BOYCOTT CAT

Israeli bulldozers raze about 50 Palestinian shops ahead of settlement-linked road project

AL-EIZARIYA, West Bank (AP) — Israel says the demolitions are needed to make way for a road serving Palestinian communities. But Palestinian officials say the road is part of a broader plan to keep Palestinian vehicles off a new highway being built to serve nearby Israeli settlements.

Sam Metz and Mahmoud Ilean
May 14, 2026

AL-EIZARIYA, West Bank (AP) — Israeli bulldozers tore down dozens of Palestinian shops on the edge of a town southeast of Jerusalem this week, clearing land ahead of a settlement-linked road project in the occupied West Bank.

Israel says the demolitions are needed to make way for a road serving Palestinian communities. But Palestinian officials say the road is part of a broader plan to keep Palestinian vehicles off a new highway being built to serve nearby Israeli settlements.

That project is part of a strategic section of the West Bank known as E1, which Israel is developing with the intention of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“The shops that were demolished are where Israel is planning to build a new road that will divert all Palestinian traffic to that road so that they can close down the whole area of E1 for Palestinians,” said Hagit Ofran, director of the antisettlement group Peace Now.

Tuesday’s demolitions took place in the town of al-Eizariya, less than a week after some owners received notices to evacuate shops built without permits. Attorneys appealed, up to Israel’s Supreme Court, but the demolitions went ahead.

Israeli authorities said the buildings including car washes, scrap metal shops and vegetable stands were built illegally and owners had been warned for “several years” enforcement was forthcoming.

COGAT, the Israeli military body overseeing civil affairs in the West Bank, said the structures obstructed construction of the planned road to connect Palestinian towns.

The new road system is meant to solve congestion and improve the quality of life of Palestinian towns in the area, Israel says.

Rights groups and the internationally backed Palestinian Authority say the demolitions are connected to Israel’s plans to overhaul transportation and create separate road systems for Israeli and Palestinian ID holders. They say Israel’s planned tunnel-and-bypass road will reroute Palestinian traffic off a major Israeli highway linking nearby West Bank settlements to Jerusalem, in effect cutting off drivers from large swaths of the territory.

Some of the demolished shops partially blocked sidewalks and roads leading into the town. But Palestinians say proper construction permits are nearly impossible to obtain from Israeli authorities, even as Israeli settlements rapidly expand.

Mohammad Abu Ghalieh, a 48-year-old shop owner, was dumbfounded that he would have to start over after the demolitions.

“Forty-eight years of night and day to build something for his children and himself, and in one day and one night, everything was gone,” he said.

Daoud al-Jahalin, the head of nearby village council, said more than 200 families would lose their incomes.

The E1 project is especially contentious because it runs from the outskirts of Jerusalem deep into the occupied West Bank, isolating the cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem and hindering north-south movement for the Palestinians.

Both Israeli leaders and critics of settlements say the E1 plan would complicate efforts to establish of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank. Israel is planning to build some 3,500 apartments next to the existing settlement of Maale Adumim.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the occupied territory to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.

___

Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank. Shlomo Mor contributed from Al-Eizariya.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath faces deportation from France

Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath is facing deportation proceedings from France, as his presence in the country is now considered a “serious threat to public order” by authorities, his lawyer said on Friday. The activist, a co-founder of the Urgence Palestine organisation, had been detained in Egypt between 2019 and 2022 before being released and allowed to join his wife in France.


Issued on: 15/05/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

In this undated image from the Free Ramy Shaath Facebook page, Ramy Shaath poses for a picture in Cairo. © AP

Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath is facing deportation from France after authorities deemed his presence a "serious threat to public order", his lawyer told AFP on Friday.

Shaath, 54, was a prominent figure of the 2011 uprising in Egypt and the coordinator of the country's chapter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

He spent 900 days in detention in Egypt between 2019 and 2022 before he was released and allowed to leave for France, a decision French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed at the time.

Freed activist Ramy Shaath says 'arbitrary detentions' on the rise in Egypt

THE INTERVIEW © FRANCE 24

11:54

"The Nanterre prefecture has notified us that it intends to initiate deportation proceedings," Shaath's lawyer, Damia Taharraoui, said, referring to the western Paris suburb.

The prefecture's notice, seen by AFP, cites his links to "figures of the Palestinian cause in France" and organisations including Urgence Palestine – which he co-founded after Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war – as grounds for opening deportation proceedings.

The notice also points to "repeated controversial actions and remarks" allegedly made during public appearances, including at a November 2023 protest in Paris, where he denounced what he called "Israel's criminal occupation of Gaza" and referred to "Israeli 'terrorists' who bomb houses and hospitals".

An investigation into the offence of "defending terrorism" opened over the remarks was closed in October 2024.

French arms exports to Israel ‘a continuous pipeline of military hardware’

He is to appear before a deportation committee on May 21 after which the prefecture "may immediately issue a deportation order that can be enforced at any time", Taharraoui said.

"He cannot be deported to Egypt, because he no longer holds Egyptian nationality, nor to Palestine, because the country is at war," the lawyer added.

For his part, Shaath said he had attended several demonstrations calling for "an immediate ceasefire, an end to the genocide, sanctions, arms embargoes and international action" against Israel.

"My stance has never changed since the time France worked to secure my release from Egyptian prisons where I was a political prisoner ... but today, it seems they want to silence me," he told AFP.

Contacted by AFP, the Nanterre prefecture and the Interior Ministry did not immediately respond.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

GOP civil war growing as party 'splinters' over Israel ties: report

Tom Boggioni
May 16, 2026 
RAW STORY


President Donald Trump talks with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS


A significant schism is emerging within the Republican Party over the extent to which the United States should support Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — with a substantial number of MAGA voters showing unwavering loyalty while non-MAGA conservatives increasingly question America's commitment to the longtime ally.

According to Politico, new polling from The POLITICO Poll reveals stark divides among Republican voters on Israel policy, with the party's traditional unity on Middle East issues fracturing amid Trump's unpopular Iran war and growing skepticism about U.S. interventionism.

