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The Neckarfront in Tübingen, Germany, seen in the blue hour over the river Neckar. At the left the Hölderlinturm, followed by a row of historic town houses, at the top the tower of St. George’s Collegiate Church.
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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
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Cardinal Seán O’Malley, archbishop emeritus of Boston, offers the homily at the closing Mass for the annual National Prayer Vigil for Life at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23, 2026. | Credit: EWTN
Jan 23, 2026 / 10:34 am (CNA).
Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley said life is a “precious gift from a loving God” ahead of the 2026 annual March for Life.
O’Malley, archbishop emeritus of Boston, celebrated Mass on Jan. 23 before the March for Life, concluding the annual National Prayer Vigil for Life at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
“I know that many of you are tired and have made many sacrifices to be here,” O’Malley said. “I assure you, you could not be doing anything more important than being here today. And your presence is not by accident. The Lord in his providence has brought all of us here today.”
The Mass featured prayers for the pro-life movement and provided a moment to strengthen commitment to defending human life ahead of the march.
“Abortion is the greatest moral crisis faced by our country and by our world. It’s a matter of life and death in a very grand scale," O’Malley said. “It’s been a joy and a privilege for me to be at every March for Life here in Washington for the past 53 years.”
“It’s such a joy to be with you here today in this March for Life. This is a pilgrimage for life, and it begins with prayer, here in Mary’s shrine. I thank God for all of you,” he said.
‘Life Is a gift’
O’Malley spoke about the 2026 March for Life theme: “Life Is a Gift.”
“What a powerful theme,” O’Malley said. “Sadly, life is not always seen as a gift. For some, it seems a burden or a curse.”
The cardinal detailed a recent poll that found “for the very first time in the history of our nation, the majority of Americans say they do not want to have children.” O’Malley called it “an alarming statistic.”
“Life is a gift, a gift given by a loving God,” he said. “Life is beautiful, especially when it is received with gratitude and love.”
We must “love as God loves,” O’Malley said. “We must love first, forgive first, give first. That’s why we’re here in this Mass for life.”
“We’re here because life is a gift. God has given us this precious gift. We must be grateful and express our gratitude by proclaiming the gospel of life,” he said.
Future of the pro-life movement
O’Malley, who has been active in the pro-life movement for decades, said the opposition once believed the pro-life advocates would “die off,” but “we’re still here, proclaiming the gospel of life.”
“Our mission is not a political crusade. It’s a response to God’s command to love and to care for each other. And God bless us, the crowd is getting younger and younger. You are beautiful,” he said.
To end abortion, “our task is not to judge others but to bring healing,” O’Malley said. We must be “gentle” like Jesus was with “the Samaritan woman, the poor, the tax collector, the adulterous woman, the good thief,” he said.
“Our task is to build a society that takes care of everybody, where every person counts, where every life is important. Political polarization, racism, economic injustice will only continue to fuel abortion in a post-Roe v. Wade world,” O’Malley said.
“Our world is wracked by divisions and violence. Pope Leo is inviting us to be messengers of unity and of peace. But we do not want to get in the way of the message,” O’Malley said.
“Together, we can protect and nurture that gift of life. We must look for opportunities to be apostles of life, building a civilization of love and ethic of care,” he said.
“The antidote to abortion is love. Love manifests in community, compassion, and solidarity. Life is a gift. Every person is a gift. Every person counts. All are important. Our mission is to work so that no child be left behind. Every baby will be welcomed, loved, cared for, nurtured, and protected,” he said.
“Thank God for the gift of life. Thank God for love. Thank God for you,” O’Malley concluded.
EWTN News’ coverage of the 2026 March for Life can be found here.
If you’re attending the March for Life, don’t forget to use #ewtnprolife on all your posts across X, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook!
Want to relive interviews and special moments from the march? Visit ewtnnews.com/watch and subscribe to youtube.com/@EWTNNews for full coverage.
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Actor David Henrie in the new series “Seeking Beauty,” which airs on EWTN+. | Credit: EWTN Studios
Jan 22, 2026 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Catholic figures gathered in Los Angeles on Jan. 16 for the premiere of “Seeking Beauty,” the first original series from EWTN Studios airing exclusively on the network’s brand-new streaming platform, EWTN+.
Here are five things to know about the new series and its host, actor David Henrie.
What is ‘Seeking Beauty’?
“Seeking Beauty” is a first-of-its-kind adventure documentary series that explores culture, architecture, food, art, and music, and aims to point viewers to the beautiful — and ultimately to the divine.
The series follows Henrie’s journey into the heart of Italy to explore what makes Italian culture one of the most beautiful in the world. It not only looks at the physical beauty of the country but also its spiritual richness.
Where can I watch it?
“Seeking Beauty” is available to watch exclusively on EWTN+, a free digital streaming platform that offers faith-based content. EWTN+ is available on RokuTV, GoogleTV, AppleTV, AmazonFireTV, and on EWTN.com.
Where does ‘Seeking Beauty’ take place?
The first season of “Seeking Beauty” takes place in several cities across Italy including Vatican City, Rome, Milan, Florence, and Venice.
Who is David Henrie?
Henrie is best known for his breakout role as Justin Russo on Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place.” He grew up in a Catholic household with Italian heritage; however, Henrie’s early adult years were marked by what he has described as a relativistic and agnostic period. He has also spoken about how the successes of early fame left him feeling unfulfilled and searching for deeper meaning.
Henrie’s return to the Catholic faith was a profound personal transformation that he says began around age 21 or 22.
A significant influence came while working on the movie “Little Boy,” where conversations with Catholic cast members Kevin James and Eduardo Verástegui, as well as a visit to St. Michael Abbey in Orange County, California — including his first confession since childhood — played a pivotal role in rediscovering his faith.
Since then, Henrie has embraced his faith publicly and personally, integrating his beliefs into his family life, creative projects, and charity work, including serving as a brand ambassador for Cross Catholic Outreach and participating in mission trips that reflect his commitment to living out his faith. He is married and has three children.
Will there be another season of ‘Seeking Beauty’?
Yes! The second season of the series was filmed in Spain and is scheduled to premiere this fall.
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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
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, while also acknowledging how difficult living according to those teachings can sometimes be.
‘Each of these acts 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.
“Each of these acts is an act of human subtraction,” Eberstadt said. “I’m not trying to make a point about morality, but arithmetic.”
“The number of people we can call our own” became smaller, she said.
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.
This reduction in the number of people in an individual's life, she argued, resulted in widespread confusion over gender identity and the meaning and purpose of the body.
Eberstadt also attributed the decline in religiosity to the smaller number of human connections modern people have.
“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 a heavenly 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 has taught 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.
Read More![Homeland Security Department says rule will address religious worker visa backlog #Catholic
Credit: Lisa F. Young/Shutterstock
Jan 14, 2026 / 10:25 am (CNA).
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it is addressing a religious worker visa backlog with rules that will reduce wait times and disruptions in ministry for faith-based communities.“Under the leadership of Secretary [Kristi] Noem, DHS is committed to protecting and preserving freedom and expression of religion. We are taking the necessary steps to ensure religious organizations can continue delivering the services that Americans depend on,” a DHS spokesperson said in a press release Wednesday. “Pastors, priests, nuns, and rabbis are essential to the social and moral fabric of this country. We remain committed to finding ways to support and empower these organizations in their critical work.”Under the rule expected to be issued Jan. 14, religious workers in the country on R-1 visas would no longer be required to reside outside of the U.S. for a full year if they reach their statutory five-year maximum period of stay before completing their green card applications. “While R-1 religious workers are still required to depart the U.S., the rule establishes that there is no longer a minimum period of time they must reside and be physically present outside the U.S. before they seek readmission in R-1 status,” DHS said.DHS acknowledged the significant demand for visas within the EB-4 category “has exceeded the supply for many years,” citing 2023 changes implemented by President Joe Biden’s State Department. “By eliminating the one-year foreign residency requirement, USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] is reducing the time religious organizations are left without their trusted clergy and non-ministerial religious workers,” according to a DHS statement.The rule, expected to be issued at 11 a.m. Jan. 14, is effective immediately, DHS said.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a press conference in December 2025 that the government would reveal its plan “early next month” for religious worker visas that would avoid giving preference to one denomination over another. Rubio noted that the plan would not favor one religion over another and that there would be “country-specific requirements depending on the country they’re coming from.” “I think we’re going to get to a good place,” Rubio said at the time. “We don’t have it ready yet. All this takes time to put together, but we’re moving quickly. I think we’ll have something positive about that at some point next month, hopefully in the early part of next month.”Visas for religious workers allow foreign nationals to work for a U.S. religious organization, through the temporary R-1 visa or a Green Card EB-4 visa, which requires at least two years of membership in the same denomination and a job offer from a qualifying nonprofit religious group.Rubio had also said in August the administration was working to create a “standalone process” for religious workers, separate from other competing applicants to the employment-based fourth preference (EB-4) category of visas that became severely backlogged after an unprecedented influx in unaccompanied minor applicants — most of which the USCIS has since alleged were fraudulent — who were added to the already-tight category under the Biden administration.In November 2025, a Catholic diocese in New Jersey dropped a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration’s State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and USCIS, citing knowledge of a solution with national implications.Since the issue of the backlogged visas started, multiple U.S. dioceses have called for a solution. Priests in the Archdiocese of Boston who are in the U.S. on visas were urged to avoid international travel amid the Trump administration’s immigration policies and deportations.Priests and other Church leaders have expressed fear of having to leave their ministries and return to their home countries, then endure lengthy wait times before coming back. Church officials have warned that a continuing backlog could lead to significant priest shortages in the United States.“We are grateful for the administration’s attention to this important issue for the Church and value the opportunity for ongoing dialogue to address these challenges so the faithful can have access to the sacraments and other essential ministries,” a spokesperson for the USCCB told CNA.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/homeland-security-department-says-rule-will-address-religious-worker-visa-backlog-catholic-credit-lisa-f-young-shutterstockjan-14-2026-1025-am-cna-the-department-of-homeland-security.jpg)
Credit: Lisa F. Young/Shutterstock
Jan 14, 2026 / 10:25 am (CNA).
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it is addressing a religious worker visa backlog with rules that will reduce wait times and disruptions in ministry for faith-based communities.
“Under the leadership of Secretary [Kristi] Noem, DHS is committed to protecting and preserving freedom and expression of religion. We are taking the necessary steps to ensure religious organizations can continue delivering the services that Americans depend on,” a DHS spokesperson said in a press release Wednesday. “Pastors, priests, nuns, and rabbis are essential to the social and moral fabric of this country. We remain committed to finding ways to support and empower these organizations in their critical work.”
Under the rule expected to be issued Jan. 14, religious workers in the country on R-1 visas would no longer be required to reside outside of the U.S. for a full year if they reach their statutory five-year maximum period of stay before completing their green card applications.
“While R-1 religious workers are still required to depart the U.S., the rule establishes that there is no longer a minimum period of time they must reside and be physically present outside the U.S. before they seek readmission in R-1 status,” DHS said.
DHS acknowledged the significant demand for visas within the EB-4 category “has exceeded the supply for many years,” citing 2023 changes implemented by President Joe Biden’s State Department. “By eliminating the one-year foreign residency requirement, USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] is reducing the time religious organizations are left without their trusted clergy and non-ministerial religious workers,” according to a DHS statement.
The rule, expected to be issued at 11 a.m. Jan. 14, is effective immediately, DHS said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a press conference in December 2025 that the government would reveal its plan “early next month” for religious worker visas that would avoid giving preference to one denomination over another. Rubio noted that the plan would not favor one religion over another and that there would be “country-specific requirements depending on the country they’re coming from.”
“I think we’re going to get to a good place,” Rubio said at the time. “We don’t have it ready yet. All this takes time to put together, but we’re moving quickly. I think we’ll have something positive about that at some point next month, hopefully in the early part of next month.”
Visas for religious workers allow foreign nationals to work for a U.S. religious organization, through the temporary R-1 visa or a Green Card EB-4 visa, which requires at least two years of membership in the same denomination and a job offer from a qualifying nonprofit religious group.
Rubio had also said in August the administration was working to create a “standalone process” for religious workers, separate from other competing applicants to the employment-based fourth preference (EB-4) category of visas that became severely backlogged after an unprecedented influx in unaccompanied minor applicants — most of which the USCIS has since alleged were fraudulent — who were added to the already-tight category under the Biden administration.
