Today we celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Pope Leo has once again drawn near to Ganezzano with his Augustinian brothers. We continue with another intense day featuring more than interesting topics.
Pope Leo in Ganezzano.
Yesterday, in the afternoon, Pope Leo XIV visited the Shrine of the Mother of Good Counsel in Genazzano, on the Vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where he offered the golden rose to the Virgin and unveiled the fresco depicting him in prayer, like his predecessors who came to the Basilica, in commemoration of his first visit on May 10, 2025. «I am here again, full of joy, to celebrate with you the Vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin and to entrust to the Child Mary all that is still being born in this poor yet magnificent humanity: fragile as a shoot, yet a sign of God’s fidelity. Yes, Mary is the dawn of a different day, of our world finally freed from evil. And we are here, close to her, around the Altar from which salvation comes to us and transforms us, children in the Son. Let us ask her for her Good Counsel, to welcome the divine Word, keep it within us, and bring it to light through courageous and wise decisions, decisions of authentic conversion».
Rupnik: no in Lourdes, yes in Brazil.
The Pope orders the concealment of Marko Rupnik’s works, who is on trial for abuse, in France, but blesses the solemn inauguration in Brazil of the façade of the Basilica of Aparecida. On Saturday, September 12, in Aparecida, Brazil, a large mosaic on the façade of the largest basilica in South America, designed by Marko Rupnik, will be solemnly inaugurated with the Pope’s blessing. Two weeks later, in Lourdes, the Pope will visit the shrine and find Rupnik’s mosaics on the basilica’s façades permanently covered, and the curious thing is that in both cases, the Pope’s approval is full, unwavering, and widely reported in the media.
In Aparecida they are not hiding it; in fact, they are promoting donations: those who contributed to making this great project a reality will appear in a book that will be kept in the shrine. The walls bearing the Rupnik mark are described on the official website of Aparecida, where the individual mosaics are shown, their meaning explained, the date of creation, the materials used, and the number of artists who made them. Unlike the Brazilian shrine, the Aletti Center is much more reserved with information. In fact, the page about Aparecida has been stagnant since 2023 : they probably thought it best not to draw too much attention and give the impression that the project had been suspended pending the final verdict on Rupnik. The east façade, completed in the spring of 2025, features nearly 4,000 square meters of mosaic at a cost of at least 14 million euros. We understand the discomfort of the victims at the sight of their abuser’s works. Much worse is the Pope’s persistent personal desire to save Rupnik at all costs. A mysterious excommunication that disappeared and a trial that never comes. Deciding yes here, no there, continues to highlight that the problem is not Rupnik’s work but managing a shame that no one knows how to cover up.
Enthusiasm over the election of Leo XIV.
It is concerning that Pope Leo XIV’s persistent inaction on pressing problems is beginning to provoke loud disaffection. After more than a decade of doctrinal and liturgical errors during the previous pontificate, it was enough to see a worn-out mozzetta, an embroidered rochet, or a pope returning so that people could kiss his hand and speak softly of Jesus and Mary to provoke cries of miracle. The so-called “redeemed conservatives,” were quick to project their own childish expectations onto the newly elected pope, celebrating each of his gestures, however small, as a transcendental turning point.
The Roman Curia continues to advance at a rapid pace along the path of modernism, and the “new religion” inaugurated in the 1960s continues to be the official doctrine. Whoever today deceives himself into believing that superficial ceremonial decorum can heal the wounds of a mystical body infected by decades of doctrinal immunodeficiency shows that he does not understand the gravity of the crisis. The “hangover of the Second Vatican Council” has reduced sociological and cultural Catholicism to rubble, extinguishing the transmission of the faith within families. In this scenario of advanced secularization and institutional desolation, we are witnessing an extraordinary and scientifically measurable phenomenon that belies the modernist narrative of the “death of God.”
In the spring of 2026 there was an unprecedented increase in conversions and adult baptisms in recent decades. Official data from European dioceses, published before Easter, outline a truly historic turning point that is forcing analysts to revise their catastrophic forecasts. The most sociologically striking fact lies in the demographic profile of this resurgence: more than half of the newly baptized are under thirty-five years old. We are talking about Generation Z and Millennials, young people raised in the existential void of relativism and spiritual consumerism. Rejecting superficiality and worldly and “democratized” liturgies, they desperately seek transcendence, the sacred, and the objectivity of doctrine.
