Category: Diocese of Scranton News

(OSV News) – “Be open to what the Lord has in store for you,” Pope Leo XIV said in a video address to thousands of youth and young adults attending the SEEK 2026 conference.

The annual gathering — taking place Jan. 1-5 at event locations in Columbus, Ohio, Denver and Fort Worth, Texas — has drawn an estimated 26,000 participants for talks and workshops on encountering Christ, with the schedule including daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration, the sacrament of reconciliation and fellowship.

Among the scheduled keynote speakers were Father Mike Schmitz, Matt Fradd, Chris Stefanick, Sister of Life Mary Grace and Sister Josephine Garrett, a sister of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

For 2026, conference organizer FOCUS — an international Catholic outreach ministering on more than 200 college campuses in the U.S., Mexico and Europe, as well as at some 20 parishes — selected the theme “To the Heights,” a favorite exhortation of the recently canonized St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, an avid mountaineer and patron of young adults.

As of midday Jan. 2, FOCUS reported that attendees numbered 16,115 in Columbus, 5,907 in Denver and 4,503 in Fort Worth.

In his pre-recorded video message to the SEEK attendees, which was posted along with a transcript to the Vatican website, Pope Leo appeared to echo St. Frassati’s sentiment, urging SEEK attendees to reflect on the call of the first two disciples of Jesus as detailed in John 1:35-51.

The pope said that Andrew and the other disciple — initially followers of John the Baptist — pursued Jesus, whose first recorded words in John’s Gospel were a question posed to the two: “What do you seek?”

“Jesus asks the disciples this question because he knows their hearts,” said Pope Leo. “They were restless — in a good way. They did not want to settle for the normal routine of life. They were open to God and were longing for meaning.”

And, said the pope, “today, Jesus directs this same question to each one of you.”

Pope Leo noted that conference attendees’ hearts may also be “restless, searching for meaning and fulfillment” as well as for “direction in your lives.”

To such profound questions, said the pope, “The answer is found in a person. The Lord Jesus alone brings us true peace and joy, and fulfills every one of our deepest desires.”

John’s Gospel passage details the process of discovering Christ and developing a life-changing relationship with him, said the pope, noting that the first two disciples replied to Jesus’ question by asking where he was staying.

“They wanted to get to know him personally by spending time with him,” said Pope Leo.

Although “the two disciples were initially with Jesus only for a few hours,” said the pope, “that encounter changed their lives forever.”

Andrew immediately sought out his brother Simon (whom Jesus later renamed Peter), excitedly sharing that he had found the Messiah — “in other words, ‘We have found the one we were looking for!'” said the pope.

Such a response to meeting Christ “is the answer that all of us can give once we too get to know the Lord,” said Pope Leo, adding that the Gospel passage “also therefore speaks to us of what it means to be a missionary. … We desire to share with others what we have received so that they, too, can come to know the fullness of love and truth found only in him.”

As they “draw close to Jesus” during the SEEK 2026 conference, Pope Leo urged attendees, “Do not be afraid to ask him what he is calling you to,” whether that vocation is the priesthood, religious life, or marriage and family life.

“If you sense the Lord calling you, do not be afraid,” said Pope Leo. “Once again, let me emphasize that he alone knows the deepest, perhaps hidden, longings of your heart, and the path that will lead you to true fulfillment. Let him lead and guide you!”

Pointing to the conference start date of Jan. 1, the feast of Mary, Mother of God, Pope Leo entrusted attendees to her maternal intercession.

He concluded his message with a blessing, saying, “I gladly invoke upon all of you and upon your families the divine blessings of this Christmas season.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The world is not saved by threatening violence or by judging, oppressing or getting rid of others, Pope Leo XIV said.

“Rather, it is saved by tirelessly striving to understand, forgive, liberate and welcome everyone, without calculation and without fear,” the pope said during Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for the feast of Mary, Mother of God, and World Peace Day Jan. 1.

Therefore, at the beginning of a new year with “new and unique days that await us, let us ask the Lord to help us experience at every moment, around us and upon us, the warmth of his fatherly embrace and the light of his benevolent gaze,” he said in his homily.

The Mass marked the 59th World Day of Peace celebrated by the church. The pope’s message for the world day, published in December, was dedicated to the humble, “unarmed and disarming” peace of the risen Christ who loves unconditionally.