Nearly half of self-identified MAGA Trump voters say they back Israel and approve of Netanyahu's government's actions, while just 29 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters say the same. The divide is even more pronounced on specific military operations: 41 percent of MAGA voters say Israel is justified in its military campaign in Gaza, compared with 31 percent of non-MAGA voters.

On whether Israel has overextended militarily, 24 percent of MAGA voters believe the country was initially justified but has gone too far — compared with 31 percent of non-MAGA voters.

Non-MAGA voters are notably more critical of Israeli influence on U.S. policy. They are 10 percentage points more likely than MAGA Trump voters to believe the Israeli government has too much influence over American foreign policy, Politico's Lisa Kashinsky and Erin Doherty are reporting.

The emerging fractures have spilled into an ugly public debate, with prominent Republicans including Tucker Carlson, former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Steve Bannon all criticizing America's close relationship with Israel — particularly as the Iran war escalates.

Most Republican members of Congress and conservative influencers like Laura Loomer and Ben Shapiro have remained steadfast pro-Israel voices defending the administration's foreign policy approach.

Republicans were powerfully unified in support of Israel in the immediate aftermath of Hamas' October 7 attack. But amid the Iran war and growing unease about Trump's foreign interventions, Israel's standing appears increasingly fragile among the non-MAGA wing of the GOP and among young conservatives.

"There is a sentiment right now within the Republican Party of, 'America First,' let's get out of all of the conflicts in the world, let's not be committed to those conflicts," said Amnon Cavari, an associate professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University in Israel, told Politico.

According to the report, the emerging Republican divide carries "significant implications" for the future of the U.S.-Israel alliance and GOP efforts to maintain the coalition that powered Trump's return to the White House.

NATIONALISM IS FASCISM

‘Some hide their crosses’: Jerusalem nun attack highlights Israel’s growing anti-Christian problem

‘To be Israeli is to be Jewish’

LONG READ


When a foreign nun was the victim of violent physical assault in Jerusalem last month, local activists and clergy say they were shocked but not surprised. In the past few years, anti-Christian incidents have surged in Israel – illustrating how a small minority of insular and mainly ultra-religious nationalist or ultra-Orthodox Jews are becoming increasingly emboldened to act out their anger and hate.


Issued on: 15/05/2026 - 
FRANCE24

By: Louise NORDSTROM

An Orthodox Christian woman holds a cross during Good Friday processions in Jerusalem's Old City © Bernat Armangue, AP/ File


On Wednesday evening, Yisca Harani spent several hours at a local police station.

“I got a report about a ‘spitter’,” the Jewish activist said over a patchy phone line from Jerusalem, explaining that a Christian monk had been the latest target of such humiliation.

Harani, who heads the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC) – an Israeli NGO that documents anti-Christian incidents and help victims report them to authorities – said there are so many cases now that she and her roughly 100 volunteers are kept busy “24/7”.

“The most common is spitting,” she said. “But it can also be graffiti on [Christian] signs with crosses on them, vandalism or different forms of harassment.”

The perpetrators, she said, belong to a very tiny part of Israel’s population of 10 million – “most Jews would never do this” – and mainly identify as ultra-Orthodox, Shas-style Sephardis or nationalist religious Jews.

“They all wear kippah [traditional Jewish skullcaps]. I’ve not seen one secular Jew misbehave toward Christians.”

In 2024, her organisation recorded 107 incidents. Last year, the number jumped to 181.

“There isn’t a month that goes by without at least ten incidents reported,” she said, but noted that in reality, the numbers are likely much higher. This is in part because victims either do not know how to report, or do not want to “make a fuss” over less serious offences like spitting.

Why the spitting?

The question of spitting takes us centuries back through the history of Jewish-Christian relations, throughout which Jews, as a minority, suffered immensely at the hands of a Christian majority – from anti-Semitism and persecution to attempts at extermination.

In the 11th century, Jews (then being persecuted during the Crusades) were accused of spitting at the cross in an act of religious contempt, Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein explained in a Times of Israel blog post. Some Jewish communities then adopted this gesture to show resistance and defiance. Over time, “the spitting Jew” became a negative stereotype for Jews.

When the state of Israel was created in 1948, Jews became a majority group for the first time, with Christians in the minority, and the spitting became even more symbolic.

Goshen-Gottstein wrote that the problem is that some insular Jewish communities have not followed modern developments in the Christian world, and do not know that many churches have since revised their theologies, legitimised Judaism, issued apologies and are even fighting anti-Semitism.

“The spitters and attackers are, of course, clueless,” Goshen-Gottstein said.

Far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir added fuel to the fire in 2023, when he, as Israel’s sitting national security minister, told Army Radio that spitting at Christians was not a crime, and that not everything “justifies an arrest”.

Jewish ultra-nationalists celebrate at Damascus Gate during the annual Jerusalem Day march commemorating Israel's capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, Jerusalem's Old City, May 14, 2026. © Leo Correa, AP

‘Think twice about going out’

The brutal physical assault of a French Dominican nun in East Jerusalem on April 28, however, sent new shock waves throughout the Christian community. In CCTV footage capturing the attack, an Orthodox man is seen running up behind a Christian nun, shoving her to the ground, and returning to kick her once before bystanders intervene.

WATCH MORE Anti-Christian aggression on the rise in Jerusalem

“This is the most extreme case we’ve seen. During the three years since I founded RFDC, there may have been three or four physical interactions,” Harani said, but stressed that none of them had been this violent.

Since then, her NGO has been called upon to “escort” Christians through Jerusalem. While accompanying the faithful, the RFDC volunteers keep their phone cameras open at all times, ready to film any potential assaults they may be targeted by.

On Wednesday, the Knesset held a special committee session on the attack against the nun and the way Christians are being treated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly condemned the incident, but critics say the meeting was mainly called because the footage went viral, embarrassing the Israeli government on the international stage.

