In summarizing the prelate’s biblical meditation, Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, reported that Cardinal Ryś said that “the Samaritan’s mercy, closeness and generosity reveal that charity is not the exclusive preserve of Christians but a place where the Church and the world can meet in genuine dialogue.”

Vatican News also reported—inaccurately—that the prelate is the archbishop of Łódź. Pope Leo transferred Cardinal Ryś from Łódź to Kraków last year.

Cardinal Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, praised Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo’s encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, as part of the “living tradition of the great documents of the Pontifical Magisterium regarding the Church’s social doctrine, analyzing today’s reality with faith and depth.”

Cardinal Re concluded by thanking the Pope for his “strong words condemning the war, which for everyone is nothing but a loss and a grave, inhumane tragedy.”

During the Mass and procession, prelates called for the humane treatment of migrants. Reuters reported that “more than 100” Catholics took part, including bishops, priests, religious, and lay faithful.

An Italian journalist reported today that Cardinal Gerhard Müller “shook up” the extraordinary consistory of the College of Cardinals by calling for a formal response to the Society of Saint Pius X’s latest statements ahead of its scheduled episcopal consecrations.

“I offer the prayers and solidarity of the Church in the United States to our sisters and brothers affected by this tragedy,” said Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, the Maronite bishop of Los Angeles. “Let us all join in prayer that Our Lady of Coromoto, patroness of Venezuela, will comfort and protect her children and that compassionate international assistance will arrive swiftly.”

“Human trafficking is a contemporary form of slavery and a grave violation of the God-given human dignity,” Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, said during a June 22 meeting with the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons.

“My Delegation wishes to emphasize the importance of prevention, protection, liberation, and rehabilitation,” Archbishop Balestrero added. “In this context, the role of the family is vital, particularly through family reunification and guardianship for unaccompanied children.”

Vatican News’s summary of the confidential deliberations hinted that some of the cardinals are tiring of synodal meetings: the agency reported that “the cardinals addressed the risk that the complexity of consultation could weigh down the Church at a time when it is called to give its witness.”

“Some of the themes that emerged included deepening the ascetical and historical dimensions of synodality, while offering the faithful an image of the priesthood that is both evangelical and non-clerical,” the summary added.

According to the Vatican News’s summary of the confidential deliberations, “the antidote to individualism and to fractures, many groups agreed, is the Gospel: a Church that offers a sense of belonging, that is able to soothe the wounds of our time, and that is renewed while avoiding forms of integralism and polarization; a Church that makes visible its Samaritan face, with Christians who are not spectators of social ruin, but wise architects who rebuild the city of all.”

According to the summary, the cardinals also discussed the following topics, among others:

• “the deep fractures of our time: among peoples and nations, within societies, and within families themselves; and on how these generate wounds, especially among the poorest, the weakest, young people who lack a sense of newness, and adults lacking the wisdom of years”
• “the danger posed by a lack of meaning, meaningful relationships, and identity, which pushes people toward a tribal attitude”
• “the call to give names to living beings, and not to reduce them to numbers and statistics; to experience and accept the human sense of limits, which AI tends to deny; and to defend the dignity of work”
• the common good, with its “its origin in faith: faith in God and in the transcendent dimension present in every person, which leads human beings to go beyond every frontier, beginning with the one that takes them beyond themselves; to live solidarity with the poor as a response to individualism; to live catholicity fully; to build gratuitous relationships, not institutions, at every level; and to seek a language capable of engaging with settings distant from the Christian faith”

Reflecting on Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo’s encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, Cardinal Brislin said that for believers, contributing to the common good “takes on the form of synodality.”

“Cardinal Brislin described synodality as the concrete trace of the communion from which the Church is born and grows, enabling Christians to enter the building site of history without fear,” Vatican News reported in its summary of the prelate’s remarks.

According to the Vatican News’s summary of the confidential deliberations, “all the groups [of cardinals] reaffirmed the centrality of faith in Christ and of the Gospel, which has the power to transform the world when it is lived rather than treated as mere theory.”

“Many participants stressed the need to move beyond the logic of just war, since the Gospel cannot be imposed by force, and instead to speak of the right to proportionate self-defense,” according to the summary.

Vatican News reported that the cardinals also discussed the following topics, among others:

• “the challenges of the present time, highlighting the dehumanizing force of the culture of power, its universal reach, the temptation to conform to the logic of the powerful, and the normalization of war and polarization”
• “the responsibility to build peace and a civilization of love”
• “the importance of offering a credible witness—beginning within the Church itself—through a language centered on people: one of listening, forgiveness, reconciliation, restorative justice, and concrete gestures”
• “unity within the Church is essential to its credibility, as is dialogue with other faiths and religions, particularly Islam”
• “the role of political authority, calling for it to be freed from what was described as its toxic link with economic power”