The answer — according to an Institute for Human Ecology panel convened Sept. 17 at The Catholic University of America in Washington — is basically this: It depends.

There are "two big questions that hang over human life in digital reality right now," announced Ross Douthat, a media fellow with the institute and New York Times opinion columnist.

He was the evening's moderator and is the author of the forthcoming book "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious" (Zondervan).

Social media and artificial intelligence

"Is social media dehumanizing us? Making us miserable; destroying our relationships; warping our intellectual lives; robbing us of creativity? And," Douthat asked, "is Artificial Intelligence replacing us?"

It's a paradox of both connection and disconnection.

With increased smartphone use — an estimated 69 percent of the global population, who also consume social media on their devices — come questions of authentic versus artificial community.

"It's actually become the vehicle through which we seek community," said Luke Burgis of Catholic University's Busch School of Business, where he is director of Programs & Projects at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship, and an assistant clinical professor of business.

"It extends us throughout the world; it puts us in dialogue with other people, through which we're constantly having our self — or our sense of self — mediated back to us. Every technology enhances some sense," he said, "to the diminishment of another."

While smartphones and social media are, Burgis said, enhancing our social sense and awareness, the communicative pace can be dizzying and dislocating.

"It's accelerated this kind of social sensory awareness that we have — but probably so fast that we have no idea what's happening."

Adjusting to the digital landscape

Jonathan Askonas, an assistant professor of politics at Catholic University, suggested that perhaps people simply need more time to adjust.

Qualifying that he opposes cellphone use by children and teens, he predicted that "once we've sort of overcome this initial narcissistic shock with the smartphone — once we've built the institutions and culture and norms around how we engage with this technology — its pro-social dimension will come to be seen more and more."

Ari Schulman, editor of The New Atlantis, a quarterly journal focused on the social, ethical, and political dimensions of modern science and technology, also cited the disrupting potential of the social media ecosystem.

"That dimension that was initially greeted as a new space of freedom, it's more like it was the dimension under us — what if the floor opened up, and just dropped out from under us?" he asked.

"That would be a new dimension as well — but it would totally unmoor us; it would rob us of all the context from which we can make sense of these kinds of contexts of social meaning," Schulman said. "I think that's the fundamental problem that we're facing here."

The decline of human connection

The smartphone era, Douthat said, isn't a transformation that's replacing workers, as happened in the Industrial Revolution. It's instead having a different effect.

"It's not creating this sort of massive economic dislocation; it's creating this massive social dislocation in which entire nations are ceasing to be capable of replacing themselves, seemingly."

Global fertility rates have been declining in all countries since 1950.

While admitting that opinion is "the doomer side of things," Douthat added that, optimistically, "the groups and peoples and cultures and families that make it through will have figured out these questions.

"You just won't make it through the next 75 years as a family or a society if you can't figure out how to get your kids to relate to one another in reality," he said, "because if you can't figure that out, they won't get married and have kids — and poof, you're gone."

Challenge to human creativity

The ascendancy of AI, Burgis said, issues a challenge to human creativity.

"I do think there's something to be said about doubling down on our human creative and artistic spirit — which I believe the AI can never replicate," declared Burgis.

"So sort of getting back to the kind of spiritual theology of creation, I think, is something that we'll probably hear a lot more about in the next few years."

Schulman noted that public reaction to AI-generated art is indeed frequently negative.

"There's already this kind of instinctive sense of dehumanization and flattening," he observed. "Everybody kind of knows this is going to hasten the decline of Hollywood."

Nonetheless, AI endlessly fascinates — but for a very basic reason, said Askonas.

"It's the thing that's most fascinating about any new technology — which is, what does it mean to be human? How does this reshape what it means to be human?" Read more

• Kimberley Heatherington writes for OSV News from Virginia.

Greater intellects than mine have considered this question before. John Henry Newman — a saint of the Catholic Church and the patron saint of the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University (ACU) — is perhaps the greatest among them.

Newman's eloquent articulation of a universal Catholic liberal arts ideal claimed traditions from the Oxford of his happy youth.

