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Keynote speakers at “The Beauty of Truth: Navigating Society Today as a Catholic Woman” conference, held Jan. 9-10, 2026, in Houston (left to right): Erika Bachiochi, Mary Eberstadt, Angela Franks, Pia de Solenni, and Leah Sargeant. | Credit: Photo courtesy of the University of St. Thomas

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the Vatican’s nuncio to the Baltic states, gives an exclusive interview to EWTN News in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Jan. 20, 2026. Credit: Tim Hotzelmann/EWTN News.

Jan 23, 2026 / 06:27 am (CNA).

Archbishop Georg Gänswein says last year's change of popes has brought a "whole new positive dimension" to the Vatican.

"Above all, there has been a change for the better in the atmosphere" with Pope Leo XIV, the Vatican’s nuncio to the Baltic states and Pope Benedict XVI's former secretary told Rudolf Gehrig of EWTN News during a Jan. 20 interview in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Gänswein said he met Leo twice last year, most recently in mid-December.

"Both meetings went very, very well. And the intervening period has made it very clear to me that — to put it somewhat idiosyncratically — normality is slowly returning," he said, calling it a sign for him that "faith and the Holy Spirit are indeed at work."

"I used the term normalization. For me, it is important to see that Pope Leo has simply emphasized some matters that are not new, but which have been completely overlooked in recent years."

Gänswein has been nuncio to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, based out of Vilnius, since 2024. The archbishop’s diplomatic post follows 17 years as the personal secretary of Pope Benedict XVI and 11 years as the Vatican’s prefect of the Papal Household.

The nuncio, originally from Germany, also praised Leo's "clear line when it comes to proclaiming the faith," which he does "joyfully and convincingly."

"When you read his catechesis or sermons, you can sense that this is a man who lives and proclaims the faith with an Augustinian spirit," Gänswein said.

German Synodal Way

The archbishop also addressed the Synodal Way in Germany, also known as the Synodal Path, which is set to hold its sixth and final assembly starting Jan. 29.

Gänswein expressed concern that the process will lead to deeper division in society and the Church, and underlined that any possible reforms must always adhere to established Church teaching.

"Anyone who has followed the events surrounding the Synodal Path from the beginning to the present day can see one important thing, namely that a number of the demands of the Synodal Path lead away from the faith," he said.

"There is no doubt that there is indeed a need to change and reform certain things here and there. I agree with that," the nuncio said. "However, what has been shown so far on the Synodal Path is, for me, clear evidence that this is not about a return to a deepening of the faith, but about a watering down of the faith."

He said any changes cannot differ from the Catholic Church's position on morality, ethics, the sacramental structure of the Church, or the official authority of bishops.

"I can only hope and pray that this wrong path will simply come to an end soon," he added.

Bishop James D. Conley of the Diocese of the Diocese of Lincoln Nebraska, celebrates Mass at the National Prayer Vigil for Life at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Jan. 22. | Credit: EWTN

Jan 22, 2026 / 22:17 pm (CNA).

Thousands of young Catholics gathered at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Jan. 22 to worship at a vigil Mass on the eve of the March for Life.

“Our goal is not only to make abortion illegal,” Diocese of Lincoln Bishop James D. Conley said during the homily. “Our goal is to make abortion unthinkable.”

More than 5,000 people — many of whom are high school or college students — filled the upper church of the basilica to attend the Mass. Following Mass, many worshippers prayed at the National Holy Hour for Life, which was held in the crypt of the basilica during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which included praying the Luminous Mysteries of The Holy Rosary.

The Jan. 22 service marked the 47th straight National Prayer Vigil for Life held at the basilica, which it began hosting in 1979 — six years after the Supreme Court decided Roe V. Wade. The Thursday night event marks the fourth post-Roe vigil.

The first reading came from Isaiah 49, in which the prophet wrote: “Before birth the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.”

In his homily, Conley referred back to that reading a few times, and expressed joy at the number of young people who attended the vigil with the goal to “build a culture of life and a civilization of love, where babies are protected in their mothers’ wombs and women are loved, heard, and cared for when they find themselves faced with very difficult and life-changing decisions.”

The bishop noted that there are many threats to the dignity of the human person prevalent in society, including euthanasia, gun violence, the death penalty, the suffering of the poor and of migrants, racism, and a lack of access to health care and education.

“But our brothers and sisters in the womb are the most vulnerable and the most voiceless,” he said, noting that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has labeled the issue its preeminent priority in terms of political concerns.

Even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Conley noted there are still over one million abortions annually. Yet, he expressed hope that the young people in front of him “are the pro-life generation” and will help bring an end to abortion in the United States.

“I firmly believe that 50 years from now when my generation will have gone to God, your grandchildren will ask you: ‘Is it true, that when you were my age, they put children to death in the womb?’” Conley said.

Conley was the main celebrant of the Mass, but it was concelebrated by Cardinal Robert McElroy of the Archdiocese of Washington; Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of Boston; Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States; and other archbishops, bishops, and priests.

Pierre, at the start of Mass, read aloud a note offered by Pope Leo XIV to attendees of the vigil, in which the pontiff assured participants of his “spiritual closeness” as they gather “for this eloquent public witness to affirm that the protection of the right to life [is the] … indispensable foundation of every other human right.”

According to the note, Leo told participants that they are “fulfilling the Lord’s command to serve him in the least of our brothers and sisters” and bestowed an apostolic blessing on them.

Many attendees traveled from other parts of the country to worship at the Jan. 22 vigil and attend the Jan. 23 March for Life.

Miriam Ware, who is 16 years old, flew from Idaho with a local group called Teens for Life, and told EWTN that she has become “very interested in becoming a pro-life advocate.”

She said she has attended the Idaho March for Life, but this is the first time she has come to the national March for Life in Washington, D.C. and enjoys seeing “how united we are” as a pro-life movement: “Just to see everyone here is awesome.”

Gus Buell, a Catholic high school junior from Traverse City, Michigan, told EWTN that he arrived on Thursday after a 13-hour bus ride and will be attending the March for Life for the first time on Friday.

He said the march helps build up the Catholic and pro-life community, and commented on the large number of young people active in the faith and the movement, saying “kids are finally starting to be inspired” and many are “trusting God more than they trust themselves.”

The March for Life drew about 150,000 people last year. The 53rd March for Life is on Friday, Jan. 23. The March for Life rally will be held on the National Mall from 11 a.m. until about 1 p.m., after which attendees will march past the U.S. Capitol and conclude in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building.

Credit: roibu/Shutterstock

Jan 22, 2026 / 18:30 pm (CNA).

The abortion issue will likely be on the ballot in several states this November.

EWTN News took a look at which states have abortion-related measures in the works or on the ballot. 

Four states might vote to create a right to abortion this November. Only one state has a measure to protect life.

Virginian lawmakers add abortion to the ballot

This November, Virginians will consider an amendment to enshrine a fundamental right to abortion in the state constitution. The amendment, if passed, could jeopardize already-existing laws protecting unborn children as well as Virginia’s parental notification law.

The proposed abortion amendment would create a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.”

Virginia lawmakers approved the amendment for a second time earlier this month, guaranteeing that it will be on the ballot. Virginia Catholic bishops promptly condemned the amendment, saying they “will fight” against its passage.

Virginia protects life after 28 weeks of pregnancy, meaning that abortion is legal until the end of the second trimester and after in cases of serious risk to the woman’s health or life.

Nevada looks to confirm abortion amendment

Nevada is close to approving an abortion amendment that would recognize a right to abortion.

The amendment would establish a “fundamental right” to an abortion, “without interference by state or local governments” up to viability, and up to birth for the sake of the health or life of the pregnant mother.

In Nevada, the state constitution can be amended only after two affirmative public votes in consecutive even-year elections. About 64% of Nevadans voted in favor of the amendment in 2024, so a 2026 passage would enshrine the amendment. 

Abortion since the 1990s has been legal until the 24th week of pregnancy in Nevada. In addition to reinforcing pro-abortion laws, the new amendment could block other state laws including the parental notification requirement for minors seeking abortions.

Idaho gathers signatures for abortion ballot measure

In Idaho, a measure to create a right to abortion may appear on the November ballot.

Campaigners are gathering signatures for the measure to legalize abortion until viability, when the baby can survive outside of the womb.

The measure guarantees “a right to make and carry out reproductive decisions, including a right to abortion up to fetus viability.”

Idaho law protects unborn children at all stages of pregnancy, with exceptions if the mother’s life is at risk.

Oregon measure could reinforce pro-abortion laws

A measure to affirm a right to abortion in Oregon may be on the November ballot.

The measure states that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged … on account of sex.”

If passed, it would also affirm a right to contraception, in vitro fertilization, medical “gender transition,” and same-sex marriage. The measure would repeal a vestigial code in the constitution that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

Oregon does not protect life at any stage of pregnancy, and the state funds abortion.

Potential ballot measure could repeal Missouri abortion amendment

In November, Missourians will have the opportunity to repeal a 2024 amendment that created a right to abortion in the state constitution. 

If passed, the measure would repeal the state’s constitutional right to abortion and allow for laws to regulate abortion. It would also codify parental consent for minors seeking abortion and prohibit gender transition procedures for minors.

The amendment would not protect unborn children younger than 12 weeks in cases of rape or incest. 