Thousands of people were present in the basilica for the celebration on New Year’s Day, including young people dressed as the three kings who visited Jesus. A figurine of the infant Jesus was before the altar, in keeping with the Christmas season of celebration, and an image of Our Lady of Hope was to the side of the main altar as a sign of the Jubilee of hope, which will end Jan. 6.

In his homily, Pope Leo reflected on the mystery of Mary’s divine motherhood, which “helped give a human face to the source of all mercy and benevolence: the face of Jesus. Through his eyes — first as a child, then as a young man and as an adult — the Father’s love reaches us and transforms us.”

By being born of Mary in a grotto, he said, “God presents himself to us ‘unarmed and disarming,’ as naked and defenseless as a newborn in a cradle.”

“He does this to teach us that the world is not saved by sharpening swords, nor by judging, oppressing or eliminating our brothers and sisters,” he said. Rather, the world is saved by seeking to understand, forgive, free and welcome everyone with love.

Mary bearing the Christ child represents “two immense, ‘unarmed’ realities” that come together, he said: “that of God, who renounces every privilege of his divinity to be born in the flesh, and that of a human person who, trustingly and fully, embraces God’s will.”

“Thus, at the dawn of the new year, the liturgy reminds us that for each of us, every day can be the beginning of a new life, thanks to God’s generous love, his mercy and the response of our freedom,” Pope Leo said. “It is beautiful to view the coming year in this way: as an open journey to be discovered.”

“Indeed, through grace, we can venture forth on this journey with confidence — free and bearers of freedom, forgiven and bringers of forgiveness, trusting in the closeness and goodness of the Lord who accompanies us always,” he said.

Overlooking St. Peter’s Square after Mass, Pope Leo urged Christians to help usher in “an era of peace and friendship among all peoples.”

“The Jubilee, which is about to end, has taught us how to cultivate hope for a new world. We do this by converting our hearts to God, so as to transform wrongs into forgiveness, pain into consolation, and resolutions of virtue into good works,” he said.

The Son of God also illuminates “the consciences of people of goodwill, so that we can build the future as a welcoming home for every man and woman who comes into the world,” he said.

“The heart of Jesus, therefore, beats for every man and woman; for those who are ready to welcome him, like the shepherds, and for those who do not want him, like Herod,” he said.

“His heart is not indifferent to those who have no heart for their neighbor: it beats for the righteous, so that they may persevere in their dedication, as well as for the unrighteous, so that they may change their lives and find peace,” Pope Leo said.

Every unborn child reveals “the divine image imprinted in our humanity,” he said, and he called for prayers for peace: “first, among nations bloodied by conflict and suffering, but also within our homes, in families wounded by violence or pain.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The “confrontational” tone dominating both global and national politics is “deepening instability and unpredictability day by day,” Pope Leo XIV wrote in his message for World Peace Day.

“It is no coincidence that repeated calls to increase military spending, and the choices that follow, are presented by many government leaders as a justified response to external threats,” he wrote in the message for the Jan. 1 observance.

But peace must be protected and cultivated, Pope Leo said. “Even when it is endangered within us and around us, like a small flame threatened by a storm, we must protect it.”

Throughout the coming year, Pope Leo will give visiting heads of state signed copies of his message, which was released by the Vatican Dec. 18, and Vatican ambassadors will distribute it to government leaders in the countries where they serve.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, presented the message at a Vatican news conference.

“In some ways we have been beaten into accepting the logic of war, the logic of armaments, the logic of enemies,” the cardinal said. Pope Leo’s message recognizes that “the first triumph of the logic of war is that we give up our hope for peace.”

“I am not a soldier, I have never been a soldier,” the cardinal said, but “even a soldier can be comforted” by Pope Leo’s appeal to cultivate “peace in his heart and in his relationships and in his prayer and in his aspirations.”

While the message “does not diminish in any way the horrors that we are surrounded with,” he said, “it puts an enormous part of the responsibility on ourselves.”

The theme of the pope’s message, “Peace be with you all: Towards an ‘unarmed and disarming’ peace,” begins with the first words he said to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square May 8, the night of his election.

Pope Leo wrote in the message that he and all religious leaders have an obligation to teach and preach against “the growing temptation to weaponize even thoughts and words” and to condemn the use of religion to justify violence and exaggerated forms of nationalism.

“Unfortunately, it has become increasingly common to drag the language of faith into political battles, to bless nationalism, and to justify violence and armed struggle in the name of religion,” the pope wrote.

“Believers must actively refute, above all by the witness of their lives, these forms of blasphemy that profane the holy name of God,” Pope Leo said.

