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Many words could describe the Francis pontificate; to me, the best is ironic. Coming from Argentina, Jorge Bergoglio was considered the ultimate outsider who would bring another wave of aggiornamento to the Church; but instead, he appeared closed inside the stale ideas of liberalism. He criticized those he saw as “wanting to go back,” yet that was exactly the criticism many of us had of him.

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Disfigurement visible on side of face…

PHOTOS: Vatican Releases First Images of Francis’ Body

On April 22, the Vatican released the first images of ‘Pope’ Francis’ corpse as it was lying in state in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta (Domus Sanctae Marthae) guest house at which the man whose real name was Jorge Bergoglio was residing for the last 12 years.

We have licensed the following two photographs for publication on this blog:

(image: Vatican Media/Getty Images)

(image: Vatican Media/Getty Images)

Although none of the photos available contain a close-up of Bergoglio’s face, one can zoom in enough to reveal a large disfigurement on the left side of his face:

The cause of this disfigurement is possibly a hematoma from the stroke the false pope reportedly suffered before falling into a coma and subsequently dying of a heart attack on Easter Monday.… READ MORE

The US peace framework reportedly includes “de jure” recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and the eventual lifting of sanctions

Washington has presented Kiev with what US President Donald Trump has called the “final offer” to end the Ukraine conflict, according to a report by Axios. The Kremlin, however, has urged the public to rely on official and primary sources for developments in US-Russia talks.

The one-page document was reportedly drafted following Trump envoy Steve Witkoff’s four-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, and was presented to Ukrainian officials in Paris last week, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Under the proposed deal, the US is said to be prepared to grant “de jure” recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, and unofficially acknowledge Moscow’s “de facto” control over the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye.

The plan also includes provisions for lifting post-2014 sanctions on Moscow and enhancing bilateral economic cooperation. In addition, Washington would formally oppose Ukraine’s bid to join NATO.

In return, Ukraine would reportedly receive a “robust security guarantee” from a coalition of EU and other like-minded countries. The proposal does not detail how a purpoted “peacekeeping” operation would function.

Russia has rejected the deployment of NATO forces, or troops from members of the bloc under a “coalition of the willing” to Ukraine under any pretext.

The framework also promises Kiev unimpeded access to the Dnepr River and potential compensation for reconstruction efforts, although it does not specify where the funding would originate. The plan references a minerals deal between the US and Ukraine, which Trump expects to be signed on Thursday.

Another component of the proposal, according to Axios, involves designating the area around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant as neutral territory under US administration. 

Washington reportedly expects Kiev to respond to the proposal during a multinational meeting in London on Wednesday. Both Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will skip the event, with General Keith Kellogg, another Trump envoy focused on Ukraine, leading the US delegation instead. Witkoff is expected to travel to Moscow for a follow-up meeting with Putin.

Rubio warned last week that the US could abandon the peace initiatives and “move on” to other issues if the negotiations fail. Trump said on Monday there is “a good chance of solving the problem” this week.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out ceding any territory to Russia and continues to urge the US and other allies to provide sustained military support.

Moscow has stated that the status of Crimea – which joined Russia in 2014 following a referendum held after a Western-backed coup in Kiev – and the four other former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia in 2022, is not open to negotiation. Russian officials insist that any peace agreement must address the “root causes” of the conflict. Putin has also said that a viable ceasefire would require Western nations to halt arms deliveries to Ukraine.

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.

What is the hermeneutical key to the pontificate of Pope Francis?

Kierkegaard famously quipped, “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.”

I propose that to understand Pope Francis, it helps to go backward, beginning near the end of his pontificate by focusing on his final encyclical, Dilexit Nos. This is a challenge for many, since Dilexit Nos has received comparatively little attention—whether in the media, the Church, or among Catholic intellectuals. 

In Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis focuses on the “heart,” especially the way our participation in the dominant culture wounds the heart in a hidden, unnoticed manner. As an antidote, Pope Francis proposes participation in popular pious practices, specifically the devotion to the Sacred Heart. God’s grace can work on us through these practices, to heal our hearts, shaping us in mercy and love by drawing us closer to the heart of Jesus. 

That the heart would be a major theme of his pontificate was not obvious on March 13, 2013, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., until then the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was introduced as the new pope. What was more obvious then was that Pope Francis had his own style: simple white robes, leading the people in familiar prayers (an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be), and carrying himself with a casual intimacy. Immediately after being elected, he took the bus with the cardinals to gather his personal belongings, and he declined to live in the Apostolic Palace. His message seemed to be, “Live more simply.”

A Pope of Many Purposes

Many noticed early on that Pope Francis proposed a distinctive view of the church. Rather than emphasizing the church as a sacramental reality imbued with the presence of God, or a conception of the church as a pilgrim people, Pope Francis voiced a preference for the church as a field hospital with a battlefield task: Heal the wounds! Start from the ground up. Encounter those on the margins. Accompany those who feel left out. 

Some have questioned at times whether the message of Pope Francis was distinctively Catholic or Christian. Were his teachings based on the Gospels or the life of Jesus? After all, the major writings of Pope Francis, including his social encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, were addressed to “all people of good will,” and their tone was, at times, quite similar to that of documents produced by secular state agencies or of similar contemporary documents motivated by social justice. Francis’s writings emphasized promoting inclusive societies; saving the rainforests; caring for the earth; encouraging global solidarity; building a peaceful world; and avoiding bad things like selfishness, racism, poverty, the prevalence of a market logic based solely on profit, and the culture of waste.  

But accounts of the pontificate of Francis that aim to go beneath the surface will emphasize deeper influences: St. Francis of Assisi, the ideas of Romano Guardini (the philosopher and theologian who was the topic of Bergoglio’s unfinished doctoral dissertation), or the Argentine movement known as the “theology of the people.” Others will point to his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel—especially the section of Chapter 4 titled “The common good and peace in society”—as the blueprint for his pontificate and the key to understanding his purposes. To be sure, any account of the pontificate of Pope Francis must include each of these. 

Recovering and Transforming Our Hearts

Still, one might wonder: What purpose united the various activities of Pope Francis? I contend that one finds it in Dilexit Nos.

Dilexit Nos: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, was promulgated less than two weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election—just as Donald Trump sat down for an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, and as thousands of Beyoncé fans showed up for what the media told them would be a free concert, but which turned out to be a five-minute speech by Beyoncé endorsing Kamala Harris at a rally for “reproductive freedom.” It’s not surprising that at the time, the media were focused almost completely on matters related to the U.S. elections (including the kerfuffle of angry Beyoncé fans who felt they had been misled). Just before the elections, few had the patience to attend to a long encyclical from an aging pope that proposed to revive seventeenth-century devotional practices. Pope Francis died less than six months after promulgating it. 

Pope Francis brings the encyclical’s central theme into focus by calling for a retrieval of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, a practice that, in earlier centuries, had been dear to the Jesuits. 

At first, we might think that Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart is an activity for grandmothers. Indeed, in the encyclical Pope Francis tells a sweet story of baking cookies with his grandmother. But the point of his story is not sentimental. Pope Francis tells us that, “In the dialect we spoke, those cookies were called ‘lies.’ . . . My grandmother explained why: ‘Like lies, those cookies look big, but are empty inside; they are false, unreal.’” With this story, the pope encourages his readers to examine our own hearts and the ways in which we are complicit with the distortions and alienation of contemporary culture—a culture that seems full of promises, but is actually quite empty. In this age of artificial intelligence, when there is a tendency to overemphasize the rational-technological dimension, Pope Francis worries that we act as serial consumers: hectic, bombarded by technology, and with little room in our hearts. 

