The Church of St. Luke

Faithful pray before a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus during Croatia’s consecration ceremony on June 27, 2025, as the nation dedicated itself anew to Christ’s divine love following the tradition established by their ancestors at the Church of Our Miraculous Lady of Sinj. / Credit: Petar Malbaša/Laudato TV

CNA Newsroom, Jun 30, 2025 / 10:46 am (CNA).

The consecration began at churches and chapels throughout Croatia, initiated by church bells ringing for five minutes before solemn Eucharistic celebrations commenced.

Bethany and Daniel Meola, a married couple with a special heart for adult children of divorce, created the Life-Giving Wounds apostolate, currently celebrating its five-year anniversary in 2025. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Life-Giving Wounds

Miami, Fla., Jun 30, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Kendra Beigel was 14 years old when her family life took a turn for the worse. In her small-town Minnesota home, she was used to her parents arguing, but her family situation further disintegrated when her mother intervened in her father’s alcohol issues and her parents went to court.

“It was like the whole town decided to take a side and get involved in our family business,” recalled Beigel, who was raised Catholic. “I had to grow up quickly… Each stage of the initial separation and how it comes out of the blue, then the divorce and everything that it brings, and then the subsequent annulment; each brought its own hurts and difficulties and it never was easier.”

Now an adult, Beigel remembers thinking back then, “How can you just be a kid anymore?” Navigating child custody routines, “you [the child] have to be the one to pack the suitcase and to move and uproot your life.”

“I threw myself into academics and extracurriculars,” she said. “No one on the outside could tell how much I was hurting because I was excelling externally… You start to really put a lot of blame and guilt on yourself when you have no one to talk to, no one thinks to bring it up with you, and you’re really just trying to run away.”

When ingrained fears caused her to struggle with family dynamics, friendships, and dating in college, Beigel knew the past had left its mark. In October 2022, she joined a Life-Giving Wounds retreat for adult children of divorce (ACODs) near her home in Denver.

Celebrating its five-year milestone in 2025, Life-Giving Wounds — back then just a two-year-old apostolate — was already making a big impact. 

The beginnings 

The ministry was created in 2020 by Daniel and Bethany Meola, a married couple with a special heart for adult children of divorce. Beginning with online retreats during the COVID-19 pandemic, Life-Giving Wounds now hosts events both online and in-person, with a presence in almost 40 dioceses throughout the United States in addition to the Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada.

Himself an ACOD, Daniel Meola explained: “The more I dug into it in college and post-college, I realized there are lot of ministries for divorcees but not as much for adult children of divorce.”

Since a high school retreat had turned his life around after his parents’ divorce, he recognized that “there needs to be an intentional ministry and community for others like me. Jesus’ heart desires this.”

In addition to retreats, Life-Giving Wounds offers a blog with topics ranging from “Book and Media Reviews” to “Relationship Advice”; a book published in 2023; and even a summer 2025 Online Reading Group and support group using Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” as a springboard.

The retreat helped Beigel break through the bubble she had found herself in after her parents’ divorce.

“Going in, you’re just thinking, none of my friends have gone through divorce. This is something that feels like such an isolating cross,” she said. “But as soon as I walked in, I saw everyone at my parish who I had no idea was in ‘the secret club that no one wants to be a part of,’ as they joked.”

The retreat was transformative. “I really appreciated that they had a whole retreat manual to follow,” she noted. “It really invited you to take a leap of faith and invite the Divine Physician into these ugly areas of your heart.”

Unbeknownst to her, a young man who had participated in a Maryland retreat earlier that year in August 2022 was Beigel’s future husband, Joe Beigel. The fact that they were both Life-Giving Wounds alumni would bring them together. Joe said the friend who introduced them “got my attention” by commenting that Kendra had attended Life-Giving Wounds and had been featured on the podcast “Restored.”

Chuckling, Kendra recounted Joe’s approach: “[He said,] ‘You can go ahead and delete that Catholic Match profile — you won’t need it now that you met me!’ And it worked!”

Joe and Kendra Beigel were married on Jan. 18, 2025.

To other ACODs, Joe’s message is: “You’re not doomed to repeat your parents’ mistakes and to not get married or to settle for less in a marriage, because God wants so much more for you.”

