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European and Asian diplomats have claimed a territorial settlement in Ukraine could send a “dangerous message”

Officials in Western Europe and Asia have claimed US President Donald Trump's reported framework to end the Ukraine conflict could set a precedent for territorial conquest, CNN reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources.

The framework, which has not been officially confirmed by the White House, reportedly includes US recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and acknowledgement of Moscow’s control over large parts of four former Ukrainian regions that have joined Russia. US Vice President J.D. Vance has also stated that the administration is considering the option to “freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.”

CNN cited several unnamed diplomats who criticized the proposed settlement, claiming it would “reward” Russian President Vladimir Putin and send a “dangerous message” to other leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping.

“This is about the fundamental principles of international law,” one Eastern European diplomat told CNN, claiming that “if one country in Europe is forced to give up parts of its own legal territory… no country in Europe or elsewhere can feel safe, NATO or no NATO.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied having any intention to strike NATO or EU countries, or claim their territories, accusing Western officials of “fearmongering” in order to justify further militarization.

Nevertheless, many Eastern European governments, such as Poland and the Baltic states, have cited the supposed threat of a Russian attack as justification for increasing defense budgets and deploying additional forces. 

The CNN report comes as US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to meet with Russian officials in Moscow for another round of talks in the coming days. Trump has warned that Washington could abandon its diplomatic efforts altogether if no significant progress is made in the peace effort soon.

Trump has publicly expressed frustration with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, whom he has accused of obstructing peace efforts by refusing to even consider any territorial concessions. At the same time, the US president has suggested that he has found Russia easier to negotiate with than Ukraine. 

Moscow has welcomed the Trump administration’s attempts to settle the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated this week that Moscow and Washington are “moving in the right direction” with regard to reaching a peace deal.

Russian officials have repeatedly said that Moscow remains open to a negotiated solution, but have emphasized that any peace agreement must reflect the territorial realities on the ground and address the root causes of the conflict.

The US president has claimed that even Zelensky understands the peninsula will remain under Moscow’s control in a final settlement

The Crimean Peninsula will remain a part of Russia under a final settlement of the Ukraine conflict, US President Donald Trump has said in an interview with Time Magazine published on Friday.

Crimea officially joined the Russian Federation in 2014 after a referendum that followed a Western-backed coup in Kiev. Ukraine and its backers have dismissed the results of the referendum as illegitimate, and Kiev has continued to claim sovereignty over the peninsula, vowing to take it back by any means necessary.

In an interview to mark his first 100 days in office, Trump said Crimea “went to the Russians” long ago and suggested that “everyone understands” that Ukraine will not be able to get it back.

“Crimea will stay with Russia” under a final settlement of the Ukraine conflict, Trump went on to say, adding that even Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky understands this. “It’s been with them for a long time,” the US president stated, noting that Russia had its submarines there “long before any period that we’re talking about” and that the majority of Crimeans speak Russian.

Trump also stressed that the peninsula was “given” to Russia by former US President Barack Obama, claiming that the whole conflict is “Obama’s war,” which “should have never happened.”

Since returning to office in January, Trump has been pressuring both Moscow and Kiev to settle the conflict. During last year’s election campaign, he said he would end the hostilities “within 24 hours” of entering the White House. He told Time, however, that he said this “figuratively” as an “exaggeration.”

Recently, Trump has signaled that he has grown frustrated with the lack of progress on reaching a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. He has expressed dissatisfaction with Zelensky, saying he has found Russia much easier to negotiate with than the Ukrainian leader. In a Truth Social post this week, the US president criticized Zelensky for refusing to even consider any territorial concessions.

Russia has expressed its appreciation for Trump’s peace efforts and has repeatedly indicated that it is open to negotiations. However, Russian officials have stressed that a final peace deal must respect the territorial realities on the ground and address the root causes of the conflict, such as Ukraine’s NATO aspirations.

In his interview with Time, Trump acknowledged that Ukraine would likely never be able to join NATO. He cited Kiev’s ambitions to enter the US-led bloc as the issue that “caused the war to start.”

“If that weren’t brought up, there would have been a much better chance that [the conflict] wouldn’t have started,” he said.

ROME – Fundamentally, every conclave shapes up as a referendum on the papacy that just ended: Do we want to keep going in the same direction, or do we want to change?

