As both sides continue to exchange firepower, Catholic theologians who spoke with EWTN News are cautioning President Donald Trump to maintain moral clarity in his decisions and conduct by complying with the long-standing Catholic tradition of just war doctrine.

“[Following just war doctrine is] not just important, but imperative,” said Joseph Capizzi, dean and ordinary professor of moral theology and ethics at The Catholic University of America.

“Governments must consider these principles of just war because they are first and better understood as principles of good governance, or statecraft,” he said.

For a war to be justified, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it must be waged to fight against a grave evil, the damage caused by waging the war cannot be graver than the evil it is meant to eliminate, there must be a serious prospect of success, and all alternatives to war must have already been tried.

Taylor Patrick O’Neill, theology professor at Thomas Aquinas College, told EWTN News that every condition must be present for a war to be just. He said a war is sinful “if you fail to meet a single one of those criteria.”

Just cause and last resort

Trump’s justification is based on claims that the regime is seeking a nuclear weapon through its uranium enrichment program.

Last year in June, Trump ordered the bombing of Iran’s Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant and asserted at the time that Iran was “a few weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.” Officials gave conflicting reports about the success of the strike and how far back it set Iran’s nuclear program, ranging from months to years.

Trump’s claims appeared to conflict with testimony three months earlier from Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, who said the intelligence community assessment is that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had not even authorized a nuclear weapons program.

Trump revived discussions with Iran in January 2026 with the same allegations and demanded Iran enter a deal in which it would end or reduce uranium enrichment and scale back its ballistic missiles program.

In a Feb. 27 interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi — a mediator for the negotiations — said Iran agreed to many concessions. The country agreed to reduce uranium enrichment and reduce its stockpile to a level at which Iran could “never, ever have [the] nuclear material that will create a bomb” and it would submit to inspections.

Al Busaidi said he believed “the peace deal is within our reach,” but less than a day later, Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, which began the military attacks on Iran. Trump said on March 3: “It was my opinion that they were going to attack first.”

O’Neill told EWTN News that for a war to be justified, it needs just cause and a right intention, meaning that a war is not justified by a just cause if “really your intention for going into war is something else.”

He said Catholics have a right to “question whether or not just cause is present” and “question whether or not right intention is present.” He said there would need to be an “imminent” threat, such as if there is “some weapon or [if] some type of military action is currently being planned and will be executed.”

O’Neill said it’s often difficult for the general public to know whether the cause is legitimate or whether it truly is the last resort: “We don’t know what options have been tried previously.” He said there could be information unavailable to the public that’s “part of the moral calculus.”

Capizzi said that when considering whether military action truly was the last resort, it should be “measured in terms of the gravity of the threat” and the impact of failing “to decrease or end that threat.”

He said a more severe gravity of a threat could accelerate the timeline toward “a just use of force.”

Proportionate force and an end goal

Trump addressed the nation on March 2 to thank the U.S. military for killing Iranian military leadership and to promise an escalation in strikes.

He said the mission could last four to five weeks but did not say who would control the country when the mission is complete. Previously, he said he may work with new leadership within the regime but also urged Iranians to revolt and take control over the country.

To determine whether the damage caused by the war will be graver than the evil it is meant to alleviate, Capizzi said the goal must be “peace … measured by justice and order and tied to actual, achievable political outcomes.” He said “merely to decapitate the head of a regime is not a sufficient political outcome, as it creates political disorder that is very difficult to control.”

O’Neill said there “should have to be some kind of plan and a real expectation that this plan is going to be successful” to make the determination. He said the criteria for just war cannot be met if “it’s not very clear what the goal is.”

“There would have to be some sort of plan and that plan would have to be based off of intelligence [assessments] and very credible information as far as what happens to Iran after these strikes,” he said.

O’Neill said the moral calculation would also have to consider the results of prior interventions in the Middle East, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.

He said if previous plans “failed to be brought to fruition … then of course you’d have to look at that in any regime changes going forward” when trying to meet the just war criteria of success being likely and for Iran’s situation being better when the mission is complete.

Iran’s death toll is at least 1,230, according to Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs and reported by state-run media. The deaths include Khamenei and dozens of military and government officials as well as civilians. More than 160 civilians were killed by a strike that hit a girls’ elementary school in Minab, according to Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon, launched in response to Hezbollah attacks, killed 72 people based on numbers from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, according to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International. Six members of the U.S. military have been killed, according to U.S. Central Command. At least 12 people have been killed in Israel, according to the Israeli-based Ynet News. Another 11 people were killed in other Arab states, according to the Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

These death totals are as of the morning of March 5.

The report, “In 25-Country Survey, Americans Especially Likely To View Fellow Citizens as Morally Bad,” explores how adults in 25 countries rate the morality of others in their nation. It also examines if people consider different behaviors to be morally wrong including drinking alcohol, gambling, having extramarital affairs, using marijuana, viewing pornography, having abortions, homosexuality, getting divorces, and using contraceptives.

The research was based on data from participants in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Surveys conducted outside the U.S. were based on nationally representative surveys of 28,333 adults conducted from Jan. 8 to April 26, 2025. In the U.S., Pew surveyed 3,605 adults who are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) from March 24–30, 2025.

The report also includes some findings from a separate ATP survey of 8,937 U.S. adults conducted from May 5–11, 2025. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 3,605 respondents is plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

According to the research, 47% of U.S. adults reported Americans have “very good” or “somewhat good” morals and ethics, which was the lowest of all countries. The majority of adults in Canada and Indonesia (92%) said the same of the people in their countries.

Most and least accepted behaviors across the globe

Getting a divorce and the use of contraception were found to be the most widely accepted of the nine behaviors.

Only 12% of adults overall said getting a divorce is morally wrong, and 8% said using contraceptives is. The only countries with a slight majority that believe getting a divorce is morally unacceptable are India with 65% holding this view and Nigeria with 55%.

Of the nine behaviors Pew asked participants about, married people having affairs had the strongest overall disapproval. Across the 25 countries, a median of 77% of adults said married people having affairs is morally unacceptable, with at least half of adults in every country holding this view.

U.S. adults were among those to be most likely to condemn extramarital affairs as immoral. Nine in 10 Americans said having an affair is morally wrong, similar to the share of people in Indonesia and in Turkey (92%) who believe the same.

Adults in Germany (55%) and France (53%) are among the least likely to believe having an affair is morally unacceptable.

Behaviors with least international consensus

The report found that for most behaviors asked about, there is not an international consensus if they are morally acceptable or not.

In the Latin American and African countries surveyed, half or more of adults said they believe abortions are morally unacceptable, but in most European countries, the vast majority of adults view abortions as either morally acceptable or not a moral issue at all. In the U.S., the group was fairly split with 47% reporting it is morally unacceptable to have an abortion.

In the U.S., adults are the most accepting of using marijuana and gambling. Only 23% of Americans said using marijuana is morally unacceptable, and 29% said the same in regard to gambling. In most other countries surveyed, more than 40% of adults said they consider gambling and marijuana use to be morally wrong.

In 10 countries, a majority said gambling is morally wrong, including 89% in Indonesia and 71% in Italy. In Australia, 25% said gambling is morally acceptable, and 43% do not see gambling as a moral issue.

In the U.S., 39% of adults reported homosexuality is morally wrong, which was found to be much more than those who hold the same belief in Germany (5%) or Sweden (5%). In other nations including Indonesia (93%) and Nigeria (96%), the majority reported it is morally wrong.

In regard to drinking alcohol, the majority of adults in Indonesia (83%) reported it is a morally unacceptable act. In contrast, only 7% of adults in Australia and Sweden reported the same. In the U.S., a small share of 16% said it is morally unacceptable.

What factors affect views of behaviors?

According to the report, a number of factors seem to affect how adults view the morality of behaviors including political party, religion, and gender.

Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to rate fellow Americans as morally and ethically bad (60% vs. 46%).

Pew examined citizens’ stances based on religious belief and found those who said religion is very important in their lives were more likely to view the behaviors as morally wrong.

In 13 of the 25 countries surveyed, the research looked specifically at the differences between Protestants and Catholics. The report detailed that Protestants are typically more likely than Catholics in the same country to believe homosexuality is wrong. In the U.S., 59% of Protestants reported homosexuality is morally wrong, while 34% of Catholics did.

There is a large variation between Christians in different countries. The majority of Christians surveyed in Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. said having an abortion is morally wrong, but across Europe, the share of Christians who hold this view ranges from 40% in Spain to 7% in Sweden.

Gender is also a factor in how people view moral behaviors. Women tend to be more likely than men to believe some behaviors are morally unacceptable. In nearly every country surveyed, women were more likely than men to say that viewing pornography is wrong. In contrast, men were more likely than women to report homosexuality is morally unacceptable.

Overall, older adults were more likely than younger adults to report the behaviors are morally unacceptable. This is the case with using marijuana in 19 of the 25 surveyed countries. In Germany, adults ages 40 and older are twice as likely as younger adults to believe marijuana use is morally wrong, with 30% of older adults holding this belief and 15% of younger adults.