What is needed instead, he said, is prayer, spirituality and ecumenical and interreligious dialogue “as paths of peace and as languages of encounter within traditions and cultures.”

The message echoed what Pope Leo had told reporters Dec. 2 after meeting Christian, Muslim and Druze leaders in Turkey and Lebanon during his first foreign trip: “The more we can promote authentic unity and understanding, respect and human relationships of friendship and dialogue in the world, the greater possibility there is that we will put aside the arms of war, that we will leave aside the distrust, the hatred, the animosity that has so often been built up and that we will find ways to come together and be able to promote authentic peace and justice throughout the world.”

The first step in sowing peace, the pope wrote, is to believe that peace is possible and that all people desire it.

“When we treat peace as a distant ideal,” he wrote, “we cease to be scandalized when it is denied, or even when war is waged in its name.”

“When peace is not a reality that is lived, cultivated and protected, then aggression spreads into domestic and public life,” he said. When that happens, “it could even be considered a fault not to be sufficiently prepared for war, not to react to attacks, and not to return violence for violence.”

Statistics show that is already happening, the pope said.

Global military expenditures “increased by 9.4% in 2024 compared to the previous year, confirming the trend of the last ten years and reaching a total of $2718 billion — or 2.5% of global GDP,” he wrote, citing studies by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Pope Leo also decried a shift in education and in the media that instead of focusing on achievements in peacemaking and diplomacy since World War II and on remembering with horror just how many people died in that war, “we now see communication campaigns and educational programs – at schools, universities and in the media – that spread a perception of threats and promote only an armed notion of defense and security.”

That shift becomes especially frightening given advancements in weapons technology, particularly the development of drones, robots and other automated lethal weapons systems that can be controlled by artificial intelligence.

“There is even a growing tendency among political and military leaders to shirk responsibility, as decisions about life and death are increasingly ‘delegated’ to machines,” he wrote.

Pope Leo called on Christians and all people of goodwill to join forces “to contribute to a disarming peace, a peace born of openness and evangelical humility.”

“Goodness is disarming,” he wrote. “Perhaps this is why God became a child.”

Pope Leo prayed that as the Jubilee Year draws to a close, its legacy would be a “disarmament of heart, mind and life.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The tenacious hope of people of faith, believing in a better tomorrow, keeps God’s plan of salvation alive in the world, Pope Leo XIV said.

They keep hope alive even though today, just like in the past, there are other kinds of plans unfolding, he said during an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 31.

They include plans “aimed at conquering markets, territories and zones of influence. Weaponized strategies, cloaked in hypocritical speeches, ideological proclamations and false religious motives,” he said.

The pope, accompanied by dozens of cardinals and bishops, and thousands of visitors in the basilica, prayed vespers and then sang the “Te Deum” (“We praise you, O God”) in thanksgiving for the blessings of the past year.

The prayer service was held less than a week before the official close of the Holy Year 2025, which was inaugurated by Pope Francis when he opened the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica during Christmas Eve Mass in 2024. Pope Leo was scheduled to close the door Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany, thereby officially marking the end of the Holy Year.

“Let us thank God for the gift of the Jubilee, which has been a great sign of (God’s) plan of hope for humanity and the world,” Pope Leo said in his homily.

In this plan, God has “reserved a special place for this city of Rome,” he said. “Not because of its glories, not because of its power, but because Peter and Paul and so many other martyrs shed their blood here for Christ.”

“That is why Rome is the city of the Jubilee,” he told the congregation, which included Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, who was seated in the front row.

The birth of the Son of God “suggests a plan, a great plan for human history,” the pope said, which will “sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.”

“Sisters, brothers, today we feel the need for a wise, benevolent, merciful plan,” he said. “May it be a free and liberating, peaceful, faithful plan, like the one the Virgin Mary proclaimed in her canticle of praise: ‘His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him.'”

“The Holy Mother of God, the smallest and highest among creatures, sees things through the eyes of God: she sees that with the might of his arm, the Most High disperses the plots of the arrogant, overthrows the powerful from their thrones and raises up the lowly, fills the hands of the hungry with good things and empties those of the rich,” he said.

“God loves to hope with the heart of the least” and the meek, he said, “and he does so by involving them in his plan of salvation.”

“The more beautiful the plan, the greater the hope,” he said. “And indeed, the world goes on like this, driven by the hope of so many simple people, unknown but not to God, who, despite everything, believe in a better tomorrow, because they know that the future is in the hands of the One who offers them the greatest hope.”