In November 2025, a Catholic diocese in New Jersey dropped a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration’s State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and USCIS, citing knowledge of a solution with national implications.
Since the issue of the backlogged visas started, multiple U.S. dioceses have called for a solution. Priests in the Archdiocese of Boston who are in the U.S. on visas were urged to avoid international travel amid the Trump administration’s immigration policies and deportations.
Priests and other Church leaders have expressed fear of having to leave their ministries and return to their home countries, then endure lengthy wait times before coming back. Church officials have warned that a continuing backlog could lead to significant priest shortages in the United States.
“We are grateful for the administration’s attention to this important issue for the Church and value the opportunity for ongoing dialogue to address these challenges so the faithful can have access to the sacraments and other essential ministries,” a spokesperson for the USCCB told CNA.
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The National Catholic Partnership on Disability’s Charleen Katra (right) speaks at a panel accompanied by former American Catholic Historical Association President Mary Dunn (left). | Credit: Ken Oliver-Méndez/CNA
Jan 13, 2026 / 10:41 am (CNA).
CHICAGO — A Catholic nonprofit that helps parishes and schools provide faith formation and catechesis for people with disabilities was selected to win the 2026 award for service to Catholic studies from the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA).
The National Catholic Partnership on Disability (NCPD) was presented the award during a panel discussion about the historical and modern interactions between the Church and Catholics with disabilities at the annual ACHA meeting in Chicago on Jan. 8.
During the discussion, panelists highlighted the ongoing efforts to make Catholic parish and school life more welcoming to members of the faithful who have disabilities and also spoke about persistent struggles to ensure that inclusivity is comprehensive throughout the Church.
“Though this recognition of our mission and ministry was very unexpected, it is both energizing and affirming,” Charleen Katra, executive director of NCPD, told CNA in a statement.
Katra said the award helps bring attention to the NCPD’s efforts to ensure Catholics with disabilities receive access to their baptismal rights: “To be educated in the faith; to live a sacramental life; and to respond to God’s call.”
“Persons with disabilities have unique gifts that bless the Church,” she said. “Thank you for blessing NCPD with this honor. We gratefully accept it on behalf of Catholics living with disabilities, and their families, who seek meaningful participation in the Church!”
Mary Dunn, outgoing ACHA president, said NCPD was selected because of its efforts to “promote real belonging” for those with disabilities and said “the lines between history and practice are always thin.”
Katra, who has a background in special education, said in the panel discussion that she first became involved in special religious education when she tutored a child with an intellectual disability named Brandon, who needed catechesis to prepare for the sacraments.
She said there are “a lot of different ways” to learn about God. Brandon needed multisensory learning that included a lot of visuals, which was not a learning experience offered at the parish at that time. In her current role, she helps provide training and resources to parishes to make sure Catholics with disabilities have access to a learning experience that fits their needs.
Although many parishes have incorporated these options into their catechesis, Katra said she still hears from families whose needs are not met by the Church. In some cases, she warned, families will leave the Catholic Church altogether if those needs are not met: “The Church can’t not look at this.”
“What happens?” she said. “They go somewhere else that will meet their needs or their loved one’s needs.”
“No one should not feel at home in the house of the Lord,” she added.
University of Southern Mississippi English professor Leah Parker, who has expertise in disability studies related to literature, said 15% of children in American public schools receive some form of special education, which highlights the need for greater inclusion.
“We’re all made in the image of God,” she said. “… I need my brothers and sisters with disabilities. We are incomplete without each other.”
The ACHA gave out two other awards during its 2026 annual meeting.
The Excellence in Teaching award was presented to Harvard ecclesiastical history professor Kevin Madigan. The Lifetime of Distinguished Scholarship Award was given to Yale history and religious studies professor Carlos Eire.
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University of Notre Dame professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings. Credit: Ken Oliver-Méndez/CNA
Jan 10, 2026 / 10:12 am (CNA).
Assessing the impact of the Catholic Church's first American pope was front and center at the 106th annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA), which met in Pope Leo XIV's hometown of Chicago from Jan. 8-11.
During a panel on the subject, Catholic scholars noted some of the historic caricatures of what an American papacy would be like and compared that to the first eight months of Leo's actual papacy.
At the outset of the panel, University of Notre Dame history professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings referenced the 1894 Puck magazine cartoon titled “ The American Pope,” which depicts the first apostolic delegate to the United States, Cardinal Francesco Satolli, sitting atop a church labeled the “American headquarters” and casting a shadow of then Pope Leo XIII over the entire country.
Sprows Cummings noted the cartoon illustrates “fears about papal intervention in the United States” at a time when the country was receiving waves of Catholic immigrants from countries such as Ireland and Italy.
As Catholics became more settled in American society in the subsequent decades, she said some of those prejudices began to lessen and pointed to the 1918 election of Catholic Democrat Al Smith as New York’s governor. By this point, Catholics had become “much more confident about their place in American culture.”
During the same early 20th century period, the United States also began to rise as a superpower. Sprows Cummings noted that predominant concerns about an American pope shifted to Vatican concerns over the “Americanization of the Catholic Church.”
America magazine's Vatican correspondent, Colleen Dulle, said some of those concerns were evidently mitigated in the person of then Cardinal Robert Prevost, whose service to the Church included many years as a missionary and bishop in Peru as well as in Rome as the head of a global religious order, the Augustinians.
Sprows Cummings said the College of Cardinals clearly saw in Cardinal Prevost the "pastoral presence, administrative savvy and global vision" that the Church needed at this time and that he was “not elected in some flex of American power.”
Miguel Diaz, the John Courtney Murray, S.J. Chair in Public Service at Loyola University Chicago, noted that some of Leo’s actions have actually amounted to the opposite of flexing American power, such as his focus on the dignity of migrants, which he contrasted to the policies of the Trump administration.
Diaz, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See under former President Barack Obama, said Leo is “a different symbol, from America first to America cares.”
He emphasized that having an American pope is significant amid the country’s political debates because “he can say things and he will be listened to.”
The panelists also discussed what Leo’s papacy may look like moving forward, with Dulle noting that only this year are there clear signs of him charting his own programmatic course, as the events and itinerary of the 2025 Jubilee were primarily developed for Pope Francis.
Up until now, she said, he has been mostly “continuing the Francis initiatives in a different style.”
She noted Pope Leo's management of this week's consistory — a meeting between the pope and the College of Cardinals — where the pontiff gave them four topics to choose from, which were all in line with Francis’s priorities: synodality, evangelization, reform of the curia, and the liturgy. The cardinals chose synodality and evangelization.
Dulle said Leo is seen as "a consensus builder” who aims to build consensus around the Church's priorities. She noted Pope Leo's announcement this week of a regular schedule of consistories, with the next one set for this June. This approach is emerging as a "hallmark of how he governs the Church" Dulle said.
Brian Flanagan, the John Cardinal Cody Chair of Catholic Theology at Loyola University Chicago, also emphasized Leo’s strong appeal to the cardinals and bishops in efforts to reach consensus, in keeping with the Pope's role as a preserver of unity.
Flanagan said he sees Leo exercising the papacy as not so much "at the top of the pyramid, but as at the center of conversation.” He said this is likely influenced by Leo's past as leader of a religious order — the Order of Saint Augustine — rather than a diocese because the orders are “global, diverse, and somewhat fractious.”
“You can’t govern a global religious community without getting people on board,” he said.
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Artemis II crewmembers (left to right) NASA astronauts Christina Koch, mission specialist; and Victor Glover, pilot; CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist; and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, commander are led to the crew access arm as they prepare to board their Orion spacecraft atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket during the Artemis II countdown demonstration test on Dec. 20, 2025.
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From left to right: Sister Catherine Joy, Sister Virginia Joy, and Sister Israel Rose of the Sisters of Life at SEEK 2026 in Denver. | Credit: Francesca Fenton/EWTN News
Jan 7, 2026 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Hundreds of young women filled a ballroom on Jan. 4 at the 2026 SEEK Conference in Denver to hear Sister Virginia Joy Cotter, SV, discuss how to follow God’s call and determine one’s vocation.
“When we think about vocation, it’s ultimately a call to love and be loved,” Sister Virginia Joy said during her talk, titled “The Adventure of the Yes: Following God’s Call.”
“Growing up, or even now, you’re probably asked, ‘What are you going to do when you grow up? What’s your major? What do you want to do with your life?’” she said. “I would guess no one has probably asked you, ‘What are you going to do with your love? How do you plan to make a gift of yourself?’ But these are the questions that sit behind a vocation.”
“For some, the word vocation might be completely foreign to you. For others, maybe it provokes a stream of emotions from wonder to anticipation to anxiety. Whatever it means to you, it’s good to take stock of where it sits with you right now and open your heart to whatever God wants to give you this morning.”
Sister Virginia Joy shared that “ultimately, our vocation is not a problem to be fixed or a riddle to be solved … Vocation is deeply relational, personal, and distinct. It comes from the Latin ‘vocare,’ meaning to call, to name, to summon. There’s one who calls and there’s one who responds. It’s a relationship between each individual and God.”
Here are seven ways a person can discern his or her vocation based on Sister Virginia Joy’s talk:
Pay attention to where and how you are called to love
Sister Virginia Joy shared that the questions behind one’s vocation are fundamentally about “what are you going to do with your love” and how you are called to “make a gift of yourself,” not merely what career or role you will have.
Receive God’s love first
She emphasized that the prerequisite for hearing God’s call is first receiving his love, since vocation flows from a relationship.
“When I think about a vocational call, I think of two things: First, God is the one who calls, and it is always a call of love. Second, we are the ones to respond to that call and to love in return. So first, the prerequisite to hearing God’s call is receiving his love,” Sister Virginia Joy said.
Develop a real prayer life and speak honestly to God
God makes himself known in prayer, especially when a person speaks from the heart — expressing longing, confusion, loneliness, or desire for meaning.
Sister Virginia Joy highlighted that “God is looking for a place to break in and make himself known. I trust you’ve experienced it here at SEEK. It’s real. He’s real. And he is in pursuit of your heart. He knows you and he desires that you come to know him. This happens in prayer.”
“But prayer can be challenging because we’re used to instant gratification. We want to see results. And yet relationships, they’re not about results,” she added. “Relationships take time, patience, and trust. Sometimes I think we settle or we allow ourselves to get distracted because real love means facing our weakness and searching for the Lord in times of loneliness, doubt, and even pain.”
Stay close to the sacraments, especially confession and the Eucharist
Sister Virginia Joy emphasized that living in grace and regularly receiving the sacraments helps ensure that a person does not miss God’s call and gains the strength to respond in his time.
She shared with those gathered that she has always found herself making life decisions after “a good confession — decisions to move across the country, decisions to become a missionary, decisions to accept a particular job or begin or end a dating relationship.”
“I know there can be a lot of fear about somehow missing what God is calling me to,” Sister Virginia Joy said. “And I just want to crush that fear because the truth is if you’re staying close to the sacraments, if you’re living in grace, you will not miss what God is calling you to. And because of the grace of the sacraments, you will have the strength to respond in God’s time.”
Live your call to love daily, even before knowing your definitive vocation
Sister Virginia Joy stressed that holiness and vocation are lived now, through everyday acts of love, even before one enters marriage, religious life, or another permanent state.
She asked those gathered: “Where are we called to love?”
“It’s not a complicated question. All the love happens right where God has you — with family, friends, roommates. We are each given so many opportunities to love every day. You might not be in your definitive vocation right now or five years from now, but your call to love is now. Your call to make a gift of yourself is now,” she said.
Recognize your unique gifts
Especially for women, discerning vocation involves recognizing the “uniquely feminine” capacity for receptivity, generosity, spiritual maternity, and leading others to God, Sister Virginia Joy explained.
“As women, we possess a unique capacity for love … Written into our very makeup by design, we as women have space for another, room for another. And the physical capacity — we’ve heard this over the days — the physical capacity to receive and carry life sheds a much deeper reality within the heart of each woman,” she said. “Our bodies and souls are intimately connected and together they tell us something — that our love is receptive, sensitive, generous, maternal.”
Observe where your heart becomes undivided and free
A key sign of vocation is interior freedom and unity of heart, where fear gives way to peace and clarity about where, as Sister Virginia Joy said, one is called “to make a gift of oneself in a total way.”
