Claire Lai, daughter of imprisoned Hong Kong activist and Catholic Jimmy Lai, speaks with EWTN News President Montse Alvarado on “EWTN News Nightly” on Dec. 8, 2025. / Credit: “EWTN News Nightly”/Screenshot
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 9, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Daughter of imprisoned Catholic activist Jimmy Lai spoke out for the first time ahead of her father’s 78th birthday.
“As a daughter, every day I wake up and I hope that today is the day we get my dad home … the day we get to go to Mass together, or to eat dinner around the table, things that years ago I almost took for granted,” Claire Lai said in an interview with EWTN News.
Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy entrepreneur and human rights activist, was arrested in 2020 in Hong Kong. He underwent a trial that lasted nearly two years for allegations of colluding with foreign forces under a national security law put in effect by the communist-controlled Chinese government.
The trial ended in August, and Lai continues to wait for the verdict in prison where he faces inhumane living conditions, deteriorating health, and is denied the Eucharist, his daughter said.
In an interview with Montse Alvarado, president and COO of EWTN News, Lai’s daughter Claire said: “We’re still waiting for a verdict, five years after he was charged. He is turning 78. We have waited a very, very long time for his cases to be resolved. We do not believe that they will be through the domestic system. Our only hope is outside, and that’s why I’m here now.”
Dec. 8 was Jimmy Lai’s 78th birthday, which falls on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. His daughter highlighted Lai’s deep devotion to the Blessed Mother.
She said her family has tried to send him a rosary in prison, but “each attempt failed.” She said he fell down once in the shower, and “because of his waist pain he wasn’t able to get up.”
“Even some of the guards came over and tried to help him … but he couldn’t get up. So he pretended as though he had a rosary in his hand and prayed to the Blessed Mother. Then he was able to get up without pain,” Claire Lai said.
“When you’re a daughter … and you hear stories like that, you wish you could yourself physically pull him up when he is in pain like that. But you find such great comfort in the fact that Our Lady is protecting him,” she said.
Conversion to the faith
Lai said her father’s conversion to Catholicism has been a stable presence during his time in prison.
“My father had quite an unconventional childhood. He came to Hong Kong when he was 12. He had nothing to his name, nothing in his pockets. But he was full of optimism and he had a yearning for freedom,” she said.
“It was only later on that he understood that there was something, a higher force, guiding him all along, which was why he was able to go from child laborer to a successful entrepreneur and do so almost without fear. It was later on that he understood that to be God,” she said.
Jimmy Lai converted the year of the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China when “people were filled with doubt and with a certain amount of fear,” his daughter said. “As Our Lady has taught us, there is nothing that conquers doubt and fear except for the love of God. And that was a time when he was ready to receive it.”
“My father converted one year after I was born. Really, the only memories I have are of growing up in a very loving Catholic family,” she said.
Legal saga
Claire Lai studied law and has been involved with her father’s case and lengthy trial. “There’s an equal amount of outrage, but also it’s a privilege to be able to be there and witness it as closely as I have,” she said.
“As someone who grew up admiring the Hong Kong legal system … it has been heartbreaking to see the rule of law break down, but even more so to see my father and his case is at the helm of it.”
The bench was “not neutral in any sense of the word,” she said. “They just grilled him repeatedly. There were gag orders that were imposed when the evidence just did not suit the narrative … it was just so deeply unfair.”
The trial had unexplained delays that were “clearly meant so that people would forget about my father and so that it would crush his spirit,” she said. But “with the good Lord as his guide, his spirit remained just as strong.”
Prison conditions
Lai has been in prison for five years, but “his incarceration has just deepened his faith,” his daughter said.
“I think there isn’t anything quite as much as suffering that opens your heart to God’s love. We are so grateful that Our Lord has accompanied my father. He wakes up around midnight every night to pray,” she said.
“Before the crack of dawn, he would read the Gospel,” Lai said. “At first, he would ask the guards if they could turn on the light so that he could read … For about the first six months, they said ‘yes.’ Afterwards, they always said ‘no.’”