After the service, Pope Leo visited the Vatican Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square and prayed at the creche while the band of the Swiss Guard played Christmas carols. He then greeted the faithful gathered there, exchanging small talk and wishing people a happy new year.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Close to 3 million pilgrims and visitors attended audiences, liturgies or meetings at the Vatican with Pope Leo XIV from the time of his election in May through December, according to the Prefecture of the Papal Household.

The prefecture, which handles the free tickets to audiences and Masses, as well as arranges the pope’s daily schedule of meetings, published statistics for the year Dec. 30.

The numbers did not include events outside the Vatican — for instance, it did not count the Mass with more than 1 million people the pope celebrated Aug. 3 at Tor Vergata on the outskirts of Rome to conclude the Jubilee of Youth, nor did the tabulations include the crowds who came to see him in Turkey and Lebanon during his first foreign trip as pope Nov. 27-Dec. 2.

The prefecture did include people who came to see Pope Francis before his death April 21. The pope, who was hospitalized from Feb. 14 to March 23, was present for eight Wednesday or Jubilee general audiences at the Vatican, welcoming 60,500 people.

In special audiences with groups, Pope Francis encountered more than 10,000 people; some 62,000 people joined Pope Francis for Masses and prayer services and an estimated 130,000 joined him for the midday recitation of the Angelus prayer on Sundays, the prefecture said. That means he encountered 262,820 people in 2025

Pope Leo held 36 general and Jubilee audiences during the year since his election May 8, encountering just over 1 million people, the prefecture reported.

In special audiences with smaller groups, the office said, he met with another 148,300 people.

Some 796,500 people attended liturgies celebrated by Pope Leo at the Vatican during the year, and an estimated 900,000 people joined him for the recitation of the Angelus on Sundays and holy days.

The prefecture said that meant 2,913,800 people had encountered Pope Leo at the Vatican in 2025.

The total for 2024, which was not a Holy Year, was close to 1.7 million people at audiences and prayers with Pope Francis.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (OSV News) – Amid poinsettias and sparkling Christmas trees, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis told Catholics gathered Dec. 28 at the Cathedral of St. Paul that the promise of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope did not disappoint, as the church focused on mercy and conversion.

In his homily, Archbishop Hebda referred to the gleaming crosier he held, recently refurbished after being discovered in a St. Paul scrapyard earlier this year. He called it “an icon for all of us … of what it is that we hope to experience in the Jubilee Year, in that we find we have this opportunity to experience the treasures of the Catholic Church, and we’re given that opportunity for renewal.”

The crosier, an ornate shepherd’s staff that is one of the symbols of a bishop’s office — fortified its rescuer’s waning Catholic faith, Archbishop Hebda said. He added that with the graces of the Holy Year, “We hope that all of us have had the chance to be shined up, to look better, to be ready, and indeed to be instruments of hope” willing to share Christ-centered hope with others.

Masses held at cathedrals on the feast of the Holy Family Dec. 28 marked the closing of diocesan celebrations of the Jubilee Year of Hope, which began at the Vatican Dec. 24, 2024. Bishops opened the year in their dioceses Dec. 29, 2024.

The Holy Year will end at the Vatican Jan. 6, 2026, with the closing of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica on the solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.

In the United States, bishops gave thanks for the graces of the Holy Year and reflected on the importance of hope. Pope Francis assigned the theme “Pilgrims of Hope” to the ordinary Jubilee Year in “Spes Non Confundit,” a declaration known as a papal bull, announcing the Holy Year issued May 9, 2024.

A jubilee year, also known as a holy year, is ordinarily held every 25 years as a time of repentance and mercy. It includes pilgrimages, especially to Rome. Over the course of the year, millions of pilgrims visited Rome to walk through Holy Doors designated at the city’s four major basilicas: St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, and St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome. Some planned their travels to coincide with particular Vatican celebrations, such as of youth, families and athletes, designed to include an audience with the pope.

Before his final illness and death in April, Pope Francis greeted communication professionals gathered in January for the Jubilee of the World of Communication. After his election in May, Pope Leo XIV continued audiences with jubilee event attendees.

Meanwhile, dioceses worldwide designated holy sites, including their cathedrals, as local pilgrimage designations for the Holy Year.

In Detroit, Archbishop Edward J. Weisenburger reflected upon changes that took place in the Jubilee Year, including his appointment to the Archdiocese of Detroit in February.

