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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.
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![What is ‘papal infallibility?’ CNA explains an often-misunderstood Church teaching #Catholic
When Pope Pius IX declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary on Dec. 8, 1854, he had a golden crown added to the mosaic of Mary, Virgin Immaculate, in the Chapel of the Choir in St. Peter’s Basilica. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
CNA Staff, Dec 8, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
On Dec. 8 the Catholic Church celebrates the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception — a paramount feast in the Church’s liturgical calendar and one that indirectly touches on a regularly misunderstood but important piece of Church dogma.The solemnity is the patronal feast of the United States and marks the recognition of the Blessed Mother’s freedom from original sin, which the Church teaches she was granted from the moment of conception.The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that Mary was “redeemed from the moment of her conception” (No. 491) in order “to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation” (No. 490). The dogma was disputed and challenged by Protestants over the centuries, leading Pope Pius IX to affirm it in his 1854 encyclical Ineffabilis Deus, stating unequivocally that Mary “was endowed with the grace of the Holy Spirit and preserved from original sin” upon her conception. Ineffabilis Deus is among the papal pronouncements that theologians have long considered to be “infallible.” But what does papal infallibility mean in the context and history of the Church?Defined by First Vatican Council in 1870Though Church historians argue that numerous papal statements down through the centuries can potentially be regarded as infallible under this teaching, the concept itself was not fully defined by the Church until the mid-19th century.In its first dogmatic constitution on the Church of Christ, Pastor Aeternus, the First Vatican Council held that the pope, when speaking “in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority,” and while defining “a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church,” possesses the infallibility that Jesus “willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.”Father Patrick Flanagan, an associate professor of theology at St. John’s University, told CNA that the doctrine of papal infallibility “does not concern the pope’s character.”“The pope is human,” Flanagan said. “In other words, he is fallible. He can sin and err in what he says about everyday matters.”Yet in “rare historical, narrowly defined moments” when the pope “exercises his authority as the supreme teacher of the Church of the Petrine office” and speaks “ex cathedra,” he is guided by the Holy Spirit to speak “indisputable truth” about faith and morals, Flanagan said. Flanagan underscored the four specific criteria that a papal statement must make to be considered infallible. For one, the pope must speak “in his official capacity as supreme pontiff,” not off-the-cuff or informally. The doctrine, meanwhile, must concern a matter of faith or morals. “No pope would speak ex cathedra on scientific, economic, or other nonreligious subjects,” Flanagan said. The statement must also be “explicitly straightforward and definitive,” he said, and it “must be intended to bind the whole Church as a matter of divine and Roman Catholic faith.” John P. Joy, a professor of theology and the dean of faculty at St. Ambrose Academy in Madison, Wisconsin, told CNA that the doctrine can be identified in part by the reading of Matthew 16:19.In that passage, Christ tells Peter, the first pope: “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”“Part of what Jesus is promising here is that he will endorse and ratify in heaven all of the judgments that Peter makes on earth,” Joy said. “So when Peter (or one of his successors) turns the key, so to speak, that is, when he explicitly declares that all Catholics are bound to believe something on earth, then we have the words of Jesus assuring us that God himself will hold us bound to believe the same thing in heaven,” he said. Though the concept of papal infallibility is well known and has become something of a pop culture reference, the number of times a pope has declared something infallibly appears to be relatively small. Theologians and historians do not always agree on what papal statements through the centuries can be deemed infallible. Joy pointed to the Immaculate Conception, as well as Pope Pius XII’s declaration on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in 1950, as two of the most well known.He pointed to numerous other statements, such as Pope Benedict XII’s Benedictus Deus from 1336 and Pope Leo X’s Exsurge Domine in 1520, as infallible statements. Flanagan pointed out that there is “no official list” of papally infallible statements. Such declarations are “rare,” he said. “A pope invokes his extraordinary magisterial powers sparingly.” When Catholics trust a papally infallible statement, Joy stressed, they “are not putting [their] faith in the pope as if he were an oracle of truth or a source of divine revelation.” “We are rather putting our faith in God, whom we firmly believe will intervene in order to stop any pope who might be tempted to proclaim a false doctrine in a definitive way,” he said.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/what-is-papal-infallibility-cna-explains-an-often-misunderstood-church-teaching-catholic-when-pope-pius-ix-declared-the-doctrine-of-the-immaculate-conception-of-the-virgin-mary.webp)