While there may be no algorithm to measure the size of one’s figurative heart, we are all regrettably familiar with—and even experience in ourselves—the broken heart, the closed heart, the empty heart, the devious heart, the perverse heart, and those who are totally heartless. Pope Francis writes, “If we devalue the heart, we also devalue what it means to speak from the heart, to act with the heart, to cultivate and heal the heart. If we fail to appreciate the specificity of the heart, we miss the messages that the mind alone cannot communicate; we miss out on the richness of our encounters with others; we miss out on poetry.” 

Pope Francis aims to awaken us to the subtle ways in which each of us actively participates in and perpetuates disordered, heartless, and sinful social structures. 

The pope calls for a transformation in our hearts. He recommends several quite specific practices. A few of these might seem sentimental: more poetry readings; more time considering the flowers and the birds; more time baking cookies with Grandma’s recipe. But the central practices Pope Francis recommends are a postmodern retrieval of traditional Catholic devotions to the Sacred Heart: devoting oneself each Thursday to contemplative worship in a holy hour before the Blessed Eucharist, and receiving the Eucharist on the First Friday of each month. 

In Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis makes reference to the Aparecida Document from the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops. That 2007 document praises “the soul of the Latin American peoples,” describing the faith in that part of the world as “a people’s Catholicism.” It has a deeply inculturated popular piety that is a “precious treasure of the Catholic Church in Latin America” and “the most valuable dimension of Latin American culture.” It is not clear whether Pope Francis endorses all of the claims made in the Aparecida Document. For example, we might raise a question: Is it true that the popular piety of Latin America manifests a thirst for God that “only the simple and poor can know”? Is it possible for a middle-class person or a wealthy person to have a heart that thirsts for God? Pope Francis does not quote from or endorse this aspect of the Aparecida Document. Instead, he seems to suggest that the popular piety of the poor in Latin America can be a model of hearts that are open to God’s grace, and that selfish hearts can be transformed by participating in and retrieving once-popular pious practices.

Pope Francis concludes Dilexit Nos by stating explicitly that the teachings in his social encyclicals, Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, are “not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ. For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home.”

In Dilexit Nos Pope Francis proposes that, in order to receive the teaching of the Church and to participate more fully in divine grace and mercy, we need the right sort of heart—and a change of heart comes with a change in our practices. 

The teaching is not a call for a better theory of social harmony. Instead, Pope Francis is calling us to prepare for Friday, June 27th, 2025—the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque—by reviving the practice of a holy hour each Thursday and the promotion of Eucharistic communion on the first Friday of each month. 

Once we understand that the teaching of Dilexit Nos on the importance of the heart is the key to interpreting Pope Francis’s earlier encyclicals, we see that, by extension, the heart is central to his entire pontificate. Indeed, his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, promulgated in the first months of his pontificate, states, “In the Bible, the heart is the core of the human person, where all his or her different dimensions intersect: body and spirit, interiority and openness to the world and to others, intellect, will, and affectivity. If the heart is capable of holding all these dimensions together, it is because it is where we become open to truth and love, where we let them touch us and deeply transform us.”

Some will point to The Joy of the Gospel as the text which holds the interpretive key to Pope Francis’s pontificate. To be sure, there is something to this claim. In response, I would point to the very first line: “The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus.” In other words, the joy in The Joy of the Gospel is a joyous heart.

To those who propose that St. Francis of Assisi is central, I respond (again) that what is important is the spirituality of the heart we find in St. Francis. Laudato Si’ begins by quoting the beautiful song of St. Francis and then contrasting the poetic spirituality of St. Francis with the violence and distortions in our hearts. 

At its deepest level, Laudato Si’ is not about environmental policy; it is a diagnosis of our malformed hearts. This diagnosis unfolds in Chapter 3, the deepest chapter of Laudato Si’, where the pope draws from Guardini’s account of the distortions of the human heart that come about from the dominant technocratic paradigm. Guardini, in his most famous book, The Lord, wrote, “None of the great things in human life springs from the intellect; every one of them issues from the heart and its love.”  