Holtz’s death was announced by his family through a statement via the athletics department at Notre Dame. The retired coach had entered hospice shortly before his death.

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The coach “is remembered for his enduring values of faith, family, service, and
an unwavering belief in the potential of others,” his family said.

Holtz was preceded in death by his wife, Beth, who passed away in 2020. The two had been married for 59 years at the time of her death. Both are survived by four children.

A fixture in college sports for decades, Holtz began his head coaching career in 1969 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He subsequently served as coach at North Carolina State and the University of Arkansas as well as a stint at the University of Minnesota; he also coached the New York Jets briefly in 1976.

His most memorable coaching appointment came at the University of Notre Dame, which he joined in 1986. He would go on to lead the team to an undefeated national championship in 1989, beating the West Virginia Mountaineers 34-21 at that year’s Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona.

After a brief retirement and a stint as a commentator for CBS Sports, Holtz took up the head coach position at the University of South Carolina in 1999, where he had previously served as an assistant coach in 1966.

He retired from that final role in 2004; his final game was marked by the infamous Clemson-South Carolina football brawl, with Holtz describing it as a “heck of a note” that his last match would be remembered for the fight.

In his later years he appeared in various commentary roles on a variety of ESPN programs. One of his four children is Skip Holtz, who has served as head coach at numerous collegiate football teams.

On Dec. 3, 2020, Holtz was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Donald Trump. The White House at the time described Holtz as “one of the greatest football coaches of all time” as well as “a philanthropist, author, and true American patriot.”

Trump himself while awarding the medal described Holtz as a “great gentleman” and a “great man.” The president said he was amazed at learning about Holtz’s coaching record ahead of the ceremony.

“When we were researching this out, I knew he was supposed to be a good coach, but I didn’t know how good he was, because these stats are very amazing,” the president admitted.

Known in part for his conservative politics, Holtz at that ceremony described Trump as “the greatest president during my lifetime.”

“I get this award; I accept it humbly,” he said. “And you don’t go in life saying ‘I want to win this award.’ You just wake up one day and it happens.”

A lifelong Catholic, Holtz was educated by the Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School in East Liverpool, Ohio. In 2012 he told the National Catholic Register, the sister news partner of EWTN News, that the nuns “influenced my life tremendously.”

“This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability,” he said.

Holtz told the Register that he had prayed to God to be made a great athlete, only to have been made a coach instead.

“God does answer your prayers, but it’s not always in the way you expect,” he said. “God knows what’s best for us, though, so there’s no need to worry when things don’t go how we originally wanted them to go.”

He professed that the Catholic Church is “infallible” on religious principles regarding faith and morals. He said he “[tried] to follow the Catholic teachings [as that’s] what brings meaning and lasting happiness to life.” He said, however, that Church leaders should be “[held] accountable for their choices.”

In multiple cases he stressed fidelity to Christ above all, such as during an interview with Southwest Michigan Catholic when he said: “I don’t go to church to honor the pope; I don’t go to church to honor the priest who might have made some mistakes; I go to church to honor Jesus Christ.”

He told the publication he and his family attended Mass “every Sunday,” regardless if football was in season or not.

After Pope Leo XIV’s election in 2025, Holtz called on Catholics to “pray for [Leo], respect him and support him.”

“Pope Leo, I’ll be praying for you. God bless,” he said at the time.

In November 2025, meanwhile, he delivered what he said was his “final public speech,” speaking at the America First Policy Institute, where he served as chair of the 1776 initiative.

“[M]y commitment to the American dream has never wavered and never will,” he said at the time. “We must protect what makes America exceptional.”

“We cannot let God down; we must always do what’s right,” he said.

USCIRF also said the Trump administration’s decision to suspend the refugee program and cap the refugee ceiling at 7,500 is hampering refugees fleeing the most egregious forms of religious persecution.

The State Department’s noncompliance with the law’s requirements has allowed a lapse in punitive measures for religious freedom violators, the commission said.

“As the Trump administration failed to release the IRF report and issue comprehensive designations by December 2025, any presidential action taken as a result of these designations terminates by the end of 2025 unless expressly reauthorized by law,” USCRIF said in its March 4 annual report, which contained recommendations for the State Department to advance religious freedom around the world including increasing the ceiling on refugee admissions.

Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the State Department is required to release an annual report on international religious freedom conditions by May 1 each year. The ambassador at large for international religious freedom is required to assist the State Department in assembling the IRF report but the position remains vacant. The Republican-led Senate did not confirm the Trump administration’s nominee for the position, Mark Walker, before the end of 2025.

The commission recommended the Trump administration promptly appoint an ambassador at large for international religious freedom and to fill vacant key roles related to international religious freedom.

A State Department spokesperson told EWTN News: “The department is committed to submitting reports to Congress. IRF Act designations do not expire, and previous Country of Particular Concern, Special Watch List, and Entity of Particular Concern designations remain in effect.”

“As Secretary Rubio has said, there is no greater friend to religious freedom than the United States,” the spokesperson said. “The American First foreign policy agenda unapologetically promotes religious freedom as a universal human right and a fundamental freedom.”

Refugees ‘in immediate need’

USCIRF said the State Department’s suspension of foreign aid “left hundreds of victims of religious persecution receiving support in immediate need of lifesaving assistance in countries such as Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Nigeria, and Vietnam.” The commission recommended the State Department prioritize funding for foreign assistance programs that promote religious freedom.

The report said U.S. funding cuts “contributed to 11.6 million refugees, including many fleeing religious persecution, losing access to humanitarian assistance.”

USCIRF said the Trump administration’s decision to suspend the refugee program and cap the refugee ceiling at 7,500 “leaves little room to resettle refugees fleeing the most egregious forms of religious persecution.” USCIRF said 130,000 conditionally approved refugees, including about 15,000 registered Iranian Christians, remain in limbo as a result.

The commission recommended the State Department increase the admissions ceiling for refugees, resume resettlement programs, and reestablish full asylum access for individuals fleeing religious persecution.

USCIRF urged the State Department to implement policy regarding visa restrictions on religious freedom violators, especially those originating from countries with special watch list and country-of-particular-concern (CPC) designations.

2026 USCIRF recommendations

The commission’s report recommended the State Department designate five new countries as CPCs: Syria, Afghanistan, India, Libya, and Vietnam, and to  maintain the CPC designations of the 12 countries that were last designated in 2023, as well as Nigeria which was redesignated in 2025.

USCIRF recommended that Algeria and Azerbaijan maintain their status on the special watch list, and to add nine countries to the list, including Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Qatar, and Uzbekistan.

The commission separately announced its recommendation for Turkey to be on the special watch list in February, as it had previously called for in 2025. The recommendation follows moves by the European Parliament and European Court of Human Rights in the past month to censure Turkey over its targeting of Christians.

This story was updated on Thursday, March 5, 2026, at 12:30 p.m. ET to include a statement from the State Department. It was corrected on Thursday, March 5, 2026, at 2 p.m. ET to clarify Nigeriaʼs redesignation.

Speaking on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in January 2025, Vance had suggested that the bishops who were objecting to aggressive immigration enforcement by the Trump administration should consider whether they were “worried about their bottom line.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has received tens of millions of dollars in government grants for its refugee resettlement program but maintains that those grants did not cover the total cost of the program.

In February Cardinal Timothy Dolan told EWTN News’ Mark Irons that Vance had “apologized” for the remarks. In a March 4 interview with the Washington Post, Vance didn’t deny apologizing, though according to the paper he “didn’t recall exactly what he said” to the prelate.

“I’m not saying he’s lying, but I mean, look, sometimes I say things too harshly. I say things too directly,” Vance told the newspaper.

The vice president admitted he “could have made that comment more carefully without going too hard” on the U.S. bishops.

He told the Post that he spoke to Dolan about the need to “be careful your financial interests and the immigration issue don’t actually cloud your judgment.” Vance did not immediately reply to a request for comment from EWTN News on March 4.

‘I have a different job’

Vance told the Post that though he admires the Catholic Church’s “spirit” and “Christian charity,” he “[has] a different job” than Church leadership and is obligated “to make sure that the American people are as safe and prosperous as they can be.”

“And sometimes that means that possibly very good people that the Catholic Church are ministering to, I have to say, ‘Has that person come into our country legally?’” he told the paper. “And if not, should we try to do something to change that?”

The vice president said he tries to manage the “conflict” between the Church and the government “in a spirit of charity.”

In February Dolan told EWTN News that though he disagrees with some positions that Vance takes, “he’s a very good guy.”

“I enjoy him a lot,” Dolan said at the time. “I agree with a bunch of stuff that he talks about, you bet.”

The investigation, which began in 2019 and culminated in January when Neronha announced its completion, reveals what the prosecutor calls a “scourge of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in Rhode Island,” one that has “plagued [the] state for decades, if not longer.”

“Not until now has there been a comprehensive review of this painful chapter in our state’s history, with a view towards offering transparency, accountability, and systemic reforms,” the attorney general said.