Abortion laws have been in flux in Missouri as the 2024 amendment was enforced amid legal challenges.

Blocked from the ballot: Montana’s push for personhood 

A Montana measure defining unborn children as persons is not on the ballot this year, despite efforts to pass it.

Despite Montana voters’ move to approve a right to abortion in 2024, lawmakers came close to approving the subsequent pro-life measure, which would have stipulated that the word “person” applies “to all members of mankind at any stage of development, beginning at the stage of fertilization or conception, regardless of age, health, level of functioning, or condition of dependency.”

The amendment would have required that “no cause of action may arise as a consequence of harm caused to an unborn baby by an unintentional act of its mother.”

The measure narrowly failed to pass in both the Montana House of Representatives and the state Senate in early 2025, receiving just less than the two-thirds majority needed for a measure to be added to the Montana ballot.

Catholic students attend SEEK in January 2026. | Credit: FOCUS

Jan 22, 2026 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Multiple news reports have said the number of Generation Z Catholics is surging in the United States.

ZENIT, an international Catholic news service, and Magisterium AI, a Catholic artificial intelligence agency, cited data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study (CES) finding there are more Gen Z adults who identify as Catholic than those who identify as Protestant.

Claim: Among Gen Z, those born roughly between 1997 and 2012, Catholics outnumber Protestants for the first time in the United States.

The CES report found that in 2023 the group was made up of 21% Catholics, compared with 19% Protestants. But other researchers dispute the data based on its sampling methods. A spokesperson for CES could not immediately be reached.

EWTN News finds: There are likely still more Protestant young adults than Catholics, although available quantitative and anecdotal data on the question is not decisive.

The breakdown: The Religion and Public Life research team at Pew Research Center told EWTN News that Pew surveys “find that among the youngest adults in the U.S., there are more Protestants than Catholics.”

“In fact, in our recent Religious Landscape Study, we found that among the youngest adults (those born between 2000-06 and who were roughly between the ages of 18 and 24 when the survey was conducted), there are about twice as many Protestants as Catholics,” the researchers said. “Within this age group, 28% are Protestant and 14% are Catholic.”

The team also noted its research found “that Catholics are not more numerous among young adults than among older adults.” Rather, “young adults as a whole are far less religious than older adults.”

“When it comes to Catholicism, far more young people have switched out than in,” according to Pew’s “ Religion Holds Steady in America” report. “Overall, 12% of today’s youngest adults have switched out of Catholicism. Meanwhile, 1% of adults ages 18 to 24 have switched into Catholicism, meaning that they identify as Catholic today after having been raised in another religion or no religion.”

Data variations

If Pew researchers found there are more Protestants than Catholics within young age groups, why is the CES data different?

Ryan Burge, religion and politics researcher and professor at the John C. Danforth Center at Washington University, said there is “reason to doubt” the data due to “aberrations” in the 2023 CES, according to his article “ Is Catholicism Surging Among Younger Folks?”

“If you compare the 2023 data to that collected in 2022 from the oldest three generations (Silent, Boomers, Gen X), there’s not a big difference,” Burge said. “It’s a point or two off, which is just the nature of survey data.”

But, when examining millennials and Gen Z, the data is “definitely beyond the typical variation that exists in this type of work,” he said. “In 2022, 16% of millennials were Catholic — it’s 20% in the 2023 data. Among Gen Z, 15% were Catholic compared to 21% in 2023.”

“The 2023 CES data is a lot more Catholic than it ‘should’ be,” Burge said.

“For instance, about 16% of people born in 1990 were Catholic in 2020, 2021, and 2022. In 2023, that percentage is five points higher. That same gap exists for people born throughout the 1990s and even into the 2000s.”

Burge also noted other aberrations among the 2023 findings. The CES information reported the number of people who “never” or “seldom” attend Mass in 2023 dropped from 41% in 2022 to 38% in 2023, while the weekly attendees rose from 29% to 34%.

“Weekly attendance doesn’t just jump five points in one year,” Burge said.

There was also a large jump in 2023 in the share of Catholics who identify as “born-again” or “evangelical.” From 2008 through 2022 there was a steady increase in the number who identified as such, usually only changing by one or two percent points each year, but from 2022 to 2023 there was a nine-point increase.

Number of young Catholics may still be increasing

While the CES data has been questioned, it does not mean there are not increases in the number of Gen Z adults drawn to the faith.

EWTN News has previously found that several college campuses across the country witnessed a notable rise in baptisms and confirmations among students in 2025. Catholic evangelists told EWTN News that the growth reflects a deepening desire among young adults for certainty, stability, and faith.

The Cardinal Newman Society also found using National Catholic Educational Association and Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) data that there has been an increase in students at Catholic colleges, with an increase of 75%. In 1970, the data showed there were 411,111 students enrolled in Catholic colleges; in 2022 there were 717,197.

In a press release, the Cardinal Newman Society highlighted some of the undergraduate enrollment at Newman Guide Recommended Catholic colleges for the 2025-26 academic year.

At Ave Maria University, there was a record undergraduate enrollment of 1,342 and a record incoming freshman class. Benedictine College has 2,250 undergraduate students, an increase of 22% over the last 10 years. The Cardinal Newman Society also reported that The Catholic University of America has increased undergraduate enrollment by 11% in the last five years.

The SECAM delegation, (left to right) Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, Bishop Stephen Dami Mamza, Archbishop José Manuel Imbamba, and Father Rafael Simbine, meets with Pope Leo XIV on Jan. 17, 2026, at the Vatican. | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 22, 2026 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) has described the first official audience between Pope Leo XIV and the leadership of the Church in Africa as a “very important meeting” that marks a new phase in relations between the African continent and the Holy See.

In an interview with Vatican News following the Jan. 17 audience, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo explained that although Pope Leo XIV has previously encountered individual African bishops, the audience represented the first formal engagement with the SECAM leadership under the new pontificate. 

The meeting, initially scheduled for Dec. 18, 2025, was postponed due to the pope’s apostolic trip to Turkey.

The SECAM delegation included Ambongo and SECAM First Vice President Bishop Stephen Dami Mamza of Nigeria’s Diocese of Yola, Archbishop José Manuel Imbamba of the Archdiocese of Saurimo in Angola, who is the second vice president of SECAM, and Father Rafael Simbine, SECAM secretary-general.

“It was really an important meeting,” Ambongo said, adding that the audience “was first to establish an official contact with the new pontiff since his election.”

He said the audience also provided an opportunity for SECAM leaders to brief the pope on the outcomes of their 2025 Plenary Assembly that was held in Kigali, Rwanda. 

The assembly, which took place just months after Pope Leo XIV’s election, focused on the theme “Christ, Source of Hope, Reconciliation, and Peace.”

According to Ambongo, the theme was chosen in response to the persistent crises affecting many African nations, particularly in the Great Lakes region.

“Africa is a continent marked by multiple crises. This theme helped us analyze in depth our mission as pastors in a continent characterized by suffering and instability,” the Congolese member of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin said.

Reflecting on the condition of the Church amid Africa’s social, political, and security challenges, Ambongo insisted that the Catholic Church remains vibrant and close to the people.

Citing the late Pope Francis’ oft-repeated reminder that the Church does not belong to any political camp but stands with the people, he emphasized that African pastors continue to accompany communities enduring hardship and violence.

“The African Church is dynamic, radiant,” he said, recalling Pope Benedict XVI’s description of Africa as “the spiritual lung of humanity.”

At the same time, Ambongo acknowledged that the Church inevitably shares in the suffering of its people, particularly in conflict zones.

The SECAM president also addressed growing anticipation around Pope Leo’s expressed intention to make Africa the destination of a future apostolic journey.

Such a visit, he said, would be both pastoral and prophetic, strengthening the faith of Catholics while offering hope to societies weighed down by conflict and poverty.

“When the pope comes to a country in crisis, it is to give hope. His voice comforts the people, confirms them in their commitment, and helps them not to be discouraged,” he said.

Ambongo added: “The prophetic word of the universal Shepherd comforts the people, strengthens their commitment, and encourages them not to lose heart. Even if things are going badly today, Christian hope tells us to hold on.”

According to the cardinal, the Holy Father also helps guide people toward the pursuit of harmonious coexistence and peace, especially in African countries experiencing crises.

Weighing in on the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he serves as bishop of the Kinshasa Archdiocese, Ambongo lamented the ongoing conflict in the eastern part of the country and its devastating impact on ordinary citizens.

He criticized the heavy investment in war and armament, saying such resources could instead be used for education, health care, and development.

“For more than a year now, the Church has been advocating dialogue. No solution will come from weapons but from sitting around a table where everyone can express their concerns,” the prelate explained.

He cited ongoing initiatives such as the Washington and Doha processes, which are steps in the right direction but remain insufficient.

The cardinal underscored the need for inclusive dialogue among the government, the opposition (armed and unarmed), and civil society in order to create the conditions for lasting peace and to bring an end to the suffering of the Congolese people.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa. It has been adapted by EWTN News English.

Shafiqur Rahman, leader of the largest Islamist politicial party in Bangladesh. | Credit: Delwar Hossain/Wikimedia (CC0)

Jan 22, 2026 / 07:00 am (CNA).