A recent survey conducted in France for Bayard-La Croix reveals that 9% of regular practicing Catholics declare the Latin Mass as their favorite, while 25% appreciate it as much as the ordinary rite, and 67% express no objection to the ancient rite. This “bi-ritual” generation under thirty-five years old rejects the old ideological labels of the post–Second Vatican Council period and rediscovers the via pulchritudinis through kneeling adoration, communion on the tongue, Gregorian chant, and the priest’s orientation ad orientem. While ordinary parishes register minimal attendance and a notably advanced average age, the city’s only Tridentine Mass is always packed with young people under thirty, young couples, and large families. Even from the point of view of vocations and clergy, the growth seems constant and evident.
If we look at the Church from the perspective of contemporary sociology, the panorama seems desolate. But if we adopt the perspective of faith and the passage of centuries, the 2026 data offer us an unbreakable hope for the next two hundred years. The law of spiritual demography is inexorable. Modernist, synodal, and progressive Catholicism is incapable of transmitting the faith. It feeds on the capital accumulated by past generations, but does not generate new faithful. When this biological generation dies out, nothing will remain of that model except empty churches converted to other commercial or civil uses. The Church that survives the great contemporary apostasy will necessarily and singularly be traditionalist. The “hangover of the Second Vatican Council” will be remembered in the books of ecclesiastical history as a painful but passing interlude, a worldly fascination that sought to dethrone Our Lord and replace Him with an anthropocentric idol.
It is possible to fall in love with artificial intelligence.
Can we fall in love with an Artificial Intelligence even knowing that it is not a person? Can an AI companion become an antidote to loneliness, or does it risk gradually replacing human relationships? And if a machine is capable of creating, remembering what we tell it, and learning about us, where is the line between artificial intelligence and the human mind? These questions are becoming less and less theoretical. According to the World Health Organization, approximately one in six people in the world experiences loneliness, while among adolescents the figure reaches approximately 21%. At the same time, the presence of AI in the economy is growing: according to Istat, in 2025, 16.4% of Italian companies with at least 10 employees will use Artificial Intelligence technologies, double the figure of 8.2% in 2024.
We are witnessing the entry of machines into areas we have always considered deeply human, from relationships to creativity, from identity to consciousness. Can there exist an artificial intelligence “worthy of human love”? Texts, images, music, and videos are now generated in seconds. But does producing something new really imply being creative? And when a work arises from collaboration between a person and a generative system, who is the author? The questions grow and we move from “what can a machine do?” to what does it mean to create? What does it mean to understand? What makes a relationship authentic? And what does it mean to be conscious? The truth is that as machines become increasingly capable of imitating what we do, we must redefine what it means to be human.
Alvarado at the “Fratello Sole” foundation.
Pope Leo XIV has chosen María Montserrat Alvarado as the new member of the Board of Directors of the “Fratello Sole” Foundation, before taking possession of her appointment. The appointment was announced in the bulletin of the Holy See and corresponds to the president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, who, starting November 1, will also assume the position of Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication. The Santa Maria di Galeria plant, north of Rome, will have a dual function: on the one hand, providing the energy necessary for the radio station present in the area and, on the other, helping to guarantee the general energy supply of the Vatican City State.
The Patriarch of Constantinople calls for the return to unity.
He said it last September 4, at the end of the XXVII International Congress of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches, held in Budapest. «We await, by grace and with divine help, the restoration of full communion with the Church of Rome in the one Body of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. The Patriarch added that the goal is for the Pentarchy to be complete again and for the “five-stringed lyre” of the universal Church to resound once more in its ancient harmony, alluding to the five ancient patriarchates of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, which Bartholomew considers the structure through which the universal Church visibly manifested its unity in the first millennium. Bartholomew described with sadness the separation from Rome, which had lasted almost a millennium, stating that the rupture of communion “tore the seamless tunic of the Lord.”
Particularly interesting is the reflection on the primacy of the Pope. Bartholomew recalled a famous formula of then-professor Joseph Ratzinger, according to which “Rome cannot demand of the East a doctrine of primacy greater than that which was formulated and lived in the first millennium.” The Patriarch then cited his predecessor Athenagoras, who in 1967 defined Paul VI as “the successor of Peter, the first among us in honor, the one who presides with love.” According to Bartholomew, this expression summarizes the Orthodox conception of Roman primacy: a primacy of service in love, exercised within the communion of sister Churches and not above it.
