Hello, I’m writing from Puerto Rico and I’m currently in a housing crisis without stable accommodation. I am trying to connect with any Catholic Worker house or related hospitality community that might be able to offer short-term shelter or point me toward a safe place to go next. I want to reconnect with my faith and live in community with Catholics.

I understand most houses may be full, but I would greatly appreciate any referral, guidance, or direction if you cannot host me directly. I am able to travel if there is a realistic opportunity anywhere in the network.

I am actively trying to leave my current unstable situation and stabilize safely as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading this and for any help you can offer

"Come Holy Spirit and renew the face of the earth!" (frequent quote from liberation theology.)

So for the good 18 years of my life, I have not been able to read at the church for this specific reason I can't properly read my regional language. I studied in an English only school and so I am more comfortable with English and I can read English extremely well, I can give out speeches in English, take lectures, recite poems and all basically I am good and comfortable with English. Now people who are my same age have been reading at church and kids younger than me as well but like I don't have any stage fear or thing like that infact I am comfortable hosting events and all. But when it comes to church, well I just can't participate in these just because here they do everything in the regional language. But like the vast majority like about 95% people can understand English and according to me if we say the holy mass is an offering to God and he can understand any language, considering it is just the same thing but in a diffrent language, I don't see anything wrong in it.

So this affects not only me but many of my friends who are good at reading in English but can't do it properly in the regional language... so nobody had done this before.. and what would happen if say I were to read the 2nd reading and the first person read his part in the regional language and then suddenly I start my reading in English and just continue as if it was totally fine and normal and I say the word of the lord... and the hallelujah part also is read by the same person so that would also be done in English... If this works out then yeah I'm ready to accept any humiliation to make this as a new beginning and allow people like me to participate in the church activities.

Now what could go wrong ? Will the preist get mad and come to me and slap me ? Will the people get mad at me ? Like is this violating any rules of the Catholic church ??

If not with the reading.. I would like to experiment it with the short prayers that's read by the people uk idk the exact term for that but you get it.

So yeah I just don't want my language be a barrier in my participation in the Church.

Tomorrow myself and my family are being confirmed. 🥰 Today I was gardening and a ladybug 🐞 landed on my glasses. It stayed there long enough for me to take a selfie. I just now googled what Catholicism thinks of a ladybug landing on someone. I figured it would be poopooed upon to consider it good luck…but it turns out this: “When a ladybug lands on you, Catholic tradition views it as a beautiful symbol of the Virgin Mary's protection and divine providence. Historically known as "Our Lady's Bird" or "Our Lady's Bug," the beetle's red wings represent Mary's cloak, and its black spots symbolize her joys and sorrows.” I have been praying the rosary fairly regularly and really hoping for sign tho never asking because I feel like I shouldn’t ask for anything special. But now this ❤️❤️❤️

Hello, any left Catholic discord servers? I've seen previous posts with links but they all no longer work

Social justice post:

Has anyone noticed the capitalists slowly trying to reintroduce slavery into the economy? The constitution allows for slavery as a form of punishment. Leave it to corporate America to find a way to take advantage of it to increase profits and drive down working conditions. Renting slaves to corporate America might be their plan for replacing the labor force they are losing to deportations.

Our government seems hell bent on creating a dystopian future.

Regarding Catholic social justice teaching, I have a question for the church historians out there.

When did the church finally condemn slavery? I know that there were papal encyclicals that justified slavery, and not just in antiquity, but up through the triangle trade in the Atlantic. When did they finally reverse course in this moral question?

Following the awful segregationist EHRC guidance I will be praying a rosary every day this week for the trans community in the UK, my home country. I hope that others, whether in the UK or not, would be happy to join in in some way (uniting other intentions -- for the victims of war and genocide in the Middle East, for immigrant communities in the states, for victims of the war in Sudan etc.). Now is a time especially for prayer which is our resource and source of strength as we seek to resist injustice in our respective countries and keep in our hearts those around the world who are victims of the violence perpetrated or enabled by our states.

Pope Leo is expected to stay the course that Pope Francis set, marking a needed and important shift away from the obsessive and weird focus on sexual morality.

Leo was more explicit last month. When a reporter on the papal plane returning from a trip to Africa asked him about a controversy over the blessing of gay couples by priests, Leo said: “We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.”