As Bangladesh heads toward a crucial general election on Feb. 12, the country’s largest Islamist party, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, has offered an unusual assurance to religious minorities, pledging that it would not impose Islamic Sharia law if it comes to power.

Shafiqur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, made the promise during a meeting on Jan. 14 with Christian leaders in Dhaka, according to participants in the discussion. The statement has sparked debate across the country, where Jamaat’s Islamist ideology and past positions appear to stand in tension with the pledge.

“He promised that they will not run the country under Sharia law,” said Martha Das, general secretary of the National Christian Fellowship of Bangladesh, who was part of a 20-member Christian delegation that met Rahman.

She told EWTN News that Christian leaders also raised concerns about the possible introduction of blasphemy laws and the safety and social security of religious minorities.

Rahman assured them that existing laws would remain in place and that no additional legislation targeting religious minorities would be introduced.

Christian leaders described the meeting as an effort to seek clarity and accountability ahead of the election. “We recorded the assurances,” Das said, adding that the community intends to hold Jamaat publicly responsible if it reverses its position in the future.

At the same time, Christian leaders stressed that their community does not support Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. “We never support the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party,” said one Christian leader who did not want to be named. “But before the election, it is a better opportunity to talk with candidates about safeguards for our future.”

Mixed reactions

The statement has generated widespread discussion in Bangladesh, where Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami has long been associated with calls for governance based on Islamic principles. Some analysts see the pledge as a tactical move aimed at broadening the party’s appeal among minority voters and the international community, while others argue that Jamaat has shown signs of gradual ideological adjustment in recent years.

A senior Catholic priest in Dhaka, who requested anonymity, cautiously welcomed the statement. “If Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami keeps its word, it is very good,” he told EWTN News. “But it remains to be seen whether this is a genuine commitment or a political strategy.”

The priest suggested that Jamaat may be attempting to present itself as more moderate to Western countries ahead of the elections. “Developed countries generally view Islamic Sharia negatively,” he said. “So Jamaat may be making such statements to gain international acceptance.”

Critics, however, point to apparent contradictions between Jamaat’s pledge and its broader political record. The party has not nominated any female candidates for the upcoming election, and previous remarks by its leaders about limiting women’s working hours have drawn criticism from civil society groups.

Election promises under scrutiny

Political analysts also caution against taking election-time promises at face value. “Sitting with people of different religions and communities before elections is definitely an election move,” said Professor Sayeed Ferdous, associate vice chancellor of Bangladesh Open University. “When leaders say we will do this or we will not do that — whether it is Sharia law or minority security — these must be considered election promises.”

Ferdous noted that Bangladesh’s political history is filled with unfulfilled preelection commitments. “Many parties have made similar promises in the past to attract votes but did not keep them later,” he said.

Another analyst, Mahbub Ullah, echoed that view, suggesting Jamaat is trying to soften its image. “They are talking a lot of soft talk ahead of the elections to appear acceptable to everyone,” he said. “It is not unusual to adopt such a strategy to change public perception of the party.”

Rift within Islamist coalition

The controversy has also exposed divisions within Islamist politics. Earlier this month, the Islamic Movement Bangladesh announced its withdrawal from the 11-party electoral alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami and declared it would contest 268 seats independently.

At a press briefing in Dhaka on Jan. 16, Islamic Movement spokesperson Gazi Ataur Rahman accused Jamaat of abandoning its ideological roots. “Jamaat has deviated from the Sharia law of Allah for power,” he said. “They consider power to be the only important thing.”

Rahman added that Jamaat’s traditional slogan — “We want the law of Allah, we want the rule of honest people” — has been forgotten, disappointing many grassroots supporters. “We believe it is not possible to establish peace under the existing law of the country,” he said. “We want Sharia law.”

As Bangladesh approaches election day, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s assurances to minorities have raised expectations — and skepticism — about whether political pragmatism or ideological transformation is driving the party’s message.

The Catholic Church in the Córdoba province of Spain is helping victims and their families after a high-speed train accident on Jan. 18, 2026, left at least 42 people dead and dozens injured. | Credit: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

Jan 20, 2026 / 17:07 pm (CNA).

Following a tragic train accident that occurred on Sunday evening, Jan. 18, in the Spanish town of Adamuz in the Córdoba province, the Catholic Church is providing pastoral care for those affected.

In addition to the help offered immediately after the accident by the local parish priest and the provision of diocesan resources by Bishop Jesús Fernández of Córdoba after he visited the scene of the accident on Monday morning, the diocese has assigned a team of three priests to the area.

The priests, Leopoldo Rivero, Francisco J. Granados, and Manuel Sánchez, will remain at the Poniente Sur Civic Center in Córdoba, the support center for the families of the victims, for as long as needed.

In a statement, the diocese emphasized the importance of a priestly presence in “a place where despair and uncertainty take their toll as people search for any indication as to the whereabouts of their loved ones.”

Rivero stated that with its presence, the Church is providing “the spiritual care so necessary at this time,” as rescue operations continue, given that many passengers are still missing and may be trapped in the wrecked train cars.

To date, authorities have confirmed the deaths of 41 people and the transfer of 152 injured people to hospitals, where they are receiving treatment, some of them still in very serious condition. At least 43 people remain missing.

Psychologists are referring “families who need [pastoral care] to the priests so that they can be with them, accompany them, and pray with them so that they feel warmth, closeness, and comfort,” Rivero added.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter Superior General Father John Berg (right) is accompanied to a Jan. 19, 2026, audience with Pope Leo XIV by Father Josef Bisig (center), a co-founder of the FSSP and its first superior general. | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 20, 2026 / 16:37 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV and leaders of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), a community dedicated to the traditional Roman rite, held a “cordial half-hour meeting” on Monday, Jan. 19, at the apostolic palace.

The priestly fraternity said in a Jan. 20 statement that the Holy Father received in private audience its superior general, Minneapolis-born Father John Berg. Also present was Father Josef Bisig, a co-founder of the FSSP and its first superior general, who now serves as rector of the FSSP’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Texas.

The FSSP is a society of apostolic life of pontifical right founded in 1988 by priests who broke with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X, precisely in order to remain fully under the Roman pontiff while preserving the older liturgy.

The FSSP’s leaders, who had requested the meeting, said in a cautiously worded statement that it was “an opportunity to present to the Holy Father in greater detail the foundation and history of the fraternity as well as the various forms of apostolate that it has been offering to the faithful for almost 38 years.”

They added that the papal audience also provided an “opportunity to evoke any misunderstandings and obstacles that the fraternity encounters in certain places and to answer questions from the supreme pontiff.”

The audience came at a sensitive time for the fraternity and for those who value the traditional form of the Latin rite as a whole following Pope Francis’ 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes that imposed sweeping restrictions on parishes and communities dedicated to the traditional Roman rite.

Due to Traditionis Custodes, the FSSP is currently undergoing an apostolic visitation initiated by the Holy See in late 2024. The visitation is part of a broader process of accompanying institutes formerly under the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei but that now, due to Traditionis Custodes, fall under the auspices of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Both the FSSP and the dicastery have both stressed that the apostolic visitation is not punitive but a normal exercise of oversight so the dicastery can “know who we are, how we are doing, and how we live so as to provide us with any help we may need.” The fraternity also underwent an apostolic visitation in 2014.

Although Pope Francis gave the FSSP a kind of protected but precarious niche, explicitly exempting it from some of the restrictions in a Feb. 11, 2022, decree, the priestly fraternity was still subjected to tighter structural control and scrutiny than under Benedict XVI. That decree arose from a prior private audience between Pope Francis and FSSP leaders.

Monday’s meeting was therefore significant, representing Leo XIV’s first clear, personal outreach to a leading traditional community and showing his willingness to listen to their concerns.

It also follows on the heels of the Holy Father granting Cardinal Raymond Burke the celebration of a pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica last October, along with the pope’s willingness to grant case-by-case exemptions to some traditional communities. The pope appears to be pursuing a policy of “pragmatic leniency” with such communities, neither willing to undo Francis’ liturgical changes but also not enforcing them with the same rigor.

Observers have therefore welcomed Monday’s meeting and are taking solace in the fact that the Church now has an American pope willing to listen to a fellow American superior general of a traditional order at a time when, according to one insider, “the waters are rough.” Berg also brings much experience to his role, having already served as the fraternity’s superior general from 2006 to 2018.

Like many traditional Roman rite communities and parishes, the FSSP is a flourishing community with several hundred priests and seminarians worldwide, a steady flow of vocations, and well-attended liturgies.

In its communique, the FSSP said Pope Leo XIV gave his blessing, “which he extended to all members of the fraternity.”

“The Fraternity of St. Peter is grateful to the Holy Father for offering this opportunity to meet with him,” the statement concluded, adding that it “encourages the faithful to continue to pray fervently during the 30 days novena of preparation for the renewal of its consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Feb. 11.”

Leah Sargeant delivers the final keynote at the conference titled “The Beauty of Truth: Navigating Society Today as a Catholic Woman” at the University of St. Thomas in Houston on Jan. 10, 2026. | Credit: Photo courtesy of the University of St. Thomas

Jan 20, 2026 / 16:07 pm (CNA).

“We have the good news that our culture needs to hear: that men and women are ordered to the good and made for amity for each other. Our embodied, sexed nature has been ordered for our salvation.”

