Vatican News: Vatican releases schedule for Pope’s Consistory with Cardinals
Pope Leo XIV will meet with members of the College of Cardinals on June 26-27 for an Extraordinary Consistory focused on the current situation of the Church and the world, the pursuit of peace, and the implementation of the Synod.
Vatican News – link to article
The Holy See Press Office has released the programme for the Extraordinary Consistory of Cardinals set for June 26-27, just ahead of the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul.
As Pope Leo XIV meets with the Cardinals, they will discuss issues such as conflicts afflicting the world and how the Church should communicate through language and attitudes to build peace and reconciliation.
It will be the second Consistory gathering of Pope Leo’s pontificate, following the meeting held in January, which brought together 170 Cardinal electors and non-electors from around the world.
At the close of that Consistory, the Pope announced the June meeting, telling the Cardinals: “I feel and experience the need to be able to count on you.”
According to the programme released by the Holy See Press Office, the work will follow a “synodal” method, with prayer, silence, personal reflection, group discussion, and plenary sessions.
The Cardinals have been asked to maintain “confidentiality” regarding what takes place in the hall and not to make statements to the press during the Consistory, in order to preserve an atmosphere of fraternal exchange.
Four sessions of reflection
Participants will be divided into 20 groups. Nine groups will be made up of Cardinal electors who are Ordinaries, including Apostolic Nuncios and Cardinal electors who have completed their service as Ordinaries.
The other eleven groups will include Cardinal electors of the Roman Curia and non-elector Cardinals.
Each group will have a president, who will moderate the discussion and keep time, as well as a secretary, who will gather the contributions and draft the group’s final report.
The Consistory will begin on Friday, June 26, with Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, presided over by Pope Leo XIV.
The Cardinals will then move to the Paul VI Hall for the opening session, which will begin with the singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus, an address by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals, and an introductory intervention by the Pope.
The first session will focus on the question: “In what kind of world are we called to proclaim the Gospel?” Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, Metropolitan Archbishop of Krakow, will offer a biblical meditation, followed by silence, prayer, group sharing, and reports in plenary session.
On Friday afternoon, the second session will consider the theme “The culture of power and the civilization of love.” Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, will introduce the theme, drawing on Chapter V of Magnifica humanitas.
Building the common good
On Saturday morning, after Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica presided over by Cardinal Re, the Cardinals will resume their work in the Paul VI Hall.
The third session, entitled “Building in the good: the worksites of our time,” will be introduced by Cardinal Stephen Brislin, Metropolitan Archbishop of Johannesburg and President of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
The discussion will focus on the fractures that make it difficult to build the common good, the questions emerging from peoples and communities, and the support that local Churches and the universal Church can offer.
The fourth and final session will take place on Saturday afternoon in the New Synod Hall and will be dedicated to “The path of implementing the Synod.” Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod, will introduce the theme, beginning from the document Towards the Synodal Assemblies 2027-2028: Stages, Criteria, and Instruments for Preparation.
The session will include questions of clarification, a dialogue with Pope Leo XIV, and free interventions lasting no more than three minutes.
The Pope’s concluding address will bring the Consistory to a close, followed by the singing of the Te Deum and a dinner with the Pope in the Paul VI Hall.
On Monday, June 29, Pope Leo XIV will preside at Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.
The first session (of the ongoing consistory) will focus on the question: “In what kind of world are we called to proclaim the Gospel?”
Answer: One in which the church hierarchy – including all of its cardinals – still defer the clear and honest identification of the ecclesial sin that hid the phenomenon of clerical sexual abuse – thereby disabling their own power to proclaim the Gospel of the forgiveness of all sins – including that one.
The inability of YouCat even to index that sin (Pride) is no coincidence. To speak of pride as the sin behind all violence – and all hiding of abuse – would require the hierarchy not only to describe it clearly – but to give examples, and the example of a culture of secrecy in the church that harmed the most innocent could not honestly be excluded. Far better then (it has obviously been concluded) not to talk about that sin at all – even in a Catechism intended for youth.
