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The Franciscan friars presented the 2025 Laudato si' Award

May 31, 2025 Rome (Italy) (AICA)

This year's laureates were: the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I; theologian Leonardo Boff; the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (Repam); and the Laudato Si' Movement.

Prevost supports Bergoglio's anti-Catholic Pachamama leftist agenda

 Boff Rehabilitates Paganism in the Amazonian apostate pseudo-synod

The Antichrist is described as a "pacifist, ecologist, and ecumenist"

RORATE CÆLI: For the record: Boff speaks on Bergoglio' apostate agenda.

You have reason to believe that Bergoglio is more liberal?

Boff: Yes. For example, a few months ago he explicitly permitted a homosexual couple to adopt a child. He kept in touch with priests who were expelled from the official church because they had gotten married. 

Francis Greets Leonardo Boff

Editors’ Note: In recognition of the 100th anniversary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, this article is published as the second in a three-part series on religious freedom. 

Should children’s parents or should the government shape the beliefs and values of children? Natural law theorists argue that parents have a responsibility, and therefore possess the prima facie authority, to direct the upbringing and education of their children. This, according to natural law theory, is no mere matter of cultural convention but is an objective moral truth. Children are born to parents—a mother and a father—and are therefore theirs (and, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, in a certain sense a part of them), though not in any sense that would reduce children to the status of their parents’ property. Indeed, parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children are rooted in their duty to bring up their children properly and educate them well. 

On this account, government has no free-standing or independent decision-making right or authority with respect to children. Children do not belong to the state in the way they belong to their parents. In extreme circumstances, government may intervene to protect children from parental abuse or neglect, but such interventions are only legitimate where parents actually abuse or neglect their children, forfeiting their rights by defaulting on their responsibilities. 

Contemporary progressives, by contrast, view the state as having what amounts to a quasi-parental role. It is true that progressives, at least for the most part, do not seek to entirely replace parents with the state—theirs is not, for example, Plato’s famous stipulation in the Republic that children ought to be held “in common” under the state’s supervision and care, such that “neither will a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent.” But they do view the state as having a measure of direct authority over children that rivals, and at times may even supersede, the authority of parents. They typically hold that authority over children is shared between the state and the parents. 

Perhaps the most influential proponent of the progressive position is my friend and former Princeton colleague, Dr. Amy Gutmann. Over the course of a distinguished scholarly career that included nearly two decades as President of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Gutmann has mounted vigorous defenses of the state’s right and duty to shape, even independently of parental wishes, the moral character and fundamental beliefs of children. For the sake of forming adult citizens committed to what she describes as the “secular standards” of modern liberal democracies and who are left “free to choose their own [version of] the good life,” she argues that public schools or other governmental institutions “cannot escape looking after children’s souls in many significant and subtle ways.” Between parents and the state, Gutmann maintains, “we have no a priori reason to favor one paternalistic agent over another.”  

A more blunt—to put it politely—expression of the progressive view comes from Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who argues that practices such as homeschooling have been abused by parents who are “ideologically committed . . . to isolating their children from the majority culture and indoctrinating them in views and values that are in serious conflict with that culture.” (The subtext, of course, is that such “ideologically committed” parents are those who are committed to living lives and raising families in conformity with traditional religious and moral values.) Criticizing what she identifies as “absolutist” views of parental rights, Bartholet said in a 2020 interview that: 

Many homeschooling parents are extreme ideologues, committed to raising their children within their belief systems isolated from any societal influence. Some believe that black people are inferior to white people and others that women should be subject to men and not educated for careers but instead raised to serve their fathers first and then their husbands. The danger is both to these children and to society. The children may not have the chance to choose for themselves whether to exit these ideological communities; society may not have the chance to teach them values important to the larger community, such as tolerance of other people’s views and values. 

In truth, the natural law view of parental rights is far from absolutist—and is neither rooted in nor designed to abet prejudice or bigotry. As I’ve noted, the natural law view’s prima facie parental authority over children’s upbringing and formation is not an exceptionless claim—parental authority can be forfeited and government may, in cases of child abuse or neglect, intervene to protect children from demonstrable harm. In cases of genuine abuse or neglect, such as when parents are harming or abjectly failing to protect their children’s physical health, parental rights can be overridden. The state, acting on its duty to advance and protect the common good, could legitimately step in to remove the child from an objectively harmful or dangerous situation by, for example, temporarily placing the child with a relative or in a foster home until the child’s parents are able (if they indeed become able) to fulfill their parental responsibilities again. 