Just as R. J. Snell has argued that John Paul II’s pontificate is best understood as “the pontificate of the person,” I propose that the papacy of Pope Francis is best understood as “the pontificate of the heart.”

Image by Ashwin Vaswani and sourced via Unsplash. 

The latest report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher organization indicates what many pro-lifers have feared for Virginia since the Dobbs decision in 2022.  Abortion promoters are using the lack of protective pro-life laws and the virtually unregulated practice of abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy to turn the Commonwealth into a destination for abortions.

According to the report the number of abortions in Virginia has increased by 4,300 and assumes that that number includes many women who may have traveled here from out of state.

The state has seen six new abortion facilities open or go into development since 2022 bringing the total number to 23.

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Virginia removed the majority of protective laws for unborn children and their mothers in 2020 opening a door to the dangerously unregulated situation we find ourselves in today. The current laws allow non-doctors to perform abortions or prescribe abortion chemicals and no office visit is required. Online prescriptions mean that a women receiving these drugs may not even be pregnant.

“The new numbers suggest a deeply alarming trend and the threatened unlimited abortion amendment that has already passed once in the General Assembly will mean that Virginia will only see more unborn children lose their lives and mothers put at risk from unscrupulous abortion promoters,” said Olivia Gans Turner, president of VSHL.

Virginia’s elections this year will allow concerned people to halt the threat of the abortion amendment, the so called Right to Reproductive Freedom Act, and send a message that Virginians do not want our home to become an abortion destination. [For more on the Right to Reproductive Freedom Act, see The 2025 General Assembly Comes to a Close and the Pro-life Movement Faces the Facts – Virginia Society for Human Life.]

The post Virginia Sees Abortions Increase Significantly as More Babies are Killed appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Historically speaking, the Catholic Church has never been immune to hardships, suffering, and scandal. It’s easy to assume a diminutive approach that the events of the last twelve years, even more so the past sixty years, are unique to Church history. If we suppress our emotional attachment to the events of the past century, and examine the persecutions inflicted on the Church over the past 2000…

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A garden without a gardener: Western Europe drifts as the world rebuilds

The defining trait of today’s Western Europe is not unity or strength – it is the complete absence of a vision for the future. While the US, Russia, China, India, and even Latin America actively shape and debate their long-term direction, Western Europe remains stuck in nostalgia. Its politicians are not building tomorrow but clinging to yesterday’s comforts. The continent’s political imagination seems limited to one goal: Maintaining the status quo of a world that no longer exists.

This backward-looking mentality has transformed the EU into what can best be described as a “terrarium of like-minded people” – an ecosystem where each actor competes for influence, all the while privately despising the others. In theory, the EU was designed to create a shared geopolitical force. In practice, that unity has been reduced to cynical self-interest and mutual sabotage.

Germany wants to preserve its economic dominance, sending constant signals to Washington that it alone is a stable transatlantic partner. France, despite its limited military capabilities, flexes what remains of its armed forces to assert superiority over Germany and southern Europe. Britain, once an outsider, is suddenly interested in being part of “Europe” again – but only to stir division and feed the fires of confrontation with Russia.

Poland plays its own game, maintaining privileged ties with the US and remaining aloof from Franco-German maneuvering. Italy conducts foreign policy like an independent middle power, working with Washington and Moscow alike. Smaller European states scramble for relevance, knowing full well they are pawns on someone else’s board.

Brussels, meanwhile, produces a steady flow of bureaucratic theater. Figures such as Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas make loud proclamations, but everyone knows they lack real power. They are political actors without a stage, reading from scripts that no longer matter. The spectacle of European unity has become hollow – not only in appearance but in substance.

Western Europe’s decline didn’t begin yesterday. But the last 15 years have exposed how brittle the EU’s foundations truly are. After the Cold War, the dream of a strong, united Europe gained some traction: A common currency, common foreign policy, even whispers of strategic autonomy from NATO.

