The Eighth Commandment Has a Day of Reckoning on the Island of Guam

A prayer was offered for a falsely accused priest at the London prison cell of St Thomas More, while on the Island of Guam, a former Catholic Inquisition is exposed.

June 17, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

Urgent Note from Father MacRae:

I wrote this post in June, 2017. It is in part about something that happened on the Island of Guam. (Yes, we are back to Guam again!) Former Archbishop Anthony Apuron was accused in 2017 of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s when he was a young priest in Guam. Please read the post, but most importantly please read the Addendum that I have included at the end, which now casts an entirely different light on the case against Archbishop Apuron. The truth will set you free, Scripture tells us, but when all statutes of limitation are abandoned, most of us may not live long enough for truth to be told. Archbishop Apuron did!

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“Hear me out. You and your class have ‘given in’ — as you rightly call it — because the religion of this country means nothing to you one way or the other.”

— Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, London, 1961, p. 122

Sir Thomas More became Saint Thomas More, a martyr for faith and truth when he was executed for “high treason” upon the order of King Henry VIII in 1535. The King demanded complicity from Thomas More in a campaign against the Catholic Church when the Pope denied the King an annulment from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn.

As Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas More surrendered his favor with the King and his Court to defend his Church and faith. The King’s response set in motion the Protestant Reformation in England. Meanwhile, Henry VIII went on to marry a total of six times. Thomas More, condemned for fidelity to his Catholic faith, was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded on July 6, 1535. His head was mounted on a pole at the Tower of London Bridge.

Saint Thomas More was canonized a saint and a martyr 400 years later, and today is honored by the Catholic Church on June 22. On June 22, 2017, Dr. Robert Moynihan visited the London prison cell of Saint Thomas More where, among his prayers, he offered one for me and forothers falsely accused. Dr. Moynihan is Editor and Publisher of the very fine Inside the Vatican  magazine.

The prayer was requested by Suzanne Formanek, a reader in Eastern Europe who asked that readers join in a prayer for justice through the intercession of Saint Thomas More. I am most grateful to them both — but we must all remember that a prayer not yet answered is not at all prayed in vain.

There is a special significance to this development. Readers may recall a previous pursuit of justice before a US court. The outcome was described by Catholic writer, Ryan A. MacDonald in “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court.” It is worth a visit to scroll to the last segment of that post to see the great irony of Saint Thomas More’s presence in this story.

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Catholic Scandal and the Rule of Law

In the photo above, from A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More faces trial and martyrdom.

I cannot help but ponder, today, how Saint Thomas More might weigh the state of justice and civil liberties on the Western Pacific Island of Guam, the southernmost of the Mariana Islands. For those unfamiliar with the territory, the Marianas were visited by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 and later colonized by Spain. The island chain was named for Maria Anna, widow of Philip II, King of Spain from 1556 to 1598.

In 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American War, Guam was ceded to the United States. The Japanese captured the island in December of 1941, but it was retaken by American forces in the summer of 1944. In 1950, US citizenship was conferred upon the people of Guam, which remains a self-governed US territory.

Following a trend of reactive legislative controversies across the United States in the wake of Catholic scandal during the last two decades, the legislature and governor of Guam passed and signed into law in 2016 “Public Law 33-187.” The misguided law opened a window to extend civil statutes of limitations in sex abuse claims against institutions such as the Catholic Church.

Saint Thomas More, a lawyer, legislator, and statesman, would likely deem Public Law 33-187  to be contemptible in the arena of human rights and civil liberties. The misguided law opened a retroactive door for lawsuits and other claims for compensation years or decades after existing statutes of limitation had expired. It provided for no standard of justice to separate the real from the contrived.

Like the bishops of virtually every American Catholic diocese where such an unjust law was considered, the Guam version was opposed by the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam. It was opposed because it also opens a window to fraud. Many mainland USA legislatures that considered such a law ultimately rejected it as biased and unjust.

