France. Baptisms of faith or reactive baptisms? – France. Baptisms of faith or reactive baptisms? – France. Baptisms of faith or reactive baptisms? – France. Baptisms of faith or reactive baptisms?
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FRANCE. BAPTISM OF FAITH OR REACTIVE BAPTISM?
«Being Christian means bearing witness and, if necessary, fight the worst tendencies of the Prince who governs this world with all the political means granted to anyone with the right to think, speech and electoral vote. Baptismal faith is not something private, but how much more public can there be: active testimony. If not, everything risks being reduced to fear and emotion".
- Actuality -
.
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
.
The 4 March 2024 the Eiffel Tower lit up with the writing «My body, my choice» — my body, my choice - to celebrate the inclusion of the "right" to abortion in the French Constitution, first nation in the world to do so.
France, catechumen being baptized during the Easter Vigil (OSV News photo/James Ramos, Texas Catholic Herald)
It's France itself, secular to the point of exasperation, never truly freed from the revolutionary anticlericalism that remained smoldering like embers under the ashes, the same as in 1793 transformed Notre-Dame into the temple of the Goddess Reason and which in the last two years has found itself celebrating something completely different: an explosion of requests for baptism among teenagers, young people and adults which is unprecedented in its recent history. In 2025 they went further 17.800 the catechumens baptized at Easter: 10.384 grown ups, the 45% more than 2024, beyond 7.400 teenagers among 11 e i 17 year old.
I couldn't help but be happy, be clear, before an adult who consciously asks for this sacrament of grace that cleanses from original sin and opens up the path of Christian life. but yet, I confess this without any pessimism, something about this phenomenon doesn't convince me and with all my heart I hope I have to say, in a few years, that I was wrong. I really want it, I'm wrong.
To understand the phenomenon we must start from two French fears, both real and competing. The first is that of an aggressive secularism that has never been content with separating the State from the Church - something sacrosanct, which Catholics themselves are right to defend to protect both freedoms: of the State and the Church - but which has progressively risen to supreme truth, to a substitute civil religion: it is not the first time in the history of France, the Goddess of Reason installed on the altar of Notre-Dame in 1793 it demonstrates it with the strength of the previous one. The second, less declared but no less widespread, it is instead constituted by the fear of a growing number of French people faced with the expansion of Muslim communities who refuse any integration and who have transformed entire neighborhoods - even in the capital - into enclaves where the law of Great Republic matters less than the law of the square. Exasperating and aggressive secularism on the one hand, fear of Islamization on the other: two pressures they generate, together, fear and confusion in a nation that, no matter how hard he tries to deny it, it cannot erase its Christian roots, an anthropological baggage that constitutes it profoundly, even before its history.
It is in this scenario that I believe it is legitimate to ask an uncomfortable question: these conversions arise from a flash of lightning on the road to Damascus - as happened, over the centuries, to famous people and countless strangers — or they are a reaction, a form of identity defense, an escape from fear dressed up as a sacrament? It would not be the first time that Christianity acts as a bond of people and a refuge in a moment of collective confusion: the case of Poland, in Europa, remains the most eloquent. But what came next is also instructive: in fact the specter of communism has fallen, who had made faith an act of national resistance, Poland has embarked on a secularization as rapid as that of France. Participation in Sunday mass, than in 1981 it was still about the 52,7% of the Polish faithful, she went down to the 46,8% In the 2001, al 40% In the 2011, until the 28,3% the 2021. Almost like for many, the common enemy against which faith was a barrier has disappeared, Christianity had lost its subjective and social utility and purpose.
To understand this mechanism It is worth taking a step back in history, because the link between collective fear and a return to faith - and conversely the link between widespread well-being and religious disaffection - is not an invention of the twentieth century. In Europe devastated by the Black Death of 1347-1351, which wiped out almost half the population in just a few years, popular religiosity exploded to the point of bordering on excess: the flagellant movement was born, who crossed the cities in procession practicing public self-flagellation as extreme penance, convinced that he was acting under direct inspiration from God; pilgrimages and vows multiplied, the cult of the patron saints from the plague grew enormously, San Rocco above all. It was such an exasperated religiosity that the Supreme Pontiff Clement VI had to intervene with two bulls, in July and September 1349, to condemn its excesses and publicly prohibit its practices, a sign that the Church too, in the face of collective terror, he recognized the risk of a refuge-faith capable of bordering on fanaticism.
A case closer to us and in some ways Spain mirrors the Polish one. National Catholicism in the post-Franco war, who had made faith a pillar of identity in a country torn apart by the civil war - during which, between 1936 and the 1939, the anticlerical persecution in the areas controlled by the republicans cost lives, according to the reference study by the historian Antonio Montero Moreno, about 6.832 religious, thirteen bishops included, as well as thousands of lay people killed for their faith - first went through the economic boom of the 1960s and then, above all, the democratic transition and the decades of peace and growing freedom that followed: and it is precisely in those decades that the collapse came, sudden. In just twenty years Spain has gone from a country where the 92% of the population grew Catholic to one in which only the 66% still declares itself as such: over twelve million fewer people, the largest contraction in Europe in absolute terms; baptisms have come down from 325.271 In the 2007 a 214.271 in recent years, today more than half of Spanish children are not baptized and among young people come 18 to the 24 years ago, over half now declare themselves non-Catholic. The seminars emptied at the same time: -30% of seminarians in the last decade e 10.615 parishes up 23.286 — more than half — are today without a resident priest.
It is certainly no coincidence that Spain, in this same thirty years of galloping de-Christianization, has become the European laboratory from which they were born, in sequence, some of the most radical legislative changes on the continent: same-sex marriage, introduced on 30 June 2005, third country in the world after the Netherlands and Belgium, with adoption rights included from day one; the express divorce of the same year, which eliminated any obligation of preventive separation; active euthanasia, legalized in March 2021, seventh country in the world to do so; the so-called ley trans of February 2023, which introduced the change of registered sex upon simple self-declaration, without any medical requirement, among the most permissive regulations in Europe. I don't claim that there is a plan behind all this - it would be unprovable - but the chronological coincidence between the void left by faith and the ground made available for these transformations remains at least a fact to reflect on.
The thread that binds the Black Death, post-Franco Spain and post-communist Poland is the same, mirror bed: in moments of great fear and collective uncertainty the churches fill up, often beyond the measure of authentic faith; in moments of peace and widespread prosperity they become empty, with them diocesan seminaries and religious novitiates are also emptying. In the poorest countries in the world, the bishops ask for financial aid to build seminaries from European bishops who, Meanwhile, they gradually closed their own, going so far as to sell most of the buildings and concentrate the few seminarians from all the dioceses of an entire ecclesiastical region in a single seminary. How authentic certain vocations are and how many aspiring priests are young people who are only looking for a better state of life and a role of maximum respect in their civil societies? All this is not a mechanical law, nor can grace be reducible to a sociological cycle. But it is a pattern that repeats itself with enough regularity to impose caution on anyone looking at the today 17.800 French catechumens and would certainly like to read in it a new springtime of faith, because this can only be assessed in several years.
An authentic conversion, especially in adulthood, it needs strong and well-considered reasons, it cannot be the result of emotion alone, of fear, of the need to belong in a moment of identity loss. Augustine, first a pleasure-loving libertine, then a Manichaean, he didn't convert to defend himself from something, but why something, or rather someone had reached him to the point of undermining all his intellectual and moral resistance. The same applies, in times closer to us, for conversions like that of Edith Stein, Jew and eminent philosopher, or by André Frossard, atheist and communist, later appointed member of the French Academy, all inspirations that arise from an encounter, not from a siege, I am the conscious and free fruit of that love that chases away fear (cf.. 1 GV 4,18). The risk, in France, is that a part of these 17.800 people found not Christ in the baptismal font, but a trench: a solid identity to oppose to a world - secularist on the one hand, Islamized on the other - perceived as hostile. This is not necessarily the case and it would be ungenerous and even dishonest to assume this a priori for everyone. S. AND. Mons. Olivier Leborgne, Bishop of Arras and former vice-president of the French Episcopal Conference, he explained that new catechumens often come from complicated lives, sometimes marked by wounds and experience entry into faith as a healing experience. And this is the language of authentic grace, not trenches, even more so, time will confirm or deny it.
So it takes time to distinguish one thing from another. Time is what is always missing from Easter statistics and what the Church instead, of always, to give: a serious catechumenate, an accompaniment that is not satisfied with the number and verifies the quality of the "yes" pronounced at the baptismal font, exactly what I had the opportunity to write in a forthcoming article of mine regarding the vocational crisis in Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries, massive entry without adequate discernment has already shown that it can betray, in other contexts, within a generation.
If in a few years France dei 17.800 catechumens the 2025 it will be a more Christian France and not just a more frightened France that has looked for a fort, then I must have been wrong. And it will be, per me, the greatest joy. If not, we will have witnessed: one part, to the Eiffel Tower illuminated to celebrate the inclusion of “right” to abortion in the French Constitution, on the other to an army of reactive baptized people who will not have understood that being Christian means bearing witness and, if necessary, fight the worst tendencies of the Prince who governs this world with all the political means granted to anyone with the right to think, speech and electoral vote. Baptismal faith is not something private, but how much more public can there be: active testimony. If not, everything risks being reduced to fear and emotion.
From the island of Patmos, 28 September 2026
.
FRANCE. BAPTISMS OF FAITH OR REACTIVE BAPTISMS?
«Being Christian means bearing witness and, when necessary, fighting — with all the political means granted to anyone with the right to think, speak and vote — against the worst excesses of the Prince who rules this world. Baptismal faith is not something private, but the most public thing there can be: active witness. If not, everything risks being reduced to fear and emotion».
— Contemporary ecclesial affairs —
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
On 4 March 2024 the Eiffel Tower lit up with the words «My body, my choice» — my body, my choice — to celebrate the enshrining of the “right” to abortion in the French Constitution, the first nation in the world to do so. This is the same France, secular to the point of exasperation, never truly freed from the revolutionary anticlericalism that has gone on smoldering like an ember beneath the ash, the same France that in 1793 turned Notre-Dame into the temple of the Goddess Reason and that in the last two years finds itself celebrating something altogether different: an explosion of requests for baptism among adolescents, young people and adults with no precedent in its recent history. In 2025 more than 17,800 catechumens were baptized at Easter: 10,384 adults, 45% more than in 2024, and over 7,400 adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17.
I could only be glad, let it be clear, before an adult who consciously asks for this sacrament of grace that washes away original sin and opens the path to the Christian life. And yet, I confess without any pessimism, something about this phenomenon does not entirely convince me, and with all my heart I hope to have to say, a few years from now, that I was wrong. I truly wish to be wrong.
To understand the phenomenon, one must start from two French fears, both real and concurrent. The first is that of an aggressive secularism that has never been content merely to separate Church from State — a sacrosanct principle, which Catholics themselves are right to defend in order to safeguard both freedoms, that of the State and that of the Church — but that has progressively set itself up as supreme truth, as a substitute civil religion: it is not the first time in the history of France; the Goddess Reason enthroned on the altar of Notre-Dame in 1793 demonstrates this with the force of precedent. The second, less openly declared but no less widespread, consists instead in the fear felt by a growing number of French people before the expansion of Muslim communities that reject all integration and that have turned entire neighborhoods — even in the capital — into enclaves where the law of the Great Republic counts for less than the law of the street. Exasperated, aggressive secularism on one side, fear of Islamization on the other: two pressures that together generate fear and bewilderment in a nation which, however hard it tries to deny it, cannot erase its own Christian roots, an anthropological inheritance that constitutes it at its depths, even before its history does.
It is in this scenario that I consider it legitimate to ask an uncomfortable question: do these conversions arise from a Damascus-road revelation — as has happened, over the centuries, to celebrated figures and to countless unknown ones — or are they a reaction, a form of identity self-defense, a flight from fear dressed up as a Sacrament? It would not be the first time that Christianity has served as a people’s bond and refuge in a moment of collective disorientation: the case of Poland, in Europe, remains the most eloquent. But what came afterward is instructive too: once the specter of communism had fallen — communism that had made faith an act of national resistance — Poland embarked on a secularization every bit as rapid as France’s own. Sunday Mass attendance, which in 1981 still involved 52.7% of Polish faithful, fell to 46.8% in 2001, to 40% in 2011, and down to 28.3% in 2021. As though, for many, once the common enemy against which faith had stood as a bulwark was gone, Christianity had lost its own usefulness and its subjective and social purpose.