She shared that while discerning her own vocation her heart was divided — seeing the beauty in both married life and religious life. It wasn’t until she asked in prayer, “What do you want, Lord?” while on retreat with the Sisters of Life that she heard him say, “You. You. All of you for myself.”
“And in an instant, my heart was undivided,” she recalled. “I knew where I was being called to give my love and my life, and I felt more free than I ever had.”
“Your love story is going to be perfectly unique to you,” Sister Virginia Joy added. “God has been preparing something far beyond your expectations and he desires your freedom to respond with an undivided heart. Whether it be marriage, religious life, lay life, there is no doubt he wants you and your unique love. God loves you.”
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The National Shrine of St. John Neumann at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Philadelphia. | Credit: Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jan 5, 2026 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Every Jan. 5 the Church celebrates the feast of St. John Neumann, Redemptorist missionary, fourth bishop of the city of Philadelphia, and organizer of the first Catholic education network in the U.S.
John Nepomucene Neumann was born in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, in 1811. He attended school in Budweis and years later, in 1831, entered the seminary in that same city.
Upon completing his preparation for the priesthood, he presented himself to his diocese but suffered an unexpected setback. The local bishop had fallen ill and priestly ordinations in his diocese were suspended until further notice.
Neumann, eager to serve the Lord, wrote letters to the bishops of the neighboring dioceses, but none of them wanted to accept him. Despite the obstacles, the saint was not discouraged.
To earn his living, he went to work in a factory where he met a few Americans from whom he learned some English. Later, he contacted some bishops in the United States. Neumann had a missionary soul and was ready to move to America.
Priest and missionary in North America
The archbishop of New York agreed to receive and ordain Neumann, so he left his family and friends to embark on the adventure of proclaiming the Lord in a distant land. After being ordained in the U.S., Neumann joined 36 other priests who were to assist the almost 200,000 Catholics living in the U.S. at the time.
The newly ordained was entrusted with the administration of a parish. The first pastoral difficulty he faced was the vast territory entrusted to him: His parish stretched from Ontario, Canada, to Pennsylvania.
Given the immense need, Neumann spent most of his time visiting villages and towns. He had to cross inhospitable territories, walk long distances in extreme cold and sweltering heat, and trek high mountains and majestic landscapes — all in order to watch over his flock and to assist those in need.
These were long years of providing catechesis, administering the sacraments, and celebrating the Eucharist. It was common to see Neumann preach both in churches and in abandoned huts. He even preached outside taverns, refuges for impenitent souls.
Neumann often had to celebrate Mass in dining rooms and kitchens.
Redemptorist
With time and continued difficulties, the missionary priest discovered the need for the support of a religious community. He knew the Redemptorists well so he applied to join the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. When the time came, he took his vows at the congregation’s house in Baltimore in 1842.
Neumann was noted for his piety and kindness as well as his versatility in understanding and accompanying his parishioners, most of whom were European immigrants. Neumann knew up to six languages, so it was not difficult for him to communicate with Catholics who did not speak English well.
In 1847, he was appointed visitator of the Redemptorists in the United States. At the end of his service, the Redemptorists were ready to form an autonomous “province or religious province,” which became a reality in 1850.
Promoter of Catholic education in the U.S.
Neumann was then ordained bishop of Philadelphia, and from that city he organized the diocesan system of Catholic schools, becoming a great promoter of religious education in the country. He also founded the congregation of the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, dedicated to teaching in schools, and was the promoter of the construction of more than 80 churches throughout the country.
Neumann was a simple man, short in stature and reportedly good-natured. Although he never had robust health, he carried out great pastoral and literary activity. He wrote many articles in magazines and newspapers, and published two catechisms and a history of the Bible for schoolchildren.
Once, in one of his articles, he wrote: “I have never regretted having dedicated myself to the mission in America.”
On Jan. 5, 1860, when he was just 48 years old, he suddenly collapsed in the street and went home to the Lord. He was beatified in 1963 and canonized in 1977 by Pope Paul VI.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Read More![At SEEK 2026, young Catholics urged to use technology intentionally, as a tool #Catholic
Andrew Laubacher, executive director of Humanality, ahead of his talk at SEEK 2026 in Denver, Colorado on Jan. 2, 2026. Credit: Francesca Fenton/EWTN News
Jan 3, 2026 / 17:56 pm (CNA).
In 2018, Andrew Laubacher, a touring Catholic musician at the time, decided to quit social media completely. Despite his recording label telling him that he was making a terrible decision, he was exhausted from the impact it was having on his life and felt God calling him to make this change.Fast-forward to today and Laubacher is now the executive director of Humanality, a nonprofit organization that “exists to help people discover freedom through an intentional relationship with technology” and offers individuals help to break their digital addiction through a 12-week digital detox program.Speaking to hundreds of young Catholics at SEEK 2026 in Denver, Colorado, on Jan. 2, he explained how social media can become addictive and have negative effects on the human person – including depression, anxiety, and body image issues – and offered tips on how individuals can use technology practically and intentionally.Laubacher began by highlighting data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which showed that the average U.S. life expectancy decreased for the first time between 2017 and 2019 and that “Americans are 10 times more likely to have a depressive illness than they were 60 years ago."Citing the federal data as well as research in Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 book “The Anxious Generation,” Laubacher explained that in 2010 a new feature was introduced on smartphones which led to “drastic increases in anxiety and depression.”What was this feature? The front-facing camera.“When that front-facing camera came out, all of a sudden our lives became self-defining,” he argued.Laubacher shared how he saw this play out in his own life – constantly comparing himself and his life to others, experiencing lust, feeling lonely, and wasting his time mindlessly scrolling through his feeds.“These technologies affected me in many different ways,” he said, “And when I made that leap [off social media] everything got better. My friendships got better, my purity, my productivity, my prayer got better. Everything started to improve.”“So you guys, the way that you've grown up with these technologies has literally changed everything… It's changed the way you think. It's changed the way you behave. It's changed the way you relate to one another. It's changed the way you sleep. It's changed the way you perceive reality,” Laubacher told those gathered. “You have to understand algorithms are literally shaping your perception of what is true. And if you are living your life scrolling and getting stuck into these platforms like me you're not necessarily as you want to be.”Laubacher said that the average 18-year-old in 2025 is on pace to have a 90-year life span. He then broke this down into how many months one might spend doing different activities such as eating, sleeping, going to school or work, and driving. Over the course of one's life, the average person is left with “334 months of free time – this is where you fall in love. This is where you create music, this is where you write that book, this is where you go on the trip with your loved ones. This is where you discover your vocation,” Laubacher said.“Right now, of those 334 months, 93% of that time is going to be spent on the screen,” he said. “At the end of your lives, you in this crowd will have looked at the screen for 27 years of your life." "And friends, my mission is to help you get that time back into your life. So you can invest that time and attention into the things that matter most.”Offering those gathered practical tools to gain more freedom from digital media, Laubacher highlighted three of the 11 ways Humanality’s digital detox program aims to help individuals gain a more human way to be – be light, be giving, and be present.“Be light” focuses on individuals stopping the nighttime scrolling and beginning to acknowledge the difference between daytime and nighttime. Laubacher explained that people spend 90% of their time indoors versus 100 years ago when people spent 90% of their time outdoors. Additionally, when people scroll on their phones at nighttime, the light from the screen tells the brain it’s daytime.“So, our separation from light in the daytime — and you scrolling yourself to sleep in the nighttime — is a huge reason for our mental health slash sleep disorder slash fatigue and exhaustion,” he said.“Be giving” turns the self-centered nature of social media to one where you “start to think outside of yourself,” which leads a person to be “more happy and more healthy when you live a life that is giving,” Laubacher explained.The last way Laubacher highlighted was “be present,” which aims to simply teach people how to be present with themselves, with others, and with God.
“Friends, I want to tell you right now, the scariest, best, most amazing adventure in your life is going to be learning to love God, your neighbor, and yourself,” Laubacher said. “And if I'm honest, I can love people pretty easily, but it's really hard for me to love myself most of the time. And I found that my technologies were not allowing me to get to know the person that God has created me to be.”“These three ways – there's a lot more – but these three ways I think if you start to implement in your day today you'll start to use technology as a tool and get out of these addictions.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/at-seek-2026-young-catholics-urged-to-use-technology-intentionally-as-a-tool-catholic-andrew-laubacher-executive-director-of-humanality-ahead-of-his-talk-at-seek-2026-in-denver-colorado-on-j.png)
Andrew Laubacher, executive director of Humanality, ahead of his talk at SEEK 2026 in Denver, Colorado on Jan. 2, 2026. Credit: Francesca Fenton/EWTN News
Jan 3, 2026 / 17:56 pm (CNA).
In 2018, Andrew Laubacher, a touring Catholic musician at the time, decided to quit social media completely. Despite his recording label telling him that he was making a terrible decision, he was exhausted from the impact it was having on his life and felt God calling him to make this change.
Fast-forward to today and Laubacher is now the executive director of Humanality, a nonprofit organization that “exists to help people discover freedom through an intentional relationship with technology” and offers individuals help to break their digital addiction through a 12-week digital detox program.
Speaking to hundreds of young Catholics at SEEK 2026 in Denver, Colorado, on Jan. 2, he explained how social media can become addictive and have negative effects on the human person – including depression, anxiety, and body image issues – and offered tips on how individuals can use technology practically and intentionally.
Laubacher began by highlighting data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which showed that the average U.S. life expectancy decreased for the first time between 2017 and 2019 and that “Americans are 10 times more likely to have a depressive illness than they were 60 years ago."
Citing the federal data as well as research in Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 book “The Anxious Generation,” Laubacher explained that in 2010 a new feature was introduced on smartphones which led to “drastic increases in anxiety and depression.”
What was this feature? The front-facing camera.
“When that front-facing camera came out, all of a sudden our lives became self-defining,” he argued.
Laubacher shared how he saw this play out in his own life – constantly comparing himself and his life to others, experiencing lust, feeling lonely, and wasting his time mindlessly scrolling through his feeds.
“These technologies affected me in many different ways,” he said, “And when I made that leap [off social media] everything got better. My friendships got better, my purity, my productivity, my prayer got better. Everything started to improve.”
“So you guys, the way that you've grown up with these technologies has literally changed everything… It's changed the way you think. It's changed the way you behave. It's changed the way you relate to one another. It's changed the way you sleep. It's changed the way you perceive reality,” Laubacher told those gathered.
“You have to understand algorithms are literally shaping your perception of what is true. And if you are living your life scrolling and getting stuck into these platforms like me you're not necessarily as you want to be.”
Laubacher said that the average 18-year-old in 2025 is on pace to have a 90-year life span. He then broke this down into how many months one might spend doing different activities such as eating, sleeping, going to school or work, and driving.
Over the course of one's life, the average person is left with “334 months of free time – this is where you fall in love. This is where you create music, this is where you write that book, this is where you go on the trip with your loved ones. This is where you discover your vocation,” Laubacher said.
“Right now, of those 334 months, 93% of that time is going to be spent on the screen,” he said. “At the end of your lives, you in this crowd will have looked at the screen for 27 years of your life."
"And friends, my mission is to help you get that time back into your life. So you can invest that time and attention into the things that matter most.”
Offering those gathered practical tools to gain more freedom from digital media, Laubacher highlighted three of the 11 ways Humanality’s digital detox program aims to help individuals gain a more human way to be – be light, be giving, and be present.
“Be light” focuses on individuals stopping the nighttime scrolling and beginning to acknowledge the difference between daytime and nighttime. Laubacher explained that people spend 90% of their time indoors versus 100 years ago when people spent 90% of their time outdoors.
Additionally, when people scroll on their phones at nighttime, the light from the screen tells the brain it’s daytime.
“So, our separation from light in the daytime — and you scrolling yourself to sleep in the nighttime — is a huge reason for our mental health slash sleep disorder slash fatigue and exhaustion,” he said.
“Be giving” turns the self-centered nature of social media to one where you “start to think outside of yourself,” which leads a person to be “more happy and more healthy when you live a life that is giving,” Laubacher explained.
The last way Laubacher highlighted was “be present,” which aims to simply teach people how to be present with themselves, with others, and with God.