So said Leah Sargeant, a former atheist and author who delivered the final keynote at a recent conference in Houston titled “The Beauty of Truth: Navigating Society Today as a Catholic Woman.”

At the conference, sponsored by the Catholic Women’s and Gender Studies program at the University of St. Thomas on Jan. 9–10, Sargeant suggested that our culture’s view of sexuality is premised on two lies. First, that “women’s equality is premised on being interchangeable with men,” and second, that “autonomy is foundational to a fully human life.”

To the first point, she noted that “it’s been common for people who advocate for women to minimize differences [between the sexes].”

Based on this lie, women, she said, are seen as “defective men.”

However, she continued, “the fundamental asymmetry between men and women is how we engender and bear children.”

It is based on this premise that the second lie, that individual autonomy is fundamental to being fully human, gets its strength, she said.

‘Forming a society open to dependency’

Sargeant said that when a woman is pregnant with another human being, the baby’s dependence and fragility does two things: It makes the baby’s life seem less valuable to those who believe autonomy is required to be fully human, and it makes the woman less-than when compared with a man, who never biologically has to enter into such a dependent relationship.

“The idea of having our lives upended by someone else [the baby’s] is a blow to women’s equality. This is the original argument for women’s access to abortion,” she said.

“The right to privacy wasn’t good enough because men always have the opportunity to abandon a child: that only required an act of cowardice. He could walk away, run, leave no forwarding address, and sever the connection. For a woman, she couldn’t divorce herself from her child by failing to step up: It would require outside, active, violent intervention in the form of poison or a scalpel.”

Women had to have what Sargeant called “an equality of vice” with men: namely, abortion. They had to “access to this cowardice as well or they could not be interchangeable with men and would lose political equality.”

Fundamentally, she concluded, both men and women must reject the lies of sameness and the “lie of autonomy” and be “radically dependent on God” and one another to live in the truth.

She quoted St. John Henry Newman, who wrote that “we cannot be our own masters. We are God’s property, by creation, by redemption, by regeneration … Independence was not made for man. It is an unnatural state that may do for a while, but will not do till the end.”

Sargeant reminded her listeners that we should not be afraid to “invite others into our lives or be ashamed to place demands on others.”

“We were always made to need each other,” she said. “We are not betraying ourselves when we expose ourselves as deeply human.”

Our task, she said, “is to give people reassurance that this truth is good,” reminding them that “hope doesn’t come from excesses of strength but in the midst of our frailty, and reminds us of how we are loved, and by whom.”

Sargeant's talk at the conference was based on her latest book, "The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto," which was released in October 2025.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles will present its 12th annual OneLife LA event on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026. In 2025 there was no walk, only a aathedral event indoors, because of heavy smoke in the air from the L.A. wildfires. | Credit: Photo courtesy of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles

Jan 20, 2026 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles will present its 12th annual OneLife LA event on Saturday, Jan. 24, beginning at 1:30 p.m. in the plaza of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. The day will highlight a variety of life and family issues, including advocating for the protection of the unborn. 

The event includes a roster of speakers and performers beginning at 2 p.m. followed by a Walk for Life at 3 p.m. and a Requiem Mass for the unborn celebrated by Los Angeles Archbishop José Gómez at 5 p.m.

In addition to Gómez, each of the auxiliary bishops in the archdiocese’s five pastoral regions typically attend, as well as bishops in neighboring dioceses.

In a statement, Gómez said: “Every life is precious and must be loved and protected, from conception until natural death — as children of God made in his image, every person has a sanctity and dignity that cannot be diminished.”

Speakers for the event include Gómez; El Paso,Texas, Bishop Mark Seitz; pro-life and prenatal health advocate Nora Yesenia; Sofía Alatorre González, who will discuss a life-changing accident she had at age 8; archdiocesan priest Father Matt Wheeler; Daniela Verástegui, a mother who speaks on family life issues and sister of actor Eduardo Verástegui; and Ken Rose of the Knights of Columbus.

As part of the event, Rose will receive a $10,000 Dr. Tirso del Junco grant on behalf of the Knights, which will be distributed to 20 local pregnancy centers along with matching funding from the Supreme Knight.

Rose has been a regular attendee at OneLife LA as well as other pro-life walks throughout the state of California and said he was “honored” to receive the grant on behalf of the Knights, an annual grant that has been made since 2020. He said: “It’s an awesome event, and I’ve been surprised at the turnout, especially considering the challenges they’ve had in recent years.”

The challenges he referenced include heavy rain in frequently sunny Southern California in 2024, and in 2025, due to heavy smoke caused by L.A.’s Eaton and Palisades wildfires, participants remained indoors at the cathedral. (The 2026 forecast so far is partly cloudy, no rain, with mild temperatures.) The 2025 event included testimonials from local residents who had lost their homes in the fires, as well as the display of the tabernacle of Corpus Christi Parish in Pacific Palisades, which was rescued from the ruins of the church after it had burned down.

In previous years, Rose has been impressed with a large number of young people who turned out for the walk, including teens as well as young adults. He also noted that it drew a large number of his fellow Knights (some in official regalia), as “we are Catholic gentlemen who are asked to step up on behalf of people who are less fortunate than us.”

Rose said in his remarks he plans to tell those in attendance “that life is special in all its stages. We must protect it, from birth to natural death. It’s what we believe as Catholics.”

Isaac Cuevas of the archdiocesan Office of Life, Justice, and Peace, said he believes the Knights to be a worthy grant recipient, as the Knights “exemplify service rooted in faith and respect for the dignity of every person. Their work strengthens families, supports those in need, and builds a culture that honors life at every stage.”

In addition to the Knights, other key participating organizations include 40 Days for Life, NET Ministries, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Sisters Poor of Jesus Christ, Catholic Charities Los Angeles, Sofesa, Depaul USA, Program for Tortured Victims, Order of Malta, Options United, and Care for Creation. The event also draws groups from Catholic parishes and schools as well as local religious.

Like-minded individuals

Other repeat participants include Ann Sanders, who began participating 12 years ago as part of the Order of Malta and today is an event organizer with the archdiocesan Office of Life, Justice, and Peace. 

“I’ve always enjoyed participating because it is an opportunity to be around like-minded individuals who desire to protect the beauty and dignity of human life,” she said. “People come together to support the life-affirming work that is being done throughout the archdiocese.”

Previous years have drawn 5,000 or more participants, she continued, and the archdiocese is hoping for strong attendance again in 2026.

Tim Shannon, who is also a member of the Order of Malta and is president of the Order of Malta Mobile Ministries, will also attend again in 2026. His group distributes food to Southern Californians in need; at OneLife LA members distribute supplies such as sunscreen and water, offer basic medical care, and provide seating where older or disabled walkers can rest. Donations for items come from the Order of Malta.

He, like Rose, noted the participation of large numbers of young people, “which is refreshing. They’re our future,” he said.

In addition to speakers, performers at the event include Francis Cabildo, worship leader and songwriter, and Miriam Solis, a Mexican singer from Guadalajara. Companion events to OneLife LA include a OneLife LA Holy Hour on Friday, Jan. 23, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Christ the King Parish in Los Angeles.

Series of pro-life walks

OneLife LA is one of a series of pro-life walks offered throughout the state of California hosted by Catholic dioceses or often organized by Catholics. The second-largest pro-life walk in the country, Walk for Live West Coast, will be held in San Francisco on the same day, with San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone playing a prominent role, as well as a San Diego Walk for Life sponsored by the Diocese of San Diego with San Diego Bishop Michael Pham participating. 

On Jan. 23 at Oakland City Hall, there will be the Standing Up 4Life rally and walk featuring many speakers from the Black pro-life community. The National March for Life in Washington, D.C., also occurs on Jan. 23; March for Life will hold a rally and march at the California state capitol in Sacramento on March 16.

OneLife LA is free to attend, but participants are asked to register online at www.onelifela.org.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 19, 2026 / 13:02 pm (CNA).

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin confirmed Saturday that the Holy See attempted to mediate to avert U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, which culminated Jan. 3 with the capture of Nicolás Maduro.

“We had tried precisely — as, among other things, has appeared in some newspapers — to find a solution that would avoid any bloodshed, trying perhaps to reach an agreement even with Maduro and with other figures in the regime, but this was not possible,” Parolin told reporters on the afternoon of Saturday, Jan. 17, outside Rome’s Domus Mariae church.

Parolin had just celebrated Mass there for the public veneration — for the first time — of relics of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati.

In remarks reported by, among others, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Parolin — who served as apostolic nuncio to Venezuela from 2009 to 2013 — said the Vatican has “always supported a peaceful solution,” adding: “But we, too, find ourselves faced with a fait accompli, a de facto situation.”

He described Venezuela’s current moment as “a situation of great uncertainty.”

“We hope it evolves toward stability, toward an economic recovery — because the economic situation is truly very, very precarious — and also toward the democratization of the country,” the cardinal said.

Parolin declined to provide further details about a Jan. 9 Washington Post report stating that the Holy See had attempted to help facilitate Maduro’s departure from Venezuela by offering asylum in Russia.

After that report was published, the Holy See Press Office confirmed that the conversation took place during the Christmas period, while adding that it considered it “disappointing that parts of a confidential conversation are published without accurately reflecting its content.”