In 1995 he met John Paul II for the first time in Rome, with whom he would meet again in Assisi in 2002 and in the Vatican in 2004. In 2006, Benedict XVI visited the Phanar, where both reaffirmed their commitment to the restoration of full communion between Catholics and Orthodox. The dialogue continued with Pope Francis, with whom he met on several occasions, including in Jerusalem in 2014, and with Leo XIV, with whom Bartholomew maintained a direct relationship by participating in the funeral of Francis and the inauguration of the new pontificate. In June 2025, Leo XIV reiterated his desire to “restore full visible communion” between the Churches.
The tragedy of the Catholic Church in Germany.
Partisan politics, by its very nature, is very ephemeral, and the Catholic Church in Germany, called to deal with much more sublime things, has once again decided to commit suicide. The German right-wing party AfD won in a small and poor region, but for the media, as well as for the German Church, it is a tragedy. AfD’s ideas are not Nazi, as they try to sell them to us, but they violate all the taboos of pro-European and progressive culture. The joint document, issued by the Council of the Evangelical Church and the Episcopal Conference, expresses “grave fears” and commits to intervening “if the dignity of the person, the democratic order, or the rule of law is called into question.”
This German right-wing party was founded in 2013 as a criticism of the euro and the centralization of the EU. In 2015, it also joined the campaign against Islamization. In recent years, it has distinguished itself by its fight against illegal immigration, advocating for “remigration.” The AfD has a decidedly more liberal program than the center parties and wants schools free of politics, starting with gender and anti-colonialist studies. The AfD wants to terminate the contract of Saxony-Anhalt with German public television, which it considers, like state schools, a tool of indoctrination. «The concept of a multicultural society has failed. To live peacefully with immigrants in the future, integration is indispensable. It is the only way to stop the advance of parallel societies in our country. Successful integration requires immigrants of all ages to acquire sufficient command of spoken and written German, respect and support our legal and social systems, and earn a living after a reasonable period.» Everyone, including some bishops, cries “Nazism.” Are there really Nazis infiltrated in the party? It will be up to the German security services to discover and punish them, since the resurgence of National Socialism has been prohibited since the Second World War.
Müller and the disconcerting German bishops.
Müller published a commentary in Kath.net in which he corrects what he calls “disconcerting” statements by several German bishops on the occasion of the recent federal, state, and municipal elections in Germany. The text comes in a context of strong ecclesial polarization: in recent days there has been talk in Germany of bishops asking the faithful not to vote for Alternative for Germany. Episcopal nerves are evident because some AfD leaders are calling for “saving the church tax.”
Müller reminds them what, theologically, the mission of a bishop is. The apostles and their successors were instituted by Jesus to proclaim the Gospel, call sinners to conversion, and transmit new life through the sacraments, not to place their spiritual authority for or against a specific political party within the legitimate democratic contest. Doing so, Müller maintains, would constitute an abuse of spiritual authority for political purposes, and warns that historically such partisan interference has always obscured the true mission of the Church. The cardinal clearly distinguishes between this illegitimate interference and the necessary application of moral principles to politics—for example, in defense of human rights against anti-Christian ideologies—but stresses that the spiritual power of the bishop does not extend to the electoral behavior of Catholics who simply differ politically from him. In a democratic election, he affirms, every Catholic has the right to vote for the party he considers best equipped to solve the country’s problems, provided that the eventual government does not resort to immoral means.
Cardinal Müller insists that the bishop must be a good shepherd, concerned with the eternal salvation of the faithful, leaving to the voters the decision on which party governs and to the organs of the State—such as the Constitutional Court—the guardianship of democracy. His task is rather to exhort the contending parties not to treat each other as enemies. He describes it as a “grave scandal” that bishops, priests, or Catholic associations appear aligned with political-ideological agitators, for with this the Church presents itself as a political actor and betrays its mission. He closes his reflection by citing the conciliar constitution Lumen Gentium (n. 8), which recalls that the Church was not founded to seek earthly glory, but to spread humility and service to the most needy.
The “diamond priest” and the angry bishop.