“Friends, I want to tell you right now, the scariest, best, most amazing adventure in your life is going to be learning to love God, your neighbor, and yourself,” Laubacher said.
“And if I'm honest, I can love people pretty easily, but it's really hard for me to love myself most of the time. And I found that my technologies were not allowing me to get to know the person that God has created me to be.”
“These three ways – there's a lot more – but these three ways I think if you start to implement in your day today you'll start to use technology as a tool and get out of these addictions.”
Read More![FOCUS expands reach into parishes, hoping to revitalize local Church #Catholic
Left to right: Curtis Martin, founder of FOCUS, and his son, Brock Martin, vice president of parish outreach at FOCUS, sit down for an interview with CNA on Dec. 10, 2025. | Credit: Francesca Fenton/EWTN News
Jan 3, 2026 / 08:00 am (CNA).
For nearly 30 years, FOCUS has been known for its missionary work on college campuses. Earlier this year, the ministry began to expand its reach with a new branch — FOCUS Parish.FOCUS Parish brings FOCUS missionaries into Catholic parishes to help revitalize the parish itself and the parishioners, and to form missionary disciples — laypeople who effectively spread the Gospel message in the local community and diocese.Founder of FOCUS Curtis Martin and his son, Brock Martin, vice president of parish outreach at FOCUS, both agree that FOCUS Parish is a response to the need of sending missionaries to “where the people are.”“If we’re trying to bring the Gospel to every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth, the vast majority of people don’t currently live on U.S. college campuses,” Brock told CNA in an interview. “The Catholic Church has amazingly already done this work — every inch of the globe is already mapped out into a parish structure. So, FOCUS’ move into parishes is really a response to the fact that we want to take this mission seriously. We need to send missionaries to where the people are.”Curtis added: “Everybody lives in a parish, as Brock said, and evangelization takes root when there’s real transformation. It’s going to take place in families and in parishes. That’s where Catholics live. And so we want to be with them to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them in the midst, as Brock said, in the midst of friendship.”Parishes who take part in FOCUS’ new ministry will receive two full-time missionaries who become part of the parish’s leadership team, help advise and lead parish ministries, and work to create small communities where the Gospel message is shared and spread to all parishioners.“These missionaries are imbedding into the parish culture,” Brock said.FOCUS Parish is currently in 25 parishes and plans to expand to an additional 25 parishes in 2026.When speaking to the fact that FOCUS Parish has become the fastest-growing part of the apostolate, Brock credited the current “landscape of the parish in the United States.”“Right now there’s about 16,000 parishes [in the U.S.],” Brock said. “I think the number of parishes who are waking up, the number of pastors who recognize that business as usual is not working, we have to, with new ardor and new methodologies, try to figure out how to live the new evangelization. I just think there’s a unique moment where as pastors and finance councils become aware of the opportunity, we’re seeing more and more people start to raise their hand at a faster rate.”Curtis highlighted the retention rate of FOCUS Parish missionaries leading to the success of the ministry.“We’re seeing greater longevity with our missionaries because they’re not walking with 18- to 22-year-olds, they’re walking with people who are of their same age, maybe older, maybe younger,” he explained. “The retention rate for FOCUS missionaries in Parish last year was 100%. Nobody left. By way of comparison, probably 25% of the missionaries left on campus; that’s part of our cycle. And so to be able to recognize, we can grow because of the longevity.”With the growth to 25 more parishes in the new year, FOCUS is looking to hire an additional 50 to 55 missionaries — considering both moving campus missionaries to parishes and hiring individuals who have never been FOCUS missionaries.As for his hopes for the future, Brock said: “My deepest hope in FOCUS Parish is that this would be a simple and repeatable gift that we can offer to the Church.”Curtis said: “My hope for FOCUS in the parish is actually hope. I think a lot of leaders in the Church are good people but they’re discouraged and they’re kind of managing a slow decline. And that’s not the way Christianity works. Christianity has grown in every generation since the time of Christ. We’re living in a very abnormal time, at least in the West. It’s shrinking. That’s not the way it should be.”He added: “There’s a resurgence of faith — articles are being written about this all over the world — FOCUS is just participating in a little way. Millions of people awakening to Christ. We need to welcome them and to be able to recognize the Church ought to be growing. This can work. And when you have hope you start to make decisions based upon that and all of a sudden you see the Church should be a place of growth.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/focus-expands-reach-into-parishes-hoping-to-revitalize-local-church-catholic-left-to-right-curtis-martin-founder-of-focus-and-his-son-brock-martin-vice-president-of-parish-outreach-at-focus.png)
Left to right: Curtis Martin, founder of FOCUS, and his son, Brock Martin, vice president of parish outreach at FOCUS, sit down for an interview with CNA on Dec. 10, 2025. | Credit: Francesca Fenton/EWTN News
Jan 3, 2026 / 08:00 am (CNA).
For nearly 30 years, FOCUS has been known for its missionary work on college campuses. Earlier this year, the ministry began to expand its reach with a new branch — FOCUS Parish.
FOCUS Parish brings FOCUS missionaries into Catholic parishes to help revitalize the parish itself and the parishioners, and to form missionary disciples — laypeople who effectively spread the Gospel message in the local community and diocese.
Founder of FOCUS Curtis Martin and his son, Brock Martin, vice president of parish outreach at FOCUS, both agree that FOCUS Parish is a response to the need of sending missionaries to “where the people are.”
“If we’re trying to bring the Gospel to every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth, the vast majority of people don’t currently live on U.S. college campuses,” Brock told CNA in an interview. “The Catholic Church has amazingly already done this work — every inch of the globe is already mapped out into a parish structure. So, FOCUS’ move into parishes is really a response to the fact that we want to take this mission seriously. We need to send missionaries to where the people are.”
Curtis added: “Everybody lives in a parish, as Brock said, and evangelization takes root when there’s real transformation. It’s going to take place in families and in parishes. That’s where Catholics live. And so we want to be with them to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them in the midst, as Brock said, in the midst of friendship.”
Parishes who take part in FOCUS’ new ministry will receive two full-time missionaries who become part of the parish’s leadership team, help advise and lead parish ministries, and work to create small communities where the Gospel message is shared and spread to all parishioners.
“These missionaries are imbedding into the parish culture,” Brock said.
FOCUS Parish is currently in 25 parishes and plans to expand to an additional 25 parishes in 2026.
When speaking to the fact that FOCUS Parish has become the fastest-growing part of the apostolate, Brock credited the current “landscape of the parish in the United States.”
“Right now there’s about 16,000 parishes [in the U.S.],” Brock said. “I think the number of parishes who are waking up, the number of pastors who recognize that business as usual is not working, we have to, with new ardor and new methodologies, try to figure out how to live the new evangelization. I just think there’s a unique moment where as pastors and finance councils become aware of the opportunity, we’re seeing more and more people start to raise their hand at a faster rate.”
Curtis highlighted the retention rate of FOCUS Parish missionaries leading to the success of the ministry.
“We’re seeing greater longevity with our missionaries because they’re not walking with 18- to 22-year-olds, they’re walking with people who are of their same age, maybe older, maybe younger,” he explained. “The retention rate for FOCUS missionaries in Parish last year was 100%. Nobody left. By way of comparison, probably 25% of the missionaries left on campus; that’s part of our cycle. And so to be able to recognize, we can grow because of the longevity.”
With the growth to 25 more parishes in the new year, FOCUS is looking to hire an additional 50 to 55 missionaries — considering both moving campus missionaries to parishes and hiring individuals who have never been FOCUS missionaries.
As for his hopes for the future, Brock said: “My deepest hope in FOCUS Parish is that this would be a simple and repeatable gift that we can offer to the Church.”
Curtis said: “My hope for FOCUS in the parish is actually hope. I think a lot of leaders in the Church are good people but they’re discouraged and they’re kind of managing a slow decline. And that’s not the way Christianity works. Christianity has grown in every generation since the time of Christ. We’re living in a very abnormal time, at least in the West. It’s shrinking. That’s not the way it should be.”
He added: “There’s a resurgence of faith — articles are being written about this all over the world — FOCUS is just participating in a little way. Millions of people awakening to Christ. We need to welcome them and to be able to recognize the Church ought to be growing. This can work. And when you have hope you start to make decisions based upon that and all of a sudden you see the Church should be a place of growth.”
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Credit: udra11/Shutterstock
Dec 31, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The past year has seen several notable Catholics pass away — from public officials to the vicar of Christ himself.
Here’s a rundown of some prominent Catholics around the world who left us in 2025:
Pope Francis (Dec. 17, 1936 — April 21, 2025)
The Holy Father, Pope Francis, passed away at 7:35 a.m. on Easter Monday, April 21, at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. The 88-year-old pontiff led the Catholic Church for a little more than 12 years.
The first Latin American pope in history as well as the first Jesuit pope, Francis led the Church through significant canonical and catechetical reforms, urging the faithful to reach out and minister to those on the margins of society while preaching the mercy of God.
Upon his death he left the legacy of what Cardinal Kevin Farrell said was a life “dedicated to the service of God and his Church,” one that urged the faithful to “live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially for the poorest and most marginalized.”
Pope Francis was succeeded in the chair of St. Peter by Pope Leo XIV on May 8.
Mabel Landry Staton (Nov. 20, 1932 — Feb. 20, 2025)
Mabel Landry Staton, a trailblazing athlete who briefly set an Olympic record at the 1952 Summer Olympics, died on Feb. 20 at age 92.
Representing the United States at the Olympic games in Helsinki in 1952, Staton — known as “Dolly” after a nickname from her father — set a record in the long jump category at 19 feet 3.25 inches. Though the record only lasted for several minutes before New Zealand athlete Yvette Williams bested it, Staton would go on to win medals in the 1955 Pan American Games.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Staton served as a Eucharistic minister at St. Thomas More Church in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, as well as on the board of the Black Catholic Ministry of the Diocese of Camden.
According to the Inquirer, Staton “could still outsprint some of the local high school boys in her 70s.”
Alasdair MacIntyre (Jan. 12, 1929 — May 21, 2025)
Alasdair MacIntyre, a towering figure in moral philosophy and a Catholic convert credited with reviving the discipline of virtue ethics, died on May 21 at age 96.
His seminal 1981 work “After Virtue” reshaped contemporary moral and political philosophy, emphasizing virtue over utilitarian or deontological frameworks.
Known by many as “the most important” modern Catholic philosopher, MacIntyre’s intellectual and spiritual journey spanned atheism, Marxism, Anglicanism, and ultimately Roman Catholicism.
James Hitchcock (Feb. 13, 1938 — July 14, 2025)
James Hitchcock — a noted historian of the Catholic Church, popular author, and longtime college professor — died on July 14 at age 87.
Hitchcock was remembered by friends and colleagues as a man of prophetic insight who defended Church teaching and helped to make the Catholic intellectual tradition accessible for his students and readers.
Hitchcock taught history at Saint Louis University from the late 1960s until 2013. Some of the most popular of the dozen books he wrote include his one-volume “History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium,” published in 2012 by Ignatius Press.
Frank Caprio (Nov. 24, 1936 — Aug. 20, 2025)
Frank Caprio, who served as a Providence, Rhode Island, municipal court judge for nearly 40 years and came to be known as “America’s nicest judge,” passed away on Aug. 20 from pancreatic cancer.
Caprio gained worldwide fame for a lenient judicial style that blended justice, extreme empathy, and mercy when his courtroom was televised in a program called “Caught in Providence.”
The program began in 1999 and went viral in 2017, achieving hundreds of millions of views since then. The show was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 2021 and has a YouTube channel with nearly 3 million subscribers.
Caprio told EWTN News in February that he always kept in mind something his father, a hardworking Italian immigrant with a fifth-grade education, had impressed upon him: “What might seem like a small fine to some was something that many couldn’t afford.”
“Your case is dismissed” became Caprio’s signature phrase.
Thomas A. Nelson (March 1, 1937 — Aug. 16, 2025)
Thomas A. Nelson, the founder of TAN Books — a Catholic publishing house known for its books promoting traditional Catholicism in the post-Vatican II era — died Aug. 16 at age 88.
Nelson, who had previously worked as a teacher, founded TAN Books and Publishers Inc. in Rockford, Illinois, in 1967 and an accompanying printing plant in 1978. In addition to being Nelson’s initials, TAN is an acronym for the Latin phrase “Tuum Adoramus Nomen” (“Let Us Adore Thy Name”).
