By Nicole Olea / Catholic Standard , OSV News

HOLLYWOOD, Md. (OSV News) – Teenagers and young adults serving at St. John’s Summer Program at St. John Francis Regis Parish in Hollywood told the Catholic Standard, Washington’s archdiocesan news outlet, what draws young people to the Church and gives them a reason to stay.

They talked about friends who invited them, Catholics they admired, communities where they felt at home and moments that helped the faith become their own.

For many, those experiences helped them come to know Christ personally.

Start with an invitation

Several of the young people at St. John’s, a Catholic day camp for ages 4 to 14, said they found their way into Catholic community because someone invited them or encouraged them to come.

Betsy Pieniadz, 19, came from New Mexico after hearing about the program through people connected to St. John’s. Ethan Lansing, 18, learned about it from a friend at Ave Maria University in Florida.

Carmen Davidson, 21, arrived from Baylor University in Texas after a friend urged her to apply, while Caroline Grifone, 21, came from Pennsylvania through people already connected to the program.

Authentic relationships matter

Grifone said young people need to meet Catholics whose faith is part of their everyday lives.

“I met people who were involved in their faith but were also athletic, fun and outgoing,” she said. “That drew me in.”

Pieniadz said negative experiences with Catholics had caused her to drift away from the Church.

“Then I came here and met people who really lived their faith,” she said.

Addie Lyons, 19, said relationships can make young people more open to the faith. Rather than beginning with a theology talk, she said, counselors build friendships, have fun with the children and let questions about faith come naturally.

Build a place where they belong

Rachel Mroz, 22, became more involved in her faith through the Catholic Student Center at the University of Maryland and returned to St. John’s looking for that same kind of community during the summer.

She said young Catholics need people around them who encourage them in the faith, “other people who want to run to heaven with us.”

Rollins Don-Simmons, 19, said the community at St. John’s gave him confidence to seek out Catholic life at the University of Maryland.

For Summer Phan, 16, and Maria Northrup, 17, older staff members offered an example to follow. Both saw teenagers and college students return year after year, showing them what staying active in the faith could look like as they grew older.

Teach the faith so they can understand it

Don-Simmons said parishes hoping to reach young people should think carefully about how they communicate the faith.

“I think we can best engage young people in the faith by explaining the faith in a way that they can understand,” he told the Catholic Standard.

Carlton Costanzo, 17, made a similar point.

“Stay rooted in our tradition while also presenting it in a way that’s accessible to younger generations,” he said.

Christopher Damron, 19, said young people respond when the faith is explained clearly and in a way they can understand.

Keep Christ at the center

Many pointed to the Eucharist as central to Catholic life.

Lansing said helping young people understand what happens at Mass can change the way they see the Church.

“If more people really understood what is happening at Mass and believed it with their whole hearts, I think it would completely change the way they look at the Catholic faith,” he said.

Hannah Lawrence, 29, said friendships first brought her to St. John’s, but daily Mass and Eucharistic adoration helped transform her faith.

Help them ask what God wants for their lives

Several also spoke about faith in terms of vocation and discernment.

Pieniadz said she initially did not want to come to St. John’s, but eventually believed God was asking her to go.

“God called me to,” she said. “God told me to.” she said.

Lansing had spent months asking St. Joseph the Worker to help him find a summer job before his friend told him about St. John’s.

“This was the opportunity that opened up,” he said. “I took it as God showing me where he wanted me to be.” he said.

Costanzo is considering college, military service, the trades and priesthood as he discerns his future.

“I think every Catholic man should be open to the possibility of seminary until he’s called to marriage,” he said.

For the young people at St. John’s, faith has grown through friendships, invitations and the example of people who took their relationship with Christ seriously.

And many of them are now doing the same for someone else.

(Nicole Olea is a reporter at Catholic Standard, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Washington. This story was originally published by the Catholic Standard and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.)

By Simone Orendain , OSV News

(OSV News) – Joseph Connor had his back turned to the large window of his 36th floor office when he “suddenly more felt than heard” the massive impact of a commercial jet slamming into the north tower of the World Trade Center a third of a mile away on Sept. 11, 2001.

As Connor watched pages and pages of office paper slowly rain down from the burning skyscraper against the clear sunny sky, the realization hit that his cousin Steven Schlag, a bond trader at the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, worked high up in one of the towers.