Still, under the natural law view, the state plays a purely supportive and subsidiary role in the child’s upbringing, moral formation, and overall well-being. When, in extreme situations, the state justly moves to intervene on behalf of the child, the state’s intervention is still in a sense supplementary to the parents’ fundamental role—never subsuming the parental right, and always moving towards the ultimate goal of restoring the child to his core family unit (though, of course, sometimes this will ultimately be impossible). 

Furthermore—and contrary to Bartholet’s caricature—the natural law view of parental rights does not promote, endorse, or sanction indoctrination. Parents are charged with the grave responsibility of forming their children, to the best of their ability, to be good people and to lead good lives. 

Formation includes the inculcation of certain values, to be sure; all parents should teach their children to conduct themselves honorably and with integrity. Indeed, any notion of strictly-neutralist parenting is absurd; when parents, no matter their fundamental commitments, teach their children that stealing is wrong, that they shouldn’t cheat on exams, that they should keep their promises, and that they should sit with the fellow student who always eats lunch alone, they are acting on normative judgments to inculcate the virtues and values their children need in order to lead good lives.  

But proper formation is not indoctrination. Forming one’s children to be sophists or sycophants, unable to formulate, articulate, and defend their own views in an intellectually robust fashion, is one thing; raising them in accordance with certain religious or moral precepts is something else, and something that all parents inevitably must do. Proper formation encourages the development of an authentic sense of agency and freedom—the freedom to engage in morally worthy choosing—that indoctrination not only fails to impart but actually destroys. 

The critic would point out the cases, and they will always exist, in which parents fail to raise their children in accordance with sound moral values. Perhaps a parent will teach a child that stealing can be good, that you should only keep your promises if it benefits you to do so, or that you should cheat on exams if it helps you to get ahead. And I have no doubt, as the critic would point out, that there are parents who seek to indoctrinate their children, rather than authentically form them to be independent and critical thinkers. But the truth is that the state must be willing to tolerate some abuses of parental rights lest the efforts to prevent the abuses undermine the rights themselves. 

The same is true of other rights—for example, the right to freedom of speech. We rightly tolerate abuses of the right to speak freely, lest our efforts to prevent abuses (by licensing government to engage in censorship) undermine the right. Of course, we draw certain lines. For example, we tolerate the abstract advocacy of violence, but we draw the line at deliberately inciting people to imminent violence. (This distinction is expressly drawn by the Supreme Court in the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, which remains the leading precedent on the subject.) Similarly, we tolerate a misguided parent’s teaching his child that stealing is good, but we punish the parent who is convicted of sending his child to rob the local convenience store. 

The progressive approach’s concrete implications—and perhaps indicative of the true intentions all along of some of those seeking to curtail parental rights—can be observed in recent efforts by progressive activists to erode parents’ control over children’s education in order to convert their children to social progressivism. Consider, for example, the recently argued US Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which progressive activists asked the Court to uphold a decision by Montgomery County, Maryland’s public school system banning parents from opting their children out of programs promoting LGBTQ ideology at the pre-K and elementary school level.  

Montgomery County’s case for subjecting young children to overtly pro-LGBTQ materials hinged fundamentally on this same progressive paternalistic conception of the state’s role in child rearing—the view that the state has an independently-grounded, non-subsidiary role to play in making normative judgments about the sorts of ideas that ought to guide a child’s moral and intellectual upbringing. Defending the policy, the county’s lawyer told the Supreme Court that allowing parents to opt their children out of pro-LGBTQ lessons would risk “exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation.” To be frank, the local government’s argument in Mahmoud was that the state has a legitimate role to play in ideologically influencing the moral formation of children enrolled in public schools, at least in part because not doing so would allegedly have a negative impact on other children whose parents seek to raise them with socially liberal moral commitments. (Of course, they are utterly unconcerned with how students whose families hold traditional values are subjected to “stigma and isolation” when they resist pressure to believe that such values are backward or bigoted.) 