That dream died in Iraq in 2003, when Paris and Berlin briefly opposed Washington’s invasion. But when France rejoined NATO’s command structure in 2007, it signaled the end of any real independence. The Americans, with British support, had reasserted dominance.

The euro, once hailed as the tool of European power, became Germany’s weapon of economic control. Southern and eastern member states were locked into a financial order they could not escape. Germany imposed its will during the eurozone crisis and the pandemic alike, and was hated for it. Smaller nations resented their role as appendages to the German economy, with little recourse.

So when the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, the rupture of Russian-German ties was quietly welcomed across the continent. France, which gave little to Kiev, now enjoys more diplomatic prestige than Germany, which gave billions. Poland’s foreign minister practically celebrated the sabotage of Nord Stream – not because it harmed Russia, but because it weakened Berlin.

EU enlargement, once seen as the triumph of European power, has become a liability. For two decades, expanding eastward was treated as a geopolitical project aimed at absorbing former Soviet spaces. But it failed to give Western Europe more clout with Washington. The new members did not submit to Berlin or Paris; they looked to the US instead. In the end, the EU overreached, alienated Moscow, and gained nothing substantial in return.

Having failed at building a real foreign policy, the EU is now desperately trying to preserve what it has. But without a dream of the future, politics loses meaning. Western European life has become a loop of managing decline, while tensions within the bloc grow sharper.

Britain may have left the EU, but geopolitical pressure has pushed it back into the game. Unable to solve its own domestic crises – with four prime ministers in three years – London doubles down on anti-Russian rhetoric to stay relevant. But it doesn’t want to fight, so it pushes its continental allies to do it instead. It’s classic British strategy: Let others bleed.

Most Germans would love to restore ties with Russia and get back to cheap energy and easy profits. But it can’t. The Americans are firmly entrenched on German soil, and Berlin’s military-industrial elite wants NATO spending to continue. Southern Europe, impoverished and increasingly resentful, can no longer sustain German prosperity. France hopes to exploit this, imagining itself as Europe’s new nuclear umbrella. Macron talks big, but everyone knows he rarely delivers.

This brings us to 2025. As tensions with Russia and China rise, EU leaders have been lining up to visit Washington. Except, of course, for the Germans, who are still trying to form a government after chaotic elections. From Poland to France, each leader went to ask Trump for preferential treatment. Divide and rule is still the American playbook, and the Western Europeans keep falling for it.

In the East, Hungary and Slovakia have had enough. Years of lectures from Brussels on LGBT rights and liberal values have created deep resentment. They now speak openly of aligning with Russia or China. Spain and Italy, meanwhile, are refusing to see Moscow as a threat. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni deals with Washington bilaterally and doesn’t pretend to represent broader European interests.

The European Commission, tasked with representing the EU, has become a parody of itself. Kallas, recently named high representative for foreign affairs, immediately overstepped her role by demanding tens of billions in new aid for Ukraine. The backlash was swift. In the EU, power over money stays with national governments. Even von der Leyen, as compromised as she is, knows better than to touch those coffers without permission.

What is left of Western Europe today is a political shell. A group of aging powers clinging to past glories, locked in competition with each other, lacking the will to act but refusing to step aside. Their one shared goal: to be seen in the room when Washington, Moscow, and Beijing make decisions. But it won’t be as equals – it would be as supplicants.

For now, the Americans hold the leash. Only the US can impose discipline on its European satellites and give their politics a sense of direction. Russia watches all of this with measured patience. Because ultimately, if stability returns to Europe, it will be because Washington permits it – not because Brussels earned it.

This article was first published by the magazine Profile and was translated and edited by the RT team.

The Bundeswehr has reportedly approached key companies to speedily move troops and equipment to Eastern Europe

Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, has reached out to major logistics and defense companies to prepare for a possible NATO deployment to Eastern Europe “in the event of a Russian attack,” Handelsblatt reported on Tuesday.

