Growing up in a home with a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Iranian American Shirin Taber had a special appreciation for being able to choose what she believed. When she told her dad that she wished everyone back in Iran could have the same freedom, he—knowing the harsh reality of the regime—said it would never happen.
The political pushback, Taber says, correlates with a growing disillusionment with Islam itself, too. Iranians are spiritually hungry and looking for answers; even with government restrictions on religion, the church continues to grow through Christian teaching coming into the Islamic nation over satellite TV. “It’s not just about a hijab, we want systematic change. We want to topple the regime. We no longer want to live in a one-state religion. We no longer want the state to dictate to us what our faith should look like, how we practice it, how we live it. We want separation of church and state. We want separation of Islam and the state.”

The Second Vatican Council was “not only meaningful, but necessary,” retired Pope Benedict XVI said in a letter to a conference about his theological work at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
A theological understanding of the world’s different religions, the relationship between faith and reason and, especially, the nature and mission of the church in the modern world were challenges the Catholic Church needed to face, the retired pope wrote in the message read Oct. 20.
The Vatican-based Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation sponsored the conference Oct. 20-21 on “Joseph Ratzinger’s Vision of the Church and Its Relevance for Contemporary Challenges.”
In his letter to conference participants, the retired pope said he hoped their discussions and an understanding of his theological work before, during and after Vatican II would “be helpful in the struggle for a right understanding of the church and the world in our time.”
As a priest and theologian, Father Ratzinger attended all four sessions of the council as a theological adviser — a “peritus” — to the archbishop of Cologne, Germany.
St. John XXIII’s decision to call the council, he said in the letter, was a surprise to everyone and many people initially thought it would “unsettle and shake the church more than to give her a new clarity for her mission.”
But “the need to reformulate the question of the nature and mission of the church has gradually become apparent. In this way, the positive power of the council is also slowly emerging,” he wrote.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu off-ered to personally reimburse the Holy See for funds paid to Cecelia Marogna, the Vatican City court heard on  October 13.
In testimony from the card-inal, and from a senior Vatican police officer, judges in the Va-tican’s sprawling financial crimes trial heard that Becciu made the offer after he was informed Inter-pol had flagged payments to Mar-gona, the self-styled international security consultant and private spy, which had been authorized by the cardinal.
According to Stefano De Santis, a senior officer in the Va-tican City’s corps of gendarmes, he and Vatican police chief Gian-luca Broccoletti visited Becciu at his Vatican apartments in early October of 2020, at the cardinal’s request, to update him on their findings regarding Marogna.
De Santis told the court that he and Broccoletti informed the cardinal that Interpol had flagged a series of payments totalling some 575,000 euros to Marog-na’s Slovenian-registered comp-any, which had been spent prima-rily on luxury goods and hotels.
According to the police inve-stigator, Becciu offered to repay the funds from his personal account at the IOR, a Vatican bank, and asked them to keep the matter confidential because it would cause “serious harm” to the cardinal and his family.
Marogna, who is charged with embezzlement during the current Vatican trial, has not presented herself in court and successfully fought against extra-dition to the Vatican in 2021.

Cardinal George Pell is warning of catastrophic consequences for the Catholic Church if Pope Francis does not correct “serious heresies” being promoted by the German Synodal Way.
“The synodal process has begun disastrously in Germany,” the Australian prelate laments, “and matters will become worse unless we soon have effective papal corrections on, for instance, Christian sexual morality, women priests, etc.”
The former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, who was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of sexual abuse and later acquitted, underscores the words of “some faithful German Catholics [who] are already talking, not of the synodal way but the suicidal way.”
Referring to Pope Francis’ invitation to lapsed Catholics, Protestants and even atheists to participate in the Synod on Synodality, Pell insists that “every synod has to be a Catholic synod, bound by the apostolic Tradition, just as Councils are so bound.”
“There can be no pluralism of important doctrines of faith or morals,” Pell categorically states. “Our unity is not like that of a loose Anglican federation or that of the many national Orthodox Churches.”
“Serious heresies” in the synodal process are “undermining and damaging the unity of the One, True Church,” in a manner contrary to “Gaudium et Spes’ call for engagement with the modern world in ‘the light of the Gospel,’” he observes.

Priests and bishops in the United States report overwhelmingly that they are “flou-rishing” in ministry, despite pressures caused by two decades of clerical abuse scandals and Church responses.
But while U.S. priests report high levels of personal well-being, they also have a widespread lack of confidence and trust in their bishops, according to a study releas-ed Wednesday by The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Priests reported that they are less likely to seek personal support from their bishop than they are from any other source, and said they believe bishops regard priests as “liabilities” and “expendable.”
Bishops have had mixed initial reactions to the survey’s findings.
One bishop told The Pillar he is grateful for the report, and praised the work of priests in American dioceses.
Another called the survey results an “examination of conscience” for bishops.
The survey report, “Well-being, Trust, and Policy in a Time of Crisis: Highlights from the National Study of Catholic Priests,” was published October 19 by The Catholic University of America’s department of so-ciology, in conjunction with The Catholic Project, a university institute founded to facilitate collaboration between the Church’s hierarchy and laity, in the wake of the McCarrick sexual abuse scandal.
The survey compiled data from 3,500 priests across 191 U.S. dioceses, and survey-ed bishops, achieving a 67 percent response rate among the American episcopate.
Despite declining numbers of practicing Catholics, diocesan plans to consolidate parishes, and fewer numbers of priests in active ministry, the survey found that the vast majority of American priests say they are “flourishing.”
Participants were asked a series of questions aimed at assessing their personal well-being according to the Harvard Flou-rishing Index, which measures life satis-faction, mental and physical health, sense of purpose, and quality of relationships.
Across the survey results, more than three-quarters of respondents reported themselves to be flourishing.