For the sake of the supposed comfort of their socially progressive peers, the government in Mahmoud claimed an interest in encouraging all students to adopt views normatively favorable to and disposed toward same-sex marriage, transgenderism, sexual liberation, and hotly-contested conceptions of sexuality and gender identity—and claimed that parents had no right to stop their children from being subjected to what truly was indoctrination. It is in cases like Mahmoud that we see the real reason that many progressives are so keen for organs and institutions of the state, at least when they are dominated by ideological allies of social and cultural progressivism, to “share”—and eventually override, as Montgomery County sought to do through banning opt-outs—parental authority with actual parents.  

The Supreme Court is, I believe, likely to side with the parents in Mahmoud and reaffirm that our Constitution protects not only the free-exercise rights of parents and their children, but also, and relatedly, the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children. This is because the United States has a long tradition of articulating and upholding the natural law account of parental rights within our constitutional order. Indeed, beginning with the landmark case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, whose one-hundredth anniversary we celebrate this year, we can trace in our constitutional order an essentially unbroken line of efforts to uphold the natural law account of parental rights against myriad efforts to undermine it.  

Pierce concerned a statute enacted by Oregon that sought to compel all children, including those enrolled in what had been state-recognized private schools, to attend public schools. The bill was aggressively promoted by the Ku Klux Klan. Its principal targets were Catholic parochial schools—many supporters of the law, such as Oregon’s Democratic governor Walter Pierce, hoped to see Catholic schools shut down and the children who would have attended those schools, many of them immigrants themselves or from immigrant families, incorporated into the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture through compulsory public education. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice James Clark McReynolds held that the law “unreasonably interfere[d] with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children,” adding that “The child is not the mere creature of the State.” 

But as Professor Melissa Moschella, my brilliant former student, has argued, the Pierce ruling and its implications went beyond merely affirming that parents, and not the state, have the right to decide on their children’s education—e.g., about where to send them to school. The Court—in keeping with past common law precedents and lower court findings—also upheld a robust account of fundamental parental rights, concordant with the natural law view, that does not stop at the schoolhouse door.  

While critics, like University of Connecticut law professor Anne Dailey, have claimed that Pierce is an “ambiguous” ruling, and have (strictly speaking correctly) observed that the proclamation that the child is not the “mere creature of the State” does not mean that the child is the “mere creature of the parents either,” the natural law view of parental rights found in our tradition does not regard children as objects or wholly subservient creatures of anyone—including their parents. While it is true, as I have observed, that under the natural law view of parental rights children do belong to parents in a sense, it is in a very particular and narrowly-tailored sense. Children are neither pieces of parental property nor creatures that possess any less dignity or worth than full-grown adults; rather, they are participants in a unique and timeless person-to-person relationship between themselves and their parents that is replete with duties on the part of parents. And, as I have already noted, proponents of the natural law account freely acknowledge that parental rights are defeasible—not absolute, as someone’s rights might be over a piece of property or some other legitimately instrumentalized object. 

As Pierce illustrates, the fight to protect and preserve parents’ fundamental rights to direct their children’s education and shape their values is nothing new when it comes to the American story. But, as the case also demonstrates, the natural law-rooted conception of the relationship between child and parent is deeply rooted in our nation’s constitutional self-understanding. It is not a doctrinally sectarian or even an explicitly religious or theistic position. The natural law account of parental rights is a substantively robust and reason-based position—one that must be defended for all Americans of all faiths and shades of belief. As supporters of the natural law account confront the challenges of today—struggles such as that against Montgomery County’s LGBTQ indoctrination efforts—we must be courageous defenders of the truth of parental rights. These are not rights conferred by a merely human authority, and subject to the whims of such an authority. They are, rather, natural rights. 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.

(h/t Harvey Millican and Supernerd)

I’m 80 Percent Blind From Glaucoma

Texas lawmakers passed bills that will help build a Pro-Life culture, but House leadership ignored the biggest threat to women and babies: abortion pills.

State officials began the 2025 legislative session in January with a major opportunity to stop the abortion industry. An estimated 30,000 Texan babies are killed each year by out-of-state procedures and abortion drugs, which also endanger mothers.

Texas Right to Life urged the Legislature to save these children with two Pro-Life Priority Bills:

1. The Woman and Child Protection Act (SB 2880) to combat abortion pills; and
2. The Stop Tax-Funded Abortion Travel Act (SB 33) to block cities from sending pregnant women to other states for abortions.