“I was in a different state, a different place, a different diocese when this started,” Archbishop Weisenburger said in his homily, according to Detroit Catholic, the digital news service of the Archdiocese of Detroit. “Hope has, in so many respects, I feel, been lived out in my life during this time. And as we join with the rest of the universal church in bringing it to a conclusion, I think we recognize that hope is not ended, but hope has in so many ways been restored, sustained and fulfilled.”

He encouraged Catholics to “continue for the rest of our years on this trajectory, this path given to us by Pope Francis and then continued under Pope Leo, recognizing that to be followers of Christ is always and everywhere to be a people of hope.”

In Miami, Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski said that the Jubilee Year “could not have come soon enough” and it “has called each one of us to spiritual renewal and to the transformation of the world by reintroducing hope to the world.”

“Perhaps because of the ascendant secularism of our times, perhaps because of the mediocre witness or even counter-witness of too many Christians, many people today have lost hope – or perhaps they never had it in the first place,” he said.

He noted that politics and ideologies are “peddling an ersatz or false hope” with which many try to replace religion. However, “A world without God is a world without hope; without hope, there is no future,” he said. “When the Word became flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary, hope was born — for Jesus, who came into the world to save it, is the hope of the world.”

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston marked the end of the Jubilee Year with Masses celebrated by Archbishop Joe S. Vásquez and Auxiliary Bishop Italo Dell’Oro at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston and St. Mary Cathedral Basilica in Galveston.

In his homily, Archbishop Vásquez quoted Pope Leo, who Dec. 20 said that “the hope this year has given us does not end.”

In Los Angeles, Archbishop José H. Gomez encouraged people to foster hope in their families, tying the Jubilee theme to the liturgical feast, which celebrated the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

“Jesus is our hope,” Archbishop Gomez said. “In the child who comes to us in the silence of the holy night, we are given the power to become children of God, sons and daughters of God. And when we reflect on the story of Christmas, we notice that when the Magi and the shepherds go off in search of Jesus, they find Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in the manger. They find Jesus in the heart of his human family. And my dear brothers and sisters, God wants us to find Jesus in our own families. … And love is what makes our families holy.”

In St. Paul, Archbishop Hebda also emphasized that God calls the faithful to form their faith in the context of family, with Jesus, Mary and Joseph as examples.

“The hope, brothers and sisters, is that throughout this year we’ve had the opportunity to really engage in conversion, to come before the Lord, to recognize our sinfulness, to recognize our neediness, and to seek the Lord’s extraordinary mercy,” he said, adding, “A Holy Year is always a time of extraordinary grace.”

ROME (CNS) – The path to conversion, the door to God’s mercy and the call to live in Christian hope all continue beyond the Jubilee Year, said the three cardinals who closed the Holy Doors at three major basilicas in Rome.

On the feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 6, Pope Leo will solemnly close the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, formally concluding the Holy Year 2025, which Pope Francis opened on Christmas Eve 2024. But diocesan and other local celebrations of the Jubilee concluded Dec. 28.

Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, archpriest of Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major, presided over the rite of closing the basilica’s Holy Door at dusk Dec. 25 before celebrating a special Mass. Cardinal Baldassare Reina, papal vicar of Rome and archpriest of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, did the same there Dec. 27. And U.S. Cardinal James M. Harvey, archpriest of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, presided over the closing of its Holy Door and the celebration of Mass Dec. 28.

The Holy Doors are bricked up between Jubilee Years, which usually occur every 25 years. Pope Leo has indicated, however, that an extraordinary Holy Year will be celebrated in 2033, to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

“What is closing is not divine grace, but a special time of the church, and what remains open forever is the heart of the merciful God,” Cardinal Makrickas said in his homily Dec. 25. While the Holy Door is closed, “the door that truly matters remains that of our heart: it opens when it listens to the word of God, it widens when it welcomes our brother or sister, it is strengthened when it forgives and asks for forgiveness,” he said.

“In this basilica, precisely during this Holy Year, we have been granted the grace of a very special task: to safeguard a memory that becomes prophecy,” he said, drawing attention to the late Pope Francis, who is buried at St. Mary Major “and honored by thousands of faithful every day.”

According to SIR, the news agency of the Italian bishops’ conference, an estimated 20 million pilgrims passed through the Holy Door at the basilica in the past year.

