Pope Leo XIV waves as the popemobile passes by a crowd of American pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the pope’s general audience on June 18, 2025, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media
CNA Staff, Jul 24, 2025 / 12:35 pm (CNA).
A new bill before Congress would “safeguard” the domestic citizenship of any American who is elected pope of the Catholic Church, including exempting him from paying taxes to the IRS.
Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Colorado, proposed the bill, saying it “ensures that any American who answers the call to lead more than a billion Catholics worldwide can do so without risking his citizenship or facing unnecessary tax burdens.”
While the text of the bill is not yet available, Hurd said in a statement on his congressional website the bill is meant “to protect the citizenship of, and provide tax-exempt status to, any American elected as the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.”
“This legislation recognizes the extraordinary nature of the papacy — a role at the intersection of faith, leadership, and global responsibility,” the Colorado representative said.
The measure would “[exempt] the individual from U.S. tax obligations while serving as pope,” Hurd’s website states.
The bill was referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means on July 17.
The current pope, Leo XIV is thus far the only U.S.-born pope in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the bill on Thursday.
According to the IRS, U.S. citizens are “subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where they live or where they earn their income.” Citizens living abroad also have the same filing requirements as those living in the U.S. itself.
Paul Hunker, an American immigration attorney and a Catholic, told CNA in May that U.S. federal law spells out the conditions under which a U.S. citizen can lose his or her citizenship.
Such conditions include committing an act of treason, obtaining naturalization in a foreign state, and accepting a position as a foreign head of state, though those actions must be done by a person voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing his or her U.S. nationality.
The U.S. State Department says it generally presumes that U.S. citizens, even if they accept a foreign government post, want to keep their citizenship unless “clearly and credibly” established otherwise.
Vatican law dictates that the Holy Father maintains “the fullness of the power of government, which includes the legislative, executive, and judicial powers” of the Vatican City State and the Holy See, the latter of which is the central governing authority of the Church.
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CNA Staff, Aug 26, 2020 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski was installed this week as the Tenth Archbishop of St. Louis, on the feast day of the city’s namesake, Louis IX of France. The new archbishop challenged Catholics to put their faith into action and seek to meet the world face-to-face.
“Parishes are not built from behind desks. Communities are not built from behind desks. As a Church, evangelization does not happen from behind a desk,” Rozanski, 61, said in his installation Mass homily Aug. 25.
Rozanski acknowledged that during the pandemic, most interactions have had to be mediated through the internet and screens.
“I yearn for that day when we can meet safely face-to-face, and not through our TVs. computers, and phones. While we are compelled to be our brother’s keeper, and so must live within these necessary public safety parameters for the time being, let us nonetheless be visible and encounter people as best we can, to spread the joy of the Gospel.”
Pope Francis in June appointed Rozanski to lead the Archdiocese of St. Louis. He succeeds Archbishop Robert Carlson, who presented his resignation to Pope Francis at the customary age of 75.
St. Louis is the largest archdiocese in Missouri, and is home to over half a million Catholics.
Rozanski expressed gratitude for his priesthood and gratitude to Pope Francis for choosing him to lead the archdiocese. The installation Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis was closed to the public because of the pandemic.
Referring to St. Louis by its popular nickname, “The Rome of the West”— so called because of its many grand Catholic churches— Rozanski pointed to the city’s most well-known symbol, the Gateway Arch, as a symbol of hope and unity.
“How much that hope is needed in our country, and in our world, today,” he remarked.
The city’s namesake, St. Louis, was holy “not because of the crown he wore, but because of the service he allowed it to give,” Rozanski said.
“We are called to be a people of hope,” he said, adding that each individual, as well as the Church as a whole, is called to practice love, putting it into action by seeking to meet with people face-to-face.
“We ourselves must be gateways to healing, to evangelization, to mercy, to compassion, to listening with the ears of Jesus,” he said.
COVID-19 is not the only urgent cross facing us today, he said, referring to the “scars of systemic racism.”
St. Louis has seen racially-charged protests in recent months, and historically has been a segregated city. Racial tension in the city has been heightened ever since the Aug. 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, MO police officer.
Rozanski referred to racism as “a man-made plague that isolates us from one another” and diminishes our God-given dignity.
A bishop must always foster a missionary attitude in his diocese, Rozanski said, which involves listening to all his people, not merely those who “would tell him what he wants to hear.”
He called for Catholics to work on “bold and creative methods” of evangelization.