“The conditions he’s kept in have just gotten worse over time. They aren’t a natural byproduct of prison. In the prison cell, there is a window that leads outside that should give access to sunlight. His is deliberately blocked so that he doesn’t have access,” she said.
“He’s been denied holy Communion for over two years and got it only very, very intermittently this year,” she said. “It’s something that costs them nothing … for him to get. It costs them nothing for him to get the rosary, and it costs them nothing to turn on the light so that he can read the Gospel.”
Kept in solitary confinement, he faces extreme heat conditions in his small cell. “In summer, the heat can get up to … 111 degrees Fahrenheit,” she said. “To say that it’s sweltering is a massive understatement.”
“He gets heat rushes all over his body, and they last until the middle of autumn. It is outrageous, and it is torturous,” she said.
“We have typhoon seasons in Hong Kong … and the cells get wet. Almost everything in there gets wet. Once that happened, the first thing he checked was his Bible, and it was the one thing that remained dry. We’re very grateful that Our Lord and Our Lady continue to watch over him,” she said.
Lai’s health has declined rapidly while behind bars.
“In less than a year, he lost 10 kilos … after already having lost a significant amount of weight the last few years. His nails are rotting … He has infections that last for months in spite of antibiotics. And his limbs get swollen, very red, and they’re agonizingly painful,” she said.
“My dad is not someone who complains. He doesn’t even make faces. You know that when he does, it’s very painful,” she said. “There are times when even from a distance, you can tell that he’s pale and he’s shivering.”
“Then there’s the less visible signs,” she said. “He’s diabetic, and he’s had heart issues. He had a perfectly healthy heart before he went to prison.” He has said “that every few days he would have heart palpitations and they would be disabling,” his daughter said.
Call for international involvement
Jimmy Lai is a British citizen and his daughter said that any communication between Britain and the Chinese government should include discussion of her father.
“He is in prison for basically standing in defense for the freedoms he first came to know as a child in Hong Kong when it was still a British embassy and for hoping that they would keep the promise made during the sign of the British Joint Declaration,” she said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to do “everything” possible to “save” Lai. A White House official told EWTN News in October that Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping about his imprisonment.
“We are so extremely grateful to President Trump and his administration,” Claire Lai said. “They have a long, proven record of freeing the unjustly detained, and we hope that my father will follow soon.”
“We are also very, very grateful for members of the public. My father is sustained by your prayers,” she said.
She shared that Pope Leo XIV is also praying for her father during this time. In October, Lai’s wife, Teresa Lai, and his daughter met Pope Leo after a general audience. “It was such a privilege and a blessing to have an audience with our Holy Father,” Claire Lai said.
Hope for a release
“The government has no case,” she said. “All they’ve proven is that my father is a good man, a man who loves God, a man who loves freedom, who loves truth, and loves his family.”
If she could speak with the Chinese government, Lai said she would say to “do the only just and … only honorable thing, which is to release a 78-year-old man, my father, Jimmy Lai, against whom no case has been made.”
“Don’t let him die a martyr in these conditions, in this health. It is a stain on your history that you will never be able to wipe off,” she said.
She said she does “worry” that her father could die in prison, but she is “hopeful.”
When her father “reflected on his earlier years, he said that even before he converted and before he opened his heart to the love of God, he was always guided by him — even before he knew it,” she said. “I think that’s how he wants to be remembered, as a faithful servant of Our Lord.”
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![Jonathan Roumie tells Father Mike Schmitz: ‘Everything in my life has prepared me for this role’ #Catholic
Actor Jonathan Roumie, known for his role as Jesus in “The Chosen,” and Father Mike Schmitz, known for the “Bible in a Year” podcast, sit down for an in-depth interview. Credit: Ascension Presents
Dec 29, 2025 / 17:21 pm (CNA).