To understand this mechanism, it is worth taking a step back in history, because the link between collective fear and a return to faith — and, conversely, the link between widespread prosperity and religious disaffection — is no invention of the twentieth century. In the Europe devastated by the Black Death of 1347-1351, which cut down nearly half the population within a few years, popular religiosity exploded to the point of excess: the flagellant movement was born, processing through cities practicing public self-flagellation as extreme penance, convinced they were acting under God’s direct inspiration; pilgrimages and vows multiplied, and the cult of the saints who protected against plague grew beyond measure, Saint Roch above all. It was a religiosity so overwrought that Pope Clement VI had to intervene with two bulls, in July and September 1349, to condemn its excesses and publicly forbid its practices — a sign that even the Church, faced with collective terror, recognized the risk of a refuge-faith capable of sliding into fanaticism.
A case closer to us, and in certain respects a mirror of the Polish one, is Spain. National Catholicism in the post-war Francoist era, which had made faith an identity pillar in a country torn apart by civil war — during which, between 1936 and 1939, anticlerical persecution in the zones controlled by the Republicans cost the lives, according to the reference study by the historian Antonio Montero Moreno, of roughly 6,832 clergy and religious, including thirteen bishops, in addition to thousands of laypeople killed for their faith — passed first through the economic boom of the 1960s and then, above all, through the democratic transition and the following decades of peace and growing freedom: and it is precisely in those decades that the collapse arrived, sudden. In barely twenty years Spain went from a country where 92% of the population grew up Catholic to one where only 66% still declares itself so: more than twelve million people fewer, the largest contraction in Europe in absolute terms; baptisms fell from 325,271 in 2007 to 214,271 in recent years, today more than half of Spanish children are not baptized, and among young people aged 18 to 24 more than half now declare themselves non-Catholic. Seminaries have emptied at the same pace: a 30% drop in seminarians over the last decade, and 10,615 out of 23,286 parishes — nearly half — are today without a resident priest.
It is surely no coincidence that Spain, in this same thirty-year span of galloping dechristianization, became the European laboratory from which, in sequence, some of the continent’s most radical legislative turning points were born: same-sex marriage, introduced on 30 June 2005, the third country in the world to do so after the Netherlands and Belgium, with the right to adoption included from the very first day; express divorce that same year, which eliminated any requirement of prior separation; active euthanasia, legalized in March 2021, the seventh country in the world to do so; the so-called ley trans of February 2023, which introduced the change of legal sex on simple self-declaration, with no medical requirement whatsoever, among the most permissive regulations in Europe. I am not claiming that behind all this lies a design — that would be impossible to prove — but the chronological coincidence between the void left by faith and the ground made available for these transformations remains, at the very least, a fact worth pondering.
The thread linking the Black Death, post-Francoist Spain and post-communist Poland is the same one, read as in a mirror: in moments of great fear and collective uncertainty, churches fill up, often beyond the measure of authentic faith; in moments of peace and widespread prosperity, they empty, and with them diocesan seminaries and religious novitiates empty too. In the world’s poorer countries, bishops ask for financial aid to build seminaries from European bishops who, meanwhile, have been progressively closing their own, going so far as to sell off much of the property and to concentrate in a single seminary the few seminarians from every diocese of an entire ecclesiastical region. How many of certain vocations are genuine, and how many aspiring priests are instead simply young men seeking a better state of life and a position of the utmost respect within their own civil societies? None of this is a mechanical law, nor can grace be reduced to a sociological cycle. But it is a pattern that repeats itself with sufficient regularity to counsel prudence to anyone who today looks at France’s 17,800 catechumens and is tempted to read into them, without further thought, a new springtime of faith — because that can only be judged several years from now.
An authentic conversion, especially in adulthood, needs strong and well-examined reasons; it cannot be the offspring of mere emotion, of fear, of the need to belong in a moment of identity disorientation. Augustine, first a hedonistic libertine and then a Manichaean, was not converted in order to defend himself from something, but because something — or rather, someone — had reached him, dismantling every intellectual and moral resistance he had. The same holds, in times closer to our own, for conversions such as that of Edith Stein, a Jewish woman and eminent philosopher, or of André Frossard, an atheist and communist who was later made a member of the Académie française — all of them revelations born of an encounter, not of a siege, the conscious and free fruit of that love which drives out fear (cf. 1 Jn 4:18). The risk, in France, is that some of these 17,800 people may have found at the baptismal font not Christ, but a trench: a solid identity to set against a world — secularist on one side, Islamized on the other — perceived as hostile. It need not be so, and it would be ungenerous, even dishonest, to presume it a priori for everyone. His Excellency Bishop Olivier Leborgne, Bishop of Arras and formerly vice-president of the French Bishops’ Conference, has explained that the new catechumens often come from complicated lives, at times marked by wounds, and experience their entry into the faith as an experience of healing. And that is the language of authentic grace, not of a trench — all the more so as it will be time to come that confirms or disproves it.
Time is therefore needed to tell one thing from the other. Time is precisely what Easter statistics always lack, and what the Church, as ever, knows how to give: a serious catechumenate, an accompaniment that is not satisfied with the numbers and that verifies the quality of the «yes» spoken at the baptismal font — exactly what, as I have had occasion to write in an article of mine soon to be published concerning the vocational crisis in Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries, a massive intake without adequate discernment has already shown itself capable of betraying, in other contexts, within the space of a single generation.
If, some years from now, the France of the 17,800 catechumens of 2025 turns out to be a more Christian France and not merely a more frightened France that went looking for a stronghold, then I will have been wrong. And that, for me, will be the greatest joy. If not, we will have witnessed: on one side, the Eiffel Tower lit up to celebrate the enshrining of the “right” to abortion in the French Constitution, and on the other an army of reactive newly baptized who will not have understood that being Christian means bearing witness and, when necessary, fighting — with all the political means granted to anyone with the right to think, speak and vote — against the worst excesses of the Prince who rules this world. Baptismal faith is not something private, but the most public thing there can be: active witness. If not, everything risks being reduced to fear and emotion.
From The Island of Patmos, 28 September 2026
.
FRANCE. BAPTISM OF FAITH OR REACTIVE BAPTISM ?
“To be a Christian means to bear witness and, if necessary, fight — by all political means recognized to anyone who has the right to think, of speech and vote - the worst excesses of the Prince who governs this world. Baptismal faith is not a private thing, but what is most public there is : active testimony. Otherwise, everything risks being reduced to fear and emotionality”.
— Church news —
Auteur
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
the 4 mars 2024, the Eiffel Tower lit up of the inscription “My body, my choice », to celebrate the inclusion of the “right” to abortion in the French Constitution, France thus becoming the first nation in the world to do so. It's the same France, secular to the point of exasperation, never really freed from the revolutionary anticlericalism that remained smoldering like an ember under the ashes, the same one who, in 1793, transformed Notre-Dame into a temple of the Goddess Reason and which, the last two years, finds himself celebrating something completely different : an explosion of baptism requests among adolescents, young people and adults, unprecedented in its recent history. On 2025, more than 17 800 catechumens were baptized at Easter : 10 384 adults, either 45 % more than 2024, and more than 7 400 adolescents aged 11 at 17 ans.
I could only be happy, let us understand it well, in front of an adult who asks in full conscience this sacrament of grace which cleanses from original sin and opens the path to Christian life. And yet, I admit it without the slightest pessimism, something about this phenomenon doesn't quite convince me, and I sincerely wish I had to say, in a few years, that I was wrong. I really wish it, cheat on me.
To understand the phenomenon, we must start from two French fears, both real and concurrent. The first is that of an aggressive secularism which has never been content to separate the State from the Church – a sacrosanct thing., that Catholics themselves are right to defend for the protection of the two freedoms, that of the State and that of the Church - but which has gradually established itself as the supreme truth, a religion civil de substitution : this is not the first time in French history, the Goddess Reason installed on the altar of Notre-Dame in 1793 demonstrates it with the force of the precedent. The second, less reported but just as widespread, is due to the fear of a growing number of French people facing the expansion of Muslim communities who refuse any integration and who have transformed entire neighborhoods – including in the capital – into enclaves where the law of the Great Republic weighs less than the law of the street. Exasperating and aggressive secularism on one side, fear of the Islamization of others : two pressures which together generate fear and dismay in a nation which, despite all his efforts to deny it, cannot erase its own Christian roots, an anthropological background which constitutes it in its depths, even before its history.
It is in this context that I believe it is legitimate to ask a disturbing question : Are these conversions born from a flash on the road to Damascus – as happened?, over the centuries, to famous people and countless unknowns — or are they a reaction, a form of identity defense, a flight from fear which is clothed in the Sacrament ? It would not be the first time that Christianity has served as national glue and refuge in a moment of collective dismay. : the case of Poland, a Europe, remains the most eloquent. But what came next is just as instructive : the specter of communism once fallen - it which had made faith an act of national resistance -, Poland is engaged in secularization as rapid as that of France. Participation in Sunday mass, which still concerned 52,7 % Polish faithful in 1981, fell to 46,8 % in 2001, at 40 % in 2011, until 28,3 % in 2021. As if, for many, the common enemy having disappeared - the one against whom faith was a bulwark -, Christianity had lost its usefulness and purpose, both subjectively and socially.
To understand this mechanism, it is appropriate to take a step back in history, because the link between collective fear and return to faith — and, conversely, the link between widespread prosperity and religious disaffection — is not a 20th century invention. In Europe devastated by the Black Death of 1347-1351, which decimated almost half the population in a few years, popular religiosity exploded to the point of sinking into excess : the flagellant movement was born, who traveled through cities in procession practicing public self-flagellation as extreme penance, convinced of acting under the direct inspiration of God ; pilgrimages and vows multiplied, the cult of saints protecting the plague experienced disproportionate growth, Saint Roch at the head. It was such an exacerbated religiosity that the sovereign pontiff Clement VI had to intervene with two bulls, in July and September 1349, to condemn its excesses and publicly prohibit its practices - a sign that the Church itself, in the face of collective terror, recognized the risk of a faith as a refuge likely to sink into fanaticism.
A case closer to us, and in some respects the mirror of the Polish case, is that of Spain. National Catholicism in the post-Franco war, who had made faith a pillar of identity in a country emerging from a civil war - during which, between 1936 and 1939, anticlerical persecution carried out in republican-controlled areas cost lives, according to the reference study by the historian Antonio Montero Moreno, approximately 6 832 religious, thirteen bishops included, as well as thousands of lay people killed for their faith —, first went through the economic boom of the 1960s, Then, Above all, the Democratic Transition and the decades of peace and increasing freedom that followed : It was precisely during these decades that the collapse occurred, suddenly. In barely twenty years, Spain has gone from a country where 92 % of the population grew up in Catholicism in a country where only 66 % still declare themselves Catholic : more than twelve million fewer people, the largest contraction in Europe in absolute value ; baptisms fell from 325 271 in 2007 at 214 271 in recent years, today more than half of Spanish children are not baptized, and among the young people of 18 at 24 ans, more than half now declare themselves to be non-Catholic. The seminars emptied at the same rate : -30 % of seminarians over the last decade, and 10 615 parishes on 23 286 — almost half — are today deprived of a resident priest.
It is certainly no coincidence that Spain, during these same thirty years of galloping dechristianization, became the European laboratory from which were born, in sequence, some of the most radical legislative turning points on the continent : same-sex marriage, introduced the 30 June 2005, third country in the world to do so after the Netherlands and Belgium, with the right to adoption from day one ; the express divorce of the same year, which removed any obligation of prior separation ; active euthanasia, legalized in March 2021, seventh country in the world to do so ; the so-called trans law of February 2023, who introduced the change of civil status upon simple declaration, without any medical requirements, one of the most permissive laws in Europe. I am not saying that there is a design behind all this – that would be undemonstrable –, but the chronological coincidence between the void left by faith and the ground made available for these transformations remains, at the very least, a fact worth reflecting on.