Under Nelson’s ownership, TAN became known for publishing orthodox Catholic books, including reprints of classic Catholic works on theology, Scripture, traditional devotions, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the lives of the saints as well as new titles on these subjects by contemporary authors.
Katharine, Duchess of Kent (Feb. 22, 1933 — Sept. 4, 2025)
The Duchess of Kent, who became the first senior British royal to be received into the Catholic Church since the 17th century, died on Sept. 4 at the age of 92.
Renowned for her natural charm, compassion for the sick and downtrodden, and commitment to serving others, the duchess was a much-loved and hardworking British royal whose popularity was enhanced by her own personal suffering and self-effacing nature.
She was received into the Church in January 1994 by Cardinal Basil Hume. Up until then, no senior royal had publicly been received into the Church since 1685.
Katharine spoke favorably of the Church’s moral precepts. “I do love guidelines and the Catholic Church offers you guidelines,” she once told the BBC. “I have always wanted that in my life. I like to know what’s expected of me.”
Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt (Aug. 21, 1919 — Oct. 9, 2025)
Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the beloved Catholic nun who became known across the country at the age of 98 as the chaplain of the Loyola University Chicago men’s basketball team, died Oct. 9 at the age of 106.
Sister Jean was born Dolores Bertha Schmidt on Aug. 21, 1919, to Joseph and Bertha Schmidt. She was raised in a devout Catholic home in San Francisco’s Castro District.
In 1937, she joined the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and took the name Sister Jean Dolores. In 1991, she joined the staff at Loyola Chicago and three years later became part of the basketball team, first as an academic adviser before transitioning to chaplain.
Sister Jean led the team in prayer before each game — praying for her players to be safe, for the referees to be fair, and for God’s assistance during the game.
She also admitted to praying for the opposing team, though “not as hard.”
Sister Mary Michael of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, PCPA (Feb. 25, 1931 — Nov. 10, 2025)
Sister Mary Michael of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, PCPA, died on Nov. 10 at age 94 after roughly three-quarters of a century of religious life.
Sister Mary Michael was the last of the original five nuns who, along with EWTN foundress Mother Angelica, began the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Alabama.
Born Evelyn Shinosky on Feb. 25, 1931, to Joseph and Helen Shinosky, she entered Sancta Clara Monastery in Canton, Ohio, on Aug. 15, 1951, and received the habit and her new name the following May.
Her passing marked the end of an era at EWTN and at the monastery — one that saw both the launch of the global Catholic network and the expansion of the religious community to include the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.
Paul Badde (March 10, 1948 — Nov. 10, 2025)
Paul Badde, author of many well-known books such as “Benedict Up Close,” “The Face of God,” and “The True Icon,” died on Nov. 10 at the age of 77 after a long illness. Badde was also a veteran contributor to EWTN and CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
Born in Schaag, Germany — a small village on the Lower Rhine — he studied philosophy and sociology in Freiburg as well as art history, history, and political science in Frankfurt. Before embarking on a journalistic career, Badde worked as a teacher for several years.
A founding editor of Vatican Magazine, Paul and his wife, Ellen, had five children.
Sister JoAnn Persch (June 27, 1934 — Nov. 14, 2025)
Longtime immigrant rights advocate Sister JoAnn Persch died on Nov. 14 at age 91.
Two weeks before her death, Persch attempted to bring Communion to detainees at the Broadview, Illinois, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility where for decades the Sisters of Mercy ministered to migrants and refugees. Officials denied her entry.
Persch and Sister Pat Murphy were founding members of the Su Casa Catholic Worker House in Chicago, serving refugees from Central America who were survivors of war, torture, and political persecution.
May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Read More![Religious sisters offer abortion clinic workers Christmas cards with resources and prayers #Catholic
null / Credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 24, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Abortion clinic workers across the country are once again receiving Christmas cards from religious sisters offering prayers, compassion, and an invitation to seek a career outside the abortion industry.And Then There Were None (ATTWN), a pro-life organization dedicated to assisting abortion clinic workers leave their jobs and find life-affirming careers, carries out this ministry each Christmas season with help from convents around the country. The Christmas card project is a part of a larger mission of handwritten cards sent throughout the year.This year, Dominican, Maronite, Benedictine, Carmelite, Capuchin, and Franciscan sisters, as well as Apostolic Sisters of St. John and Trinitarians of Mary, sent at least 1,030 handwritten Christmas cards to abortion clinic workers with loving messages and an image of the Holy Family. Reaching ‘quitters’ATTWN has sent nearly 23,000 handwritten cards to abortion facilities in the last decade, encouraging workers to leave their jobs with ATTWN’s support.“The clinics are hearing from us about once every four to five business days in some way, whether it’s through some gift, a little trinket, a handwritten card, a postcard, or something we send in,” Abby Johnson, ATTWN CEO and founder, told CNA.Johnson herself once worked in the industry, serving as a clinic director of an abortion facility in Bryan, Texas, for eight years before leaving and starting ATTWN to help other “quitters” leave, find new employment, and heal from their experiences.“Our handwritten card ministry is one of the most effective ministries we have in reaching abortion clinic workers and having them leave,” she said. “There’s just something very personal about a handwritten note. Somebody took the time to sit down and write to you.” ATTWN has “dozens and dozens” of volunteers who send the messages regularly, Johnson said. “We have a really accurate database of abortion clinics and abortion referral facilities. I think there’s about 850 facilities on there, and this group of women are constantly writing notes.” When workers receive the notes, “they leave,” Johnson said. “Workers will say, ‘I got this letter. I folded it up, I kept it in my purse, I put it in my scrub pocket, and I went home and I called you guys.’ So it is very powerful. We see that it does truly make a difference.”“I received a handwritten note from one of my sidewalk counselors when I worked at the clinic, and I still have it in my wallet,” Johnson said. “It’s just a Bible verse on it, but it says, ‘The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.’ And I still have that little card in my wallet from 18 years ago.”The note “meant enough at that time to keep it,” Johnson said. “I pull it out and remind myself why I’m doing [pro-life work] and how God has blessed me so much. It’s just a powerful reminder that someone out there took the time to think about you, specifically.”Christmas card ministry The letters create “by far the most overwhelming response … and we have the highest response from them at Christmastime, which is when they are receiving the notes from the sisters,” Johnson said. Five years ago, Johnson decided to incorporate the Christmas season into the ministry, specifically with the help of religious sisters. “The idea came to me because I was very moved by a Franciscan sister who used to pray in front of the facility where I used to work in Bryan, Texas. It was the first time that I had ever seen a nun in public in my life.”“I was so struck by her being out there and her presence,” she said. “It was so hot outside, and she was in her full habit, and her little face was so red. It was over 100 degrees. I remember I just watched her all day outside my window.”“I remember the first patient that left that day after having an abortion, she fell to her knees and was just weeping. I thought: ‘Wow, this has really impacted her in a way that I just can’t understand. She has a sorrow that I just don’t understand.’”“That’s always stayed with me ever since I was working there … So when we started the ministry, we started thinking: ‘How could we incorporate nuns in some way?’” If workers started speaking with religious sisters, it could “make an impact on their heart,” Johnson thought. “We started reaching out to convents across the country, asking them if they would partner with us.”Several reached back out to ATTWN and eagerly wanted to be a part of the project.A ‘perfect partnership’ATTWN shares its database of clinics with the sisters, “then they just start writing,” Johnson said. “It’s just been really beautiful to see the fruit of that.”Some of the participating sisters live in cloistered convents. “They don’t go out. They spend their lives in contemplative prayer,” Johnson said. “So their only real correspondence is through mail, through writing. So it’s beautiful work for them.”“This is what they do. They write notes, they send letters, they pray. That’s what they do all day long. So it’s a perfect ministry for them. It’s a perfect partnership.”ATTWN will send the sister some ideas of what they can write so they know the proper resources to share with the workers, but then they can add any additional messages.“They fill in other things that they would like to say, different spiritual things that they feel led to say,” Johnson said. Their messages are “from their hearts and are just so prayerful and beautiful.”After the sisters write the Christmas cards, they are “put on the altar, they’re blessed, they’re prayed over, and they’re sent in.”“We always make sure that we send them a card that has the image of the Holy Family on it. We just want to remind them that that’s what God wants for them, and this is what Christmas is about — it’s about the Lord.”The image is a reminder that “this is what we’re designed for,” Johnson said. “We’re designed for families, and God wants families for them as well. He wants families for the women who are walking into those clinics.” “He created us for good, for family, for love, and for creation, not for destruction. We make sure that the cards that we send in have an image that really defines that.”Johnson plans for ATTWN to continue to send the annual cards from the sisters. “For so many of these convents, being pro-life is a part of who they are. It’s part of their charism,” she said. “So we would love to have as many as we can participate.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/religious-sisters-offer-abortion-clinic-workers-christmas-cards-with-resources-and-prayers-catholic-null-credit-rawpixel-com-shutterstockwashington-d-c-newsroom-dec-24-2025-0800-am-c.webp){kind=tracking}
null / Credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 24, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Abortion clinic workers across the country are once again receiving Christmas cards from religious sisters offering prayers, compassion, and an invitation to seek a career outside the abortion industry.
And Then There Were None (ATTWN), a pro-life organization dedicated to assisting abortion clinic workers leave their jobs and find life-affirming careers, carries out this ministry each Christmas season with help from convents around the country. The Christmas card project is a part of a larger mission of handwritten cards sent throughout the year.
This year, Dominican, Maronite, Benedictine, Carmelite, Capuchin, and Franciscan sisters, as well as Apostolic Sisters of St. John and Trinitarians of Mary, sent at least 1,030 handwritten Christmas cards to abortion clinic workers with loving messages and an image of the Holy Family.
Reaching ‘quitters’
ATTWN has sent nearly 23,000 handwritten cards to abortion facilities in the last decade, encouraging workers to leave their jobs with ATTWN’s support.
“The clinics are hearing from us about once every four to five business days in some way, whether it’s through some gift, a little trinket, a handwritten card, a postcard, or something we send in,” Abby Johnson, ATTWN CEO and founder, told CNA.
Johnson herself once worked in the industry, serving as a clinic director of an abortion facility in Bryan, Texas, for eight years before leaving and starting ATTWN to help other “quitters” leave, find new employment, and heal from their experiences.
“Our handwritten card ministry is one of the most effective ministries we have in reaching abortion clinic workers and having them leave,” she said. “There’s just something very personal about a handwritten note. Somebody took the time to sit down and write to you.”
ATTWN has “dozens and dozens” of volunteers who send the messages regularly, Johnson said. “We have a really accurate database of abortion clinics and abortion referral facilities. I think there’s about 850 facilities on there, and this group of women are constantly writing notes.”
When workers receive the notes, “they leave,” Johnson said. “Workers will say, ‘I got this letter. I folded it up, I kept it in my purse, I put it in my scrub pocket, and I went home and I called you guys.’ So it is very powerful. We see that it does truly make a difference.”
“I received a handwritten note from one of my sidewalk counselors when I worked at the clinic, and I still have it in my wallet,” Johnson said. “It’s just a Bible verse on it, but it says, ‘The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.’ And I still have that little card in my wallet from 18 years ago.”
The note “meant enough at that time to keep it,” Johnson said. “I pull it out and remind myself why I’m doing [pro-life work] and how God has blessed me so much. It’s just a powerful reminder that someone out there took the time to think about you, specifically.”
Christmas card ministry
The letters create “by far the most overwhelming response … and we have the highest response from them at Christmastime, which is when they are receiving the notes from the sisters,” Johnson said.
Five years ago, Johnson decided to incorporate the Christmas season into the ministry, specifically with the help of religious sisters.
“The idea came to me because I was very moved by a Franciscan sister who used to pray in front of the facility where I used to work in Bryan, Texas. It was the first time that I had ever seen a nun in public in my life.”
“I was so struck by her being out there and her presence,” she said. “It was so hot outside, and she was in her full habit, and her little face was so red. It was over 100 degrees. I remember I just watched her all day outside my window.”
“I remember the first patient that left that day after having an abortion, she fell to her knees and was just weeping. I thought: ‘Wow, this has really impacted her in a way that I just can’t understand. She has a sorrow that I just don’t understand.’”