In a new sit-down interview with Father Mike Schmitz, who is best known for the “Bible in a Year” podcast and YouTube videos on Ascension Presents, actor Jonathan Roumie spoke in depth about his role portraying Jesus in the hit series “The Chosen.”“Everything in my life has prepared me for this role,” Roumie told Schmitz in the 43-minute-long interview, which aired Dec. 28 on the Ascension Presents YouTube channel.Looking back at his childhood, Roumie recalled a couple of moments and experiences that deeply impacted him and his own portrayal of Jesus. He said at 12 years old he reenacted Christ’s passion and crucifixion in his backyard after watching Robert Powell’s portrayal of Jesus in “Jesus of Nazareth.”“I had 2-by-8 planks that I found and I hammered them together and I hammered the nails where the hands would go and I painted the blood and the same thing with the feet,” he recalled. “And then I grabbed like a bush, a piece of a branch of a bush, and made my own crown of thorns and I painted blood on it and everything and I processed around to the side of my garage.”Roumie also opened up about his experience being bullied as a child and how it led him to offer up his past trauma to God as he was reenacting the Crucifixion during filming of Season 6 of “The Chosen,” which focuses on Jesus’ passion and crucifixion.“I was bullied as a kid a lot and I had to kind of look at what Jesus went through as a righteous man and a peaceful man and meek and humble and see just the level of devastation and terrorized bullying that he received to the point of death,” he said. “So for me, I think, and I’ll go back and look at all those experiences I had as a kid, which might have been part of the reason that led me to reenact the Passion, as something that I could relate to and I think all of that prepared me for this role.”He added: “I understand it now a bit more, at least I think, in my own sort of human ignorance and pride… Of course I don’t know exactly what all of this is about but it feels authentic. Like, ‘Well, I went through that as a kid and my compassion increased and my empathy increased and now I’m playing the most compassionate, empathetic human being that was God in the universe for all time.’ So I can lend that experience in his suffering and in his empathy even in wanting to forgive his enemies, which I had to do.”“I was beaten pretty bad. So, I had to offer up all of my past trauma to him as I was recreating it, knowing that that was part of my own personal sacrifice — was my own offering for him on behalf of what he suffered for humanity.”The actor shared that before beginning the filming of Season 6, he asked God in prayer that “if it were his will to allow me a fraction of a fraction of what he went through.”Before traveling to Matera, Italy — the location where the Crucifixion was filmed — Roumie injured his right shoulder after falling while filming a scene. An X-ray and MRI showed that he had separated a bit of his AC joint from the clavicle, causing sharp pain.“It was the right shoulder, so the shoulder that was carrying the beam [of the cross] on and it was extremely painful,” Roumie said. “And that was just one of many things.”Roumie added that while filming the Crucifixion “certain adjustments” also had to be made due to pain being felt by the metal and real nails being used during filming.“He [God] gave me exactly what I asked for — just a glimpse, just a glimpse,” he said. “And I think the thing that I got was that I got to enter into it in a way that I had never entered into it before.”Schmitz asked Roumie how his experience portraying Jesus’ passion and crucifixion has impacted the way he attends or prays at Mass. Roumie shared that in the past year he began to feel “convicted to give more reverence to Christ in the Eucharist.”“I started receiving on my knees and on the tongue, which I hadn’t before,” he said, adding that it was slightly “disorienting at first.”He recalled an experience at Mass where he kneeled to receive the Eucharist but the priest asked him to stand up. He hesitated but rose and continued on with the Mass. Afterward, he asked his spiritual director if that was permissible, to which he responded that a priest “shouldn’t do that but it happens.”After this experience, Roumie shared that he “doubled down on it and now I’m prepared to just wait as long as I need to until somebody concedes because I’m not going anywhere.”Returning to his time portraying Jesus in the series, Schmitz told Roumie that “the show is called ‘The Chosen’ in the sense that it’s also about those who were chosen, but you were chosen and there’s something in that that has changed you. You being chosen to not only portray Jesus, but to be his disciple, an imitator of him, as St. Paul says, and that’s changed you.”“That’s something I’m trying to wrap my head around and identify with,” Roumie responded. “It wasn’t somebody else. He picked me. And I, of course, said yes, because I needed the work initially. I didn’t know what it was going to do to me internally.”Once the final season of “The Chosen” airs, it will have been a span of 10 years that Roumie will have been portraying Jesus. He said that this experience is something that might take “the rest of my life to unpack.”There was an error serializing the imagefile_get_contents(https://iframe.ly/api/iframely/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtLHZ1qYhph0&api_key=): Failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