He foresaw an institution which could explore harmonies but also probe tensions; which was committed to truth; which would dedicate itself to the pursuit of virtue and the celebration of Catholic culture; which embodied the simple love of learning; which harnessed both faith and reason in its wide-ranging engagement with those who lie beyond the reach of Church teachings.

As first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, Newman developed and realised his vision for learning, enriching young lives and passionately defending the idea of knowledge for its own sake. All this was the science of humanity.

I have thought a great deal about Newman's vision and its importance now that my own Catholic University told us it is to make devastating cuts to teaching and research staff, and to the University's ability to engage in knowledge creation as Newman understood it.

Some 32 full-time humanities posts are being permanently disestablished.

Other staff will retire and will not be replaced.

More staff on temporary contracts will see those not renewed.

History and philosophy — core disciplines of the Catholic tradition — are the disciplines worst affected.

Theology, literature, political science, and sociology will suffer as well from these cuts.

The University claims that this is a critical moment when its academic model requires change to ensure it can meet long-term operational needs in an economically sustainable manner.

It says it wishes to align education and research better to its major thematic directions and operational needs. But it also just does not have the money.

ACU went from surpluses of over $30 million in 2020 and 2021 to a deficit of $8 million in 2022 and a forecast deficit exceeding $30 million for 2023. Critics might ask: where did the money go?

ACU says it no longer has the students or the revenues to sustain the interest in humanities fields it was investing in as recently as the start of 2023.

But the scale and speed of its retrenchment are scarcely precedented in the history of the humanities anywhere.

The effect on the lives of individual academic employees will be a hard cross to bear.

Many ACU staff moved heaven and earth to heed the University's call to speak truth.

Some have been teaching here for years and are now forced to compete with cherished colleagues to retain their jobs.

Others left tenured positions in Britain, America, or other parts of Australia to join ACU. Only recently arrived, some will now be marooned on this island continent with no loved ones, little financial support, and no valid visa.

ACU brought over their possessions, but no one will foot the bill for their lonely return to a place of origin.

The moral tragedy of this situation is grave. It is a deplorable, heart-breaking situation which raises many questions.

Where did ACU lose its way?

Should not Newman's vision have held even in the brave new world we find ourselves in?

A twenty-first-century Catholic University cannot always conform to his golden ideal.

It must work with the secular: with research metrics, performance indicators, funding requirements, and all the knowledge-creating bureaucracy's other paraphernalia.

Those who have made decisions about our lives and futures repeatedly emphasise this.

Yet Newman's vision recognised something which risks being lost in all this: the exceptional difficulty of quantifying truth's value.

Is there a litmus test for validity of truth?

What even is a truth?

How is one truth to be separated from any other?

Is the authenticity of truth to be measured in terms of the number of pages needed to describe it or the frequency of its citation?

What of its impact factor or potential for commercialisation?

Only an unworldly ivory-tower dweller could remain self-cocooned from these questions. However, only a fool would deny that truth is not narrowly confined: it has a universality, a Catholicity.

At a practical level, truth must also be less abstract.

It must be found in the experiments scientists run, the accounts of the past historians give, arguments that philosophers reason.

A modern Catholic University must embrace all such modes of truth-telling which, properly constituted and understood, complement and inspire one another.

As Newman recognised, the Catholic University also needs to confidently embrace the daily concerns, perspectives, and languages — technical and everyday — of a wide world of stakeholders from across a global communion and academy.

ACU retains its Biblical and Early Christian Studies programmes and Theology and Religion.

It will spare a small number of history and political science posts in areas of perceived teaching "need".

But a significant question remains: is this sufficient to fulfil Newman's shining concept?

Will this lead to the impoverishment of Catholic intellectual life?

As yet incomplete research projects to be abandoned by the University, and perhaps lost to the world at large, include pioneering studies on the concept of home and problem of homelessness, on the origins of conspiracy theory, on transgender Australia and Queer Medievalism, on AI safety, and epistemic humility.

My colleagues work on understandings of gender, on stories of migration, on the entanglements of empire, and on ecologies of experience.

Such projects, disciplines, and those who pursue them, ought to be utterly central to Catholic intellectual life.

