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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- At a time when young people spend so much time in "digital environments," members of the Catholic Biblical Federation need to ask how they are fulfilling the Second Vatican Council's mandate to give everyone access to the Bible, Pope Leo XIV said.

"What does 'easy access to Sacred Scripture' mean in our time? How can we facilitate this encounter for those who have never heard the Word of God or whose cultures remain untouched by the Gospel?" the pope asked members of the federation's steering committee and its regional representatives.

Pope Leo welcomed the group to the Apostolic Palace Nov. 17, expressing particular concern for people who "find themselves in cultural spaces where the Gospel is unfamiliar or distorted by particular interests."

At the end of the audience, Mary Sperry, associate director of the U.S. bishops' Office for the Biblical Apostolate, presented Pope Leo with two large white binders. They contained a preview copy of The Catholic American Bible, slated for publication in 2027. 

Meeting on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, "Dei Verbum," Pope Leo asked members of the group to reflect on how they individually and as a federation respond to the call "to hear the Word of God with reverence and to proclaim it with faith."

"The church draws life not from herself but from the Gospel," he said. "From the Gospel she continually rediscovers the direction for her journey, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who teaches all things and reminds us of everything the Son has said."

A key part of that, he said, is helping everyone have access to a Bible so they can "encounter the God who speaks, shares his love and draws us into the fullness of life."

Translations of the Bible, which the federation promotes, are essential for that, he said, but so are initiatives like encouraging "lectio divina," a prayerful reading of Scripture.

"Ultimately," Pope Leo told federation members, "your mission is to become 'living letters … written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God,' bearing witness to the primacy of God's Word over the many voices that fill our world."
 

The United States Conference of Catholics has published the seventh edition of its Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.

The publication follows a vote by the US bishops, at their November meeting, to bar gender-altering treatment at Catholic hospitals.

French officials recalled the 10th anniversary of Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris that left over 100 dead.

Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris said that the bells of Notre-Dame Cathedral and other churches rang for five minutes to invite Parisians to unite in prayer.

Addressing a UN committee meeting on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), a leading Vatican diplomat said that support for the agency “is very important because it sustains the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who otherwise would have no other source of help.”

“The Holy See deplores the attacks on UNRWA facilities, including offices, schools and hospitals,” Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, said on November 13. “Such facilities, together with places of worship must remain inviolable spaces that provide protection and care for civilians.”

Several nations suspended funding of the agency following accusations of links between some employees and the October 2023 attack on Israel. Archbishop Caccia said:

The Holy See considers it vital that the work of UNRWA remains firmly rooted in the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. These principles must also guide the recruitment, administration and activities of local staff.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Custos of the Holy Land encouraged Christians from around the world to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

“I know what the first objection is: ‘It’s dangerous, there’s war,’” said Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, the Latin Patriarch. “Well, the war is over. We are not yet in peace, but the war is over, and pilgrimage is absolutely safe.”

In a recent address to a Vatican conference on mysticism, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, explored the question of whether St. John Henry Newman was a mystic.

“There has always been debate as to whether or not he was a ‘mystic,’” Cardinal Semeraro said. If mysticism is “an intimate feeling of God’s presence, he was certainly a mystic; if, instead, it refers to the presence of extraordinary graces, there is no evidence to support this.”

The prelate added, “Mystical graces do not constitute an indispensable condition for holiness; however, the theme of successive divine callings to holiness allows us to place the Christian life in the movement of continuous growth under the influence of divine grace.”

In an encounter with the world of cinema ahead of the 130th anniversary of the first film, Pope Leo XIV expressed appreciation of the art form.

“Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity,” Pope Leo told attendees on November 15. “Do not be afraid to confront the world’s wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated.”

Prior to the encounter, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education released the titles of the Pope’s four favorite movies: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Sound of Music (1965), Ordinary People (1980), and Life Is Beautiful (1997).

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, was Pope Leo’s legate to the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompei as it marked the 150th anniversary of its beginnings: the arrival of the Marian image venerated there.

Paying tribute to the shrine as a place “of hope, prayer, and mercy,” Cardinal Parolin contrasted the Blessed Virgin Mary’s haste at the Visitation—an “interior haste, born of the heart and a profound urge to recount the great works of God”—with the “superficial haste of those who allow themselves to be overwhelmed by activism.”

The shrine, Cardinal Parolin added, was born of St. Bartolo Longo’s own interior haste. After experiencing “a profound interior crisis,” the saint found in the Virgin Mary “the sure path to God, the peace that the world could not offer him,” and felt the urgency of proclaiming that “the Lord is near, loves every man, and nothing is lost.”