Kendra agreed. “The thing that shifted with marriage, it’s not that you are done working on the wounds from your parents’ divorce, you just have someone you are working on it with, because that’s what marriage is. You’re working together first and foremost, helping each other along.”

Craig Soto II and Sidney Soto, another Life-Giving Wounds alumni couple from Kansas, are preparing to welcome a baby into the world. Craig Soto said of Life-Giving Wounds’ anniversary: “Truly, what five years means to me is hope.” 

“When we did the full-body scan to make sure the baby was healthy, I remember the sonogram technician said everything was normal,” Soto said. The simple phrase hit him hard. 

“That’s a beautiful gift for me, for somebody who’s lived a very abnormal life. I got so used to it that ‘the normal’ actually became confusing and strange to me,” said Soto, a retreat leader. “To hear that our child is ‘normal’... To me, a normal life is all I’ve ever really wanted. That’s why I say that there’s hope, because I have hope for a normal life.”

Those called to the vocation of marriage aren’t the only ones who have benefited from Life-Giving Wounds. In fact, retreat alumnus Father Ryan Martiré of the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota, helped bring Life-Giving Wounds to seminarians.

Martiré participated in one of the first online retreats as a seminarian, later joining an in-person retreat while studying at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis. 

The seminary’s rector “saw a tremendous need in the seminary and asked if I would introduce this ministry to more people in the seminary,” said Martiré, who was ordained on June 11, 2024. “Not only healing for themselves, but to be fathers who can provide this healing for others.”

Kenrick-Glennon Seminary held its first retreat in spring 2022 and has the honor of being Life-Giving Wounds’ first seminary chapter.

“The wound of divorce can be very attached to a father wound,” Martiré explained. “When a seminarian receives healing there, it can have a serious spiritual impact, that he receives confidence to be a father.”

“One of the things that struck me when I was studying wounds of divorce is that so many children with parents who have divorced did not experience a word of accompaniment from their pastor or priest: ‘I’m so sorry that happened,’” he added. “A child who’s starting to self-protect and live hyper-independently because of their parents’ divorce needs a spiritual father or a spiritual mother to comfort them and to acknowledge that they’re hurting in their perfectionism, or in whatever way they’re coping.”

Brady Hershberger, a young adult Life-Giving Wounds alumnus from Ohio, said: “I think Life-Giving Wounds is making the ACOD population feel seen, and like we don’t have to keep sweeping this wound under the rug as if it weren’t seriously a wound… It gives me a sense of hope that people like me will be seen and loved and heard.”

Indeed, Martiré said he believes Life-Giving Wounds has a special connection to the 2025 Jubilee, with its theme of hope.

“What struck me my first time at the retreat was seeing really stable, healed, holy people giving the presentations. People who are coming from a dark path with very divided families, and you see that they’re not living defined by their wounds,” he said. “That’s very hopeful that, as Christians, we don’t need to live in the past. We can become transformed by Christ if we let him into our suffering, our dark and imprisoned places.”

Life-Giving Wounds co-founder Bethany Meola said she is excited for what’s to come. The ministry has projects focused on engaged and married couples in the works, and they also look to increase outreach to college students, Hispanic ministry, seminaries and religious, and more.

“This anniversary is an opportunity to look back and see where God has taken us so far,” she said. “Obviously we have objective numbers to see how the ministry has grown from local to all around the country, from just a few retreats to more and more every year, which has been so beautiful. But more than the numbers, we’re reflecting on the people we’ve been privileged to encounter — more and more people all the time whom Life-Giving Wounds can hopefully lend some support to.”

ROME (CNS) -- When Pope Leo XIV gave newly appointed metropolitan archbishops their pallium on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, he told them it symbolizes their responsibility to care for their people and to promote unity.

"Dear brothers, this sign of the pastoral responsibility entrusted to you also expresses your communion with the Bishop of Rome, so that in the unity of the Catholic faith, each of you may build up that communion in your local churches," he said in his homily during Mass in St. Peter's Basilica June 29.

He urged them to "learn to experience communion in this way -- as unity within diversity -- so that the various gifts, united in the one confession of faith, may advance the preaching of the Gospel."