The thread that connects the Black Death, post-Franco Spain and post-communist Poland is the same, read in mirror : in times of great fear and collective uncertainty, the churches are filling, often beyond the measure of authentic faith ; in times of peace and widespread prosperity, they empty themselves, and with them the diocesan seminaries and religious novitiates are also empty.. In the poorest countries in the world, bishops ask for financial aid to build seminaries from European bishops who, in the meantime, gradually closed theirs, going so far as to sell a large part of their buildings and to concentrate in a single seminary the rare seminarians from all the dioceses of an entire ecclesiastical region. How much, among certain vocations, are they authentic, and how much, on the contrary, are young aspiring priests only seeking a better standard of living and a role of the greatest respect within their civil societies? ? All this is not a mechanical law, and grace cannot be reduced to a sociological cycle. But it is a pattern that repeats itself with sufficient regularity to impose caution on anyone looking at the 17 800 French catechumens and would like to read there without further delay a new spring of faith, because this can only be judged in several years.
An authentic conversion, especially in adulthood, needs strong and carefully considered reasons ; she cannot be the daughter of emotion alone, fear, of the need to belong in a moment of identity disarray. Augustin, first libertine enjoyer then Manichaean, does not convert to defend himself from something, but because something – or rather someone – had reached him to the point of shaking all his intellectual and moral resistance. It is the same, in a time closer to our own, for conversions such as that of Edith Stein, Jewish and philosopher badge, or André Frossard, atheist and communist, later elected member of the French Academy : all these fulgurations are born from an encounter, not a seat, and are the conscious and free fruit of this love which banishes fear (cf. 1 Jn 4, 18). The risk, In France, is that part of these 17 800 people found on the baptismal font not Christ, but a trench : a solid identity to oppose to a world – secularist on one side, Islamized by the other — perceived as hostile. It is not said that this is so, and he would be petty, even dishonest, to presume it a priori for all. Mgr Olivier Leborgne, bishop of Arras and former vice-president of the Conference of Bishops of France, explained that new catechumens often come from complicated lives, sometimes marked by injuries, and experience their entry into faith as a healing experience. And this is the language of authentic grace, not that of the trench - all the more reason to let the time to come provide confirmation or denial.
So it takes time to distinguish one from the other. Time is precisely what is always missing from Easter statistics, and what the Church, elle, always knows how to give : a serious catechumenate, an accompaniment which is not satisfied with the number and which verifies the quality of the “yes” pronounced at the baptismal font – exactly what, as I had the opportunity to write in an article to be published soon on the vocational crisis in Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries, mass entry without adequate discernment has already shown that it could betray, in other contexts, within a generation.
And, in a few years, the France of 17 800 catechumens from 2025 reveals itself as a more Christian France, and not only a more frightened France gone in search of a fort, then I would have been wrong. And it will be, In my opinion, the greatest joy. Otherwise, we will have attended, on the one hand, at the illuminated Eiffel Tower to celebrate the inclusion of the “right” to abortion in the French Constitution, and on the other hand to an army of reactive baptized people who will not have understood that being Christian means witnessing and, if necessary, fight — by all political means recognized to anyone who has the right to think, of speech and vote - the worst excesses of the Prince who governs this world. Baptismal faith is not a private thing, but what is most public there is : active testimony. Otherwise, everything risks being reduced to fear and emotionality.
From the Island of Patmos, the 28 september 2026
.
FRANCE. BAPTISM OF FAITH OR REACTIVE BAPTISM??
«Being a Christian means witnessing and, if necessary, combat - with all recognized political means those who have the right to think, word and vote — the worst deviations of the Prince who rules this world. Baptismal faith is not something private, but the most public that can exist: the active testimony. Otherwise, everything runs the risk of being reduced to fear and emotion.
- Ecclesial news -
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
The 4 March 2024 the Eiffel Tower lit up with the inscription «My body, my choice» — my body, my choice — to celebrate the inclusion of the “right” to abortion in the French Constitution, first nation in the world to do so. It's the same France, secular to the point of exasperation, who never truly freed himself from revolutionary anticlericalism, and that continues to simmer like an ember under the ashes; the same as in 1793 transformed Notre-Dame into a temple of the Goddess Reason and that in the last two years has celebrated something very different: an explosion of baptism requests among teenagers, young people and adults unprecedented in recent history. On 2025 were more than 17.800 catechumens baptized at Easter: 10.384 adults, a 45% more than in 2024, and more than 7.400 teenagers from 11 and 17 years.
I couldn't help but rejoice, let it be clear, before an adult who asks with full conscience for the sacrament of grace that cleanses from original sin and opens the path of Christian life. And yet, I confess it without any pessimism, something that in this phenomenon does not convince me at all, and I wish with all my heart to have to say, in a few years: I made a mistake. I really want to be wrong.
To understand the phenomenon we must start from two French fears, both real and concurrent. The first is that of an aggressive secularism that has never been content with separating the State from the Church — a sacrosanct thing., and that Catholics themselves have reasons to defend to protect both freedoms: that of the State and that of the Church —, and that has progressively emerged as the supreme truth, as a substitute civil religion. It is not the first time in the history of France, the Goddess Reason enthroned on the altar of Notre-Dame in 1793 demonstrates with force the precedent. The second, less declared, but no less widespread, Instead, it is the fear of a growing number of French people who, faced with the expansion of Muslim communities that reject all integration and have turned entire neighborhoods — also in the capital — into enclaves where the law of Great Republic weighs less than the law of the street. Infuriating and aggressive secularism, on the one hand, fear of Islamization by another: two pressures that together generate fear and confusion in a nation that, no matter how hard you try to deny it, cannot erase his own Christian roots. An anthropological baggage that constitutes her in the deepest part, even before its own history.
It is in this scenario where I consider it legitimate to raise an uncomfortable question: Are these conversions born from a flash on the road to Damascus — as has happened, throughout the centuries, to famous people and countless strangers — or are they a reaction, a form of identity defense, an escape from fear that is clothed in Sacramento? It would not be the first time that Christianity serves as a mortar for the people and a refuge in a moment of collective confusion.: the case of Poland, in Europe, remains the most eloquent. But what came next is also instructive.: the specter of communism fallen, who had made faith an act of national resistance, Poland undertook secularization as fast as France. Participation in Sunday Mass, that in 1981 still reached 52,7% of the Polish faithful, descended to 46,8% in 2001, al 40% in 2011, until the 28,3% in 2021. As if, for many, the common enemy against which faith acted as a dam has disappeared, Christianity would have lost its own usefulness and subjective and social purpose.
To understand this mechanism It is worth taking a step back in history, because the link between collective fear and the return to faith — and, the other way around, the link between general well-being and religious detachment — not a 20th century invention. In Europe devastated by the Black Death of 1347-1351, that decimated almost half of the population in a few years, popular religiosity exploded to the point of bordering on excess: the flagellants movement was born, who toured the cities in procession practicing public self-flagellation as extreme penance, convinced of acting by direct inspiration from God. Pilgrimages and votes multiplied, and the cult of the saints who protected the plague grew disproportionately, like Saint Roque to first place. It was a religiosity so exasperated that the Supreme Pontiff Clement VI had to intervene with two bulls, in July and September 1349, to condemn their excesses and publicly prohibit their practices. A sign that even the Church, in the face of collective terror, recognized the risk of a faith-refuge capable of degenerating into fanaticism.
A case closer to us and, in certain aspects, speculate in Polish, it's Spain. National Catholicism in the post-Franco war, who had made faith a pillar of identity in a country that had been torn apart by a civil war — during which, between 1936 and 1939, anticlerical persecution in Republican-controlled areas cost lives, according to the reference study by historian Antonio Montero Moreno, to some 6.832 religious, thirteen bishops, and thousands of lay people murdered for their faith —, first went through the economic boom of the sixties, and above all, the democratic transition with the decades of peace and increasing freedom that followed: and it is precisely in those decades when the collapse came, sudden. In just twenty years, Spain has gone from being a country where 92% of the population grew in the Catholic faith to one where only the 66% is still declared as such: more than twelve million fewer people, the largest decline in Europe in absolute terms; baptisms have fallen from 325.271 in 2007 a 214.271 in recent years; Today more than half of Spanish children are not baptized, and among the young people of 18 a 24 years more than half declare themselves non-Catholic. The seminaries have emptied at the same rate: a decrease in 30% in number of seminarians in the last decade, and 10.615 of the 23.286 — parishes, almost half — today lack a resident priest.
It is no coincidence that precisely Spain, in this same thirty years of rampant de-Christianization, has become the European laboratory from which they were born, in sequence, some of the most radical legislative changes on the continent: same-sex marriage, introduced on 30 June 2005, third country in the world to do so after the Netherlands and Belgium, including the right to adoption from day one; the quick divorce that same year, which eliminated any requirement for prior separation; active euthanasia, legalized in March 2021, seventh country in the world to do so; the so-called trans law of February 2023, that introduced the change of registered sex by simple self-declaration, without any medical requirement, among the most permissive regulations in Europe. I do not claim that there is a design behind all this — it would be unprovable —, but the chronological coincidence between the void left by faith and the terrain available for these transformations remains, at least, a fact to reflect on.
The thread that unites the black plague, post-Franco Spain and post-communist Poland is the same, reflected in time like a mirror: In moments of great fear and collective uncertainty, churches fill, often beyond the measure of authentic faith; in times of peace and widespread prosperity they are emptied, and with them the diocesan seminaries and religious novitiates are also emptied.. In the poorest countries in the world, The bishops ask for financial aid to build seminaries from European bishops who, meanwhile, they have been progressively closing theirs, going so far as to sell a large part of its buildings and concentrate the few seminarians from all the dioceses of an ecclesiastical region in a single seminary.. How authentic are certain vocations?, and how many aspiring priests are actually just young people seeking a better state of life and a role of maximum respect in their own civil societies? All this is not a mechanical law, nor can grace be reduced to a sociological cycle. But it is a pattern that is repeated with sufficient regularity to impose caution on anyone who looks at the 17.800 French catechumens and want to read in them, without a doubt, a new spring of faith, because this can only be assessed in several years.
A true conversion, especially in adulthood, needs strong and contrasted reasons; It cannot be the daughter of mere emotion, of fear, of the need to belong in a moment of identity confusion. Augustine, first happy libertine and then manichean, He didn't convert to defend himself from something, but because something - or rather someone - had reached him to the point of disarming all his intellectual and moral resistance.. The same goes, in times closer to us, for conversions like Edith Stein's, Jew and distinguished philosopher, or André Frossard's, atheist and communist, later appointed member of the French Academy: all of them fulgurations that are born from an encounter, not from a siege, conscious and free fruit of that love that expels fear (cf. 1 Jn 4,18). The risk, in France, is that a part of these 17.800 people have found in the baptismal font not Christ, but a trench: a solid identity to oppose a world — secular on the one hand, Islamized by another — perceived as hostile. It is not necessarily said that it is so, and it would be mean, and even dishonest, show it off a priori for everyone. Mons. Olivier Leborgne, bishop of Arras and former vice president of the French Episcopal Conference, has explained that new catechumens often come from complicated lives, sometimes marked by wounds, and live the entry into faith as a healing experience. And that is the language of authentic grace., not from the trench — all the more reason will be the time to come that will confirm or deny.
It is necessary, therefore, time to distinguish one thing from another. Time is precisely what is always missing from Easter statistics, and what the Church instead, since always, knows how to give: a serious catechumenate, an accompaniment that is not satisfied with the number and that verifies the quality of the “yes” pronounced before the baptismal font — exactly what, as I have had the opportunity to write in a soon-to-be published article regarding the vocational crisis in Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries, massive entry without adequate discernment has already proven to be able to betray, in other contexts, over the course of a generation.
If in a few years the France of the 17.800 catechumens from 2025 turns out to be a more Christian France, and not only a more frightened France that looked for a fort, then I must have been wrong. and it will be, for me, the greatest joy. Otherwise, we will have attended: on the one hand, to the illuminated Eiffel Tower to celebrate the inclusion of the "right" to abortion in the French Constitution; for another, to an army of reactive baptized people who will not have understood that being Christian means witnessing and, if necessary, combat - with all recognized political means those who have the right to think, word and vote — the worst deviations of the Prince who rules this world. Baptismal faith is not something private, but the most public that can exist: the active testimony. Otherwise, everything runs the risk of being reduced to fear and emotion.
