Military Archdiocese Hosts Workshops on ‘Gender and Deliverance Ministry’; And Other News

Here are some items that might be of interest:

1. According to a press release from the U.S. Archdiocese of Military Services, this past autumn Archbishop Timothy Broglio held a series of five-day convocations for military chaplains across the nation and in Rome focusing on the topic of “Gender and Deliverance Ministry.”  No explanation of what was meant by “gender and deliverance ministry,” though two of the featured speakers are associated with the Nesti Center for Faith and Culture at the University of St. Thomas (Houston, Texas) which describes its mission as studying “the relationship between the Gospel’s universal call to love and the worldview and values of the dominant American culture.” A third speaker is the author of a book on exorcism, which is usually a main part of what is considered “deliverance ministry.”

2. Krakow, Poland, has a new archbishop, Cardinal Grzegorz Rys, who is replacing Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski, who is retiring because of age, reported Katholisch.de.  Jedraszewski has a strongly anti-LGBTQ+ record, referring to gay people as “a rainbow disease.”

3. Spain’s  Bishop José Ignacio Munilla of the Diocese of Orihuela-Alicante is being investigated for hate speech and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people by Madrid’s public prosecutor, reported Die Tagepost. The legal case started with a complaint from a citizens’ group which said that Munilla’s comments defending conversion therapy, which he made on a radio show. Since conversion therapy is banned in all of Spain, the citizens’ group said the bishop’s comments were discriminatory. In a Facebook post, Munilla rejected the accusation and said that the case was trying to impose a ” state anthropology” based on “gender LGBTQ theory.”

4. A transgender woman in Maryland was released from jail with a sentence of probation after she pleaded guilty to spray-painting trans symbols on the outside walls of Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Elmentary school in Easton, Maryland, reports The Star Democrat,  a local newspapaer. Sian Radaskiewicz-King had been held in jail for two months without bail, in what her defense lawyers said was an unusually long period of time for a grafitti crime. Her attorney said of this long period of confinement, “This was never about danger. This was about discrimination.” The attorney also said that Radaskiewicz-King had been held in a men’s unit and was denied her medication.

5. Three German theologians have said that the time is ripe for a new universal council for the Catholic Church, 60 years afteer the close of Vatican II, the last such gathering of this kind. In a podcast interview Gregor Maria Hoff , Dietmar Winkler, and Michaela Quast-Neulinger, reports Katholisch.de.  A council is needed because “a backlog of problems has accumulated in the form of divisive tendencies, necessitating a conciliar dialogue.”  Same-gender partnerships was identified as one such problem, while other items included the ordination of women, the climate crisis, digitalization, and artificial intelligence. Hoff also mentioned the growth of a “”right-wing Catholic element” which he said is trying to “transform an open church into a closed society.”

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, December 13, 2025