Catholic Nutshell News: Tuesday 5/20/25
Topics include: Saints for healing from cancer, Pope Leo’s first significant personnel change, Vatican offers to host peace talks, & The other Popes named Leo
“I’ll pray for thee from my pistachio tree”
Today's sources are the National Catholic Register, CNA, Aleteia, The CatholicVote, The Pillar, OSV, Big Pulpit, and Matt Fradd. (Catholic Nutshell is a subscription service for faithful, hopeful, & curious Catholics willing to exercise the Catholic News Muscle)
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Aleteia
Saints to turn to for healing from cancer
By Mónica Muñoz, August 8, 2024
No one can avoid diseases, not even the saints. When we learn about the lives of the saints, we discover that many of them suffered from various ailments. We share this bodily weakness and can turn to the saints to console us in moments of pain and to intercede with the Lord. Their prayers may help to obtain from God the restoration of our own or someone else’s health, if it is God’s will, but also the grace that our sufferings may serve for our sanctification.
St. Peregrine is widely known worldwide for his powerful intercession and healing of those suffering from cancer.
Saint Agatha is invoked against breast cancer and other diseases of the breast.
St. Ezekiel Moreno personally knew the agonies of cancer.
Many other saints are also attributed with miracles on the healing of cancers, including Sants Padre Pio, Marcellin Champagnat, and St. Zelie Martin, Mother of Thérèse.
The Pillar
A significant personnel change in Pope Leo’s opening weeks
By The Pillar, May 19, 2025
The announcement of Cardinal Baldo Reina as grand chancellor of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, replacing Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, marks one of the most significant personnel changes in the opening weeks of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate. While Pope Leo has not reversed a 2019 legal reform that gave the pope direct authority to appoint the institute’s grand chancellor, his selection of Reina effectively restores an earlier structure. Paglia, 80, remains at the helm of the Pontifical Academy for Life. However, his tenure at the JPII Institute and the Pontifical Academy for Life has been controversial regarding moral issues of artificial contraception and assisted suicide, and potential financial mismanagement of donated funds.
Catholic News Service
‘Visible communion among all those who profess the same faith’
By Cindy Wooden, May 19, 2025
During a special audience with religious leaders who came to Rome to inaugurate his papal ministry, Pope Leo XIV vowed to continue working toward Christian unity and promoting dialogue among all religions. "Now is the time for dialogue and building bridges," the pope said May 19 as he met with the leaders in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace. His guests included Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem, and Catholicos Awa III, patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, as well as Anglican, Methodist, and Lutheran leaders. Representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, and Jain communities also attended. "I consider one of my priorities to be that of seeking the reestablishment of full and visible communion among all those who profess the same faith in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."
CatholicVote
Vatican offers to host Ukraine-Russia peace talks, says Trump
By Elise DeGeeter, May 19, 2025
President Donald Trump announced Monday that Pope Leo XIV has offered to host peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine at the Vatican. Trump made the announcement after a two-hour call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “I believe it went very well,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War… The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!” Both Trump and Vance have met personally with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in recent weeks. Pope Leo XIV publicly called for a “just and lasting peace as soon as possible” for the “beloved Ukrainian people.”
National Catholic Register
Trump names Archbishop Cordileone to Religious Liberty Board
By Tyler Arnold/CNA, May 16, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump has tapped San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to serve on an advisory board for the country’s newly established Religious Liberty Commission, according to a Thursday announcement from the archdiocese. Archbishop Cordileone, who has served as the archbishop since 2012, is the third member of the Catholic hierarchy to be given a role in the presidential commission’s work. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York and Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, are members of the commission. “Religious liberty is a critical issue in our time that needs to be defended and addressed,” Archbishop Cordileone said in a statement. “I am happy to join my brother bishops in providing a Catholic voice on this important topic at a national level.”