“So, I have to give myself a little bit of grace, but it’s something that I think I will always live with. And in fact, I don’t know that I want to let it go because it keeps me connected to him, especially when the show ends.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/jonathan-roumie-tells-father-mike-schmitz-everything-in-my-life-has-prepared-me-for-this-role-catholic-actor-jonathan-roumie-known-for-his-role-as-jesus-in-the-chosen.png)
![CNA explains: How does ‘Mass dispensation’ work, and when is it used? #Catholic
null / Credit: FotoDax/Shutterstock
CNA Staff, Dec 26, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Amid heavy immigration enforcement by the Trump administration, several bishops in the U.S. have recently issued broad dispensations to Catholics in their dioceses, allowing them to refrain from attending Mass on Sundays if they fear arrest or deportation from federal officials.Bishops in North Carolina, California, and elsewhere have issued such dispensations, stating that those with legitimate concerns of being detained by immigration agents are free from the usual Sunday obligation.The Church’s canon law dictates that Sunday is considered the “primordial holy day of obligation,” one on which all Catholics are “obliged to participate in the Mass.” Several other holy days of obligation exist throughout the liturgical year, though Sunday (or the Saturday evening prior) is always considered obligatory for Mass attendance.The numerous dispensations issued recently in dioceses around the country have underscored, however, that bishops have some discretion in allowing Catholics to stay home from Mass for legitimate reasons.Dispensation must be ‘just,’ ‘reasonable’David Long, an assistant professor in the school of canon law at The Catholic University of America as well as the director of the school’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, told CNA that bishops have the authority to dispense the faithful in their diocese with, as the Code of Canon Law puts it, a “just and reasonable cause.”“This generally applies when a holy day of obligation falls on a Saturday or Monday, during severe weather events (snowstorms, hurricanes, floods, etc.), when there is no reasonable access to Mass, or during public emergencies such as pandemics or plagues,” he said. Once such circumstances end, he noted, the dispensation itself would cease.By virtue of their office, diocesan administrators, vicars general, and episcopal vicars also have the power to issue dispensations, Long said.Priests, however, normally do not have that authority “unless expressly granted by a higher authority, such as their diocesan bishop,” he said.Canon law, he said, dictates that a dispensation can only be granted when a bishop “judges that it contributes to [the] spiritual good” of his flock, for a just cause, and “after taking into account the circumstances of the case and the gravity of the law from which dispensation is given.”The lay faithful themselves can determine, in some cases, when they can refrain from going to Mass, though Long stressed that such instances do not constitute “dispensation,” as the laity “does not have the power to dispense at any time” that authority being tied to “executive power in the Church” via ordination.Canon law dictates, however, that Catholics are not bound to attend Mass when “participation in the Eucharistic celebration becomes impossible.”Long said such scenarios include “when [the faithful] are sick, contagious, or housebound, when they are the primary caregiver for someone else and cannot arrange coverage for that person, when traveling to Mass is dangerous, when there is no realistic access to Mass, or for some other grave cause.”“This is not a dispensation,” he said, “but instead is a legal recognition of moral and physical impossibility at times.”The recent immigration-related controversy isn’t the only large-scale dispensation in recent memory. Virtually every Catholic in the world was dispensed from Mass in the earliest days of the COVID-19 crisis, when government authorities sharply limited public gatherings, including religious gatherings, all over the world.In 2024, on the other hand, the Vatican said that Catholics in the United States must still attend Mass on holy days of obligation even when they are transferred to Mondays or Saturdays, correcting a long-standing practice in the U.S. Church and ending a dispensation with which many Catholics were familiar.‘The most incredible privilege we could possibly imagine’Though the obligation to attend Mass is a major aspect of Church canon law, Father Daniel Brandenburg, LC, cautioned against interpreting it uncharitably.