After the death of John Paul II in 2005, the vote was overwhelming for continuity, which is how you got to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, John Paul’s right-hand man, as Pope Benedict XVI in just four ballots; in 2013 the decision was massively for change, explaining the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as Pope Francis in just five.

If we assume the same choice will shape the 2025 edition, then it’s worth asking who the continuity candidate might be this time – and it’s hard to think of a more obvious answer than 69-year-old Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, arguably as close to a potential “Pope Francis II” as one will find among the plausible contenders.

Not only is his background in the Community of Sant’Egidio, by far Francis’s favorite among the “new movements” in the Catholic Church, but Francis gave Zuppi the historically influential post in Bologna in 2015, chose him as president of the Italian conference in 2022, and also tapped Zuppi in 2023 as his personal peace envoy for the war in Ukraine. Short of pointing a finger and publicly shouting, “This is my beloved son, upon whom my favor rests,” it’s difficult to think of anything else a pontiff might do to signal that someone has his trust.

Zuppi returned the favour, backing Francis at every controversial turn during his papacy, from the decision in 2015 to open a cautious door to communion for Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the church – Zuppi called it a blow for “closeness” to people doing their best – to the 2024 authorisation of blessings for people in same-sex unions, which he said placed the church “on the horizon of mercy”.

His liberal credentials certainly aren’t in any doubt. For instance, he contributed the foreword to the Italian edition of American Jesuit Father James Martin’s 2017 book Building a Bridge, arguing for greater tolerance and inclusivity for the LGBT community.

A native Roman, Zuppi was born in 1955 as the fifth of six children. He was almost literally born into ecclesiastical service: His father Enrico was the longtime editor of an illustrated weekly supplement to L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, while his mother was the niece of the legendary Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, a veteran Vatican official who played a key role in the Second Vatican Council and later became the very first prefect of the newly created Congregation for Bishops.

In 1973, at the tender age of 18, Zuppi’s life took a turn when he met the then 23-year-old Andrew Riccardi, a lay Catholic intellectual and activist who, five years before, had founded the Community of Sant’Egidio. Reflecting the idealistic impulses of Vatican II, Riccardi originally conceived the group’s mission as serving poor students in popular schools in rough neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city of Rome.

As time went on, Sant’Egidio took on a bewildering variety of other roles, from ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue to conflict resolution, all basically inspired by the progressive energies unleashed by the council.

At every step, Zuppi was at Riccardi’s side. He became the pastor of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where Sant’Egidio holds its famous evening vespers services that attract throngs of secularised young Romans who otherwise would never darken the door of a Catholic Church, and in the early 1990s, he became part of the Sant’Egidio team that helped negotiate an end to a long-running civil war in Mozambique.

So strong is the bond between Zuppi and Riccardi that the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, a conservative who tended to look askance at the Sant’Egidio phenomenon, once warned that if Zuppi should emerge wearing white from the conclave, the “real pope” would be Riccardi.

In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI made Zuppi an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Rome. When Francis took the reins in 2013, his enthusiasm for Sant’Egidio was immediately evident – during one of his first Sunday Angelus addresses, he spotted a banner from the group in the crowd and blurted, “Those guys from Sant’Egidio are great!”

Francis didn’t waste much time elevating the cleric most identified with the community, naming Zuppi Archbishop of Bologna in 2015. It was a symbolically charged choice, since the liberal Catholic energies associated with the so-called “Bologna School” have long seen themselves as the keeper of the flame for Vatican II in Italian Catholicism.

Zuppi’s later appointment by the pope as president of the powerful Italian bishops’ conference made him a national and international point of reference.

The case for Zuppi as pope?

First and foremost, his election would solidify and, at least to some extent, institutionalise Pope Francis’s legacy. He’s cut from the same cloth, and given his lifetime of experience inside the ecclesiastical system, he arguably would know how to pick the personnel and to create the structures to make that legacy more invulnerable to being rolled back.

In a time when the uncertainties and pressures of geopolitics are seen as a key voting issue in the conclave, Zuppi also brings hard-won international experience, most recently from his missions to Russia, China and the U.S. as part of his diplomatic roadshow related to the Ukraine war – even if some would point out that his mission didn’t really produce many concrete results, even at the basic humanitarian level of prisoner exchanges or the return of forcibly removed children.