They search the innermost corners of hearts and consciences; they interrogate pasts known or unknown; they challenge perceptions of what we think we know about stories, artefacts, identities, ideas.

Charity, a primary Catholic virtue, should begin at home for the Catholic institution — and where better than through a detailed study of Catholic contributions to hospitality and treatment of the displaced and destitute?

Sexuality has been perhaps the area of the Church's greatest influence on human behaviour and the human condition. Is it not entirely fitting — indeed, essential — that a Catholic University fosters deep engagement with the difficult questions which inevitably emerge from every manner of expression of human bodily desires?

What also of our relationships to generations past and future? To art and beauty? To our fragile earthly and celestial environments?

The list of questions that were being asked by these abandoned projects is sad and long.

My intrepid ACU colleagues have pursued truths in relation to such topics and such questions without fear or favour.

They have interrogated ideas that every Catholic must ponder every day and they have answered them in language that bridges the secular-spiritual and faith-reason divides.

I suspect some see these endeavours as a threat.

They are afraid of an inexact science in which conclusions cannot be quantified and are unappreciative of irreconcilable disagreements that nevertheless benefit from being aired. But such discomfort and disagreement are part of Catholicism's universal, all-embracing identity.

As Catholics, we must all recognise that.

We must also recognise that Catholic education, especially one that benefits from the largesse of the state, is universal and for everybody. That means articulating truths in ways understandable to those of faith and those of none.

What will be lost? For what gain?

I grieve for what might have been.

And I fear there can be no optimistic chord on which to end this lament.

ACU is the second-ranked Catholic university in the Anglophone world in philosophy, and is tied for sixth-place in philosophy of religion (according to the Philosophical Gourmet Report).

Once ACU has gone down its chosen path, will it be able to recover, much less retain, its standing in the world of learning, nationally or internationally?

It seems doubtful.

Which scholar will henceforth want to settle in Australia to tell truths if it means giving up security for precarity?

Who will dare speak truth to power when that power may strip them of their livelihood in the blink of an eye?

• Miles Pattenden is, for the time being, Senior Research Fellow in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the Australian Catholic University.

The past 50 years in the West saw a celebration of unfettered freedom. Citizens on both sides of the Atlantic were encouraged to liberate themselves from the relational constraints of family, history and even nature.

Now Covid-19 has highlighted our mutual dependence on one another and a desire for community.

President Joe Biden is now deploying unprecedented fiscal resources to repair the damage wrought by four decades of market fundamentalism.

First the $1.9tn American Rescue Plan to kickstart the economic recovery from the pandemic. This is to be followed by an enormous programme of investment aimed at infrastructure, research, net carbon zero, childcare, education and health.

Whereas Ronald Reagan in the 1980s saw government as the source of political and social problems, Biden considers it as the solution to them.

It is unclear, however, whether this new age of state activism will address the human need for community and belonging.

If national leaders want to strengthen their country's structural resilience, they need to ensure these transformational policies empower local leaders and civic institutions to revitalise their communities.

A politics that strengthens belonging can reverse the excesses of individualism without succumbing to the errors of authoritarianism.

Since at least the 1980s, citizens in the North Atlantic world believed a myth that individual autonomy, global markets, digital connections and higher incomes would secure individual happiness and aggregate wellbeing.

But the opposite has occurred.

In his New York Times op-ed in November 2020, Pope Francis put this well: "The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging."

According to the US sociologist Robert Putnam, civic-minded generations that survived the Second World War were replaced by generations that were "less embedded in community life".

In 2017, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, an expert on the long-term health effects of social connection, testified before the US Senate: "There is robust evidence that lacking social connection significantly increases risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds many leading health indicators.

"Social isolation influences a significant portion of the US adult population and there is evidence the prevalence rates are increasing. Indeed, many nations around the world now suggest we are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic'."

The chief promoters of market fundamentalism such as the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and the US economist Milton Friedman advanced policies that weakened anti-trust law, unleashed monopoly powers and centralised wealth in metropolises - the symbols of individualistic ambition.

The rural towns and smaller cities that were forgotten about became the electoral redoubts for right-wing populist parties, such as Rassemblement National in France or the Republican Party under Donald Trump in the US.