Eight of the 54 archbishops receiving the pallium -- a woolen band worn around the shoulders over Mass vestments -- were from the United States.

Speaking with Catholic News Service in Rome, many of them reflected on their role in helping foster peace and unity. 

Archbishop W. Shawn McKnight of Kansas City, Kansas, said that ever since Pope Leo was elected and spoke about peace and unity, he has taken that message "to heart" and has been thinking, "What does that mean for us back home?"

"How do we tend to the unity of the church, such that we can be an oasis of peace in our own communities, in a climate sometimes that is very chaotic, adversarial, polarized," he said. "I think we have to consider the ways in which the church can be a better sanctuary of mercy in that context." 

Archbishop Joe S. Vásquez of Galveston-Houston said it comes down to taking the time to listen to and engage with one another in a way that is respectful and civil. 

All dialogue and discussion about things of great importance can be done without "having to be so critical of one another as to demean one another, disrespect one another or not appreciate the other as a person," he said. 

Archbishop Edward J. Weisenburger of Detroit noted there are Catholics in his archdiocese that "hop from parish to parish looking for the message they want to hear, the style of liturgy they want to experience."

But, he said, "historically, parishes were places where you bond together as a people in a community, and you know each other, and you support each other, and you help each other, and when my faith is weak, I lean on you. When your faith is weak, you lean on me."

"That sense of unity on the local level, I think, is suffering, and so I really think one of the ways we Americans, and especially we in the Archdiocese of Detroit, I begin with myself at home, we need to really look at how we're building those local communities and that creates unity," he said. 

Archbishop Michael G. McGovern of Omaha, Nebraska, said, "I'm everybody's bishop. I'm not just the bishop for some people."

What that looks like, he said, is "one Sunday I'm going to go to the traditional Latin Mass community and I'll wear my choir robes and I'll sit on the side. I don't say the Latin Mass, but I just, I'm there to be present to the people because they're part of the church."

Another day, he said, he will go to the Vietnamese community in Omaha, where they recently celebrated a confirmation in a church that had been built by Polish immigrants.

"We're Catholics together. We're Christians together," he said. "I have to buy into your world before you buy into my world," which really speaks to people.

"I'm in a unique position to put a new face on the church as a bishop if I'm willing to get to know what's interesting to people, what are they concerned about, and when I'm able to do that, I think then I'm able to build unity," Archbishop McGovern said. 

Archbishop Richard G. Henning of Boston said "that sense of oneness or communion is critical in the Scriptures. It's one of the things Jesus prays for that they may all be one."

"We should have our own opinions and even different opinions, but there should also be a sense in which we are a single family, that there is a unity between us, that there is a peace between us, a charity between us," he said. 

Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob of Milwaukee said, "We have to be unified. We have to work for peace and solidarity. We have to care for the marginalized."

"That's nothing new. You can walk it right back to the Gospels and Jesus Christ, but maybe we need to put a new face on it, we need to speak to this moment," he said.

Archbishop Robert G. Casey of Cincinnati said that, "as a bishop, I'm entrusted with a flock. I don't choose that flock. It's handed over to me and it's a very diverse flock." 

"How can I tend the sheep of my flock? All of them, not some of them, but all of them. And so I think the pope, in being a representative of Christ who calls us to peace and unity, really invites us as church to seek out that care and concern of all God's children, of all those that make up this flock we shepherd," he said.

The church has to adapt to an ever-changing world, he said. "That can be challenging because we hold fast to our truths. We are a Catholic Church that has its practices, its customs, but we're also a church that has to learn to live in the present age, as we've done throughout all of history."

The British Parliament building in London. / Credit: Marinesea/Shutterstock

CNA Newsroom, Jun 29, 2025 / 19:05 pm (CNA).

The politician posted on social media that the incident raised “grave public interest” about pressure religious MPs faced.

Catholic speaker and author Kim Zember (left) and Zember on the set of her new podcast on EWTN, “Here I AM Stories,” with guest Angel Colon. / Credit: Photos courtesy of Kim Zember

CNA Staff, Jun 29, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

During her senior year of high school, Catholic speaker and author Kim Zember realized she had a sexual attraction to women. She went on to live a hidden life for years — dating men publicly but dating women secretly. Eventually, she ended up solely in relationships with women.

