Today, September 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Leo XIV turns 71. Yesterday, at the Angelus, he explained that forgiveness does not admit bookkeeping: seventy times seven means, precisely, to stop keeping score. We have a weekend full of score-settling, and a very loaded Monday ahead. Good reading.
Seventy-one candles and a joke about Sinner
Pope Leo XIV turns 71, his mathematics degree, his passion for baseball and the quip about Sinner: 10 curiosities about the American Pontiff: his mathematics degree from Villanova, the White Sox, five languages, twenty years in Peru. And the joke of May 12, 2025, when a journalist proposed a charity tennis match, offering to bring Agassi, and the newly elected Pope accepted with one condition: “basta che non porti Sinner.” Two days later he received the tennis player at the Vatican; Sinner gave him a racket and suggested they hit some balls. The Pope looked at the antiques in the room and preferred to decline. In one week the pontificate had already produced its first bilingual pun and its first prudent refusal. The Pope’s brother: “he has not collapsed; humor helps him” Il fratello del Papa, «orgoglioso non sia crollato, si aiuta con l’umorismo», an interview on the occasion of the birthday. It is worth clarifying which brother we are talking about: it is John Prevost, the middle one, not Louis, the eldest, who is the one who appears at the White House. John says his brother has helped him with the computer and with his tax return, and that in Castel Gandolfo they went swimming; in the Leggo version he adds that he has “a vast range of knowledge.”
The race of artificial intelligence.
Cosa vuol dire fermare la corsa dell’AI?. It comments on the alarm raised by Dario Amodei of Anthropic and notes that the solution he proposes—export controls that slow China down enough to widen the U.S. lead in the decisive three or five years—does not solve the problem of competition but reformulates it as a race. It is not Catholic press, but it is exactly the terrain of Magnifica humanitas: whoever asks to slow down usually asks, in the same sentence, to slow down the others.
The Angelus of forgiveness without accounts
Leo XIV and at the Sunday Angelus, commenting on Peter’s question about how many times one must forgive, the Pope explained that Jesus’ “seventy times seven” is not a number but the abandonment of moral bookkeeping: “forgiveness is indispensable and if it is lacking one cannot live in peace.” He used the image of the wind that sweeps away the thickest clouds until the sun is visible again, and recalled Peter, to whom the Risen One does not reproach the denial but asks if he loves him, “as if nothing had happened.” After the prayer he recalled the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 and asked for prayers for peace.
A cardinal acquitted, and the list of the others
Il cardinale scagionato (e gli altri), signed by Lorenzo Prezzi in Settimana News. On August 31, Judge Martin Castonguay of the Quebec Superior Court ordered Pamela Groleau to pay Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops from 2010 to 2023, $100,000 for having falsely accused him of sexual violence in the context of a class-action lawsuit against the archdiocese; the judges noted manifest inconsistencies and defamatory intent. Ouellet, who had already been acquitted in canonical proceedings in 2021 after the preliminary investigation by Fr. Jacques Servais, has donated the entire sum to victims of abuse among Canada’s Indigenous populations. Prezzi adds the cardinal list: Lacroix, Pell, Barbarin, Bernardin, Danneels, Rodé. And he closes with an open case: Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, Archbishop of Rabat, under preliminary investigation since July and self-suspended. Guess what the next story is about.
Rabat already has a successor for López Romero
El Vaticano confía a otro religioso español el futuro de la archidiócesis de Rabat, RFI headlines. On Saturday the 12th the Sala Stampa announced the appointment of Mario León Dorado, a missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate, born in Madrid in 1974, as coadjutor archbishop of Rabat; he had been apostolic prefect of Western Sahara since 2013 and apostolic administrator of Rabat since early August, as we reported. The figure of the coadjutor includes the right of succession: when the see becomes vacant, the archdiocese is his. The Vatican communiqué reviews his career without once mentioning López Romero, who remains the titular archbishop and denies the accusations. Rome has said nothing about the substance of the matter; it has said who comes next, which is one way of saying something.