“That’s always stayed with me ever since I was working there … So when we started the ministry, we started thinking: ‘How could we incorporate nuns in some way?’”
If workers started speaking with religious sisters, it could “make an impact on their heart,” Johnson thought. “We started reaching out to convents across the country, asking them if they would partner with us.”
Several reached back out to ATTWN and eagerly wanted to be a part of the project.
A ‘perfect partnership’
ATTWN shares its database of clinics with the sisters, “then they just start writing,” Johnson said. “It’s just been really beautiful to see the fruit of that.”
Some of the participating sisters live in cloistered convents. “They don’t go out. They spend their lives in contemplative prayer,” Johnson said. “So their only real correspondence is through mail, through writing. So it’s beautiful work for them.”
“This is what they do. They write notes, they send letters, they pray. That’s what they do all day long. So it’s a perfect ministry for them. It’s a perfect partnership.”
ATTWN will send the sister some ideas of what they can write so they know the proper resources to share with the workers, but then they can add any additional messages.
“They fill in other things that they would like to say, different spiritual things that they feel led to say,” Johnson said. Their messages are “from their hearts and are just so prayerful and beautiful.”
After the sisters write the Christmas cards, they are “put on the altar, they’re blessed, they’re prayed over, and they’re sent in.”
“We always make sure that we send them a card that has the image of the Holy Family on it. We just want to remind them that that’s what God wants for them, and this is what Christmas is about — it’s about the Lord.”
The image is a reminder that “this is what we’re designed for,” Johnson said. “We’re designed for families, and God wants families for them as well. He wants families for the women who are walking into those clinics.”
“He created us for good, for family, for love, and for creation, not for destruction. We make sure that the cards that we send in have an image that really defines that.”
Johnson plans for ATTWN to continue to send the annual cards from the sisters. “For so many of these convents, being pro-life is a part of who they are. It’s part of their charism,” she said. “So we would love to have as many as we can participate.
Read More
From left to right, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman are seen as they depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building to board their Orion spacecraft atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building as part of the Artemis II countdown demonstration test, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Read More![Vice President Vance presents a Christian vision of politics #Catholic
U.S. Vice President JD Vance. / Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2025 / 14:27 pm (CNA).
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, America’s second Catholic vice president, laid out a distinctly Christian vision for American politics in a speech this week, declaring that “the only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been and, by the grace of God, we always will be a Christian nation.”Speaking to more than 30,000 young conservatives at Turning Point USA’s AmFest 2025 some three months after the death of its founder Charlie Kirk, Vance called for a politics rooted in a Christian faith that honors the family, protects the weak, and rejects what he described as a decades-long “war” on Christianity in public life.The Christian faith has provided a “shared moral language” since the nation’s founding, the Yale-trained lawyer argued, which led to “our understanding of natural law and rights, our sense of duty to one’s neighbor, the conviction that the strong must protect the weak, and the belief in individual conscience.”“Christianity is America’s creed,” the vice president said to loud cheers, while acknowledging that not everyone needs to be a Christian and “we must respect each individual’s pathway” to God. Even so, he said, “even our famously American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept.” Vance described how, over the past several decades, “freedom of religion transformed into freedom from religion” as a result of the cultural assault on Christian faith from those on “the left” who have “labored to push Christianity out of national life. They’ve kicked it out of the schools, out of the workplace, out of the fundamental parts of the public square.”He continued: “And in a public square devoid of God, we got a vacuum. And the ideas that filled that void preyed on the very worst of human nature rather than uplifting it.”Vance said cultural voices opposed to Christian faith “told us not that we were children of God, but children of this or that identity group. They replaced God’s beautiful design for the family that men and women could rely on … with the idea that men could turn into women so long as they bought the right bunch of pills from Big Pharma.” The former U.S. senator and Catholic convert credited President Donald Trump for ending the cultural “war that has been waged on Christians and Christianity in the United States of America,” touting the administration’s policy priorities as the fruit of Christian motivation.“We help older Americans in retirement, including by ending taxes on Social Security, because we believe in honoring your father and mother rather than shipping all of their money off to Ukraine,” he said. “We believe in taking care of the poor, which is why we have Medicaid, so that the least among us can afford their prescriptions or to take their kids to see a doctor.”Speaking of the despair he felt after the assassination of his friend Kirk, he said: “What saved me was realizing that the story of the Christian faith … is one of immense loss followed by even bigger victory. It’s a story of very dark nights followed by very bright dawns. What saved me was remembering the inherent goodness of God and that his grace overflows when we least expect it.”Of masculinity, Vance said: “The fruits of true Christianity are good husbands, patient fathers, builders of great things, and slayers of dragons. And yes, men who are willing to die for a principle if that’s what God asked them to do.”He described how he saw the fruits of Christian men living out their faith during a recent visit to a men’s ministry that aids those who struggle with addiction and homelessness: “They feed them. They clothe them. They give them shelter and financial advice. They live out the very best part of Christ’s commission.”After eating lunch with some of the men who were “all back on their feet” after receiving help, Vance said he saw that the answer to “What saved them?” was not “racial commonality or grievance … a DEI prep course” or “a welfare check.”“It was the fact that a carpenter died 2,000 years ago and changed the world in the process.” “A true Christian politics,” he said, “cannot just be about the protection of the unborn or the promotion of the family. As important as those things absolutely are, it must be at the heart of our full understanding of government.” On immigration policy, Vance has challenged U.S. bishops, popesThe vice president has publicly disagreed with the U.S. bishops on their reaction to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, as well as with Pope Leo XIV and the late Pope Francis, who seemed to criticize Vance in a letter the pontiff penned to the U.S. bishops last winter. In defense of the administration’s approach to immigration, Vance had in a late January interview invoked an “old school … Christian concept” he later identified as the “ordo amoris,” or “rightly ordered love.” He said that according to the concept, one’s “compassion belongs first” to one’s family and fellow citizens, “and then after that” to the rest of the world.After Pope Leo on Nov. 18 asked Americans to listen to U.S. bishops’ message opposing “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and urging the humane treatment of migrants, Vance countered: “Border security is not just good for American citizens. It is the humanitarian thing to do for the entire world.”Vance continued: “Open borders” do not promote “[human] dignity, even of the illegal migrants themselves,” citing drug and sex trafficking.“When you empower the cartels and when you empower the human traffickers, whether in the United States or anywhere else, you’re empowering the very worst people in the world,” Vance said.In this week’s AmFest speech, he touted the administration’s successes regarding immigration: “December marks seven months straight of zero releases at the southern border. More than 2.5 million illegal immigrants have left the United States. The first time in over 50 years that we have had negative net migration.”At the end of the speech, Vance told the thousands of young people that while “only God can promise you salvation in heaven” if they have faith in God, “I promise you closed borders and safe communities. I promise you good jobs and a dignified life … together, we can fulfill the promise of the greatest nation in the history of the earth.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/vice-president-vance-presents-a-christian-vision-of-politics-catholic-u-s-vice-president-jd-vance-credit-gage-skidmore-cc-by-sa-4-0-via-wikimedia-commonscna-staff-dec-23-2025-1427-p.webp)
U.S. Vice President JD Vance. / Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2025 / 14:27 pm (CNA).
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, America’s second Catholic vice president, laid out a distinctly Christian vision for American politics in a speech this week, declaring that “the only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been and, by the grace of God, we always will be a Christian nation.”
Speaking to more than 30,000 young conservatives at Turning Point USA’s AmFest 2025 some three months after the death of its founder Charlie Kirk, Vance called for a politics rooted in a Christian faith that honors the family, protects the weak, and rejects what he described as a decades-long “war” on Christianity in public life.
The Christian faith has provided a “shared moral language” since the nation’s founding, the Yale-trained lawyer argued, which led to “our understanding of natural law and rights, our sense of duty to one’s neighbor, the conviction that the strong must protect the weak, and the belief in individual conscience.”
“Christianity is America’s creed,” the vice president said to loud cheers, while acknowledging that not everyone needs to be a Christian and “we must respect each individual’s pathway” to God. Even so, he said, “even our famously American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept.”
Vance described how, over the past several decades, “freedom of religion transformed into freedom from religion” as a result of the cultural assault on Christian faith from those on “the left” who have “labored to push Christianity out of national life. They’ve kicked it out of the schools, out of the workplace, out of the fundamental parts of the public square.”
He continued: “And in a public square devoid of God, we got a vacuum. And the ideas that filled that void preyed on the very worst of human nature rather than uplifting it.”
Vance said cultural voices opposed to Christian faith “told us not that we were children of God, but children of this or that identity group. They replaced God’s beautiful design for the family that men and women could rely on … with the idea that men could turn into women so long as they bought the right bunch of pills from Big Pharma.”
The former U.S. senator and Catholic convert credited President Donald Trump for ending the cultural “war that has been waged on Christians and Christianity in the United States of America,” touting the administration’s policy priorities as the fruit of Christian motivation.
“We help older Americans in retirement, including by ending taxes on Social Security, because we believe in honoring your father and mother rather than shipping all of their money off to Ukraine,” he said. “We believe in taking care of the poor, which is why we have Medicaid, so that the least among us can afford their prescriptions or to take their kids to see a doctor.”
Speaking of the despair he felt after the assassination of his friend Kirk, he said: “What saved me was realizing that the story of the Christian faith … is one of immense loss followed by even bigger victory. It’s a story of very dark nights followed by very bright dawns. What saved me was remembering the inherent goodness of God and that his grace overflows when we least expect it.”
Of masculinity, Vance said: “The fruits of true Christianity are good husbands, patient fathers, builders of great things, and slayers of dragons. And yes, men who are willing to die for a principle if that’s what God asked them to do.”
He described how he saw the fruits of Christian men living out their faith during a recent visit to a men’s ministry that aids those who struggle with addiction and homelessness: “They feed them. They clothe them. They give them shelter and financial advice. They live out the very best part of Christ’s commission.”
After eating lunch with some of the men who were “all back on their feet” after receiving help, Vance said he saw that the answer to “What saved them?” was not “racial commonality or grievance … a DEI prep course” or “a welfare check.”
“It was the fact that a carpenter died 2,000 years ago and changed the world in the process.”
“A true Christian politics,” he said, “cannot just be about the protection of the unborn or the promotion of the family. As important as those things absolutely are, it must be at the heart of our full understanding of government.”
On immigration policy, Vance has challenged U.S. bishops, popes
The vice president has publicly disagreed with the U.S. bishops on their reaction to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, as well as with Pope Leo XIV and the late Pope Francis, who seemed to criticize Vance in a letter the pontiff penned to the U.S. bishops last winter.
In defense of the administration’s approach to immigration, Vance had in a late January interview invoked an “old school … Christian concept” he later identified as the “ordo amoris,” or “rightly ordered love.”
He said that according to the concept, one’s “compassion belongs first” to one’s family and fellow citizens, “and then after that” to the rest of the world.
After Pope Leo on Nov. 18 asked Americans to listen to U.S. bishops’ message opposing “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and urging the humane treatment of migrants, Vance countered: “Border security is not just good for American citizens. It is the humanitarian thing to do for the entire world.”
Vance continued: “Open borders” do not promote “[human] dignity, even of the illegal migrants themselves,” citing drug and sex trafficking.
“When you empower the cartels and when you empower the human traffickers, whether in the United States or anywhere else, you’re empowering the very worst people in the world,” Vance said.
In this week’s AmFest speech, he touted the administration’s successes regarding immigration: “December marks seven months straight of zero releases at the southern border. More than 2.5 million illegal immigrants have left the United States. The first time in over 50 years that we have had negative net migration.”
At the end of the speech, Vance told the thousands of young people that while “only God can promise you salvation in heaven” if they have faith in God, “I promise you closed borders and safe communities. I promise you good jobs and a dignified life … together, we can fulfill the promise of the greatest nation in the history of the earth.”
Read More
Justin Hall, left, controls a subscale aircraft as Justin Link holds the aircraft in place during preliminary engine tests on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, at NASA’s Armstong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Hall is chief pilot at the center’s Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory and Link is a pilot for small uncrewed aircraft systems.
Read More![Albany’s retired bishop files for personal bankruptcy #Catholic
Bishop Edward Scarfenberger. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Albany
National Catholic Register, Dec 19, 2025 / 12:24 pm (CNA).