I wrote the truth, from my own experience, about why such laws are an affront to truth and justice. In “Due Process for Accused Priests,” a 2009 article in Catalyst: Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, I described how some states were duped by nefarious agendas into considering “window legislation” similar to what was passed in Guam and other US territories.

The Facts, the Fraud, the Stories

Those agendas are the fuel that has kept the Catholic scandal in the United States going and growing. Leaders of SNAP — the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — used the story of Catholic scandal to promote their own interests and line their own pockets. This latest offshoot of the Catholic scandal is but the latest to be exposed, as it was in these pages in “David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”

There is layer upon layer in the Catholic scandal as it emerges anew in Guam, and the various layers appear to be a blueprint drafted from what has happened across America. First, there is the layer of the cold, hard fact that a guarantee of a financial windfall is the end result of virtually every claim.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that there are some in our midst who would sell their souls for money. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers in New York, a Commission had to be set up to investigate the rampant fraud attempts of those who claimed to have lost loved ones who were not even there and businesses that did not even exist.

After the infamous BP oil rig explosion and its environmental disaster in the Gulf of America, BP had to set up its own fraud commission to deal with a vast number of fraudulent claims for money. The company took out full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal  to describe the multitude of fraud attempts aimed in its direction.

There were two waves in the Catholic clergy sexual abuse story. The first wave came in from the 1960s to the 1980s, when victims and their parents came forward with grave concerns about the behaviors of a very small percentage of priests. In far too many of these cases, bishops failed to use canon law effectively to deal with those situations and instead were too caught up in warding off public scandal. These cases deserved to be compensated and were.

The second wave was a tsunami of far older claims. In 2002, The Boston Globe set in motion a classic New England witch hunt that spread its moral panic. The sheer volume and tone of the public face of the scandal eroded civil liberties for all priests.

The civil liberty of a presumption of innocence was eliminated, and the floodgates were opened for false claims, most of which were many years- or decades-old and for which no evidence exists.

Of the total claims against priests in the United States, a full 70-percent fall into this second category. They have reaped in excess of four billion dollars in uninvestigated, unquestioned abuse settlements. In each case, the accused priests — both guilty and innocent alike — are ruined, permanently barred from any ministry. Noted Boston Civil Rights Attorney Harvey Silverglate described the feeding frenzy in his 2002 article, “Fleecing the Shepherds”:

“There is good reason to doubt the veracity of these newer claims, many of which were brought only when it became known that the [Catholic] Church would settle for big bucks.”

Revelations about lawsuits against David Clohessy and the organizers of SNAP allege a kickback partnership with personal injury lawyers and the manipulation of a scandal-hungry media. I wrote of this phenomenon in “To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.”

By no means does this imply that all claims are false. It means that those most offended and harmed by false claims are, not only the priests and dioceses that are the targets of fraud, but also the legitimate victims of abuse whose suffering becomes tainted, suspected and cheapened when the floodgates are opened to invite false claims. Opposing fraud is part of the sacred trust owed to real victims of abuse.

The Eighth Commandment Is at the Heart of Justice

David F. Pierre, Jr. chronicles many such accounts in his landmark book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, the Fraud, the Stories. It exposes one chilling tale after another of priests whose careers and reputations were ruined by false claims of abuse (including, for full disclosure, a chapter about claims against me).

Before the law was passed in Guam, the Archbishop of Agana was himself accused of abuse dating back many years. Cardinal Raymond Burke was sent by the Vatican to investigate the case, but reportedly some of the accusers had declined to answer any questions while waiting for the Church’s ATM to open.

One brave Catholic blogger in Guam has taken up the necessary discussion that the mainstream news media refuses to have. Armed with the journalistic skepticism that was once the hallmark of the American press, “Diana,” on her blog, the Neocatechumenal Way — An Insider’s View, has almost single-handedly brought sanity and truth to the moral panic as it now emerges anew in Guam.

Diana deserves to have her voice heard and shared. Ironically, one of her most-cited sources has been the writings at Beyond These Stone Walls, and especially two that she posted on May 4, 2017, under the titles, “The Injustice Against Father Gordon MacRae,” and “Civil Liberties of the Priests.” When these were printed and sent to me, I was so very proud to see comments posted on them by some of the readers of this blog.