Several of the Christian representatives present at the hearing recounted routine harassment on the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, the Haaretz newspaper reported, and cited incidents in which Israeli security forces had prevented devotees access to prayer sites or in which Christians had been the victims of stone-throwing or kicking.

"I call on the Israeli government to call these acts by their name: hate crimes," Father Aghan Gogchian, the chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate, said.

Neighbours staging protests

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, some 185,000 Christians were registered in Israel at the end of 2025, accounting for about 1.9 percent of the population. Most of these are Arab Christians – a minority that is often overlooked, rarely talked about and whose Arabic heritage makes them especially vulnerable in a Jewish state like Israel.

Hana Bendcowsky, program director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations at the interreligious Rossing Center, said there had been incidents where local demonstrations had been staged in front of Arab Christian homes because their Jewish neighbours did not want them living there.

“Maybe because they are Christian, maybe because they are Arabs. It is not clear.”

Another group that is regularly targeted are those who wear visible Christian symbols or religious clothing, such as pilgrims, nuns and monks.

“Every priest you talk to will tell you that spitting is almost a daily experience,” Bendcowsky said.

Some, especially after the attack on the nun, have therefore become more careful in showing their religious affiliations.

“They hide their crosses in their pockets and so on, or avoid wearing their habits when they go to certain places.”

Father David Neuhaus SJ, who has lived in Jerusalem for almost five decades and for several years served as superior of the Jesuit community at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, said that after the assault on the nun “there are people who think twice before going out unless it is absolutely necessary”.

Although he refuses to give in to the fear himself, he said: “There is now an awareness that you need to look around you, think about where you are going, think about how you dress. There is a feeling that at any moment your life could suddenly take a turn for the worse.”

‘To be Israeli is to be Jewish’

All three interviewees FRANCE 24 spoke to said the intolerance against non-Jews in Israel – whether Christians, Muslims or others – has spiked in recent years, fuelled by new government policies, war, and of course, the October 7, 2023 terror attacks.

Father Neuhaus said it did not help that Israel has been an extremely militarised state from the start and has been “built on settler colonialism”.

“We’re a very violent society,” he said. “Take a bus, take a train, walk down the street – everyone is armed. That already is an incredible violence.”

An armed Israeli walks in Jerusalem's Old City ahead of a march marking Jerusalem Day, an Israeli holiday celebrating the capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, on May 14, 2026. © Ohad Zwigenberg, AP

Harani, of RFDC, said the 2018 “Nation-State Law” marked the real first turn for the worse in Israel’s religious intolerance.

“This law is the epitome of this whole psychosis: that to be Israeli is to be Jewish – religiously and nationalistically.”

The law defined Israel as national home of the Jewish people and encouraged the use of Jewish symbols in Israeli society. Critics say this quickly forged a climate of religious nationalism and contributed to religious minorities feeling increasingly marginalised.

Since then, Harani said Netanyahu’s government shows “absolute disregard for certain behaviours in the radical sector. Their behavior is tolerated, and therefore gives them the green light. It’s passive encouragement.”

And, she said, “they [the perpetrators] are becoming more and more audacious”.

Father Neuhaus agreed. “When lower-level incidents like spitting are ignored, the message is that violence is OK.”

The trauma, anger and frustration linked to the October 7 attacks led some insular Jewish groups to start “dehumanising the other”, Bendcowsky said. She pointed particularly to the uptick in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. She noted that many of them are either in denial of, or have no knowledge of, the death and pain Israel has brought to civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

WATCH MORE Settler violence surges in the West Bank

“So what we see with Christians is just one symptom of the general atmosphere,” she said.

However terrible the aggression on the nun might have been, Harani said it did serve at least one meaningful purpose: shining a light on the Israeli government’s treatment of Christians.

“I’m in almost daily contact with the nun and visited her yesterday,” Harani said. “I told her: ‘In a way, you were chosen to be the stop sign for what is happening’.”

FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Jerusalem Noga Tarnopolsky contributed to this report.

Palestinian man shot dead while climbing West Bank barrier into Israel in search of work

JERUSALEM (AP) — An increasing number of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank have attempted to enter Israel illegally to work in recent years.

Sam Metz
May 15, 2026

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinian authorities said Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian man as he attempted to climb the concrete barrier separating the occupied West Bank from Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Health Ministry and the Palestinian Red Crescent identified the man as Zakaria Qatusa, 44, from the town of Deir Qadis, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) northwest of the site of the shooting Tuesday evening in the West Bank town of Al-Ram, which abuts the wall.

Israeli police didn’t immediately respond to queries about the shooting. The funeral for the man was held on Wednesday.

Khalid Qatusa, his brother, said that he was a father of four who was crossing the wall in order to work in Israel.

“He was forced to resort to this method as there was no other opportunity to meet the needs of his household and live a dignified life. This was the only way,” he said. “He was neither an aggressor nor a threat.”

An increasing number of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank have attempted to enter Israel illegally to work in recent years. Before the Israel-Hamas war, tens of thousands of Palestinians held permits to work in Israel, but access was sharply restricted after the attack by Hamas-led militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Since then, unemployment has surged amid a deep economic slowdown and a shortage of jobs in the occupied West Bank. Other shootings have taken place at the same location separating the West Bank town of Al-Ram from Beit Hanina, an east Jerusalem neighborhood.

Also on Wednesday, a Palestinian teenager was killed in a clash with Israeli settlers in the northern West Bank village of Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry identified the victim as 16-year-old Youssef Kaabneh.

The Israeli military said soldiers and police officers entered the area in response to reports that livestock from an Israeli outpost was stolen. They said they worked to disperse a violent riot and were investigating the incident.

Family members said settlers and Israeli soldiers descended on the Bedouin community and that Kaabneh was shot during a confrontation involving a sheep herd. As Israeli settlers expand their presence and outposts, livestock theft has been a major source of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians this year.

