1. Top Priority for Pope Leo: Warn the World of the A.I. Threat, By Motoko Rich and Adam Satariano, The New York Times, May 15, 2025, 5:04 AM
Less than a week into the role, Leo XIV has publicly highlighted his concerns about the rapidly advancing technology. In his inaugural address to the College of Cardinals, he said the church would address the risks that artificial intelligence poses to “human dignity, justice and labor.” And in his first speech to journalists, he cited the “immense potential” of A.I. while warning that it requires responsibility “to ensure that it can be used for the good of all.”
While it is far too early to say how Pope Leo will use his platform to address these concerns or whether he can have much effect, his focus on artificial intelligence shows he is a church leader who grasps the gravity of this modern issue.
Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan friar, professor and the Vatican’s top adviser on the ethics of artificial intelligence, said he was surprised by Leo’s “bold” priorities. Father Benanti remembers that just 15 years ago, when he told his doctoral advisers that he wanted to study cyborgs and human enhancement at the Gregorian, the pontifical university where he now teaches, his advisers thought he was nuts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/world/europe/pope-leo-artificial-intelligence.html
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2. There Are Ways to Die With Dignity, but Not Like This, By L.S. Dugdale, The New York Times, May 15, 2025, Pg. A27
Dr. Dugdale is a physician and an ethicist at Columbia University and the author of the book “The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom.”
The New York bill defines “aid in dying” as a medical practice. If a patient qualifies, a doctor can prescribe a lethal dose of drugs that the patient may self-administer to end his or her life. Labeling this a medical practice confers a kind of legitimacy on what is also called, more accurately, physician-assisted suicide.
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This is a major oversight that fails to protect depressed people from making flawed decisions. Depression is not just a mood; it distorts perception, often convincing people that their lives are worthless, their loved ones are better off without them and death is their only option. When people intervene to prevent a conventional suicide attempt, they do so because they believe such thoughts are not expressions of a person’s true will but rather symptoms of an illness.
Oregon collects data on assisted suicides in the state, and those numbers should prompt concern about depressed patients. In 2024, for example, most people who received assisted suicide prescriptions in Oregon had terminal cancer — a group known to be at high risk for depression. Yet of the 607 Oregonians who received lethal prescriptions that year, only three were referred for psychological or psychiatric evaluation. (Research has shown that depression is a diagnosis that many doctors are prone to miss.)
This is troubling because depression remains a highly treatable illness. If we fail to properly screen terminally ill patients for depression, we risk letting the illness — not the individual — make the decision to end a life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/opinion/medical-aid-dying-new-york.html
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3. A new pope confronts his church’s abuse scandal amid praise and scrutiny, By Karin Brulliard, Samantha Schmidt, Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan O’Connell, The Washington Post, May 15, 2025
Even as Pope Leo XIV’s profile as a humble champion of the disenfranchised takes shape, a looming question is how he will approach the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis while leading a global institution that has maintained secrecy and silence around its handling of claims against clergy.
Leo has assumed his role a dozen years after Pope Francis inherited a church roiled by clergy abuse scandals and then went on to devote more attention to the issue than his predecessors. But survivors and scholars say the new pontiff must urgently improve on Francis’s complicated legacy, pushing where he didn’t by robustly committing to transparency and accountability in investigations of harm.
“He’s a man of justice and a man who has cared for those who are marginalized, and certainly victims should be at the top of that list,” said Daniel Griffith, a Minneapolis priest and founding director of the Initiative on Restorative Justice and Healing at the University of St. Thomas. “There has been slow and steady movement forward. However, there is much more that needs to be done.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2025/05/15/pope-leo-catholic-church-abuse-scandal/
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4. Five Takeaways From RFK Jr.’s Grilling on Capitol Hill, By Liz Essley Whyte, The Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2025
Abortion pill restrictions
In response to questions from the abortion opponent Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), Kennedy referred to a new insurance data analysis by the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center that concluded adverse events from the abortion pill are higher than stated by the Food and Drug Administration.
“It’s alarming and clearly it indicates that at very least the label should be changed,” Kennedy said, adding that he has asked FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to do a review on the matter that is a priority for him.
The FDA has said that mifepristone is safe to use as directed but that prolonged bleeding and infection can occur rarely after all abortions.
