Gallagher in Moscow.
The Roman Curia’s vacation period is coming to an end and activities are resuming. Diplomacy begins this period in Moscow. Gallagher will meet his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, but relations with Patriarch Kirill still need to be rebuilt. The death of Francis has not changed the Vatican diplomacy’s stance on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Likely topics of discussion would be general : bilateral relations, international cooperation, and various global issues. Obviously, attention will focus on the war initiated by Russia in 2022, which has caused significant disruptions in relations between the Federation and the Holy See, as well as between Catholics and Orthodox. It is no coincidence that the Vatican’s “foreign minister” has not visited Moscow since 2021. From 2009 came the mutual recognition of the status of the apostolic nunciature in Moscow and the Russian embassy to the Holy See. This achievement was reached mainly thanks to the improvement of dialogue with the Patriarchate of Moscow, which has always been an obstacle in Russian-Vatican relations. The Russian Orthodox hierarchy has still not forgiven Pope Francis’s sarcastic comment in an interview in which he described Patriarch Kirill as “Putin’s altar boy.” Between the Vatican and Moscow, especially in the ecumenical sphere , everything is somewhat reset. Another aspect of the trip is the meeting with local Catholics , always forgotten by Vatican authorities. Gallagher’s arrival will serve to strengthen ties with the Holy See and will culminate with the Mass to be celebrated on Thursday afternoon in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Moscow.
The “infinite gratitude” of Communion and Liberation.
This is how it appears in their official publication, and rightly so: “A cordon must be opened, for the Pope wants to thank the choir.” The visit to the Rimini Meeting of another Pope “who came from afar,” 44 years after John Paul II’s, was accompanied throughout his journey, on foot and at a good pace for a long time. “Receiving the Pope was the occasion to respond to a person who, by accepting the invitation to come to the Meeting, had already welcomed us beforehand; we only had to respond to his welcome. I did not have to explain anything to the Pope, who already knows everything about Augustine, so I let myself be guided by him, by his eyes, by the interest he showed. The experience I lived was one of sharing: an appointment, a trait, a concern of Saint Augustine.”
And if John Paul II’s task to the people of the Meeting 44 years ago was to “never tire of building the civilization of love,” Leo XIV has updated it in method. “May the movement, the groups, and the communities be a springboard from which to launch themselves fully into all reality. May they combat whatever would distance them from their brothers and sisters of different cultures, sensibilities, and backgrounds, especially from the poorest. On the contrary, go out to meet everyone!”
Zuppi’s Mass in Rimini.
Saint Michael banned.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court unanimously upheld on Thursday a court order preventing the city of Quincy from installing two statues of Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Florian outside its new public safety building. The ruling ratifies a decision by the Norfolk Superior Court in October 2025 that had suspended the project pending the outcome of the judicial process. The statues represent the traditional patron saints of police officers and firefighters, respectively. Mayor Thomas Koch and other municipal officials argued that the works were chosen to honor the courage and sacrifice of first responders, not to promote any religion. The sculptures are already finished and stored, while the new public safety complex is already completed and operational without them.
In response to this decision, Quincy spokesperson Lisa Aimola said the city will continue to defend itself in court. “The firefighters and police officers of Quincy risk their lives daily for this city, and these statues were chosen to honor their courage, service, and sacrifice.” “This decision is disappointing, but it is preliminary, and we will continue to fight to be able to commemorate our first responders as the law allows.”
“This decision suggests a desire to impose a rigid and absolutist standard in matters related to the separation of church and state, which is not in line with the traditional practices of the Commonwealth.” There are works of art with religious meaning in public buildings throughout Massachusetts, including the State House, the Boston Public Library, the Cambridge Public Library, Newton City Hall, and the Cary Library in Lexington. She added that numerous public schools are named after Protestant pastors.
The piety of the priest dismissed from Vicofaro.
A few days after the confirmation of his removal from the parish of Vicofaro , Father Massimo Biancalani published on social media a photo of Michelangelo’s Pietà, where, instead of the body of Christ, the Virgin holds in her lap that of a “migrant.” This was another gesture of protest and disappointment with which the priest welcomed the Holy See’s decision. “I must say it with courage: in our case, the Church did not protect us . It yielded to political blackmail. Vicofaro, this church-refuge, should have been closed and its pastor disqualified. And so it was. I felt betrayed and abandoned. In my case, the Church preferred to compromise with those in power and with unjust policies toward migrants. It chose to set the Gospel aside.” He is determined to continue the fight: “I move forward: with the poor, with determination, and without fear. There are still good seeds out there. We have sown well.”
The priest gets married.