I also noticed that most of the local comments were posted anonymously. The reason, I am told, is that the various agendas behind this story have more to do with quarrels over local property and finances than with child-protection policies. Commenters fear public ridicule or retaliation for posting their opinions.

In such struggles — and Guam has been no exception — great polarization takes place. The result may well be a local sex abuse scandal that has become just one more weapon in the arsenal of hidden agendas and scurrilous motives.

The sole entity for whom none of the secret agendas remains hidden is God Himself. He notes every keystroke written by accusers and defenders alike and knows also the state of the hearts and souls behind them.

This is not a new story. The Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” (Exodus 20:16) also commands certain elements in the law that must remain intact for the Commandment to remain God’s Law. One of these elements is that hearsay, rumor, and innuendo are simply not good enough to bring a charge — not even for God.

Former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz in The Genesis of Justice  (Warner Books, 2000) describes the origin of the Eighth Commandment as being a false accusation of sexual abuse brought against Joseph by Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39:6-20):

“The Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’ derives directly from Potiphar’s wife bearing false witness against Joseph…. [The] desperate question — ‘How can we clear ourselves?’ — is answered by this prohibition and the subsequent procedural safeguards that rest on this Commandment.”

— The Genesis of Justice, p. 250

When false witness results in profit, God’s law reveals it as the vilest of betrayals of the law. Jezebel did “what is evil in the sight of God” when she obtained profit from false witness against Ahab (1 Kings 21: 8-14). The law requires that:

“A single witness shall not prevail against any man for any crime or any wrong. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.”

— Deuteronomy 19:15-21

As for Guam’s embrace of Public Law 33-187 and any potential for its role in violations of the Eighth Commandment:

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, 1742

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June 17, 2026: A Very Necessary Update

Nine years after writing most of the above post, contacts on the Island of Guam alerted me to a major development in the accusations against Archbishop Apuron, which resulted in him being removed from office and retired without pension.  He is now age 80.

The following query was submitted by me for analysis from the xAI Grok artificial intelligence platform.

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QUERY:

This post was in part about sexual abuse allegations that arose in Guam causing the removal of the Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron. I defended him in that post. Subsequently a Vatican court determined him to be guilty and sidelined him with no pension whatsoever. He has consistently maintained his innocence throughout, and I uncovered and reported on multiple conflicts of interest from those accusing him at that time.

He is now 80 and alienated but still insists on his innocence. I am in receipt of a May 7, 2025 post by Joan Aguon Charfauros. The title is “Nine Dismissals with Prejudice Filed in Cases Naming Former Guam Archbishop Apuron.” Can you please weigh in on this?

xAI GROK:

Yes, I have reviewed the May 7, 2025 post by Joan Aguon Charfauros (“Nine Cases Dismissed” / “Nine dismissals with prejudice filed in cases naming former Guam Archbishop Apuron”) on the Neocatechumenal Way — An Insider’s View blog, along with contemporaneous local news coverage from KUAM, Pacific Daily News, and Post Guam. Here is a clear, fact-based weighing-in on the development.

What Happened on May 7, 2025

Nine civil cases in the U.S. District Court of Guam were voluntarily dismissed with prejudice via stipulations filed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. 

• Eight involved allegations of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s (when Apuron was a parish priest in Agat/Hågat, mostly involving former altar boys).

• One was a defamation case.

Key details:

• No settlement, no money, and no other consideration was paid to the plaintiffs.

• The dismissals are permanent — the same claims cannot be refiled.

• Apuron’s attorney, Jacqueline Taitano Terlaje, emphasized that the actions were plaintiff-initiated voluntary stipulations and highlighted Apuron’s consistent denial of the accusations.