Alessandria: not a line written, no sanction, no diocese
Se il tabù Tesla conta più della verità: il caso Gallese è preoccupante. The facts: on September 11 Leo XIV accepted the resignation of Msgr. Guido Gallese, 64, Bishop of Alessandria since 2012—the youngest in Italy at the time—and appointed the Bishop of Acqui, Luigi Testore, as apostolic administrator. Il Sole 24 Ore summarizes the accusations that circulated for months: the purchase of a Tesla, kitesurfing, the management of the curia’s assets, the letters sent to Rome, the apostolic visitation entrusted in January to Cardinal Bertello. And the statement of the person concerned to the diocesan weekly: “I have not received a single written line nor any sanction.” Typical of these times: a campaign without documents, with surreptitious photos and not a single probative source; in the end no sanction, no written line, and an early retirement so that nothing is clarified.
Aparecida discovers Rupnik’s Last Judgment; Lourdes covers it
Aparecida unveiled the mosaics on the west façade of the basilica: almost 4,000 square meters by 39 artists from the Aletti Center, with stones from Brazil, Italy, Greece and Afghanistan, financed by the Campaign of the Devotees. With it the Biblical Journey project, begun in 2019 and continued after the accusations, is completed. The shrine recalls that since 2020 it has been directed by Maria Campatelli and that the canonical visitation to the Aletti Center found no problems. And now the detail we did not invent: the west façade is dedicated to the Apocalypse, the Second Coming and the Last Judgment; according to the shrine it represents “the victory of God over evil.” Meanwhile, in Lourdes Rupnik’s mosaics in the Basilica of the Rosary will remain covered with panels during Leo XIV’s visit on September 26 and 27, and also afterwards, by decision of Bishop Jean-Marc Micas, out of consideration for the victims. And in the nunciature in Paris, where the Pope will sleep on the 25th and 26th, there is a private chapel also decorated by Rupnik. Brazil uncovers the Last Judgment; France covers it. In Italy we have a colloquium on the Rupnik case in Modena, La Chiesa di Leone XIV nella strettoia del caso Rupnik. The festival is held from September 23 to 27 under the slogan “Bella Ciao” and features some thirty colloquia.
The disappearance of the antiphons
L’infelice sparizione delle Antifone. The thesis is technical and well argued: in the rite of Paul VI the rubrics provide as the first option the singing of the antiphon from the Missal or the Gradual, and the systematic application of the alternative option—“another suitable chant”—has in practice eliminated the Word of God from the entrance, offertory and communion, replaced by generic pieces about the joy of being together, bread and wine, and friendship. The author calls it a mutilation of the rite and a flattening of the pedagogy of the liturgical year. The normative fact is that what was lost was not forbidden; it was simply never chosen.
The Four Last Things, from homily to mosaic
La Messa Tradizionale i novissimi, published in The Catholic Thing. Starting from the funeral of a young man celebrated in the ancient rite, Royal misses the Four Last Things—death, judgment, hell and glory—which were taught to children and which today, he says, are hardly mentioned even at funerals, and recalls that they are still in the Catechism, numbers 1020 to 1060. The drift of the text toward Muslims who dream of Jesus and toward those who risk more for proclaiming the truth is his own affair. The same weekend, in Aparecida four thousand square meters of Last Judgment were inaugurated. The Four Last Things enjoy better health in mosaic than in homily.
Altar girls at the Pope’s Masses in France
Chiesa in uscita (di testa) con the occasion of the papal trip to France from September 25 to 28, the French Episcopal Conference has confirmed that some girls will serve at the altar alongside boys at the Pope’s Masses. Valli admits that the Church does not expressly prohibit it, but stresses the how: the decision comes after pressure from Magdala, the association formerly known as the Comité de la jupe, which according to Le Parisien considers the distinction between altar boys and altar girls “rare symbolic violence” and sees in the papal Masses a “strong signal” for a synodal Church. Magdala also calls for the ordination of women, the end of mandatory celibacy, LGBTQ inclusion, and access to contraception and abortion.
Evangelizing history is not historicizing the Gospel
Evangelizzare la storia non è storicizzare il Vangelo. The distinction is classic and well made: evangelizing history starts from the Incarnation and consists in speaking to the people of one’s time in an understandable language without modifying what is announced; historicizing the Gospel is rereading what the Church has always announced in the light of the cultural demands of the moment, so that it is no longer the Gospel that judges history. No doctrinal novelty, but it is the piece that conceptually orders half of today’s Specola.