The banker suspected the number of lives lost was quickly rising as he frantically tried to call his cousin, a very close relative. Then, the middle of the second tower burst into a fiery ball, struck by a second jet. For Connor, this confirmed a terrorist attack.

“How could this happen again?” he remembers asking himself. “(Steven) had a wife – a foreign-born wife, like my mom was – and three kids. My mom had two. But why, God? What? How did you let this happen?”

He knew well the anguish of a young widow left with young children. It was the story of his mother on the day she lost her husband to a terrorist bombing 26 years earlier, at a historic tavern near his Wall Street office.

Connor, 60, recently described to OSV News the devastation that unfolded before his eyes in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, as the United States prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The al-Qaida-led attacks in New York and Washington, with a thwarted attempt failing in Pennsylvania, left close to 3,000 people dead.

Connor said he questioned God after seeing “specks jumping” from the blazing towers to their deaths on 9/11.

“How are people left to make a choice: whether to burn or drop 1,000 feet?” Connor asked. “So, that’s something I had struggled with. But I think over time, my faith has gotten much stronger, and certainly in the last decade or so, I think it has even gotten more so.”

Connor, a regular Massgoer, credits his stronger faith after the losses in part to his son, an Augustinian friar studying for the priesthood. He said his son’s faith has helped him to “become more introspective … and understand what it means to be Catholic … to really embrace God and embrace Jesus.”

Now a New Jersey-based anti-terrorism advocate, Connor lost his father days after his ninth birthday. On Jan. 24, 1975, 33-year-old Frank Connor was at lunch at Fraunces Tavern in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district when he and three other men were killed, and nearly 60 were injured in a bombing. The Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), a Puerto Rican separatist group, claimed responsibility.

Connor said he has had no inclination to walk away from God, unlike some others he knew who lost loved ones on 9/11. The experience, he said, of losing his father and being raised by a mother and grandmother who were devout, Irish women kept him grounded and better able to handle the loss of his close cousin, whom he described as tough and funny.

“We went to church and all those things, but Grandma Connor always instilled in us never to be raised with hate,” said Connor.

His cousin Jean Schlag Nebbia of Naples, Florida, also clung to her faith shortly after her older brother Steven, who was 41, died in the attack.

“I never blamed God for 9/11. I felt that you’re given the gift of life, and then you’re given the gift of choice. And sometimes there’s bad people and they make bad choices, and other people are hurt through bad choices,” Nebbia, a former special needs teacher’s aide, told OSV News.

Three months after the attacks, she came to a realization.

Nebbia, 63, described watching news footage of the burning towers obsessively, trying to find her brother among those jumping out of the buildings. On the third month of non-stop viewing, her husband gave her some advice a Christian coworker had given him: “to say ‘I’m going to put this in God’s hands.'”

“The moment he said that to me is the moment I started to live … giving up my worries and giving up the unknown,” Nebbia told OSV News. “You know, ‘God, I need a good night’s sleep. I’m going to put this in your hands.’ That, to me, was a turning point. And I don’t know if I could have done that if I didn’t have my Catholic base.”

Nebbia said her 12 years of Catholic education and growing up as a regular Massgoer gave her a solid grounding in faith in God’s providence. She said she goes to God in prayer for almost every aspect of her life because “he has my back” just like her older brother, whom she was very close to, “always did.”

Vera Murphy Trayner also leaned heavily on her faith after losing her husband, Patrick Murphy.

On the morning of the attack, Trayner prayed the rosary fervently as she rushed home from her son’s nursery school while pushing him in his stroller. Murphy, 36 and the vice president for technology at the resource and management consulting firm Marsh McLennan, was on the 97th floor of the first tower that was hit three floors below. His department had moved there just months prior.

Trayner’s go-to devotion “always” came through for her with prayers answered.

“I prayed and prayed and prayed that Patrick would find a way out. He was so smart … and athletic and young … and it was the first prayer that I made that was not answered,” Trayner told OSV News.

She said she “was disappointed” but also held firm to the belief that her husband’s death “happened for a reason” and she “had to accept it.”

“Well, it’s free will. The terrorists, obviously they’re guided by evil and they were able to do such an evil act,” Trayner said. “I don’t want to feel sorry for myself because all through history, there have been traumas, wars. There’s death. There’s fires.”