Zuppi is also seen as a gifted pastor, whose 19-year run at Santa Maria in Trastevere gave him a deep understanding of how to engage and inspire a staggering variety of people. He was seen as especially successful at reaching young adults, but his affable and outgoing personality made him popular with pretty much all demographic groups.

Why not Zuppi?

The fear of him being overly beholden to a particular movement in Catholicism is real, especially one that’s already seen with resentment in some circles for what critics regard as a relentless drive for self-promotion and a tendency to infiltrate circles of power wherever possible. Veteran Italian columnist Sandro Magister recently wrote that a Zuppi papacy would be dominated by an “external oligarchy, or, rather, a monocracy”, referring to the overwhelming influence of Riccardi and Sant’Egidio.

In addition, there’s also some sense that Zuppi may be a bit too political to be seen as a fair broker to all parties. Last year, he publicly voiced doubts about a proposed constitutional reform to allow for the direct election of Italy’s prime minister, in what was seen as a clear break with a key priority of the country’s conservative government under Giorgia Meloni.

Most basically, however, the objection to Zuppi is that he’s simply too identified with the Francis era, and if you’re looking for a change, he’s not your candidate.

One thing no one disputes about Matteo Zuppi is that at a personal level, he’s a truly nice guy who’s almost impossible not to like. It remains to be seen whether, in this case too, nice guys really do finish last.

(Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images)

The post Papabile of the day: Cardinal Zuppi first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Papabile of the day: Cardinal Zuppi appeared first on Catholic Herald.

Social democrat Cansel Kiziltepe has linked a slump in the car maker’s sales to CEO Elon Musk’s “far-right positions”

A Berlin senator has branded Elon Musk’s Tesla a “Nazi car,” while commenting on the company’s declining sales. Social democrat Cansel Kiziltepe attacked the electric vehicle maker in a now-deleted post on X on Wednesday.

Musk has faced criticism in the EU for his perceived right-wing political views. He was condemned in Germany for endorsing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and in the wider EU for being a close ally of US President Donald Trump, whose policies on issues such as diversity and the Ukraine conflict do not align with those of Brussels.

Musk in turn has accused the EU of censorship, bureaucratic overreach, and economic harm, often framing the bloc’s policies as stifling free speech and national autonomy.

“Who wants to drive a Nazi car? Electric car manufacturers are experiencing a sales boom – apart from Tesla,” Kiziltepe, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the senator for labour, social affairs, equality, integration, diversity and anti-discrimination of the state of Berlin, wrote on X.

The post drew sharp criticism from officials in the neighboring state of Brandenburg, home to Tesla’s only car factory in Europe. Brandenburg's minister-president, Dietmar Woidke, slammed it as being “completely out of place,” while the state’s economic minister, Daniel Keller, demanded that Kiziltepe retract her statement.

The post has since been deleted, although Kiziltepe has defended her position, stating on X on Friday that she “expressly stands” by her assessment of Musk, and linking Tesla’s slump in sales to “the far-right positions” of its CEO.

In the first quarter of this year, Tesla vehicle deliveries dropped globally by 13% year-on-year, automotive revenue slumped 20% and net income plunged by 71%.

Tesla’s Gigafactory near Berlin was targeted by protesters earlier this year when the word “heil” was seen projected onto its wall next to the automaker’s logo, spelling the message “Heil Tesla.” During a campaign ceremony marking Trump’s inauguration in January, Musk made a gesture that his critics interpreted as a Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute. Musk dismissed the accusations as politically motivated.

The billionaire has previously voiced his support of Germany’s right-wing AfD, a rival to the ruling SPD. Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Musk’s backing of the AfD “disgusting.” Economic Minister Robert Habeck also accused the entrepreneur of launching a “frontal attack” on democracy.

READ MORE: Germany faces third year of zero growth – media

The AfD secured 20.8% of the vote in the German federal election in February, becoming the country’s second-largest party. Immigration and economic discontent were cited as among the key factors behind the party’s success.

The increasing pace of scientific discoveries, including the race to put a man on the moon in the late 1950s, meant that there was widespread enthusiasm and support for science in the 20th century. In addition, science produced the first oral contraceptive pill which started to be marketed in 1960. The Pill showed that science could be a major ulterior force for changing society.

