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Panoramic view of the west bank of Nigeen Lake in Srinagar, India, with the distant Middle Himalayan Pir Panjal mountain range in the background. The city, situated on the banks of the Jhelum river and several lakes in the Himalayan Kashmir Valley, is the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir and the northernmost million-plus city of India.
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CNA Staff, Oct 4, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Daniel Whitehead knew it was time for a change when his wife told him she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile. With the strain of constantly meeting with people who were struggling, the Christian pastor said he had “gone numb.”
“I realized in that moment, it had been well over a year that I’d felt any emotion,” he told CNA. “No laughter, no tears, just numbness.”
Then he discovered Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries. At the time, it was a small, local ecumenical group creating resources for mental health in pastoral ministry. Nine years later, Whitehead has become its leader and Sanctuary has become a large-scale resource operating across the world.
Working through burnout “was really confusing,” Whitehead said of his own experience.
“I didn’t have language, or self-permission, or a framework to really understand what I was going through,” he said. “But how I would describe it was a feeling of fear, anxiety, and feeling trapped.”
Looking back at his challenges in ministry, Whitehead said he was experiencing “emotional overwhelm” from “moving from meeting to meeting, feeling the weight of people’s expectations, having to be there for people when they’re at their worst, and not really having an outlet to process that with.”
This experience helped him “realize the great need that exists in the church for support in this area,” he said.
“From that moment throughout my recovery journey I was looking for a cause to give myself to, and Sanctuary was that cause,” he said. “I very much felt called to the work.”
Whitehead told CNA that amid an ongoing mental health crisis, the church can be a great resource.
“The church is so perfectly placed to offer hope, belonging, community, and purpose to people in crisis — all of which are vital components of a person’s recovery and all of which are areas that the church has a monopoly on,” Whitehead said.
In the United States, depression and anxiety rates rose by more than 50% from 2010 to 2019 and suicide rates for adolescents ages 10 to 19 rose 48%.
“It really is an opportunity for the church to step in and offer Christ’s hope to people in crisis,” Whitehead said.
Sanctuary’s resources guide both the church and people struggling with mental health.
The ministry “creates high-quality resources that anyone anywhere can access,” which Whitehead said “makes us quite a unique proposition globally speaking.”
Resources include video courses designed to be taken in small-group settings.
Since its launch, more than 365,000 Christians in 102 countries have participated in the Sanctuary Course, according to the organization.
Sanctuary’s work “allows people who are experiencing crisis to feel seen and gives the church more confidence to know what its role is and what its role isn’t when walking with a person in crisis,” Whitehead explained.
This year, the organization is developing resources to reach young people.
It recently launched “The Sanctuary Youth Series,” which is all about starting “important conversations” with youth in youth ministry, explained Bryana Russell, Sanctuary’s director of engagement and interim director of development.
The series, Russell told CNA, “targets the pressing questions young people are asking about mental health” and is designed “to raise awareness and reduce stigma” about mental health.
“We know young people want to talk about the intersection of faith and mental health,” Russell said. “This series is one of the few resources available to help faith communities do so.”
“Our hope is that the next generation will experience the Church as a supportive place and that youth ministry leaders, parents and caregivers, and youth will all be equipped to have conversations about mental health,” Russell said.
The series is “designed to be used in groups” to help “young people connect with trusted adults in their church or school community,” Russell said, noting that being in community helps mental health.
“Young people benefit from the support of trusted adults, but few are having the conversations they need to,” she said.
The ecumenicism of Sanctuary is what drew Whitehead to the group nine years ago.
“Our staff represent a range of church traditions, the majority of which are Protestant, but I would suggest that the spiritual practices that many of us draw from both individually and corporately are often more liturgical in nature,” Whitehead said.
“I think we all have a deep appreciation for the richness and vitality that different church traditions and denominations bring to the table,” Whitehead said.
Sanctuary works with various churches, including Catholic dioceses and parishes.
“Across the United States and Canada, many other dioceses are providing the leadership and support for mental health ministry,” Russell said.
Sanctuary’s course for Catholics — designed specifically for Catholic parishes and in use in parishes around the world — features Catholic voices including Archbishop J. Michael Miller of Vancouver and Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver.
“The Sanctuary Course for Catholics plays an important role in opening the conversation and equipping parishes to begin such a ministry,” Russell said.
This year, Sanctuary officially teamed up with the Archdiocese of Vancouver, which is formally launching a Mental Health Ministry with the help of Sanctuary.
“We are delighted that our resources will be a part of their designed reach to build this ministry of presence,” Russell said.