 Failure to Stop Abortion Pills

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The Woman and Child Protection Act ranked as the top Pro-Life measure of 2025 and would have cracked down on abortion pills brought to Texas from other states and countries. Whether sold online, shipped in the mail, or trafficked over the border, the Woman and Child Protection Act would have saved lives by:

• Allowing Texans to sue abortion pill manufacturers and distributors;
• Giving women and families the right to sue for wrongful deaths or injuries caused by these drugs; and
• Empowering the attorney general to prosecute abortion pill traffickers directly.

While the Texas Senate boldly championed this issue, Texas House leadership refused.

Groups, lawmakers, and activists rallied behind SB 2880 by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R–Mineola) and Rep. Jeff Leach (R–Allen). However, Chairman Ken King (R–Canadian) delayed SB 2880 so long in committee that it never reached the House floor before the deadline.

Without this legislation, an estimated 38,000 abortion pills will be brought to Texas between now and the next regular session in 2027—killing babies and endangering as many as 1 in 10 mothers who take them. The only way Texas lawmakers could save children from chemical abortions before 2027 is if Governor Abbott calls a special session for the Woman and Child Protection Act.

Story continues below.

Building a Pro-Life Texas Progress: 

Despite the failure on abortion pills, lawmakers still passed several meaningful Pro-Life measures that help foster a Culture of Life in Texas:

 Stop Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Travel Act
(SB 33 by Sen. Donna Campbell, M.D. (R–New Braunfels), sponsored by Rep. Candy Noble (R–Lucas))
Your taxpayer dollars will be protected from funding abortion travel costs (like what happened in Austin and San Antonio). SB 33 clarifies that it is illegal for governments to give tax dollars to abortion groups.

 Support for Fragile Babies

(SB 1233 by Sen. Kelly Hancock (R–North Richland Hills), sponsored by Rep. Valoree Swanson (R–Spring))
When a family finds out their preborn child may not live very long after birth, hospitals and doctors will now provide information on specialized care for their babies and community support for the parents so they don’t feel alone. The bill offers families hope through nonprofits like Abel Speaks, instead of pushing them toward abortion.

 The Life of the Mother Act
(SB 31 by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R–Mineola), sponsored by Rep. Charlie Geren (R–Fort Worth))
SB 31 reaffirms that doctors are allowed to intervene if a pregnant woman faces a life-threatening physical condition under Texas’ Pro-Life laws. In most cases, the best option is to deliver the baby early—even if the child is too premature to survive—so both mother and baby receive care. Importantly, this sort of pre-viable delivery is often labeled “abortion” by medical professionals, leading to the misunderstanding that it would be banned. In rare and tragic situations where early delivery cannot save either life, the law permits doctors to act to save the mother. SB 31 also provides education for physicians and their legal advisors, helping them navigate these difficult cases and save as many lives as possible.

 Adoption Education in High Schools
(SB 1207 by Sen. Phil King (R–Weatherford), sponsored by Rep. Terri Leo Wilson (R–Galveston))
This bill requires public high schools to teach about adoption in their health classes. Currently, for every 50 babies aborted, only 1 is adopted, largely due to fears and myths about adoption. SB 1207 helps young Texans see adoption as a compassionate and life-affirming option.

 Protecting Pregnancy Center Funding
(SB 1388 by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R–Brenham), sponsored by Rep. James Frank (R–Wichita Falls))
SB 1388 ensures that state funds from the Thriving Texas Families program only go to Pro-Life organizations like maternity homes, pregnancy resource centers, and adoption agencies. This way, the funds are not diluted by groups that do not align with the program’s life-affirming purpose.

Pro-Life Funding (Thriving Texas Families Program)

The final Texas budget includes $200 million for pregnancy centers, adoption agencies, and maternity homes, thanks to Rep. Caroline Harris Davila (R–Round Rock), Rep. Tom Oliverson, M.D., (R–Cypress), and other leading Pro-Life officials.

At first, lawmakers sought to cut the program to $140 million ($25 million less than 2023). Texas Right to Life does NOT receive any state funding, but we were the only statewide organization in the Capitol that testified for officials to keep the program’s full amount. While the Senate slightly walked back the needed $210 million, Pro-Life nonprofits will still receive a meaningful boost to serve pregnant women and families.