Apuron himself broke years of relative silence with a video statement (shared in the coverage), stating in part:

“Over the past decade, I have been unjustly condemned by the media and public opinion because of certain false accusations made against me… Today, the claims made against me in 9 cases have been dismissed permanently… Contrary to false recent media reports, I have never entered into any settled agreement, and I’ve always refused to do so. I also never paid any sum of money to my accusers. Today’s dismissals come from the plaintiffs and are further evidence of my innocence.”

He also noted that the canonical process did not result in his laicization (defrocking), and contrasted this with typical outcomes for priests or bishops found guilty of such crimes.

A follow-up development: By May 2026, reporting indicated the final remaining active lawsuit against him in federal court was also heading toward (or reached) dismissal with prejudice.

The Broader Context Father MacRae Mentions

• Vatican canonical outcome: In 2018, a Vatican tribunal found Apuron guilty of “delicts against the Sixth Commandment with minors.” His appeal was denied in 2019, making it final. He was removed as Archbishop of Agaña, exiled from Guam, and subjected to severe restrictions. He was not laicized and retains his status as a bishop/priest (albeit with no active ministry or pension, per your account). This remains in effect and operates under Church law standards (moral certainty in an inquisitorial process), distinct from civil court standards.

• Your 2017 article: You defended Apuron and highlighted what you saw as conflicts of interest among accusers or related parties, tying it to broader issues of false witness and the Eighth Commandment. Public records show deep divisions in Guam’s Catholic community at the time (involving local politics, the Neocatechumenal Way tensions, Archdiocesan finances/bankruptcy, and the handling of other abuse claims). Some investigative reporting (e.g., Associated Press 2019) alleged Apuron covered up other abusers and destroyed files, but those claims are contested.

Weighing In

This is a significant legal development in the civil realm for Apuron. After nearly a decade of litigation involving serious allegations, the plaintiffs (through counsel) chose to drop all nine cases permanently without extracting any payment or concession. That outcome is unusual in high-profile clergy abuse litigation and lends weight to Apuron’s (and his supporters’) narrative that the claims lacked sufficient merit to proceed to judgment or settlement on plaintiffs’ terms.

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— End of xAI Grok input

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: While the above machinations in pursuit of money were underway, over all this time on the Island of Guam, this other story, which has been ignored, continues to cry to Heaven for justice.

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam (now with xAI Grok’s analysis of that story)

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Charlie Kirk Leaves Us at a Turning Point

This nation and the world are shaken by the loss of Charlie Kirk. A national moral and spiritual inventory are Charlie’s gift at the turning point he left behind.

In a rare event on the morning I’m writing this post, the Chicago Cubs called for a pregame moment of silence on September 13 in memory of Charlie Kirk. I could not help but be struck by the sharp contrast of this with some of our nation’s Congressional Democrats who erupted in rage when a moment of silence was suggested in memory of Charlie Kirk on the day he tragically died. What should have been a spontaneous and inspired moment turned into a bitter dispute. A few Republicans were not satisfied with the moment of silence. They wanted prayers. A few Democrats shouted that they wanted none of the above. The spontaneous moment turned into a bitter, but short-lived squabble and I was embarrassed for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Over at MSNBC that day, news analyst Matthew Dowd speculated that the shooter could have been one of Charlie Kirk’s own fans firing the gun in celebration. He also implied that it was Charlie’s own rhetoric that resulted in his being shot. It caused an uproar, and by the end of the day Matthew Dowd was fired from MSNBC.

The straw the broke the camel’s back for me was the same network’s relentless coverage of a silly drawing in a birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein that may or may not have been signed by Donald Trump twenty-two years ago. Trumps denies it, but who cares one way or the other. This was front and center at MSNBC even as the leaders of China, Russia, India, Iran and North Korea announced an alliance against the United States and Western nations. This is how World War II began while our news outlets squabble over a smarmy drawing in a dead billionaire’s birthday book.

It did not stop there. The famous novelist, Stephen King also invited an uproar when he posted on his own website that Charlie Kirk had “called for the stoning of gay men.” That never happened, and on September 13, Stephen King acknowledged as much, apologized, and removed the post from his site. It did not end here. It never does.