Kennedy said that he would make a recommendation about abortion-pill restrictions but that the decision “will ultimately go through the White House, through President Trump.”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/rfk-jr-hhs-hearings-takeaways-1a8564c3
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5. Those who’ve worked with Pope Leo XIV are optimistic he’ll elevate women’s roles — with limits, By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press, May 15, 2025, 7:23 AM
Before becoming Pope Leo XIV , Cardinal Robert Prevost presided over one of the most revolutionary reforms of Pope Francis’ pontificate by having women serve on the Vatican board that vets nominations for bishops.
But he also has said decisively that women cannot be ordained as priests, and despite having worked for years in Peru where women often lead church communities, seems noncommittal on whether women could ever serve in any ministerial capacity.
Nevertheless, the women who have worked closely with Prevost in recent years have praised his leadership style, ability to listen and respect for their opinions. In interviews with The Associated Press, they say they expect that as pope, Leo will continue to promote women in church governance positions, albeit with limits.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/15/pope-leo-women-priests-ordination/4f607db4-314b-11f0-8498-1f8214bba2d2_story.html
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6. The Two Leos, By Raymond J. de Souza, First Things, May 15, 2025
Pope Leo XIV has explained that his choice of regnal name is an homage to Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), the architect of the modern papacy. It was Leo who confronted the industrial and political revolutions with gospel principles, launching modern Catholic social teaching. It was Leo who moved the Church away from a defensive posture against the ills of modernity toward, as George Weigel puts it, engagement with modernity in order to convert it. My own view is that the two great popes of the modern papacy are its founder, Leo XIII, and its exemplar, St. John Paul the Great. The two are remarkably similar, elected to the throne of Peter exactly a century apart.
I was thus most pleased with Leo XIV’s invocation of Leo XIII. The new Holy Father made particular reference to Leo XIII reigning in a time of economic and social change; Leo XIV intuits that something similar is afoot, in another “industrial” revolution, this one driven by digital technology and, as the Holy Father has specifically mentioned, artificial intelligence.
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A knowledge of truth that fosters personal autonomy and economic viability is a good summary of the priority on liberty found in Leo XIII’s thought. There is reason to think that Leo XIV’s own Augustinian background in the Christian anthropology of the Church Fathers, as well as his exposure in Peru to the limits of the state, politically and economically, might dispose him to the liberty path, recalling that liberty is the greatest of natural endowments.
https://firstthings.com/the-two-leos/
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7. Missouri lawmakers approve referendum to repeal abortion-rights amendment, By David A. Lieb, The Associated Press, May 14, 2025 8:42 PM
Six months after Missouri voters approved an abortion-rights amendment, Republican state lawmakers on Wednesday approved a new referendum that would seek the amendment’s repeal and instead ban most abortions with exceptions for rape an incest.
The newly proposed constitutional amendment would go back to voters in November 2026, or sooner, if Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe calls a special election before then.
Republican senators used a series of rare procedural moves to cut off discussion by opposing Democrats before passing the proposed abortion-rights revision by a 21-11 vote. The measure passed the Republican-led House last month.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/14/abortion-rights-ban-missouri-sick-leave/2041f1ce-3115-11f0-8498-1f8214bba2d2_story.html
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8. Pope Leo XIV and the Challenge of AI, The National Catholic Register, Editorial, May 14, 2025
Pope Leo XIV disclosed the primary reason for his choice of papal name two days after his historic May 8 election, it was no major surprise.
As many observers had already guessed, the first American pope in Church history wanted to communicate his continuity with Pope Leo XIII, who is best known for the “social justice” teachings in his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. But what was unexpected is the direct way Leo linked his papal name selection to the challenge that artificial intelligence poses for contemporary humanity.
In case anybody missed this transparent tip about a central priority of his unfolding papacy, the new Holy Father referenced the AI issue again in his first public meeting at the Vatican with journalists who had covered the papal conclave.
Why is Pope Leo stressing this issue so prominently at the very beginning of his pontificate – and what can we conclude about the approach he intends to take in addressing it?
First and foremost, it’s because he foresees AI’s potential to fundamentally rework human societies, in a similar way to how the Industrial Revolution upended the social order during Leo XIII’s time.
In particular, our new Pope is concerned that artificial intelligence, if misapplied, will privilege only the rich and powerful and turn out to be profoundly damaging for vast numbers of workers, whose jobs are at risk because of AI’s capacity to displace them, and for other groups that are denied their fair share of the enormous wealth and opportunities AI has the potential to generate.