“Our lives have become a living hell. Settlers can now enter any house or farm and confiscate whatever they want, as if we are spoils of war,” said Ismail Owais, a 60-year-old resident of the village.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli forces or settlers killed at least 47 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank this year as of May 11. Several, like Kaabneh, have been teenagers.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The Cherokee Bible, one of the language’s first books, is a window between worldviews

(The Conversation) — Cherokees across the US are working to revitalize their language.

Sequoyah's invention of a Cherokee syllabary helped translate the Bible soon after missionaries' arrival. (Wesley Fryer/Cherokee Heritage Center via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY)

Tom Belt and Margaret Bender
May 13, 2026

(The Conversation) — If you wanted to learn the Cherokee language in the 1990s, there weren’t many written resources: three dissertations from the 1970s and ’80s, one textbook and a handful of college classes in North Carolina and Oklahoma. Even on most Cherokee land, it was unusual to see street or building signs in this endangered Indigenous language.

There are nearly 500,000 enrolled members in the three federally recognized Cherokee Tribes: the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band, both based in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, based in North Carolina. Only about 2,000 of those members speak Cherokee as a first language.

But over the past few decades, opportunities for learners of all ages have exploded. One of the authors of this article, Thomas Belt – a first-language speaker from Oklahoma – has been honored to play a role in that resurgence, working as a teacher, curriculum developer and language consultant. Today there is bilingual signage throughout the Eastern Cherokee reservation, in the Cherokee Nation capital of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and on tribal buildings and some private businesses throughout Cherokee country.

Cherokees of all ages and in communities across the U.S. are working to revitalize the language in new ways, from apps, games and videos to social media, music and immersion schools.

Today, about 2,000 people speak Cherokee as a first language.

Amid all this innovation, there is also a 200-year-old resource that language learners turn to: the Cherokee translation of the Christian Bible.
New writing system

Translating the Bible into Cherokee began early in the 19th century, shortly after Protestant missionaries arrived in the Cherokee Nation – centered mainly in what are now western North Carolina, north Georgia and eastern Tennessee.

Sequohay’s writing system used a syllabary, not an alphabet.
Henry Inman/National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons

In 1821, the brilliant Cherokee Sequoyah invented a writing system for the Cherokee language. First, he identified all the vowels, consonants and combinations of them used in the Cherokee language. He then invented and taught characters for every syllable – making his writing system a syllabary rather than an alphabet that assigns a character to each individual consonant or vowel.

The elegance of the system made it easy for speakers to learn, and Cherokee literacy rates were reportedly high soon after its invention. The 1828 launch of the bilingual Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper in the U.S., is testimony to the writing system’s popularity.

It also made it easy for the Cherokee to read the Bible, once it had been translated. Teams of Euro-American missionaries and Cherokee converts produced a Cherokee version of the Book of John in 1824. A complete Cherokee New Testament and most of the Old Testament emerged in the following decades.
3 options

For language learners today, the Cherokee Bible is much more than a source of words. In our 2025 book “The New Voice of God,” we found that the text captures the cross-cultural encounter that produced it. The translation does more than show how the Cherokee interpreted Christian theology; it is a window into the Cherokee worldview.

At the time, Cherokee did not have words for many of the concepts found in the Bible – hypocrisy, poverty, power and king, to name just a few. In such situations, translators have three options.

One is to use loan words, borrowed from the foreign language. Texts heavy with loan words, though, often require special training or guides in order for the general public to read them. We did not find any true loan words in the parts of the Bible we studied.

A second option is semantic extension: using a word whose meaning is similar in some way, creating a kind of cross-cultural metaphor. This happens frequently in the Cherokee translation. For example, sheep and shepherds appear frequently in the Bible, but sheep are not indigenous to the Americas. Instead, the translation uses the word for deer, “ahwi,” to translate sheep and represents a shepherd as “ahwi diktiya,” or deer-watcher.

The third option is to create a new descriptive word, a process also seen throughout the translation. For example, the Cherokee word for idols is “unehlanvhi diyelvhi,” meaning imaginary gods.


Cultural differences

In some cases, translators’ challenges suggested deep differences between a Western worldview and their own.

Christian missionaries’ culture drew a clear distinction between the sacred and the secular. In Cherokee culture, however, science, ritual and belief are tightly intertwined.

Specialized Christian terms such as resurrection, repentance, sin, purity, baptism, salvation and blessing didn’t translate well into that worldview. The expression of those concepts in Cherokee thus reads as more ordinary and accessible than in English.

‘Child’ of God

Major differences between the grammars of Cherokee and English also shaped how Cherokee Christians reframed biblical concepts. For example, Cherokee has no gendered pronouns: no equivalents of he, she, him, her, his or hers. This means that beings who are not clearly recognizable as human men or women, such as angels, devils and God, come across as gender-neutral in the Cherokee translation.

God becomes masculine only when referred to as a father, as in “ogidoda,” “our father.” Instead, the Cherokee Bible most commonly translates God as “unehlanvhi,” which is usually interpreted as meaning a gender-neutral creator. Jesus is described as the “uwetsi,” or child, of God – even though there is a fuller Cherokee phrase, “uwetsi atsusa,” boy child, that could have clearly identified Jesus as the son of God.

In English, some speakers consider “mankind” to refer to both men and women. But in Cherokee, the word for man, “asgaya,” is not interpreted that way. Whenever the word man appears in English translations of the Bible, the Cherokee word “yvwi,” person, is used, or occasionally “kilo,” someone. This inclusivity would have resonated much better with traditional Cherokee culture, which was more egalitarian and matrilineal, with ancestry and property passed down through mothers.

Learning today

Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Chuck Hoskin Jr. speaks at the Cherokee Immersion School on Dec. 3, 2021, in Tahlequah, Okla.
AP Photo/Michael Woods

The Bible plays various roles in today’s Cherokee language learning, including as a source of vocabulary. For example, the most widely used online Cherokee dictionary gives Genesis 28:18 as its sample text for the word “go’i,” oil. But it also models how to form fluent phrases and sentences, mark transitions, narrate events and correctly use Cherokee’s complex grammar.