A retired New York bishop has filed for personal bankruptcy protection in federal court after a state jury verdict found him, along with other officials, personally liable for the collapse of a Catholic hospital pension fund that left about 1,100 retirees without the lifetime monthly payments they were expecting.It’s not clear whether a Catholic bishop in the United States has ever previously filed for personal bankruptcy protection.Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, 77, who served as bishop of Albany from April 2014 until his retirement in October, is seeking protection from creditors for his assets valued at between $100,001 and $500,000, according to a filing Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York.The seven-page filing does not list the bishop’s assets but states that he has between 100 and 199 creditors and debts totaling between $1,000,001 and $10 million.Last week, a jury found Scharfenberger 10% liable in a $54.2 million judgment in a civil lawsuit over the failed pension plan once provided by St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, a Catholic hospital that operated from 1949 until 2008, according to The Evangelist, the diocese’s newspaper.The verdict and judgment, issued Dec. 12, cover compensatory damages — the amount a court finds is owed to plaintiffs for harm they have suffered — but not punitive damages, which may be added in cases of recklessness, malice, or fraud. The bankruptcy filings by the bishop and another defendant in the state lawsuit over the pension plan failure forced a pause in a punitive damages hearing earlier this week, according to WNYT Channel 13 in Albany.The National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, was unable to reach Scharfenberger before the publication of this story. A lawyer representing the bishop acknowledged a request for comment Dec. 17 but did not immediately provide one.A rare personal bankruptcyIn recent decades, bankruptcies have occurred regularly in the Catholic Church in the United States. Between 2004 and November 2025, 39 of the country’s dioceses have filed for bankruptcy, almost all to protect assets from clergy sex-abuse lawsuits, as the Register reported last month. One of those is the Diocese of Albany, which filed for bankruptcy in March 2023. But those diocesan cases were filed under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, which allows a corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship to reorganize and continue operating while developing a court-approved plan to repay creditors.Scharfenberger filed under Chapter 13, which allows an individual with regular income who cannot pay debts to keep certain assets while working out a repayment plan. “The rules in Chapter 13 permit a debtor to keep property and confirm a plan with payments to creditors based on the debtor’s ‘disposable income,’” said Marie Reilly, a bankruptcy expert and law professor at Penn State Dickinson Law, in an email. “If the debtor commits his disposable income to paying creditors for the term of a three- to five-year plan, he gets a discharge (forgiveness) of the unpaid balance.”Reilly, who has researched several dozen diocesan bankruptcies for The Catholic Project, a lay initiative of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., told the Register that the bankruptcy filing does not necessarily solve all of the bishop’s money problems.“There are exceptions — some debts don’t get discharged. Creditors can object to the plan if it does not meet the statutory requirements,” Reilly said. “And, it is possible that the pension fund creditor may move to dismiss the bishop’s Chapter 13 case as having been filed ‘in bad faith.’”$50 million shortfall St. Clare’s Hospital was originally run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Albany maintains that it never owned the hospital and that the bishop of Albany merely provided “canonical oversight” to make sure the hospital met “its mission to serve all in accord with Catholic moral standards,” according to an August 2025 statement from the diocese.Last week, the jury found that the Diocese of Albany has no liability for the pension failure, instead holding the hospital corporation and certain officers and board members accountable. In addition to Scharfenberger, the jury found two deceased employees of the diocese liable, according to The Evangelist: Former Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard (1938–2023), who led the diocese from 1977 to 2014, was found 20% liable; and Father David LeFort, a former vicar general of the diocese who died in August 2023, was found 5% liable. Also found liable were St. Clare’s Corporation (20%), St. Clare’s president Joseph Pofit (25%), and former St. Clare’s president Robert Perry (20%), according to The Evangelist.The judgments stem from a pension plan that operated for about 60 years. In 1959, the hospital began offering employees a defined-benefit plan that provided a lifetime monthly pension after retirement.Church plan exempt from ERISALike most plans operated by Catholic institutions, the pension plan had a religious exemption from the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (known as ERISA), which sets minimum funding requirements for most nonreligious pension plans and also enables the federal government to step in and make payments to retirees of failed plans, using a fund financed by covered pension plans.When the hospital closed in 2008, the officers of St. Clare’s “determined that the corporation would continue to exist for purposes of administering the pension plan,” according to a complaint filed in state court in Schenectady County by the New York attorney general’s office in May 2022. “They also chose to continue treating the pension plan as a ‘Church plan’ — which it could do only if the corporation’s former employees and pensioners were designated as employees of the Church. This was all in order to avoid the contribution and insurance requirements of ERISA, and the duties imposed by ERISA upon corporation directors and trustees as fiduciaries,” the complaint states.The bishop of Albany was automatically a member of the hospital’s board and served as its honorary chairman, and had authority to appoint most of the directors on the board, according to the state attorney general’s complaint.The attorney general’s office alleged that St. Clare’s Corporation failed to make contributions to the pension fund “for all but three years from 2001 to 2019” and concealed from retirees “the insolvency of the pension plan.”In 2018, the St. Clare’s board terminated the pension plan effective Feb. 1, 2019, because of an approximately $50 million shortfall. More than 1,100 employees lost retirement benefits, including about 650 who lost all pension payments and about 450 who received a lump-sum payment “equal to 70% of the value of their vested pension,” the complaint states. The retired employees include “nurses, lab technicians, social workers, EMTs, orderlies, housekeepers, and other essential workers” who worked at the hospital “between 10 and 50 years,” the complaint states.Testimony and reactionOn Dec. 9 during the civil trial, Scharfenberger testified that during his tenure no boards he sat on ever discussed the hospital’s pension plan, according to The Times-Union of Albany. In a written statement issued in August, when Scharfenberger still led the Diocese of Albany, the diocese said the bishop “has actively sought ways to help the pensioners” while denying that the diocese ever “exercised any control over St. Clare’s Hospital operations or its pension.” “He hosted a listening session with pensioners at Siena College to identify issues and consider ways to help those in need. He also reached out to the Mother Cabrini Foundation to try to secure funding for the pensioners, but that effort was unable to move forward once the pensioners filed the lawsuit,” the statement said. “The diocese is eager to see the case move forward and promptly resolved,” the August statement continued. “Our prayers continue for all who are struggling in any way, and as we stated previously, our offer to connect those in need with services that can help, stands. No one should walk alone.”His successor, Bishop Mark O’Connell, who was installed as bishop of Albany on Dec. 5, told reporters shortly before the verdict was announced last week: “I care deeply about their hurt [and] not having their pensions,” according to The Evangelist.During the Dec. 12 press conference, when a reporter asked O’Connell what the diocese would do if the jury found the diocese liable for the pension fund collapse, the bishop noted that the diocese is already in the midst of a bankruptcy process.“If we are liable, then we’ll do what we can to make amends, given that they are one creditor as a group among many people accusing the Diocese of Albany,” O’Connell said, according to WAMC Northeast Public Radio. “And that’s what bankruptcy process is. We obviously cannot pay a billion dollars. Right? So that’s what Chapter 11 is all about, to figure out what’s fair. And since you have a bankruptcy judge and mediators, it’s not up to us.”Later that day, the jury found the diocese not liable in the pension fund collapse lawsuit. The diocese issued a written statement, according to The Evangelist, that said: “As grateful as we are for the jury’s informed decision, we are still very much aware of the hurt felt by the St. Clare’s pensioners who cared for the sick and the poor throughout the long history of St. Clare’s Hospital. This does not mean that we will turn our backs to the pensioners, for as Bishop O’Connell has noted, they are a part of our flock; they are still in need of healing.”That same day, lead plaintiff Mary Hartshorne, who worked in the hospital’s radiology department for about 28 years, told WNYT Channel 13 in Albany that she and other hospital retirees were pleased with the jury’s verdict but did not feel they would be made whole.“We’ve been playing this game for seven and a half years, and I think my question I ask everybody is: How do you get that back? You don’t,” she said.This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/albanys-retired-bishop-files-for-personal-bankruptcy-catholic-bishop-edward-scarfenberger-credit-photo-courtesy-of-the-diocese-of-albanynational-catholic-register-dec-19-2025-1.webp)
Bishop Edward Scarfenberger. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Albany
National Catholic Register, Dec 19, 2025 / 12:24 pm (CNA).
A retired New York bishop has filed for personal bankruptcy protection in federal court after a state jury verdict found him, along with other officials, personally liable for the collapse of a Catholic hospital pension fund that left about 1,100 retirees without the lifetime monthly payments they were expecting.
It’s not clear whether a Catholic bishop in the United States has ever previously filed for personal bankruptcy protection.
Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, 77, who served as bishop of Albany from April 2014 until his retirement in October, is seeking protection from creditors for his assets valued at between $100,001 and $500,000, according to a filing Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York.
The seven-page filing does not list the bishop’s assets but states that he has between 100 and 199 creditors and debts totaling between $1,000,001 and $10 million.
Last week, a jury found Scharfenberger 10% liable in a $54.2 million judgment in a civil lawsuit over the failed pension plan once provided by St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, a Catholic hospital that operated from 1949 until 2008, according to The Evangelist, the diocese’s newspaper.
The verdict and judgment, issued Dec. 12, cover compensatory damages — the amount a court finds is owed to plaintiffs for harm they have suffered — but not punitive damages, which may be added in cases of recklessness, malice, or fraud. The bankruptcy filings by the bishop and another defendant in the state lawsuit over the pension plan failure forced a pause in a punitive damages hearing earlier this week, according to WNYT Channel 13 in Albany.
The National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, was unable to reach Scharfenberger before the publication of this story. A lawyer representing the bishop acknowledged a request for comment Dec. 17 but did not immediately provide one.
A rare personal bankruptcy
In recent decades, bankruptcies have occurred regularly in the Catholic Church in the United States. Between 2004 and November 2025, 39 of the country’s dioceses have filed for bankruptcy, almost all to protect assets from clergy sex-abuse lawsuits, as the Register reported last month. One of those is the Diocese of Albany, which filed for bankruptcy in March 2023.
But those diocesan cases were filed under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, which allows a corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship to reorganize and continue operating while developing a court-approved plan to repay creditors.
Scharfenberger filed under Chapter 13, which allows an individual with regular income who cannot pay debts to keep certain assets while working out a repayment plan.
“The rules in Chapter 13 permit a debtor to keep property and confirm a plan with payments to creditors based on the debtor’s ‘disposable income,’” said Marie Reilly, a bankruptcy expert and law professor at Penn State Dickinson Law, in an email. “If the debtor commits his disposable income to paying creditors for the term of a three- to five-year plan, he gets a discharge (forgiveness) of the unpaid balance.”
Reilly, who has researched several dozen diocesan bankruptcies for The Catholic Project, a lay initiative of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., told the Register that the bankruptcy filing does not necessarily solve all of the bishop’s money problems.
“There are exceptions — some debts don’t get discharged. Creditors can object to the plan if it does not meet the statutory requirements,” Reilly said. “And, it is possible that the pension fund creditor may move to dismiss the bishop’s Chapter 13 case as having been filed ‘in bad faith.’”
$50 million shortfall
St. Clare’s Hospital was originally run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Albany maintains that it never owned the hospital and that the bishop of Albany merely provided “canonical oversight” to make sure the hospital met “its mission to serve all in accord with Catholic moral standards,” according to an August 2025 statement from the diocese.
Last week, the jury found that the Diocese of Albany has no liability for the pension failure, instead holding the hospital corporation and certain officers and board members accountable.
In addition to Scharfenberger, the jury found two deceased employees of the diocese liable, according to The Evangelist: Former Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard (1938–2023), who led the diocese from 1977 to 2014, was found 20% liable; and Father David LeFort, a former vicar general of the diocese who died in August 2023, was found 5% liable.
Also found liable were St. Clare’s Corporation (20%), St. Clare’s president Joseph Pofit (25%), and former St. Clare’s president Robert Perry (20%), according to The Evangelist.
The judgments stem from a pension plan that operated for about 60 years.
In 1959, the hospital began offering employees a defined-benefit plan that provided a lifetime monthly pension after retirement.
Church plan exempt from ERISA
Like most plans operated by Catholic institutions, the pension plan had a religious exemption from the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (known as ERISA), which sets minimum funding requirements for most nonreligious pension plans and also enables the federal government to step in and make payments to retirees of failed plans, using a fund financed by covered pension plans.