Bad Bills Defeated

This session, we helped defeat several dangerous bills, including efforts that would have:

• Repealed Pro-Life laws or added exceptions for abortion;
• Let fathers avoid paying child support if they offered to pay for an abortion; and
• Honored former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards.

The Bottom Line

We’re encouraged by the good steps taken to help moms and babies, but we cannot ignore the bloodshed by abortion pills in Texas and House leadership’s apathy.

Christians must stay vigilant, engaged, and vocal. Together, we will continue to defend Life at every stage—from fertilization to natural death—and hold elected officials accountable for protecting the most vulnerable.

LifeNews Note: Ashley Leenerts writes for Texas Right to Life

The post Abortion Pills are Killing 30,000 Texas Babies a Year. We Must Stop This appeared first on LifeNews.com.

If you are not from the Cincinnati area you may not be familiar with Cincituckey. It’s the area around the border of Ohio and Kentucky connected by several bridges over the Ohio River.

This past Sunday, on a beautiful afternoon, I joined thousands of faithful pro-lifers from both states as we gathered for the 20th annual Cross the Bridge for Life. The crowd was full of pastors, priests, nuns, local politicians and families all coming together in unity to stand for Jesus and for life.

One of the first people I met up with was Cory Bowman, a Republican who is running for mayor of Cincinnati. We talked about the importance of standing boldly for pro-life and not backing down from our stance.

Bowman’s name might not be familiar to those outside Ohio but he has a very well-known brother, Vice President JD Vance. The two men share a father, Donald Bowman, but have different last names because the vice president eventually took the last name of his maternal grandparents, Bonnie and James Vance.

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Bowman, 36, is the founding co-pastor of a non-denominational Christian church. Among the campaign priorities listed on his website is “safeguarding the unborn.”

In the November election, he will challenge popular incumbent Aftab Pureval, who, immediately after the fall of Roe v. Wade, stood with representatives of Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio to say he would repeal a 2001 law barring the city from covering abortion in its health insurance. I’ll be praying for Bowman’s success.

Also in attendance was Laura Strietmann, executive director of Cincinnati Right to Life, who showed off a mobile pregnancy help van owned by our friends at Created Equal that travels around Ohio. Many other pregnancy help centers, churches and pro-life organizations also had booths at the event. Archbishop Robert Casey of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and Bishop John Iffert of the Diocese of Covington both took part in the festival and walk.

After a concert and talks, the walk started in Kentucky and then crossed the half-mile-long, pedestrian-only Purple People Bridge to Ohio. The crowd then returned to the Kentucky side of the former railroad bridge for more talks, food and activities for kids.

Voters in Ohio approved a pro-abortion constitutional amendment in 2023 and in Kentucky, a pro-life amendment stating that nothing in the state constitution guaranteed a right to abortion was defeated in 2022. Abortion remains legal until 22 weeks in Ohio but a Kentucky law enacted after the fall of Roe v. Wade that allows abortion only under certain severe medical circumstances remains in effect and just two days before the Bridge event, pro-lifers in the state got some good news: The ACLU, without explanation, dropped a lawsuit seeking to overturn the protective law.

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services reported just 23 abortions in 2023, all deemed medically necessary, compared to 4,441 in 2021 when abortion was fully legal. In 2023, Ohio saw 22,000 abortions, an increase of 19 percent over the previous year.

Cross the Bridge for Life provided a perfect Sunday afternoon to gather with so many committed, passionate people and clergy to take a stand for life. Now more than ever we must stand united against the abortion industry and be a light for Christ.

Crossing a bridge shouldn’t mean the difference between life and death.

LifeNews Note: Bryan Kemper is the director of youth outreach and street activism for Priests for Life and the founder of its youth outreach Stand True. He is the author of Pro-life is the New Punk Rock.

The post Thousands of Pro-Life People in Cincinnati Area Stand Against Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Response to another flawed semi-trad argument…

Don’t Be Like Judas!
(Nor Like Eric Sammons, For That Matter)

OK, so we doctored this screenshot a little: The painting on the left doesn’t actually show the betrayal of Judas

Eric Sammons, editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine, recently released a video clip on YouTube that’s a composite of highlights from his 35-minute Crisis Point podcast episode “Don’t Be Judas” of Apr. 15, 2025.