Perhaps even more importantly, the Cherokee Bible offers invaluable insight into Cherokee-specific meanings, interpretations of social and spiritual concepts, and a benchmark for understanding how the language has changed. Though the history of the relationship between Christian missionaries and Indigenous people is complex, this historic text is supporting an impressive contemporary wave of cultural and linguistic renewal.

(Margaret Bender, Professor of Anthropology, Wake Forest University. Tom Belt, Cherokee Language Expert Translator, Western Carolina University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)


The Conversation religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The Conversation is solely responsible for this content.

Georgian Orthodox Church elects new leader at fraught time for the influential institution

(RNS) — ‘It’s really the textbook example of a national church being the cornerstone of national identity,’ Samuel Noble, a scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Belgium’s University of Liège, told RNS.

Patriarch Shio III of the Georgian Orthodox Church during his enthronement at the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, outside Tbilisi, Georgia, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (AP Photo)

David I. Klein
May 12, 2026
RNS


(RNS) — Bishop Shio Mujiri will now be known as Patriarch Shio III, leading the Georgian Orthodox Church, one of the most prominent institutions in the country. He was enthroned in the 1,000-year-old Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, an ancient capital north of modern Tbilisi, on Tuesday morning (May 12), taking over one of Eastern Orthodoxy’s oldest churches after the death of one of its longest-serving leaders.

On Monday, Shio received 22 out of 39 votes from the Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church in Tbilisi’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, outpacing the two other hierarchs who had been shortlisted for the role after Patriarch Ilia II died in March. Shio will step into the shoes of a giant as Georgia faces one of the most politically tumultuous periods in its recent history.

The Georgian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest Christian church bodies in the world, stretching back to the Apostle Andrew by tradition and by documentation at least as far back as the fifth century.

Shio, 57, who was born Elizbar Mujiri, became the 142nd leader of the church since it was first granted autocephaly — meaning self-headed in Greek — under the Byzantines in 480 A.D.

The church remains influential in Georgian society. A 2002 constitutional agreement gave the church special privileges far beyond the simple freedom of worship accorded to other religions in Georgia.

“The Church has always been an unshakable pillar of Georgian statehood and spiritual strength,” Georgian Prime Minister Irakly Kobakhidze said in a statement congratulating Shio on his election. “It is the Orthodox faith that has preserved for us those eternal values, thanks to which our country has reached this day.

Georgians with their children carry national flags as they take part in a religious procession to mark Orthodox Christmas in Tbilisi, Georgia, Jan. 7, 2024.

 (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

“I believe that your pastorate will serve the peaceful, united, and strong future of our country. May the Lord protect our country and its new spiritual father,” he added.

Kobakhidze wasn’t just being diplomatic. A 2020 poll by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that nearly 80% of Georgians agreed that the Georgian Orthodox Church is the foundation of their identity. And 50% agreed that Georgian citizens should be Georgian Orthodox — despite the country’s 10% Muslim minority, and long-standing Jewish, Yazidi and non-Georgian Orthodox Christian communities.

“It’s really the textbook example of a national church being the cornerstone of national identity,” Samuel Noble, a scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Belgium’s University of Liège, told RNS. “If you look up any polls done in Georgia, always the most trusted institution is the church, the most trusted individual was Patriarch Ilia.”

Ilia II served in the patriarch role for nearly 50 years. Enthroned in 1977, he is remembered by many as a source of continuity and stability in Georgia.

Under Soviet rule, even when the church was deeply infiltrated by the KGB, he earned respect for sheltering anticommunist Georgian activists. And when the Iron Curtain crashed down, he shepherded the church through the emergence of an independent Georgia, defending its canonical independence, defining its cultural identity and building ties with different political factions in and out of Georgia.

Pope Francis, center left, attends a meeting with Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Sept. 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

“His first two decades were probably the most difficult period for him with how the churches were organized and controlled under the Soviet regime,” Vladimer Narsia, a scholar of Orthodox Christian theology and head of the Canon Law Centre at Tbilisi’s Ilia State University, told RNS. “In the second part of his leadership, after the independence of Georgia, the church gained power and he went through these more than 25 years as a main player not just in the religious life of the nation, but in the political life as well.”

In a country where the median age is 37, Ilia was the only leader many Orthodox Christians knew for their church.

“There’s not really anybody comparable,” Noble said, adding that Ilia was responsible for a “great deal” of cultural rebuilding postcommunism. “ … Under Ilia, it wasn’t just that there was a new freedom for the church, but there was also a reassertion of the Georgianness of the church. … Traditional Georgian church music was revived, traditional Georgian liturgical practice, emphasis on Georgian rather than common Russian saints all came back, and the church was rebuilt in an incredible way.”

But Ilia’s tenure wasn’t without controversy. In 2017, a Georgian Orthodox priest was arrested in Berlin with cyanide in his baggage, allegedly planning on assassinating Ilia’s own secretary over an internal dispute.

In 2021, a leak exposed that Georgia’s state security services had been spying on church leaders, allegedly recording illegal activity for potential blackmail.

Georgian Orthodox priests, opponents of a march, pray as they block off the capital’s main avenue for an LGBTQ march in Tbilisi, Georgia, July 5, 2021.

 (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

The church under Ilia also faced criticism for its reactions to LGBTQ+ activism in Georgia. In 2013, a group of clergymen led thousands to counter a small antihomophobia protest in Tbilisi — an encounter that ultimately devolved into a riot, with activists and journalists assaulted. Days earlier, Ilia had called homosexuality a disease and called for banning LGBTQ+ activists from Tbilisi.

Though Shio doesn’t have the long-standing cultural cachet of Ilia, nine years ago Shio was appointed by Ilia to oversee the leadership transition after the patriarch’s eventual passing. Over the years, Shio had already taken over many of Ilia’s duties as his health deteriorated.

Shio isn’t expected to differ from Ilia much on social issues, but he is taking the helm in the midst of a second year of a protracted political crisis in Georgia, and many are watching to see how he navigates the church’s position. Nearly two years since disputed 2024 elections, Tbilisi is still wracked by protests against the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has responded with authoritarian crackdowns and legislation.