Pope St John XXIII had made reference to the marvellous progress of science in his day and on the need for science.[1] The feeling was that through science modern society would be able to give a better life to all and that the Church had to keep up with this inexorable progress. This appeared to be the principal motivation for calling of Second Vatican Council aggiornamento or the bringing of the Church up to speed.

Professor Roberto Mattei has revealed behind-the-scenes activity during the Council.[2] Apart from aggiornamento John XXIII did not appear to have an agenda but sought input from all the participants about what needed to be discussed. The number of participants asking for Communism to be denounced at the Council was greater than any other request. This however never happened despite both John XXIII and Pope St Paul VI having read the secrets of Fatima and knowing Our Lady had warned about Russia spreading its errors. It was a major flaw of the Council. In the end the Council embraced ecumenism, religious freedom and inter-religious dialogue and state-church separation.[3] Russia was effectively free to spread its errors, and the Catholic Church was no longer insisting on being the only source of truth. The demands of a secular world made the Church move from a position of motivation by spirit and truth to motivation by empathy and mercy.

If we go back to what motivated John XXIII to bring the Council, it seemed to be the excitement that with science the world was moving quickly forward and all problems could be solved. The major motivator of changes in the world in the 1960s was scientific discovery: publicly everyone was excited about space exploration, privately about contraception. Through contraception, however, science helped secularise society. Initially, many in the Church saw contraception as a science-driven advance for society rather than an improper use of science. Pope Paul VI belatedly but bravely stood up against contraception but the Church did not see itself as having jurisdiction over the scientific world. Pope Paul rather gently chided scientists that they might have “peace of conscience”[4] if their methods did not stop the transmission of life. He also might have issued a stern warning to pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists if he realised the huge market that contraception was opening up for them.

The Church has been repeatedly told it was against science. However, modern science arose out of the fact that in the Bible, God is shown to be very vested in the temporal world. This led to the development of calculus and inductive scientific reasoning.[5] Pope St John Paul II confirmed Galileo and Gaudium et Spes (36) that faith and science can never be at odds with each other.[6] Not only is the Church not against science but science is the only source of truth aside from revelation – a gift of God to both religious and secular mankind. It should therefore be at the centre of the Church’s orbit, and in the Church’s dealings with the secular world, as a common trusted language. Also, church-state separation makes no sense if science can be used by both church and state as both should come to the same conclusions in keeping with natural law, since natural law is written in everyone’s heart.[7] It would seem that the aggiornamento of Second Vatican Council might have been better for the Church, had it been centred on firmly co-opting science into the Church.[8]

[1] Veterum Sapientia 4.

[2] De Mattei, R. (2010) Il Concilio Vaticano II, una storia mai scritta. Torino, Lindau. p. 492.

[3] Cf. Dignitatis Humanae 15.

[4] Humanae Vitae 24.

[5] Pullicino, P. (2023) The Science of Ezekiel’s Chariot of YHWH Vision. Richmond, Tiger of the Stripe. p. 255.

[6] Fides et Ratio 29.

[7] Gilson, E. (1956) The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press. p. 267. Valid interpretation of scientific results is still dependent on spiritual guidance (Pullicino, P. (2023) Ibid. p.250)

[8] This might be achieved by a) setting up a dicastery for science, b) becoming involved in research, (particularly into negative effects of science (e.g. contraception, abortion) that remain unpublished), c) highlighting unethical science: basic science, stem cell/embryo or clinical research. d) highlighting immoral practice in hospitals: beating heart donors, abortion wards, end of life “care” e) applying science to optimise health of clergy and to biblical study (cf. footnote 5).

( Photo: The Council Fathers seated during the Second Vatican Council. The bishop in the front row is Aimé-Georges Martimort (credit Lothar Wolleh.)

The post Science, contraception, and the missed opportunity of Vatican II first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Science, contraception, and the missed opportunity of Vatican II appeared first on Catholic Herald.