“Let us walk together on this journey of faith. I need your help, and I need your prayers,” he said.
Rozanski had previously led the Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts since 2014.
A Baltimore native, Rozanski was born in 1958, and attended Catholic schools in the city. He attended seminary at the Catholic University of America, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1984. He served in parish ministry, the archdiocesan curia, and with its seminary, and was named a monsignor in 2003.
St. John Paul II appointed Rozanski auxiliary bishop of Baltimore in 2004. He oversaw one of Baltimore archdiocese’s geographical vicariates while parishes were merged, and served as vicar for Hispanics. He was vocal in supporting Maryland’s DREAM act, allowing some undocumented immigrants to receive in-state college tuition.
At the time of his episcopal consecration, Rozanski was the youngest bishop in the United States. He went on to serve as chair of the U.S. bishops’ conference committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and as a consultant to the National Association for the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities.
A Polish-American, Rozanski has co-chaired the Polish National Catholic – Roman Catholic Dialogue. The Polish National Catholic Church is a schismatic Church founded in the U.S. in the late 19th-century by Polish-American immigrants.
He is a member of the Knights of Columbus and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
Though Rozanski himself backed major changes in the Springfield diocese’s handling of abuse, CNA has reported that one anonymous abuse victim has asked for a Church investigation into whether Rozanski was involved in covering up abuse by a former bishop of the diocese.
On June 24 of this year, the Springfield diocese released a 373-page report finding that an alleged victim’s claim he was molested by the late Bishop Christopher Weldon were “unequivocally credible,” despite Weldon not yet being listed on the Springfield diocese’s list of clergy credibly accused of abuse.
The investigator, Judge Peter A. Velis, said his findings raise questions about whether there was an attempt to conceal the report’s contents about Bishop Weldon from the review board or Bishop Rozanski.
In June, Rozanski apologized for the “chronic mishandling of the case, time and time again, since 2014.”
“At almost every instance, we have failed this courageous man who nonetheless persevered thanks in part to a reliable support network as well to a deep desire for a just response for the terrible abuse which he endured,” Rozanski said at a June press conference, one year after he commissioned the independent investigation into the matter.
In March 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Bishop Rozanski attempted to authorize a change to norms for the anointing of the sick, permitting a nurse, rather than a priest, to conduct the physical anointing. Only a priest can validly administer the sacrament.
Later that same week, the diocese told CNA it had rescinded that policy. Rozanski emailed Springfield priests that afternoon explaining that “After further discussion and review, I am rescinding my previous directive and temporarily suspending the Anointing of the Sick in all instances.”
The diocese reinstated the practice of the anointing of the sick in May.
CNA Staff, Apr 17, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Pro-life adovcates have criticized the governor of Michigan for calling aboriton a “life-sustaining” procedure during an interview on Thursday.
In an April 16 appearance on the podcast &ldquo… […]
Nell O’Leary, managing editor of Blessed Is She. / Therese Westby
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 3, 2022 / 11:01 am (CNA).
When Nell O’Leary sat down with her team to brainstorm a new book for Catholic women, she said they felt drawn to the theme of “identity.”
“This one kept coming back, this idea of identity, of who we are as Catholic women, made in God’s image and likeness,” O’Leary, the managing editor of Blessed Is She, told CNA. This identity, she said, gets battered by the world “with all these lies that you are what you look like, you are your social media following, you are how successful you are, you are how many kids you have.”
Instead, O’Leary says, every woman is unconditionally loved as a “beloved daughter of God.”
This message is central to Made New: 52 Devotions for Catholic Women, a weekly devotional released in December. The book houses personal stories from five writers associated with Blessed Is She (BIS), a “sisterhood” of Catholic women who desire to grow in their faith through prayer and community. Each of the five — O’Leary, Leana Bowler, Brittany Calavitta, Jenna Guizar, and Liz Kelly — focus on a theme under the umbrella of identity: beheld, belong, beloved, believing, and becoming.
While their stories are different, their tone is consistent. Each writer engages the reader with the frank, casual tone of a friend who’s honest about her struggles, hopeful for the future, and, well, confident in her identity.
“I invite you to journey with me, dear sister, to walk through the next fifty-two weeks as we rediscover our value, our worth, and our identity in Our Lord’s eyes,” Guizar, the founder of BIS, writes in the book’s opening. “He is waiting for you and me, and He desires to be in relationship with us. All it takes is a response to His call: yes.”