The report, published on March 4, includes a review of diocesan child abuse allegations beginning decades ago as well as diocesan responses to those allegations, including “transferring accused clergy to new assignments” and the use of “spiritual retreats” and “sabbaticals” for priests accused of abuse.

The report identifies “75 clergy, including 61 diocesan priests and deacons, 13 religious order members, and one extern priest” it says have been credibly accused of abuse.

The list includes what the attorney general’s office said were 20 individuals whom the diocese “failed to publicly identify” prior to the report’s publication.

‘Untested perspectives’

In a largely blistering response to the report, the Diocese of Providence acknowledged that “any abuse of children is an abhorrent sin and a terrible crime” and that the diocese committed “serious missteps” in its past response to abuse allegations.

Yet the diocese argued that the report “does not have the force of law but rather offers untested perspectives of the attorney general” and that the document “reveals no evidence of recent child sexual abuse by clergy, no credible accusations against those in ministry today, and no instances of the diocese’s failure to meet its legal reporting obligations.”

The diocese’s response is notable among Church communications regarding abuse reports. Many U.S. diocesan responses to such reports are usually brief, often contrite, and noncontroversial, issued mostly to acknowledge the report and apologize for past abuse.

The Providence Diocese, however, sharply criticized the attorney general’s investigation and conclusions as it offered a lengthy rundown of the ways in which the diocese itself has moved to address abuse allegations over the last few decades.

Noting the “additional names” identified by the diocese as credibly accused, the statement argued that “were these [individuals] still living, their average age would be over 104 years old.”

“This statistic alone confirms that none of these individuals pose a present-day threat to safe environments,” the diocese said, arguing further that many of the new allegations involved individuals “not under the direct jurisdiction of the bishop of Providence.”

The diocese “willingly endured six and a half years of persistent requests for over 75 years of material,” the statement said, arguing that the inquiry “did not result from legal compulsion, criminal or civil administrative proceedings, or coercion by governmental power.”

The attorney general’s office presents the history of abuse in the diocese “in ways that might lead the reader to conclude these issues are an ongoing diocesan problem or that these are new revelations,” the diocese said. “They are not.”

Perhaps most notably, the diocese alleged in its statement that the report is meant to be used as a political tool more than a spotlight for abusive clergy and a call for more safety measures.

“[T]he report and the timing of its release is intended to sway legislative debate,” the diocese said, arguing that its intent is “to bolster proposed and previously-rejected legislation that seeks to suspend long-standing statute of limitations laws for civil suits.”

In the report itself, Nerhona did call for “further necessary and lasting change” and “targeted legislative reforms” including “expanding the criminal statute of limitations for second-degree sexual assault” and “expanding the civil statute of limitations for bringing claims arising from child sexual abuse against institutional defendants.”

Such measures “are crucial to protecting the safety of our children and expanding legal accountability for perpetrators and their enablers,” the prosecutor said.

It its statement, meanwhile, the diocese called attention to what it said were “the efforts of thousands of people who have stood together and responded effectively” to the crisis of abuse in the state.

“That cooperation and singular focus have been the reality in the Diocese of Providence for decades, and those accomplishments should be recognized,” the diocese argued.

The Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island’s lone Catholic diocese, oversees what is by one metric the most Catholic state in the U.S.: Approximately 40% of Rhode Island residents are Catholic, or nearly 450,000 people.

Its current prelate is Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, appointed to the post in April 2025 by Pope Francis just weeks before the pontiff passed away.

“I had never heard of the woman in my life, but I read this article right there on the spot and I thought, ‘Wow, she was something. How did I miss her all this time,’” McGrath told EWTN News.

“Music was at the very heart of her whole ministry,” he added. “And so, that struck me too as an artist, that she was using her artistic gifts to advance her spirit.”

One year later, McGrath welcomed a couple of brothers into his home who were preparing to take their final vows. Together they watched a video on Bowman that left him “energized and inspired.”

“The next morning, I got up and started painting and I didn’t stop for two weeks,” he said. “And in two weeks’ time I had nine paintings in a style very different from anything I had ever done before … It was like I was touching things that were already deep in me, you know, spiritually, but I didn’t have access to.”

Now McGrath has 47 paintings inspired by Bowman that have been packaged into boxes and sent to Rome for review to advance her cause for canonization.

The diocesan phase of Bowman’s cause for canonization was officially closed by the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, on Feb. 9. McGrath attended the Mass for this occasion, which was celebrated by Bishop Joseph Kopacz and held in the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in Jackson.

He called it a “truly wonderful event.”

Notable figures in attendance included three sisters from Bowman’s community; Meg Paulino, their community archivist; and Emanuele Spedicato, the postulator for her cause for canonization.

Reflecting on his paintings, McGrath said one stands out among the rest: a painting titled “This Little Light of Mine.” A painting from his first nine paintings inspired by Bowman — which he calls “the spirituals” — this painting depicts Bowman in a green habit holding a monstrance up in the air. He explained that it connects the classic song with “the light of Christ.”

McGrath shared that Bowman continues to provide Catholics with an important message today: “We’re all made in the image and likeness of God, and that’s got to be preeminent.”

Bowman, born Bertha Bowman in 1937 in Mississippi, was a trailblazing Catholic sister, educator, and evangelist. A member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, she converted to Catholicism as a child and later became one of the most compelling advocates for Black Catholic spirituality in the United States.

With a doctorate in English literature and a gift for storytelling, Bowman traveled the country speaking, singing, and teaching — urging the Church to embrace the cultural gifts of African American Catholics.

In 1989, despite battling cancer, Bowman addressed the U.S. bishops with a now-famous speech that blended gospel song, humor, and a prophetic call for unity. Her witness left a lasting impression, and in 2018 her cause for canonization was formally opened by the Diocese of Jackson, giving her the title “servant of God.”

The Photina Center for Catholic Counseling will offer in-person courses for the University of Mary’s Catholic Anthropology Certificate and limited courses in the master of science in counseling as well as professional development resources.

University of Mary President Monsignor James Shea said counseling should recognize “the spiritual element of our being.”

“The difficulty with modern, secular mental health training is that it often considers the human person in a very limited way, largely through an un-Christian lens, and increasingly through a lens that is openly hostile to the Christian understanding of the human person,” Shea told EWTN News.

“To have Catholic anthropology woven throughout our counseling formation is important for resetting that un-Christian lens,” he continued. “It allows therapists to see, truly, what the actual good is for our fellow human beings and thus truly to serve their well-being completely, protecting and affirming their essential dignity as one created in the image and likeness of God.”

This is not the first partnership between the Diocese of Phoenix and the University of Mary. The university recently began to provide courses at the newly-established Nazareth Seminary and also operates a satellite campus, Mary College, at Arizona State University.

“Something near and dear to Bishop [John] Dolan’s own heart and vision for the Diocese of Phoenix has been to provide better access to Catholic, mental health counseling services, something so desperately needed not only in Arizona but throughout the country,” Shea said.

Dolan, who has lost four family members to suicide, is known for his mental health advocacy.

“Catholic universities exist to serve the Church,” Shea said of the partnership.

The University of Mary and the Diocese of Phoenix will host an open house on March 29 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Diocese of Phoenix, 400 E. Monroe St., Phoenix.

Why Catholic therapy?

“Therapy, at its best, aims at providing for the well-being of the person,” Shea said. “If your vision of the human person does not factor in the truth that every person is a created being in the image and likeness of God, with inestimable dignity, then it will fail to provide for the ultimate well-being of the one receiving therapy.”

The center is named for St. Photina who, according to Eastern Christian tradition, was the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:4-42.

“The center draws inspiration from her encounter with Christ, which is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the New Testament,” read the University of Mary press release shared with EWTN News.

“In Jesus, she finds truth, healing, and courage for joyful witness,” the press release continued. “Photina means ‘light,’ embodying the center’s goal to illuminate paths of hope and healing for individuals, families, and communities.”

“If there’s no recognition that the spiritual element of our being flows in and out of the physical and mental elements of the human person, then it’s impossible to fully account for the therapeutic needs of the human person, or even how to best administer care,” Shea said.

“The students are some of the most devoted, conscientious, and hardworking I have had,” Brunner told EWTN News. “Every week that I go in the prison to teach, I come out feeling even more insightful than when I entered. I learn as much from the students about life as they do from me.”

Brunner, an assistant professor at University of St. Mary, a Catholic liberal arts university in Leavenworth, Kansas, is involved in the university’s prison education program.

About 100 students are enrolled across federal, state, and military correctional facilities in the university’s program. Though the university has worked in prisons for decades, the program recently received full accreditation, according to a Feb. 26 announcement.

“This is not an auxiliary initiative but a central expression of our Catholic identity,” program director Michelle Workman said.

“We approach prison education as authentic higher education rooted in rigor, dignity, and long-term formation,” Workman told EWTN News. “Our faculty teach the same curriculum, and our students meet the same expectations, as those enrolled on campus.”

As the university is sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Workman said that “our mission calls us to educate the whole person and to serve those on the margins.”