When the hospital closed in 2008, the officers of St. Clare’s “determined that the corporation would continue to exist for purposes of administering the pension plan,” according to a complaint filed in state court in Schenectady County by the New York attorney general’s office in May 2022.
“They also chose to continue treating the pension plan as a ‘Church plan’ — which it could do only if the corporation’s former employees and pensioners were designated as employees of the Church. This was all in order to avoid the contribution and insurance requirements of ERISA, and the duties imposed by ERISA upon corporation directors and trustees as fiduciaries,” the complaint states.
The bishop of Albany was automatically a member of the hospital’s board and served as its honorary chairman, and had authority to appoint most of the directors on the board, according to the state attorney general’s complaint.
The attorney general’s office alleged that St. Clare’s Corporation failed to make contributions to the pension fund “for all but three years from 2001 to 2019” and concealed from retirees “the insolvency of the pension plan.”
In 2018, the St. Clare’s board terminated the pension plan effective Feb. 1, 2019, because of an approximately $50 million shortfall. More than 1,100 employees lost retirement benefits, including about 650 who lost all pension payments and about 450 who received a lump-sum payment “equal to 70% of the value of their vested pension,” the complaint states. The retired employees include “nurses, lab technicians, social workers, EMTs, orderlies, housekeepers, and other essential workers” who worked at the hospital “between 10 and 50 years,” the complaint states.
Testimony and reaction
On Dec. 9 during the civil trial, Scharfenberger testified that during his tenure no boards he sat on ever discussed the hospital’s pension plan, according to The Times-Union of Albany.
In a written statement issued in August, when Scharfenberger still led the Diocese of Albany, the diocese said the bishop “has actively sought ways to help the pensioners” while denying that the diocese ever “exercised any control over St. Clare’s Hospital operations or its pension.”
“He hosted a listening session with pensioners at Siena College to identify issues and consider ways to help those in need. He also reached out to the Mother Cabrini Foundation to try to secure funding for the pensioners, but that effort was unable to move forward once the pensioners filed the lawsuit,” the statement said.
“The diocese is eager to see the case move forward and promptly resolved,” the August statement continued. “Our prayers continue for all who are struggling in any way, and as we stated previously, our offer to connect those in need with services that can help, stands. No one should walk alone.”
His successor, Bishop Mark O’Connell, who was installed as bishop of Albany on Dec. 5, told reporters shortly before the verdict was announced last week: “I care deeply about their hurt [and] not having their pensions,” according to The Evangelist.
During the Dec. 12 press conference, when a reporter asked O’Connell what the diocese would do if the jury found the diocese liable for the pension fund collapse, the bishop noted that the diocese is already in the midst of a bankruptcy process.
“If we are liable, then we’ll do what we can to make amends, given that they are one creditor as a group among many people accusing the Diocese of Albany,” O’Connell said, according to WAMC Northeast Public Radio. “And that’s what bankruptcy process is. We obviously cannot pay a billion dollars. Right? So that’s what Chapter 11 is all about, to figure out what’s fair. And since you have a bankruptcy judge and mediators, it’s not up to us.”
Later that day, the jury found the diocese not liable in the pension fund collapse lawsuit. The diocese issued a written statement, according to The Evangelist, that said: “As grateful as we are for the jury’s informed decision, we are still very much aware of the hurt felt by the St. Clare’s pensioners who cared for the sick and the poor throughout the long history of St. Clare’s Hospital. This does not mean that we will turn our backs to the pensioners, for as Bishop O’Connell has noted, they are a part of our flock; they are still in need of healing.”
That same day, lead plaintiff Mary Hartshorne, who worked in the hospital’s radiology department for about 28 years, told WNYT Channel 13 in Albany that she and other hospital retirees were pleased with the jury’s verdict but did not feel they would be made whole.
“We’ve been playing this game for seven and a half years, and I think my question I ask everybody is: How do you get that back? You don’t,” she said.
This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.
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A new animated film titled “David” tells the story of King David — from his humble beginnings as a shepherd boy to his battle against Goliath. / Credit: Sunrise Animation Studios
CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).
A new animated film called “David” tells the story of King David, from his humble beginnings as a shepherd boy to his battle against Goliath. Created by Sunrise Animation Studios, the film aims to bring the story of David to life for both children and adults.
Released in theaters Dec. 19, the film features popular Christian singers including Phil Wickham and Lauren Daigle.
Brent Dawes, the writer and director of the film, told CNA in an interview that the inspiration for the film came 30 years ago when the founders of Sunrise Animation Studios first created the studio.
“The studio was started by a guy and his wife, Phil and Jacqui Cunningham, and one of the reasons they started a studio was because Phil had a desire to make a movie on David over 30 years ago,” said Dawes, who has been working with the Cunninghams for 25 years. “So it’s been a vision for more than 30 years for him.”
Originally planned to be a live-action film, Cunningham approached Dawes 11 years ago about making the film animated instead.
He said he thought making the film this way would “open the audience up hugely because families can watch it, kids can watch it, and it just allows so many more people to access it.”
“David, as you might know, is not the most PG-friendly story in the Bible. So if you’re going to do a live-action version it’s going to be pretty R-rated and pretty much for adults,” Dawes explained. “So, making it an animation allowed us to sort of turn it back a little bit, still tell the story authentically, but tell it in a sort of gentler way so it meant it could just reach a much wider audience, which is wonderful.”
Dawes pointed out that faith-based media, such as films like this one, are important to make, especially for children, because “Hollywood doesn’t tell stories from the heart anymore, and it tells it from a board room. Also, so many movies are told with an agenda, whether it’s political, whether it’s belief, all sorts of things.”
He added: “So telling a story like this, obviously we’re coming from a Christian point of view, but it was important for us that we tell this movie for a world audience. We also don’t want to alienate people who don’t believe. We believe this is a truly accessible story, whether you believe or not.”
“We’re not telling the audience, ‘You have to believe what our character believes,’ but our story is based 3,000 years ago, and this is what he believed, and this is how he lived his life. So, let us tell you that story. And however you want to engage with that, that’s up to you.”
Dawes shared that during all the time working with the story of David, he has learned several things from the famous king, specifically that “when a challenge comes up, it’s something to be faced with confidence, not with nervousness or fear — like David when he faced Goliath … He had a faith and a confidence and a childlike faith at that.”
Dawes said he hopes viewers will not only be entertained but also left inspired. He hopes the film “speaks to each individual where they are in their life.”
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Carolers outside Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois, on Dec. 13, 2025. / Credit: John Jansen/Courtesy of the Pro-Life Action League
CNA Staff, Dec 17, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
When a pregnant woman at an abortion facility heard distant carolers singing “Silent Night,” she got up and left.
The mother, back in 2003, decided to keep her baby after a pro-life group’s first Christmas caroling event outside a Chicago abortion clinic struck her heart.
“The memories of Christmases past stirred in her and she decided she couldn’t go through with the abortion and kept her child,” said Matthew Yonke, a spokesman for the Pro-Life Action League, the group that coordinates these events.
She would be the first of many women who chose life after hearing carols. Now, the tradition extends across the nation — and babies continue to be saved.
As Christmas Day approaches, nearly 100 caroling groups across the U.S. are gathering at various abortion facilities to sing.
Through the nationwide “Peace in the Womb” caroling effort, the group hopes “to bring the Christmas message of peace and joy to the darkness of abortion clinics,” according to a press release shared with CNA.
It’s a “simple call for an end to the violence of abortion,” according to Yonke.
“At the time of Christmas, the whole world tries to put aside differences and pursue peace, so we’re asking folks to make a connection to the womb, which should be a place of peace, but which is turned into a place of violent unrest in every abortion,” Yonke continued.
Saving lives
The carolers had already packed up after singing their final song outside an abortion site when a couple approached the remaining pro-lifers in Downers Grove, Illinois, on Dec. 13.
The couple, Yonke said, “told the sidewalk counselors still there that they had decided to keep their baby after hearing our carols.”
“Stories like this go all the way back to the first year,” Yonke said. “We’re thrilled when God can use these beloved songs that touch the hearts of even non-Christians to do his work in the world.”
This was one of two rescue stories so far this December that the league heard about, according to Yonke.
“Please don’t kill your baby at Christmas,” one caroler called out to a young woman in the back seat of a car that was driving into an abortion clinic.
It was a Saturday in Milwaukee, and a group of carolers had gathered to sing outside the abortion clinic on St. Paul Avenue.
The car drove into the abortion center parking lot. But minutes later, the car turned around with the young woman still in the back seat — she never even entered the abortion clinic.
Salvation came through an unplanned pregnancy
Pro-Life Action League invites local pro-lifers to work with them to organize their own caroling groups.
On Sunday, Dec. 14, one such caroling group sang outside an abortion facility in Renton, Washington.
“This was a fantastic event and I think every Catholic church should do this in their community,” said local pro-life activist Richard Bray, who organized the caroling with the Respect Life Ministry at a local Catholic parish, St. Stephen the Martyr.
While every event organized with the league has a “Peace in the Womb” banner, Renton’s organizer would have something special — a handmade manger.
An 88-year-old parishioner at St. Stephen’s built an empty manger that the carolers brought to the event, according to Bray.
The empty manger not only symbolizes that Christ is coming at Christmas — but it also represents how a crib is empty after an abortion, according to Bray.
“It’s particularly sad to think of someone getting an abortion during the Christmas season,” Bray told CNA. “So we gather to sing carols and remind abortion-bound mothers and our community that the salvation of the world came through an unplanned pregnancy.”
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Clockwise from left, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, and Mike Fincke pose for a playful portrait through a circular opening in a hatch thermal cover aboard the International Space Station on Sept. 18, 2025.
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The atmospheric glow blankets southern Europe and the northwestern Mediterranean coast, outlined by city lights. At left, the Po Valley urban corridor in Italy shines with the metropolitan areas of Milan and Turin and their surrounding suburbs.
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View on Val Montanaia (Montanaia Valley), with the Cima Both (2,437 m) on the left and the “Campanile” (2,173 m) in the middle; both are peaks of the Spalti di Toro group, in the Friulian Dolomites Natural Park, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy.
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View of the village of Gyakar surrounded by a poplar grove in the Upper Mustang region of Nepal. The summits of the Damodar Himal, the Purkung Himal and the Annapurnas are visible in the distance. A suspended bridge over the deep canyon (left) connects it to the neighbouring Chele village and thence to the rest of Nepal.
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Drone view of Lake Willoughby, Vermont, with Mount Hor on the left and Mount Pisgah on the right
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NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (left) and Mark Vande Hei (right) prepare to fly out to a landing zone in the Rocky Mountains as part of the certification run for the NASA Artemis course at the High-Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site in Gypsum, Colorado, Aug. 26.
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From left to right, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot; Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander; CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, and NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, suit up and walk out of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. During a two-day operation, the Artemis II team practiced night-run demonstrations of different launch day scenarios for the Artemis II test flight.
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Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, left, NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft aboard the SpaceX recovery ship SHANNON shortly after having landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025. McClain, Ayers, Onishi, and Peskov returned after 147 days in space as part of Expedition 73 aboard the International Space Station.
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The Artemis II crew (from left to right) CSA (Canadian Space Agency) Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist; Christina Koch, mission specialist; Victor Glover, pilot; and Reid Wiseman, commander, don their Orion Crew Survival System Suits for a multi-day crew module training beginning Thursday, July 31, 2025, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Behind the crew, wearing clean room apparel, are members of the Artemis II closeout crew.
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Statue of a saint, placed above the facade of the St. Anthony Cathedral of Breda, in the Netherlands. In her left hand she holds a cross and in her right hand a ciborium (host chalice). Above the chalice floats a radiant host, a prominent expression of regained Catholic pride. Below the statue is written: “A.D. MDCCCXXXVII”, Anno Domini 1837, the year the cathedral was built.
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The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has also captured a smaller companion star in the upper left of this image. Both stars lie in the Orion Nebula, a colossal region of star formation roughly 1450 light years from Earth.
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Barn swallow juvenile (Hirundo rustica rustica) at the Ormož Basins nature reserve, Slovenia. Taken during a period when the storm Boris blocked migration routes, and low temperatures left the swallows struggling to find prey and stay warm in that area. This one was visibly weak, nevertheless, it had just caught a moth, with remains visible around the beak, and its scales on the face.
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