came, he took total possession of the apostles. They were unharmed by the flames but their minds and hearts were filled with divine gifts, so they could preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit wants to consume us with his fire too: he wants to take possession of us, which, paradoxically, is the only way we can be truly free.

Pope Leo XIV has discussed how unity in the Church won’t come from “our own efforts” nor “through any preconceived model or blueprint”, rather it depends on the will of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

His comments came during a conference at the Vatican to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, in which he discussed the relationship between the Western and Eastern Churches.

Meeting on Saturday with members of the Symposium “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity”, the pontiff said that unity will be a gift received as Christ wills and by the working of the Holy Spirit.

On 12 May 2025, Pope Leo XIV addressed journalists who had come from all over the world to the Vatican to hear from the new pontiff.

In his address, Pope Leo discussed the great challenges of the modern media landscape, especially the impact of artificial intelligence, highlighting the vital importance for those shaping narratives of maintaining values and ethics when covering the ever shifting and increasingly technologically driven world we live in.

He also highlighted the need to move “beyond stereotypes and clichés” when it comes to media representations of Christian life and the life of the Church itself.

The incense is rising again.

Not just in Gothic cathedrals or Latin Mass enclaves—but in the hearts of young Americans who, against every cultural current, are swimming upstream toward Catholicism. It’s a phenomenon that baffles secular elites and liberal Protestants alike. How, in this age of deconstruction and digital nihilism, could the Church of hierarchy, ritual, and confession be considered—of all things—cool?

Yet it is. Quietly, steadily, and then suddenly. The Latin Mass is trending. Catechisms are bookmarked. Young adults are quoting Aquinas in the same breath as Camus. It’s not ironic. It’s not aesthetic. It’s not cosplay. It’s a revolt against rootlessness.

Pope Leo XIV has had his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call on the afternoon of Wednesday, 4 June, comes as tensions between Russia and Ukraine continue to escalate despite international efforts to broker a ceasefire.

The Pope’s phone conversation with Putin, confirmed by a Vatican spokesman late on Wednesday night, came the same day that United States President Donald Trump had a call with the Russian president also.

Pope Leo XIV today spent an hour meeting with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) at the Vatican.

The commission was established in 2014 by Pope Francis and has been part of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith since 2022.

In a statement about the meeting on 5 June, the commission said it updated Pope Leo on progress in the Memorare Initiative, a capacity-building program designed to support local churches – particularly in the Global South – in their efforts to protect minors and care for victims of abuse.

Pope Leo XIV urged Catholics not to delay the pursuit of their faith while also cautioning them about succumbing to the indignities of more aggressive forms of capitalism during his Wednesday General Audience.

He was speaking about the parable on the labourers in the vineyard that Jesus gives in the Gospel of Matthew, when the landowner hires people at different hours of the day but still gives them all the same wages.

“The metaphor of the marketplace is very appropriate for our times,” the Pope says, “because the market is the place of business, where unfortunately even affection and dignity are bought and sold, in the attempt to earn something. And when we do not feel appreciated, acknowledged, we risk selling ourselves to the first bidder.”

Early on in Pope Francis’s papacy, it became clear that “discernment” would be one of his buzzwords, and the Ignatian concept went on to become a bedrock of his Magisterium and pastoral decision-making process.

Discernment is a loaded term for the Jesuits, carrying with it a specific interpretation and certain rules for how to exercise it according to Ignatian spirituality, as laid out by St. Ignatius in his famed Spiritual Exercises.

This emphasis on discernment became so central to Francis’s papacy, that at times it could be difficult to understand him and many aspects of his papacy without having at least a basic knowledge of the Jesuit spin on it.

Cohabiting couples can be enlightened to the truth and beauty of Christian marriage by Catholics who bear witness to the sacrament in their own lives, Pope Leo XIV has said.

In an address to the seminar organised by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, the American Pontiff said that many young people were “longing for authentic relationships and guides in life” and that the soaring numbers “who choose cohabitation instead of Christian marriage in reality need someone to show them in a concrete and clear way”.

He said the most effective witness Catholic couples could offer to cohabitees was “the example of their lives”.

Catholics can demonstrate “what the gift of sacramental grace is and what strength derives from it”, Pope Leo said, and be “someone to help” other young couples “understand the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to love and the service of life that God gives to married couples.”

Pope Leo has paid tribute to a martyred cardinal who saved the lives of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

The life of Blessed Iuliu Hossu, a Greek-Catholic cardinal who oversaw the diocese of Cluj-Gherla and who was eventually martyred during the Romanian communist persecution, was commemorated at an event in the Sistine Chapel.

Besides saving Jewish lives, Blessed Iuliu opposed the forced passage of Greek Catholics to the Romanian Orthodox Church. He was eventually arrested in 1948 for his opposition to the communist government.

To Carthage I came where a frying pan of illicit loves sputtered all around me … or, rather, to Rome where swifts screamed around the Column of the Immaculate Conception and where Leo XIV had just become the first Augustinian to be elected Pope. I headed immediately to his cathedral, St John Lateran, hoping for a plenary indulgence in this Jubilee Year of mercy and guessing that of the four Roman basilicas with holy doors the queues there would be the shortest. I left the noise, heat and the jasmine for quiet coolness, pacing over a splendid Cosmatesque floor to search between statues of the Apostles for a priest to hear my confession. To obtain an indulgence one must also pray for the intentions of the Pope and I did this on my knees up the nearby Scala Sancta, reciting the sorrowful mysteries amid discomfort that was utterly appropriate when following Our Lord up the stairs of Pilate’s praefectorial palace.

The election of Pope Leo XIV came at the end of my first and last conclave. Having been made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2014, I had never before been part of the process – and as I turn 80 in a few months’ time, please God I shall not be again. I was relieved to discover that the reality of a conclave was nothing at all like Edward Berger’s recent film. During this conclave, with 133 cardinals present, there was no rancour between us, nor any kind of politicking by which someone might have tried to promote themselves or block someone else. It was, in fact, at times marked by fraternal unity and prayerful discernment.

A 2001 Vatican ruling has resurfaced, confirming that bishops cannot require priests to use female altar servers. The letter, issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments under Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez, was published on 27 July 2001 and reaffirmed the rights of priests over liturgical decisions in their parishes.

The document states: “A priest may not be obliged to have women or girls as altar servers, nor may the diocesan Bishop oblige him to do so.” It also quotes a circular letter sent to the presidents of episcopal conferences on 15 March 1994: “It will always be very appropriate to follow the noble tradition of having boys serve at the altar,” noting the role of such service in fostering vocations to the priesthood. The letter was issued in response to an unnamed bishop who had written to the Vatican seeking to mandate female altar servers for all priests in his diocese.

On 27 May 2025, the Vatican’s Philatelic and Numismatic Office released its first official postage stamps featuring Pope Leo XIV. The series comprises four stamps, each capturing key events from the initial phase of his pontificate. The €1.25 and €2.45 stamps depict Pope Leo XIV’s first public appearance on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on 8 May, immediately following his election. The €1.30 and €3.20 stamps showcase moments from the Mass he celebrated with the College of Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on 9 May.

Sisters Marizele Cassiano and Marisa de Paula, two Brazilian nuns from the Copiosa Redenção congregation, have gone viral after an impromptu beatboxing session. The nuns appeared on the Catholic TV channel Pai Eterno, hosted by the recently ordained Deacon Giovane Bastos of the Redemptorist order.

When asked about their vocation, Sister Marizele began to sing a refrain – “Vocação, ooh” – from a song about the call to religious life. She then began to beatbox, with Sister Marisa responding by standing up and dancing. Deacon Bastos also joined in.