Morning Keys: Cardinal Tagle elected dean of cardinals

 

Written by Morning Keys

Here are today’s key Catholic stories, led by this morning’s news that Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has been elected dean of the College of Cardinals, succeeding Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. Also at the top: Pope Leo XIV’s homily opening the academic year at Rome’s pontifical universities, where he warned of “false teachers who exploit the religious sentiments of many believers” and urged students and professors to “guard your hearts,” and day two of the Amoris Laetitia meeting. Today the Church also keeps its first Oct. 9 memorial of St. John Henry Newman on the universal calendar, nearly a year after Leo named him a Doctor of the Church. New at Where Peter Is: Rodrigo Guerra’s 2017 study “Understanding Amoris Laetitia,” now translated into English.

Today’s Mass readings (USCCB) · Saint of the day (Vatican News): St. John Henry Newman

Top stories

Cardinal Tagle elected dean of the College of Cardinals, succeeding Cardinal Re

Cardinal Tagle elected dean of the College of Cardinals as Cardinal Re steps down. Leo accepted the resignation of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who becomes dean emeritus, and on Oct. 8 approved the cardinal bishops’ election of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, as dean. Tagle takes the title of the suburbicarian see of Ostia and keeps Albano. Unlike Re, 92, who has led the college since 2020 and presided at Pope Francis’s funeral, Tagle, 69, is young enough to vote in a conclave. — Holy See Press Office (in Italian)

Leo opens the pontifical universities’ year, warns of “false teachers”

Leo opens the pontifical universities’ year: reason and memory guard against “false teachers.” At an evening Mass in St. Peter’s, Leo said Paul’s rebuke of the Galatians is “an appeal to reason, memory and critical thinking,” since “in every age, there is no shortage of false teachers who exploit the religious sentiments of many believers for their own interests.” The mind “must not simply compile data — as an algorithm now does more quickly than we can,” he said, urging students to remain rooted in the People of God and not to forget the poor. — Vatican News · Full text: Holy See · CNS (Carol Glatz)

Rodrigo Guerra: Understanding Amoris Laetitia

Rodrigo Guerra: Understanding Amoris Laetitia. As part of its Amoris retrospectives, WPI publishes an English translation of the Mexican philosopher’s long 2017 study, an expanded version of his late-2016 open letter to the four dubia cardinals (“Dear Cardinals…”), first published in Spanish in the journal Medellín. Guerra, then a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, wrote it before Cardinals Meisner and Caffarra died later that year. — Where Peter Is (Rodrigo Guerra; Oct. 8)

Amoris meeting, day two: “No single stereotype of an ideal family”

Amoris meeting, day two: “no single stereotype of an ideal family.” Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão of Goa and Daman, president of India’s bishops’ conference, said the Church in Asia sees “a challenging mosaic of diverse realities” and asked participants, “What is the Holy Spirit asking the Church to change?” Cardinal Mario Grech said families “are subjects of the Church’s mission, and we have much to receive and learn from them.” A press briefing on the meeting is set for 1:30 p.m. Rome time today. — America (Gerard O’Connell) · Vatican News (Alessandro Di Bussolo) · Vatican News (Farrell and Grech) · Also: OSV News (Courtney Mares)

Pope and Holy See

• Holy See at the UN: a moratorium on executions must lead to abolition. Archbishop Christophe El-Kassis, the Holy See’s permanent observer, told the General Assembly’s Third Committee Oct. 7 that “the death penalty is inadmissible” and that a person’s God-given dignity “is never forfeited, no matter the gravity of the crime.” — Vatican News (Giada Aquilino and Francesca Merlo)
• Archbishop Gallagher in Pakistan for 75 years of diplomatic ties. The Secretary for Relations with States is in Islamabad Oct. 8–10, meeting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, and the bishops’ conference; today he celebrates Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Church and visits the Faisal Mosque. — Vatican News
• Today Leo receives the Red Cross president and South Africa’s Cardinal Brislin. His morning audiences also include Honduras’s bishops on their ad limina visit, with the Amoris meeting this afternoon. Leo united the Italian dioceses of Lucera-Troia and Foggia-Bovino under Archbishop Giorgio Ferretti, a Sant’Egidio priest. And after Thursday’s audience, Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio discussed “environmental and food-related emergencies associated with migration” and young people with Cardinal Parolin. — Today’s audiences (in Italian) · Appointments (in Italian) · Sierra Leone statement (Holy See Press Office)