As the clip is less than a minute long (a so-called YouTube ‘short’), a lot more people will be exposed to what Sammons says there than would take the time to sit through the full-length episode.… READ MORE

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) affirms that the consumption of pornography (depiction of erotic behavior or images to cause sexual excitement) negatively impacts the physical, psychological, emotional and social health of adults, children, and families. Viewing pornography has become pervasive even among young children and can be highly addictive. It has been declared a public health crisis by many states. Current mobile and high speed internet technology makes the use or exposure to pornography ubiquitously available for adults and adolescents. For children, negative effects of pornography exposure include anxiety, depression, violence, and the sexual assault of other children. Pornography is also used to groom children for sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

Pornography use results in a deformed and maladaptive view of human sexuality and relationships.  This results in higher rates of depression, dissatisfaction with a sexual partner, and dissatisfaction with marriage.  Men who view large amounts of pornography are more likely to downplay the seriousness of rape, and to even endorse the myth that women enjoy rape.

The ACPeds recognizes that pornography is addictive with negative consequences to society, and especially to children. It undermines healthy adult sexual and non-sexual relationships and harms children directly and indirectly. Parents need to protect children and adolescents from the harmful effects of pornography by putting parental controls in place so that children cannot access it on devices.  Parents should also work with local and state officials to outlaw its production and consumption.

Approved by the ACPeds Board of Directors (May 2025)
Approved by ACPeds Members (June 2025)

 Corresponding ACPeds Referenced Paper:

The Impact of Pornography on Children (Aug. 2024)

Other Pertinent ACPeds Referenced Paper:

Media Use and Screen Time – Its Impact on Children, Adolescents, and Families (May 2020)

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) affirms children living with their married, biological parents consistently have better physical, emotional, and academic well-being (unless the children are experiencing an abusive environment). Although the demographics of families are changing, with more parents opting for cohabitation or divorce and stepparenting, the research continues to demonstrate the benefits of the married environment for children’s development.

Each child and each family are obviously unique, with different strengths and weaknesses, different personalities and temperaments, and varying degrees of social, emotional and economic resources, as well as differing family situations prior to divorce. Despite these differences, divorce has been shown to diminish a child’s future competence in all areas of life, including family relationships, education, emotional well-being, and future earning power.

With divorce and single parenting, children experience significant potential losses, including loss of time with parents, loss of economic security, loss of emotional security and weakened relationships with parents, loss of academic stimulation and possible loss of religious faith and practice. Children who have experienced divorce are at greater risk for physical, emotional and sexual abuse by a nonbiological parent-figure living in the home, and they may be less likely to value their own marriage in the future.  Even the divorced adults (primarily mothers) may suffer similar losses, including decreased physical, emotional, and financial well-being.

When adults view their marriage as damaged and “at risk”, those who persist and work to improve their marriage often find ten years later that they are in a happy relationship.  Therefore, ACPeds encourages married parents to work to improve their relationship and avoid divorce whenever possible. ACPeds supports the well-being of children, regardless of their family structure, and encourages parents (biological or adoptive) and guardians to provide maximal love and nurturance to their children.

Approved by the ACPeds Board of Directors (May 2025)
Approved by ACPeds Members (June 2025)

Corresponding ACPeds Referenced Paper:

Marriage, Divorce, and Family Relations: Effect on Children (2025)

Other Pertinent ACPeds Referenced Papers:

Marriage and the Family (Sept. 2014)

Cohabitation: Effects of Cohabitation on the Men and Women Involved – Part 1 of 2 (Mar. 2015)

Cohabitation: Effects of Parental Cohabitation and other Non-marital Sexual Activity on Children – Part 2 of 2 (Jul. 2015)

Same-Sex Parenting: A Scientific Analysis (May 2019)

Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor Pope Francis, is a pope of notable firsts.

Formerly Robert Cardinal Prevost, OSA, Pope Leo XIV is the first pope from the United States, the first from North America, the first to have Peruvian citizenship, and the first from the Augustinian Order. 

Perhaps the Augustinian charism has profoundly shaped his life, including these early days of his papacy.