Now 60, Trayner said her studies at Jesuit-run Boston College opened her up further to the faith during difficulties.

“I was able to ask questions and being a woman in the Catholic faith, being a widow in the Catholic faith, being a mother, I read quite a bit of different books … answering my own questions and talking with people,” she said.

Trayner, a Tampa-based college counselor who remarried in 2006, has relied on the Holy Spirit “to give me the right words,” the Blessed Mother to intercede in raising her children, and the saints, especially Joan of Arc, to guide her through every major challenge.

Still, she said, as she described breaking into a sweat while speaking to OSV News, she remains haunted by the thought of how her first husband must have suffered as the north tower became engulfed in an inferno and collapsed.

Nebbia admitted that as a Catholic, in recent weeks she has begun to struggle with forgiving the terrorists.

“I just feel like I don’t need to forgive them. That’s not my job. So now I’m questioning myself, like, ‘Alright, how do I go about forgiving these people, how?’ That was their goal. They achieved their goal. Now, I question that part of me,” she said.

Connor said he has come to accept his family’s tragic losses.

“Maybe I didn’t understand the reason, and maybe I don’t understand the reason why Steve was killed and the other 3,000 people, but I do feel that God does have a reason for it,” he said.

(Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Chicago.)

By James Ramos

HOUSTON (OSV News) – The death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo following an encounter with federal immigration agents has shaken one of Houston’s most deeply rooted immigrant communities.

Since his death on July 7, family members, community advocates and Church leaders have questioned the circumstances surrounding his death and called for accountability and a full investigation.

The place where it happened sits in the heart of Magnolia Park, a neighborhood built by generations of Mexican American and immigrant families.

Along Canal Street, taquerias, refresquerías and meat markets share blocks with modest homes, aging storefronts and family-owned businesses that have anchored the East End for decades.

Just a block away, Canal Street intersects South Sgt. Macario García Drive, named for the Mexican immigrant and World War II hero who became the first Mexican-born recipient of the Medal of Honor. History doesn’t feel distant in Magnolia Park. It’s woven into the street signs.

On July 25, more than 300 Catholics, clergy, relatives and community supporters gathered in Magnolia Park for a vigil Mass to honor Salgado Araujo, with hundreds more joining the 1.5-mile prayer procession and a candlelight vigil.

Just before dusk settled over Canal Street, where the procession ended, and hundreds of vigil candles began to glow against the East End’s fading light, Ronaldo Salgado Araujo slipped away from the crowd.

He didn’t say anything. He simply walked to a patch of pavement on the 6800 block of Canal Street, bent down and touched the ground where his father died 18 days earlier.

The moment lasted mere seconds, reflecting the somber tone of a day marked by prayer and calls for answers.

The afternoon began at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, a cornerstone of Magnolia Park, where worshippers filled the pews as Archbishop Joe S. Vásquez of Galveston-Houston celebrated Mass and called for both compassion and reform.

“Human dignity and national security are not in conflict,” Archbishop Vásquez told the congregation in Spanish. “Both are possible when people of goodwill work together.”

At the Mass, Archbishop Vásquez acknowledged the pain surrounding Salgado Araujo’s death while placing it within a broader moral framework.

“As Catholics who believe that all people are created in the image and likeness of God, we mourn every situation in which human life comes to an unnatural end,” he said.

But Archbishop Vásquez also used the occasion to revisit a larger issue.

Archbishop Vásquez echoed what he said July 15 after Salgado Araujo’s death, calling for meaningful immigration reform and an end to indiscriminate deportations.

“The U.S. Catholic bishops have repeatedly called for enforcement efforts that are targeted, proportional and humane,” Archbishop Vásquez said, adding that lasting reform requires “peaceful dialogue, mutual respect and a commitment to charity.”

“Only with Christ’s help and by working together will we have a nation under God with liberty and justice for all,” he said.

Among Salgado Araujo’s family members attending the Mass was his 29-year-old son, Ronaldo, who with his girlfriend carried forward the gifts during the offertory procession.

After Mass, the congregation stepped into the thick Houston heat and gathered outside the church.

Auxiliary Bishop Italo Dell’Oro of Galveston-Houston, who concelebrated the Mass with several other local priests, offered a blessing before the walk began.

Soon, the procession stretched across several blocks before it ended at the place where Salgado Araujo died.