To kick off the event, Sanctuary and the archdiocese hosted Matt Maher, a Catholic contemporary Christian worship musician and Sanctuary’s ambassador.
“Through stories, conversation, and song, themes of psychology, theology, and lived experience were introduced, offering an accessible and inspiring call to this ministry,” Russell said of the launch event.
“What makes Sanctuary unique is our ability to bring psychology and theology together to really validate and sanctify peoples’ stories,” Whitehead said. “Which means that in order to hold mental health well we have to really take each of these disciplines seriously.”
He added: “I’m inspired to continue this work when I look at the great need and also the great opportunity we have for the church to step into a gap that exists in society.”
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Washington, D.C., Sep 29, 2025 / 19:13 pm (CNA).
Teachers, coaches, and other public and private school leaders said their religious liberty was threatened in American schools at a hearing conducted by President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission on Sept. 29.
Speakers said there must be a fight for schools to bring back the “truth” to protect students and religious liberty. Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach; Monica Gill, a high school teacher; Marisol Arroyo-Castro, a seventh grade teacher; and Keisha Russell, a lawyer for First Liberty Institute, addressed the commission led by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
“There has to be a call to action,” commission member Dr. Phil McGraw said. “The most common way to lose power is to think you don’t have it to begin with. We do have power, and we need to rally with that power.”
Kennedy said he was suspended — and later fired — from his position as a football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington for praying a brief and quiet prayer after football games.
“After the game, I took a knee to say thanks,” Kennedy explained. “That’s all. If that could be turned into a national controversy, it says more about the confusion in our country than the conduct of the person performing it.”
Kennedy told the commission the law is “cloudy and muddy” and they “have the power to clarify it.” Kennedy also said some lawyers “need to be held accountable” for actions taken in religious liberty cases.
Kennedy said: “I don’t know a lot about law and liberty, but I know that you’re supposed to advise people on the truth and the facts, and they’re not. They have an agenda, and their agenda is well set and in place and is working very well, keeping prayer out of the public square. They’re still doing it. That needs to be exposed.”
“Being a teacher has been one of the greatest blessings of my life,” Gill said to the committee. “God really gave my heart a mission … to show all of my students every day that they are loved. No matter what they’re going through, no matter what their grades are, no matter what their status is with their peers, I love them.”
“But in the summer of 2021 … Loudoun County Public Schools adopted a policy that forced teachers to deny the foundational truth of what it means to be human, created as male and female,” Gill said.
“This policy forced teachers to affirm all transgender students,” Gill said. “My employer gave teachers a choice: deny truth or risk everything … I knew that I could not stand in front of my Father in heaven one day and say: ‘My pension plan was more important than your truth.’ I also knew that if I say that I love my students, the only right choice would be to stand in love and truth for them.”
To combat the policy, Gill joined a lawsuit by Alliance Defending Freedom after a fellow Virginia teacher was fired for speaking out against the same policy. The lawsuit “resulted in victory for all teachers to freely speak truth and love when Loudoun County finally agreed not to require teachers to use pronouns in accordance with the student’s sex,” Gill said.
Arroyo-Castro testified that she was punished for displaying a cross in her private workspace in her seventh grade classroom in a New Britain School District school in Connecticut.
“I share this with you to help you understand why the crucifix is so significant to me and why I will never hide it from anyone’s view,” Arroyo-Castro said. “The vice principal told me that the crucifix was of a religious nature, so against the Constitution of the United States, and that it had to be taken down by the end of the day.”
If she did not take it down it would be considered “insubordination and could lead to termination,” Arroyo-Castro said. She asked if she could have time to pray on it, and was told she could, but “it wouldn’t change anything.”
“I was later called to a meeting with the district chief of staff, the principal, the vice principal, [and a] union representative. The chief of staff suggested that I put the crucifix in a drawer. I knew I couldn’t do that since my grandmother has instilled in me the meaning of the crucifix and how it should be treated with respect. But the chief of staff said that the Constitution says that I had to take it down,” Arroyo-Castro said.
After she refused to remove it, Arroyo-Castro was released from school with an unpaid suspension. She was offered legal defense by lawyers at First Liberty, which sued the school for violating the Constitution. While the lawsuit is ongoing she works in the administrative building “far from the students.”
Arroyo-Castro said: “Every day, I wonder how they’re doing.”
“Please do what you can to educate the districts in American schools about the true meaning of the establishment clause and the free exercise clause,” Arroyo-Castro advised the commission members. “How can we do our jobs well when many education leaders today don’t understand the Constitution themselves? We must understand as Americans that freedom of religion is a right that benefits all Americans.”
Leaders at Jewish, Catholic, and Christian schools also recounted religious freedom issues facing faith-based schools across the nation and what the country can do.