The way God set up the Church is one Pope, a lot more Bishops, and exponentially more laymen. This should tell us something about our role in the Church. Clearly, the “institutional” Church is not our role, either to be in it or be overly concerned with it. A few years ago, I wrote a column about three men who became overly concerned about the institutional Church and how their unremitting…

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“And the enemies of the Lord … shall come to nothing and vanish like smoke” (Ps 36:20)

Lying in State, the Body of Francis Appears to be Turning Dark

(image: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images – cropped)

The body of the late Jesuit apostate Jorge Bergoglio (‘Pope Francis’) has been lying in state inside an open coffin in St. Peter’s Basilica since Tuesday, April 22. Tens of thousands of mourners have been paying their respects.

On Friday evening at 8:00 pm local time, the casket will be sealed. The funeral will take place on Saturday at 10:00 am, followed by a procession to the Basilica of St.… READ MORE

The US president’s new merch has reignited third-term rumors

US President Donald Trump has launched a new line of “TRUMP 2028” merchandise, fueling speculation that he aims to seek a third term in office.

The baseball caps, now available through the official Trump campaign store, feature Trump’s name and the year 2028 embroidered in bold block letters, evoking the iconic “Make America Great Again” look. The shop also offers T-shirts in classic red and navy blue featuring the same slogan – along with a promise to “Rewrite the Rules.”

Last month, Trump said he is “not joking” about potentially seeking a third term, claiming that there are “methods” to pursue another run despite the US Constitution’s two-term limit on the presidency.

https://t.co/9ANjNT4QGt pic.twitter.com/6y5nDVVMI1

Asked by NBC News about a hypothetical scenario in which Vice President J.D. Vance could run and then hand over the office to him, Trump replied: “That’s one. But there are others too.”

Although Trump noted that “it is far too early to think” about 2028, the merchandise rollout has reignited speculation about his future plans. The campaign store has warned of up to ten business days of processing time due to “high demand.”

Trump won the 2024 election by a wide margin against Democratic candidate and then-Vice President Kamala Harris, becoming the second president in US history to serve two non-consecutive terms.

The 22nd Amendment states that no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice. However, Trump allies have floated legal arguments challenging or reinterpreting the amendment’s wording, hinting at potential legal or political strategies to pave the way for a third run.

READ MORE: Bookmakers see 20% chance of third Trump term – media

Earlier this year, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles introduced a constitutional amendment that would allow presidents to serve three non-consecutive terms, though it has so far gained little traction. Amendments to the Constitution require approval by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, followed by ratification from three-quarters of the states.

Israel has argued that The Hague has no jurisdiction over its citizens

The International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber has instructed a lower panel to reconsider Israel’s objections to the court’s jurisdiction over arrest warrants issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to a ruling published on Thursday.

Last November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for allegedly committing grave atrocities, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare, during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza launched in response to a deadly 2023 raid by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Israel, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, argued that the court lacks jurisdiction over its citizens. At the time, the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber dismissed Israel’s objections – filed before the warrants were issued – as premature.

However, the Appeals Chamber has now determined that the lower panel “committed an error of law” by failing to adequately address Israel’s arguments, and has remanded the matter for a new ruling.

The directive does not annul the existing warrants but requires the Pre-Trial Chamber to reevaluate the substance of Israel’s jurisdictional objections.

Israeli officials have welcomed the Appeals Chamber’s decision – but criticized it for refusing to suspend the arrest warrants immediately. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar stated on X that the arrest warrants were issued unlawfully and are “null and void.”

“We said it from the start: The International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) doesn’t have, and never had, jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and its former Minister of Defense,” Saar wrote.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, accused the ICC of acting “as a political tool serving Israel’s enemies.”

“The decision to revisit the question of jurisdiction exposes the lack of legitimacy behind the political arrest warrants,” Danon said, according to a statement from his office. “Israel will continue to defend itself, in coordination with its partners, and will not remain silent in the face of such hypocrisy.”

The ICC Prosecutor’s Office has acknowledged the Appeals Chamber’s ruling and is currently reviewing the decision, although the timeline for the reconsideration has not been specified. The court had also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes, which was withdrawn in February 2025 following confirmation of his death.

Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a week-long series of essays at Public Discourse reflecting on Pope Francis’s pontificate, his legacy, and the Catholic Church’s future.

Witnessing the tireless dedication of Pope Francis over the last twelve years to those most in need—the poor, the sick, the rejected, those suffering in body and spirit—was an extraordinary gift to me. After his passing, I found myself thinking: How often today does God bless his people with a shepherd, particularly one with significant health challenges, who devotes such intense energy and affection to all that seek his attention?