Clergy walked alongside parishioners. Religious sisters moved through the crowd carrying candles, signs and rosaries. Faith leaders from multiple traditions joined the procession, which was organized by an interfaith coalition with support from the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.

As they walked, participants prayed the rosary and Divine Mercy chaplet in English and Spanish. Hymns floated between prayers. Responses echoed off warehouses, storefronts and passing traffic.

Drivers honked in support. Some waved from open windows. Others raised fists.

For most of the journey, Ronaldo Salgado Araujo carried a large wooden cross adorned with roses that towered over the procession, often casting a long shadow down Navigation Boulevard as the clouds dodged the setting sun.

At times he pressed it tightly against his face. At other times he leaned on it as prayers and chants continued around him.

Lázaro Contreras, director of Hispanic ministry for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, said the Church’s presence was intended to show accompaniment for both the family and the broader community.

“The Church is always with us in every dimension of our lives, and this is one of them,” Contreras said. “The presence of our bishops, our shepherds, attending their flock is very important for the family and for the community.”

Contreras said Salgado Araujo’s story resonates because it feels familiar. He described him as a hardworking father who spent years building a life and helping his children succeed.

“In different ways, many of us feel that he represents our fathers and our families,” Contreras said.

Concerns about immigration enforcement continue to surface throughout the archdiocese, he said.

“Some people called me and said, ‘This has happened in our community. Some of our members have been detained and taken,'” Contreras said. “It’s something that is active and happening.”

Many Catholics, he said, are searching for guidance amid uncertainty.

“They are looking for guidance and for refuge,” Contreras said. “In these moments, they want to know the Church is standing with them and defending their dignity.”

Once the faithful arrived at Canal Street, Ronaldo Salgado Araujo carried the cross to a house near where his father died and set it down.

He addressed the vigil, thanking those “who are supporting us and calling for justice for my father.”

But he urged attendees not to focus solely on his family’s loss and referenced Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant and father who was fatally shot during a July 13 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Biddeford, Maine. Federal officials later said Durán Guerrero was not the intended target.

“Please do not forget that justice is still needed for Johan,” Ronaldo Salgado Araujo said. “Justice is needed for everyone, for all who have been victims.”

He then invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words from the 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” saying: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

(James Ramos is content editor for the Texas Catholic Herald, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. This story was originally published by the Texas Catholic Herald and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.)

By Kimberley Heatherington
WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Artificial intelligence is quickly bringing about the end of the world as people know it – but Pope Leo XIV has an urgent message for everyone: Don’t run from the change AI brings; instead, engage it.

That was just one of the take-aways from an Aug. 1 conference at the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington exploring the pope’s recent encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.”

Peter Cooney, co-founder of the website platform Acutis AI – named in honor of St. Carlo Acutis and designed as a Catholic alternative to mainstream AI systems by offering responses rooted in Church teaching – walked attendees through Pope Leo’s lengthy document.

“He opens up on a strong note: Humanity is facing a pivotal choice. He gets straight to it. If you look at other encyclicals, they usually open on a much softer note,” said Cooney, 21, an incoming senior and Economics major at the University of Dallas. “So I think what Pope Leo is telling us is: This is important – listen up; pay attention.”

And there’s good reason to – given the speed with which AI is spreading into all corners of everyday life.

Cooney noted that on Nov. 30, 2022, the launch of ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot, was announced on the social media platform Twitter, now known as X. Within five days, it had over a million users – now, less than four years later, there are over a billion monthly active users.

“This is the fastest growing technology we’ve ever seen in the world,” Cooney said. “And I think there are a few things to note about this technology that makes it different than in the past.”

Among those differences, he said, is the diversity of AI users (everyone from kids to the military); concentrated AI ownership (Cooney estimated less than 10 companies own 95% of the current market); and the competitive AI race between the U.S. and China (with the goal of weaponizing the powerful technology).

“So what you have is a few companies in two of the most powerful nations of the world competing to create the smartest AI models; to have a military advantage,” Cooney emphasized. “And that same technology is on kids’ Chromebooks in their classrooms. This is the world that the Holy Father is addressing.”

Still, the Catholic Church is not without answers.

With this encyclical, Pope Leo has “established the Church as a moral authority on this topic,” Cooney said. “Which gives tech leaders good reason to read the rest of what he has to say.”