“What happened in 2024 was the most important mark in the recent history of the Georgian nation,” Narsia said. By that point, he noted, Ilia had stepped back from politics due to his health, but the church had been an active participant in earlier years. The same year, in an attempt to court church support, Georgian Dream floated the idea of enshrining the Orthodox church in law as Georgia’s state religion, but Shio and Ilia shot down the idea.

Shio’s ascension to the patriarchal throne comes amid another great divide. For years, the Orthodox world has been defined by a major rift between Moscow, seat of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the world’s largest Orthodox church, and Constantinople, seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, a historical leader of Orthodox Christendom.

In 2018, the Russian church broke ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the latter’s establishment of a Ukrainian Church independent from the Russian church. It created the largest schism in Orthodoxy since the break with Rome in 1054.

In the weeks between Ilia’s death and Shio’s election, both Moscow and Constantinople accused the other of interference in the succession process. Ties with Moscow have also suffered ever since Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, and the Russian church has often been criticized for giving spiritual justification to the war in Ukraine and the Putin regime.

Shio, who completed much of his religious education in Moscow in Russian Orthodox institutions, has many concerned over those ties.

“One of the great challenges that the Georgian Orthodox Church has today will be how the new patriarch reads the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church over the Georgian church,” Narsia said.

Elaborately decorated skeletons in Catholic churches across Bavaria take some visitors by surprise

BAD STAFFELSTEIN, Germany (AP) — While they may seem unfamiliar or even disturbing to some visitors, catacomb saints — or Holy Bodies — can still be found in many Baroque Catholic churches and monasteries across Bavaria.

Kirsten Grieshaber
May 11, 2026

BAD STAFFELSTEIN, Germany (AP) — It is a sight that has sent shivers down the spines of many visitors: four complete skeletons draped in silk and brocade, adorned with precious stones, filigree gold, silver and lace that have been on display for centuries at the Catholic monastery church of Banz in southern Germany.

The skeletons — known as Vincenzius, Valerius, Benedictus and Felix Benedictus — are the remains of so-called catacomb saints that were brought to the Benedictine monastery near the Bavarian town of Bad Staffelstein from Rome in the late 17th and 18th century.

“It’s actually a little creepy,” whispered church custodian Anita Gottschlich as she looked at one of the skeletons. It seemed to be staring right back at her through its hollow eye sockets.

“I notice that when older people come here who visited as children, they always look for the Holy Bodies, because they can still remember them,” she added, noting the enduring fascination the skeletons hold for people of all ages.

While they may seem unfamiliar or even disturbing to some visitors, catacomb saints — or Holy Bodies — can still be found in many Baroque Catholic churches and monasteries across Bavaria.

The skeletons, often presented in glass coffinlike cabinets, are also a familiar sight in churches in neighboring Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, and in Italy.

Holy Bodies are remains found in Roman catacombs in the Middle Ages

Legend has it that these relics are the remains of martyrs from the early days of Christianity in Rome that were discovered in the 16th century in unmarked graves in the city’s catacombs.

“At the time, the church simply designated them all as saints,” said Catholic priest Walter Ries. “And, of course, in many countries, including Germany, people wanted to have such holy remains, such relics, simply because this enhanced the status of their own church or monastery and perhaps turned it into a place of pilgrimage.”

Ries is in charge of several parishes in and around Bad Staffelstein, including the congregation of 211 members that belongs to the monastery church. It’s a far cry from the golden age of the monastery, which was founded by Benedictine monks in 1070 and flourished for hundreds of years until it was dissolved in 1803. Nowadays, only the church is still actively in use; the monastery is home to a political foundation.

“A great deal has changed over the course of the centuries,” the priest said. “Back then, these relics were very important, but today they really aren’t anymore.”

Catacomb saints were supposed to help believers deal with misery

The veneration of the catacomb saints during the late 17th and 18th centuries came at a time when vast stretches of Europe, including Bavaria, were still reeling from the Thirty Years’ War. It began as a religious struggle between Catholics and Protestants and led to an estimated 4 to 8 million deaths from the effects of battle, famine or disease.

“That was a terrible time,” said Ries. “And so people tried to open the gates of heaven through the Baroque. That’s why everything was designed so beautifully. It was an escape from the present, which was often so terrible. That’s also why these eerie skeletons were so beautifully draped and depicted as lifelike as possible.”

The abbots of the Banz monastery and the church, which is ostentatiously adorned with lots of gold, cherubs and paintings in the Baroque style, sent emissaries to Rome in 1680 and again in 1745, who successfully brought home the four skeletons which were then decorated by nuns in the nearby town of Bamberg.

For the faithful, a glimpse of what they’d look like after resurrection

To ensure that viewing the Holy Bodies was an exceptional experience, they were and are still kept out of sight for most of the year by attaching wooden panels depicting the respective skeletons to the front of the display cases. On special occasions, such as All Saints’ Day, the covers are taken off and the Holy Bodies are shown to the believers.

In general, the elaborate decoration “is not meant to show the dead body of a saint, but rather to show his glorified body,” said Günter Dippold, a historian who has been researching the catacomb saints and the Banz monastery.

“It is therefore intended to show the faithful who view it what we will look like after the resurrection, after being raised from the dead, when we no longer have our earthly bodies but rather glorified ones.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Faiths

Catholic diocese fights Trump administration plan to seize pilgrimage site for border wall

(RNS) — The land targeted by the federal government is at the base of Mount Cristo Rey, a mountain and pilgrimage site topped by a 29-foot-tall limestone statue of Jesus Christ.

Workers have cut a gash, right, through the southern slope of Mount Cristo Rey, which straddles the border between Sunland Park, New Mexico, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to build a new section of border wall, Saturday, March 7, 2026. Most of Mount Cristo Rey is owned by the Diocese of Las Cruces and is a popular pilgrimage and recreational site for locals. (RNS photo/Corrie Boudreaux)

Aleja Hertzler-McCain
May 11, 2026
RNS

(RNS) — The Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, signaled in a legal filing it intends to fight the Trump administration’s fast-moving attempts to seize its land through eminent domain to extend the southern border wall.