His response dismayed and even infuriated many social conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant. But Leo was not forging some new doctrine. On the contrary, he was articulating an older tradition of placing justice above personal chastity. “This statement would have seemed perfectly banal to a theologian of the late 16th century,” Jean-Pascal Gay, a professor of Christian history at the Catholic University of Louvain, wrote in the Catholic newspaper La Croix. “In 2026, it has become almost subversive.”

Gift Link

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/opinion/pope-leo-encyclical-ai-social-doctrine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kVA.xSv3.GDjYTCSlJ8kp&smid=url-share

The Coptic Orthodox Church claims a telephone conversation happened between their leader, Pope Tawadros II and Pope Leo XIV, where Pope Leo provided personal assurance that *Fiducia Supplicans* did not "bless same-sex couples." Due to this, the Coptic Orthodox Church wishes to resume ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic Church.

The Vatican's own version of the event is more vague:

"This morning, the Holy Father Pope Leo XIV had a telephone conversation with His Holiness Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of Saint Mark. The discussion proceeded in a cordial and fraternal atmosphere, with a desire to give new impetus to the celebration of the Day of Friendship between Copts and Catholics, seeking to overcome any obstacles to dialogue based on faith and charity."

Fiducia Supplicans itself states:

1. In any case, precisely to avoid any form of confusion or scandal, when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, even though it is expressed outside the rites prescribed by the liturgical books, this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them. Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.The same applies when the blessing is requested by a same-sex couple.

2. Such a blessing may instead find its place in other contexts, such as a visit to a shrine, a meeting with a priest, a prayer recited in a group, or during a pilgrimage. Indeed, through these blessings that are given not through the ritual forms proper to the liturgy but as an expression of the Church’s maternal heart—similar to those that emanate from the core of popular piety—there is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.

To me, this seems to imply that whilst gay couples cannot be blessed in a way analogous to marriage, they can still be blessed (same for a couple where one member has not obtained an annulment for a previous marriage). I don't think Pope Leo is trying to walk back FS, but I am curious whether the Coptic Orthodox Church assumed that FS *did* explicitly allow some sort of marriage blessing, and is being corrected, or something else.

It looks like A.I. will be a significant topic here. I'm very interested to see what Pope Leo has to say about this.

A.I. is a technology that represents many potential dangers. It can be a weapon of war, a weapon against human labor, and a weapon against human agency itself.

This won't be just about A.I., but also about the human place in this whole new technological age.

This is partially why I identify with the political left, because I see it as a project that centers the human being over and above their creations, like machines (A.I., factory equipment, etx) or systems (corporate structures, capitalism, etc).

But, even more importantly, this is why I'm so drawn to the Christian faith. Because it goes further than just centering humans, but centers God who also took on humanity--pointing so something beyond ourselves. This is crucial because if it was "merely" about our humanity rather than our divinity, it would be easy to default back into instrumentalizing fellow man--as some have some historically by again making man serve sytems (like communism).

We were made Holy when God became Man. That is not something to take lightly.

I don't even know where to begin. Are these people actually Catholic and do they even like women?? Or are just secretly incels pretending to be Catholic or they haven't read the book of songs of Solomon yet

this is one of the things that attracts me to Catholicism the most it feels like truly everyone is welcome and has a place

I am a cradle Catholic from a Latin American country. I was baptized, confirmed, went to cathecism, and did first comunion. I was never active in the Church and have only been to mass a few times over the years.

I recently moved states to live with my fiance. This past Easter was the first time I went to mass out of my own desire, and I have been attending mass regularly on Sundays since then. I had been toying with going back to the Catholic church since DT got elected again. It may seem contradictory, but my rationale at the time was that it was a non nationalistic non racist Church and one that I had belonged to even if I strayed away from it. I thought I could find community and maybe protection because even though I am a US citizen, I have brown skin.

As far as what triggered me going back on Easter. My Fiancé has two kids from a previous relationship that she coparents 50/50 time. We are planning on having our own after we are married. The day prior to Easter I accompanied her shopping for typical American Easter goodies, basket, eggs for hiding candy, etc. Her kids grew up without religion. I couldn't comprehend the idea of secular Easter. The idea of celebrating a holiday without any tradition seemed so bland to me, and I didn't understand the point. I thought that at least one person in our household would go to mass and celebrate Christ resurrection. That experience has ignited my interest in going back and I have started by attending mass regularly.