Pope Leo is hardly alone in expressing this concern. The same day as he highlighted AI’s challenges to journalists, The Wall Street Journal published an article that quoted a CEO who warned his employees in April that “AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it’s coming for my job too.”
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Practicality, calmness, courage and strength. That’s a powerful quartet of positive attributes for addressing the challenges of AI – and indeed for all of the immense evangelical mission that’s now been entrusted by God to the stewardship of the Church’s first U.S.-born pope.
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/editorial-pope-leo-xiv-artificial-intelligence
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9. On Pope Leo’s Desk: Rupnik, How will the pontiff handle a notorious abuse case?, By JD Flynn, The Pillar, May 14, 2025
Pope Francis may well be remembered as the pope who allowed Theodore McCarrick to be criminally tried and laicized in the Church.
But on the whole, the late pontiff’s record on handling clerical sexual abuse in the Church is not likely to be recorded as universally positively by Church historians.
Francis will likely be remembered as a pontiff who aimed to legislate through a problem of immense scope and scale in the Church, while proving unable to ensure that law were applied fairly, or refrain from placing his personal, and often intuitive judgements, over the mechanisms of the law.
Despite ushering in legal and structural changes, the former pope developed a reputation for rehabilitating, tolerating, and even refusing to acknowledge abuse or cover-up by prelates with whom he had a personal relationship – criticisms which have also dogged, with cause, his own immediate predecessors in the Petrine Office. All of that likely means that in the annals of history, what Francis wrote and said about clerical sexual abuse will be measured against his own handling of the cases close to his orbit, and their impact on the decline of the rule of law in the Church’s life.
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It is not clear whether Leo intends a wholesale examination of penal processes, and the quasi-judicial processes which replaced them in many countries, though that seems likely to be eventually on the list for a canonist in the chair of Peter.
But whatever he intends on safeguarding reform, the pontiff will need trust and cooperation. He’d likely get that in spades, if he starts by taking the Rupniks down from the wall.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/on-pope-leos-desk-rupnik
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10. Pope Leo XIV, Taxes, voting, and citizenship – An American pope explainer, Does Pope Leo have to deal with the IRS?, By Michelle La Rosa. The Pillar, May 14, 2025
Cardinal Robert Prevost made history May 8, as the first American to be elected Bishop of Rome, taking the name Leo XIV.
But what does it mean for an American to be pope? Will Leo pay income tax in the U.S.? Can he vote for president? Could he…run for president?
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Will Pope Leo keep his U.S. citizenship? It’s not clear.
Leo may choose to submit a request to relinquish his U.S. citizenship. Or he might try to keep his citizenship in his country of origin, as his three immediate predecessors did.
But even if Leo wants to maintain his American citizenship, the decision is not entirely up to him.
From the perspective of the U.S. government, becoming a foreign head of state does not automatically result in the loss of U.S. citizenship – though it could.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/taxes-voting-and-citizenship-an-american
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11. Pope Leo XIV says Eastern Catholics often see violence, calls for peace, By Charles Collins, Crux, May 14, 2025
Pope Leo XIV says the Church needs the Christian East and has a “great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your … liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety.”
The new pontiff was speaking to participants in the Jubilee of the Oriental Churches in the Vatican’s Audience Hall on Wednesday.
There are 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in the world, consisting of nearly 20 million people. The Eastern Catholic Churches are located in Eastern Europe, Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and India. However, many Eastern Catholics have come to Western Europe, the Americas, and Australia.
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2025/05/pope-leo-xiv-says-eastern-catholics-often-see-violence-calls-for-peace
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12. Women’s health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood 15 to 1, report finds, By Kate Quiñones, Catholic News Agency, May 14, 2025, 5:29 pm
In a recently released report, Charlotte Lozier Institute found that life-affirming women’s health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood locations 15 to 1.
As pro-lifers look to federally defund Planned Parenthood, the policy and research institute developed a comprehensive report of life-affirming community health centers across the country.
The institute, which is the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America, launched “Real Choices,” which documents the number of federal qualified health centers in each state.
Designed to highlight the work of life-affirming clinics, the webpage reflects the reality that these clinics outnumber Planned Parenthood locations.
The report found more than 8,800 community health centers that offer women’s health services in comparison with the 579 Planned Parenthood locations in the U.S.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/264099/women-s-health-centers-outnumber-planned-parenthood-15-to-1-report-finds
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TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association.
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