Building on the body of liberal political thought by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and John Stuart Mill, market fundamentalists reduced humans to "homo economicus", a rational, selfish animal in search of happiness in the pleasures of cheap consumer goods and wealth accumulation.

In his work The Master and His Emissary (2009), psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist argues that this reductive view of human beings has led to a "decreasing stability and interconnectedness" and the "destruction of local cultures" across the West.

"Homo economicus" is not only theoretically questionable but empirically flawed.

In 2001, a global study led by evolutionary biologist Joseph Heinrich and economist Herbert Gintis evaluated human behaviour across five continents, 12 countries and 17 different types of societies. It comprehensively disproved the theory of the utility maximising individual.

Humans value fairness and reciprocity just as much as they do their own self-interest.

Yet many of our national and international institutions function on outdated neoliberal models.

Without reform, our economic systems will continue to consolidate power into the hands of the tech monopolies, designed to maximise our selfish traits at the expense of mutual flourishing.

Local communities will continue to lose their main streets and the lifeblood of local employment. Workers will continue to get squeezed out by labour markets with fewer employers.

These results are a recipe for angry, disaffected voters frustrated with the endless failures of democracies to produce better lives.

Covid-19 provides an opportunity to rediscover our natural need for belonging.

Protective isolation and the closing of borders have thrown us back onto family and neighbourhood, community and country.

In 1943, the French philosopher Simone Weil wrote in her Draft for A Statement of Human Obligations, "The human soul needs above all to be rooted in several natural environments and to make contact to the universe through them."

For Weil, tracing a social philosophy back to Aristotle, this included "the real, active and natural participation in the life of the community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future".

To remove people from place and community is to destroy the very soil of their humanity. Continue reading

• Adrian Pabst is a New Statesman contributing writer.
• Ron Ivey is a fellow at the Centre for Public Impact.

Pope Francis warns that humanity is largely going down the wrong road, and needs a radical transformative change of direction.

He writes, "Just as I was writing this letter, the Covid-19 pandemic unexpectedly broke in and exposed our false securities. …

If anyone thinks it was just about making what we were already doing work better, or that the only message is that we need to improve existing systems and rules, they are denying reality."

Instead, the Holy Father is urging us to build a Gospel-centered fraternal global alternative that replaces our "throwaway culture" with the "culture of encounter."

Francis writes, "I very much desire that, in this time that we are given to live, recognizing the dignity of every human person, we can revive among all a worldwide aspiration to fraternity."

But he emphasizes that tremendous obstacles stand in the way of establishing universal brotherhood and that we must have the faith and courage to overcome them.

Francis laments that "instances of a myopic, extremist, resentful and aggressive nationalism are on the rise."

The Holy Father warns against the widespread narrow-minded, unchristian notion that the territory beyond our village or country belongs to the "barbarian," and that whoever "comes from there cannot be trusted," and that new walls - including "walls in the heart" - must be erected for self-preservation against "them."

He adds, "People are no longer felt as a primary value to be respected and protected, especially if they are poor or disabled if they are not needed yet - like the unborn - or no longer needed - like the elderly."

The pontiff notes a global "moral deterioration" and a "weakening of spiritual values and responsibility."

As an example, the pope points to the unacceptable silence on the international level toward countless children "emaciated from poverty and hunger. …Only when our economic and social system no longer produces even a single victim, a single person cast aside, will we be able to celebrate the feast of universal fraternity."

Reflecting on the enormous destructive power of modern weaponry - especially upon innocent civilians - Pope Francis declared: "We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.' Never again war!"

This authoritative papal teaching is a significant step in moving the Catholic Church away from the just-war theory and back to its original Gospel-centered, Christ-like teaching of total nonviolence.

Pope Francis prophetically urges us not to slip back into the old significantly sick "normal" but instead to have the faith and courage to build a better world saying: "The pain, uncertainty and fear, and the realization of our own limitations, brought on by the pandemic have only made it all the more urgent that we rethink our styles of life, our relationships, the organization of our societies and, above all, the meaning of our existence."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag6@comcast.net.

We know that a hungry man cannot be judged for stealing a loaf of bread.