“This ‘obligation’ is sort of like the obligation of eating,” he said. “If you don’t eat, you’ll die. Similarly, the Church simply recognizes that if we don’t nourish our soul, it withers away and dies. The bare minimum to survive is Mass once a week on Sundays.”“Most people find the ‘obligation’ of eating to be quite pleasurable,” he continued, “and I think anyone with a modicum of spiritual awareness finds deep joy in attending Mass and receiving the Creator of the universe into their soul. At least I do.”Like Long, Brandenburg stressed that the lay faithful lack the authority to “dispense” themselves from Mass. Instead, they are directed to follow their consciences when determining if they are incapable of attending Mass, particularly by applying the principle of moral theology “ad impossibilia, nemo tenetur” “(no one is obliged to do what is impossible”).Being too sick, facing dangerous inclement weather, or lacking the ability to transport themselves are among the reasons the faithful might determine they are unable to attend Mass, he said.“Here, beware the lax conscience which gives easy excuses,” Brandenburg warned, “and remember that the saints became holy not through excuses, but through heroic love.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/cna-explains-how-does-mass-dispensation-work-and-when-is-it-used-catholic-null-credit-fotodax-shutterstockcna-staff-dec-26-2025-0600-am-cna-amid-heavy-immigratio.webp)
![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)
![HHS announces actions to restrict ‘sex-rejecting procedures’ on minors #Catholic
President Donald J. Trump watches as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health and Human Services Secretary, speaks after being sworn in on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 18, 2025 / 13:31 pm (CNA).
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed regulations today that would seek to end “sex-rejecting procedures” on anyone younger than 18 years old, which includes restrictions on hospitals and retailers.Under one proposal, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would withhold all funding through Medicare and Medicaid to any hospital that offers surgeries or drugs to minors as a means to make them resemble the opposite sex. The proposed rules would prohibit federal Medicaid funding for “sex-rejecting procedures” on anyone under 18 and prohibit federal Children’s Health Insurance program (CHIP) funding for the procedures on anyone under 19.This includes surgical operations, such as the removal of healthy genitals to replace them with artificial genitals that resemble the opposite sex and chest procedures that remove the healthy breasts on girls or implant prosthetic breasts on boys.It also includes hormone treatments that attempt to masculinize girls with testosterone and feminize boys with estrogen and puberty blockers, which delay a child’s natural developments during puberty.HHS also announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing warning letters to 12 manufacturers and retailers that they accuse of illegally marketing “breast binders” to girls under the age of 18 as a treatment for gender dysphoria. Breast binders compress breasts as a means to flatten them under their clothing.The news release said breast binders are Class 1 medical devices meant to help recover from cancer-related mastectomies, and the warning letters will “formally notify the companies of their significant regulatory violations and how they should take prompt corrective action.”Additionally, HHS is working to clarify the definition of a “disability” in civil rights regulations to exclude “gender dysphoria” that does not result from physical impairments. This ensures that discrimination laws are not interpreted in a way that would require “sex-rejecting procedures,” the statement said.HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a news conference that “sex-rejecting procedures” on minors are “endangering the very lives that [doctors] are sworn to safeguard.”“So-called gender-affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people,” he said. “This is not medicine — it is malpractice.” The proposals would conform HHS regulations to President Donald Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order to prohibit the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children. The order instructed HHS to propose regulations to prevent these procedures on minors.In a news release, HHS repeatedly referred to the medical interventions as “sex-rejecting procedures” and warned they “cause irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other irreversible physiological effects.”HHS cited its own report from May, which found “deep uncertainty about the purported benefits of these interventions” for treating a minor with gender dysphoria. The report found that “these interventions carry risk of significant harms,” which can include infertility, sexual dysfunction, underdeveloped bone mass, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, and adverse cognitive impacts, among other complications.Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, a medical advocacy group, said in a statement that the proposed regulation on hospitals is “another critical step to protect children from harmful gender ideology” and said he supports rules that ensure “American taxpayer dollars do not fund sex-change operations on minors.”“Many so-called gender clinics have already begun to close as the truth about the risks and long-term harms about these drugs and surgeries on minors have been exposed,” he said. “Now, hospitals that receive taxpayer funds from these federal programs must follow suit.”Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Person and Identity Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), said she sees the proposed restriction on hospitals as “excellent.”“This proposed rule sends a powerful message to states and health care providers: It’s time to stop these unethical and dangerous procedures,” Hasson said. “Puberty is not a disease to be medicated away. All children have the right to grow and develop normally.”“Sex-rejecting procedures promise the impossible: that a child can escape the reality of being male or female,” she added. “In reality, these sex-rejecting procedures provide only the illusion of ‘changing sex’ by disabling healthy functions and altering the child’s healthy body through drugs and surgery that will cause lifelong harm.”In January, Bishop Robert Barron, chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, welcomed Trump’s executive action on these procedures, warning that they are “based on a false understanding of human nature, attempt to change a child’s sex.”“So many young people who have been victims of this ideological crusade have profound regrets over its life-altering consequences, such as infertility and lifelong dependence on costly hormone therapies that have significant side effects,” Barron said. “It is unacceptable that our children are encouraged to undergo destructive medical interventions instead of receiving access to authentic and bodily-unitive care.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/hhs-announces-actions-to-restrict-sex-rejecting-procedures-on-minors-catholic-president-donald-j-trump-watches-as-robert-f-kennedy-jr-health-and-human-services-secretary-sp.webp)
![‘Our Lady of Guadalupe is the mother of all’: DC pilgrimage highlights value of migrants #Catholic
Bishop Evelio Menjivar speaks with “EWTN News in Depth” on Friday, March 14, 2025. / Credit: “EWTN News in Depth”
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 15, 2025 / 16:36 pm (CNA).
The Virgin Mary’s role as comforter to all was specially highlighted during a pilgrimage through the streets of Washington, D.C., Saturday morning. “Our Lady of Guadalupe is the mother of all. She envelops each one of us with the same tenderness and the same love, no matter our country of origin or language,” Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjívar said during his homily at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The words from the bishop, who was born in El Salvador, came after the Archdiocese of Washington’s annual “Walk with Mary” procession that began at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, a Hispanic Catholic parish. Participants also prayed a rosary upon arriving at the basilica, which holds 2,500 people and was filled to capacity, according to the archdiocese. The archdiocese billed this year’s celebration of the pilgrimage honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe on her feast day as “highlight[ing] a call to accompany and pray for migrants and refugees, reflecting the Church’s mission of compassion, solidarity, hope, and peace.” “For more than a decade, thousands of pilgrims from diverse cultures and backgrounds have walked side by side, lifting their voices in prayer and songs of praise,” the archdiocese said. “Along the way, participants celebrate the archdiocese’s rich cultural diversity and unity in Jesus Christ, while reflecting on the appearance of the young mestiza Virgin of Guadalupe to the peasant St. Juan Diego on a hilltop near Mexico City in 1531.”The Mass, which included a reenactment of the story of Mary’s apparition to St. Juan Diego, was celebrated by Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington; Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States; and Auxiliary Bishops Menjívar, Juan Esposito, and Roy Campbell.Menjívar interspersed his homily, which was mostly in Spanish, with reflections in English on the Virgin Mary and the Church’s role in accompanying poor and marginalized communities, particularly migrants.