I have no idea how Catholic prelates can prepare for the task of governing such a large organization in our complex and tumultuous world. Buenos Aires is not an easy place to be bishop: when asked why he never visited his homeland after his election, Pope Francis would joke, “I spent 76 years in Argentina. That’s enough, isn’t it?” But it was his home, and when he became Bishop of Rome, he came to a very different place, both in the culture of its people and in the particular issues that the Church faced there. What a profound cross it must have been for him to be suddenly, and unexpectedly, catapulted from being a subway-riding bishop on the verge of retirement, to steering the universal Church through the perilous waters of sex scandals and the Vatican’s grave financial difficulties. 

Even apart from the perennial challenges of governance, contemporary popes face the perennial task of confronting the needs of the wounded modern world—“smelling of the sheep,” as Francis would say—without becoming of the world. I especially appreciated the pope’s focus on fighting clericalism and raising up the laity and their contributions to the Church. On one hand, clergy need to learn how to leave in the laity’s hands the political and other temporal responsibilities that are the latter’s proper domain; on the other hand, the laity should often be called to assist the clergy in matters of the latter’s own proper responsibilities of Church government. Harmonizing these apparently dueling needs is no easy task; it is especially difficult when coupled with the challenge in any large organization—like the Church—of finding and training the right people to assume positions of leadership.

Pope Francis also devoted much of his pontificate to the challenge of implementing a culture of love in support of the truth in contemporary culture—a culture that does not grasp what authentic love is, because we treat love as a commodity. Many people—young people especially—are eager for caritas in veritate, and the pope sought to teach it to them through many of the themes of his pontificate: accompanying others, recognizing the concrete circumstances that we fallen human beings can find ourselves in, and always being witnesses to God’s infinite mercy. 

Learning to Find Friends in Unexpected Places

The occasion of the pope’s passing gives us a chance to reflect on the lessons he has left us on how to give witness to truth and love in the modern world. What is the path forward—for the Church and for all people of goodwill? Following the pope’s example, we should ask how God is calling ordinary men and women to engage with the world today—a world in which people, particularly young people brought up amid a culture of chaos and confusion, are calling out for meaning and purpose. The question is especially urgent for those of us, like myself, who grew up in very different circumstances, often with more support than what many young people today have. I was blessed to be raised by a hard-working father who revered his wife, and a loving and deeply God-fearing mother, who both generously gave themselves to me and my six siblings. Not everything was great: I was raised in a small, poor town in Mexico’s Sonoran desert—now the cradle of the Caborca drug cartel. But on the whole, I had a very happy childhood. My young adult years were similarly fortunate. I earned advanced degrees, moved to the United States where I enjoyed enormous opportunities, and, thanks to the intervention of a friend and one of my brothers, I was rescued from going down the wrong path. I found a better way to which God was calling me, in Opus Dei. 

The spirit of Opus Dei, a part of the Catholic Church, encompasses many ideals, one of which is the commitment to finding God in the parts of life where he might at first seem most distant. Pope Francis himself expressed this ideal very well in an audience of his I attended in November 2014:

When the Lord invites us to become saints, he doesn’t call us to something heavy, sad . . . quite the contrary! It’s an invitation to share in his joy, to live and to offer with joy every moment of our life, by making it become at the same time a gift of love for the people around us. If we understand this, everything changes and takes on new meaning, a beautiful meaning, a meaning that begins with little everyday things. For example: a lady goes to the market to buy groceries and finds a neighbour there, so they begin to talk and then they come to gossiping and this lady says: “No, no, no I won’t speak badly about anyone.” This is a step towards sainthood, it helps you become more holy. Then, at home, your son wants to talk a little about his ideas: “Oh, I am so tired, I worked so hard today. . . .”—“But,” [you tell yourself,] “you sit down and listen to your son, who needs it!” . . . [T]his is a step towards sainthood. . . .  These are little things, but many little steps to sanctity. Every step towards sainthood makes us better people, free from selfishness and being closed within ourselves, and opens us to our brothers and sisters and to their needs.