Hope, the theme of the Jubilee Year, “moved the countless pilgrims who left on our roads the footprints of steps weighed down by the burdens pressing upon their hearts,” Cardinal Reina told people during the Mass at St. John Lateran. “They passed through the Holy Door in order to find the One they were seeking. The door of our cathedral bears the imprints of the caresses of all those who passed through it in search of mercy.”

Though the Holy Door is closed, he said, “we know that the Risen One passes through closed doors and never tires of knocking on our closed doors, in order to offer and to find mercy. Yes, to find it — because he too seeks it.”

“Indeed, he has told us of the final surprise: that in the end we will be judged on love, on mercy, on the glass of water given to the thirsty; on the morsel of bread to the hungry; on closeness to those who are imprisoned or ill; on clothing the naked; on welcoming the stranger,” Cardinal Reina said.

At St. Paul Outside the Walls, the burial place of the Apostle Paul, Cardinal Harvey noted that the Jubilee’s theme, “Hope does not disappoint,” was taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. “It is not only a motto, but is most of all a profession of faith,” the cardinal said.

“In a world marked by war, crises, injustices and confusion, the church wanted to reaffirm that Christian hope is far different from trying to flee history,” he said; rather, “it is expressed in the ability to pass through it with one’s gaze fixed on Christ.”

The Holy Door is not simply a material passageway, Cardinal Harvey said, “it is a spiritual threshold, a call to each one of us to leave behind that which weighs on our hearts to enter the space of mercy. Crossing it means recognizing that salvation flows from humbly entrusting ourselves to the only One who can give us fullness of life.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – In a year that brought both a new U.S. president and a new pope, the issue of immigration emerged as a flashpoint between them and as a key issue for the U.S. church.

President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second, nonconsecutive term in the White House Jan. 20, becoming the nation’s 47th president four years after he left office as its 45th. In his second inaugural address, Trump said he would begin “the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have increased since then. However, as the Trump administration seeks to meet a goal of 3,000 such arrests per day, many of the individuals impacted have never been charged with a crime, arrest data shows.

On May 8, Pope Leo XIV was elected pontiff following the death of Pope Francis on April 20.

Ever since, Pope Leo has navigated the immigration issue “very effectively, I think,” Kenneth Craycraft, a professor of moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology in Cincinnati and author of “Citizens Yet Strangers: Living Authentically Catholic in a Divided America,” told OSV News.

“He has condemned the hateful rhetoric and lack of due process for immigrants, while also defending the rights of nations to control their borders. His statements have been careful, circumspect and wise,” Craycraft said.

John White, a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, concurred, telling OSV News Pope Leo is “adhering to the Gospel message.”

“I think that he is a very careful man. He’s a very deliberate man,” White said of the pontiff’s approach. “I think one of the things that is so interesting here is that Pope Leo has both South American roots, but also American roots; he speaks perfect English, obviously, and directs that message toward American Catholics, which I think is important.”

In November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a “special pastoral message on immigration,” voicing “our concern here for immigrants” at their annual fall plenary assembly in Baltimore.

The statement came as a growing number of bishops acknowledged that some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies risk presenting the church with both practical challenges in administering pastoral care and charitable endeavors, as well as religious liberty challenges.

At least one member of the Trump administration, “border czar” Tom Homan, called the U.S. Catholic bishops “wrong” in comments to reporters at the White House Nov. 14. “The Catholic Church is wrong,” he said. “I’m a lifelong Catholic, but I’m saying it not only as a border czar, but I’m also saying this as a Catholic, I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church.”

The bishops’ message marked the first such message by the U.S. bishops in over 12 years, coming after a 2013 response to the federal government’s contraceptive mandate. Pope Leo praised the message, telling reporters, “I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.”

White cited dispensations from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass for the faithful if they fear for their well-being in San Bernardino, California, amid immigration enforcement raids as among “one of the biggest stories and through lines of the year” for the U.S. church.

Trump’s return to the White House was marked by a slew of executive orders in addition to his birthright citizenship order, such as one withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate, another to expand the use of the federal death penalty, and another directing the U.S. government to only recognize two sexes, male and female.

On July 4, Trump signed “the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” a reconciliation bill enacting much of his legislative agenda on taxes and immigration. Catholic leaders alternately praised and criticized various provisions in the legislation, with some arguing its cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would harm the poorest families, while others pointed to a provision stripping Medicaid funding from entities that perform abortion – such as Planned Parenthood – for one year. However, as of the beginning of December, that provision remained blocked by a federal judge.