Pope Leo XIV has referred to the Venezuelan crisis on several occasions, most recently Jan. 9 in his address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See, when he called for respect for the will of the Venezuelan people and for peaceful solutions free of “partisan interests.”

The pope also received Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on Monday, Jan. 12 — three days before her meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, whom ACI Prensa identified as a 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Speaking afterward at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., Machado said the Holy Father “knows very well what is happening in Venezuela,” adding that he is “fully aware of what the Catholic Church is experiencing, due to the persecution and pressure on our bishops and priests.” She also said the pope is “not only concerned, but is helping and actively supporting” efforts toward a peaceful transition.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shooting by an ICE agent during federal law enforcement operations on January 07, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Credit: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Jan 19, 2026 / 09:34 am (CNA).

Winona-Rochester Bishop Robert Barron has called on federal immigration officials to focus on deporting only serious criminals while also urging U.S. protesters to "cease interfering" with the work of immigration agents.

The bishop's plea comes amid heightened national tensions in response to mass deportations and the killing of a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis.

Barron issued the statement on Jan. 18 via X. A native of Chicago, he was made bishop of the southern Minnesota diocese in 2022.

The prelate made the remarks as officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continue enhanced deportations of immigrants in the country illegally. The mass deportation effort is a major part of U.S. President Donald Trump's domestic policy in his second term.

Tensions were heightened greatly on Jan. 7 when an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis as she apparently engaged in a protest of ICE enforcement in the city.

Good had partially blocked a street with her car and was approached by ICE agents, who ordered her out of the vehicle; when she attempted to speed away she allegedly struck ICE agent Jonathan Ross with her car. Ross shot and killed her in response. The killing generated national outrage and major protests throughout the country.

'There is a way out'

Barron, who regularly weighs in on Catholic and other issues in the public sphere, said on X that his "heart is breaking" over the "violence, retribution, threats, protests, deep suspicion of one another, political unrest [and] fear" that has spread throughout Minnesota in recent weeks.

Offering "a modest proposal" for resolving "this unbearable state of affairs," Barron urged immigration officials to "limit themselves, at least for the time being, to rounding up undocumented people who have committed serious crimes."

"Political leaders should stop stirring up resentment against officers who are endeavoring to enforce the laws of the country," he continued. "And protestors should cease interfering with the work of ICE."

Americans, meanwhile, "must stop shouting at one another and demonizing their opponents."

"Where we are now is untenable. There is a way out," the bishop said.

Minneapolis is only the latest flashpoint in ongoing national unrest over the federal government's immigration actions, one that has touched the U.S. Catholic Church in numerous ways.

Multiple U.S. bishops have issued dispensations from Mass for those who are afraid of being arrested and deported, including the Archdiocese of New Orleans, the Diocese of San Bernardino, and numerous others.

In December of 2025 ICE agents arrested a Catholic church employee in Minnesota, after which they surveilled the parish, with the church pastor claiming the agents were "terrorizing" locals "just by their presence."

Church leaders have regularly attempted to reach out to immigrants who have been targeted for deportation by ICE. In November of 2025 Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila and Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Rodriguez led the Stations of the Cross at an ICE detention facility in Aurora, while prelates such as Lincoln Bishop James Conley have urged the government to allow pastoral access to detained immigrants.

At their November 2025 plenary assembly, the U.S. bishops declared their opposition to the indiscriminate mass deportation of immigrants in the country illegally. The bishops urged the government to respect the dignity of migrants as well.

We March with Selma event. | Credit: Via Flickr CC BY NC 2.0

Jan 19, 2026 / 04:00 am (CNA).

Sister Mary Antona Ebo was the only Black Catholic nun who marched with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

“I’m here because I’m a Negro, a nun, a Catholic, and because I want to bear witness,” Ebo said to fellow demonstrators at a March 10, 1965, protest attended by King.

The protest took place three days after the “Bloody Sunday” clash, where police attacked several hundred voting rights demonstrators with clubs and tear gas, causing severe injuries among the nonviolent marchers.

Sister Mary Antona Ebo died Nov. 11, 2017, in Bridgeton, Missouri, at the age of 93, the St. Louis Review reported at the time.

After the “Bloody Sunday” attacks, King had called on church leaders from around the country to go to Selma. Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter of St. Louis asked his archdiocese’s human rights commission to send representatives, Ebo recounted to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2015.

Ebo’s supervisor, also a religious sister, asked her whether she would join a 50-member delegation of laymen, Protestant ministers, rabbis, priests, and five white nuns.

Just before she left for Alabama, she heard that a white minister who had traveled to Selma, James Reeb, had been severely attacked after he left a restaurant and later died from his injuries.

At the time, Ebo said, she wondered: “If they would beat a white minister to death on the streets of Selma, what are they going to do when I show up?”

In Selma on March 10, Ebo went to Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, joining local leaders and the demonstrators who had been injured in the clash.

“They had bandages on their heads, teeth were knocked out, crutches, casts on their arms. You could tell that they were freshly injured,” she told the Post-Dispatch. “They had already been through the battleground, and they were still wanting to go back and finish the job.”

Many of the injured were treated at Good Samaritan Hospital, run by Edmundite priests and the Sisters of St. Joseph, the only Selma hospital that served Blacks. Since their arrival in 1937, the Edmundites had faced intimidation and threats from local officials, other whites, and even the Ku Klux Klan, CNN reported.

The injured demonstrators and their supporters left the Selma church, with Ebo in front. They marched toward the courthouse, then were blocked by state troopers in riot gear. She and other demonstrators knelt to pray the Our Father before they agreed to turn around.

Despite the violent interruption, the 57-mile march drew 25,000 participants. It concluded on the steps of the state capitol in Montgomery with King’s famous March 25 speech against racial prejudice.

“How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” King said.

King would be dead within three years. On a fateful April 4, 1968, he was shot by an assassin at a Memphis hotel.

He had asked to be taken to a Catholic hospital should anything happen to him, and he was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Memphis. At the time, it was a nursing school combined with a 400-bed hospital.

There, too, Catholic religious sisters played a role.

Sister Jane Marie Klein and Sister Anna Marie Hofmeyer recounted their story to The Paper of Montgomery County Online in January 2017.

The Franciscan nuns were walking around the hospital grounds when they heard the sirens of an ambulance. One of the sisters was paged three times, and they discovered that King had been shot and taken to their hospital.

The National Guard and local police locked down the hospital for security reasons as doctors tried to save King.

“We were obviously not allowed to go in when they were working with him because they were feverishly working with him,” Klein said. “But after they pronounced him dead we did go back into the ER. There was a gentleman as big as the door guarding the door and he looked at us and said, ‘You want in?’ We said yes, we’d like to go pray with him. So he let the three of us in, closed the door behind us, and gave us our time.”

Hofmeyer recounted the scene in the hospital room. “He had no chance,” she said.

Klein said authorities delayed the announcement of King’s death to prepare for riots they knew would result.

Three decades later, Klein met with King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, at a meeting of the Catholic Health Association Board in Atlanta where King was a keynote speaker. The Franciscan sister and the widow of the civil rights leader told each other how they had spent that night.

Klein said being present that night in 1968 was “indescribable.”

“You do what you got to do,” she said. “What’s the right thing to do? Hindsight? It was a privilege to be able to take care of him that night and to pray with him. Who would have ever thought that we would be that privileged?”

She said King’s life shows “to some extent one person can make a difference.” She wondered “how anybody could listen to Dr. King and not be moved to work toward breaking down these barriers.”

Klein would serve as chairperson of the Franciscan Alliance Board of Trustees, overseeing support for health care. Hofmeyer would work in the alliance’s archives. In 2021, both were living at the Provinciate at St. Francis Convent in Mishawaka, Indiana.

For her part, after Selma, Ebo would go on to serve as a hospital administrator and a chaplain.

In 1968 she helped found the National Black Sisters’ Conference. The woman who had been rejected from several Catholic nursing schools because of her race would serve in her congregation’s leadership as it reunited with another Franciscan order, and she served as a director of social concerns for the Missouri Catholic Conference.

She frequently spoke on civil rights topics. When controversy erupted over a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer’s killing of Michael Brown, a Black man, she led a prayer vigil. She thought the Ferguson protests were comparable to those of Selma.

“I mean, after all, if Mike Brown really did swipe the box of cigars, it’s not the policeman’s place to shoot him dead,” she said.

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis presided at her requiem Mass in November 2021, saying in a statement: “We will miss her living example of working for justice in the context of our Catholic faith.”

A previous version of this story was first published on Catholic News Agency on Jan. 17, 2022.

Keynote speakers at “The Beauty of Truth: Navigating Society Today as a Catholic Woman” conference, held Jan. 9-10, 2026, in Houston (left to right): Erika Bachiochi, Mary Eberstadt, Angela Franks, Pia de Solenni, and Leah Sargeant. | Credit: Photo courtesy of the University of St. Thomas

Jan 18, 2026 / 10:26 am (CNA).

This past week, nearly a quarter of U.S. states sued the federal government for defining biological sex as binary, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for and against legally allowing males to compete against females in sports, and a Vatican official called surrogacy a “new form of colonialism” that commodifies women and their children.