And so, when it comes to sin, the church is still in an era of ‘don’t talk about pride’. The 2022 Irish call for a ‘reckoning’ on clerical abuse – repeated even by Ireland’s bishops – has been blanked at the highest level – seriously endangering synodality also.
Not for nothing does Charles Collins of CRUX call out this obvious dithering of those who wear red as a symbol of readiness for martyrdom. Readiness for “sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed” is still a step too far.
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2026/06/synodality-leo-style-holds-promise-the-clerical-abuse-crisis-is-the-real-test
Sean, what exactly is Charles Collins (CRUX) talking about? He says there is a burgeoning crisis of abuse and cover-up in the Catholic Church? What exactly is he referring to? He cites one case, which by no means signals a wave of abuse: “a jury in Texas sentenced Father Anthony Odiong to life in prison earlier this month, after finding him guilty of serial felony sexual assault.” He says child abuse is declining, and we must now focus on abuse of adults. “The abuse crisis is also changing form. Abuse of minors is thankfully falling drastically – although not totally – but the abuse of adults is emerging as a grave and widespread issue in urgent need of address.” He says: “the pontiff hasn’t given the cardinals a real-world practical problem to address. Leo has just such an issue in the burgeoning global crisis of clerical sexual abuse and coverup.” Short of material, he spends most of the article on the technicalities of synodality.
You will recall, Joe, that following the first 1980s revelations of clerical abuse of children in Louisiana, USA, an eastward-tending wave of similar revelation followed, affecting e.g. Ireland, Germany, France – even Poland and more recently Spain and even Italy.
While that was happening Ireland’s Margaret Kennedy was writing a PhD thesis on Christian clergy adult abuse – the unacknowledged problem of clergy overstepping pastoral boundaries in their adult relationships with women who came to them seeking pastoral support. That problem of adult abuse was also part of the case of which Pope Leo himself became aware in Peru – the abusive Sodalitium Christianae Vitae exposed by the journalists whom he supported, now suppressed – and he is also right now dealing with complaints by female former members of Opus Dei, including Ireland’s Anne Marie Allen – central to a Financial Times investigation of OD that led to the more recent book by Gareth Gore – which Pope Leo has described as ‘rigorous’.
Was there not also – c. 2001 – the revelation that an Irish nun, Sr Maura O’Donohue MMM had in 1994 presented a confidential dossier to the papacy on African clergy sexual abuse of female religious there, documenting the phenomenon across more than six African nations and including the prediction that this would be revealed as a global problem? (Whatever transpired from that – does anyone know?)
As this wave of revelation – by secular media – was happening did we not hear c. 2003 – again from secular media – of a Vatican document called Crimen Sollicitationis (1962), binding bishops to strict secrecy on abuse of minors and of the confessional for sexual solicitation – while pontifical secrecy for abuse cases was formally lifted only in 2019?
Never yet has it been explained why, when it comes to abuse in the church, we hear of it first from external secular sources – not from any internal process. That this points conclusively to a systemic structural problem has never been admitted. Meanwhile the papal commission for the protection of minors reports that safeguarding is patchy globally, and Hans Zollner SJ, head of the IADC at the Greg – the church’s leading Centre for safeguarding research and formation – has repeatedly warned that the church has no global mechanism to ensure bishops apply safeguarding norms consistently.
If this does not mean that Catholics globally must still rely on secular sources to keep them up to date on the abuse crisis – and must still await the full reckoning called for by the Irish national synodal synthesis of 2022, what does it mean?
Pope Francis’ insistence that bishops are not called to replace the conscience of the laity surely has a corollary – the need for an affirmation at the highest level of the primacy of individual conscience – as a counter-weight to the hierarchical principle – when it comes to safeguarding of all, especially children – when the papacy has not yet formally admitted the sinfulnesss of binding anyone ever to secrecy on such matters?