The pontiff, Cooney said, notes three particular AI dangers: the ease of obtaining results; its impression of objectivity where it doesn’t actually exist; and its ability to simulate human communication.

While AI can be genuinely helpful, “If we’re never thinking through things anymore and just outsourcing all of that to AI, then we’ll lose the ability to think,” suggested Cooney, “which is a huge part of what makes us human.”

He also confirmed that for AI, “every answer is based on probability. It’s basically doing math and finding the highest probability of the next word being correct,” Cooney said. “AI is not neutral.”

As to human communication, Cooney added, “If we’re not careful, we can allow AI to slowly take away our human relationships … it can deteriorate human relationships.”

Cooney observed that Pope Leo says these threats place truth, work and freedom in jeopardy.

Truth, because AI amplifies the problem of misinformation through the ability to manipulate images or videos; work, because using AI to replace employees compromises their human dignity; and freedom, because it’s easy to feel like you’re choosing while your choices are actually heavily influenced by AI.

And yet, Cooney confirmed, Pope Leo is ultimately hopeful.

“He doesn’t say to hide from AI or run away from it. He acknowledges all the dangers and the confused and afraid state of the world,” Cooney said. “But he calls us to build. He says, despite this downward spiral, we can also glimpse a great part of humanity that is striving … to build the holy city.”

Pope Leo’s “Magnifica Humanitas” commissioning of people to take up their role as disciples of Jesus Christ in an “era of digital transformation” is indeed evocative.

“Let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the ‘construction site’ of our time,” Pope Leo writes in the encyclical. He urged people “not to be passive spectators of social and cultural fractures, nor mere commentators on what is crumbling, but men and women prepared to enter the construction sites of history – research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions and local communities – in order to rebuild what has collapsed and protect what is threatened.”

Pope Leo’s call to men and women today, Cooney said, “is to build without fear, to protect our children, and to trust everything to Mary.”

In order to live out Pope Leo’s summons, Cooney noted three personal suggestions.

“We can’t be afraid of AI. We have to learn how to use it – and learn how to use it well,” he said.

He also urged parents “to have conversations with kids – and have a conversation with their schools, to find out how is AI being used. Because it’s being used in pretty much every school … it’s important that they have an understanding of how it works, and how it has problems sometimes.”

And finally, Cooney advised prayer.

“I would say try to pray a few Hail Marys every day for world peace,” he said, “and that the world can figure this out together.”

(OSV News correspondent Kimberley Heatherington reported from Washington.)

By Kurt Jensen
WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Independence Day is a reminder that Americans’ “inalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – are gifts from God, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl said July 4 in the nation’s capital.

Cardinal Wuerl, the retired archbishop of Washington, delivered the homily at a Mass of Thanksgiving for America’s 250th anniversary held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. The quietly dignified service was a cool reprise from the 100-degree heat and high humidity outside.

“We can claim to be free because we have been created free and equal by God,” Cardinal Wuerl said.

And that, he said, can be traced, in American history, all the way back to the Mayflower Compact in New England in 1620. The compact, he reminded the congregation, only had two elements: “The law of God and the need of the common good.”

In addition, American identity “doesn’t rest on blood ties, ethnic origin or national heritage.”

“Our beginnings as a nation celebrate our freedom,” the cardinal observed, calling on the congregation to “do our part now to honor that promise for everyone.”

In 1776, “We as a people collectively started down the pathway that eventually resulted in our national independence. We claimed our freedom as a nation and our civil liberties as a people,” he said.

This event, he added, “calls for our reflection, our celebration and our prayers of thanksgiving as we renew today our appreciation of our historic heritage and focus on the present effort today to live up to all those ideals that have so identified us as a nation and as a people.”

Thomas Jefferson, when he authored the declaration, told others that it did not contain ideas original to himself, but rather expressed “the common beliefs of people of his day,” Cardinal Wuerl said.

Jefferson would call the Declaration “an expression of the American mind and spirit, deeply rooted in the thoughts and faith of the American people,” he said.

As a result, the cardinal added, the many references of “our faith in God” should not come as a surprise to anyone.

“Even in this quintessentially civil declaration, we should not be surprised to find so many references to our faith in God,” he said.