From the Island of Patmos, 28 of September 2026
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The symbolic language of the liturgy – The symbolic language of the liturgy
Italian, english, español
THE SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE OF THE LITURGY
Standing or kneeling during liturgical prayer is anything but indifferent. Every gesture somehow falls within that dimension of announcement and instruction which is an integral part of the liturgical action and therefore cannot be left to the temporary taste of each individual.
— Liturgical ministry —
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Author
Simone Pifizzi
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PDF print format article – article print format – article in printed format
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The liturgy is undoubtedly an announcement of salvation, but above all concrete communication of this salvation, which is expressed through gestures and attitudes. Consequently the liturgy does not only use words, but also of symbolic language; he uses signs that evoke the mystery and already give a foretaste of it, as many prayers after communion recall.
Jean François Millet, L'Angelus
When preparing a liturgical celebration we cannot forget this fundamental dimension at all, otherwise we risk overestimating the secondary and forgetting the essential; to have a beautiful, spectacular "ceremony"., which pleases the eye, but which leaves the heart empty; you risk saying a lot of words, but not to communicate anything at all.
FROM WALKING TOGETHER TO THE LITURGICAL PROCESSION
When it comes to procession, thoughts immediately turn to those public processions with images or statues of the Virgin Mary or the Saints. Processions that do not always constitute a clear and correct symbol of the Christian mystery, above all because heavy folkloric elements often intervene in them; and I say folkloric when things, after all, they're fine.
Every procession, even those that are done in church during Mass (entrance, presentation of gifts, Communion, etc.), has the aim of expressing the path of the Church, of the new people of God, towards the new temple and the new Jerusalem (cf.. AP 21,2), following in the footsteps of Christ.
The reference we can make, thinking about the procession, is at the Exodus: the event that saw the twelve tribes of Israel united on the same path. A journey guided by Moses and which brings together an entire people in its widest variety. A path that, according to the Bible, it has a fundamentally cultic purpose: God summons his people to worship him (cf.. Is 5,3). A journey that is undertaken in the name of union and which has a destination beyond the Red Sea, beyond the Jordan, beyond the waters of death. A path that is continually comforted by the real and mysterious presence of the Lord, who speaks to his people and gives them the law of life.
The procession is meant to remind us of this: we are Christians if we are on a journey; and we are not alone in making this journey, but we do it together with other brothers, supported and accompanied by the presence of the Risen One, as they summarize well, in sequence, the extraordinary images of the story of the disciples walking with Jesus towards Emmaus (cf.. LC 24,13-35).
STANDING AND KNEELING
Standing or kneeling during liturgical prayer he is anything but indifferent. Every gesture somehow falls within that dimension of announcement and instruction which is an integral part of the liturgical action and therefore cannot be left to the temporary taste of each individual. The attitudes to be assumed during the liturgical celebration are neither casual nor aimed at efficiency or external order. That is, they do not serve to change position to avoid boredom and tiredness, nor to make the ceremony more pleasing to the eye. I'm, rather, true symbolic actions. Among these, standing is undoubtedly one of the most important and significant.
Standing because children of God resurrected with Christ. The iconography of the catacombs always presents us with the figure of the standing person praying. Furthermore, it is symptomatic that the priest at the altar, since the beginning, say all presidential prayers standing. It is then very significant that in the ancient Church, according to many authoritative testimonies, it was even forbidden to kneel on Sunday and during the fifty days of Easter.
Standing it is therefore the normal attitude of the Christian who, even if a sinner, he is aware of his dignity as a child of God, received from that Jesus who died and rose again for the salvation of all.
In liturgical prayer the Church wants to make this announcement. In private, then, everyone can take the attitude they want. The conciliar reform therefore did not "secularize" the liturgy, but he gave it back its symbolic charge and also its function as an announcement to the world.
Standing waiting for the Lord to come. Standing in liturgical prayer also has a further meaning, always linked to the announcement of the Paschal mystery. That is, it is the eschatological announcement, of Christian life as the expectation of the final coming of Christ. Jesus himself invites his disciples to be like those servants who stand, with the belt around his hips and the lamps lit, they await their master when he returns from the wedding to open the door immediately as soon as he arrives and knocks (cf.. LC 12,35).
With this awareness it is beautiful and moving to pray standing. How beautiful and moving it is to walk together and on our feet to welcome the Body of Christ, true manna and bread come down from heaven, to support our journey towards eternity, towards those new heavens and that new earth. There are those who with Christ have conquered sin, standing, they sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb eternally before God (cf.. AP 15,2-3).
On your knees yes, but to get up again. Kneeling is also a significant attitude, which however finds its origin and space above all in private prayer. In fact, it expresses awareness of one's poverty, of one's sin. For this reason the attitude of kneeling entered the liturgy very slowly and with a certain parsimony, hand in hand with the spread of penitential rites, linked above all to the celebration of public penance. Liturgical attitudes that give space to kneeling are rare; moments that appropriately express the humble adoration and supplication of a whole people who feel crushed not so much by their own sin but rather by the infinite love of God. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal provides:
«They then kneel at the consecration, unless the state of health prevents it, the narrowness of the place, or the large number of those present, or other reasonable grounds. Those who do not kneel at the consecration, make a deep bow while the priest genuflects after the consecration" (n. 43).
In fact, one kneels not before the memory of a past event, but before the death and resurrection of the Lord who in that moment becomes truly present on the altar: and it is precisely because that death is already victorious, it's already Easter, that the knee bent before it is never the last word. But precisely thanks to this great love, man can and must get up to walk quickly towards that nuptial encounter which will make us fully participants in that divine life that is already within us and gives us the honor of standing before God as children.. Precisely for this reason in front of the tabernacle, in front of the maximum sign of that love that paid for our dignity, in private prayer of adoration, the normal attitude that comes naturally to us is to prostrate ourselves on our knees.
SIT TO LISTEN
Before the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, sitting in Church was a simple functional attitude for the assembly; for the various ministers, sometimes, it was even regulated by meticulous choreographic details: body erect, hands on knees, feet together, hat on his head, various bows… Today, thanks to the reform of the Council which brought the liturgy back to its original sobriety, even sitting has returned to having a predominant symbolic function. In fact, nothing in the liturgy must be simply functional or worse, choreographic and ceremonial. For this reason it is important to know the meaning of these gestures in order to accept them and carry them out with the joy and enthusiasm of those who are aware of becoming in some way, with his person, sacramental instrument of announcement for the world.
Sign of listening. Within a liturgical celebration, sitting takes on precise meanings, out of any ambiguity and for this reason this attitude is not left to the individual taste of the moment. First of all, sitting is a sign of confidential interior listening, respectful and meditative. A listening experience that therefore matures deep feelings and courageous decisions. It is certainly no coincidence that even in human relationships when one wants to truly give space to listening to the other, we sit opposite each other. The norms of the Roman Missal remind us: «The prayer is over (collection) the reader goes to the ambo and proclaims the reading; everyone listens to it sitting down" (PNMR, 89). The rule is clear: it doesn't say that everyone reads for themselves. Because of this, while recognizing the positive services rendered by the "Mass leaflets", it is always legitimate and necessary to ask ourselves whether the price being paid is not too high. If in fact everyone or almost everyone reads on their own, the symbolic attitude that lies at the origin of sitting is nullified!
A Word that is addressed to a united people. But this attitude of listening described above is so important? It would not be enough for everyone to read the Word carefully on their own and try to put it into practice? A big temptation of which we are victims is that of being extremely insensitive to the liturgical dimension and of evaluating things only from an individual and moral efficiency perspective.. In doing so, however, we forget that Sacred Scripture is not primarily a book of meditation, but a word that God addresses to his people, a Word that aims above all to make the Church: «The people of God are gathered first and foremost through the Word of the living God» (Priesthood, n. 4).
The attitude of those who are seated and attentive to what is proclaimed therefore reveals the primary function of the Word of God which is to establish a dialogue of love not so much with individuals, but rather with the entire people of God, with the entire assembly considered as a single entity, in which the whole Church is visibly represented and truly present.
Here then is the ultimate meaning of every gesture described here: walk, stand, kneel, sit are not a script to be performed nor an ornament that veils otherwise poor words. The body of the assembly, in its moving and its stopping, it does not simply describe the faith of the Church: he does it. For this reason, no liturgical gesture can be left to chance or to the taste of the moment - because it is precisely through those gestures, even before through words, that the announced salvation becomes concretely present among his people.
From the island of Patmos, 26 September 2026
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THE SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE OF THE LITURGY
Whether one stands or kneels, the posture assumed during liturgical prayer is anything but indifferent. Every gesture belongs, in some sense, to that dimension of proclamation and instruction which is integral to the liturgical action, and therefore it cannot be left to each person’s passing preference.
— Liturgical pastoral care —
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Author
Simone Pifizzi
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The liturgy is undoubtedly an announcement of salvation, but above all it is the concrete communication of that salvation, expressed through gestures and postures. The liturgy therefore does not rely on words alone, but also on symbolic language; it uses signs that evoke the mystery and already let us taste it in advance, as many post-communion prayers recall.
In preparing a liturgical celebration, this fundamental dimension can never be forgotten, or we risk overvaluing what is secondary and losing sight of what is essential — risk turning it into a beautiful, spectacular “ceremony” that pleases the eye but leaves the heart empty; risk saying a great many words while communicating nothing at all.
FROM WALKING TOGETHER TO THE LITURGICAL PROCESSION
When we speak of a procession, our thoughts turn at once to public processions carrying images or statues of the Virgin Mary or the Saints. Such processions do not always constitute a clear and correct symbol of the Christian mystery, not least because they are often burdened with heavy folkloric elements — and I say “folkloric” when, all things considered, matters have gone well.
Every procession, including those that take place inside the church during Mass (entrance, presentation of the gifts, communion, etc.), is meant to express the journey of the Church, the new People of God, toward the new temple and the new Jerusalem (cf. Rev 21:2), following in the footsteps of Christ.
The reference we can draw, thinking of the procession, is to the Exodus: the event that united the twelve tribes of Israel in a single journey. A journey led by Moses, gathering an entire people in all its breadth and variety. A journey which, according to the Bible, has a fundamentally cultic purpose: God summons his people so that they may worship him (cf. Ex 5:3). A journey accomplished in unity, with a destination beyond the Red Sea, beyond the Jordan, beyond the waters of death. A journey continually accompanied by the real and mysterious presence of the Lord, who speaks to his people and gives them the law of life.
The procession exists to remind us of this: we are Christians only if we are on the move; and this journey is not one we make alone, but together with our brothers and sisters, sustained and accompanied by the presence of the Risen One — as the extraordinary sequence of images in the story of the disciples walking with Jesus toward Emmaus so beautifully sums up (cf. Page 24:13-35).
STANDING AND KNEELING
Whether one stands or kneels, the posture assumed during liturgical prayer is anything but indifferent. Every gesture belongs, in some sense, to that dimension of proclamation and instruction which is integral to the liturgical action, and therefore it cannot be left to each person’s passing preference. The postures to be assumed during the liturgical celebration are neither arbitrary nor ordered toward mere efficiency or outward tidiness. They do not exist simply to change position out of boredom or fatigue, nor to make the ceremony more pleasing to the eye. They are, rather, true symbolic actions. Among these, standing is undoubtedly one of the most important and significant.
Standing, because we are children of God risen with Christ. The iconography of the catacombs always depicts the figure at prayer standing upright. It is likewise telling that, from the earliest times, the priest at the altar says all the presidential prayers standing. And it is deeply significant that, according to many authoritative witnesses, the early Church forbade kneeling altogether on Sundays and throughout the fifty days of Easter.
Standing, then, is the normal posture of the Christian who, sinner though he may be, is conscious of his dignity as a child of God, received from that same Jesus who died and rose again for the salvation of all. In liturgical prayer the Church wishes to make this proclamation. In private prayer, everyone is free to take whatever posture they wish. The conciliar reform, then, did not “secularize” the liturgy; rather, it restored to it its symbolic power and its function as proclamation to the world.