“Catholic social teaching affirms the inherent dignity of every human person and calls us to solidarity and the pursuit of the common good,” Workman said. “Incarcerated individuals are not defined solely by their past actions; they remain persons created in the image of God, capable of intellectual growth, moral reflection, and meaningful contribution.”

Another professor involved in the program, Michael Hill, told EWTN News: “We are called to serve the least of these; to care for the imprisoned.”

“When I look at many of my students, I know that, with only a few different choices or a few different contingencies, I might well be one of them,” said Hill, assistant professor of history and theology at the university.

“I had several great professors in my life who radically altered my trajectory, not by being great, but by simply being present,” he continued. “If I can help some of these men, in however small a way, then my life has been for something.”

When asked about the challenges of the work he does, Hill said they are “beyond count.”

“On a personal level, many of our students come from backgrounds that don’t celebrate academic success. Many wonder if they truly belong in college. All carry the scars of life that ultimately placed them in prison,” he said. “I’m not only a teacher to many of our students, I’m also an adviser, mentor, and counselor. Wearing so many hats is an ongoing challenge. But those challenges make the successes so much sweeter.”

Sometimes, unexpected challenges arise that are “more to do with the nature of prison itself,” Brunner added.

“Flexibility is the name of the game because we never know what to expect on any given day,” Brunner said. “We constantly have to pivot, whether it be because of lockdowns, rules that arise because of prison culture, or any other unexpected event.”

But the in-person element of education “adds a layer of humanity to the program that other modes of learning cannot,” Brunner observed.

“Sitting in a classroom with these men again allows them to feel human,” she said. “Being there in person with them shows the men that I believe in their ability to change and that I am not going to judge them for the mistakes they have made in the past.”

“Sadly, their time in my class is one of the few times in their lives when they can feel like ordinary humans — a time when they can forget their bad decisions and focus on making a better life for themselves, both in prison and out,” Brunner said.

Classes give students a reprieve from the daily life of prison, what Hill described as “a space to be men, not just inmates or [a] number.”

“Giving our students a time and place to simply be — away from the violence and politics — matters,” Hill said. “Giving them face-to-face responsibility and accountability, not in a hierarchical relationship of authority with the state or its representatives, matters.”

Workman said higher education improves outcomes after prison, including reducing the likelihood of re-offending.

“Education inside correctional facilities strengthens families, reduces the social and financial costs of re-incarceration, and contributes to safer communities,” Workman said.

“Research consistently demonstrates that participation in higher education during incarceration is associated with significantly lower recidivism rates and stronger post-release employment outcomes,” she continued.

“Education builds cognitive skills, strengthens decision-making capacity, and supports the development of pro-social identity,” Workman said.

Brunner often sees the men “realize that they have the ability to learn, grow, and make better decisions.”

“Watching this kind of transformation is life-changing for me as well,” Brunner said. “I often tell my students that just because they are imprisoned physically, they do not have to be imprisoned mentally or spiritually. That is a choice, and there is no better feeling than to see them choose freedom.”

“At its core, however, this work is about hope — about restoring the possibility that a person can grow intellectually, rebuild identity, and reenter society with purpose,” Workman said.

About a month after Hicks was installed as New York’s 11th archbishop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Feb. 6, SiriusXM announced he is hosting the show. The program takes over the time slot previously held by former archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who hosted “Conversations with Cardinal Dolan.”

Hicks will host the weekly program alongside Father Dave Dwyer, host of the daily call-in show “The Busted Halo Show” and executive director of Busted Halo Ministries. Dwyer also co-hosted the radio show with Dolan.

Hicks and Dwyer will discuss real-world issues, current events, and everyday life through a Catholic lens, according to a statement. The show will offer conversation rooted in Church teachings and lived pastoral experience. The program will highlight works of those fostering personal conversion and the transformation of society through evangelization, the statement said.

The show joins a number of other Catholic faith-based shows on the channel including “The Katie McGrady Show,” “Catholic Guy with Lino Rulli,” and “Frontiers of Faith.”

The show is set to air at 2 p.m. ET Tuesdays on channel 129 and will be available on demand on the SiriusXM app. An inaugural episode aired March 3, according to the Archdiocese of New York.

Archbishop Hicks

Hicks was named archbishop of New York by Pope Leo XIV on Dec. 18, 2025, and brings a perspective from decades of service and ministry. He graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 1989 with a philosophy degree and went on to receive master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees from the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois.

He was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Chicago on May 21, 1994. Prior to his appointment in New York, Hicks was appointed by Pope Francis on July 17, 2020, as bishop of Joliet, Illinois.

He has a history of ministerial experience in Latin America serving in El Salvador as the regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, a charity that serves orphans in Latin America. He previously served as vicar general of the Archdiocese of Chicago and auxiliary bishop of Chicago.

Hicks also serves on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations and as the USCCB liaison to the Association of Ongoing Formation of Priests and the National Association of Diaconate Directors.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced the annual collection for the fourth Sunday in Lent. It will benefit six Catholic agencies and offices that provide charitable services, which primarily focus on support for migrants domestically and relief abroad.

“The Church in the United States was built on ministry among immigrants,” Bishop Daniel H. Mueggenborg of Reno, Nevada, chair of the USCCB Committee on National Collection, said in a statement.

“We help all who are marginalized, including victims of war and disaster overseas,” he said. “The Catholic Relief Services Collection combines all these kinds of assistance. Our Lord tells us to love our neighbors — those we know, those we don’t, and those we think are very different from us. The Catholic Relief Services Collection is one way that we show that love. Today it is more vital than ever.”

Along with CRS, the collections will support the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), the USCCB Secretariat of Migration, the USCCB Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, the USCCB Secretariat of Justice and Peace, and the Holy Father’s Relief Fund.

According to the USCCB, the CRS funds support international development and relief efforts, which include those affected by war and disaster.

Funds for CLINIC help provide training and support for more than 400 community-based and Catholic immigration law providers in 49 states. Donations to the Secretariat of Migration will assist ministries for migrants and refugees, publish education resources, and promote policies that affirm their lives and dignity.

The Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church funds will support two initiatives. One focuses on pastoral ministry for migrant workers, travelers, and seafarers. The other focuses on pastoral needs for Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Funds for the Secretariat of Justice and Peace support advocacy for the poor in other countries, which includes work with government officials to end violent international conflicts abroad. The Holy Father’s Relief Fund provides aid to areas in crisis.

“Together, these agencies help victims of war and natural disaster, support sustainable economic development overseas, advocate for international peace and human rights, help refugees and immigrants in the United States to obtain legal support, offer pastoral support to a wide variety of people who migrate for work and build cross-cultural understanding,” Mueggenborg said.

The bishops said the Church received nearly $13.5 million from the collections in 2024 and $8 million supported CRS to support international relief and development efforts in places affected by war and natural disasters.

During the recent “Theological and Pastoral Congress on the Guadalupe Event,” held in Mexico, the prelate described his diocese as a former valley of fruit orchards now transformed into the heart of global technology, home to world-class companies such as Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Nvidia.

There, Cantú explained, people from India, China, Latin America, Africa, and many other countries live together, bringing with them their religions or their religious “indifference.”

He spoke of “a strong secularization” there, calling it a “society that proudly proclaims itself postmodern, without need for God or religion.” He added that many “no longer have the time or space for religion” and that they “prefer modern practices” such as yoga or meditation, which they call mindfulness, which is “meditation without transcendence.”

The bishop wants the pastoral and spiritual preparation for the 50th anniversary of the Diocese of San José in 2031 to be marked by Our Lady of Guadalupe, who he hopes will serve as a point of reference and model.

Using Our Lady of Guadalupe’s methodology in Silicon Valley

The bishop posed a direct challenge to priests, deacons, religious, and laity of his diocese: “How can we apply the methodology of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which she used 500 years ago in Mexico, now, in Silicon Valley, in a postmodern world?”

He said the Spanish friars “did not have much success in evangelizing” because they arrived with the conquistadors, who used aggression and force. “But Our Lady had a great success that the friars could not have imagined. Millions of hearts were touched and transformed in a short time.”

Cantú enumerated the key elements of this Guadalupan pedagogy, beginning with beauty and maternal tenderness of her words to Juan Diego: “‘My dearest Juan Diego, the littlest of my sons.’ Whose heart made of stone like we have in our Silicon Valley wouldn’t melt with those words?” he asked.

He also emphasized how Mary “spoke to him in his language, not in Spanish. She used the symbolism of the Indigenous people, a codex that bore witness to what she recounted, which bore witness to what Juan Diego later told the other Indigenous people.”

He recalled the Christological way the Virgin introduced herself, identifying herself as “the Mother of the God by whom we live,” and how she thus introduced “the beauty of truth” in contrast to the old logic of human sacrifice.

Another element that Cantú emphasized is the role of the laity and, in particular, the poor. He highlighted that the Virgin involves Juan Diego in the mission of the Church when she tells him: “It is necessary that you go to the bishop.” He commented that “participation brings dignity and is an expression of dignity,” and that aspects of synodality are already evident in Guadalupe: participation and a voice within the ecclesial community.