A decade later she found herself increasingly unhappy and one day she threw up her hands and asked God to enter her life. Now, 11 years after experiencing transformation, she’s sharing her conversations with other people who have dealt with sexual identity and gender confusion in a new podcast on EWTN called “Here I AM Stories.”

“In the tenderness of God, I just felt like he said, ‘I want you to share other people’s stories. You’re not the only one,’” Zember told CNA.

According to EWTN, the podcast “highlights raw voices, radical lives, and real stories of those who left LGBT identities for a greater eternal purpose.” It airs weekly on Mondays during the month of June and then beginning in July, two episodes will be aired every month. 

“These are people who have been walking it out,” Zember said. “This is not stories of perfection.”

Four episodes of the podcast have already been released. One particularly powerful episode was a conversation with Jessica Rose, who identified as a male for seven years, battled depression, and attempted suicide until she gave her life to Christ. 

Another episode features the story of Angel Colon, who survived the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting where 49 lives were lost. Despite being shot multiple times, he survived and credits the miracle to God, changing his way of life.

Zember’s own story follows a similar pattern as the guests she speaks with in her podcast. She grew up in what she says was a “normal” Catholic household with two older brothers and parents who were high school sweethearts. She received all her sacraments but admitted that she grew up without having a relationship with Jesus.

She shared that she saw God like a “cop that kind of just kept tally of all the things I was doing, good or bad, and was kind of calculating everything. So that was kind of challenging because I heard all the time like, ‘God loves you,’ ‘God’s for you,’ but I didn’t experience that.”

Despite having a decent childhood, Zember said she did not have a “good, tender father” and did not trust men. As a senior in high school, she longed for a relationship and acted upon her attraction to women.

“My senior year in high school I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t feel safe with men, but I feel safe with women and I’m attracted and I don’t know what that means, but I’m going to take a step,’” she recalled. “And [in] my senior year in high school I acted on these desires towards women with one of my best friends and that changed everything for me.”

From there she began dating women in private. Believing that what she was doing was wrong, she sought a Catholic counselor at age 18 and was affirmed in her homosexual identity. From there, she came out publicly and no longer hid the fact that she was dating women. It wasn’t until Oct. 17, 2014 — after a decade of living a gay lifestyle — that she “cried out to the Lord and said, ‘I can’t do this.’”

She recalled telling God: “‘I’ve heard about you my whole life. I’ve read about you my whole life but I need to experience you now. And so I need you to show up.’ And it might sound horrible but I was like, ‘I need you to show up and I need you to show up now because if you don’t show up and show me that you’re good, I will go to someone or something else, like I have my entire life. So, I’m giving you your one shot, God.’” 

“And I’m telling you, he showed up. He showed up that evening in a way that I will never forget,” Zember shared. “Oct. 17 feels sometimes like my birthday — though I was born on Dec. 22 — that encounter I had with God marked me in a way … that I’ve never been the same.”

In that moment Zember said she experienced the “tangible love of God” and “he has been faithful every day since then.”

“Also in revealing his character and nature, he has shown me that he’s the one my heart has been searching for. He has shown me that he is the one, that God himself, that made man in Jesus Christ, that he is the love of my life that I’ve desired.”

Zember now lives in freedom from her struggle with same-sex attraction and helps others who face similar battles to find their true identity in Christ. 

When asked what the Church can do to better minister to those struggling with gender and sexual identity issues, she said: “I think as a Church, we need to recognize again our own unworthiness; no matter what Jesus has already saved us from, we still need him.”

“If we’d recognize our own brokenness and our own need for Jesus, I think we’d be able to receive other people in their need for him, too. We’d stop trying to fix people, and we’d actually try to walk with one another,” she added. “We’d try to walk with one another in our brokenness to Christ, the only one who can heal, deliver, make whole, and set free.”

As for her hopes for the new podcast, she said she hopes it would show people “that we have a good Father” and “that people would give Jesus a try — a real one.”