But for some reason, many lay people believe that the tradition of celibacy for priests, goes back to the apostles.

That is not so.

Paul tells us that he apostles, including Peter, had wives who helped them in their ministry. (Cn 9:4)

Until the 11th century, the church had married priests, bishops and popes.

But humanity being what it is, church property was being handed down to families.

Mandatory celibacy solved that problem.

The solution was more about finance than holiness.

Mandatory celibacy is not pro-life, and it has never worked.

For centuries its failure has been hidden. Now it is very public.

I agree with Daniel O'Leary SJ. Mandatory celibacy is a sin.

Perhaps we should look at other Orthodox traditions we regard as extended family.

Celibacy is for religious/monastic orders. A diocesan priest must be a married before he goes out to a parish. Mistakes happen. A priest may be divorced once. But not twice.

This system seems to work without too much failure, for the Orthodox churches.

Our system has failed, and we won't admit it.

Instead we play the "blame game" with the help of media that feeds on sensational negative news.

An American friend has a term for this kind of media. He calls them "shit-house flies."

There has been a lot of prayer this week. The past few days have been tinged with sadness.

• I am sorry that a reputable magazine connected with the church, should send emails to subscribers giving details of Bishop Charles Drennan's resignation.
• I am sorry that Pope Francis didn't offer his famous response: "Who am I to judge?"
• I am sorry that the church will lose a very fine bishop.
• I am also sorry for the women concerned. But I have seen how young women flirt with priests. Do they think that a vow of celibacy guarantees immunity?
• Most of all, I am sorry that the church maintains a suicidal resistance to married priests.

Over the past few years, when I've read about a priest charged with sexual abuse, I've known that both abuser and abused are victims.

The Greek playwright Aeschylus put it another way:

"Who is the slayer and who the victim? Speak!"

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.
• The views and opinions expressed in CathNews' opinion pieces belong to the author.

Recently she stated, "New Zealand condemns any use of chemical weapons, whether it is in Syria or on the streets of the UK.

"New Zealand believes all states must adhere to obligations under international law, including in respect of chemical weapons."

It is however inconsistent for the Prime Minister to denounce this crime against humanity while at the same time giving approval for chemical warfare in New Zealand in the form of a war against our own children.

Last year the Abortion Supervisory Committee reported to Parliament that 1,970, pre-born children were killed in their mother's womb with the lethal chemical Mifegyne RU486.

This chemical was approved for the killing of children by then Minister of Health Annette King, in August 2001.

In her media release on 30 August 2001, the Minister stated that, "Mifegyne RU486 meets the international standards of safety and effectiveness required for medicines".

Mifegyne RU 486, is not a medicine and pregnancy is not a disease.

The lethal drug is not safe for the unborn child, nor is it safe for women.

It is however, as the Minister claims, highly effective in killing the unborn.

Since the introduction of this new chemical warfare against the unborn there have been nearly 18,000 unborn killed in New Zealand by this drug.

This chemical war is also violence against women who are the second victims of this war.

I call this a crime against humanity.

Mifegyne acts by depriving the endometrium of a hormone which the human embryo requires to flourish, the embryo then dies of starvation.

This highly effective chemical warfare is approved and funded as a core health service by the government and is used in a number of Public Hospitals.

The Family Planning Association is an ardent supporter of chemical warfare with Mifegyne.

The Association supports the decriminalisation of abortion, removing abortion from the Crimes Act and making it no longer a crime to kill an unborn child.

The Association supports abortion being a reproductive choice for women for any reason with this lethal poison being available at all of its other 29 clinics.

Chemical warfare has been raging against our own children in the womb for more than fifty years.

It is hypocritical for our government to condemn crimes against humanity in other countries while actively waging a government funded war against our own children.

There will be no peace in New Zealand until this devastating war against our nation's children in the womb is stopped.

• Ken Orr is spokesperson for Right to Life NZ
• Image: ODT

One who doesn't suffer with suffering brothers . . . must question himself on the sincerity of his faith and of his humanity, Pope Francis says.

His comments were made in the context of the Rohingya minority, who are persecuted in Myanmar. Read more

Musk urged a group of governors to proactively regulate AI, which he views as a "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization."