The leaders highlighted the need to protect the financial aid faith-based institutions receive and stop any threats of losing money if certain values are not enforced. Todd J. Williams, provost at Cairn University, said: “Schools will begin to cave because they’re worried about the millions of dollars that will go out the door.”
Father Robert Sirico, a priest at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said he was recently affected by a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court that redefined sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
“While presented as a matter of fairness, this reinterpretation proposes grave dangers, grave risks for all religious institutions, even those like Sacred Heart that receive absolutely no public support,” he said.
Sacred Heart has filed a lawsuit to combat the issue, but Sirico said what needs to be done “exceeds the competency of [the] commission and the competency of this administration.”
“We have to think of this in existential terms, and we have to come at this project with the understanding that this is going to take years to transform. This is why religious people can transform the world: We believe in something that’s greater than our politics. We can reenvision.”
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CNA Staff, Sep 1, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
A recent study found that the rate of mental-health-related hospitalizations doubled for women who had abortions compared with women who gave birth.
The study, published this summer in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, compared abortions with other pregnancies in hospitals in Quebec, Canada, between 2006 and 2022, tracking data on women for up to 17 years.
The study, which compared more than 1.2 million women who gave birth in Quebec hospitals with more than 28,000 women who had abortions, found that “rates of mental-health-related hospitalization were higher following induced abortions than other pregnancies.”
Abortion was associated with a number of mental-health-related difficulties including hospitalization for psychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, and suicide attempts, the study found.
This association was especially high for women who were younger than 25 years at the time of their abortions, as well as for patients who already had an existing mental illness.
The risk of mental health hospitalization was highest within five years of the abortion. The risk decreased gradually after the five-year point, but only after 17 years did the risk begin “to resemble” pregnancies carried to term, according to the study.
Tessa Cox, senior research associate at the think tank Charlotte Lozier Institute, said the study was “particularly powerful.”
“This recent study out of Canada, which has more comprehensive health care data than the U.S., adds to a mounting body of research suggesting that abortion can harm women’s mental health,” Cox said.
“The abortion industry downplays the evidence, so the fact that this new study included more than a million women and took prior mental health and other related factors into account makes it particularly powerful,” she told CNA.
“Women deserve to have all the facts — and women and men who have been harmed by abortion need to know that forgiveness and healing are possible,” Cox said.
Another scholar called the study “robust,” noting that it followed the data over an extended period of time and had constants that enabled the information to be more accurate.
Michael New, senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and assistant professor of practice at The Catholic University of America, noted that the study “provides strong statistical evidence that abortion increases the risk of a range of mental health problems.”
New said the study had many strengths, including its large sample size, the way it tracked women over an extended period of time, and how the authors analyzed data from an extended period of time.
This method was rare, according to the study, which noted that “large population-based studies with long-term follow-up are rare yet necessary to understand the mental health needs of women post abortion.”
New called this study’s results “robust,” noting that this study stands firm against criticism that similar studies have faced.
The study is one of several that have investigated correlation between mental health challenges and abortion.
“While other research has found that women who obtain abortions are likely to suffer from mental health disorders, critics of these studies have argued that women with mental health problems are more likely to obtain abortions in the first place,” New said.
“Most importantly it holds constant whether or not the women in the study had been hospitalized with mental health problems in the past,” he said of the Canadian study.
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Washington D.C., Aug 27, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
As lawmakers prepare to return next week from their August recess, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) wants them to get to work on immigration reform and bolstering federal safety net programs, among other issues, framing its advocacy work around protecting human dignity and supporting the most vulnerable.
“As a nonpartisan organization, the USCCB is engaged with members of Congress, their staff, and the White House and the administration to advance the common good for all and uphold the sacredness of human life and the God-given dignity of the human person,” Chieko Noguchi, the USCCB’s executive director for public affairs, told CNA.
“This means that the care for immigrants, refugees, and the poor is part of the same teaching of the Church that requires us to protect the most vulnerable among us, especially unborn children, the elderly, and the infirm,” Noguchi noted.
Addressing the conference’s ongoing public policy priorities, Noguchi referenced a letter to members of Congress earlier this year from USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Broglio that in addition to immigration reform called for legislation that supports vulnerable communities, especially children and low-income families.
But following this summer’s passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act spending package, Broglio faulted that measure for including “unconscionable cuts to health care and food assistance, tax cuts that increase inequality, immigration provisions that harm families and children, and cuts to programs that protect God’s creation.”
