kilian trotier

Leiter ZEIT-Magazin Online, #ZEITSinn - Wofür leben wir? Hier privat // editor at @zeitonline #GoHabsGo, Foto: Phil Dera

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

America’s best export.

[Paulina Guzik @Guzik_Paulina]

In what will certainly become one of the most fundamental speeches of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV told the Spanish Parliament, before receiving a 7-minute standing ovation: "The defense of human life is neither a partisan issue nor a confessional interest: it is a goal of civilization."

"If life ceases to be recognized as a fundamental value, what future can our societies have?" he said, speaking to a gathering of politicians, many supporting abortion and euthanasia.

"Can a community that casts into the shadows the unborn child, the elderly, the sick, those who suffer in silence, or those who depend entirely on the care of others be called fully just?"

"Every human life must be recognized and safeguarded from conception to its natural end, in every circumstance of its existence. When this certainty is obscured, the most vulnerable are the first victims, and the law loses its deepest meaning: to serve and protect every person."

"For this reason, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect and love those lives that are most fragile," he said, repeating what John Paul II emphasized decades ago.

Starting his speech he commented that Church's is the "message offered in the spirit of service to the human person."

"When the Church addresses anything concerning public life, she does so while respecting the proper mission of institutions and the legitimate responsibility of those who have received the mandate to legislate," Pope Leo said, emphasizing "the Church offers a reflection born of the desire to serve the common good."

He hailed Spain as country that "has known how to view the human being as more than just a cog in the social, economic or political order. It has recognized the human being as a creature open to truth, endowed with freedom, and driven by a thirst for eternity that no temporal reality can quench -- in a word, as someone whose dignity takes precedence over all utility and to whose service legislative action is subject."

He said it was Catholic orders that "helped to shape a legal and moral consciousness capable of remembering that authority always entails responsibility and that every human being must be recognized as a subject of rights and duties."

"That aspiration continues to resonate today: that dignity, justice and the common good should be the measure of social relations, both at the national and international levels."

Referring multiple times to his "Magnifica Humanitas" encyclical, he said: "When the common good ceases to be a shared horizon, public action runs the risk of fragmenting into partial interests, incapable of safeguarding what belongs to all."

"In this context, the family — the primary human reality and the natural foundation of the community — takes on particular importance," Pope Leo said.

"The family will always be the first school of humanity, where one learns, before anywhere else, the basic grammar of living together: welcoming life, caring for others, forgiving, serving and belonging."

"Human life can never be treated as a commodity," the pope said.

"A law does not attain its true greatness merely by having been formally enacted; it attains it when, in addition to being valid in form, it can stand before the dignity of the person and pass that test without shame."

"I invite you, then, to lift your gaze to the world around you, not to turn away from reality, but to remember that every decision by public authorities affects real people, especially those who have less power to make their voices heard."

"The expanse of one’s vision consists precisely in looking more deeply at what is at stake in every public decision. This is why, alongside technical solutions and legal reforms, a moral renewal is also needed."

Video: Vatican Media
(fragment of speech follows)

[DIE ZEIT @zeitonline]

Sonnwendfeiern, Fahnenrituale, NS-Literatur: Über Jahre hat sich im Geheimen ein rechtsextremer Jugendbund formiert – mit gutem Kontakt in den Bundestag. https://t.co/gkDTPXV4DG

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill or threaten with death. Instead, death enslaves those who have turned their backs on the living God, turning themselves and their own power into a mute, blind and deaf idol (Ps 115:4–8), to which they sacrifice every value, demanding that the whole world bend its knee. Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life. #Peace

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.

[Mark Schieritz @schieritz]

Warum wir bald wieder über das Duschen reden werden https://t.co/vmlrAi5GW7

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

Happy Feast of St. Óscar Romero.

From his final homily:

"I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, “Thou shalt not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The Church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!"

[DIE ZEIT @zeitonline]

Peter Kurth war Spitzenpolitiker: ein schwuler Katholik, Modernisierer der CDU – bis er unter Rechtsextremen auftauchte. Und austrat. Jetzt will er wohl zurück. https://t.co/DFWK0tUnhd

[Rev. Benjamin Cremer @Brcremer]

Beware of any Christian movement that acts as though the world is full of enemies to be destroyed rather than full of neighbors to be loved.