"Until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don't know how to react because it seems so ethereal," Musk said.

Zuckerberg shot back, saying fearmongering about AI is "irresponsible."

The two divergent views on AI reflect the existential questions humans face about their uniqueness in the universe.

Today, robots are quickly populating our cultural landscape. Engineers are building robots that can converse, perform dangerous tasks and even have sex.

Like Musk, people may see robots as a threat, especially as some become increasingly humanlike.

Even the appearance of humanlike robots causes many people discomfort. This phenomenon, called "the uncanny valley," is a hypothesis proposed in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, and according to researchers, this discomfort stems from some existential questions about the nature of humanity.

This hypothesis says that the more humanlike something is, the more comfortable we feel with it. But this comfort level suddenly dips when the object closely resembles a human.

Researchers have corroborated this hypothesis, and many factors contribute to it. For one, these humanlike robots remind us of our own mortality.

"They contain both life and the appearance of life," said Karl MacDorman, associate professor in the Human-Computer Interaction program of Indiana University. "It reminds us that at some point, we could be inanimate after death."

What's more, the idea that robots may have a consciousness and become almost indistinguishable from humans disturbs some, as recent movies such as "Ex Machina" and "Her" attest. The possibility that humans are not unique opens up questions about the nature of humanity.

Philosophers such as Daniel Dennett describe humans as nothing but complicated robots made of flesh. But Jews, Christians and Muslims believe humans are made in God's image, the apex of God's created order.

"I think particularly in the Christian tradition and Jewish tradition there's this concept of Imago Dei, which means we are created in the image and likeness of God," said Brent Waters, Christian ethics professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. "To try to create something unique that God created may also be a form of idolatry."

People from cultures that attach spiritual significance to trees or stones may have an easier time with robots.

MacDorman points out that Japanese society, which is both Shinto and Buddhist, has a general tendency to be more accepting of robots, including humanlike ones. For example, robots interact with customers in department stores, and engineers have built companion robots for families and the elderly.

On the other hand, followers of Abrahamic religions tend to be more disturbed by robots that bridge the gap between the human and inanimate. Continue reading

The Holy Father called on Europe to re-found itself by drawing, in part, on its Christian Legacy.

"Where is your vigour?" he put to 750 members of the European parliament.

"Where is that idealism that inspired and ennobled your history?"

Bluntly, Francis told the parliament the world is looking less and less to Europe which is often seen as "elderly and haggard".

He said Europe is becoming less and less a "protagonist" in world affairs and increasingly the rest of the world is viewing it with "mistrust" and "suspicion".

Citing youth unemployment, immigration, extremism, and the loneliness of elderly and the young, Francis argued that many of Europe's political problems came from losing its "spiritual core".

He told the parliament that a "cult of opulence" based on exaggerated individualism is no longer sustainable and that it is time for Europe to re-focus and "promote policies which create employment".

"What dignity can a person ever hope to find, when he or she lacks food and the bare essentials for survival, and worse yet, when they lack the work that confers dignity?"

Pope Francis also cautioned that while the promotion of human rights is necessary, their promotion can be misused, particularly with the claim to individual rights.

"An underlying factor in the push for individual rights is the concept that the human being is detached from all social and anthropological roots, thus making the person a 'monad' who promotes the individual but not the human person", the Pope observed.

Acknowledging that all of Europe and Christianity's past has not been free of conflicts or errors, he however said their history is the story of being driven by the desire to work for the good of all.

The Holy Father told the parliamentarians that by creating a vacuum of ideals, including a forgetfulness of God, Europe risks losing its own soul.

He urged the European politicians to keep the human person rather than "pressure of multinational interests which are not universal" at the centre of their interests.

The family, he said, "united, fruitful and indissoluble, possesses the elements fundamental for fostering hope in the future. Without this solid basis, the future ends up being built on sand, with dire social consequences."

Pope Francis, Tuesday, travelled to Strasburg and delivered back to back speeches to the European Parliament and Council of Europe. Many of his points received rousing applause.

Sources

• CNA
• News.va
• Catholic World Report
• Crux
• Image: @LukeCoppen