Catholic News Agency
St. Nicholas of Tolentine is called Pope Leo’s favorite saint
By Diego López Marina, May 20, 2025
Some Catholics wonder who Pope Leo XIV’s favorite saint is. A Peruvian missionary priest, a close friend and confidant of the pontiff, said he knows the answer in this little-known devotion of the Holy Father, who used to pray to this saint on his knees in a small chapel near Chiclayo in northern Peru. “St. Nicholas of Tolentine is, without a doubt, his favorite saint. He is the protector of his perpetual vows, his great devotion within Augustinian spirituality,” said Peruvian priest Father David Farfán Guerrero, whom the Holy Father met in 1985 in Chulucanas in the Piura district of the country. St. Nicholas of Tolentine is considered the first saint of the Order of St. Augustine. He lived in the 13th century.
CRUX
The other Popes named Leo
By Charles Collins, May 19, 2025
Leo I – known as Leo the Great – is famous for meeting Attila the Hun in 452, persuading him to turn back from his invasion of Italy. The first Leo was also the pontiff when the Council of Chalcedon occurred. This Council was rejected by what is now known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches, mainly in Armenia, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Iraq, and southern India. Pope Leo III was the bishop of Rome who crowned Charlemagne as emperor of what became the Holy Roman Empire, which became the paradigm of Church-State relations for 1000 years. Leo IX was the pontiff in 1054, when the Great Schism split East and West into the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Pope Leo X was the Bishop of Rome when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses in 1517. Leo XIV says he hopes to heal some of these divisions that occurred during the reign of some of his namesakes.
ARC
The now-vacant church Pope Leo XIV attended growing up
By Aaryan Kumar, May 14, 2025
Pope Leo spent his early years in the far South Side suburbs of Dolton and Riverdale, where he was a choir boy and an altar boy at St. Mary of the Assumption Church. As the population in the deindustrializing town plummeted, so too did church attendance, forcing the parish to shutter in 2011. It is no longer home to the worship it once was: no benches, altars, or podiums exist. The first thing you notice upon walking in is a huge work of neon-color graffiti. To the left, a large hole in the roof presides over the tattered floors. The stained glass windows, however, remain intact. Abandoned churches have become common. A church in New Buffalo was converted into a brewery. A church in Chicago’s Ukranian Village neighborhood was transformed into a condo unit. Some critics consider it sacrilegious, but the alternative—vacated churches being demolished as formerly tight-knit communities evaporate—is not appealing either.
From Pulpit & Agency to Satire for 5/20/25
BIG PULPIT
Tito Edwards Catholic blogger site: May 20, 2025
The Big Pulpit website is an intelligent news aggregator offering quality insight & analysis on the Catholic Church worldwide. Here are Chief Editor Tito Edward’s top recommendations for today.
Building a Parallel Economy of Catholic-Owned Companies – Genesius at Catholic Stand
Young Trad Catholics React to Pope Leo XIV – Murray Rundus at Catholic Family News
A Day in the Life of Pope Leo XIV – Joan Lewis at Joan’s Rome
What It Means to the United States to Have an American Pope? – Catholics For Catholics
Catholic News Agency
CNA’s top headlines — May 20, 2025
Catholic News Agency provides reliable, free, up-to-the-minute news affecting the Universal Church, emphasizing the words of the Holy Father and happenings of the Holy See to anyone with access to the internet.
Pope Leo XIV’s connection to Spanish Civil War martyrs, Valley of the Fallen - May 20, 2025 - By Nicolás de Cárdenas - Pope Leo carries on his pectoral cross, among others, a relic of an Augustinian martyr bishop, Anselmo Polanco, who was executed during the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War.
Bishops Paprocki, Rhoades join Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission advisory board - May 19, 2025 - By Tyler Arnold - Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Bishop Kevin Rhoades, and Father Thomas Ferguson will also join advisory board for President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission.
Chicago to celebrate election of Pope Leo XIV with Mass at White Sox stadium - May 19, 2025 - By Tessa Gervasini - The Archdiocese of Chicago will host a celebration at Rate Field, the home of the Chicago White Sox, on June 14 to honor Pope Leo XIV.