These are just the latest legal and cultural effects of a “mass cultural confusion” surrounding the meaning and purpose of the human body, and particularly women’s bodies, according to Leah Jacobson, program coordinator of the Catholic Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

On Jan. 9–10, the program sponsored a symposium titled “The Beauty of Truth: Navigating Society Today as a Catholic Woman,” which brought together a group of Catholic women who have used their gifts of intellect and faith to serve as what Jacobson calls an “antidote” to the “chaos and confusion” of the cultural moment.

The speakers presented on a wide range of topics concerned with the beauty, truth, and necessity of the Church’s teachings on human sexuality in many realms.

‘Every act is an act of human subtraction’

In one of the first talks, writer Mary Eberstadt argued that the question “Who am I?” became harder to answer due to the widespread use of the birth control pill, which has led to huge increases in abortion, divorce, fatherlessness, single parenthood, and childlessness. These effects led to a reduction in the number of people in an individual's life, which, she argued, resulted in widespread confusion over gender identity and the meaning and purpose of the body.

While she acknowledged that not everyone has been affected equally, “members of our species share a collective environment.”

“Just as toxic waste affects everyone,” she said, the reduction in the number of human connections “amounts to a massive disturbance to the human ecosystem,” leading to a crisis of human identity.

“The number of people we can call our own” became smaller, she said. “Each of these acts is an act of human subtraction,” Eberstadt said. “I’m not trying to make a point about morality, but arithmetic.”

Eberstadt also attributed the decline in religiosity to this decline in the number of human connections modern people experience.

“The sexual revolution subtracted the number of role models,” she said. “Many children have no siblings, no cousins, no aunts or uncles, no father, yet that is how humans conduct social learning.”

“Without children, adults are less likely to go to church,” she said. “Without birth, we lose knowledge of the transcendent. Without an earthly father, it is hard to grasp the paradigm of an earthly father.”

‘A love deficit’

“Living without God is not liberating people,” she continued. “It’s tearing some individuals apart, making people miserable and lonely.”

When the sexual revolution made sex "recreational and not procreative, what it produced above all is a love deficit,” Eberstadt said.

At the same time, secularization produced “troubled, disconnected souls drifting through society without gravity, shattering the ability to answer ‘Who am I?’”

“The Church is the answer to the love deficit because Church teachings about who we are and what we’re here for are true,” she said.

She concluded with a final note on hope, saying “it is easy to feel embattled, but we must never lose sight of the faces of the sexual revolution’s victims,” she said, “who are sending up primal screams for a world more ordered than many of today’s people now know; more ordered to mercy, to community and redemption.”

The Church’s teachings were ’truly beautiful’ but 'very, very hard to live'

Erika Bachiochi, a legal scholar and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who teaches a class for the graduate program, shared her experience as a mother of seven who tried to live according to the Church’s “difficult” teachings.

As her children began to arrive at “a breakneck pace” and each pregnancy was “a bit of a crucible,” Bachiochi said being a mother was “very hard” for her, partly due to wounds from her youth (among other troubles, her own mother had been married and divorced three times), and partly because of a lack of community.

Echoing Eberstadt’s “arithmetic” problem, Bachiochi described having very few examples of Catholic family life and a very small support system.

Bachiochi said she believes God heals us from our wounds through our “particular vocations,” however.

Of motherhood, she said: “I think God really healed me through being faithful to teachings that I found quite hard, but truly beautiful. I was intellectually convinced by them and found them spiritually beautiful, but found them to be very, very hard to live.”

“Motherhood has served to heal me profoundly," she said, encouraging young mothers to have faith that though it might be difficult now, there is an “amazing future” awaiting them.

“It’s really an incredible gift that Church has given me … the gift of obedience,” she said.

She also said by God’s grace, she was given an “excellent husband” and has found that “just as the Church promises, that leaning into motherhood, into the little things, the daily needs, the constant requests for my attention, has truly been a school of virtue.”

The Catholic Women’s and Gender Studies Program is a new part of the Nesti Center for Faith and Culture at the University of St. Thomas, a recognized Catholic cultural center of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education.

Pope Leo XIV waves to crowds in St. Peter's Square after praying the Angelus on Jan. 18, 2026. | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 18, 2026 / 09:44 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday urged prayers for peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as violence in the country’s east continues to drive families from their homes and across borders.

“Many have been forced to flee their country – especially to Burundi – due to violence, and they are facing a serious humanitarian crisis,” the pope said after praying the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square on Jan. 18. “Let us pray that dialogue for reconciliation and peace may always prevail among the parties in conflict.”

Leo also assured those affected by severe flooding in southern Africa of his prayers.

The pope also marked the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

“During these days, I invite all Catholic communities to deepen their prayers for the full, visible unity of all Christians,” Leo said, recalling that “the origins of this initiative date back two centuries,” and noting that Pope Leo XIII “greatly encouraged it.”

The theme for this year’s observance is drawn from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling” (4:4). The prayers and reflections, the pope said, were prepared by “an ecumenical group coordinated by the Armenian Apostolic Church’s Department of Interchurch Relations.”

In his reflection before praying the Angelus, Leo connected the call to peace and unity with a warning against what he described as a culture of appearances, urging the faithful to follow the example of St. John the Baptist, who stepped aside once he had pointed others to Christ.

The day’s Gospel reading (Jn 1:29-34), the pope noted, shows John identifying Jesus as the Messiah: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (v. 29). John’s humility remains a needed witness, Leo said, because “approval, consensus and visibility are often given excessive importance, to the point of shaping people’s ideas, behaviors and even their inner lives.”

“This causes suffering and division, and gives rise to lifestyles and relationships that are fragile, disappointing and imprisoning,” the pope said.

Instead of chasing what he called “substitutes for happiness,” Leo said Christians should remember that “our joy and greatness are not founded on passing illusions of success or fame, but on knowing ourselves to be loved and wanted by our heavenly Father.”

Leo emphasized that God’s love is not about spectacle but about closeness and compassion: “The love of which Jesus speaks is the love of a God who even today comes among us, not to dazzle us with spectacular displays, but to share in our struggles and to take our burdens upon himself.”

He concluded by urging believers to resist distractions and cultivate prayer and simplicity: “Let us not waste our time and energies chasing after appearances,” he said, encouraging Catholics to make time each day, when possible, for silence and prayer — “to withdraw into the desert,” in order to meet the Lord.

This story was first published in two  parts by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Former United States Ambassador to the Holy See Francis Rooney speaks to “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Catherine Hadro on Monday, May 12, 2025. | Credit: “EWTN News Nightly”/Screenshot

Jan 17, 2026 / 10:00 am (CNA).

Francis Rooney, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, said Pope Leo XIV’s papacy marks a period of opportunity for the Church in the U.S. in an interview this week with “EWTN News In Depth.”

The former diplomat and congressman highlighted Leo’s measured approach to diplomacy in light of U.S. involvement in Venezuela. “He’s always calm, he’s always careful, and he’s very judicious in his comments," Rooney said in a report that aired Jan. 16.

“The Holy See has a long tradition of intervening in hostage situations and situations of marginalized people or people under great stress and change, like a regime change,” Rooney said.

The Vatican’s move to host opposition leader María Corina Machado this week, he said, likely had diplomatic intentions to strengthen her standing.

“I think it’s predictable that [Pope Leo XIV] would want to shore up her position on the international stage as well as he can,” Rooney said. “So a pre-Trump meeting with the Holy Father is a global expression of her importance right now.”

Reacting to a speech by Pope Leo to diplomats at the Vatican, during which the Holy Father lamented that “peace is no longer sought as a gift and a desirable good,” Rooney pointed out that while Leo does not do so in the same manner as Pope Francis, “he speaks very clearly and says a lot of the same things.”

“[Leo’s] willing to call out bad activities by world leaders. He’s willing to call out the actions of Trump undermining the post-World War II order and creating potential consequences of bad actions by other people like North Korea, Russia, China,” he said, adding: “He’s not at all like Pope Francis. He’s calm, deliberate.”

Rooney served as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See from 2005 to 2008. He was a Republican member of the U.S. House from Florida from 2017 to 2021.

“The Church has a love-hate relationship with the United States. They resent our power, but they love our money, and they love our number of Catholics in the United States,” he said. “So this is an opportunity for Pope Leo to close that gap, earn more respect for the United States for the important role it plays in the Church, and also in Latin America.”

U.S. President Donald Trump met with Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on Jan. 12. Rooney, whose congressional Florida district included Fort Myers and Naples, speculated the closed meeting likely revolved around immigration.

“We have Alligator Alcatraz down here near where we live, and a lot of migrants are being kicked out of the country who have no criminal record,” Rooney said. “I think most Americans would agree that we need workers. If theyve been living here a long time, some of their kids have gone to school with our kids, they should be able to stay and have an orderly rational plan for citizenship like President George W. Bush tried to accomplish but didn’t get it done.”

“On the other hand, if they’re criminals, they should go. I don’t think anybody would argue that we shouldn’t police the border and have a strong border,” he said, concluding that Coakley and the president likely “spoke about that a great deal.”

London, England with the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf in the background. | Credit: © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons

Jan 17, 2026 / 08:16 am (CNA).

Abortions in England and Wales hit a record high as use of the abortion pill continues to rise.

The number of abortions jumped 11% from 2022 to 2023, going from 250,000 to 270,000 according to figures from the Department of Health.