“My hope is that people will say, ‘Wait a minute, if Jesus was that good in their life, maybe he wants to be that good in mine too’ — in whatever it is. It doesn’t have to be homosexuality or identity confusion. It could be you holding on too tightly to something. It could be you needing a career and if you don’t get it, you don’t know who you are. It’s all the longings of our heart to be seen, known, loved, chosen, and desired, and how we try to go to the things of this world to fill those when it’s actually the very one who created us that wants to fill those.”

One unique feature of the monastery at Subiaco is that it was built into the mountain. In any room, at least one wall is bare rock. During construction, the connection with the mountain was always preserved. Even above the main altar of the upper church, the rock juts out and looms overhead, enveloping the worship space like a vast cloak. / Credit: D. Ermacora

Paris, France, Jun 29, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Over the centuries, a magnificent monastic complex was built around the Sacred Cave where St. Benedict developed his religious rule.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Archbishops around the world can provide by their example the fraternity and unity in diversity the entire Catholic Church needs today, Pope Leo XIV said.

"The whole church needs fraternity, which must be present in all of our relationships, whether between lay people and priests, priests and bishops, bishops and the pope," he said during his homily at Mass on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul June 29.

"Fraternity is also needed in pastoral care, ecumenical dialogue and the friendly relations that the church desires to maintain with the world," the pope said.

"Let us make an effort, then, to turn our differences into a workshop of unity and communion, of fraternity and reconciliation, so that everyone in the church, each with his or her personal history, may learn to walk side by side," he said. 

The feast day celebration in St. Peter's Basilica included the traditional blessing of the pallium, the woolen band that the heads of archdioceses wear around their shoulders over their Mass vestments and symbolizes an archbishop's unity with the pope and his authority and responsibility to care for the flock the pope entrusted to him.

Pope Leo revived a tradition begun by St. John Paul II in 1983 by personally placing the pallium around the shoulders of the recently named archbishops.

Pope Francis had changed the ceremony starting in 2015. The late pope had invited new archbishops to concelebrate Mass with him and be present for the blessing of the palliums as a way of underlining their bond of unity and communion with him, but the actual imposition of the pallium was done by the nuncio and took place in the archbishop's archdiocese in the presence of his faithful and bishops from neighboring dioceses.

The Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff issued a formal notification June 11 that on June 29 Pope Leo would preside over the Eucharistic celebration, bless the palliums and impose them on the new metropolitan archbishops. 

According to the Vatican, 54 archbishops from more than two dozen countries who were named over the past 12 months received the palliums. Eight of them were from the United States: Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of Washington; Archbishop W. Shawn McKnight of Kansas City, Kansas; Archbishop Michael G. McGovern of Omaha, Nebraska; Archbishop Robert G. Casey of Cincinnati; Archbishop Joe S. Vásquez of Galveston-Houston; Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob of Milwaukee; Archbishop Richard G. Henning of Boston; and Archbishop Edward J. Weisenburger of Detroit.
The pope blessed the palliums after they were brought up from the crypt above the tomb of St. Peter. Each archbishop then approached Pope Leo by the altar and either knelt or bowed their head as the pope placed the pallium over their shoulders. Each shared an embrace with the pope and a few words.

In his homily, the pope reflected on Sts. Peter and Paul -- two saints who were martyred on different days and yet share the same feast day.

Sts. Peter and Paul were two very different people with different backgrounds, faith journeys and ways of evangelizing, Pope Leo said. They were at odds over "the proper way to deal with gentile converts" and would debate the issue. 

And yet, they were brothers in the Holy Spirit, and they both shared "a single fate, that of martyrdom, which united them definitively to Christ," he said. 

Their stories have "much to say to us, the community of the Lord's disciples," he said, especially regarding the importance of "ecclesial communion and the vitality of faith."

"The history of Peter and Paul shows us that the communion to which the Lord calls us is a unison of voices and personalities that does not eliminate anyone's freedom," Pope Leo said.

"Our patron saints followed different paths, had different ideas and at times argued with one another with evangelical frankness. Yet this did not prevent them from living the 'concordia apostolorum,' that is, a living communion in the Spirit, a fruitful harmony in diversity," he said.