Several eastern NATO members, especially the Baltic states, have repeatedly alleged that Russia is preparing for an invasion – an accusation that Moscow has consistently denied.

The Bundeswehr is reportedly holding confidential discussions with firms including Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa, and Rheinmetall to secure their support in transporting troops, weapons, and equipment.

According to the newspaper, the German Defense Ministry has asked Deutsche Bahn to examine how it could help transport military convoys by rail during a crisis. Meanwhile, Lufthansa is being considered for basic training support for fighter pilots through its flight school. Rheinmetall is already involved in military logistics through a recent €260 million ($300 million) contract and is also in talks to expand its role.

This effort forms part of Germany’s strategic role as NATO’s central logistics hub, the outlet reports. Under the military bloc’s new defense framework, Berlin has committed to mobilizing thousands of soldiers and hundreds of aircraft and ships within 30 days if a crisis arises.

Defense officials told the newspaper that the Bundeswehr is not able to manage this large-scale mobilization on its own. German military leadership has therefore turned to the private sector to build what they describe as a “strategic deployment corridor” across the country.

“The Bundeswehr relies almost exclusively on civilian commercial service providers for the logistical transport of military goods and equipment outside of crisis zones,” the Bundeswehr Operational Command told Handelsblatt. “In sea and air transport for extra-wide and extra-heavy equipment, this figure is even 100 percent.”

The initiative comes as Germany seeks to recover from decades of underinvestment in its armed forces, which have left its military ill-prepared for large-scale conflict. Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s €100 billion special fund, announced after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, aims to reverse this trend. Germany’s chief of defense staff, General Carsten Breuer, recently stated that the Bundeswehr must be war-ready by 2029 so that it is able to fight Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected allegations that Moscow harbors aggressive intentions toward NATO countries, calling them “nonsense” designed to alarm Western Europeans and legitimize major increases in defense budgets.

The modern, liberal, secular world does not like to hear such reminders.  When a pope dies, the press will, predictably, praise his personal kindness and concern for the poor and marginalized.  In part, this is merely politeness of the kind appropriate when any person dies.  But it also seems to be what is emphasized in commentary on who a pope’s successor ought to be.  The liberal, secular world’s idea of a good pope is essentially a social worker with the personality of Mr. Rogers.  It is impatient with the idea that the main reason the papacy exists is to preserve the doctrine handed down to us by the Apostles, and to unite the faithful around that doctrine. 

This is, of course, in part because the modern world is hostile to many of the specifics of that doctrine.  But in part it is because liberal, secular modernity is founded on the idea that religious doctrine of any kind is a matter of subjective and idiosyncratic opinion that has only private significance.  The modern world cannot fathom how such mere opinion (as it sees it) could still seriously be thought the central concern of an office with the public visibility and influence of the papacy.  Hence it focuses its attention on the philanthropic activities of popes, which it finds more understandable and useful.

But the world’s priorities are not, and never should be, the Church’s.  She must always keep before her mind Christ’s Great Commission:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)

And popes must always keep before their minds Christ’s words to St. Peter:

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren. (Luke 22:31-32)

Christ’s command is to convert the world to his teaching, the deposit of faith.  Peter’s commission is to preserve that faith and confirm his brethren in it.  Naturally, that is not because doctrine is an end in itself.  As the Church’s Code of Canon Law famously emphasizes, the salvation of souls is her supreme law.  But the point is precisely that sound doctrine is the necessary prerequisite of the salvation of souls.  Christ’s commission was not “Go therefore and advance social justice in all nations.”  He did not say to Peter “I have prayed for you, that you may reach out to the marginalized.”  That is not because social justice and reaching out to the marginalized are not important.  It is because unless you get doctrine right, you are not going to understand what true social justice amounts to, and you are not going to know what you should be doing for the marginalized once you’ve reached out to them.