What drives young people away is ambiguity
«È l’ambiguità dottrinale, non la fermezza, ad allontanare i giovani», Homily of the Archbishop of Warsaw to catechists, built on the Baptist, the one who was not afraid to tell Herod “it is not lawful for you.” The phrase that has circulated: if young people are leaving the Church it is also because some present its teaching in such an unclear way that it becomes “like soapy water, like mixed jelly,” and is indistinguishable from what the other market stalls offer. UCCR links it to a quote from Leo XIV a few months ago: Christianity is not made attractive by watering down its contents. The thesis is empirically debatable—the practice of religion also declines where doctrine is preached undiluted—but the commercial argument is impeccable: no one changes stalls to buy the same thing.
«Evangelium vitae» and the imperfect law
L’Eutanasia della Profezia es the continuation of the matter we already covered: the author maintains that under Cardinal Zuppi and the last two presidents of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Paglia and Pegoraro, the Italian ecclesial leadership is in fact pushing Catholic politicians toward a law on assisted suicide, and that Pegoraro’s reading of number 73 of Evangelium vitae confuses defending oneself against an unjust law with promoting it. The legal point is precise and deserves debate: one thing is to limit the damage of an already approved law and another is to give legal form to what today exists only by virtue of Constitutional Court ruling 242/2019. The rest—genetic mutation, euthanasia of prophecy—is the author’s rhetoric. The same blog these days publishes the note of the bishops of Triveneto and the news of the rejection of the British bill on end-of-life: it is worth reading them together, because the comparison with France and the United Kingdom is the most solid part of the argument. On the same blog, Il ritorno alle barbarie: un raffronto con la società secolarizzata di oggi e il mondo precristiano (parte 3), the third installment of a series of great interest.
The bishops of the United States, the AR-15 and the crossbow
USSCB , lhe United States Conference of Catholic Bishops filed an amicus curiae on September 4 in Viramontes v. Cook County, concerning the ban on more than one hundred semi-automatic weapons, including the AR-15. According to Catholic World Report, the bishops argue that today’s weapons are “fundamentally different” from those of the eighteenth century, that they are “dangerous and unusual,” and that local communities may regulate them. Formally the brief does not support either party, which its critics consider a neutrality with quite clear practical effects, and they also object to the analogy with the medieval crossbow. We abstain on the Second Amendment. About the crossbow we will only say that the Fourth Lateran Council of 1139 prohibited it against Christians, permitted it against infidels, and did not succeed in stopping its use. As an argumentative precedent, the bishops could have chosen one with a better record of compliance.
Vatican media enter La Stampa
Media vaticani: accordo con il gruppo SAE, Since September 11, Vatican News, Radio Vaticana and L’Osservatore Romano feed a multimedia widget with news and videos about the Pope, twenty-four hours a day, on the website of La Stampa and the rest of the SAE group’s mastheads. It is the first time an Italian publishing group has signed something like this with a dicastery; the editorial director of Vatican media, Andrea Tornielli, speaks of “maximum diffusion of the message,” and the president of SAE, Alberto Leonardis, considers the Church “a fundamental ethical reference point.” Antonio Socci has objected to the obvious: La Stampa, Il Tirreno, the Gazzetta di Modena and La Nuova Ferrara are not exactly Catholic mastheads nor do they project the Pope’s message “to the world.” A few days before leaving the dicastery, this kind of agreement is surprising; no one says whether money is involved or in which direction, and the circulation of Italian print media has been falling for fifteen years. It seems a bad deal, and the Dicastery for Communication has not bought a loudspeaker; it has rented a shop window on a street with less and less traffic.
Guadalupan Jubilee Year at Tepeyac
México vivirá Año Jubilar Guadalupano, Leo XIV has granted, through the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Guadalupan Jubilee Year from October 12, 2026 to October 12, 2027, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the dedication of the new basilica and the transfer of the image, which took place on October 12, 1976. There will be a holy door and a plenary indulgence for those who visit the shrine with devotion, participate in a liturgical act or dedicate time to prayer, under the usual conditions. The opening will be at midday, at the Mass of the Roses; the date also coincides with the 131st anniversary of the pontifical coronation. Tepeyac thus links the ordinary Jubilee of 2025 with its own and with the countdown to the fifth centenary of 1531. In matters of accounting, the Mexicans have the advantage.
We end with a Happy Birthday, Your Holiness.
«God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…»