“During my 37 years of service, and also during the years of preparation, I was able to grow and mature, and I have always felt that my Church supports me and grants me its benevolence. Without the Catholic Church, I would not be who I am today.” But he also states that he would not have been able to endure these 37 years without the support of his life companion. “It is time—as I feel—to reorder priorities, now that she has retired and the end of my professional career is approaching. She waited for me a long time. I am very grateful to her for that. Now it is enough.” “I am aware of the disappointment my decision will cause. I only hope that it will finally be accepted, although I know that I am currently making life difficult for many.” The priest expressly thanks Bishop Bätzing and his team “for the respectful treatment they have given my situation and for the consistency of their actions.” The diocesan spokesperson, Stephan Schnelle, stated in response to an inquiry: “We respect Father Andreas Unfried’s personal decision and thank him for his decades of service.” He waited to “secure” a pension, which in Germany is not small, and marries a veteran Catholic woman, at a good time. The diocese, of course, does not wish to sever ties with him; in this case, the problem is not Latin.
The origins of liberation theology.
An interesting article on the history of so-called liberation theology that we must not forget. This “infiltration” dates back to 1971 , when a Peruvian priest named Gustavo Gutiérrez published “A Theology of Liberation: Perspectives.” The central thesis was political, and the conceptual framework came from elsewhere: Christian salvation could not be reduced to an interior or transcendent event; salvation is liberation: a concrete, historical, and political liberation. And the poor are not poor by chance or by personal sin; they are poor because there is a class that exploits them . The Church’s mission, therefore, was not to console the poor by promising them heaven, but to accompany them in their struggle for historical liberation here on earth. Concern for the poor is authentically Christian and is not an invention of Gutiérrez or the left. Social doctrine defends the dignity of the worker, criticizes the unjust accumulation of wealth, and demands that the State protect the most vulnerable. Gutiérrez took that legitimate concern and reformulated it within a Marxist framework.
If salvation is essentially political, why are the sacraments necessary? Why are priests necessary? Why is Christ necessary? Liberation theology, taken to the extreme, can make the Church superfluous, even if, in the seminaries, it was said that the Church had to incarnate itself in the reality of the poor, and this sounded like compassion, mission, the Gospel.
John Paul II’s and Ratzinger’s response to liberation theology.
In 1979, John Paul II’s inaugural address before the Episcopal Conference of Mexico rejected the reinterpretation of Jesus as a political figure, the reduction of the Church’s mission to the transformation of social structures, and defended a notion of liberation inseparable from interior redemption and a personal relationship with God. Four years later, in Managua, John Paul II pointed his finger at Ernesto Cardenal, priest and Sandinista official, addressing the entire Latin American Church: a priest cannot simultaneously be a minister of a Marxist government and a minister of the Church.
In 1984, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under the direction of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, published the Instruction Libertatis Nuntius on certain aspects of liberation theology. The document does not condemn concern for the poor but reaffirms it; it does not deny the social dimension of sin but recognizes it. What it condemns with surgical precision is the adoption of Marxist analysis as a tool of theological interpretation. Ratzinger’s argument in that document is that Marxism is a conceptual system which, once adopted, transforms everything it touches. If the Marxist analysis of history as class struggle is adopted, the Gospel can no longer be read in any other way, because this interpretive framework determines everything. Libertatis Nuntius was followed, in 1986, by Libertatis Conscientia , which completed the argument by offering a positive doctrine of Christian freedom. Rome had carried out its intellectual work. The problem was that that intellectual work, however precise, did not erase twenty years of formation in the seminaries
Upon being elected Pope, Benedict XVI said: “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 full understanding, but no longer loves itself; it now only sees what is deplorable and destructive in its own history, while it is no longer capable of perceiving what is great and pure. […] Multiculturalism, which is encouraged and fostered continuously and with passion, is sometimes, above all, an abandonment and a denial of what is one’s own, an evasion of what is one’s own. But multiculturalism cannot exist without constant shared elements, without points of reference based on one’s own values.”
Pope Francis and progressivism.
Ratzinger was dismissed and the Church once again allowed Marxism—which had become a progressive ideology—to infiltrate Catholic doctrine. Many of today’s parish priests, trained in seminaries, are deeply imbued with that theology. In 2013 , Pope Francis received Gutiérrez in a private audience. His work had been the subject of Vatican investigation for decades and had been marginalized during the two previous pontificates. Bergoglio rehabilitated a language against which his predecessors had fought. Phrases like “killer economies,” “throwaway culture,” and “globalization of indifference” imply an analysis of structural causes and a biased political prescription. When a Pope uses this language, he is not necessarily endorsing Liberation Theology, but he is giving it new air. Liberation Theology did not destroy the Catholic Church, but it instilled in a generation of Latin American priests a way of seeing the world and the Gospel that still persists in parishes, theology faculties, and episcopal documents.
The Company and Paul IV.
And we conclude with another historical article that appears in the Jesuit magazine. Rome, summer of 1558. Within the walls of the Roman palaces, an important chapter opens for the future of a still very young religious order: the Society of Jesus. Saint Ignatius of Loyola had died almost two years earlier, and his followers had been gathered since June 19 in their first General Congregation, under the direction of Vicar Diego Laínez, who on July 2 would be elected Superior General. But for Paul IV, the reform of the Church passes through the return to established monastic forms, and it is precisely here that tension arises with the Jesuits. The Pontiff observes with some perplexity this new “Company” that does not pray the office in choir and that has a Superior General elected for life, a structure that in his eyes may seem excessively centralized.
«…you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel.»
Good reading.