The National Eucharistic Congress has announced the official launch of the St. Katharine Drexel Route from Indianapolis to Los Angeles.

The route is part of the the three-year National Eucharistic Revival in the United States that is due to draw to a close this year.

The 2025 Drexel Route opens with a Mass of Thanksgiving in Indianapolis on Sunday, May 18, and will continue through until Corpus Christi Sunday, 22 June, crossing much of the breadth of the US.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the former Prefect of the Papal Household, described the results of the recent papal conclave as marking the beginning of a new era for the Church – one marked by clarity, stability and a decisive break from the confusion of the past.

In an interview with Corriere della Sera, Gänswein described the elevation of Cardinal Robert Prevost as a moment of “great and good surprise”, adding that he felt an immediate sense of hope as the new Pope appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

“Optically and acoustically, this Pope inspires hope, hope, hope,” remarked Gänswein, who was long-time aide to Pope Benedict XVI.

There was palpable confusion when Robert Francis Prevost stepped out on the loggia. A scramble to discern what sort of pontificate the Catholic Church was likely to witness in the next few years soon followed.

Both conservative and progressive factions within the Catholic Church are expressing cautious optimism. Yet during Leo XIV’s first address, relief was more immediate. Cardinals who fell into both the relative conservative and progressive camps were filmed looking joyous.

While the reasons for their approval vary, a deeper examination reveals that Prevost, a figure once unknown on the global stage, may indeed be positioned as something of a “compromise” candidate – one whose past actions, statements and affiliations have led to this unusual alignment of expectations.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released a ten-year anniversary preface to its document on the harms of pornography.

Create in Me a Pure Heart: A Pastoral Response to Pornography was originally issued in 2015 to counteract the growing prevalence of internet pornography. It offers guidance to those exploited by the pornography industry, those who exploit others through it, and also to parents, users, spouses, young people and clergy on how to respond to its widespread presence in contemporary culture.

In the ten years since the document’s publication, Covid, the use of artificial intelligence and an increasing dependence on technology have all contributed to the prevalence of pornography. The preface to the 2025 edition notes that modern society is increasingly living in a state of social isolation. The USCCB states that the “loneliness epidemic” can push individuals towards pornography, which “offers a deceptive substitute for real relationships”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Monday he had spoken with Pope Leo XIV and invited him to visit Ukraine.

On Sunday, the pontiff sid he carried “in my heart the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people”.

“May everything possible be done to reach an authentic, just and lasting peace, as soon as possible. Let all the prisoners be freed and the children return to their own families,” Leo said.

In a message on X – formerly known as Twitter – Zelenskyy mentioned it was their first conversation, “but already a very warm and truly substantive one”.

The election of a new father in God reconfigures the Catholic Church. The Church is part institution and, with a father in God, part family; a symbiosis of two different modes of being.

A new pope brings the opportunity to assess his gifts as leader of the institution and also to learn to love him as our “father in God”.

To love our pope we have to get to know him. And so Catholics all over the world are getting better acquainted with Pope Leo XIV, the former Cardinal Bob from Chicago.

Already the furore over conflicting information about his allegiances has begun.

On 8 May Catholics worldwide celebrated as white smoke rose above the Sistine Chapel and Cardinal Robert Prevost became the first American pope.

Many have been wondering what direction this papacy will take. Pope Francis, for all his positives, has left the Church in a more divided state than he found it, and so there is apprehension as to whether our new pope might become a divisive Francis II-esque figure, if not in name, then in action.

However, for those fearing this, our new Pope has given two important signs to the contrary. Firstly, unlike Pope Francis, he appeared on the balcony in the full papal regalia. Secondly, he chose the longstanding papal name “Leo” – meaning “lion” – symbolising strength and bravery.

ROME – In his first Sunday Regina Coeli address during Easter, Pope Leo XIV gave pilgrims a surprise and sang the traditional Marian prayer, and prayed for increased vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life.

Speaking to pilgrims from the central loggia of St Peter’s Basilica, Leo noted that his address coincided with Good Shepherd Sunday, saying it was “a gift” that his service as pope began on that day.

“On this Sunday, we always hear proclaimed at Mass a passage from the tenth chapter from the Gospel of John, where Jesus reveals himself as the true Shepherd: who knows and loves his sheep and gives his life for them,” he said.

Yet again, the timing of historical events has proved impeccable. In succession to Pope Francis, who died not long after imparting Urbi et Orbi from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, the conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV did so in time for his first Angelus address – or, to be proper, Regina Caeli, it being Eastertide – to fall on Good Shepherd Sunday. The point was not lost: speaking to the crowds gathered in St Peter’s Square, he called it “a gift”.

In many ways the address represented business as usual. Substantially, it contained nothing that Pope Francis would not have included: a plea for peace in Gaza, Ukraine, India and Pakistan; encouragement of young people; a welcome to pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee of Bands and Popular Entertainment, who “enliven the feast of Christ the Good Shepherd: the One who guides the Church with his Holy Spirit.”

ROME – In a meeting with the College of Cardinals Saturday, two days after his election to the papacy, Pope Leo XIV explained that he chose his papal name as a commitment to the Church’s social teaching amid a new revolution in artificial intelligence.

The Pope said there were various reasons for why he chose his papal name “but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution”.

Rerum Novarum (“New Things”) is an encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 addressing the conditions of the working classes and which deals with various social issues. It is widely hailed as having laid out the framework for the Catholic Church’s modern social doctrine and its position on social issues, which were a bedrock of Pope Francis’s pontificate.