Almost 90% of these abortions were done via abortion pills, and most were performed on very young unborn children, usually aged two to nine weeks. Surgical abortions have been decreasing for the past two decades, according to the Department of Health

The abortion rate is estimated to be at 12.3 per 1,000 women in 2023, almost doubling the 2013 rate, which was 7.1 per 1,000 women. About 40% of women who had abortions in 2023 in England and Wales had already had an abortion in the past.

Pregnancy support line takes 1.3 million calls in 2025

Heartbeat International’s pregnancy support helpline broke records with 1.3 million calls in 2025, according to a recent report by the group.

The Option Line tripled the number of calls it received in 2025 — calls which, more than 90% of the time, come from men and women who are at risk for abortion, according to the organization.

Via its High Risk Response Network, Option Line helps connect those in need to local pregnancy help centers for prompt telecare consultations, as well as in-person visits. According to Heartbeat International, 9 out of ten callers show up for virtual consultation appointments, and three in four callers show up for pregnancy help appointments after they call.

Gov. Newsom rejects abortionist extradition request

California Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to extradite a California abortionist who allegedly provided abortion pills to a man who coerced his girlfriend into having an abortion.

Newsom on Wednesday rejected Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s indictment for abortionist Remy Coeytaux, who was charged with criminal abortion in Louisiana after Rosalie Markezich’s boyfriend allegedly ordered abortion pills from him and forced her to take them. Newsom said in a statement that he would “never be complicit with Trump’s war on women.” 

South Carolina lawmakers introduce bill to ban coerced abortion 

South Carolina lawmakers introduced several pro-life bills at the start of this year’s legislative session, including a bill to protect women from coerced abortions. 

The bill would make it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion, with penalties up to one year in prison and $5,000 in fines, or higher if she is a minor or if the perpetrator is the father of the child.

This bill was among several other newly-introduced pro-life bills, including a bill to protect unborn children after conception. The Life Begins at Conception Act, sponsored by Sen Matt. Leber (R-District 41), would protect unborn children after conception unless they were conceived by rape or incest. Legislators also introduced a bill that would ban chemical abortion pills.

Lawmakers also introduced a bill to classify abortion drugs as a controlled substance. This bill, if passed, would make possession without a prescription a felony, while exempting pregnant women from prosecution.

Another bill would make it a felony to pay for or reimburse the cost of an abortion for a South Carolina resident and would criminalize donating to organizations who fund women crossing state lines for abortions. Another bill would permanently bar abortion clinics from receiving Medicaid funds for any services, codifying a 2017 executive order. 

A Bangladeshi border post in Bagha, Rajshahi district, near the India-Bangladesh border on June 13, 2021. | Credit: Dewan Tirtho / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Jan 17, 2026 / 08:00 am (CNA).

For decades, India was the most affordable and trusted destination for Bangladeshis seeking medical treatment abroad. Among them were thousands of Catholics who relied on Indian hospitals — many run by Christian institutions — for lifesaving care. But following political unrest in Bangladesh in July–August 2024 and the subsequent strain in relations with New Delhi, tightened Indian visa policies have sharply reduced access, leaving Catholic patients and families struggling both medically and emotionally.

An average of 3.6 million Bangladeshis used to travel to India annually for tourism, medical treatment, and business. Since Aug. 5, 2024, however, the number of Bangladeshi travelers — especially medical patients — has dropped dramatically, largely due to stricter visa procedures.

“I wanted to go to India for treatment of my heart disease, but I did not get a medical visa,” said Mita Corraya, a Catholic from Dhaka. “My cousin recovered after receiving treatment at Christian Medical College Vellore. Sadly, I was not given a visa.”

Corraya told EWTN News that she is now receiving similar treatment in Dhaka, but at a much higher cost. “So far, my treatment has cost nearly 1 million taka [about $8,101]. If I had been able to go to India, it would have cost around 500,000 taka [about half],” she said.

Cancer patients among the most affected

The visa complications have hit cancer patients particularly hard. Rina Gomes, a Catholic from Tejgaon parish in Dhaka, said she has been unable to return to India for follow-up care for breast cancer.

“I went to India for treatment in May 2024,” Gomes said. “Now I cannot go back. The political relationship between India and Bangladesh has become worse, and ordinary people are suffering. This should be stopped.”

Bangladesh ranks 10th globally among countries whose citizens seek medical treatment abroad. According to health sector data, 51% of Bangladeshi patients travel to India, followed by Thailand and Singapore at 20% each. Smaller numbers go to the United Kingdom (3%), Japan and Malaysia (2%), and China and the United Arab Emirates (1%).

More than half of Bangladeshi patients traveling abroad go primarily for diagnosis and medical checkups. Among those seeking treatment, heart disease, kidney ailments, cancer, and cataract surgeries are the most common reasons.

‘People are suffering because of politics’

“Previously, many patients traveled to India on tourist visas and consulted doctors,” said Dr. Edward Pallab Rozario, a Catholic Bangladeshi family medicine specialist and certified diabetologist as well as a children, skin, VD, sex, and burn physician. “Now they must apply for medical visas. About 80% receive approval, but 20% do not.”

Rosario explained that Indian hospitals remain popular because of their affordability and patient-centered approach. “Patients tell us Indian doctors spend time with them and listen carefully. The cost is also lower. That is why people still want to go, despite the difficulties.”

Beyond medical care, visa restrictions have strained family relationships within Bangladesh’s small Catholic community, which has long-standing cross-border ties with India.

A Telugu Catholic living in Dhaka, who requested anonymity, told EWTN News that members of his family live in Andhra Pradesh. “One of my sisters married there, and two studied there. We used to visit once a year, but now we cannot get tourist visas.”

“My mother has become ill because she has not seen her daughters for more than a year,” he said.

He also described the distressing case of a Christian student who failed to obtain a visa extension in India and attempted to cross the border irregularly. The student was arrested and jailed by Indian authorities. “Community leaders are working for his release,” he said.

He urged both governments to improve relations. “People are suffering because of politics. This should not happen.”

Trade tensions deepen uncertainty

The strain in bilateral relations has extended beyond visas into trade, further impacting livelihoods in Bangladesh.

Following political changes on Aug. 5, 2024, India imposed trade restrictions. On April 8, it canceled transshipment facilities that allowed Bangladesh to export goods to third countries via Indian airports. India later imposed phased restrictions on Bangladeshi exports through land ports, affecting garments, processed food, jute products, cotton-yarn waste, plastic goods, and wooden furniture.

Bangladesh responded by halting yarn imports from India through land ports on April 15.

According to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), Bangladesh exported goods worth $760 million to India during the first five months of the current fiscal year (July–November), compared with $810 million in the same period last year — a decline of 6.68%.

Exports of processed food products dropped by 13%, while jute and jute products fell by 37%.

‘Economics should not be mixed with politics’

Economists warn that continued restrictions could further weaken Bangladesh’s export capacity.

Khandaker Golam Moazzem, research director at the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD), told EWTN News that Bangladesh has limited export markets, making India strategically important.

“Even after Bangladesh restricted yarn imports, imports from India increased,” he said. “But after India imposed restrictions, Bangladeshi exports declined. Economics should not always be mixed with political issues.”

Kamruzzaman Kamal, director of marketing at PRAN-RFL Group, Bangladesh’s largest processed food exporter, said rising logistics costs have reduced profitability. “There are additional costs at land ports, and many products are no longer viable,” he told EWTN News. “We want initiatives to strengthen bilateral relations and reopen land ports.”

Hope for dialogue

Despite the current strain, business leaders in India have described the trade crisis as temporary. Economists on both sides argue that dialogue is essential — not only to revive trade but also to reduce the human cost borne by patients and families.

For Bangladesh’s Catholic minority, the crisis is deeply personal.

“We do not want conflict,” Corraya said quietly. “We only want treatment, dignity, and the chance to live.”

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Aug. 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. | Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Jan 16, 2026 / 18:29 pm (CNA).

U.S. bishops and Catholic pro-life organizations will be watching to see if President Donald Trump’s health care plan includes pro-life language.

Trump has faced criticism over the past week from pro-life activists after he urged Republican lawmakers to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment when negotiating extensions for health care subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act.

Trump’s health plan, outlined in a four-point memo, will be negotiated with Congress over whether to include the strongest possible pro-life protections and prevent federal funds from being used to pay for abortions. The Hyde Amendment, long included in federal spending bills, prevents tax dollars from being used on elective abortions.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has urged Congress to uphold the Hyde Amendment amid the negotiations, saying: “Authentic health care upholds the dignity of all human life, and health care policy must not violate this dignity.”

Health initiatives

The White House published a one-page memo that details some of the president’s priorities for the health care plan, although details have yet to be released. There was no mention of the Hyde Amendment in the 827-word memo.

According to the White House, the plan focuses on four issues: lowering drug prices, lowering insurance premiums, holding big insurance companies accountable, and maximizing price transparency.

“You’re going to get a better deal and better care,” Trump said in a video message. He urged the Republican-controlled Congress to take swift action to draft and pass legislation to achieve these goals.

To lower drug prices, the memo states Congress should allow more medicine to be sold over the counter and codify the administration’s recent deals with drug companies that require them to sell medicine in the United States at rates that are comparable to other developed countries.

