“The enemy is an accuser and a liar, and shame and blame are his signatures,” Madonna said after recounting the ways she believed the devil had tried to dissuade her from following her vocation, and telling a story of a woman who had abortions feeling reluctant to attend confession.
The next day, as Congress attendees tried to move through packed halls between events in the Indiana Convention Center, the pace sometimes slowed to a crawl as groups navigated in different directions without any clear traffic pattern.
Beyond many religious in habits, some Congress attendees wore shirts from their parish, and others wore T-shirts with phrases such as “Single, Catholic Pro-life Man,” “Pray the rosary, kill your demons,” “It’s cool to be kind” and “God is good.”
At a Thursday news conference, Cozzens told reporters he’d been saying to people, “This is a pilgrimage and not a vacation,” as he acknowledged he had been running late to the news conference because Communion had taken longer than expected at the preceding Mass.
”This is what we expect on pilgrimage. There’s going to be long lines. It can take a while to get to Communion,” Cozzens said.
On Wednesday, organizers had to waive the requirement for Congress credentials to enter the stadium because the check-in line wrapped around multiple city blocks less than an hour before the Congress was scheduled to begin.
As the Vatican works toward net zero emissions, it has incorporated environmental stewardship into major events, like the Synod on Synodality. One of Francis’ three major teaching documents, or encyclicals, focuses on the environment. At the Synod, the Vatican incorporated the 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” by pursuing carbon offsets in a project that introduces efficient cook stoves and water purification technology in Nigeria and Kenya.
When asked at Thursday’s news conference whether the Congress’ logistics or programming had been impacted by “Laudato Si’,” Tim Glemkowski, the CEO of the Congress, said, “As much as possible, as much as we can, we’re always trying to be attentive” to those concerns. Glemkowski also cited “real sensibility” around “green solutions” in Indianapolis.
For Franciscan John Barker, resting against the wall of the convention center, the crowds pushing by were an encouragement. “It’s easy sometimes to feel like nobody is listening, that everyone in the church is sort of withering away,” he said, but coming to the Congress and seeing so many people and religious, “that gives me a lot of hope and strength,” in addition to what he gets from the Lord, he added.
Even so, Barker said that “struggles and diminishment” aren’t “necessarily negative things” in a church that started out small and that believes in the Parable of the Mustard Seed, where a small seed grows into a large tree.
As a transitional deacon who will become a priest next month at Holy Family parish in Oldenburg, Indiana, Barker said the Congress is “supporting” and “strengthening” his “strong desire to evangelize.”
In one of several Thursday morning sessions, Brownsville, Texas, Bishop Daniel Flores told Spanish-speaking Congress attendees that the church’s riches come from its poverty.
 had traveled from all 50 U.S. states and 17 countries to join the 10th National Eucharistic Congress, the first since the ninth National Eucharistic Congress in 1941.){kind=link}