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

NEW: JD Vance flew to Rome to formally invite Pope Leo XIV to join America’s 250th anniversary celebration.

The first American pope has declined — days after rejecting President Trump’s “Board of Peace” invitation.

On July 4, he’ll be in Lampedusa, standing with migrants — not in Washington — drawing another stark line between the Trump-Vance White House and the Catholic Church under Leo. https://t.co/H5b2n8AZcQ

[Thomas Reese, S.J. @ThomasReeseSJ]

Cardinal Tobin celebrates Ash Wednesday Mass for detainees in Newark ICE facility https://t.co/aFj0aoxLX8 @fionaamurphyy @AlejaCorazonHM

[Mark Schieritz @schieritz]

https://t.co/O9KCXJq85M

[Olivia Kortas @OliviaKortas]

Wieder einmal wurden wir in Kyjiw von fürchterlich lauten Explosionen geweckt, Russland griff die Ukraine mit rund 450 Drohnen und 60 Raketen an, Hauptziel war die Hauptstadt. In 1170 der riesigen Wohnblocks sind die Heizkörper kalt, Hunderttausende frieren, bei -20 Grad.

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

News: Letter from multiple Catholic leaders in the US, including archbishops, bishops, religious order superiors, priests, and members of men's and women's religious orders, to the US Senate: Immigration policy should be guided by "human dignity" and "social stability." (First four pages of signatories, courtesy of @JesuitRefugee USA).

[Moritz Müller-Wirth @muellerwirth]

Welche Kolumnen tun ihm leid? (Spoiler: auch eine über ⁦⁦@Ricarda_Lang⁩ )Wie lange
braucht er fürs Schreiben? Was denkt er über seine Kritiker? Martenstein unplugged im Abschiedsinterview. Mit ⁦@Chaimowicz_S⁩ ⁦@ZEITmagazin⁩ https://t.co/OLYxsZjVt5

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

I have a dogmatic certainty: just as God raised up a pope from behind the Iron Curtain to help defeat communism, God has raised up a pope from the Americas to help defeat MAGA authoritarianism.

I dedicate my whole heart to that mission.

To paraphrase Peter: I bring neither silver nor gold to this work. I bring the greatest gifts I have ever received — my back, my mind, and my heart.

I give them because you and I were made for this moment: repairers of the breach. https://t.co/O7a45oWDnr

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

Sharing this remarkable image, José y Maria, by Everett Patterson, seems even more urgent this year. In the past, I’ve delighted over the clever visual puns (Dave’s City Hotel, Weisman cigarettes and Mary’s “Nazareth High School” sweatshirt) and in the reminder that Mary and Joseph were, like this couple, desperate young people looking for lodgings, when there was “no room at the inn,” as one translation of Luke’s Gospel has it.

In the past few years, there has been an intense debate (mainly online) over whether Mary and Joseph were refugees. To me, it seems clear that they were, at least during the “Flight into Egypt” where they flee a murderous king, leave Galilee and travel to Egypt to take refuge. That fits the classic description of a refugee: someone who leaves their homeland out a “well founded fear of persecution.” Some people say, well, they were still in the Roman Empire, which is beside the point. Do we really think that a poor couple from Galilee would have considered Egypt their homeland? Popes since at least Pope Pius XII have agreed. He called the Holy Family the “archetype of every refugee family.”

But before that, as a couple looking for lodging, they mirror thousands of couples and families today who have been denied “room at the inn.” In the United States, couples and families (and children) looking for “room” have been harassed, rejected, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and tortured. “No room at the inn.”

I will never understand how people can treat other human beings like this—even if they are, or are assumed to be, somehow breaking the law. Christ is present in every person, and every person has infinite dignity--whether you are Joseph and Mary, José y Maria, or an unknown person looking for room for their family.

If we delight in making room in our homes for our Nativity scenes, and delight in making room for Baby Jesus in the creche’s manger, can we make room for Christ, who is present in every migrant and the refugee? José y Maria, pray for us.

(Image: "José y Maria," Everett Patterson https://t.co/74UW24kf6Y)

[Joshua McElwee @joshjmcelwee]

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @Reuters

https://t.co/Z91z9fGMKB