“Let me say this in English because I believe it is very important for us to understand Mary reflects what the Church is called to be,” Menjívar said. “In the apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te [“I Have Loved You”] Pope Leo affirms the Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children. Where walls are built, she builds bridges.”The Virgin Mary, he said, regards “every rejected migrant” as “Christ himself, who knocks at the door of the community.” Reflecting on the significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Menjívar noted that Mary “did not manifest herself to a powerful or well-educated person.” “She appeared to Juan Diego, a simple, poor, Indigenous man, marginalized by the systems of his time,” the bishop said. “With this, God proclaims another truth. He takes the side of the little ones, the despised, the ones who do not count.” “So the good news,” he concluded, “is this: For God, we do count, and a lot, because we are his sons and daughters.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/our-lady-of-guadalupe-is-the-mother-of-all-dc-pilgrimage-highlights-value-of-migrants-catholic-bishop-evelio-menjivar-speaks-with-ewtn-news-in-depth-on-f.webp)
![Ancient Advent Mass gains new interest among younger Catholics #Catholic
The Rorate Caeli Advent Mass celebrated at The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. / Credit: The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion
CNA Staff, Dec 14, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Advent is a season filled with rich Catholic traditions, but a slightly lesser-known one is growing in popularity among younger Catholics. The ancient liturgy of the Rorate Caeli Advent Mass honors the Blessed Virgin Mary through a Mass celebrated at dawn, in complete darkness, and lit only by candles, which symbolizes Christ, the Light of the World, entering into the world with Mary as the vessel. Emerging in the Middle Ages, the Rorate Caeli Mass gets its name from the prophecy of Isaiah. Rorate Caeli is Latin for “drop down, ye heavens.” These are the opening words of this liturgy’s Introit, which is used as an opening psalm or entrance antiphon and comes from Isaiah 45:8.Father Tony Stephens, rector at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin, calls this Mass “a teachable moment.”“As all of us are gathered in the church, only lit with the candles, slowly the light begins coming in through the windows and it’s like the light of Christ,” he told CNA. The process symbolizes “the light of Christ coming into our lives, slowly but surely and progressively as we go through life.”“And just like that light begins to come in through the windows, as the physical sun rises, so in our journey as Catholics, the closer we get to Christ, the more his light shines in our life,” he said. Fr. Nathaneal Mudd, CPM, celebrates the Rorate Caeli Advent Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in 2024. Credit: The National Shrine of Our Lady of ChampionStephens has been rector of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion for two years but was scheduled to celebrate the Rorate Caeli Mass there for the first time on Dec. 13. The shrine is the first and only approved Marian apparition site in the United States. It was here that the Blessed Mother is believed to have appeared to Adele Brise in 1859. When speaking about the Blessed Mother’s role in Advent, Stephens described it as “a season of anticipating Our Lord, but when you look at the subtext of Advent, things about Mary are everywhere — in the readings and her role in salvation history is so important. And so that’s, again, part of the reason you have these special Marian Masses honoring her during this Advent season.”He also highlighted the fact that this ancient Mass is seeing a resurgence in popularity and credited Pope Benedict XVI, in part, for reintroducing Catholics to older, traditional practices and his “desire of the hermeneutic of continuity.” “He in his pontificate really emphasized a desire to have that continuity between the earlier traditions of the Church, even prior to the [Vatican II] council … looking at all of the rich liturgical heritage that we have as Catholics,” he added. The priest pointed out that young people are also searching for more traditional practices.“There is a great love, especially amongst young people, for things that are traditional,” he said, adding that the Mass also “appeals to the senses in a way that technology and phones don’t.” “The real light of a candle is way different than the electronic light put off by a cellphone screen,” he said. “A burning, living candle, the way it flickers, and you can’t recharge a candle — it gives everything it has like Jesus did on the cross. A candle burns with all its might to put off that light. And so there is a selflessness about that light of that candle that’s different than technology, and young people desire that kind of self-gift and authenticity.”Stephens said he hopes those who attend a Rorate Caeli Mass will leave with “an eager anticipation of Jesus coming at Christmastime.”“A Rorate Caeli Mass is one of those times that we can have a little consolation and we’re reminded of the author of all consolation and his mother,” he said.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/ancient-advent-mass-gains-new-interest-among-younger-catholics-catholic-the-rorate-caeli-advent-mass-celebrated-at-the-national-shrine-of-our-lady-of-champion-credit-the-national-shrine-of-ou.webp)