Eventually I came to see that one area of secular life where people needed more help finding God’s truth was, paradoxically, in academia—in institutions of higher education ostensibly devoted to truth. I made my way to Princeton, New Jersey, where I helped start the Witherspoon Institute and the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education (FEHE). I saw these as means to help students and professors rediscover higher education’s vocation to truth-seeking—and perhaps, from knowing the truth, to eventually find its Author. 

But I soon discovered another truth that Pope Francis recalled frequently throughout his papacy: that even those who seemed far from God, at least outwardly, could teach me a thing or two. One such person was my good friend, Princeton Professor Robert “Bob” Hollander. I got to know Bob through our common interest in tennis, which we regularly played together. I learned much from him during our after-game conversations about many things unrelated to religion. Bob eventually told me he was atheist, which for a young, zealous Christian like me was unacceptable. At first I asked myself, “Do I want to spend so much of my time with a heathen?” But I resisted my initial impulse to quit our friendship, and years later I came to realize what a good decision that was. Bob eventually had a profound, positive impact on me, because he helped me understand friendship better, thereby bringing me closer to the truth and to God. More practically, he gave me invaluable counsel at crucial moments, without which Witherspoon and FEHE might never have come to be.

Not many years after I came to the Princeton area and befriended Bob, I read an article that discussed Princeton University’s desire to expand its humanities offerings. I saw this as an opportunity for me to start contributing directly to higher education, by finding money to support Princeton’s effort. I was an engineer by training, not a humanist, so I could contribute little in the way of academic expertise; but I did have a lot of experience raising money for nonprofit work, from my time in Opus Dei. I went to Bob with an idea and a proposal: What if I could obtain a grant to support a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton’s Humanities Council? Would Princeton be interested? Bob’s response was immediate: We can make this happen. 

And it did happen, but by a path that I would not have expected. Bob helped organize a lunch with Alexander Nehamas and Carol Rigolot—respectively the Chair and Executive Director of Princeton’s Humanities Council—along with Bob, and myself, to talk about the possible grant. I felt myself surrounded by people who were, in Pope Francis’s words, “on the margins” of God’s Kingdom—people who were quite secular and perhaps even in personal disagreement with Christian teachings. At the time Opus Dei was known for being “ultraconservative,” and therefore I felt the need to mention this fact to them, in case they feared it might cause controversy. 

But my fear turned out to be unfounded. Nehamas and Rigolot welcomed the proposal for the fellowship, which was filled first by the late Michael Sugrue in the 1997–98 academic year. Nehamas found Sugrue to be “an exceptional teacher-scholar,” and he and others expressed sincere gratitude to me for helping bring him to Princeton. The experience was such a success that the Humanities Council eventually developed the fellowship into Princeton’s Society of Fellows, which today offers some of the most prestigious and sought-after opportunities in the academy. By taking this risk, Bob and I helped spur a renewal of humanities teaching at Princeton.

I later asked Bob why people who did not share my fundamental beliefs about truth would have gone along with my idea. He thought they simply didn’t care what I believed. He quipped after one of our tennis matches, “Luis, you are not a threat around here because you are Mexican, you are an engineer, and you didn’t go to Princeton.” I laughed hard. All the same, I think that particular experience revealed something that Pope Francis had been trying to remind us of: that the desire for truth is in everyone, and that if we present our interest in truth joyfully, even those who disagree with us might still recognize us as friends.

The things I learned from this experience planted the seeds in my mind for bigger projects. Five years later, in 2003, Robert P. George and I launched the Witherspoon Institute. Our idea was to sponsor teaching and research that we thought was urgently needed in academia but did not yet fit into its priorities. A particular area of concern to us was research on the importance of the traditional structure of the family to the well-being of children and all of society. Perhaps the most famous such project that we sponsored was the 2012 New Family Structures Study of Mark Regnerus. Through the use of good-faith and reason-based empirical methods, Regnerus did an enormous service to our understanding of the family, despite suffering a great deal of ideologically motivated backlash, thanks to Witherspoon’s support. And despite criticism, the research still stands today. Over time more and more people are coming to recognize its truth.