Craycraft argued, “It’s been a very disappointing and disconcerting first year” of the second Trump administration.

“The president’s erratic behavior, name-calling, and Truth Social rants indicate a person who is neither psychologically nor morally fit for the most important political office in the world,” he said. “Many Catholics were hoping that holding their noses and voting for him would yield some affirmative pro-life policies and measures. But the President endorses IVF, surrogacy and mifepristone, all very much in conflict with Catholic moral theology.”

The Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a new generic form of mifepristone – a pill commonly, but not exclusively, used for early abortion – was met with pushback from pro-life groups who argued that the administration should review the safety of the original drug instead.

The Trump administration also moved to formally dissolve the U.S. Agency for International Development and move a small number of its remaining functions under the purview of the State Department. Cuts to funding for the government’s now-shuttered humanitarian aid agency in countries all over the globe included funding for efforts by Catholic and other faith-based humanitarian groups such as Catholic Relief Services, the overseas charitable arm of the Catholic Church in the U.S.

The issue of political violence was another that colored 2025. Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA was killed Sept. 10 during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem. After his death, Kirk received praise from his allies in conservative politics for his willingness to debate and his advocacy for their cause. However, in discussions about his legacy, his critics also pointed to his controversial political rhetoric on subjects including race, persons experiencing same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, and immigrants.

“The assassination of Charlie Kirk has contributed to the further decline in American political discourse,” Craycraft said, adding, “It’s a very sad episode in American public life.”

The targeted killings of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, and the firebombing of the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, which is being investigated as the attempted murder of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, were among other instances of political violence.

In a message released in October, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services — who, until the U.S. bishop’s plenary in November, was the president of USCCB — urged every American to “reflect on the value of every human life, see Christ in each person, even those whose politics you oppose.”

After Pope Leo released his first apostolic exhortation, “Dilexi Te” (“I have loved you”), about love and care for the poor on Oct. 9, Archbishop Broglio issued a statement at the time urging the faithful to engage the document “on the challenges we face with contemporary migration,” and said Pope Leo “encourages us to respond with four actions: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. This is a sharp contrast to the culture of fear being imposed upon our sisters and brothers in Christ.”

(OSV News) – Life issues are perennially critical to the robust public witness of the Catholic Church, but 2025 nonetheless proved a particularly eventful year across a wide spectrum of related concerns.

The year opened with the annual National Prayer Vigil for Life, where worshippers praised and thanked God “for the gift of human life in all its forms and at every stage” and ended with a new coalition of more than 50 organizations pledging to end the death penalty in the United States once and for all.

Remarks by Pope Leo XIV in an impromptu Sept. 30 Castel Gandolfo press scrum demonstrated the expanse – and continuity – of the life issues of concern to the church.

The pope, who shortly after being elected the successor to Pope Francis reaffirmed the church’s teaching against abortion, responded to a media question concerning the Chicago Archdiocese’s plans to give an immigration advocacy award to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a Catholic who supports keeping abortion legal, over the objections of pro-lifers. (Durbin ultimately declined to accept the award.)

“Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion but says I’m in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” the pontiff remarked. “So someone who says that ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life. … Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear.”

On the same day as the pope’s remarks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced approval of a new generic form of mifepristone — a pill commonly, but not exclusively, used for early abortion — marking the second time a Trump administration has permitted a generic form of mifepristone.

“It is shockingly inconsistent that the FDA approved a generic for mifepristone, while at the same time reviewing the effects of this lethal drug,” Kat Talalas, assistant director of communications in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, told OSV News on Dec. 3.

On Dec. 9, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called for FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to be fired, arguing that Makary has “slow-walked a promised safety study of women’s real-world experiences taking abortion drugs.” The White House rejected that claim and the call for his firing.

Pro-life groups and politicians characterized the move as an abandonment of pro-life principles, concerns that were reinforced on Oct. 16 when President Donald Trump announced a policy proposal to increase access to in vitro fertilization.

Trump made campaign trail promises to expand IVF, an action the Catholic Church and other experts warn will fuel large-scale destruction of embryonic human life while doing little to increase the nation’s overall birth rate. The U.S bishops expressed concern on Oct. 17, saying that while reproductive technologies such as IVF can be “well intended” to assist infertile couples, they nonetheless “strongly reject” efforts to promote IVF.

Other family life matters – such as health insurance, cash support for parents and food assistance benefits, also known as SNAP – also grabbed headlines in 2025.