Standing, in expectation of the Lord who comes. Standing in liturgical prayer carries a further meaning as well, still tied to the proclamation of the paschal mystery: it is the eschatological announcement, Christian life as the expectation of Christ’s final coming. Jesus himself invites his disciples to be like those servants who, standing, with their belts fastened and their lamps lit, wait for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door the moment he arrives and knocks (cf. Page 12:35).
With this awareness, it is beautiful and moving to pray standing. Just as it is beautiful and moving to walk together, and standing, to receive the Body of Christ — true manna, bread come down from heaven, to sustain our journey toward eternity, toward those new heavens and that new earth. There, those who with Christ have conquered sin stand and sing forever before God the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb (cf. Rev 15:2-3).
Kneeling, yes — but in order to rise. Kneeling is likewise a significant posture, though it finds its origin and its place above all in private prayer. It expresses an awareness of one’s own poverty, one’s own sin. For this reason, kneeling entered the liturgy only very slowly and sparingly, in step with the spread of penitential rites, tied above all to the celebration of public penance. There are few liturgical moments that make room for kneeling — moments that fittingly express the humble adoration and supplication of a whole people who feel overwhelmed not so much by their own sin as by the infinite love of God. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal states:
“The faithful should kneel at the consecration, unless prevented by reasons of health, lack of space, the large number of people present, or some other good reason. Those who do not kneel ought to make a profound bow when the priest genuflects after the consecration” (no. 43).
We kneel, in fact, not before the memory of a past event, but before the death and resurrection of the Lord, who at that very moment becomes truly present on the altar: and it is precisely because that death is already victorious, is already Easter, that the knee bent before it is never the last word — so that the acclamation “We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your Resurrection until you come again” might, implicitly, sound like standing before the Risen One, living and true. But it is precisely because of this immense love that man can and must rise again, to walk swiftly toward that nuptial encounter which will make us fully sharers in that divine life already within us, and which grants us the honor of standing before God as his children. It is for this same reason that before the tabernacle — before the supreme sign of that love which paid the price for our dignity — the posture that comes to us spontaneously in private adoration is to prostrate ourselves on our knees.
SITTING TO LISTEN
Before the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, sitting in church was, for the assembly, largely a simple matter of practicality; for the various ministers, at times, it was even governed by meticulous choreographic detail: an upright body, hands on the knees, feet together, biretta on the head, various bows… Today, thanks to the Council’s reform, which restored to the liturgy its original sobriety, sitting too has recovered a predominantly symbolic function. Nothing in the liturgy, in fact, should be merely functional or, worse, choreographed and ceremonial. This is why it matters to understand the meaning of these gestures, so as to embrace and perform them with the joy and enthusiasm of one who knows that, through his own person, he becomes in some way a sacramental instrument of proclamation to the world.
A sign of listening. Within a liturgical celebration, sitting takes on precise meanings, free of any ambiguity, and for this reason the posture is not left to individual taste in the moment. First, sitting is a sign of confidential, interior, respectful and meditative listening — a listening that matures deep feelings and courageous decisions. It is surely no accident that, even in human relationships, when we truly wish to make room for listening to another, we sit down facing them.
The norms of the Roman Missal remind us: “When the prayer has ended, the reader goes to the ambo and proclaims the reading; all listen while seated” (GIRM, 89). The rule is clear: it does not say that everyone reads for themselves. For this reason, while acknowledging the real service rendered by the “Mass leaflet,” it remains right and necessary to ask whether the price we pay for it is not too high. For if everyone, or nearly everyone, reads on their own, the symbolic gesture at the root of sitting is emptied of its meaning.
A Word addressed to a people united. But is this attitude of listening really so important? Would it not be enough for each person to read the Word attentively on their own and strive to put it into practice? A great temptation to which we fall victim is that of being largely insensitive to the liturgical dimension, judging everything only in individual and moral-efficiency terms. In doing so, however, we forget that Sacred Scripture is not, first and foremost, a book for meditation, but a word that God addresses to his people — a Word whose primary aim is to build the Church: “The People of God is formed into one, in the first place, through the word of the living God” (Priesthood, no. 4).
The posture of those who sit attentively to what is proclaimed thus reveals the primary function of the Word of God: to establish a dialogue of love not so much with individuals as with the whole People of God — with the entire assembly considered as a single subject, in which the whole Church is visibly represented and truly present.
Here, then, is the ultimate meaning of every gesture described above: walking, standing, kneeling, sitting are not a script to be performed, nor an ornament veiling words that would otherwise be poor. The body of the assembly, in its moving and in its stillness, does not merely describe the Church’s faith: it enacts it. This is why no liturgical gesture can be left to chance or to the whim of the moment — because it is precisely through these gestures, even before words, that the salvation proclaimed becomes concretely present in the midst of God’s people.
From The Island of Patmos, 26 September 2026
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THE SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE OF THE LITURGY
Standing or kneeling during liturgical prayer is not at all indifferent. Each gesture forms part, in some way, of that dimension of announcement and instruction that is an integral part of the liturgical action, and therefore it cannot be left to the momentary pleasure of each one.
— Liturgical Pastoral —
.
Author
Simone Pifizzi
.
The liturgy is undoubtedly an announcement of salvation, but above all concrete communication of that salvation, which is also expressed through gestures and attitudes. That is why the liturgy does not use only words, but also of symbolic language: uses signs that evoke mystery and that, somehow, They let us taste it beforehand, as many prayers after communion remember.
When preparing a liturgical celebration this fundamental dimension cannot be forgotten at all; Otherwise there is a risk of overvaluing the secondary and forgetting the essential.: to make a spectacular “ceremony”, that satisfies the eye but leaves the heart empty; There is a risk of saying many words without communicating anything at all..
FROM WALKING TOGETHER TO THE LITURGICAL PROCESSION
When talking about procession, The thought immediately runs to those public processions with images or statues of the Virgin Mary or the Saints. Processions that, in fact, they do not always constitute a clear and correct symbol of the Christian mystery, especially because heavy elements of folklore often intervene in them; and I say folkloric when things are going well.
All procession, including those done in church during Mass (Prohibited, presentation of gifts, communion, etc.), Its purpose is to express the path of the Church, of the new people of God, towards the new temple and the new Jerusalem (cf. AP 21,2), following in the footsteps of Christ.
The reference we can make, thinking about the procession, It's the Exodus: event that united the twelve tribes of Israel on the same path. A path guided by Moses that brings together an entire people in its widest variety. A path that, according to the bible, It has a fundamentally cultic purpose: God summons his people to worship him (cf. Ex 5,3). A path that is carried out under the sign of union and that has a goal beyond the Red Sea, beyond the Jordan, beyond the waters of death. A path continually comforted by the real and mysterious presence of the Lord, who speaks to his people and gives them the law of life.
The procession is intended to remind us of this: We are Christians if we are on the way; and we do not travel this path alone, but with other brothers, sustained and accompanied by the presence of the Risen One, as a summary, in its sequence, the extraordinary images of the story of the disciples who walk with Jesus towards Emmaus (cf. LC 24,13-35).
STANDING AND KNEELING
Standing or kneeling during liturgical prayer is not at all indifferent. Each gesture forms part, in some way, of that dimension of announcement and instruction that is an integral part of the liturgical action, and therefore it cannot be left to the momentary pleasure of each one. The attitudes that must be assumed during the liturgical celebration are not casual nor are they ordered to efficiency or external order.. They are not used to change posture to avoid boredom or fatigue, nor to make the ceremony more pleasing to the eye. Son, rather, true symbolic actions. Among them, standing is undoubtedly one of the most important and significant.
Standing because we are children of God resurrected with Christ. The iconography of the catacombs always presents the figure of the praying man standing. Besides, It is significant that the priest, at the altar, say from the beginning all the presidential prayers standing. And it is very significant that in the ancient Church, according to numerous authorized testimonies, It was even forbidden to kneel on Sunday and during the fifty days of Easter.
Stand is, therefore, the normal attitude of the Christian who, even though I am a sinner, He is aware of his dignity as a child of God, received from that Jesus who died and rose again for the salvation of all.
In liturgical prayer The Church wants to make this announcement. In private, instead, everyone can assume the attitude they prefer. The conciliar reform, therefore, has not “secularized” the liturgy, but has given it back its symbolic load and also its function of announcement to the world.
standing, waiting for the Lord to come. Standing in liturgical prayer also has a further meaning, always linked to the announcement of the paschal mystery. It is about, indeed, of the eschatological announcement, of the Christian life as awaiting the final coming of Christ. Jesus himself invites his disciples to be like those servants who, standing, with the waist cinched and the lamps lit, They wait for their lord when he returns from the wedding, to open it as soon as it arrives and knocks (cf. LC 12,35).
With this awareness it is beautiful and moving to pray standing. How beautiful and moving it is to walk together and, standing, receive the Body of Christ, true manna and bread from heaven, to support our path to eternity, Towards those new skies and that new earth. Over there, those who have overcome sin with Christ sing standing, eternally, before God, the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb (cf. AP 15,2-3).
On your knees yes, but to get up. Being on your knees is also a significant attitude, which, however, finds its origin and its place above all in private prayer. Expresses awareness of one's own poverty, of one's own sin. That is why the attitude of kneeling entered the liturgy very slowly and with a certain parsimony., at the same rate that penitential rites spread, linked above all to the celebration of public penance. There are few liturgical moments that give space to be on our knees.; moments that opportunely express the humble adoration and supplication of an entire people who feel overwhelmed, not so much because of his own sin, how much for the infinite love of God. The General Ordination of the Roman Missal provides:
«Let them kneel in the consecration, unless health prevents it, the narrowness of the place, the large number of faithful present or other reasonable causes. Those who do not kneel for the consecration bow deeply while the priest genuflects after the consecration. (n. 43).
We kneel, indeed, not before the memory of a past event, but before the death and resurrection of the Lord, that at that very moment becomes truly present on the altar: and it is precisely because that death is already victorious, It's already Easter, so the knee bowed before her is never the last word - so the acclamation "We announce your death, we proclaim your resurrection. ¡Ven, Lord Jesus!» could implicitly sound like standing before the Risen One, alive and true. But it is precisely thanks to this great love that man can and must rise to walk without delay towards that nuptial encounter that will make us full participants in that divine life that is already in us., and that grants us the honor of standing before God as children. For that very reason, before the tabernacle, in front of the supreme sign of that love that paid for our dignity, In the private prayer of adoration the attitude that springs spontaneously to us is that of prostrating ourselves on our knees..
SITTING TO LISTEN
Before the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, sitting in church was, for the assembly, a practically functional attitude; for the different ministers, instead, sometimes it was even regulated by minute choreographic details: upright body, hands on knees, feet together, biretta on the head, various inclinations… Today, thanks to the reform of the Council that has returned to the liturgy its original sobriety, sitting has also recovered a predominantly symbolic function. Nothing in the liturgy, indeed, must be simply functional or, even worse, choreographic and ceremonial. That is why it is important to know the meaning of these gestures to accept them and perform them with the joy and enthusiasm of someone who is aware of becoming, somehow, with his own person, into a sacramental instrument of announcement to the world.
Listening sign. Within a liturgical celebration, sitting takes on precise meanings, free of all ambiguity, and that is why this attitude is not left to the individual pleasure of the moment. First of all, sitting is a sign of confidential listening, interior, respectful and meditative; a listen that, for it, makes deep feelings and brave decisions mature. It is no coincidence that also in human relationships, when you really want to give space to listen to the other, let's sit in front of each other.
The norms of the Roman Missal remind us: «Finishing the collect prayer, the reader addresses the ambo and proclaims the reading; "Everyone listens to it sitting down." (OGMR, 89). The rule is clear: It doesn't say that everyone reads on their own.. That's why, recognizing the positive service provided by the “little sheets of Mass”, It is still legal and necessary to ask ourselves if the price paid for this is not too high. Yes indeed all, or almost all, they read on their own, the symbolic gesture that is at the origin of sitting is emptied of meaning.
