Posted inVatican Dispatch

Pope Leo appoints Italian sister to top Vatican post

by Gerard O’Connell June 30, 2026

Salesian Sister Alessandra Smerilli, newly appointed prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, speaks during a Vatican news conference about “Raising Hope for Climate Justice” Sept. 30, 2025. Credit: CNS photo/Lola Gomez

Pope Leo XIV has appointed the Italian Salesian woman religious, Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A., as prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, making her the first woman to head this major Vatican office. Sister Smerilli, a member of the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, served as secretary of the dicastery since 2021. The dicastery covers such global issues as justice, peace, the economy, the environment, sustainable development and artificial intelligence.

Pope to speak via livestream at Liberty Medal event in Philadelphia

 

News

Pope to speak via livestream at Liberty Medal event in Philadelphia

Camillo Barone  NCR

Defying pope and facing excommunication, SSPX consecrates bishops at huge outdoor Mass

 

Vatican News

Defying pope and facing excommunication, SSPX consecrates bishops at huge outdoor Mass

Vatican

• NCR

  Justin McLellan

Posted inVatican Dispatch

Pope Leo makes final appeal to SSPX before schismatic ordination of bishops: ‘Please turn back!’

by Gerard O’Connell June 30, 2026

Pope Leo XIV attends the annual session of the World Food Program's executive board during his visit to the agency's Rome headquarters June 22, 2026. Credit: CNS photo/Lola Gomez

“Please turn back!” Pope Leo XIV said in a final heartfelt written appeal, on June 29, to the superior general and “bishops, priests, seminarians and faithful connected to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X,” asking them not to go ahead with the planned ordination of bishops without the necessary papal mandate on July 1.

“I feel it is my duty, through the authority received from Christ, to ask you to desist from your intended act,” he said, speaking as the supreme guarantor of unity and orthodoxy in the Catholic Church, in a letter made public by the Vatican on June 30. The SSPX has a global membership of some 600,000 members, 700 priests and seminarians and two bishops.

Listening and courage: How to heal church's rift with Society of St. Pius X

 

Guest Voices

Opinion

Listening and courage: How to heal church's rift with Society of St. Pius X

James Gordon Reid Haveloch-Jones  ncr

Editorial: Fight for democracy remains urgent as US marks 250 years

 

Editorial

Editorial: Fight for democracy remains urgent as US marks 250 years

Opinion

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  NCR Editorial Staff

The Grace Is From God’s Side

 

 

 

Everyone is Chosen

The Grace Is From God’s Side

Monday, June 29, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

 

 

Father Richard points to God’s covenant with the Jewish people to illustrate how the choosing rests entirely on God’s side, not on our own merit: 

We first see the idea of grace in the Hebrew Scriptures through the concept of election or chosenness. This is eventually called “covenant love” because it finally becomes a mutual giving and receiving. This love is always initiated from God’s side toward the people of ancient Israel, and they gradually learn to trust it and respond in kind. The Bible shows a relentless movement toward intimacy and divine union between Creator and creatures. For this to happen, there needs to be some degree of compatibility, likeness, or even “sameness” between the two parties. In other words, there has to be a little bit of God in us that wants to find itself.

 

The forgotten history of the Catholic Church and the American Revolution

by James T. Keane June 25, 2026

Soldiers in Revolutionary War uniforms participate in a military parade to commemorate the U.S. Army's 250th Birthday in Washington June 14, 2025. Credit: OSV News photo/Carlos Barria, Reuters.

What provoked the American Revolution?

Economic conflict, Enlightenment ideologies and historical trends aside, among the leading proximate causes were the Coercive Acts of 1774, a number of British parliamentary decrees that came to be known on this side of the pond as the “Intolerable Acts.” The first four might fairly be considered revenge for the Boston Tea Party. First, the Boston Port Act authorized a blockade of Boston’s harbor until the locals paid up for the losses incurred by the British East India Company; next, the Massachusetts Government Act and the Administration of Justice Act both severely curtailed the authority of local government in the colonies (including over trials); and then the Quartering Act required locals to pay for the lodging of British soldiers in the colonies.