Affordable Care Act subsidies – which would cost an estimated $350 billion over the next decade, if extended – cover some 22 million Americans. Set to expire Dec. 31, their absence will result in estimated average health insurance premium increases of 26%, with a congressionally approved extension far from certain.

As a result, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted 4.2 million more Americans will go without coverage, while critics point to enrollment fraud and the benefit to insurance companies instead of patients.

The complications of substituting direct subsidies for ACA exchange assistance are a point for current debate, but the U.S. Catholic bishops addressed the need for health care reform as early as 1993 in “A Framework for Comprehensive Health Reform,” insisting “every person has a right to adequate health care.”

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act – signed into law July 4 – is expected to challenge family finances in several ways. Estimated to cut $930 billion from Medicaid and $285 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, it also increases the national debt on paper by $3.4 trillion.

After the bill’s passage, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services – then president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – issued a statement citing what he described as “unconscionable cuts to health care and food assistance, tax cuts that increase inequality, immigration provisions that harm families and children, and cuts to programs that protect God’s creation.”

Twenty U.S. Catholic bishops signed onto an interfaith effort opposing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would enact key provisions of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda on taxes and immigration, calling it a “moral failure.”

Republicans have, however, pointed to monetary gains for families. A Dec. 3 House Ways and Means Committee press release noted, “Families are benefiting from a slew of tax cuts, including a bigger child tax credit, a larger standard deduction, making the lower 2017 tax rates permanent and President Trump’s additional tax relief, like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security.”

A lesser-known provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, dubbed “Trump Accounts,” gives every American newborn $1,000 if parents open a tax-deferred investment account. Private firms invest the money — and parents can make annual pretax contributions up to $2,500 — which can be accessed once a child turns 18. To qualify for an account, a baby must be a U.S. citizen, have a Social Security number and be born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.

Families coast-to-coast are also being impacted by amplified immigration enforcement policies, including raids, arrests and deportations in multiple cities.

As OSV News reported in July, three Florida immigration detention sites were accused of denying timely medical care (potentially resulting in deaths), having freezing and overcrowded cells with no bedding or hygiene access, and of carrying out degrading treatment — including beatings, shackling and isolation, with detainees being forced to eat with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

“If the administration succeeds in deporting the numbers of people it says it wants to deport, it will not only change the church in America. It will change America,” Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami told OSV News on Nov. 4.

On July 20, Archbishop Wenski and some 25 Knights of Columbus rode their motorcycles to pray a rosary at the entrance of Alligator Alcatraz, the controversial migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades.

On Nov. 12, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly to issue a rare group statement voicing “our concern here for immigrants” at their annual fall plenary assembly in Baltimore.

A day later, on the feast of the patron saint of immigrants St. Frances Xavier Cabrini – and a day after the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a special pastoral message on immigration – a coalition of Catholic organizations held a second wave of prayer vigils across the country Nov. 13 for what organizers called “a national day of public witness for our immigrant brothers and sisters.”

Assisted suicide and the death penalty also continued to make their mark in 2025, with both the New York Assembly and Senate passing the Medical Aid in Dying Act, a controversial bill now awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul ‘s signature.

The Albany-based New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide organized four vigils on Dec. 3 and 4 to urge Hochul to veto a measure its opponents consider “a very dangerous bill.”

On Dec. 12, Illinois became the 12th state, along with the District of Columbia, to legalize assisted suicide, amid outcry among the state’s Catholic bishops and other pro-life and disability advocates. Gov. JB Pritzker signed SB 1950 into law, allowing terminally ill adults who are Illinois residents to end their lives through self-administered lethal drugs prescribed by a physician.

As of Dec. 15, 46 prisoners have been executed in 11 U.S. states, a sharp increase over 25 executions in 2024. According to The Death Penalty Information Center, there are two more executions scheduled for 2025. The center notes, “For every 8.2 people executed in the United States in the modern era of the death penalty, one person on death row has been exonerated.”

On Dec. 3, a new coalition of more than 50 organizations launched the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Laura Porter, the campaign’s director, said the coalition comes at “a critical juncture in our country’s history with the death penalty, with executions on the rise and new experimental execution methods being promoted in a handful of states despite growing opposition to the death penalty.”

“It is more important than ever,” said Porter in a statement, “that we shine a light on capital punishment’s failures, and come together to show growing bipartisan support for ending executions.”