And Ireland still has to experience a full accounting of abuse in Catholic schools.
You will surely come back to point out that most abuse occurs within families, with no school system immune anywhere. Agreed!
In February 2005 Irish bishops produced a Lenten reflection – ‘Towards Healing’ – proposing a whole church response to all such abuse. It was still-born – just like ‘Share the Good News’ in 2011 – probably due to general clerical unreadiness for open discussion of the matter. That problem hasn’t gone away, while the role of the rule of mandatory clerical celibacy in this whole debacle cannot be honestly and openly addressed either.
Is it really any wonder that Charles Collins of CRUX wonders why the consistory of cardinals cannot prioritise the issue?
Charles Collins is also probably alluding to the ongoing investigation by the DDF of former Jesuit Marko Rupnik, renowned artist, for abuse alleged by female religious in Czech Republic, Slovenia and Italy. e.g.
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2025/06/vatican-website-removes-pictures-of-artwork-created-by-priest-accused-of-abuse/
Two different AI bots – Copilot and Claude – also confirm similarities of the Rupnik case and an earlier case in Kerala, India, where a Bishop Mulakkal was accused of abuse by a religious sister in 2018 – and then got the support of some of her order’s sisters – and that case has also still reportedly not been resolved to the satisfaction of the women involved.
Maybe it is that phenomenon of religious women not deferring to higher authority – and openly protesting against decisions that initially went in favour of a higher-status accused – that Charles Collins is referencing? The 1994 O’Donoghue dossier maybe referenced instead the silence and deference of the women affected – their trust that reporting to Rome would somehow resolve the matter without a public fuss?
Isn’t the DDF also studying the phenomenon of adult spiritual abuse, allegedly exemplified not just by Rupnik but by Jean Vanier and his clerical mentor, a Fr Thomas Philippe OP – the latter of whose abuses the church was aware as early as 1956?
The inequalities of power that can exist between adults makes the protection of vulnerable adults almost as much of a priority as the protection of children – given that ‘pastoring’ can be an encounter between a cleric and a person at a point of vulnerability, making ‘consent’ illusory. That’s all ‘in process’ – and in the meantime we get these high profile cases of some affected women saying, publicly, ‘enough’.
My guess is that Charles Collins is seeing that as an emerging trend, likely to ‘burgeon’?
We are reduced to guesswork about what Charles Collins is possibly alluding to. Referring to cases from thirty to seventy years ago would rather suggest that the abuse of adults by clergy was more prominent back then, rather than something presently burgeoning, or “likely to burgeon. I venture to suggest that clergy today are much more sensitive to pastoral boundaries and to professional deontology. Given the sexual complexion of so many priests today, abuse of adult women is rarer, except in Africa. Open discussion of the real or possible problems would be great, but it is made difficult by discussion-stopping amalgamations such as the branding of Fr Rupnik’s work as “rape art.” Visit the Chapel of the Irish College in Rome to see how beautiful and spiritually profound his art can be. It would be a crime to destroy it. As well slash Caravaggio’s paintings or silence Gesualdo’s music since both were murderers. (BTW, Sean, you attribute to me stereotyped defensive arguments, whataboutery re abuse in families and schools — this sort of thing is inappropriate in discussing such difficult and grave issues.)
Mea Culpa, Joe – that attribution was due my own defensiveness, re e.g. the SAVI report of 2002 – still regarded as a landmark study of the prevalence of all sexual violence in Ireland – probably also a trigger for that sadly still-born church document of 2005 ‘Towards Healing’.
Please God someday in Ireland synodality will rise to the challenge of discussing this issue under the generic umbrella of abuse of power. A full confession of the ecclesiastical contribution to that should surely be seen as a sine qua non of ‘mission’? In the meantime the best we can individually do is pray, especially for those who still suffer.