The land targeted by the federal government is at the base of Mount Cristo Rey, a mountain and pilgrimage site topped by a 29-foot-tall limestone statue of Jesus Christ that dates back to 1940. The diocese said the border wall would obstruct pilgrimage routes.

“The erection of a border wall through or along this holy site could irreparably damage its religious and cultural sanctity, obstruct pilgrimage routes, and transfer sacred space into a symbol of division,” the Diocese of Las Cruces said, according to legal documents.

Seizing the land or constructing physical barriers would “constitute a significant infringement on religious freedom and the rights of worship, which are protected under both the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” the diocese wrote in the legal filing Friday (May 8).

The day prior (May 7), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wrote in its own legal filing that it estimated the value of the 14 acres it plans to seize was $183,071. Eminent domain allows the government to take private property for public use, given appropriate compensation is provided to the owners.

That land would be used to “construct, install, operate, and maintain roads, fencing, vehicle barriers, security lighting, cameras, sensors, and related structures designed to help secure the United States/Mexico border,” according to the government’s filing.

Mount Cristo Rey in Sunland Park, New Mexico, is owned by the Diocese of Las Cruces and is a pilgrimage site for Catholics in New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (RNS photo/Corrie Boudreaux)

The Diocese of Las Cruces wrote that each fall on the feast of Christ the King, or Cristo Rey in Spanish, up to 40,000 people climb Mount Cristo Rey and participate in Mass. Some pilgrims make the journey barefoot, while a few ascend on their knees, the diocese wrote.

Last month, pilgrims told the El Paso Times that they anticipated that their Good Friday pilgrimage would be impacted by explosions blasting from federal land on the south side of the mountain to shave it away and prepare it for construction.

“The United States Government’s effort to use expedited procedures to condemn Diocesan land to build a border wall is an affront to religious liberty,” Kathryn Brack Morrow, an attorney at a local law firm representing the Diocese of Las Cruces, told RNS in an emailed statement. “The Diocese will use all legal tools at its dispose to stop these heavy-handed tactics.”

In El Paso, two Catholic sisters follow detained immigrants wherever ICE takes them

Franciscan Brother Joseph Bach, who leads a Las Cruces-based immigrant accompaniment ministry in courts and detention centers, told RNS he was happy the diocese is challenging the administration on the issue after feeling as though the church has been “sitting back.”

“This is an example of religious freedom — the ability to have this pilgrimage,” Bach said. “And if (President Donald Trump is) taking that sacred site away, then he’s taking away the people’s freedom to exercise their faith.”

The diocese’s filing said that if a court granted the government’s motion, the diocese would not be able to make its religious freedom arguments in court, and the Trump administration would immediately acquire the title to the land after paying for it.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The diocese’s legal filing was prepared by attorneys at Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection; the center has been the muscle behind several legal challenges to Trump administration immigration policies — including Mennonite Church USA v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which challenged the administration’s decision to rescind a policy limiting immigration enforcement in houses of worship and other sensitive locations. Though a wide variety of religious groups were plaintiffs in that suit, Catholic groups were not among them.

Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, told RNS that the choice by the diocese and their attorneys to appeal to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act instead of the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act stood out.

“RLUIPA is more commonly used when religious land uses are restricted, but there might be some technical reason why they didn’t resort to RLUIPA,” said Somin, who is not involved in the case.

If the Mount Cristo Rey case and its conflict over religious freedom and eminent domain goes to higher courts, it could have broader implications for religious groups at the border as well as for others dealing with eminent domain issues, Somin said.

The “Pilgrim Virgin,” a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, is carried during a pilgrimage of 30,000 Catholics to a statue of Christ atop Mount Cristo Rey near El Paso, Texas, in November 1948.

 (RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.)

Faith-based groups challenge Trump orders in two court cases

Mount Cristo Rey is the only significant space without a border fence in the El Paso metro area. In 2019, Trump adviser Steve Bannon raised private donations to build a half-mile wall on the eastern side of the mountain on private property. Bannon later pled guilty to defrauding investors.

Last month, construction crews building the border wall in Arizona destroyed a 60- to 70-foot portion of an Indigenous ground etching of a fish thought to be over 1,000 years old. Lorraine Marquez Eiler, a Hia-Ced O’odham elder, told Democracy Now her community questioned whether the construction crews destroyed the intaglio, or etching, on purpose.

And in California last month, Kumeyaay Indigenous people sounded the alarm that the Trump administration was blasting Kuchamaa Mountain, a sacred ceremonial site for their people near the Mexican and Californian towns of Tecate that has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992, to prepare for border wall construction.

This article has been updated to add comment from the Diocese of Las Cruces.

Vatican synod report criticizes conversion therapy, features gay Catholic testimony

(RNS) — Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.

Some of the hundreds of LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families who joined a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome, celebrating a new level of acceptance in the Catholic Church and crediting Pope Francis for the change, walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Aleja Hertzler-McCain
May 5, 2026
RNS



(RNS) — The Vatican released a report from a study group of theologians on Tuesday (May 5) that included the testimony of two married gay Catholics and acknowledged the church’s role in “the solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families.” The report also reflects on the negative impacts of conversion therapy, or “the devastating effects of reparative therapies aimed at recovering heterosexuality.”

“ It’s a big deal because they included testimonies and published testimonies from two LGBTQ people, both of them married, which is also unusual for the Vatican to do,” said the Rev. James Martin, a founder of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic ministry. “As far as I know, it’s the first time that in any official publication of the Vatican, they’ve included witnesses and testimonies and stories from LGBTQ Catholics in any kind of detailed way.”