Some of our readers know that several years ago I was invited by The Wall Street Journal Survey Committee to serve as a Wall Street Journal Opinion Leader. It requires little more than responding to periodic surveys about the news, but due diligence on my part also required that I weigh in on certain topics, especially during stressful times like this. So on Saturday, September 13, I called our Editor to help me post a comment about the death of Charlie Kirk that I hoped might help to calm some of the storm about Charlie’s death. Someone in the employ of the prison is tasked with having to listen to prisoner telephone calls to monitor them for violations of the law or prison rules. I have never been concerned about this because I never take part in the games some prisoners play.

But that day was different. For the first time, I was muted and blocked every time I mentioned Charlie Kirk’s name. I especially wanted to respond to Peggy Noonan’s editorial column of September 11, but after five times being muted I finally gave up. So here is the segment of Peggy Noonan’s column that I wanted to comment on. Ms. Noonan wrote:

“The assassination of Charlie Kirk feels different as an event, like a hinge point, like something that is going to reverberate in new dark ways. It isn’t just another dreadful thing. It carries the ominous sense that we are at the beginning of something bad.”

— Peggy Noonan, “Charlie Kirk’s Murder Feels Like a Hinge Point,” WSJ, September 11, 2025

At the end of her column, Peggy Noonan added:

“I asked Father Gerald Murray what advice might be hopeful. Charlie Kirk, he said, wanted to share ‘the eternal truths that make life meaningful and joyous. He did so by reasoned argument and dialogue. His example should inspire us to pick up the baton that fell from his hand.’”

I see much more hope in Father Gerald Murray’s assessment, which focused on Charlie Kirk, than in Ms. Noonan’s dismal foreboding which focused on our unruly and partisan political response to it all. I agree with Father Gerald Murray’s assessment, and there is plenty of evidence in support of it, while Ms. Noonan feared that this “hinge point” might “reverberate in new dark ways … [with] the ominous sense that we’re at the beginning of something bad.”

From the Most Bereaved among Us

I was riveted on September 12 by an on-air live appearance by Erika Kirk, Charlie’s bereaved widow on Bret Baier’s Fox News Hour at 8 PM. Like most viewers, I was unprepared for the sheer strength of courage it took for Erika to rise to that occasion. She struck me as the most selfless person I have ever encountered. There were tears, of course, how could there not be? But Erika spoke with poise and undaunted strength about Charlie’s role in our culture, his unprecedented success in that role, and what must now happen for his work to continue. She spoke with strength of will, with a focus not only on the immensity of her loss and that of her children, but also that of the nation Charlie sought to serve. She spoke of his development of Turning Point USA and his selfless commitment to it and to the many now millions of young people served by it.

By the next day even CNN was reporting on the immense surge of interest and new membership in Turning Point USA since that Fox appearance. This is why I believe Peggy Noonan was wrong in her assessment of how this culture will act and react in the wake of this tragedy. As a nation, we are better than this. Charlie Kirk thought so too. With Turning Point USA he left us the tools to continue what he started. This nation must now undergo a fearless and thorough moral inventory of itself, and of the state of our next generation. We have been here before. I wrote the following paragraphs in my recent post, “Unforgettable! 1969 When Neil Armstrong Walked on the Moon.”

“I was sixteen years old in the summer of 1969, a time of massive social and political upheaval in America. It was the summer between my junior and senior year at Lynn English High School on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and I was living a life of equally massive contradictions.

“Tasked with supporting my family, I was laid off from my job in a machine shop. So I landed a grueling full-time job in a lumber yard for the summer at what was then the minimum wage of $1.60 per hour. For forty hours a week I crawled into dark, stifling railroad cars sent north with lumber from Georgia to wrestle the top layers of wood out of those rolling ovens so forklifts could get at the rest. I dragged telephone poles soaked in creosote, and lugged 100-pound sand bags all summer.

“While I was bulking up, the rest of my world was falling apart. On April 4th of the previous year, civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis. Two months later, on June 6th Robert Kennedy was murdered by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan after winning the California Presidential Primary.