There is something for everyone, and Father Lanfranco Casali, who died at the age of 93, requested to be transformed into a precious gem in a Swiss laboratory (at a cost of up to 22,000 euros). The bishop of Fano stopped the decision: «It is a personal choice with which we do not agree», and cited the norms of the Vatican. «While the Diocese is certain of Don Casali’s good faith, it declares that it was a personal decision of the deceased priest, which was not shared with the bishop or anyone else». The bishop wants «to highlight the numerous good works carried out by Don Lanfranco during his ministry as a priest of the diocese». In the instruction “Ad Resurgendum cum Christo,” of August 15, 2016, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while it allows cremation, it explicitly prohibits scattering the ashes, keeping them at home, or transforming them into commemorative objects or jewelry, reiterating the obligation to keep them in sacred places.
Evil exists.
Evil continues to exist, although it is almost never spoken of. It is enough to read the newspapers to realize it. It is an evil present in the lives of people, in families, but also and above all in international relations. What is new in our era, not only in the present but since 1789, is the ideological disguise of evil, which leads to justifying it when it is convenient. The recent debate on “end of life” is surreal: an attempt is made to present the legalization of consented murder as a value of personal freedom of choice that must be guaranteed. The same happened with abortion, when the freedom to end the life of the fetus was presented and is presented as an element of civilized progress.
The central theme remains the same as that of Cardinal Ratzinger, decades ago: the West hates itself: «There is a strange self-hatred in the West that can only be considered pathological. The West makes a laudable attempt to open itself to external values with understanding, but no longer loves itself; in its own history it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer capable of perceiving what is great and pure». Evil comes from those who perpetrate and justify it, from those who are accomplices or weak toward the aggressors, and, in the West, from those who undermine its foundations.
There is an even more subtle and devastating evil, one that infiltrates among those who have no ideological doubts, but who are victims of a profound and seemingly invincible existential fatigue. In the realm of spiritual life, it is called “lukewarmness,” but it is often disguised as a kind of resentment and hatred toward one’s own identity, which recalls what Ratzinger said, who spoke precisely of a “strange” and “pathological” attitude, but which, it should be added, sometimes seems to come from an inner restlessness, a self-contempt that can be traced not only to the West, but also to oneself. This disease is the most serious, because it weakens many potential fighters, who, instead of embarking with joy and enthusiasm on the new evangelization, spend their time blaming others.
When God is silent.
Interesting article by Ferri focused on the text: «Behold, the days are coming—declares the Lord GOD—when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD» (Amos 8:11). It is perhaps one of the prophetic texts that best describes the spiritual crisis of our time, not because today we lack food, at least in much of the Western world, not because we lack words, since we live immersed in an incessant ocean of information, opinions, images, slogans, comments, and messages.
The prophet does not simply describe a time of silence, but announces a form of spiritual punishment: a time will come when the problem will not be that God has nothing more to say, but that man will no longer be able to hear Him. This is a crucial distinction. God continues to speak; man, however, can lose the ability to listen. The silence of God, in an absolute sense, only exists in hell. In fact, Sacred Scripture affirms that God allows Himself to be found by those who seek Him with a sincere heart (Jer 29:13). We can have open churches and large communities, produce documents, organize meetings, multiply conferences, publish books, and fill social networks with religious content. And yet, what Amos already foresaw can occur: a deep longing for the Word of God. The problem of Israel was not atheism. It was something much more subtle: a religiosity that could continue to function externally while the heart moved away from God. The true crisis of faith does not begin when man stops speaking of God, but when he continues to speak of God without listening to Him.
Hunger arises when something essential is lacking. And human beings can survive without many things; however, they cannot live fully without a word capable of telling them who they are, where they come from, where they are going, and what is the ultimate meaning of their existence. The Word of God is not simply a series of contents to be understood; it is, above all, Someone to encounter. The Word of God has a face. «The Word became flesh» (John 1:14). The Christian soul can find itself, in fact, in a paradoxical situation: possessing a great deal of religious information and very little intimacy with God. It can be familiar with formulas, debates, controversies, apparitions, interpretations, theological disputes, and even quotations from Scripture, without having truly learned to listen to the voice of the Lord.
We can have a religion reduced to an emotional experience: much intensity, little truth. We can have a religion reduced to an intellectual system: much conceptual precision, little prayer. Authentic Catholicism does not accept any of these reductions. Truth must become life, and life must be enlightened by the truth. We can possess the Word without being possessed by it. A Christian can read the Gospel to know what to think; a disciple reads it to allow Christ to transform him.
«what has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.»
Good reading.