So on the Fourth of July, “We renew our identity as a people who claim a God-given right: To life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our beginnings as a nation have religious roots, deep in the convictions of the people in those original 13 states and those who we refer to as our founders,” he said.

Cardinal Wuerl, a native of Pittsburgh, was archbishop of Washington from 2006 to 2018.

One of the principal concelebrants was Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the new Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.

Delivering a message from Pope Leo IV, Archbishop Caccia said July 4, 1776, was “the defining moment in the history of the United States of America, and giving voice to the ideas of liberty, equality, pursuit of happiness, justice, and democratic types of government.”

Religious freedom, and the ability to practice one’s faith openly without fear, has long been central to the American promise, Archbishop Caccia said.

By Jean Gonzalez
ORLANDO, Fla. (OSV News) – A sea of white robes and zucchettos of pink and magenta in the pews. A statue of Jesus welcoming the faithful with his exposed Sacred Heart upon the foot of the altar.

A setting fit for a June 11 Mass that united U.S. bishops gathered for their spring plenary June 10-12. They left the second of two days of public sessions at Omni Resort in ChampionsGate for a half-hour drive up Interstate 4 for the spiritual refuge that is the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe in Orlando.

And the Mass was a momentous one as it served to formally consecrate the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City incensed the altar after processing in from the thick humidity and cloudy skies of a typical Orlando afternoon outside the shrine. The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was joined on the altar by bishops and deacons of the Orlando Diocese.

“Clothe us, Lord God, with the virtues of the heart of your son, and set us aflame with his love,” the archbishop prayed in opening the Mass.

More than 200 bishops present, along with about 150 observers, mostly benefactors and staff of the Diocese of Orlando. The monstrance used ahead of Mass for Eucharistic adoration was from the Servants of the Pierced Hearts, a Miami-based religious institute.

The relics of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque – the French Visitation sister who experienced visions of Jesus revealing his Sacred Heart – were also present at the Mass, on loan for the consecration from the Knights of Columbus.

In his homily, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore described the Sacred Heart of Jesus not as an “abstract devotion,” but as a “visible sign of love.”

He explained why the Church consecrates. He described it as an act of faith and acknowledgment of the need for God’s mercy, wisdom and guidance. It is also an act of hope. It is “a heart that has known joy and sorrow, friendship and betrayal, suffering and sacrifice,” he said.

The act of consecration is an act of faith and hope, the archbishop said, but it is also an acknowledgment of God’s faithful work and love in the world and how we as people and as a Church have not always “clearly reflected that love.”

“Indeed, it is sometimes obscured almost beyond recognition,” the archbishop added. “To be sure, there have been moments of extraordinary witness and holiness. But there have also been moments of failure, division and sin. Consecration requires the humility to acknowledge both.”

And why the Sacred Heart? Because it reveals a savior who “desires not merely our obedience, but our friendship; not simply our service, but our communion with Him,” he said.

“To consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart is ultimately to accept Christ’s invitation to remain in His love and to allow that love to shape every aspect of our lives, public and private,” Archbishop Lori said. “It is a declaration that the future does not belong merely to political movements, economic forces, or human plans. The future belongs to God.”

The act of consecration does not just happen among the shepherds, but also the sheep. In speaking to the laity both in the pews at the shrine and watching on the livestream, Archbishop Lori said the act of consecration is one the faithful and leaders do together.

“This consecration is not something the bishops do for you. It is something we do together,” he said. “The renewal of the Church and our nation will not come through declarations alone. It will come through disciples who remain in Christ’s love and bear the good fruit of holiness in families, parishes, communities and in their daily lives.”

The Sacred Heart reconciles divisions and transforms hardened hearts, the archbishop said.

“It means building communities – ecclesial and civil – where truth is proclaimed clearly and charity is practiced generously. It means resisting the temptation to define ourselves by division, ideology or resentment,” Archbishop Lori said. “We consecrate our nation, not because it is perfect, but because it is beloved by God. We entrust to the Heart of Christ our achievements and failures, our hopes and anxiety, our present challenges and our future aspirations.”

(Jean Gonzalez, editor with Florida Catholic Media, is helping cover the bishops’ spring plenary for OSV News.)

By George P. Matysek, Jr.
BALTIMORE (OSV News) – Carrying a golden monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament, Father Michael DeAscanis paced his 227-step climb up downtown Baltimore’s Washington Monument June 10, repeatedly praying one complete “Glory Be” for every 10 steps until he reached the top.