A recently emerging issue for the bishops is digital safety. In a joint letter this July with other faith-based and family organizations, the USCCB voiced support for the Kids Online Safety Act. The measure would place greater responsibility on technology companies to design platforms that protect minors from harmful content and addictive features. The bishops described the legislation as consistent with their commitment to safeguarding children and promoting environments where families can thrive.
This fall, immigration remains central to USCCB advocacy efforts. The bishops continue to press Congress to provide permanent protections for so-called “Dreamers,” referring to people who were brought to the U.S. as children.
“The continued uncertainty associated with the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program is untenable and unjust, depriving hardworking people the ability to be fully recognized members of our society,” the conference maintains.
The bishops also oppose changes to social safety net programs that would limit eligibility for mixed-status families (those with both legal and unauthorized members). They cite, for example, the Child Tax Credit, which currently only requires the benefiting child to have a Social Security number.
“This is consistent with the goals of such programs, which exist to empower families and to prevent them from falling into poverty,” the USCCB asserts.
The bishops are also urging passage of the Religious Workforce Protection Act, which as of Aug. 22 had 10 Democrat and three Republican lawmakers cosponsoring the House bill and would authorize the continuation of lawful nonimmigrant status for certain religious workers affected by the current backlog for religious worker immigrant visas.
A similar bill in the Senate now has five Republicans and one Democrat cosponsoring. Numerous Catholic institutions such as parishes and schools depend on international clergy. In an Aug. 7 interview with EWTN, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration is committed to fixing the ongoing backlog of religious worker visas.
Despite the fact that earlier this year the USCCB ended its decades-long partnership with the federal government to resettle refugees due to funding cuts and suspended agreements that made the program unsustainable, the bishops continue to call for generous resettlement policies and humane border enforcement.
Housing is also an increasing policy focus. In an Aug. 8 letter, the bishops pressed Congress to strengthen funding for affordable housing and community development in the fiscal year 2026 appropriations process.
Meanwhile, the USCCB’s advocacy around health care policy remains linked to the Church’s pro-life stance. The bishops have been strongly supportive of congressional efforts to ensure that federal programs such as Medicaid do not fund abortion. In July, a federal judge blocked a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood for one year and ordered the federal government to resume Medicaid reimbursements to the abortion giant while litigation over the law continues.
The USCCB also supports expanding access to maternal health services, pediatric care, and palliative care. Broadly on fiscal policy, the USCCB has called for a federal budget that prioritizes the poor and reflects Catholic principles of solidarity centered on the common good.
The bishops also continue to press for robust support for international humanitarian aid. As global crises intensify, the bishops have asked Congress to provide funding for humanitarian and development assistance in the fiscal year 2026 budget. Funding for the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. The USCCB frames these legislative priorities as connected parts of a single mission.
“The decisions you make in your important work on behalf of our nation will have a lasting impact on the well-being and common good of many people,” Broglio wrote. Congress returns from its summer break on Sept. 2.
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Ensemble of the Solovetsky Monastery in the fog on a summer evening. Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia
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Second Lady Usha Vance hosted a special Summer Reading Challenge event at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Aug. 4, 2025. She was joined by NASA astronaut Suni Williams to read a space-themed book to children in grades K-8 as part of her initiative to promote literacy.
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Pelagic stingray (Pteroplatytrygon violacea), Cape Palos, region of Murcia, Spain. This species of stingray has a worldwide distribution in waters warmer than 19 °C (66 °F), and migrates seasonally to spend the summer closer to the continental shelf and at higher latitudes. The only stingray that almost exclusively inhabits the open ocean, this species is typically found in surface waters down to a depth of 100 m (330 ft). The pelagic stingray typically grows to 1.3 m (4.3 ft) long and 59 cm (23 in) across. It’s an active predator that captures prey by wrapping its pectoral fins around it, before manipulating it to the mouth. A wide variety of organisms are represented in its diet: crustaceans, molluscs, bony fishes, sea horses and filefish, comb jellies and medusae, and polychaete worms.
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Common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), Arrábida National Park, Portugal. The common cuttlefish is one of the largest and best-known cuttlefish species. They are a migratory species that spend the summer and spring inshore for spawning and then move to depths of 100 to 200m during autumn and winter. They only have a lifespan of 1–2 years and have many predators including sharks, dolphins, seals, fish, and cephalopods which includes other cuttlefish. During the day, most cuttlefish can be found buried below the substrate and fairly inactive. At night however, they are actively searching for prey and can ambush them from under the substrate. Cuttlefish are carnivorous and eat a variety of organisms including crustaceans (crabs and shrimp), small fish, molluscs (clams and snails), and sometimes other cuttlefish.
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This full-disk image from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite shows the Americas at the start of astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere on June 21, 2012.
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