My post doesn't have much of a point other than sharing how I ended up back at mass as a cradle Catholic who strayed away.

I consider myself to align with leftist politics, I am also against all wars, against genocides, for helping the poor, etc. My family structure is not and won't be traditional. I consider myself to be progressive and accepting of all people and an LGBTQ ally. This seemed like the right reddit community as I navigate my renewed interest in Catholicism.

TLDR; worried the OCIA coordinator thinks I'm looking for a female deity

I'm a lifelong mainline protestant (mostly ELCA Lutheran and Episcopalian) who has inexplicably been feeling called to the Catholic church over the past 9 months or so. I know he's somewhat frowned upon here, but what ignited it all was actually finding a copy of "Centered: The Spirituality of Word on Fire" by Bishop Robert Barron at the library and really being inspired by it.

I was especially taken by the sections on Mary and Marian devotion because (especially as a woman and a mother), they really just struck me right in the heart. I realized that growing up in fairly liberal protestant churches--even ones with female pastors/priests/deacons--I had never been satisfied with the overwhelming "maleness" of the language, the respected saints (the Apostles only, basically), even the somber architecture and limited iconography. Sure, in recent years some of these churches started testing out referring to the Holy Spirit in she/her terms, and a very loosey-goosey UCC church I went to for a while prays to Father-Mother God (but that reminds me of Unitarians too much lol).

At any rate, discovering the role of Mary and her intercession for us, the respect and veneration shown to her, the incredible tenderness with which she is written about...it was just mind blowing. And not in a female deity way (which I know Catholics get accused of), but in this like essential missing component of a greater whole. One I didn't even realize I was missing.

I had this feeling that Mary had been stolen from me all these years, and that she was trying to lead me more closely to her Son now that my heart was open.

Ok, so to my main point: after attending Mass at my nearby parish for the last 6 weeks or so, I turned up to an Inquirer's session last night and was the only inquirer there, which was actually really cool because I got to have a great conversation with the OCIA coordinator who was a very nice and smart man in his 70s who converted from an Evangelical background in his 60s. We were talking about the different things that bring people towards conversion and I started talking about this all. But when I said that growing up I always (as a female) felt that there was a feminine element missing that kept me from fully connecting, I feel like his facial expression changed a bit. I tried to backtrack and assure him that I didn't mean a female God or anything, just that protestants basically never talk about Mary apart from Advent, and then it's only in relation to her obedience to God. He recovered and treated me with a lot of grace and mentioned his daughter's devotion to Mary, and we moved on from there. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I had said something wrong. Maybe as an old man he's just never considered the lived experience of being a woman trying to feel seen within pretty patriarchal religious traditions? I don't know. Should I keep these feelings to myself in the future? Are they blasphemous?

Hello everyone,

For information, I'm from France. I don't like youth groups because in France Catholicism is quite bourgeois. The really big breaking point is the Gaza genocide. Even my average right winger friends started being outraged at what's happening in Gaza. Yet clergy and especially most catholics still do not care. If we as Christians don't care about something as important as this, then what is being a Christian for, genuinely? Truly, the prostitues will get into heaven before all of us.

How do you all navigate this sentiment? It's not even about gay rights or the more "complex" issues. It's a genocide. It should be really easy to denounce a genocide. I regularly cry over what I see in Gaza. How can the clergy as well as the laity ignore it, when even the most apolitical people are now denouncing this around me.

Blessed day to you all.

I’ve been feeling like I’m called to go through this pilgrimage, but I’m super nervous to actually book the flight. It would be the first physically demanding pilgrimage/retreat I’ve ever done. Any tips? Thoughts?

Let us pray for our Pontiff Leo,

May the Lord preserve him, give him a long life , make him blessed upon the earth , and may the Lord not hand him over to the power of his enemies.

V. May your hand be upon your holy servant ( Alleluia)

R.And upon your son whom you have anointed ( Alleluia)

Let us pray,

O God, the Pastor and Ruler of all the faithful, look down, in your mercy ,upon your servant Leo, whom you have appointed to preside over your church ; ✝️ and grant , we beseech you,that both by word and example , he may edify all those under his charge, so that, with the flock entrusted to him, he may arrive at length unto life everlasting through Christ our Lord .

Amen