A Word addressed to a united people. But is this attitude of listening that we have just described really so important?? Wouldn't it be enough for each one to read the Word on his own?, carefully, and will strive to put it into practice? A great temptation of which we are victims is to be extremely insensitive to the liturgical dimension and value things only in terms of individuality and moral efficacy.. By doing so, however, we forget that the Holy Scripture is not, first of all, a meditation book, but a word that God addresses to his people; a Word whose main purpose is to make the Church: “The people of God are gathered first and foremost through the word of the living God.” (Priesthood, n. 4).
The attitude of those who remain sitting and attentive to what is proclaimed and revealed, therefore, the primary function of the Word of God: establish a dialogue of love not so much with individuals as with all the people of God, with the entire assembly considered as a single subject, in which the entire Church is visibly represented and truly present.
Behold, so, the ultimate meaning of each gesture described here: walk, stand, kneel, sit are not a script that is recited nor an ornament that disguises otherwise poor words. The body of the assembly, in its moving and in its stopping, does not simply describe the faith of the Church: to achieve. That is why no liturgical gesture can be left to chance or to the pleasure of the moment — because it is precisely through those gestures, even before through words, how the announced salvation becomes concretely present in the midst of his people.
Desde The Island of Patmos, 26 September of 2026
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Emma Bonino and the death of a sad woman. Pity does not erase that truth of which it is the daughter, otherwise it would just be pietism
EMMA BONINO AND THE DEATH OF A SAD WOMAN. PITY DOES NOT ERASE THAT TRUTH OF WHICH IT IS THE DAUGHTER, OTHERWISE IT WOULD JUST BE PIETISM
In Heaven there is an army of angelic creatures who owe the conquest of their eternal bliss to that baptism of blood in martyrdom called abortion.
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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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Before writing this article I questioned myself as a Christian, priest and theologian on the relationship between piety and truth.
(Emma Bonino, ANSA photo)
A Senator of the Republic, who in his youth was very close to Marco Pannella and Emma Bonino, the first one described me as a sunny and cheerful man, beyond his provocative public performances in front of the cameras, that they had a purposeful reason, sometimes studied or even scientific: «Marco Pannella» he told me «had a laughing look and eyes». A completely different description regarding the second: «Emma Bonino was a sad woman, His eyes were melancholy even when he laughed.".
Inveterate smoker, she never stopped smoking even after being diagnosed with lung cancer which affected her for a decade, finally died after a long respiratory illness. On its coherence, or perhaps on the lack thereof, I think it's legitimate to question myself: why did the one who fought for years to get a law on euthanasia approved not call Marco Cappato, he has personally assisted others several times in the process of assisted suicide? On abortion, instead, we don't ask ourselves the same question: it was herself, in the seventies, to set an example first hand, immortalized with a bicycle pump in her hand used to perform clandestine abortions. Two battles, two different consistencies: its one, abortion, he chose the direct gesture, on the other, l'euthanasia, reached the moment of its end, he preferred the opposite path to the one he had fought for so that it became law for everyone.
We all remember this sad woman who never missed an opportunity to define abortion as a "great social achievement", defining law n. 194 the 1978, which regulates the legalized killing of a human being, «an example of civilization». And here the mind can only rush to a completely different figure: Daniele Capezzone, currently director of the Roman newspaper Time, in the past parliamentarian and secretary of the Italian Radicals since 2001 al 2007. Daniele Capezzone, who is a secularist and an all-round liberal, several times, debating in various television programs on Mediaset networks, defined abortion as "a tragedy" and law no. 194 "a necessity", stating that he felt "discomfort in hearing it defined as a 'great achievement'". Here is the difference that I would like to underline: with whom - despite disagreeing with me in the doctrine that considers life sacred from the moment of conception -, recognizes abortion as having the moral weight of a tragedy that must be contained, dialogue remains possible, even fruitful. With those who made it a source of pride and a trophy to show off as a "great achievement", the dialogue stops before it even begins: not for my closure, but because between those who mourn an evil that they consider necessary and those who instead celebrate it as a good there is no common ground on which to meet, especially when human life is at stake.
I who believe in the immortality of the soul and eternal life, I don't know what happened to Emma Bonino, when I closed my eyes to this life he reopened them before the immediate judgment of God. One thing is certain in my faith: in Heaven there is an army of angelic creatures who owe the conquest of their eternal bliss to that baptism of blood in martyrdom called abortion. And I am sure that these Angels, the first to be able to fully understand the weight of a life spent against their very existence, they will be able to intercede with God with a mercy greater than any human judgement, because He alone has the last word on this sad woman.
From the island of Patmos, 11 September 2026
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Praise of the new literary genre: the insinuation with bibliography at the bottom of the IA
PRAISE OF THE NEW LITERARY GENRE: THE INSINUATION WITH BIBLIOGRAPHY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE AI
Everything repeats the same at regular intervals, it consumes itself, it doesn't need a real defendant: all he needs is a target vague enough that it can be anyone, therefore comfortably none.
Author
Editors of The Island of Patmos
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In Saxony-Anhalt the AfD — Alternative for Germany, “Alternative for Germany” — won with over 43 percent and its co-president lives in a civil union with a woman while the party she leads does not recognize that kind of family.
It's real news, verifiable, and - let's face it - also quite interesting to talk about: the contrast between the private life of those who lead a party and the programs that party writes is legitimate journalistic material, when it is based on facts, date, public statements signed by those who made them.
What a tasty morsel for certain blogs covered with the aura of newspaper headlines, where real news dies to give space to sleight of hand: you take that solid premise and use it as a springboard to land somewhere else entirely, on a target never named, without a single test, with the only help of a list of academic titles lined up to act as a bibliography, the same as, if you take it off, leaves only a naked inference on the table (see reference article who).
In the picture: Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), Merda d'artista n. 4, May 1961. Latta, printed paper and label, 4,8 × 6,5 cm. London, Tate Modern Museum. Original label: «Merda d'artista. Net content gr. 30. Preserved naturally. Produced and canned in May 1961».
The mechanism is proven e, you have to admit it, bold in his brazenness. We start by quoting Kurt Lewin, we pass through Anna Freud and reactive formation, we get to Erving Goffman and his covering, i.e. the strategy, described by the Canadian sociologist, with which those who bear a stigmatized trait do not hide it completely but smooth it out, he keeps it low-key, just to remain accepted by the group that despises that trait. All serious concepts, by serious authors, born to describe real social phenomena, which some columnists however use as a master key universal: any behavior of the target, any of his words, becomes automatically “he tries” of the thesis, because the thesis is constructed in such a way that nothing can disprove it. If the priest is silent on the subject, for example the problem of widespread homosexuality even among the clergy, then he remains silent to hide. Instead, we talk about it, then he talks about it too much and is even accused of “homophobia”, therefore he hides by concealing his true identity, the one that the magician announces he has discovered: his intimate repressed homosexuality. There is no move that escapes reading: it is the same logical structure as astrology, just with more footnotes.
Who is dedicated to journalistic activity seriously and for a long time, instantly understands that the entire first part of this article was developed by an Artificial Intelligence system, the compositional style is unmistakable precisely in the construction of the sentences and in the asepticity of others. Only the final part, in which the style changes completely, it is instead crafted by the poison throwing specialist.
And then Proust… always Proust, always the Baron of Charlus, his character most tormented by his own reflection, always the mirror that the poor inverted person cannot bear to look at. It has become such a tired tòpos that it is worth recommending, to those who recycle it for the umpteenth time, to try to quote someone else, that I know, Charles Bukowski - just to stay on the subject of black holes, obviously an astrophysical concept, don't be misunderstood! ―, it works the same anyway. And so it is enough to take a hendecasyllable at random and state that it speaks of the internalized homophobia with which some priest, accused of being a repressed gay, would give vent to his unresolved being, word of a magician (ending of the same article, who). No one will ever be able to prove otherwise, and that's exactly the point: an accusation to which a priest cannot respond precisely because it is absurd, it's not an accusation, it is an obsessive-compulsive ritual, a pathology about which the magician, although generous in the barrage of quotes provided by IA al “independent international newspaper”, one is careful not to quote Freud in relation to it.
Counting well, among psychologists, sociologists and novelists, the bibliography is close to twenty names: a critical apparatus worthy of a degree thesis, put at the service of an anecdote which - once the footnotes have been removed - stands on nothing, in the belief that a falsehood, if repeated in a hammering way, may eventually become true.
Everything repeats the same at regular intervals, it consumes itself, it doesn't need a real defendant: all he needs is a target vague enough that it can be anyone, therefore comfortably none, or to put it with Luigi Pirandello: One, no one and a hundred thousand". And it must be said that writing about covering without putting your name and surname means being an extraordinary comedian: those who are unaware that they are, they are so busy pretending that they are playing serious things.
While waiting for someone from that shop finally write an article with a name and surname, a date, a document - that is, one who does the job he presumes to do - all that remains is to admire the constancy. The same formula for years, the same repertoire of strictly anonymous authors, the exact same faceless specter. If the poison that replaces the total lack of imagination were a crime, other than covering: a case would have to be opened. On the contrary, let's correct it: another file.
From the island of Patmos, 8 September 2026
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We equip the parishes with a “little piece” to watch the games for free
WE EQUIP THE PARISHES WITH A "PIECE" TO WATCH THE MATCHES FOR FREE
Soon we will equip each of our parishes, convent or monastery of a «pezzotto», that is, a particular fake decoder used to illegally access the contents of Italian and foreign pay television channels.
Author
Hermit Monk
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If I borrow the title of a well-known autobiography by the great Vittorio Gassman, I can also say that I now have "a great future behind me".
I remember how strongly Cardinal Pietro Palazzini intervened, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, against the historian Giordano Bruno Guerri when in 1985 his book on Santa Maria Goretti came out: Poor saint, poor murderer. Text to which the Congregation, today Dicastery, responded with replies to the same acts that the author claimed to have reinterpreted. One example among many: to the thesis that the girl would have been a convenient figure for the propaganda of the fascist regime, the historians of the Dicastery replied that the collection of eyewitness testimonies, commissioned directly by the Supreme Pontiff Pius (1903-1914) and entrusted to the Passionist Fathers, it started already in 1904, fifteen years before the formation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919, seventeen years before the establishment of the National Fascist Party in 1921, eighteen years before Benito Mussolini organized the March on Rome in 1922. After careful studies and research lasting thirty years, formally opened in 1935 the first diocesan phase of the beatification process. Mary was beatified in 1947 and canonized in 1950.
I also remember when the television broadcast of Funny mystery by Dario Fo on Rai 2 the 22 April 1977 triggered harsh condemnation from the Vatican and naturally from the Christian Democrats.
Despite, but this is my opinion, some parts of the work were notable even for those who are used to seeing topics of the Christian faith treated differently. I think about Lament of the Madonna under the cross, Franca Rame's intense representation of every earthly pain, questionable? Maybe yes, but undoubtedly masterful. I remember that there was some religious superior who took the trouble to send all his brothers a letter absolutely banning television viewing.
And what can I say, Alas — I also remember this — from when in 1973, the Vatican accused the famous and provocative advertising campaign of the Jesus Jeans created by Oliviero Toscani. Even Pasolini spoke about it in a famous and insightful article:
«Those who produced these jeans and launched them on the market using, for the slogan of pragmatics, one of the ten commandments, they demonstrate — probably with a certain lack of guilt, that is, with the unconsciousness of those who no longer pose certain problems - of already being beyond the threshold within which our form of life and our mental horizon are arranged".
Other times will be said, then the Vatican's reprimands were followed closely by the actions of the judiciary and the police. And cell phones certainly didn't exist, let alone social media. But now, what happened? Perhaps what Pasolini himself predicted in the article:
"There is, in the cynicism of this slogan, an intensity and innocence of an absolutely new kind, although it has probably matured for a long time in recent decades (for a shorter period in Italy). That's exactly what it says, in its laconic nature of a phenomenon suddenly revealed to our consciousness, and already so complete and definitive, that the new industrialists and the new technicians are completely secular, but of a secularism that is no longer measured by religion" (Corriere della Sera, 17.05.1973).