"It is important that we learn to experience communion in this way -- as unity within diversity -- so that the various gifts, united in the one confession of faith, may advance the preaching of the Gospel," Pope Leo said.

Sts. Peter and Paul challenge Catholics to follow their example of fraternity and to think about "the vitality of our faith," he said. "As disciples, we can always risk falling into a rut, a routine, a tendency to follow the same old pastoral plans without experiencing interior renewal and a willingness to respond to new challenges." 

The two apostles were open to change, new events, encounters and concrete situations in the life of their communities, the pope said, and they were always ready "to consider new approaches to evangelization in response to the problems and difficulties raised by our brothers and sisters in the faith."

In the day's Gospel reading, Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" which he continues to ask his disciples today, "challenging us to examine whether our faith life retains its energy and vitality, and whether the flame of our relationship with the Lord still burns bright," the pope said. 

"If we want to keep our identity as Christians from being reduced to a relic of the past, as Pope Francis often reminded us, it is important to move beyond a tired and stagnant faith," he said, and ask: "Who is Jesus Christ for us today? What place does he occupy in our lives and in the life of the church? How can we bear witness to this hope in our daily lives and proclaim it to those whom we meet?"

"Brothers and sisters, the exercise of a discernment born of these questions can enable our faith and the faith of the church to be constantly renewed and to find new paths and new approaches to preaching the Gospel. This, together with communion, must be our greatest desire," he said.

Keeping with a long tradition, a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, led by Orthodox Metropolitan Emmanuel Adamakis of Chalcedon, was present at the Mass. Also present were members of the Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

The pope and the Orthodox metropolitan also descended the stairs below the main altar to pray at St. Peter's tomb.

"I would like to confirm on this solemn feast that my episcopal ministry is at the service of unity, and that the church of Rome is committed by the blood shed by Sts. Peter and Paul to serving in love the communion of all churches," Pope Leo said before praying the Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter's Square. 

"The New Testament does not conceal the errors, conflicts and sins of those whom we venerate as the greatest apostles. Their greatness was shaped by forgiveness," he said. "The risen Lord reached out to them more than once, to put them back on the right path. Jesus never calls just one time. That is why we can always hope. The Jubilee is itself a reminder of this."

In fact, "those who follow Jesus must tread the path of the beatitudes, where poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy, hunger and thirst for justice, and peace-making are often met with opposition and even persecution," he said. "Yet God's glory shines forth in his friends and continues to shape them along the way, passing from conversion to conversion."

Pallium: U.S. archbishops on healing division

Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul June 29, 2025, and gave eight newly-appointed U.S. metropolitan archbishops palliums -- woolen bands symbolizing an archbishop's unity with the pope and his authority and responsibility...

Pro-life demonstrators take part in a rally calling for Planned Parenthood to be defunded in Denton, Texas, on Saturday, June 28, 2025. / Credit: Carole Novielli/Live Action

CNA Staff, Jun 28, 2025 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

Thousands of pro-life advocates rallied at hundreds of locations across the United States on Saturday while taking part in a “single, coordinated day of demonstration” urging Congress to defund the abortion giant Planned Parenthood.

The pro-life group Live Action spearheaded the nationwide “Defund Day” event. Group founder Lila Rose told CNA it was the “largest grassroots effort” yet to call for stripping federal funds from Planned Parenthood, which received approximately $800 million in taxpayer dollars during its most recent fiscal year.

“We’re spearheading an effort with over 200 peaceful rallies across the country in all 48 states where there are Planned Parenthoods,” she said. “This is a national call to defund the biggest abortion chain.”

Citing Planned Parenthood’s hundreds of thousands of abortions per year, as well as other extreme services such as providing cross-sex hormones to minors, Rose said: “Congress has an opportunity to defund. They need to seize it.”

Photos and videos flooded social media on Saturday showing demonstrations taking place around the country, including in states such as California, Texas, Kentucky, and Georgia, with protesters displaying signs and banners calling for Planned Parenthood to be blocked from federal funds.

Rose told CNA that pro-life advocates are “closer than ever” to defunding the abortion chain.

“We have the opportunity with the [Republican] majority in the House and the Senate, and with an administration that has indicated it would defund,” she said.