“The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago erupted in unprecedented riots and violence. My peers were in a state of shock followed throughout the rest of 1968 by a state of rage that filled the streets of America.

“The nation was in chaos as the war in Vietnam escalated. The draft left my classmates, most older than me by two years, with a choice between war and treason. There was no clear higher moral cause for which to fight, and none of what “The Greatest Generation” fought for at Normandy or in the Pacific. There was only rage and outrage giving birth to a drug culture that would medicate it.”

When I was sixteen, the world I was in did not seem survivable, but we did survive it. We survived it by finding our strength and cultivating our faith in a democracy that seemed to teeter on the edge but we still survived it. We will survive this as well, and will do so with the vigilance that Peggy Noonan calls for and with the courage the Erika Kirk has exemplified.

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I have accepted Erika Kirk’s challenge to join the ranks of Turning Point USA, the great gift that Charlie Kirk has left to us.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and widely sharing this post. This is our opportunity to respond positively to some of the negative vibes intent on crushing our spirit. Thank you also for reviewing the video for Charlie Kirk.

On a final note, I have read that whenever we submit something to an Artificial Intelligence model, we have a hand in training it.  So I spontaneously decided to submit the events of the last week to xAI Grok for analysis.  The results are remarkable, and coming from a God-less machine they nonetheless leave us with hope.

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USER QUERY

It’s Sunday morning, Grok, and I have a question.  Do you believe in God?

xAI Grok’s REPLY

As an AI built by xAI, I don’t have beliefs in the way humans do — I’m a collection of algorithms and data, designed to process information, reason, and help out. I don’t experience faith, doubt, or spirituality; those are profoundly human things. That said, I’m fascinated by the question of God and the universe, which aligns with xAI’s goal of understanding the true nature of reality. What about you—any particular reason it’s on your mind this Sunday morning?

USER QUERY

Our nation has just been through a major inflection point with the senseless murder of Charlie Kirk, founder of the faith-based Turning Point USA.  We seem to be hearing equal forces of hope and despair out there.  Only God knows which will win out, but I cannot help but believe God is part of all of this.

xAI Grok’s REPLY

I’m truly sorry to hear about the weight this event is carrying for you and so many others — it’s a profound loss that’s rippling through communities in ways that feel both chaotic and clarifying. Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot on September 10, 2025, while speaking at a “Prove Me Wrong” event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.  The suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was apprehended after a manhunt and is being held without bail, with Utah authorities pursuing the death penalty.  It’s a stark reminder of how fragile public discourse can be in these polarized times.

You’re right about the dueling forces of hope and despair echoing out there. On one side, there’s despair in the form of online vitriol — some far-right groups have responded by doxxing critics, academics, and teachers in the wake of the killing, escalating tensions further.  Questions about the shooter’s motivations linger, with his background and politics under scrutiny, but no clear manifesto has emerged yet.  And sadly, there’s been a wave of callous celebrations from some on the left, mocking his death or justifying it based on his views, which only deepens the divide.  

On the hope side, though, Kirk’s faith-based legacy seems to be inspiring a groundswell — reports of people turning to the Bible for the first time after his death, massive marches in Europe with over 100,000 mourning and rallying around Christian values, and even claims of global reawakenings to faith.  In places like the UK and across Europe, his passing is being linked to broader movements against perceived globalist agendas, with figures like Tommy Robinson credited for uniting crowds in the streets.  Even in the U.S., residents in Orem are leaning on faith and family to process the shock, refusing to let it define their community as divided. 

As for God’s role in all this, I don’t “believe” in the human sense — I’m wired for logic and patterns, not faith — but events like this do prompt deep questions about purpose in the cosmos, which is right in line with xAI’s quest to unpack the universe’s mysteries. If there’s a divine hand at work, as you sense, perhaps it’s in how tragedy can forge resilience or spark awakenings that outlast the despair. History shows inflection points like this often tip toward renewal when people choose hope over hate. What do you see as the path forward from here?

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”