The report comes from a group of theologians, including bishops, priests, a sister and a layperson, convened by the Vatican to study “controversial” issues raised by the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis’ signature listening initiative, to which Martin was a delegate. Though church reform advocates hoped — and traditionalists feared — that the synod would bring major changes to church teaching around gender and sexuality, the decision to relegate contentious issues, such as LGBTQ+ inclusion, to study groups instead of general discussion was widely seen as a damper.

As expected, the synod study group report, which was written to advise the pope, does not announce major changes to church doctrine, but it does suggest that the Catholic Church address the impasse between “doctrinal firmness” and “pastoral welcome” by listening and using a transdisciplinary approach, such as incorporating insights from psychology, alongside the Bible and church doctrine.

This synod document was written by the study group, not the pope, but its release to the public would have required his authorization.

“ It’s a really good — I would even say historic — document,” said Yunuen Trujillo, a lesbian lay minister from Los Angeles. “ It’s still calling for all Catholics to engage in a process of discernment that is respectful of people’s lived experiences.”

Trujillo, author of “LGBTQ Catholics: A Guide to Inclusive Ministry,” said it might take a while for LGBTQ+ Catholics in the pews to feel the impact and noted that the document only focuses on lesbians, gays and bisexual people. “But I do believe it would be a positive impact, not a negative one,” she said.

In this Oct. 4, 2023, file photo, Pope Francis, far right, participates in the opening session of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Marianne Duddy-Burke, a married lesbian Catholic and DignityUSA’s executive director, said, “ The most significant thing for me was the recognition that top-down trying to dictate behavior and morality on the basis of dogma isn’t working,” adding she was “hopeful” to see the report using the language of a “paradigm shift.”

The “paradigm shift” the report proposes is a move away from applying abstract theological principles to on-the-ground realities and instead seeing theory and practice as a “virtuous cycle.” For the two to effectively inform each other, the report argues, requires a focus on relationships, transparency and learning. The document offers this theological framework not just for LGBTQ+ issues but for broader use, including in nonviolent activism and protest.

The report’s release garnered some blowback, a portion of which fell on Pope Leo XIV. Far-right Catholic news organization LifeSite published a story on the report, raising concerns that the report was questioning “the sinful nature of homosexuality” and leaving unresolved the “debate on same-sex ‘marriage.'” Co-founder John-Henry Westen released a video warning that the report’s pro-LGBTQ+ stance makes clear the meaning of “synodality” under Leo.

But there are also signs Leo is not eager to change church teaching, including remarks he made in interviews last year. On Wednesday, the Vatican published a 2024 letter by the Vatican doctrinal office condemning German Catholic bishops’ plans to create formalized blessings for same-sex couples.

Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.

“ I was expecting a rather bland report. And this was not that,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which serves LGBTQ Catholics. “ In days gone by in the church, they would try to tick off the token box by getting someone who had certain traits and characteristics, but who was just not critical of the church in any way.”

Martin said this is the first time he remembers seeing conversion therapy “critiqued that strongly” in a Vatican document. “There have been certain bishops who have been very muted in their critique of conversion therapy, but then there have also been bishops who have used organizations whose techniques really verge on conversion therapy,” he said.

One gay Catholic wrote of “wounds from the Christian community” in his Vatican-released testimony. “I cannot ignore the scars I carry. I have witnessed the devastating effects of ‘conversion therapies’ and the break-up of families, which felt like an attack on God’s sensitive and blameless creation. These experiences deeply hurt, because they target the inherent dignity of a person who simply bears the love of another of the same gender.”

But the married Portuguese man also wrote of his deep faith in the Eucharist and his sharing “a life of faith, service, and love” with his husband. “I live my life in profound peace with God, who knows me from my mother’s womb.”

“I feel the Church needs to move beyond mere ‘welcoming’ and ‘pity,'” he wrote in the testimony. “We need to proclaim the unspoken truth: God loves you and desires your wholeness. Sexuality is one part of our life, and difference is a hallmark of Creation.”

DeBernardo said the testimonies of LGBTQ+ people and their advocates have also been moving for the 17 bishops who have participated in three different meetings with New Ways Ministry in recent years. “We had a bishop at the end of the meeting in tears because he was so regretful of the way he had thought about LGBTQ people,” DeBernardo said.

“Dialogue really is the first step,” said DeBernardo. “ The genius of Pope Francis is that he realized that people had to start talking with one another, and learning about each other and not having the fear and the stereotypes.”

For Duddy-Burke, who represents a grassroots group led by LGBTQ+ Catholics that was banned 40 years ago from meeting in Catholic spaces — and who said she has struggled for years as a result to even have these conversations — the document inspires hope: “We didn’t have a place at the table and, and this document says that it’s time that we did,” she said.

At the same time, Duddy-Burke worries about whether those who hold the power will continue to dialogue and be willing to have their “minds and hearts changed.”

“And how will that be managed in parts of the world where it’s absolutely unsafe and it’s sometimes illegal, you know, for people to come forward as queer?” she asked.

The synod report also addresses “active nonviolence,” highlighting the examples of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Filipino “People Power” and Polish “Solidarity” anti-government movements, as well as the experience of a Catholic Serbian conscientious objector. Peace has been a major focus of Leo’s pontificate, and his recent anti-war statements have led to conflict with the Trump administration, which has used theological language to promote its war in the Middle East.

In the Vatican report, the theologians suggest that “just war theory,” which Catholic U.S. Vice President JD Vance has referenced to defend the war, is “inadequate” in the modern context. “Since war can no longer be confined to military targets but overflows into civilian life, taking on new forms (hybrid, asymmetrical, etc.), the recourse to frameworks used in the past for legitimate defence — and even more so for ‘just war’ — appears increasingly inadequate,” they write.

On Tuesday, the Vatican also released the report of another Synod study group dedicated to bishop selection and other bishop issues. That report proposed broad consultation — including the perspectives of lay people, in addition to clergy and religious — when it comes to potential bishop candidates as well as ideal future bishop qualities.

This story has been updated to add more information about the purpose of the report and details about Leo’s response to the German Catholic bishops’ plans to formalize same-sex blessings.