Rose said there are still “significant challenges” to the defunding goal, including the possibility of a filibuster in the Senate blocking any bill to that effect, though she noted that the budget reconciliation process could be used to bypass that obstacle.

If defunding is ultimately accomplished, Rose said, “we need to ensure that it sticks,” not just for one budget year but permanently.

Looking forward, she said, “we have to abolish abortion.”

“Defunding will weaken abortion, but the main goal is the complete legal protection for the preborn.”

“We’re building a groundswell [to abolish abortion],” she added. “It’s going to take time to develop the political infrastructure. But I believe we’ll do it within a decade.”

A monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament is displayed on the altar during Eucharistic adoration at a Loretto Community Pentecost event accompanied by live music. / Credit: Loretto Gemeinschaft

CNA Newsroom, Jun 28, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The Loretto Community traces its roots to the mid-1980s, when a businessman and permanent deacon from Salzburg, Austria, first visited Medjugorje.

Chase Crouse, founder of Hypuro Fit. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Chase Crouse

CNA Staff, Jun 28, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

In 2019, Chase Crouse was working two jobs — in ministry at the Archdiocese of New York and as a personal trainer. He quickly realized that while he loved working with people at the gym, he hated not being able to talk about Jesus with them. So he decided to combine both of his passions and create a Catholic fitness and personal training apostolate called Hypuro Fit.

Hypuro Fit’s programing is rooted in St. John Paul II’s theology of the body, encouraging its members to trade the mentality of needing to achieve the perfect “beach body” for the goal of living as a gift for others through self-discipline, self-mastery, and honoring the bodies God gave them.

After Crouse, a graduate of John Paul the Great Catholic University in San Diego who holds a master’s degree in biblical theology, began working with people as a trainer, he began to notice that anytime he asked people why they wanted to work out, their answers would always be along the lines of wanting to look a certain way and have others find them attractive. Crouse began to reflect on this and turned to John Paul II’s theology of the body.

“I read it with this question in mind and sure enough, really early on, he talks about this law of gift, from Gaudium et Spes, that man finds himself through a gift of himself, but what he adds in audience 15, which is kind of my lightbulb moment, is this idea that self-donation is impossible without self-mastery,” he explained.

In addition to being the founder of Hypuro Fit, Crouse is one of 10 coaches who work with individuals who join their programs.

The fitness apostolate offers two different options for users: one-on-one training or following a workout program through the app.

One-on-one training is done remotely through the use of Zoom and phone calls and allows the individual to work with a coach to build a custom workout plan, nutrition goals, and helps provide accountability.

The app is filled with a variety of different programs that include a library of workouts for people in every walk of life and with differing time constraints. The programs in the app also include educational content, technique tutorials, recipes, and articles for spiritual formation.

Hypuro Fit also has specialty programs such as “Breaking the Chains” for those experiencing an addiction to lust as well as a postpartum program for moms.

“What we like to say with both approaches [we offer] is that we’re authentically Catholic but we’re technically excellent, meaning that we are going to base all of our exercise routines, our nutrition protocols, based on the latest science and studies we have at our disposal,” Crouse explained. “But at the same time, we’re also authentically Catholic, meaning that for our one-on-one clients, we’re going to pray with them and for them. But then even for our subscribers in our app, we’re bringing them back to our why, which is this idea of self-mastery for self-gift.”

Crouse said the majority of the apostolate’s clients are between the ages of 30 and 60, so “they’re people in their vocation and they’re really busy.” 

Additionally, about one-third of clients are priests and religious, who receive access to the programming for free. Due to this, Hypuro Fit is aiming to show them that you don’t have to work out like you did in high school, you don’t even have to work out every day, you just need to show up and do something that is reasonable for your lifestyle.

“Ultimately we’re doing this to better give of ourselves and find that why and put everything in light of Christ and his resurrection,” he said.

Crouse added that the main goal of the ministry’s work is to help individuals “be more present and to live out their vocation to the best of their ability.”

“If we can help priests to be better priests, have more energy, give better, religious to be better brothers and sisters, husbands and wives to conquer themselves in order to give themselves to be more present — that’s the goal, that’s the dream.”