U.S. Catholic

Sometimes it can be difficult to see what, if any, enduring legacy exists in the 21st century for a saint who died 800 years ago this October. But St. Francis of Assisi is someone who still matters today, and in some surprising ways. In our time marked by increasing individualism and isolation, which is exacerbated by social media algorithms and a decline in institutional belonging, Francis’ witness to the importance of relationship and active participation in community is a powerful message.

Caught up in some painful drama as a college student, many years ago, I sought solitude in a forest near the school and knelt to pray beside a fallen log. Hearing a rustling beside me, I opened my eyes and beheld a raccoon on its haunches, its tiny paws pressed together. Call me naive, but it looked for all the world like I had a ring-tailed prayer partner. I have encountered a surprising number of people who have shared such moments of spiritual connection with their furred or feathered friends.

Somewhere, women were laughing. The sound carried me back to my childhood, when I’d lie in my bed comforted by the voices of my older sisters talking in their bedroom down the hall. Now, decades later, groggy and in pain after an emergency surgery, I was convinced my big sisters were talking together in the next room. Earlier, as I’d counted my racing pulse through the pain that pounded my body, sleep had seemed impossible.

Listen on: Apple | Spotify In 2025, Congress passed HR 1, referred to by the Trump administration as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but also known as the Big Bad Budget Bill. It slashed funding for human needs programs including Medicaid and SNAP and gave trillions in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest people on earth. In this episode, Sister Eilis McCulloh speaks with Rev.

My son Quentin died by suicide on April 26, 2020. Every Catholic parish has people like me who bear the sorrow of suicide loss, as well as those whose loved ones have attempted suicide. They also have people who wrestle with suicidal ideation and others who have survived their own suicide attempts. The most recent data indicates suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States.

Isaiah 5:1–7 Psalm 80:9, 12, 13–14, 15–16, 19–20 Philippians 4:6–9 Matthew 21:33–43 Oh boy, this feels like another one of those moments where we’re in trouble. God seems to be complaining, in the reading from Hebrew scripture, that humanity has not responded to God’s loving care. Jesus sounds angry, too, that we’ve rejected God’s prophets, turning them away time and time again and greedily keeping the gifts of God to ourselves.

Jesus got angry from time to time. All four of the gospels testify to this. This should be no surprise. The Councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451) built upon each other and declared that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human. And this means he was fully human in every complex detail of being human, other than one thing: sin—intrinsic separation from God that results in harming others.

The rain stopped for no one in Chicagoland this summer, Pope Leo XIV included. On August 11, rolling walls of dark clouds loomed from all directions under an algae-green sky. The local NBC 5 weather team reported uprooted trees in dozens of communities; tornado sirens echoed downtown. By 11 a.m., crews were already working to restore power to thousands of people, primarily in the Southland.

When we consider the situation of migrant children in the United States, the reality is troubling. More than 6,200 children have been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the second term of President Donald Trump’s administration. In April 2026, the Marshall Project reported that on average, 226 children are incarcerated daily.

The common life of culture can only exist within what Pope Leo XIV in Magnifica Humanitas (On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence) calls an “ecology of communication,” fostered by an education that is not an “incessant flow of information” but rather a shared “ability to grasp reality as a whole” and “ask profound questions about meaning.” Without that shared life, we cannot really know truth at all. We think, therefore we are. Truth is a common good.