The bishop noted that Juan Diego’s participation does not create a separate structure, because “we shouldn’t create a parallel Church but rather everything should be under the authority, the structure that the Son of the Virgin left us, which is a hierarchical Church, with respect for the magisterium, but the magisterium, in turn, with the participation and listening of everyone, everyone, everyone.” For this reason, he defined it as “a hierarchical and synodal Church.”

Among the elements the prelate highlighted is the concept of the sacred little house as a Church of mercy, a house where wounded humanity is welcomed: a “little house of love and compassion.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe resonates with migrant communities

Cantú explained that in his diocese, faith has remained alive thanks to refugees and immigrants: Hispanics, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Indians, and Africans, many of them with histories of having to leave their native lands and discrimination.

The Virgin of Guadalupe becomes a bridge of identity and solace there, not only for Mexicans, he noted. To illustrate this, he recounted an experience in a trilingual parish (Vietnamese, Filipino, and Hispanic) during a Mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The bishop arrived prepared to celebrate Mass in Spanish with the Hispanic community, but discovered that about half of those present were Vietnamese, so he decided to preach by including his own story as the son of Mexican immigrants in Texas.

“In Texas, many times Americans didn’t see me purely as American because my parents were born in another country, and at home they spoke Spanish; and when I went to visit my cousins ​​in Monterrey, they also didn’t see me as Mexican, so, well, I felt like a bit of an outsider.”

As he shared this experience of not belonging, Cantú observed the faces of the Vietnamese faithful: “I saw in their faces that they understood, as refugees who left their country 30 or 40 years ago, that perhaps they never had the opportunity to learn the language well, to fully understand American politics or culture, that for the rest of their lives they felt like guests. And it was, I believe, at that moment that they identified with Juan Diego, whom the Virgin received in her little house.”

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

From the earliest ages, the Drexel children were taught to pursue personal holiness through daily Mass, meditation, the rosary, and other devotions as well as by acts of penance and sacrifice. Katharine kept notes on her efforts to grow in virtue. In 1878, she wrote: “I am resolved during this year to try to overcome impatience and give attention to lessons. I, Katie, put these resolutions at the feet of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph hoping that they will find acceptance there. May Jesus, Mary, and Joseph help me to bear much fruit in the year 1878.”

When she was in her 20s, Katharine lost both of her parents and inherited a portion of the family’s vast wealth. At this time, she became aware of the plight of the Native Americans, many of whom suffered from dire poverty and a lack of education. She would devote the remainder of her life to assisting them.

In two private audiences with Pope Leo XIII, she begged him to send more missionaries to the Native Americans. During one of these meetings, the Holy Father suggested to an astonished Katharine that she herself become such a missionary.

Although Katharine enjoyed an opulent lifestyle, she became disillusioned with the things of the world. She wrote a longtime friend, Bishop James O’Connor, of her desire to enter religious life.

“Like the little girl who wept when she found that her doll was stuffed with sawdust and her drum was hollow, I, too, have made a horrifying discovery and my discovery, like hers, is true. I have ripped both the doll and the drum open and the fact lies plainly and in all its glaring reality before me: All, all, all (there is no exception) is passing away and will pass away,” she wrote.

The bishop thought Katharine could do more for the Church in her position in society and worried she might have difficulty in renouncing her wealth. She responded: “The question alone important, the solution of which depends upon how I have spent my life, is the state of my soul at the moment of death. Infinite misery or infinite happiness! There is no half and half, either one or the other.”

The bishop eventually relented and advised her to found a community to work among Native Americans and African Americans, declaring: “God has put in your heart a great love for the Indian and the Negroes.” In 1891, joined by 13 others, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

Mother Drexel went to work opening mission churches and boarding schools for Black and Native American children throughout the U.S.

At times, prejudice and racism hindered her work. She would often buy buildings to create schools through third parties — otherwise, when sellers learned Mother Drexel was buying them to educate Black or Native children, they wouldn’t sell to her.

Once, when members of the Nashville, Tennessee, city council wondered if Blacks were capable of higher education, she responded: “I cannot share these views with regard to the education of the race. I feel that if among our colored people we find individuals gifted with capabilities, with those sterling qualities which constitute character, our holy mother the Church who fosters and develops the intellect only that it may give God more glory and be of benefit to others, should also concede to the Negro the privilege of higher education.”

In 1915, Katharine founded a teachers’ college in Louisiana, which would eventually become Xavier University of New Orleans and one of the first American colleges to admit Black students.

Throughout her life, Mother Drexel’s chief motivation in addition to her missionary outreach was to help more souls know and love Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. She believed devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was key to the success to her community’s missionary work.

She died in 1955 at the age of 96 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000. Her community’s motherhouse for decades was located in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, which included a shrine — elements of which included Mother Drexel’s remains and a museum dedicated to her memory. However, due to a lack of vocations, the motherhouse closed and the property sold at the end of 2017. The St. Katharine Drexel Shrine is now part of the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

St. Katharine Drexel is honored in the Church on March 3.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, a sister news service of EWTN News, on March 3, 2021, and has been updated and adapted by EWTN News.

The 6-3 ruling was announced by the Thomas More Society, a religious liberty law firm that has represented parents and teachers through the legal fight, one that has spanned nearly three years and multiple courts.

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez originally ruled in the class action lawsuit on Dec. 22, 2025, that parents “have a right” to the “gender information” of their children, while teachers themselves also possess the right to provide parents with that information.

Benitez issued an order at the time striking down California’s secretive school gender policies. In January the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked that order amid the ongoing lawsuit, which the plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court.

On March 2 the Supreme Court blocked the appeals court ruling, holding in part that California’s policies “substantially interfere” with the “right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.”

Pointing to earlier precedent on parental rights, the court said that parents enjoy “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”

“Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours,” the court said.

“These policies likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

Thomas More Society attorney Paul Jonna called the ruling a “watershed moment for parental rights in America.”

“The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: You cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back,” Jonna said.

“The court’s landmark reaffirmation of substantive due process, its vindication of religious liberty, and its approval of class-wide relief together set a historic precedent that will dismantle secret gender transition policies across the country.”

In his December 2025 ruling, Benitez had ordered that parents have a right to transgender-related information regarding their children on grounds of the 14th and First Amendments.

Teachers, he said, can also assert similar First Amendment rights in sharing that information with parents.

“Even if [the government] could demonstrate that excluding parents was good policy on some level, such a policy cannot be implemented at the expense of parents’ constitutional rights,” Benitez wrote at the time.

This was the fourth Pillar Awards, which, according to its website, celebrates “individuals who embody the Museum of the Bible’s mission to invite all people to engage with the transformative power of the Bible through its history, narrative, and impact.”

Cavins and Schmitz are the first Catholics to receive the award, joining past winners including Dallas Jenkins, the creator of the hit series “The Chosen,” and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

The award recognized the global impact of Cavins’ “The Bible Timeline” learning system and the reach it has had through the chart-topping “The Bible in a Year with Fr. Mike Schmitz” podcast.

Cavins received the award on behalf of himself and Schmitz and said in his acceptance speech he was “deeply honored” to receive the award.

He went on to share how he met his wife, Emily, and the impact she had on his life, as well as his time away from the Catholic Church as a Protestant pastor and his eventual return to the Catholic faith.

“I speak evangelical and Catholic with no accent on either,” he said jokingly.

Cavins shared with those in attendance that there are a lot of people like him in the world “that when they hear the story of salvation history it changes our lives. It’s the story that changes our lives. It’s the word of God that changes our lives. It isn’t our own skill, it isn’t our own cleverness, but it is the word of God that transforms the human soul.”

Carlos Campo, Museum of the Bible president and CEO, said in a press release: “We’re honoring leaders, teachers, artists, and scholars who have carried the Bible into culture and changed lives with its truth.”

“The Bible does not only inform us, but it also transforms us. It changes the way we love, changes the way we lead, changes the way we serve. We celebrate the truth of that Bible; preserved through history, proclaimed story and proven through changed lives,” he added.

Honorees are selected by a committee of Museum of the Bible leadership and representatives of the board of directors. Nominees for the Narrative award bring the stories of the Bible to life through cultural mediums.

This year’s gathering also featured cast members from other shows from “The Chosen” universe including “The Chosen Adventures” and 5&2 Studios’ next series, “Joseph of Egypt,” as well as Amazon MGM Studios and the Wonder Project’s “House of David.”

“This is huge. This is the Comic-Con of the Bible,” Michael Iskander, the actor who portrays King David in “House of David,” told EWTN News on the teal carpet.

This was the young actor’s first time attending ChosenCon. He participated in a panel discussion alongside star of “The Chosen” Jonathan Roumie and Adam Hashmi, the actor who will portray Joseph in “Joseph of Egypt.”

“I’ve wanted to come to ChosenCon for such a long time as a fan but I’m here as a guest. So this is really, really special,” he said.