In 2013, Robby George and I founded the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education (FEHE) to help students pursue truth through authentic friendship and robust intellectual life. Among the numerous related projects in which I have been involved, none gives me greater satisfaction than the Stanford Civics Initiative (SCI), which I helped Josiah (“Josh”) Ober to found and develop. Although in the end my contribution to the project was minor, I’ve been blessed by the deep and lasting friendship I developed with Josh as a result—a friendship as unexpected as that which I made with Bob.

I would have been able to do none of these things had I not, as Pope Francis exhorted us, taken the chance to befriend a man like Bob, even though on the surface we might have seemed unsuited for one another. Bob gave me practical guidance without which my ideals would not have become a reality. But more importantly, he reminded me that even people who seem far from God still bear the dignity of being made in God’s image. Even though they may not recognize God—or at least appear not to do so—they are still made for him, and for truth, which they are always seeking in one way or another. I think that the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus articulated this point quite well:

For paradise we long. For perfection we were made . . . This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives . . . This longing makes our love and friendship possible, and so very unsatisfactory. Hunger is for . . . nothing less than perfect communion with the . . . one in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together . . . we must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled.

The desire for truth can become a powerful bond of friendship—“intellectual friendship” as we say at Witherspoon and FEHE—as my friendship with Bob showed me. The experience also taught me to expand my heart, to understand better the mystery of what it means to be a person. Without this man, an atheist, I would have been a lesser human being. And, of course, Bob benefited from my friendship in turn: not just by the friendship itself, but from participating in the good it did for higher education—whether directly, in the Society of Fellows, or indirectly in the projects to which the Society gave rise: Witherspoon and FEHE. And then there were the occasional discussions about religion that we would have after tennis. I still maintain the hope that, when he died, the memory of those conversations helped him, in some mysterious way, to go to God. 

Building Blocks for Civic Engagement in a Secular World

Pope Francis, it seems to me, was trying throughout his pontificate to urge Christians to find their “Bob” who might be out there—someone who, despite appearing to be far from God, is still searching for truth and friendship, has much truth to impart in turn, and has much good to do in the world that he might not do without our help. Bob taught me a great deal, but two things seem especially worth noting, since they were also close to the pope’s heart. They are what I call building blocks for civic engagement in our secular world. 

The first is that which the Church proclaimed in Dignitatis Humanae and reaffirmed under Pope Francis. That every human person, even if he is an atheist like Bob, has an ineradicable dignity, because he is a being 

“endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility.” At the same time every person is “impelled by nature” to seek truth, and we should strive not to let appearances distract us from this deeper reality. And yet, “[t]he truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power.” Therefore man cannot fulfill his “moral obligation to seek truth” unless he be free, “[enjoying] immunity from external coercion as well as psychological freedom.” 

In other words, the best context for bringing others to truth is precisely through the kind of intellectual friendship that Bob and I had. 

The second truth is something I learned through my work with Witherspoon and FEHE (which were inspired by what Bob and I achieved at Princeton University): namely, how vital the man-woman traditional family structure is for society. I also realized how important intellectual friendship was for defending the family. On one hand, the best way to make the case for the family is by appealing to truths that all people can understand—in this case, the truths of social science—and we must be confident that people will respond to truth. At the same time, that truth has to be presented well, by being framed in love. We need to be patient with those who disagree on fundamental truths about marriage and family, and we must strive to express ourselves in ways that will win them over. We need to show them that we care about these truths not to impose ourselves on others, but to serve others out of love. We must show our interlocutors that we love and respect them because they, like all people, are God’s children, just as I tried to draw Bob to God above all by being his friend.

Truth and charity should go hand in hand. One cannot love others unless that love is grounded in truth, just as love cannot make a family unless it be grounded in the truths of human nature. At the same time, the deeper one understands the truth, the more one loves it and other people—who are made for truth—and the more easily one can express truth winsomely, because of one’s confidence in its truth. 

It is not enough to have the truth and to be able to argue logically for it, although all that is necessary. As Pope Francis reminded us, it is also vitally important to teach truth by the example of one’s love for others—by “accompanying” them along the difficult journey of life, as the pope liked to say. If we are to move forward toward a more just society, we must learn to accompany one another along the difficult, often surprising, and deeply rewarding path toward truth.

For his willingness to answer God’s call and the call of the Church, and for his faithful service until the end, I am grateful to Pope Francis.

Image by Gabriel Sozzi and sourced from Wikimedia Commons.