ROME – In his first outing as pope, Leo XIV made an unannounced visit to a shrine dedicated to St Augustine in a small town outside of Rome, where he prayed before a famed icon housed there and met with members of the Augustinian order.

In a May 10 statement, the Vatican said that shortly after 4pm that day “Pope Leo XIV visited the Shrine of the Mother of Good Counsel in Genazzano for a private visit”.

The shrine, run by the religious order of St Augustine, is home to an ancient image of the Virgin Mary, “dear to the order and to the memory of Leo XIII”, whose encyclical Rerum Novarum helped inspire Leo XIV’s choice in name.

“No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:30)

In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus describes the powerful protection of his Father’s hand. We can trust that in heaven we will be utterly safe in the Father’s embrace, and with his hands he “will wipe away every tear” from our eyes (Revelations 7:17).
To arrive in the Father’s embrace, we must first put ourselves into the hands of our Good Shepherd, Jesus, which have the same divine power: “no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). The Father “has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35), so we can rest in Jesus. The only person who can pry us from the hands of Jesus is our own self, through our own sin: if we are faithful he will never let go of us, but he respects our free choices, whatever they be. Our Good Shepherd carries us in his hands but he never coerces us.

ROME – American cardinals who participated in the conclave that elected history’s first-ever pope from the United States, Chicago-born Robert Prevost have hailed him as a “citizen of the world”, saying his nationality was secondary, but he had the qualities they were looking for.

Speaking to journalists during a May 9 press conference a the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington said they had all heard Prevost speak during the pre-conclave general congregation meetings, and were impressed by his personality.

In his first homily since his election, Pope Leo XIV noted many people today view Jesus Christ as merely “a charismatic leader or superman”.

“This is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptised Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism,” he told in his Mass with the cardinals of the Church in the Sistine Chapel on Friday.

Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected as the new Pope on Thursday. It was a surprise for many, since he is an American, although he also has citizenship in Peru, where he served as bishop of Chiclayo from 2015‍ until 2023. He was appointed the head of the Dicastery for Bishops by Pope Francis in 2023, when he was made a cardinal.

ROME – Naturally enough, journalists covering the Vatican tend to seek out figures in the system from their own countries or language groups. French speakers seek out the French, Spanish speakers the Spaniards and Latin Americans, the Italians gravitate to their paesani, and, by the same logic, Americans are drawn to fellow Americans.

Thus it was that when Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was appointed the new head of the powerful Dicastery for Bishops in January 2023, my wife Elise and I made an appointment to drop by for a courtesy call in his Vatican office. I reminded him we’d met years before when he was the Prior General for the Augustinians, he told me that when he’d become the Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru he’d discovered a copy of my book on Opus Dei on a shelf in his new office, and we had a pleasant conversation.

History was made on Thursday, 8 May 2025, when cardinals gathered in Rome for the conclave elected Cardinal Robert Prevost as the first ever pope from the United States, with his papal name declared as Leo XIV.

In brief remarks after stepping out onto the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica late on Thursday afternoon, Pope Leo XIV said his words marked “the first greeting of Christ resurrected, the good pastor who gave life for the Lord”.

He asked that the hearts of individuals and families be filled with peace, “whoever they are, all peoples and the whole earth, peace be with you”.

The peace of Christ is “a disarmed and disarming peace, humble and perseverant,” he said, adding that this peace is “extended to everyone, unconditionally”.

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, has been elected the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He has taken the papal name of Pope Leo XIV. He is the first pope from the United States.

As Crux’s John L Allen previously wrote in his “Papabile for the Day” series, once upon a time, it was said that the idea of an American pope was unthinkable. In the beginning, it was for basically logistical reasons – steamships from the New World took so long to reach Rome that American cardinals often arrived too late to vote, and in any event they were never part of the political sausage-grinding before the conclave began.

Later, the veto on an American pope became geopolitical. You couldn’t have a “superpower pope”, or so the thinking ran, because too many people around the world would wonder if papal decisions were really being crafted in the Vatican or at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Habemus papam. The Church has a new pope: Leo XIV. When the protodeacon of the College of Cardinals, Dominique Mamberti, announced “Cardinalem Prevost” there was a brief silence in St Peter’s Square as people attempted to register who he was; but the same was true of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 2013. Robert Francis Prevost, the former Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, was one of the lesser-known of the papabile, the likely candidates for the papacy, but not a total outsider. His relatively swift election, during the first full day’s conclave voting, suggests that he has made a favourable impression on his fellow cardinals. That augurs well for a Pope who spoke from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica – his basilica – about the need for unity in the Church.

The menu for the cardinal-electors involved in the conclave to elect the next pope has been designed by a nutritionist to assist participants in their arduous task and to offset the likes of increased stress levels.

Nutritionist Giorgio Calabrese, an Italian doctor who specialises in nutritional science, is behind the special conclave menu comprising dishes designed specifically to provide the necessary energy for the cardinals as they lead a sedentary but stressful life for several days, reports the Catholic News Agency (CNA).

Under a darkening evening sky with seagulls and flashing drones swooping over the crowd crammed into St Peter’s Square, the black smoke finally came at 9 p.m. from the Sistine Chapel. The crowd roared but the dark soot-like colour came as no surprise. The starting gun had gone off for the race to win the Crown of Peter. 

The crowd were not overjoyed by the long wait. The Roman sky has become so dark that it was difficult to see the colour of the crucial plume emitting from the chapel’s chimney. The Italian media are speculating that Raniero Cantalamessa, the 90-year-old Preacher to the Papal Household, went on way too long in his “spiritual reflection”. For 45 minutes, so Corriere reported.