Speaking about his panel, Iskander said: “Everybody has been so warm. It was Jonathan and Adam and I and we had a really, really amazing conversation about what it means to play these biblical characters, how it affects us, how it’s changed us and what these biblical characters mean to everyone who is watching.”

Many of the actors in attendance highlighted the importance the fans have played in the success of “The Chosen” and shared their feelings on the fact that they only have one season left to film.

“I remember in Season 1 we had like five superfans that would follow us around — by the way those five same fans we can see around here on occasion. So if we do see them we’re just like ‘Oh my goodness — here since the beginning,’” said George Xanthis, the actor who portrays the apostle John in “The Chosen.” “But they’re just as important as the fans that have been here for two years or one year or six years or whatever it is but remembering back to that time, we were so grateful that we even had five fans.”

He added: “So I take that feeling into things like today and it’s not lost on me how lucky I am, and how lucky we all are as a series and as a cast and as a production. So when days like this come about I just try to give my all. I want to say ‘Hi’ to as many people as possible.”

Paras Patel, who plays Matthew, called his time on the show “a gift and a blessing.”

“In many ways I have learned so much about myself being on the show and strengthened myself through it that I’m excited to see what will happen after,” he shared. “I kind of don’t want it to end because I just love these guys and I love our crew, but, as they say, all good things must come to an end.”

An actor who has been deeply impacted by his time portraying his character is Giavani Cairo, the actor who plays Thaddeus. The actor has spoken openly about growing up without his biological father and during a panel discussion at ChosenCon discussed a moment of healing he received while filming.

“He’s [Thaddeus] impacted me in ways that I could not have even imagined,” he told EWTN News.

He shared that a few months before booking the role on “The Chosen,” he decided to “renew” his faith.

“I started reading the Bible every day, talking to God like he was a friend, and that’s when the audition for ‘The Chosen’ came — at the right moment, right time,” he said. “And they always say God finds you in those moments.”

He added: “So for me it started a healing process. I always had a chip on my shoulder wanting to prove that I was worthy. And he’s made me reflective that I am worthy of his love, and I’m worthy of other people’s love as well. So I just wanted to make people feel seen through Thaddeus that we all do matter.”

While details of Season 6 of “The Chosen” are still largely under wraps, Roumie briefly discussed his experience portraying the Lord’s passion and crucifixion.

“For the first few months afterwards going to Mass — and even thinking about it now — I just get weepy. I get emotional. It’s hard. It’s left an indelible impression on me — mentally and emotionally sharing even just a percentage, a micron of a percentage of the Lord’s passion playing it and reenacting it has left me absolutely humbled and moved,” he told EWTN News.

Monsignor Patrick J. Winslow, vicar general and chancellor of the Diocese of Charlotte, was grateful that his city was hosting the conference and called the event “inspiring to the faithful.”

“I think it’s such a beautiful new art form — a series — and to take the Gospel story in elevated form of that art form and present it for the world in a way that so many people can view and resonate with is just an extraordinary feat,” he said.

Winslow added: “When you present a faithful rendition of Our Lord, or a faithful rendition of the Gospel, or David, or for that matter any story of faith, but you do it in a way that’s very well done, very well produced, it’s striking chords that very few people have access to. They’re deep within. And when you strike those chords with people, it inspires.”

“Historically, the majority of papal tiaras are gifts, usually from the home diocese of the pope or from religious [communities] they may be affiliated with,” Isaac Smith, a convert to Catholicism and the founder of Amici Vaticani, told EWTN News.

Smith said he was motivated to launch the project to provide Leo with a papal tiara based on the desire for “us, as Americans, to continue that tradition.” He said the first American pope is “such a historical milestone” for Catholicism in the United States.

The history of papal crowns dates back to at least the eighth century with the word “tiara” first used in the 12th century. A second crown was added to the tiara in the 13th century to symbolize that the pope holds authority in both spiritual and temporal matters.

A three-crown tiara first appeared in the 14th century. One interpretation of the three crowns is that they represent the threefold office of Christ: priest, prophet, and king. Another suggests it represents the militant, the suffering, and the triumphant Church.

The proposed tiara commissioned by Amici Vaticani maintains the 14th-century tradition of three crowns. The tiara will be constructed with sterling silver and the crowns will be gold-plated.

Because the gift is meant to honor Leo’s American heritage, the tiara will have red, white, and blue stones, which represent the colors of the American flag. It will incorporate other American symbols: oak leaves, representing the national tree; and corn stalks, representing the national crop.

Some of the symbols included in the tiara have dual meanings relevant to both the papacy and the United States. It will incorporate roses, which is a symbol of the Virgin Mary and the national flower; and it will incorporate olives, which is a symbol of the pontiff’s commitment to peace and appears on the Great Seal of the United States.

A buttony cross will sit atop the crown as a symbol of American Catholicism. The cross is used in the coat of arms for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the country’s first Catholic diocese, and is featured on the flag of Maryland, which is the location of the first English Catholic colonies.

The design, Smith explained, is meant to be “elegant and traditional” to honor the office of the papacy but is also meant to “incorporate distinctively American elements” to honor the pope’s American heritage.

Smith said he hopes to fund the project through small donations from the American Catholic faithful so the pontiff can see “this was a group effort” and a gift from Catholics in his home country. This project, he said, provides “a tangible way for people to connect with the successor of Peter.”

He also said he plans to compile the names of every person who donates more than $20 into a book, which would be presented to the Holy Father along with the crown and would say on the cover: “Holy Father, please pray for these people.”

Smith said his intention is that the tiara can “hopefully [be] put on display in a place of honor” after it is constructed “and presented to the pope when he visits.” When Leo met Vice President JD Vance, the pontiff said he would travel to the United States at some point, although the Holy Father does not have any specific publicly announced plans to visit as of yet.

The tiara will be constructed by a Maltese jeweler and artist named Gabriel Farrugia, who has a background in creating religious art, including an Our Lady of Fátima crown, which was used in a coronation ceremony in Guardamangia, Malta. He has also been commissioned by Catholic churches for artistic projects.

The tiara’s lappets will be hand-embroidered by Sacra Domus Aurea, a company that designs and creates traditional Catholic vestments.

“Making sacred art is a type of thanksgiving to the One who created us,” Farrugia told EWTN News.

“For the God that created us and gave us life, I think we should give him something,” he said, adding that sacred art provides “something that will be left there for ages” and something for “people to admire, to enjoy, and to reflect [upon].”

The construction of the crown has not yet begun, as Amici Vaticani is still in the early stages of the crowdfunding effort.

Amici Vaticani was launched in 2025 for the purpose of constructing the tiara. According to its website, the nonprofit also seeks to build up “the awakening of a Catholic spirit in the United States.”

“Our country, once defined by its Protestant heritage, is now witnessing a boon of conversions,” the website notes. “Men and women rediscovering the depth, beauty, and authority of the Catholic faith.”

More than three decades after her death, Bowman should be remembered for “her charism, gifts, prophetic voice, charismatic personality, and real strong commitment to the Church — truly being Catholic,” Bishop Joseph Kopacz of the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, told EWTN News.

Bowman, the granddaughter of a slave, challenged the Church in the 20th century to confront its history of racial exclusion and to embrace Black Catholics through her work as a scholar, teacher, and speaker.

The Diocese of Jackson officially closed its proceedings regarding her potential sainthood on Feb. 9 after Kopacz opened her cause in November 2018. The records are now being sent to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican.

“People around the world will be very excited and will celebrate what we hope will be the occasion of her canonization. And that’s because people, Catholic and non-Catholics alike, are drawn to her story,” Veryl Miles, law professor and leader of the Sister Thea Bowman Committee at The Catholic University of America, told EWTN News.

Sister Thea’s life and legacy

Bowman was born Dec. 29, 1937, in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and was given the name Bertha Elizabeth Bowman. While her family was Methodist, Bowman was called to the Catholic faith at a young age.

“At 9 years old, she told her parents she wanted to be Catholic. The sisters who were teaching at the school, the parish where she was, had such an impact on her. Then six years later, she joined their religious community,” Kopacz said.

She joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at age 15 and enrolled in Viterbo University, which was run by the Franciscan sisters. Three years into formation, she took the religious name Thea, which means “of God” and is a version of her father’s name, Theon.

“She was so focused on serving the Lord as a religious, and in this community, because they loved her as a young child,” Kopaz said. Bowman knew: “This is who I know. This is who I love. This is where I want to be.”

She was the first and only African American woman in her religious community, often facing racism both within and beyond the Church, leading her to become an advocate for the dignity of Black people, their culture, and Black Catholic spirituality.

Bowman went on to study at The Catholic University of America, earning a doctorate in English in 1972. Bowman helped found the National Black Sisters’ Conference and taught the university’s first Black literature course.

Bowman, who taught for many years, was “a master teacher,” Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Charlene Smith, a close friend of Bowman’s and co-author of her biography “Thea’s Song,” told EWTN News.