According to the memo, the plan would lower health care premiums by providing health care subsidies directly to Americans rather than to insurance companies and support a cost-sharing reduction program to lower the most common Affordable Care Act premiums by more than 10%.

The plan would seek to hold insurance companies accountable by forcing insurance companies to publish rate and coverage comparisons in “plain English” that is easier to comprehend and by requiring them to publish the percentage of their revenues that are paid out in claims compared with overhead costs and advertise the percentage of insurance claims they reject.

According to the White House, the plan would improve transparency by requiring that insurance companies prominently display their pricing and fees to prevent surprise medical bills.

“Instead of putting the needs of big corporations and special interests first, our plan finally puts you first and puts more money in your pocket,” Trump said. “The government is going to pay the money directly to you. It goes to you, and then you take the money and buy your own health care.”

Catholic Health Association reacts

At least one Catholic health group has welcomed some of the priorities included in the plan. The Catholic Health Association of the United States generally aligns with Church teaching but has faced criticism for its stances on issues such as abortion.

Sister Mary Haddad, RSM, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which represents numerous Catholic hospitals, said in a statement that the organization welcomes the initiative.

“We welcome the administration’s engagement in the vital work of expanding access to quality, affordable health care,” she said. “Ensuring that individuals and families can obtain the care they need is central to the mission of Catholic health care.”

Haddad asked Congress and the administration to advance a bipartisan deal on the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which narrowly passed in the House with broad support from Democrats and only a little support from Republicans. A key point of contention was the Hyde Amendment, which was not included in the House-passed version and could complicate the Senate negotiations.

“Renewing them would immediately ease financial pressures on households while helping ensure people maintain their health coverage,” Haddad said. “We will continue to work with the administration and with Congress to strengthen health care access for communities across the country.”

Staten Island, New York | Credit: John McAdorey/Shutterstock

Jan 16, 2026 / 17:40 pm (CNA).

The New York Police Department (NYPD) says it will increase officer presence at local churches after several crimes committed at Catholic parishes on Staten Island.

Several Catholic churches on Staten Island have been vandalized or attacked in recent weeks, including a robbery and a violent incident during a morning Mass in which two police officers were injured.

State Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton called for increased police presence at churches in the area after the incidents. At a Jan. 15 press conference, local leaders including NYPD Staten Island Borough Commander Melissa Eger said police presence would be heightened at churches across the borough.

Eger said at the press conference that none of the incidents indicated that the Catholic churches had been targeted due to religion, describing the crimes as “acts … of opportunism and theft" as well as one incident involving a mentally ill person.

“That said, any incident, especially a disruption of service that occurs at any house of worship, generates serious concern from our community and we know that,” the commander said.

Scarcella-Spanton said at the press event that “nobody should feel unsafe where they are praying.”

Addressing the Catholic community, she said: “I just want you to know that we stand with you.”

“We’re going to be making sure that this issue is highlighted, because I think it’s important to bring light to the fact that this has happened now four times,” the state senator said.

Also at the press conference was Father Jacob Thumma, the pastor of both St. Ann’s Church and St. Sylvester’s Church, both of which were the site of recent criminal incidents.

Referring to the incident at St. Ann’s on Jan. 9 where a man violently disrupted morning Mass and injured two responding officers, Thumma said the altercation “highlights an urgent societal concern — the need for enhanced services and compassionate care for those suffering from mental illness.“

“We must continue to invest in mental health resources that support families [and] provide timely interventions before crises occur,” the priest said.

He further called on the public “to join us in prayer for the individual involved in this incident, that he may receive the healing he needs, [as well as for] for the injured police officers and their families.”

Dutch conservative political commentator and activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek delivers a speech during the first “Remigration Summit” at Teatro Condominio on May 17, 2025, in Gallarate, Italy. She was recently barred by the U.K. government from entering the U.K., deemed “not conducive to the public good.” | Credit: Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images)

Jan 16, 2026 / 17:10 pm (CNA).

Here is a roundup of Catholic world news from the past week that you might have missed:

Dutch conservative activist and Catholic convert barred from entering UK

Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a 28-year-old Dutch lawyer, activist, and Catholic convert, announced on X that her Electronic Travel Authorization was revoked as of Jan. 13 and she may not enter the U.K. The U.K. government said her “presence in the U.K. is not conducive to the public good” and that she may not appeal it. The notice came just days after she accused Britian’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer of allowing “the ongoing rape and killing of British girls by migrant rape gangs” and criticized Starmer for threatening to block X in the name of “safety.”

Vlaardingerbroek was received into the Catholic Church, along with her father, in April 2023 in London by Father Benedict Kiely, a priest in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. 

Sydney Archdiocese wades into ‘globalize the intifada’ debate 

The Archdiocese of Sydney has waded into the debate surrounding an inquiry by the New South Wales government into a law banning phrases such as “globalize the intifada” in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack in December 2025.

The archdiocese pushed back against the prospect of hate speech laws, according to a Catholic Weekly report on Tuesday, writing in a submission regarding the inquiry: “Our first response to bad speech should be better speech … Engaging in respectful civil discourse should be possible without the threat of arrest and prosecution.”

The submission continued: “The better way to protect against hateful rhetoric is to educate people in civil discourse and positive human behavior.”

Maronite warning over land purchases in Lebanon

Lebanon’s Maronite League has issued a sharp warning over what it describes as an organized effort to purchase land in several key districts, including Baabda, Jezzine, Zahle, and the coastal Chouf, according to ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News.

In a statement from Beirut, the league stressed that land in Lebanon is not merely a commercial asset but a core element of historical and cultural identity, particularly for the country’s Christian presence. The council cautioned that unregulated or distress-driven land sales could undermine Lebanon’s delicate demographic balance and erode long-standing communal roots. It called for clear legal safeguards to prevent indiscriminate transactions. 

The league urged Christian youth to engage with state institutions despite long-standing governance challenges, reaffirmed its support for President  Joseph Aoun, and reiterated its position that all weapons must remain exclusively in the hands of the state to preserve sovereignty and stability.

Bishop Chami calls for prayer and fasting amid regional turmoil

Against the backdrop of escalating instability across the Middle East, Bishop Jean-Marie Chami, Melkite Catholic patriarchal vicar for Egypt, Sudan, and South Sudan, has issued a spiritual appeal for peace. Addressing both believers and people of goodwill, he called for fasting, prayer, and extended periods of Eucharistic adoration, ACI MENA reported.

Acknowledging widespread feelings of helplessness in the face of violence and uncertainty, the bishop emphasized that faith remains a powerful response when human solutions falter. He encouraged a 40-day spiritual commitment as a preparation for Lent, offered specifically for unity among peoples and healing for a wounded humanity.

Christian schools in Jerusalem suspend classes amid permit crisis

Christian educational institutions in Jerusalem have suspended classes in an unprecedented move highlighting mounting pressure on faith-based schooling in the city, ACI MENA reported.

Fourteen schools affiliated with the Christian Educational Institutions Secretariat, along with several independent schools, halted operations after Israeli authorities restricted teacher access permits. School leaders warn that the measures threaten their ability to continue a centuries-old educational mission that has served students of all backgrounds. According to the schools, more than 170 teachers and staff have been affected, preventing the start of the second academic term. Church officials stress that these schools are not only academic centers but also vital pillars of Jerusalem’s cultural and social fabric, and caution that continued restrictions risk undermining the city’s pluralistic character.

Ethiopian Catholic eparchy celebrates 10th anniversary 

The Eparchy of Bahir Dar-Dessie, the youngest ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the Ethiopian Catholic Church, is celebrating its 10-year anniversary.

Despite ongoing instability in the region, Eparch Lisane-Christos described the milestone, which comes along with the construction of the eparchy’s first cathedral, as “a sign of a new era of grace,” according to a report from Fides News Agency. “While the foundation stone will be laid during the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Eparchy of Bahir Dar-Dessie, the construction of the cathedral is a long-term project that will require ongoing support after the festivities end,” he said. 

Backlash ensues over Egypt holiday policy that excludes Catholics, Protestants

The Egyptian minister of labor is facing backlash after announcing his decision to grant five paid holidays to Orthodox Christians in Egypt but only three to Catholics and Protestants in the country.

“The Catholic Church in Egypt follows with great concern the recent government decision regarding holidays for Christian citizens,” said Bishop Ibrahim Ishaq, patriarch of the Coptic Catholic Church, according to a  Manassa News report.

The bishop further emphasized his “deep regret at the lack of full equality among Christian denominations, especially regarding the celebrations of the Catholic Church’s children.” The bishop noted he is in talks with the Egyptian government to change the policy to include Catholics and Protestants. 

Church in Sri Lanka ‘making significant contribution to rekindling hope’ after cyclone

The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka is providing hope for people affected by Cyclone Ditwah and flooding that swept through the country late last year, Fides News Agency reported.

“The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka is making a significant contribution to rekindling hope,” said Father Basil Rohan Fernando, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Colombo, in the report.

“The Catholic community in Sri Lanka has become involved and is committed to a single goal: to instill new hope,” he continued. “We have assumed a special responsibility; namely, to keep hope alive. This is being done by supporting many people with material, financial, but also spiritual, psychological, and social assistance, as was the case during the Christmas season and continues to be the case today.”