Today no one in the Church seems to be scandalized anymore for certain advertising releases. Shields are no longer raised like they used to be, Indeed, certain answers are left to local managers. If something happens, it will be the local bishop who will speak to stigmatize an event and recall certain principles of respect. Take the case of churches violated in recent acts of vandalism, with sacred furnishings destroyed and acts of desecration in various Italian areas. There was no high and community response, no one made themselves heard. Let's imagine, so, for trifles like an advertisement. Evidently there are more important things to think about and talking about it would perhaps lead to greater publicity of the thing, what the creators of certain propaganda ultimately want.
Thus neither a prelate nor the C.E.I. they intervened, if not at the level of individuals on social media, against an advertisement for a well-known sports content platform which used words from the liturgy as a slogan, the confessional where we carry our sins, the Church and the priests (who).
All to publicize the next edition of the European football cups, it is no coincidence that they are broadcast on the aforementioned platform that comes to define itself: «the cathedral of football». It will be said that these are small things, Totò would have said trifles. That Bergomi, dressed in a clergyman, has a discreet priestly face and that the slogan "go and look at them all", the matches of course, otherwise it is a sin, makes you smile at how pathetic it is.
Yet no one says anything against this commercial use of the priesthood and ecclesial places. A few days ago Enzo Bianchi died. Anything can be said about him, but one thing must be recognized: he was the only one who over the years repeatedly underlined the importance of the Christian difference. Of course it can't be deduced from the response to an advertising spot, it is of a completely different nature and value since it comes from the heart of our faith, but this somehow reveals itself and makes itself manifest. So why let it be trivialized, without saying anything? We are now so approved and integrated, just to paraphrase an old book by Umberto Eco 1964, where the Italian semiologist analyzed the theme of culture and mass media? (Apocalyptic and integrated, The Ship of Theseus, 2025).
Since some prelates don't miss the joke, could at least be answered. You trivialize the contents and facts of our faith? And then we, we will soon equip each of our parishes, convent or monastery of a «pezzotto», that is, a particular fake decoder used to illegally access the contents of Italian and foreign pay television channels. You see that the football speakers on television would immediately run to the judiciary, crying scandal. I know it, it is illegal, it's not done. But we didn't start it.
From the Hermitage, 7 September 2026
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Femicide seen from a different observatory: that of the priest caring for souls — Femicide seen from a different advantage point: that of the priest in the care of souls — Femicide seen from a different observatory: that of the priest in the healing of souls
Italian, English, Español
FEMINICIDE SEEN FROM A DIFFERENT OBSERVATORY: THAT OF THE PRIEST IN CARE OF SOULS
Before the killer legalized by the State kills her, it would be appropriate to ascertain the sex of the creature to be aborted, because if it's a male everything is fine, but if the creature to be killed is a female, the crime of femicide should be applied, or not?
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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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PDF print format article – article print format – article in printed format
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When the legislator must study new laws, give life to new measures, correct old ones, or implement reforms in the social sphere, healthcare, school, he even consults experts, or presumed such, more unlikely.
Even within the Church and its various teams of scholars there are elements that could contribute to all this. but yet, before an ecclesiastical figure, or even to a lay Catholic, clerical interference is immediately shouted down. It is a selective exclusion: It's not about competence, it concerns the identity of the person wearing it.
For intellectual honesty it must be said that this reaction does not arise out of nowhere: we Catholics too - ecclesiastics and lay people - have ended up reaping what we have often sown. My teacher, Father Peter Gumpel S.J (cf.. who, who) sent as a visitor to Ireland by the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI during the 1960s, he noted with disappointment that priests were involved in every political and administrative sphere, crucial for making certain choices and decisions, or to prevent others. He said that everything was not only wrong, but it was destined not to last: he would have fallen in the worst possible way, generating the opposite by reaction. The weather, four decades later, he proved him right. Yesterday in Ireland people stepped off the sidewalk to let a priest pass, the men took off their hats and the women bowed their heads; today, wearing ecclesiastical dress on the streets of Dublin means exposing yourself to insults that, if addressed to subjects belonging to other groups even subject to excessive protection, they would bring whoever utters them to the bar of a court. From an excess of presence we have moved on to total exclusion: two mirror errors, not a fix.
Whether certain secularist-fundamentalists like it or not — which have nothing to do with the secularism that we Catholics protect, because it establishes those separations between political and religious power that are beneficial, as well as the State, first of all of the Church - we priests remain people who have to deal with human material, often even with situations of extraordinary delicacy. It is reasonable to speak in the appropriate parliamentary commissions about issues related to terminally ill patients and at the end of life, inviting unspecified experts who have never attended hospitals, assisted the sick and dying, followed their relatives in post mortem, when for many of us certain realities are daily bread, not to mention those orders and congregations born precisely for this reason, with men and women religious who have been trained for centuries to carry out these delicate ministries, from the Fatebenefratelli to the Camillians? An elderly brother said: «We don't have any problems, even at the cost of annoying someone, to refer certain subjects to a good psychiatrist, or to convince family members, often inclined to reject the very idea of certain mental disorders, to do it as soon as possible. However, the opposite almost never happens: than a psychiatrist, faced with an internal conflict within a Christian conscience, direct the patient to a spiritual director". «My colleagues», a Catholic psychiatrist friend told me, «rather they are willing to do damage, but not a priest, May!». It is a one-way channel and for this very reason pastoral competence on certain human phenomena remains structurally excluded from those who legislate them.
He's in this blind spot which fits the topic I want to talk about. As has already happened in other countries, Femicide has also been introduced in Italy as an independent form of crime (cf. Law 2 December 2025, n. 181), which punishes with life imprisonment for anyone who causes the death of a woman as an act of discrimination or hatred towards her as a woman. He is a figure about which I believe it is legitimate to discuss: a murder remains a murder, always, killing a woman cannot be more serious than killing a man and vice versa. This, it must be said out of honesty, judges have always evaluated it in trial practice: when faced with the murder of a woman they have always applied all the aggravating circumstances of the case, due to the greater physical strength of the attacker and the lesser possibility of defense of the victim. In the history of criminal procedural law there have been sentences of the supreme penalty of life imprisonment against men who killed women not only due to the inferior physical strength of the victim, which has always been the almost obvious aggravating circumstance, but because they were pregnant, or because they had a baby of a few months that they were breastfeeding, or because they were mothers of several small children in need of their mother's care.
The murderer of Maria Goretti, killed in July of 1902 and proclaimed a saint half a century later in 1950, was sentenced to 30 year old, avoiding the life imprisonment that that crime would have entailed with all the recognized aggravating circumstances, because he was not yet of age: he was in fact just twenty years old and of legal age, at the time, in Italy it was reached a 21. And we are talking about criminal justice at the beginning of the twentieth century, when, according to certain complaining activists, women did not enjoy particular considerations, legal protections and penalties in case of crimes. If Maria Goretti's killer had killed a man he would not have received such a sentence and with all the aggravating circumstances of the case.
The expression "for anyone who causes the death of a woman as an act of discrimination or hatred" could be applied, reasonably, to a whole range of categories, or perhaps all that has ever happened is the death of a sick elderly person, of a disabled person, of a homosexual, of a Jew, of a priest and so on, was caused by reasons of discrimination and hatred?
In my experience as a spiritual director I have known cases of women who are difficult to talk about, because besides political correctness there is something worse than external censorship: self-censorship. It is a silent phenomenon and more insidious than actual censorship, because it doesn't need anyone to impose it: today there is no longer any need to be silenced, many silence themselves, convinced that certain things simply aren't said. Several times I have tried to convince girlfriends or wives of violent men, not just to leave them, but to report them. And time and time again the rejection came with the same two sentences: "But I love him", "but I'll change it". Desperate parents turned to me in front of a daughter who was stubborn in not listening to anyone who had bruises on her once a week, with brothers, sisters, friends who begged her: «Leave him, he is a dangerous violent man". Reply, always the same: "But I love him", "but I'll change it".
Having stated the obvious — which should not be assumed as such, that is, if a woman is stupid, imprudent and self-harming, no one has the right to kill her - it remains reasonable to ask: how many of these cases ended up in tragic feminicides? And when it happened, the great commentators and analysts have never gone to the real source of the problem? That said: considering how widespread and growing functional and digital illiteracy is, if someone suffering from this disorder accused me of saying that a murdered woman "asked for it", I dare say that it is a problem of those who cannot read, not mine, which I think I know how to explain myself and have explained much more: I spoke with sad realism about unconsciousness, of the lack of prudence and obstinacy of certain women who have decided to love the wrong man and even change him, refusing to leave very violent and very dangerous men, even if you pray in this sense as parents, siblings, sisters, family and friends.
Usually we try to end on a high note; in this case I intend to end in maximum ugliness. While certain laws on feminicide were passed in various countries, in Argentina — which has been around since 2012 includes femicide as an aggravating factor (L. 26.791) — in December 2020 there were celebrations in the square and the dome of Parliament was lit up in green for the legalization of abortion. The 4 March 2024, in France, first country in the world to do so, the Eiffel Tower lit up with the writing «My body, my choice» (my body, my choice) to celebrate the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, understood in both cases as a great social achievement. At this point, necessary coherence on the part of certain legislators should be required: before the killer legalized by the State kills her it would be necessary to ascertain the sex of the creature to be aborted, because if it's a male everything is fine, but if the creature to be killed is a female, the crime of femicide should be applied, or not? Question of coherence, just a question of consistency.
«Interrupting a pregnancy is like killing someone. It's right to take a human life to solve a problem? It's okay to hire a hitman to solve a problem? Killing a human being is like hiring a hitman to solve a problem." (Francesco, Supreme Pontiff, 10 October 2018).
From the island of Patmos, 6 September 2026
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FEMICIDE SEEN FROM A DIFFERENT VANTAGE POINT: THAT OF THE PRIEST IN THE CARE OF SOULS
Before the killer legalised by the State puts her to death, it might be worth checking the sex of the child to be aborted — because if it is a male, everything is fine, but if the child to be killed is a female, should the crime of femicide not apply?
— Current Affairs —
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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When lawmakers need to draft new legislation, bring in new measures, amend old ones, or reform social, healthcare or education policy, they often turn for advice to experts — or self-styled ones — of the most improbable kind. Even within the Church, among its various circles of scholars, there are figures who could genuinely contribute to this. Yet the moment an ecclesiastical figure, or even a Catholic layperson, is approached, the cry of clerical interference goes up at once. It is a selective exclusion: it has nothing to do with competence, and everything to do with the identity of whoever holds it.
In all intellectual honesty, it must be said that this reaction does not come from nowhere: we Catholics too — clergy and laity alike — have largely reaped what we ourselves once sowed. My own teacher, Father Peter Gumpel S.J., who was sent to Ireland as an Apostolic Visitor by Pope Paul VI back in the 1960s, noted with dismay that priests were entangled in every political and administrative sphere, often decisive in making certain choices and decisions, or in blocking others. He said that this state of affairs was not only wrong but bound to collapse under its own weight — and that it would trigger, by reaction, the exact opposite. Time, four decades on, proved him right. Where once people in Ireland would step off the pavement to let a priest pass, men raising their hats and women bowing their heads, today wearing the clerical habit on the streets of Dublin means exposing oneself to insults that, had they been directed at members of certain other groups — now sometimes shielded to an excessive degree — would land the speaker in the dock. We have gone from an excess of presence to total exclusion: two mirror-image errors, not a correction.
Whether or not it suits certain hard-line secularists — who have nothing in common with the secularism we Catholics ourselves defend, since it establishes a separation between political and religious power that benefits, above all, the Church even more than the State — we priests remain people who deal daily with human material, often in situations of extraordinary delicacy. Is it reasonable for parliamentary committees to discuss terminal illness and end-of-life issues by calling in unnamed experts who have never set foot in a hospital, never sat with the sick and the dying, never accompanied a grieving family through what comes after death — when for many of us these realities are our daily bread? Not to mention the religious orders and congregations founded expressly for this purpose, whose members have been trained for centuries to carry out precisely this delicate ministry — from the Fatebenefratelli, the Hospitaller Brothers of St John of God, to the Camillians. An elderly confrère of mine once put it this way: “We have no trouble, even at the risk of upsetting someone, in steering a person towards a good psychiatrist, or in persuading family members — often reluctant to accept the very existence of certain psychiatric disorders — to do so as soon as possible. But it almost never happens the other way round: that a psychiatrist, faced with an inner conflict within a Christian conscience, sends the patient to a spiritual director.” “My colleagues,” a Catholic psychiatrist friend once told me, “would rather do harm than send someone to a priest — never that!” It is a one-way channel, and precisely for this reason pastoral expertise on certain human phenomena remains structurally excluded from those who legislate on them.