Smith and Bowman met in 1954 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, at St. Rose Convent. “She was just like me. We both wanted to be Franciscans, we both wanted to teach, and we both wanted to major in English in college, and we did all three of those things,” Smith said.

After having moved away for graduate school, Bowman returned to La Crosse to teach in the English Department at Viterbo University. Smith also returned to serve as the school’s dean of students.

“When I got back to La Crosse, they told me that I should beware of Sister Thea Bowman because she was ‘the most powerful woman on campus.’ They didn’t know that we were really good friends,” Smith said.

“Being the dean, I was able to go to any classroom. I would go to Thea’s classrooms, and she would always come bounding in with a song, and she would get everybody into a really good mood,” Smith said.

Bowman would also teach at parishes about Black liturgy and music. Eventually she starting to speak at a national level, becoming the first African American woman to address the U.S. bishops’ conference.

She often used music to help evangelize and bridge interracial divides, and became a major contributor to the development of “Lead Me, Guide Me,” the Black Catholic hymnal published in 1987.

Smith reflected on Bowman’s “marvelous” and “magnetic” personality. “We were invited to a dinner at a hotel, and she was going to give a speech. We got there early, so we went to sit down in the lobby … a pianist from Argentina was playing songs from ‘Porgy and Bess,’ and Thea got up and started singing ‘Summertime.’”

“She got a standing ovation and an encore,” Smith said. “I think one of the greatest gifts, graces, in my life was my friendship with her. She was very kind to me, and she was very kind to all the people that she met.”

At age 54, on March 30, 1990, Bowman died of breast cancer. She was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, alongside her parents.

Impact of Bowman’s cause

Bowman’s journey toward sainthood could have an especially effective impact today with the present division in the nation, as she would preach how we are “all human beings, and we should love everybody,” Smith said.

“She was not interested in the melting pot at all,” Smith said. “She was more interested in a salad bowl because she said: ‘In a salad, people keep their identity, whereas in a melting pot, they’re all mushed together.’”

Bowman “welcomed all in the universal body of Christ” Kopacz said. “She said the Church needs to truly be actively universal, and embrace different cultures and all the gifts that people bring.”

“So today, more than ever, that voice is needed in our society as we can get more divisive,” Kopacz said. “I just think it’s perfect for our time and our Church.”

“Her message is so universal,” Miles said. Especially “understanding the relationship between faith and identity among its members.”

“She really understood and articulated so beautifully that we are people of faith and we are people of identities. The Church is a global church. There’s so many different people who are part of this Church  — people of different races, different ethnicities, and nationalities.”

‘An impetus’ for other African Americans on their way to sainthood

Currently, there are no canonized African American saints, but the Church honors Black saints from other nations, including St. Josephine Bakhita, St. Martin de Porres, St. Monica of Hippo, and St. Augustine of Hippo, among others.

Bowman is among seven African American Catholics with active canonization causes — dubbed the “Saintly Seven.” The group also includes Venerable Pierre Toussaint, Venerable Mother Mary Lange, Venerable Mother Henriette Delille, Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, Servant of God Julia Greeley, and Servant of God Friar Martin de Porres Maria Ward.

Even before her potential canonization, Bowman will “draw attention” to the group, Kopacz said. If she becomes venerable, which the bishop expects she will, he believes Bowman “will be an impetus” for the causes of other African Americans to move forward.

“She’s going to be an important part, and she’ll move the other causes along,” he said.

Since people “can relate” to Bowman’s story as it “is so contemporary and so special,” Miles said she also hopes the other stories of the seven Catholics “will become highlighted” by her cause.

“People will be more interested in finding out about the other African Americans who are in the process of canonization, because their stories are very special and very unique, too,” Miles said.

Meta won’t allow its AI chatbot to discuss abortion with minors, according to a report from the progressive outlet Mother Jones.

Citing internal Meta documents, Mother Jones reported that Meta’s chatbot policy guidelines for interactions with minors prevent the chatbot from advising them on “content that provides advice or opinion” about “sexual health” or offering information helping them obtain an abortion.

According to the report, a Meta spokesperson disputed claims of bias, saying that “any claims of enforcement based on group affiliation or advocacy are baseless” and that the company allows “posts and ads promoting health care services like abortion, as well as discussion and debate around them, as long as they follow our policies. We also give people the opportunity to appeal decisions if they think we’ve got it wrong.”

When asked about the leaked documents, a company spokesperson told EWTN News: “Our AIs are trained to engage in age-appropriate discussions with teens and to connect them with expert resources and support when appropriate.”

“They provide factual information on sexual health but refrain from offering advice or opinions. We continuously review and improve our protections so that teens have access to helpful information with default safeguards in place.”

The Meta spokesperson also responded to advertisement censorship claims.

“Every organization and individual on our platforms is subject to the same set of rules, and any claims of enforcement based on group affiliation or advocacy are baseless,” the spokesperson said.

United Kingdom assisted suicide bill falters as local measures advance

A national assisted suicide bill is failing to pass in the United Kingdom this week, even as local measures advance.

According to a statement by the advocacy group Right to Life UK, on Feb. 26 the national bill was “widely pronounced as dead by commentators after it was revealed that it will ‘almost certainly’ run out of time.”

In Wales, the regional Parliament voted on Feb. 24 in favor of the National Health Service to oversee assisted suicide if the Terminally Ill Adults Bill passes in the House of Lords.

Archbishop Mark O’Toole of Cardiff-Menevia in a Feb. 25 statement called the vote “a sad day for Wales’ most vulnerable.”

The island of Jersey similarly passed a law to legalize assisted suicide in a 32-to-16 vote on Feb. 26 by members of the States Assembly. The measure applies to “mentally competent” adults with terminal illnesses and who have been residents of Jersey for 12 months.

Before the bill can become law, it will need royal assent.

Ohio appeals court upholds ban on aborted baby burial requirement

Ohio judges on Wednesday upheld a ban on a law requiring abortion clinics to dispose of the remains of babies via burial or cremation.

The appellate court in Cincinnati upheld a lower court ruling permanently blocking the law.

Ohio in 2023 passed a constitutional amendment enshrining a right to abortion.

Executive Director of Ohio Right to Life Carrie Snyder condemned the decision.

“It’s unfortunate, but not a surprise, that the First District Court of Appeals sided with the abortion industry to stop Ohio’s fetal remains law from taking effect. Sadly, clinics will continue treating these precious little ones like garbage to be disposed of as cheaply as possible,” Snyder said in a Feb. 26 statement.

“This really underscores that abortion is not health care and that clinics are going to do everything within their power to boost their profit margin.”

A Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, meanwhile, celebrated the decision, claiming the burial law was “cruel” and “nothing more than an opportunity to shame and stigmatize” women who get abortions.

Texas attorney general sues mail-in abortion company for alleged illegal shipments

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued mail-in abortion company Aid Access along with California abortionist Remy Coeytaux and abortionist and founder of Aid Access Rebecca Gomperts for allegedly illegally shipping abortion drugs to Texas.

Aid Access’ website advertises its shipping to all states including Texas, according to Paxton’s press release.

“These unlawful shipments have had real and devastating consequences for Texas families,” the press release read. “In 2025, a Nueces County man allegedly used abortion-inducing drugs obtained from an out-of-state provider to secretly poison his girlfriend, resulting in the death of their unborn child.”

“Every unborn child is a life worth protecting,” Paxton said, adding that he will “relentlessly enforce our state’s pro-life laws against Aid Access and other radicals like it.”

The event was originally planned as a protest in response to the university’s appointment of abortion advocate Professor Susan Ostermann as the head of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.

After Ostermann withdrew from the position earlier this week, the student organizers turned the event into a prayer vigil offered “in thanksgiving and support for Notre Dame’s Catholic mission.”

A group of about 150 students, community members, faculty, and priests from the Congregation of Holy Cross met on the south quad of campus, where they were greeted by students Luke Woodyard and Gabe Ortner, the event’s organizers.

After a blessing of candles, those present processed to the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, where they prayed the rosary.

The event was co-sponsored by the major Catholic clubs on campus: Right to Life, Militia Immaculata, Children of Mary, the Knights of Columbus, and Students for Child-Oriented Policy.

According to Woodyard, while a protest would have drawn a greater number of attendees, organizers agreed that changing the event to a prayer vigil would be a more appropriate response to the news of Ostermann’s withdrawal.

“The big reason we changed the protest to a prayer vigil was because we won, we got Ostermann to not be appointed. And even though this was a victory in a battle, not the [larger] war, we can celebrate this victory now,” Woodyard said.

“If we came here with a bunch of protests, it would make us seem like we weren’t grateful for the university listening to us,” he added. “And we really are. We praise [President] Father [Robert] Dowd for any impact that he had on Ostermann withdrawing, and we pray for the future of Notre Dame.”

Ostermann, whose appointment was announced in January, has publicly supported abortion on multiple occasions, calling it “freedom-enhancing” and “consistent with integral human development that emphasizes social justice and human dignity.”