Each week begins with a short reflection or personal story from one of the writers and concludes with a scripture passage and two questions for the reader to ask herself. Along the way, artwork interrupts the text to greet readers with dusty, muted colors and shapes. The rose-gold cover impresses a feminine touch, along with a pink ribbon bookmark. Leaves and plants adorn the pages, suggesting growth and life made new.
Interior of Made New. Therese Westby
A saint’s calling
If readers come away remembering one thing, O’Leary wants them to believe and remember that “there’s no one way, cookie-cutter way, to become a saint.”
“God is calling you personally, through the circumstances in your life, through the challenges, through the blessings, to grow in holiness in who you are and where you are,” she said. “And to compare yourself to other women and feel like you can’t measure up is simply not where you want to put your energies.”
Instead, she said, God is calling each woman — in her particular, unique life — to become a saint.
Every woman is different, something that the five writers themselves demonstrate. According to O’Leary, they are not all just a “bunch of young moms.” One struggles with infertility, another married later in life, one started a family before marriage, and another has no children.
“I think that however old the reader is, they will find part of their own story,” O’Leary said. “When we write [our stories], we want the reader to actually be able to contemplate and ponder… to kind of find their own story. So you’re not just consuming another person’s content, you’re actually looking at yourself too.”
One story particularly moved O’Leary (even though she compared picking her favorite to “picking a favorite flower”). She pointed to writer Liz Kelly, who shares with readers her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis toward the end of the book.
While Kelly originally “thought that meant her role would become really small,” God “used her in that time and in that diagnosis to broadcast his message even further than she thought,” O’Leary summarized.
She added, “I think the reason I love that story so much is because where we see limitations, God just sees more opportunities for grace.”
Unconditional love
A theme in the book that O’Leary herself touches on is God’s unconditional love — that he loves you as you are right now, regardless of what you do or don’t do, regardless of how your family or friends treat you, regardless of your past or future. He loves you.
“I suppose people in general struggle with the idea of unconditional love because it’s so rarely manifest in our human interaction,” O’Leary said of accepting God’s love. “And so, because the human level of relationship in our lives are fraught with other imperfect people, to really trust in and experience God’s love takes this trust and this faith.”
Her first piece of advice for women who doubt God’s love or think they aren’t good enough is to visit the confessional.
“Get all those embarrassing sins off your chest,” she said. “The priest has heard it all … you can go behind the screen.”
“It’s nothing that’s too embarrassing to bring to the sacrament and really unload yourself of the burden of all those sins and experience God’s grace filling you,” she added. God’s unconditional love can get “so shrouded and clouded by my own, my own humanity, my own mistakes, my own sinfulness.”
Community and Covid
Another topic in the book — and a priority for Blessed Is She as a whole — is community. O’Leary addressed the challenges of community, particularly during the pandemic.
“Living in a global pandemic, so many things being more online, we just see that highlights reel…those drive those envy twinges of, ‘Her life looks perfect. She doesn’t have my struggles,’” she said. “Really puts in wedges in our sisterhood and we need our sisterhood.”
“When we can’t be together, it just starts to look like everyone has it together,” she added. “We don’t.”
O’Leary advised women to read the free daily devotions offered by Blessed Is She. And delete social media apps off of their phones, even if just for the weekend.
“I know that our phones and the internet are wonderful for connecting us, but they’re also really toxic for making it feel more lonely,” she said. “Live the life that’s in front of you.”
The personal
O’Leary talked about her personal life and her own struggle with identity. The fourth of five children, she said she grew up surrounded by high-achieving parents and siblings. While she thought that one day she might have a family, she worked toward becoming an attorney. She ended up marrying her “law school love” and worked as an attorney. Then, she became a stay-at-home mom.
“Realizing that I had hung so much on my identity being what I did, and what the world could see and applaud, that becoming a mom and then eventually staying at home with our kids,” she said. “It’s such a hidden life.”
“The children are not cheering you on, ‘You did a great job!’ there’s no affirmation, there’s no feedback other than the deep satisfaction I guess, that no one went to the ER,” she added.
The experience changed her.
“What I realized that I had to have a big mentality shift from, I’m not what I do and I’m not what I accomplish and I’m not even how my children behave,” she said. “That really, in these hidden moments in prayer with God, to say, ‘I know I’m your beloved daughter. I know I’m made in your image and likeness.’”
Still trying to get used to having an American citizen as our Pope. But I’m getting there.
It’s really quite wonderful.