The steady spiral ascent brought the priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore more than 120 feet above the city to a lookout inside the historic monument. There, framed by windows facing in every direction, he raised the monstrance and traced the Sign of the Cross – blessing Baltimore from north, south, east and west.

Below, more than 200 people gathered outside the monument, designed in 1815 by American architect Robert Mills, who later designed the Washington Monument in Washington.

As Father DeAscanis offered a prayer for Baltimore and the nation, the crowd – wet from morning showers – sang religious and patriotic hymns, including “God Bless America.”

The poignant moment was part of the June 9-11 Baltimore leg of the 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which began May 24 in St. Augustine, Florida, and is making its way up the East Coast to Maine and then back down to Philadelphia as part of celebrations surrounding America’s 250th anniversary. Nine young adults, known as “perpetual pilgrims,” are on the route and plan to travel every mile.

Held under the theme “One Nation Under God,” the pilgrimage arrived in the Baltimore Archdiocese June 9. The June 10 events in Baltimore began with morning Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the United States’ first Catholic cathedral.

Kathy Bentz, a parishioner of Our Lady of Hope in Dundalk, Maryland, took a day off from work to attend the pilgrimage. Faith is needed more than ever, she said, because people are “looking for hope.”

“I need to be around people who get me and I get them,” she said. “And that’s why I’m here. I feel like I’m in the presence of good and it makes me want to do better.”

The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage began its journey through the Baltimore archdiocese with a June 9 procession at the site of the nation’s first monument to George Washington – a stoic stone tower in Boonsboro, just off the Appalachian Trail in Washington Monument State Park.

As the nine perpetual pilgrims followed the Eucharist under a baldacchino to the monument, they were joined by 130 others from all over the archdiocese and beyond to watch Father Jeffery Dufresne of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis take the holy Eucharist to the top of the monument and down, before presenting it on the altar.

“It was extremely beautiful to see Jesus overlooking the valley that he created,” said Zachary Robinson, a Catholic from Westminster, Maryland, as he hiked back. He called it “an experience of God just delighting in the beauty of his creation.”

From Boonsboro, the pilgrimage traveled to Hagerstown, where close to 450 people attended Mass at St. Mary June 9 before joining a procession on the streets around the church.

From Hagerstown, the pilgrimage went to Baltimore for the June 10 morning procession and then continued to Severna Park for an afternoon retreat focused on the Sacred Heart. The pilgrims ended the day in Annapolis, Maryland’s capital and home to the U.S. Naval Academy, with a procession beginning at the city’s historic St. Mary’s Church, followed by sunset Eucharist adoration.

St. Mary’s campus includes the birthplace of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Carroll was the cousin of Archbishop John Carroll, the first bishop of Baltimore.

While a thunderstorm greeted everyone as they arrived at St. Mary, only a few raindrops were falling when the Eucharistic procession to the State House began. Singing songs and saying prayers in both English and Spanish, participants waved white flags, carried signs saying “Jesus, I Love You” and smiled at those gathered to watch the procession.

As they walked, the nine perpetual pilgrims reached out to those lining the parade route asking if they knew what the procession was about and sharing information about the Eucharist.

“It’s part of our ministry,” said pilgrim Raymond Martinez II of the personal encounters, noting that along the way he has met both non-Catholics and Catholics who have lapsed in their faith.

The pilgrimage continued from the Archdiocese of Baltimore into the Diocese of Wilmington, which encompasses the state of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore, June 11-12.

Pilgrims then plan to spend the June 12-14 weekend in the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, with a stop in Gloucester City to commemorate Fort Nassau, the state’s first European settlement.

Since its Pentecost Sunday launch, the pilgrimage has traveled through the dioceses of St. Augustine, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and Arlington, Virginia; and the Archdiocese of Washington.

(George P. Matysek Jr. is the managing editor for Catholic Review, the newspaper of the Baltimore Archdiocese. Contributing to this story was Catholic Review Media news correspondent Katie V. Jones and OSV News.)

By Mark Zimmermann

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – While flashy events are planned in the U.S. capital for the Independence Day weekend, a prayerful commemoration of the United States’ 250th anniversary unfolded June 5-6 as the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage came to Washington to renew and deepen faith in Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

The pilgrimage included a special blessing of America near the Washington Monument on the evening of June 5, a Eucharistic procession through downtown Washington the next day, followed by a Vigil Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the solemnity of Corpus Christi.