United States

• Massachusetts report: 275 accused clergy and 944 survivors in three dioceses. The state attorney general’s Sept. 30 report on Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester, based on more than 300,000 pages of documents, found that church officials knew of abuse but failed to prevent it. “This investigation was not about demonising a faith or a church,” Attorney General Andrea Campbell said. “Rather, it was about seeking justice.” — The Tablet (Brian Fraga) · WBUR
• Court order shields nearly all Illinois Catholic health care from the state’s assisted suicide law. An amended temporary restraining order, agreed to by the state, bars enforcement against members of the Illinois Catholic Health Association (more than 95 percent of the state’s Catholic institutions) and several religious medical groups until the court rules on a preliminary injunction. The law took effect Sept. 12. — The Center Square · Thomas More Society (plaintiffs’ counsel)
• U.S. bishops will choose a secretary and six committee chairs in November. Bishops Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend and Earl Fernandes of Columbus are nominated for secretary at the Nov. 16–19 Baltimore assembly; the doctrine committee race is between Bishop William Joensen of Des Moines and Bishop Steven Lopes of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. — USCCB

Around the World

• Cardinal Cobo calls Spain’s housing crisis “immensely radical” after an 87-year-old’s eviction. Mari Carmen Abascal was evicted from the Madrid flat she had lived in for 71 years after an investment fund raised her rent from €500 to €2,650 a month; she died in hospital Wednesday, as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap election. — The Tablet (Bess Twiston Davies)

Liturgy and Church Life

• Today: St. John Henry Newman’s first memorial on the Church’s universal calendar. Leo proclaimed Newman a Doctor of the Church and, with St. Thomas Aquinas, co-patron of the Church’s educational mission on Nov. 1, 2025. A decree of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, released in February, added his optional memorial to the General Roman Calendar on Oct. 9, the day in 1845 he was received into the Catholic Church. The English liturgical texts were confirmed Aug. 4. — Vatican News · Decree (Holy See Press Office) · USCCB
• Analysis: Five years on, synodality is “something deep.” Justin McLellan looks at how the process Francis opened in October 2021 is taking root locally as its implementation phase heads toward a 2028 Vatican assembly. The shift “doesn’t make a lot of noise, but it’s something deep,” said Sr. Nathalie Becquart of the synod office. — National Catholic Reporter (Justin McLellan)
• Msgr. Arthur Holquin on why Flannery O’Connor was right about the wrong word. The first of two essays on the Eucharist as sacrament starts from a recent Rita Ferrone essay and traces the Church’s language of sign and symbol from Augustine to Guardini, Francis, and Leo. — Liturgy and Truth (Msgr. Arthur Holquin)

Commentary

• Opinion: Heidi Schlumpf asks whether the bishops will speak with one voice on migrants again. Some bishops are speaking out about mass detention and deportation, she writes, but will they act as a group at their November meeting? — Commonweal (Heidi Schlumpf)
• Opinion: Michael Sean Winters on telling the Holy Spirit from ourselves. Picking up a point Fr. Sam Sawyer made at a seminar on Magnifica Humanitas, Winters argues that tradition records Catholics responding to the Spirit in their own time, and also how earlier generations “were often blinded by their cultural circumstances.” — National Catholic Reporter (Michael Sean Winters)

Also today

• Meet the soon-to-be-Blessed Georgia Martyrs — Michelle La Rosa, The Pillar. Five Franciscans killed in 1597, to be beatified Oct. 31 in Savannah.
• Opinion: Synodality stifled (in Italian) — Marco Bernardoni, SettimanaNews. Argues synodality has been sidelined at the Amoris meeting.