It is in this blind spot that the subject I want to address lies. As has already happened in other countries, Italy too has now introduced femicide as an autonomous criminal offence (cf. Law No. 181 of 2 December 2025), punishable by life imprisonment for anyone who causes the death of a woman as an act of discrimination or hatred against her precisely because she is a woman. This is a category I consider it legitimate to question: a killing is a killing, always and in every case — taking a woman’s life cannot be any graver than taking a man’s, and vice versa. And this, in all honesty, is something judges have always taken into account in practice: courts have always applied every relevant aggravating factor when a woman was killed, both for the greater physical strength of a male attacker and for the lesser capacity of a woman to defend herself. In the history of criminal procedure there have been sentences of life imprisonment handed down against men who killed women not only because of the victim’s lesser physical strength — which has always counted, almost automatically, as an aggravating factor — but because the victim was pregnant, or was nursing an infant only months old, or was the mother of several small children who depended on her care.
Maria Goretti's murderer — she was killed in July 1902 and canonised as a saint half a century later, in 1950 — was sentenced to 30 years, escaping the life sentence that crime would otherwise have carried with every aggravating factor recognised, because he was not yet legally an adult: he was barely twenty, and at the time the age of majority in Italy was 21. And this was the criminal justice of the early twentieth century — the very justice about which certain aggrieved activists today claim that women enjoyed no particular consideration, legal protection or punishment of offenders. Had Maria Goretti’s murderer killed a man instead, he would not have received a sentence of that severity, complete with every aggravating circumstance applied.
The phrase “causing the death of a woman as an act of discrimination or hatred” could reasonably be applied to a whole range of other categories as well — has it never happened that the death of a sick elderly person, a disabled person, to homosexual, a Jew, a priest, and so on down the list, was caused by motives of discrimination and hatred?
In my experience as a spiritual director I have encountered cases involving women that are difficult to speak about, because beyond political correctness there is something worse than outside censorship: self-censorship. It is a silent phenomenon, more insidious than outright censorship, because it needs no one to impose it: today people no longer even need to be silenced — many simply fall silent on their own, convinced that certain things simply are not said. Many times I have tried to persuade the girlfriends or wives of violent men not only to leave them, but to report them. And many times the refusal has come back with the same two phrases: “But I love him,” “but I can change him.” Desperate parents have come to me over a daughter who refused to listen to anyone, who once a week had bruises on her body, while brothers, sisters and friends begged her: “Leave him, he’s dangerous, he’s violent.” The answer, always the same: “But I love him,” “but I can change him.”
Granting the obvious — which, being obvious, should not even need to be granted, namely that no one has the right to kill a woman merely because she is foolish, reckless or self-destructive — it remains fair to ask: how many of these cases have ended in tragic femicides? And when that has happened, have the great commentators and analysts ever traced the problem back to its true root? That said: given how widespread — and increasingly so — both functional and digital illiteracy are, should someone afflicted by either accuse me of having claimed that a murdered woman “had it coming”, I would simply say that this is a problem for whoever cannot read properly, not for me, since I believe I know how to make myself understood, and that I have addressed something quite different: I have spoken, with sober realism, of the recklessness, the lack of prudence and the sheer obstinacy of certain women who have chosen to love the wrong man and even to change him, refusing to leave men who are highly violent and highly dangerous.
One usually tries to end on a high note; in this case I mean to close on the ugliest note possible. While certain laws against femicide were being passed in various nations, in Argentina — which has recognised femicide as an aggravating factor since as far back as 2012 (Law 26,791) — crowds celebrated in the streets in December 2020 as the dome of parliament was lit up green to mark the legalisation of abortion. On 4 March 2024, France, the first country in the world to do so, lit up the Eiffel Tower with the words “My body, my choice” (“my body, my choice”) to celebrate the inclusion of the right to abortion in its Constitution — both events hailed, in their respective countries, as a great social triumph. At this point, one might reasonably ask certain legislators for a little consistency: before the killer legalised by the State puts her to death, it might be worth checking the sex of the child to be aborted — because if it is a male, everything is fine, but if the child to be killed is a female, should the crime of femicide not apply? A question of consistency. Simply a question of consistency.
“Terminating a pregnancy is like doing away with someone. Is it right to do away with a human life to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem? Doing away with a human being is like hiring a hitman to solve a problem” (Francis, Supreme Pontiff, 10 October 2018).
From The Island of Patmos, 6 September 2026
.
.
FEMICIDE SEEN FROM A DIFFERENT OBSERVATORY: THAT OF THE PRIEST IN THE CURE OF SOULS
Before the murderer legalized by the State kills him, It would be advisable to check the sex of the child to be aborted, because if it's a man everything is fine, but if the creature that is going to be killed is a girl, Shouldn't the crime of femicide be applied??
- Ecclesial news -
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
When the legislator needs to make new laws, carry out new provisions, correct the old ones, or promote reforms in the social field, health or educational, often resorts to consulting even the most unlikely experts—or alleged experts—. Also within the Church, and among its different circles of scholars, There are figures that could contribute a lot to all this.. And yet, before an ecclesiastical figure, or even before a Catholic layman, Immediately the cry goes up against clerical interference. It is a selective exclusion: It has nothing to do with competition., but with the identity of the person who owns it.
For intellectual honesty It must be said that this reaction does not come from nowhere: We Catholics too – clerics and lay people – have ended up reaping what we have often sown.. my own teacher, el Padre Peter Gumpel S.J., sent at the time as Apostolic Visitor to Ireland by the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI during the sixties of the last century, He noted with disgust that the priests were involved in all political and administrative spheres, decisive when making certain decisions or preventing others. He said that all of that was not only not right, but it was destined not to stand: would fall in the worst way, generating the opposite effect by reaction. time, four decades later, he agreed. Yesterday in Ireland people came down from the sidewalk to let a priest pass, The men took off their hats and the women bowed their heads.; hoy, Wearing the ecclesiastical habit on the streets of Dublin means exposing oneself to insults that, directed against members of other groups—sometimes even subject to excessive protection—, they would take the person who pronounces them to court. We have gone from an excess of presence to a total exclusion: two specular errors, not a correction.
Whether certain fundamentalist secularists like it or not — that have nothing to do with the secularism that we ourselves, the Catholics, we defend, because it establishes that separation between political and religious power that benefits, in addition to the State, above all to the Church —, We priests are still people who deal with human material, often in situations of extraordinary delicacy. Is it reasonable that parliamentary committees talk about terminally ill patients and the end of life by calling anonymous experts who have never set foot in a hospital?, They have never cared for a sick or dying person., They have never accompanied their families in the post mortem, when for many of us these realities are our daily bread? Not to mention the religious orders and congregations born precisely for this, with religious men and women trained for centuries to exercise this delicate ministry, from the Fatebenefratelli – the Hospitaller Brothers of Saint John of God – to the Camillians. An old confrere told me: «We have no problem, even at the risk of annoying someone, in guiding certain people towards a good psychiatrist, or in convincing family members — often reluctant to accept the very existence of certain psychological disorders — to do so as soon as possible. But the opposite almost never happens.: than a psychiatrist, faced with an internal conflict typical of a Christian conscience, send the patient to a spiritual director. "My colleagues", A Catholic psychiatrist friend told me, «rather they prefer to do harm, but send someone to a priest, never". It is a one-way channel, and precisely for this reason pastoral competence over certain human phenomena remains structurally excluded from those who legislate on them..
It's in this blind spot Where is the topic I want to talk about?. As has already happened in other countries, Also in Italy, feminicide has been introduced as an autonomous crime. (cf. Law no. 181, from 2 December 2025), which punishes with life imprisonment anyone who causes the death of a woman as an act of discrimination or hatred towards her because she is a woman. It is a figure that I consider legitimate to discuss: a homicide is still such, always and in any case; Killing a woman cannot be more serious than killing a man., and vice versa. This, it has to be said honestly, judges have always valued it in procedural practice: In the case of the homicide of a woman, they have always applied all the aggravating circumstances of the case, both due to the greater physical strength of the aggressor and the lesser ability of the victim to defend himself. In the history of criminal procedural law, there have been sentences to the maximum penalty of life imprisonment against men who killed women not only because of the victim's lesser physical strength — which has always constituted an almost automatic aggravating factor —, but because they were pregnant, or because they had a baby who was only a few months old whom they were breastfeeding, or because they were mothers of several small children who needed their care.
The murderer of Maria Goretti —killed in July 1902 and proclaimed saint half a century later, in 1950 —was sentenced to 30 years, thus avoiding the life sentence that this crime would have entailed with all the recognized aggravating factors., because he was not yet of age: I was barely twenty years old, and at that time the age of majority in Italy was reached at 21. And we are talking about criminal justice at the beginning of the 20th century., the same one about which certain complaining activists claim today that women did not enjoy special consideration, legal protection or punishment of crimes. If Maria Goretti's murderer had killed a man, I would not have received a sentence of that caliber, with all the aggravating factors applied.
The expression "causing the death of a woman as an act of discrimination or hatred" could reasonably be applied to a wide range of categories: Has it never happened that the death of a sick old man, of a disabled, of a homosexual, of a jew, of a priest, and so on, has been caused by reasons of discrimination and hatred?
In my experience as a spiritual director I have known cases of women that are difficult to talk about, because beyond political correctness there is something worse than external censorship: self-censorship. It is a silent phenomenon and more insidious than censorship itself., because it does not need anyone to impose it: today it is not even necessary to be silenced, many are silent on their own, convinced that certain things just aren't said. Many times I have tried to convince girlfriends or wives of violent men, not just that they left them, but that they were denounced. And many times the refusal has come with the same two phrases: "But I want it", "but I'm going to change it". Desperate parents have come to me about a daughter who refused to listen to anyone., that once a week I had bruises on myself, while brothers, sisters and friends begged him: «Leave it, "He is a dangerous and violent man.". Answer, always the same: "But I want it", "but I'm going to change it".
Taking the obvious for granted — that, for being, It shouldn't even need to be said., namely, that no one has the right to kill a woman even if she is foolish, reckless or self-destructive —, it is still legitimate to ask: How many of these cases have later ended in tragic femicides?? And when that has happened, Have the great commentators and analysts ever gone to the true origin of the problem? That being said: considering the widespread, and increasing, What is functional and digital illiteracy?, If someone affected by this disorder accused me of having stated that a murdered woman "asked for it", I allow myself to say that it is a problem of those who do not know how to read., not mine, since I think I know how to explain myself and have exposed something very different: I have spoken, with sad realism, of unconsciousness, of the lack of prudence and the obstinacy of certain women who decided to love the wrong man and even change him, refusing to leave very violent and very dangerous men.
They usually try to finish on a high note.; In this case I intend to close in the ugliest way possible. While in several nations certain laws on feminicide were approved, in Argentina — which since 2012 considers femicide as an aggravating circumstance (Ley 26.791) — in December 2020 Celebrated in the streets and the dome of Parliament was illuminated green for the legalization of abortion. The 4 March 2024, in France, first country in the world to do so, The Eiffel Tower lit up with the phrase "My body, my choice» ("my body, my decision") to celebrate the incorporation of the right to abortion in the Constitution, understood in both cases as a great social achievement. At this point, due coherence should be requested from certain legislators: before the state-legalized murderer kills him, It would be advisable to check the sex of the child to be aborted, because if it's a man everything is fine, but if the creature that is going to be killed is a girl, Shouldn't the crime of femicide be applied?? Question of coherence, just a matter of consistency.
«Interrupting a pregnancy is like getting rid of someone. Is it fair to throw away a human life to solve a problem? Is it fair to hire a hitman to solve a problem? Getting rid of a human being is like hiring a hitman to solve a problem." (Francisco, Supreme Pontiff, 10 October 2018).
From the Island of Patmos, 6 September of 2026
.
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