Babylon Bee - Satire News
Far-Right Christian Extremists Pray For Joe Biden
By U.S. Staff, May 19, 2025
In a horrifying display of what could be growing Christian Nationalism, a group of far-right Christian extremists gathered earlier today to pray for former President Joseph Biden. According to eyewitnesses, the dangerous far-right Christians gathered together in a little circle, then proceeded, one after the other, to pray for a man with whom they disagree morally, politically, economically, and spiritually. "It was really scary to see," said Wayne Prinque, a reporter who caught the entire far-right Christian prayer ritual on camera. "One of the grandmothers even got on her knees as she prayed for Joe Biden's health, repentance, and ultimate salvation. I can't believe they would go so far as to pray for a president whom many would have considered their enemy. This madness needs to be stopped right away."
Nutshell reflections for 5/20/25:
USCCB Daily Reflection AUDIO & VIDEO - May 20, 2025
Tuesday of Fifth Week of Easter
The Obscure, Forgotten, and Undiscovered
Taming the jumping cactus, ‘a grotesque, evil desert plant’
By James K. Hanna, May 20, 2025
Father Cyprian Vabre (b. 1872), a French-born Catholic priest, served the Church in Flagstaff, Arizona, from 1900 until his death in 1924. He spent hours taming the grotesque and evil, not as an exorcist, but a different prickly medium. I know nothing about cactus and rely here on the editor of The Coconino Sun of Flagstaff. In 1920, he described the cholla, or jumping cactus, as “a grotesque, evil desert plant,” six feet tall. It seemed to throw its thorns when struck or jarred. The threat of stinging projectiles did not discourage Father Vabre. Once harvested, the cholla would dry for several months. The bark and pulp would be removed, leaving only the skeleton, or “bones” of the trunk. He wove them into intricate patterns, including a five-foot-high reading lamp, small sitting stools, and tall hat racks.
Our Sunday Visitor
What keeps us from total surrender to God’s will
By Chloe Langr, May 19, 2025
A friend told me how the Surrender Novena helped her surrender to God’s will and grow to trust his providence. I pulled up the novena on my phone and prayed the prayers for the first day. The Surrender Novena is a prayer written by Servant of God Father Don Dolindo Ruotolo, an Italian priest who lived from 1882 to 1970. He referred to himself as “the Madonna’s little old man” and was St. Padre Pio’s spiritual director for a while. Each day of the Surrender Novena ends with praying the refrain (“O Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything”) 10 times. After a few days of repeating the prayer, the desire to trust that God would care for things grew. When we allow worry to consume our thoughts, it can keep us back from the intimacy of allowing God to provide for us. We doubt that God is a good father. It can be incredibly discouraging not to see those desires come to fruition. We might think we have the perfect solution that would solve everything. But this isn’t surrender. He is a God who works wonders for us.
Matt Fradd's Terrifying Ruminations
Why we need divine revelation, according to Aquinas
By Matt Fradd, April 10, 2025
Philosophy has its limits. As St. Thomas Aquinas clearly shows, philosophy alone isn’t enough. To fully understand who God is and how to attain ultimate happiness and salvation, we need truths revealed directly by God — Divine Revelation. "It was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason" (ST I, Q.1, Art.1). The fullness of God’s nature and His plans for humanity go beyond human reason’s capacity. Our ultimate destiny exceeds our natural comprehension; it must be revealed by God Himself to orient our lives toward Him correctly. Philosophy, while valuable, is often slow, uncertain, and vulnerable to error. Divine Revelation, conversely, ensures clarity, certainty, and universal accessibility.
The Catholic Weekly
An Augustinian vision for a restless church
By Daniel Ang, May 20, 2025
It is natural and proper that a pope’s reception of revelation, pastoral vision, and theological orientation is deeply shaped by the contours of his own life. In short, biography shapes theology. Born into a working-class family in mid-20th-century Chicago, with French, Italian, and Spanish roots, Pope Leo grew up amid the challenges and diversity of a rapidly changing America. As Prior General of the Augustinian Order, Leo’s leadership was informed by his doctoral work at the Gregorian University, where he explored the Augustinian vision of authority not as control or domination but as service offered in love. Leo XIV draws not only from Augustine’s doctrinal insights but from the deeper well of his lived experience—a theology forged in struggle, restlessness and the eventual surrender to grace. Leo XIV’s vision will emphasise that true pastoral care arises from the recognition of human restlessness and the unceasing pursuit of God.
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