However, the influence of Saint Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century bishop and Doctor of the Church, is not unique to Pope Leo among recent popes.

Pope Benedict XVI, while not a member of the Augustinians, also shares with Pope Leo a life and ministry shaped by Saint Augustine. 

Both Pope Leo and Pope Benedict completed their doctoral work on Saint Augustine as young priests.

The then-Father Robert Prevost, a canon law student in Rome, defended his doctoral thesis in 1987, discussing the role of local priors in the Augustinian order based on Augustine’s monastic rule.

Pope Benedict, as Father Joseph Ratzinger, completed his theology doctorate in 1953 in Germany with a dissertation on Augustine’s concept of the People of God. 

But what was Augustine’s influence on their work as bishops? 

In both, this influence meant helping others in their search for God through preaching and pastoral closeness.

Saint Augustine insisted that Christians ought to use their talents in service to God and others. 

For Father Prevost, this was evident as a missionary and bishop in Peru. There, he accompanied Catholics and others through civil unrest and natural disasters, offering them an example of how to live out the Gospel. 

For Father Ratzinger, this commitment to the Augustinian ideal of service was manifested by his teaching and episcopal career. Like Augustine, he taught about the compatibility of faith and reason and the primacy of love as communion. 

Both Popes have also shown their devotion to Saint Augustine in their respective coats of arms.

Pope Leo XIV’s coat of arms features an emblem of the Augustinian order: an inflamed, pierced heart resting upon a book. The emblem represents the conversion experience of Saint Augustine, who described it using the phrase,

Pope Benedict XVI’s coat of arms features a scallop shell, which relates to a famous legend of Saint Augustine.

While walking on a beach one day, he noticed a child trying to use a seashell to scoop up the sea into a hole in the sand. When he told the boy that this was impossible, the boy replied that this represented Augustine’s attempts to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity and the need for childlike faith. 

As the new pontificate of Pope Leo XIV continues, we do not have to look too far into the past to see the influence of Saint Augustine, the Doctor of Grace, on recent pontificates. 

Benedict XVI’s teachings as pope were heavily influenced by Augustine, and he once referred to him as "the greatest Father of the Latin Church." Like him, he taught that God was accessible to human reason, and that both faith and reason led to true knowledge. 

In a world marked by more complex challenges, Saint Augustine can help the new Pope, and us, promote the Gospel as a response to the deepest questions of the human heart. 

Saint Augustine, Doctor of the Church, pray for us!

The Turkish leader has suggested hosting a leadership-level summit in Istanbul or Ankara

Türkiye is ready to continue mediating between Russia and Ukraine to help end the conflict and plans to propose hosting a summit bringing together the two countries’ leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.

Speaking in a televised address posted on X, Erdogan described the second meeting between delegations from Moscow and Kiev in a month as “very magnificent.”

“My biggest wish is to bring together both (Russian President) Vladimir Putin and (Ukraine’s Vladimir) Zelensky, perhaps in Istanbul or Ankara,” he said, suggesting that US President Donald Trump could also take part in the gathering.

“If they agree, I would join the meeting personally,” Erdogan stated, calling for Istanbul to become “a true center of peace.”

During Monday’s meeting in Istanbul, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations agreed on a “largest ever” prisoner exchange, according to the head of the Russia negotiation team, Vladimir Medinsky. The swap will include all severely injured and seriously ill POWs, as well as a separate mechanism involving all captive soldiers who are under 25 years old, he told reporters.

Medinsky also said Russia would unilaterally return the bodies of 6,000 Ukrainian servicemen next week. Moscow also presented Kiev with a detailed memorandum outlining a proposal for a lasting peace and steps toward a “full-fledged ceasefire,” he said.

Türkiye has played a key mediating role between Russia and Ukraine since 2022, when it hosted early peace talks between the two. Those talks failed to bring about a breakthrough after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised Kiev not to accept a deal, and to seek victory on the battlefield.

Ukraine returned to talks under pressure from US President Donald Trump, who has insisted that a truce be brokered. The previous round of talks, held in Istanbul on May 16, led to the exchange of 1,000 prisoners from each side.

On Monday, the Ukrainian delegation suggested holding the next meeting before the end of June, the head of Kiev’s delegation Rustem Umerov told reporters after the talks. Moscow has not commented on the proposal.