“Today we walk with Jesus Christ our Redeemer, our Savior. We walk with him in the streets of our nation’s capital,” Father Charles Trullols, the director of the Catholic Information Center, said in his homily during a June 6 Mass outside the center before leading its fourth annual Eucharistic procession through the city.

This year’s procession was held in conjunction with the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage’s arrival in Washington. An estimated crowd of 1,000 people attended the Mass and then prayerfully processed through the city, following Father Trullols and other priests who held the Eucharist aloft in a monstrance beneath a canopy, passing the city’s office buildings, public squares and landmarks, including within sight of the White House. Hundreds of people knelt reverently on the sidewalk and on closed-off sections of streets.

The 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage — with the theme “One Nation Under God” — began May 24 in St. Augustine, Florida, and will wind through most of the 13 original colonies, traveling about 2,200 miles before arriving in Philadelphia July 4 to commemorate with prayer and Eucharistic devotion the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The pilgrimage’s St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Route is placed under the patronage of the religious sister and Italian immigrant who in 1946 became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized.

In his homily at the Mass, Father Trullols said the phrase “one nation under God” should be more than a patriotic slogan.

“A nation remains ‘under God’ only if its people place God first,” said Father Trullols, a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei.

The priest said that ways Catholics can put God first include through daily prayer, attending Mass, receiving the sacrament of confession, caring for the poor, remaining faithful in marriage and pursuing holiness in everyday life.

“Today’s procession is not a parade,” he said, emphasizing that it would offer a public witness to the Catholic belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist.

Father Trullols said early Christians understood that the Eucharist is not just a symbol — it is Jesus, the Bread of Life who transforms people’s lives. He noted how Mother Cabrini worked tirelessly to minister to poor immigrants, drawing her strength from praying before the Eucharist in the tabernacle, and he also pointed out how Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, who evangelized millions through his radio shows and TV programs, prayed before the Eucharist in a daily Holy Hour, no matter how busy he was.

Noting the importance of such Eucharistic devotion, Father Trullols said, “There is where saints are made.”

The evening before, Father Trullols had received the Blessed Sacrament at the Basilica of St. Mary in Alexandria, Virginia. Then he joined the nine young adult “perpetual pilgrims” accompanying the Eucharist in the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, as their Ford Transit Van crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge to Washington.

A press statement from the pilgrimage’s organizers noted that bridge, “long recognized as a symbol of national unity and reconciliation between North and South, serves as a fitting gateway for bringing Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, into the heart of the nation’s capital.”

After the pilgrimage vehicle arrived on the National Mall on the evening of June 5, Father Trullols led a Eucharistic procession toward the grounds near the base of the Washington Monument, and he offered a symbolic blessing for the nation within sight of that illuminated monument and the U.S. Capitol in the distance.

Later that day, the perpetual pilgrims visited the St. John Paul II National Shrine in northeast Washington before attending Mass at the adjacent basilica, where Bishop-elect designate Gary R. Studniewski was principal celebrant and homilist.

By instituting the Eucharist, Jesus “wanted for us to know, to see and to even feel that He is still among us not just a symbol, not just half a locket with the promise we will get the other half when we get to heaven, but his real body and blood right here,” said Bishop-elect designated Studniewski, whose episcopal ordination as an auxiliary bishop of Washington is scheduled for July 7.

“And we do more than just see and touch his body and blood: We take Jesus into ourselves as food for our perilous journey,” the bishop-elect said.

Speaking at the shrine prior to that Mass, perpetual pilgrim John Paul Flynn said, “accompanying Jesus is a one-of-a-kind experience, a really beautiful experience.”

“We are having Jesus in the very center of our nation’s capital,” said Flynn, a native of the Washington area and a student at The Catholic University of America. “We are bringing Jesus to where all the decisions are made.”

Saying he was blessed to “travel with Jesus every single day,” Flynn called it very special to “see Jesus walking our streets, walking the same steps I have walked.”

(Mark Zimmermann is editor of the Catholic Standard, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Washington. Richard Szczepanowski, the Catholic Standard’s managing editor, contributed to this story. This story was originally published by the Catholic Standard and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.)