{"id":69120,"date":"2025-11-29T02:32:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/69120\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T02:32:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:32:06","slug":"dallas-priest-asks-pope-leo-xiv-to-bless-his-parishs-future-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/69120\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas priest asks Pope Leo XIV to bless his parish\u2019s future church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Father Paolo Capra stood in a crowd outside an Istanbul cathedral on Friday, half a world away from his parish in Pleasant Grove.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Capra was waiting for a glimpse of Pope Leo XIV. He had a simple request: for the pontiff to bless a single brick destined to be the first laid in the new Dallas church for his working-class flock more than 6,000 miles away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">\u201cThis stone,\u201d Capra told Christopher Lamb, CNN\u2019s Vatican correspondent, in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DRnbs23DJff\/?igsh=ZHZ2eGk5bm0zdzJp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DRnbs23DJff\/?igsh=ZHZ2eGk5bm0zdzJp\">interview<\/a>, \u201cwould like to be the first stone of the new church that we want like to build in the parish of St. Augustine in Dallas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Capra said he hopes to one day build a larger, \u201cmore beautiful\u201d church. Their current church \u2014 located on St. Augustine Road \u2014 is too small to hold the 500 people in their congregation, most of them low-income and immigrants from Mexico, he said. <\/p>\n<p>Breaking News<\/p>\n<p class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__3beff secondaryRoman secondaryRoman-20 text-center text-gray-dark\">Get the latest breaking news from North Texas and beyond.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__8MgJa flex flex-wrap text-gray-dark secondaryRoman secondaryRoman-10 text-center justify-center\">By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0<a class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__lU9-l border-b border-gray-dark hover_border-0 focus_border-0 active_border-0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/help\/terms-of-service\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__lU9-l border-b border-gray-dark hover_border-0 focus_border-0 active_border-0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/help\/privacy-policy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">The church has set a goal of $17 million for the first phase of the project, according to information on its website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Renderings on the church\u2019s website show a bright, white sanctuary with a green roof and a tower capped with a cross. A glass entryway is framed by the white brick, with an anchor-and-cross emblem above the main doors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Pope Leo XIV\u2019s visit to Turkey was his first foreign trip as pope. Waiting for his arrival, Capra held the brick, which bore the words \u201cFirst stone,\u201d his church\u2019s name and 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">\u201cSo you hope he will bless that when he goes past?\u201d Lamb asked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">\u201cWe hope so,\u201d Capra responded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">To the sound of cheers, Pope Leo XIV stepped toward Capra\u2019s group and clasped their outstretched hands as they told him they were visiting from Dallas. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">He took note of the brick Capra held and waved a cross over it in blessing. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">\u201c\u00a1Viva el Papa! \u00a1Viva el Papa!\u201d they called out.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Father Paolo Capra stood in a crowd outside an Istanbul cathedral on Friday, half a world away from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,1881,8356,8871],"class_list":["post-69120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-faith","tag-pleasant-grove","tag-pope-leo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}