Month: June 2025

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Pope Leo XIV: ‘There is no cry that God does not hear’

June 11, 2025 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Leo XIV greets pilgrims from the back of a pickup style popemobile before his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on June 11, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, Jun 11, 2025 / 05:50 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV reflected on Christian hope — one of the three theological virtues, along with faith and charity — during his general audience on Wednesday. 

“There is no cry that God does not hear, even when we are unaware that we are addressing him,” the pope said, illustrating this idea with the story of Bartimaeus, described in the Gospel of Mark as a blind beggar who encountered Jesus as He was leaving Jericho. 

Pope Leo explained that this story helps us understand that “we must never abandon hope, even when we feel lost.” 

The Holy Father today spoke on the healings performed by Jesus and invited Catholics to bring before the heart of Christ their “most wounded or fragile parts” or those areas of life where they “feel paralyzed or stuck.” 

“Let us ask the Lord with trust to hear our cry and heal us!” the pope said. 

Pope Leo focused on the attitude of Jesus, who does not immediately approach Bartimaeus but instead asks him what he wants. “It is not obvious that we truly want to be healed of our illnesses — sometimes we prefer to remain as we are so as not to take on new responsibilities,” he said. 

“It may seem strange that, faced with a blind man, Jesus does not immediately approach him. But if we think about it, this is how he helps reactivate Bartimaeus’ life: He prompts him to rise and entrusts him with the ability to walk,” the pope added. 

Indeed, the pope said that Bartimaeus does not only wish to see again — he also “wants to regain his dignity.” 

“To look upward, one must lift one’s head. Sometimes people feel stuck because life has humiliated them, and they simply want to regain their worth,” the Holy Father said. 

For this reason, he called on the faithful to do everything they can to obtain what they seek, “even when others scold you, humiliate you, or tell you to give up.” “If you truly desire it, keep crying out!” he said. 

The pope stressed that what saves Bartimaeus is faith. “Jesus heals us so that we may be free,” he said. 

Pope Leo XIV embraces a baby during a ride around St. Peter's Square in the popemobile before the general audience on June 11, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pope Leo XIV embraces a baby during a ride around St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile before the general audience on June 11, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Exposing ourselves to Jesus with all our vulnerabilities 

Leo XIV also reflected on Bartimaeus’ gesture of casting off his cloak in order to stand up. 

“For a beggar, the cloak is everything: it is security, it is home, it is the protection that shields him. In fact, the law protected a beggar’s cloak and required that it be returned by evening if it had been taken as a pledge,” he explained. 

The pope compared the beggar’s cloak to the illusion of security that people often cling to. 

“Often what holds us back are precisely these apparent securities — the things we have wrapped around ourselves for protection, which in reality prevent us from moving forward,” he said. 

Pope Leo noted that, in order to go to Jesus and be healed, Bartimaeus “must expose himself to Him in all his vulnerability” — a fundamental step on any path to healing. 

Finally, the pope called on the faithful to trustingly bring to Jesus “our illnesses, as well as those of our loved ones,” and “the pain of those who feel lost and without a way out.”  

“Let us cry out for them as well, and let us be certain that the Lord will hear us and will stop for us,” he said. 

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New U.S. embryo screening firm raises specter of ‘designer babies’

June 10, 2025 Catholic News Agency 0
null / Credit: Tati9/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Jun 10, 2025 / 15:51 pm (CNA).

A U.S.-based biotech company has announced the launch of Nucleus Embryo, a company that screens human embryos for desired genetic profiles, a practice the Catholic Church teaches violates human dignity and contributes to a eugenic mentality. 

People undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) will be able to screen up to 20 embryos for over 900 conditions and traits, including health risks, intelligence, and physical characteristics like height and eye color, in order to “optimize” their embryos, according to Kian Sadeghi, founder of Nucleus Genomics, parent company of Nucleus Embryo.

“I see a world where sequencing, analyzing, and editing DNA merge seamlessly to create a truly preventative health care system,” the 25-year-old Sadeghi said on the company’s website, adding: “Every parent wants to give their children more than they had. For the first time in human history, Nucleus adds a new tool to that commitment.”

Embryos that meet parental desires will be eligible for implanting, and undesirable ones will be discarded.

While the Catholic Church teaches that IVF is morally illicit because it completely separates procreation from the marital act and violates the dignity of the child, the Church also condemns preimplantation diagnosis as “shameful and utterly reprehensible,” an “expression of a eugenic mentality” that leads to the destruction of innocent human life.

Published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the 2008 document Dignitatis Personae affirms that the human embryo cannot be treated as “mere laboratory material” because this violates its dignity, which “belongs equally to every single human being, irrespective of his parents’ desires, his social condition, educational formation, or level of physical development.”

The document explicitly condemns preimplantation diagnosis and resulting genetic enhancements because they can result in the killing of human embryos “affected by various types of anomalies,” and they “presume to measure the value of a human life only within the parameters of ‘normality’ and physical well-being, thus opening the way to legitimizing infanticide and euthanasia.”

Such procedures could also marginalize individuals, widen societal divides, and “harm peaceful coexistence among individuals,” the dicastery stated.  

The document questioned who would establish which gene edits were worthwhile and which were not, and what limits, if any, should be placed on genetic enhancements “since it would be materially impossible to fulfill the wishes of every single person.”

In the end, the common good will be harmed by “favoring the will of some over the freedom of others.”

National Catholic Bioethics Center senior ethicist Father Tad Pacholczyk told CNA that “couples will now be tempted to impose quality control and eugenics onto their vulnerable and voiceless children.”

Nucleus Embryo’s website emphasizes genetic manipulation of embryos before implantation and states: “The best time to prevent disease is pre-pregnancy. Knowing what you could pass on to your kids lets you plan with clarity and avoid future surprises.”

National Catholic Bioethics Center senior ethicist Father Tad Pacholczyk. Credit: "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo/Screenshot
National Catholic Bioethics Center senior ethicist Father Tad Pacholczyk. Credit: “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo/Screenshot

This is a “‘command and control’ mentality over procreation,” Pacholczyk said, which allows people to treat their “own offspring like raw material … It’s tragic when our children become a mere abstraction, pawns to be played in the end game of seeking what we want.”

“Society’s demand for physical perfection places untold pressure on couples today to ‘conform to the norm’ by aborting or otherwise eliminating any less-than-perfect children,” he continued.

“Human embryos, among the most vulnerable of God’s creatures, have been entrusted to us to be received unconditionally and lovingly by all parents, without demanding that they run any gauntlet of prenatal screening. Every child, exactly as he or she arrives into our families, is precious, good, and beautiful.”

Pacholczyk said not every use of prenatal diagnostic information is morally unacceptable, however. 

Diagnostic information that “assists in the treatment of an in-utero patient represents a morally praiseworthy use of this powerful technology.”

For example, a life-threatening disease known as Krabbe’s leukodystrophy can be treated through a bone marrow transplant immediately following a child’s birth. If the disease is diagnosed prenatally, the parents can look for matching bone marrow before the child is born. Certain other diseases, such as spina bifida, can also be surgically treated prenatally.

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