The priority of doctrine makes perfect sense when one properly understands the nature of the will and of the actions that flow from it.  As Pope Leo XIII taught, following St. Thomas Aquinas:

The will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect.  In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given.  No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will.  The end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason.  (Libertas 5)

Action follows from the will, and the will pursues what the intellect judges to be good.  Hence we cannot will rightly, and our actions will not reliably be good in their effects, unless the intellect’s judgements are correct.  Modern people are used to thinking in clichés to the effect that what matters is not what you believe, but rather doing the right thing and having a good will.  But the reality is that if what you believe is false, your will cannot be aimed at what is actually good (even if you are not culpable for the fact), and what you do will not be the right thing except by accident.  Hence sound doctrine is crucial to willing and acting rightly.

This makes it intelligible why, though schism is a very grave sin, Aquinas teaches that heresy is even worse (Summa Theologiae II-II.39.2).  Catholics must remain in communion with the pope, but precisely because the pope’s job is to preserve sound doctrine.  It’s not that we must avoid heresy so that we will avoid schism; rather, the point of avoiding schism is to avoid heresy. 

It also makes it intelligible why papal infallibility concerns only doctrine, and not a pope’s personal moral character.  The Church does not say that a pope cannot do bad things, or that he cannot have a bad will.  It claims only that, when he formally defines a matter of doctrine ex cathedra, in a manner intended to be absolutely final and definitive, he will not err.

It is no surprise, then, that the duty of popes to preserve the deposit of faith has been repeatedly emphasized in Catholic tradition.  Here are several examples:

The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith and in no way to deviate from the established doctrine of the Fathers.  For it is impossible that the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ who said, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,” should not be verified.  (Formula of Pope St. Hormisdas)

For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.  (First Vatican Council, Session 4, Chapter 4)

The living teaching office of the Church… is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit.  (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, Chapter II)

The mission of Peter and his successors is to establish and authoritatively confirm what the Church has received and believed from the beginning, what the apostles taught, what Sacred Scripture and Christian Tradition have determined as the object of faith and the Christian norm of life.  (Pope St. John Paul II, Catechesis of March 10, 1993)

The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law.  On the contrary: the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word.  He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism…  In his important decisions, he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church's pilgrimage.  Thus, his power is not being above, but at the service of, the Word of God.  It is incumbent upon him to ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in usage.  (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for the Mass of Possession of the Chair of the Bishop of Rome, May 7, 2005)

This last statement, from Benedict XVI, is especially eloquent.  And it reminds us that true humility in a pope entails a steadfast refusal to ignore or dilute or obfuscate the Church’s traditional teaching in any way, not even when others may delude themselves that doing so would be merciful or pastoral or better in line with the signs of the times.

May the cardinals take such reminders to heart as they deliberate.  May they elect a man willing to live by, and indeed if necessary even die for, these noble words from the tradition.  St. Peter, pray for us.

When Pope Francis first became head of the Church, I did some research on him.

I learned that, as a Cardinal in Argentina, he was quoted as saying, “Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you.”

Strong words from a man who valued the sacredness of life from the moment of conception to the instant of natural death. The late Holy Father was a champion of the marginalized—and no one is more marginalized in our society than the unborn child.

The pontiff also preached a “revolution of tenderness” which the pro-life movement lives out each day. Through its outreach to pregnant women in difficult circumstances, the movement offers mothers the hope and strength they need to carry on amidst trying times.

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I also had a personal connection to Pope Francis. At a time when I was particularly worried and distraught, I sent him a letter asking for prayers. A Vatican representative responded by sending me a papal prayer card and a letter assuring me of the Holy Father’s prayers. I had the mementos framed and the display now hangs in my office—a constant reminder of Pope Francis’ kindness to me.

People around the world are grieving the loss of this Pope with a pastor’s heart. Let us pray that his successor will be equally devoted to defending the most defenseless among us.

LifeNews.com Note: Maria Gallagher is the Legislative Director and Political Action Committee Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and she has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio.

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