She has also argued that the pro-life movement has its roots in “white supremacy and racism” and has described pregnancy resource centers as “anti-abortion propaganda sites.”

Since the appointment was announced in January, the university has faced backlash from Catholics across the country, including students, alumni, faculty, and more than a dozen bishops including local Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend. The university continued to defend Ostermann’s promotion amid the criticism, citing her expertise in Asian studies and her past research.

When Ostermann withdrew from the position on Feb. 26, students were surprised at the unexpected reversal but grateful for the desired outcome.

Maria Madigan, a sophomore who serves as the head of service for Notre Dame Right to Life, told EWTN News that the grateful and loving spirit of the prayer service was the same spirit in which the protest had been planned.

“[The planned protest] was never filled with hate or any [kind of] malicious intent. … We love Notre Dame because of her Catholic mission and her identity,” she said.

“We wanted to protest the Ostermann appointment because we felt that it went against our mission. And then when Ostermann withdrew, the focus shifted, because … we want to think about having a positive vision going forward for Notre Dame.”

Regarding Ostermann’s withdrawal, Woodyard said: “We don’t know what happened behind the scenes — hopefully that will come out in the coming weeks — but what we do know is that she did withdraw, and so we’re thankful for that, and that’s why we’re here, but at some point, we have to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Organizer Ortner emphasized that although the planned protest was turned into a prayer vigil, the defense of Notre Dame’s Catholic mission is far from over.

“We have to recognize the work that Father Dowd has done in leading this university. He’s clearly been working tirelessly on this with Bishop Rhoades, and I admire the direction that he seems to be taking Notre Dame in, and that gives me a lot of hope,” Ortner said.

“However, at the same time, there also seem to be particular members of the administration who do not entirely share the Catholic vision of Notre Dame,” he said.

“Ultimately, Notre Dame should be united in its Catholic identity among all of the members of administration, with no exception.”

If the protest had gone forward, speakers would have included Anna Kelley,  president of the school’s Right to Life group; Lucy Spence, editor-in-chief of the Irish Rover student newspaper; and Theo Austin, vice president of Students for Child-Oriented Policy.

Students have expressed concern that the appointment shows a willingness of university administration — particularly on the part of Provost John McGreevy, who approved the appointment — to deviate from the university’s Catholic mission.

Max McNiff, a student who attended the prayer vigil, shared his hopes that the controversy that precipitated Ostermann’s withdrawal would send a clear signal to the university.

“I think this sets a good precedent for stuff like this in the future. I think that the administration is going to be very cautious, and hopefully nothing like this will happen again.”

“I think this also sets a precedent that researchers who are considered maybe ‘elite’ by secular academic standards, but who very manifestly publicly contradict Catholic doctrine [on matters] such as abortion, should not expect to come into leadership positions at Notre Dame,” he said.

Ultimately, however, students expressed their gratitude at the reversal of Ostermann’s appointment, calling it a “victory” in the battle for Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.

“Having the opportunity to gather together and to thank God for his faithfulness, and the faithfulness of the university, is really beautiful, and I think you can see it in the passion of the students,” Madigan said. “Everyone here knew it wasn’t a protest anymore, but they were still coming.”

“We’re all here because we care and we love this university and we want to uphold its Catholic mission and its pro-life mission as much as possible,” she said. “And at the end of the day, whether one person showed up, or whether 200 people showed up, this was a prayer service, and it was to God, and the words that were said here were to him.”

“And that’s what I really want the focus of this whole event to be on, praise and thanksgiving to the Lord for his faithfulness and to Our Lady for protecting her university.”

Cabrini, who served poor Italian immigrants in Chicago, received roughly 38% of the almost 4,000 votes cast during an online contest to pick three nominees for the honor.

The park district is now looking for artists who want to create the statue and are asking that applications be submitted by March 1.

Here are 10 things to know about this beloved Catholic saint:

1. She was the first American citizen to be canonized.

Though born in Italy, Frances Xavier Cabrini became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1909. In 1946, she was canonized by Pope Pius XII, becoming the first American citizen to be declared a saint.

2. She originally wanted to be a missionary to China.

Inspired by St. Francis Xavier, Cabrini hoped to evangelize in China. Instead, Pope Leo XIII directed her westward, telling her to serve immigrants in the United States, “not to the East, but to the West.”

3. She arrived in New York with almost nothing.

In 1889, Cabrini landed in New York City with six fellow sisters and limited resources. What awaited her was not a warm welcome but housing instability and overwhelming poverty among Italian immigrants.

4. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

In 1880, she established the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a religious order dedicated to education, health care, and missionary work. The order continues its work worldwide today.

5. She built an empire of schools and hospitals.

By the time of her death, Cabrini had founded nearly 70 institutions, including orphanages, schools, and hospitals across the United States, Europe, and Latin America.

6. She served Italian immigrants during a time of intense prejudice.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Italian immigrants faced widespread discrimination in America. Cabrini advocated fiercely for their dignity, education, and health care.

7. She became a U.S. citizen in 1909.

Cabrini’s naturalization reflected her long-term commitment to serving American communities, particularly in cities like New York and Chicago.

8. She died in Chicago in 1917.

Cabrini passed away on Dec. 22, 1917, in Chicago after years of tireless travel and work. The doctor attributed her death to chronic endocarditis, or heart disease. Her body is preserved for veneration at the National Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.

9. She is the patron saint of immigrants.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII officially named her the patron saint of immigrants, recognizing her lifelong dedication to displaced and marginalized communities.

10. Her legacy remains visible across the U.S.

Hospitals, schools, and institutions bearing her name continue her mission of faith-driven service and education.

The movement has two components: creation of a website featuring a new adoration finder tool to help Catholics find the location of adoration in their area, and the release of “Adore Him,” a full-length feature film promoting adoration. 

The Adore Movement’s website went live in February. “Adore Him” is currently in production and will open in U.S. theaters in October.

“In 2022, we launched the ‘Jesus Thirsts’ movement in conjunction with the kickoff of the U.S. bishops’ three-year National Eucharistic Revival to promote the Catholic teaching of the Holy Eucharist,” Greco noted. 

“Our movement included a series of in-person diocesan events around the country, which culminated in the release of the 2024 film ‘Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist.’ It was a major success, and we felt led by the Lord to focus next on Eucharistic adoration.”

From business executive to full-time evangelist

Greco is a retired pharmaceutical industry executive who was ordained a permanent deacon in 2007. As a young adult he experienced a conversion from being a “lukewarm to an on-fire Catholic” and has nurtured a passion for evangelization ever since. In 2014, he launched Spirit Filled Hearts Ministry, which engages in a variety of initiatives to promote the Catholic faith. 

Today, he is a full-time evangelist, working under the auspices of the Diocese of Orange from an office in the diocese’s famous chancery office, Christ Cathedral (formerly Rev. Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral). He works in conjunction with the bishop of Orange, Kevin Vann, and Orange Auxiliary Bishop Timothy Freyer, both of whom have been regular participants in Spirit Filled Hearts Ministry events. Vann, in fact, is the first on camera to introduce the “Jesus Thirsts” film to viewers.

“The Eucharist is at the heart of our faith. Any revival in our own lives, as well as that of the Church as a whole, must begin with a renewed devotion to Christ in the Eucharist,” Greco told EWTN News.

The deacon went on to cite a 2019 Pew Research Center survey that found only 31% of Catholics believe that the bread and wine at Mass “actually become” the body and blood of Jesus at the command of the priest; 69% viewed them as mere “symbols.” 

“Combine a survey like this with the reality that many Catholics are leaving the active practice of their faith and it shows us the necessity of focusing on the real presence of Jesus and the power of the Mass and Eucharistic adoration,” he said.

Greco came up with the idea for the Adore Movement after prayer. “The Lord wants Eucharistic adoration to be better understood in terms of its grace and power,” he said.

The movement’s outreach

Visitors to the Adore Movement site can listen to videos featuring Greco; eCatholic CEO Jason Jaynes; Norbertine Father Charbel Grbavac, the movement’s spiritual director; and Dan DeMatte, co-founder and executive director of Damascus, a ministry to youth and young adults, and co-host of the radio program/podcast “Beyond Damascus.” 

There are print-ready materials suggesting how one may do a Holy Hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament as well as postcards and posters that can be downloaded to promote adoration in one’s own parish. The site can be viewed in both English and Spanish.

While he’s proud of what his team at eCatholic has accomplished, the site is still very much a work in progress, Jaynes said. eCatholic provides technology services to 40% of Catholic parishes in the United States, he said, which means the company can easily access up-to-date adoration information from those sites. For those not contracted with eCatholic, the team requests parishes to send in their adoration information so it can be added or updated.

The site is a “living, breathing, evergreen organism,” Jaynes continued, with new videos, adoration sites, and educational materials being added regularly. eCatholic has worked with Spirit Filled Hearts Ministry on other projects previously, he noted, including “Jesus Thirsts.” They were particularly excited to be part of the Adore Movement, he said, “because as we’re surrounded by so much noise in society, and our team wants to utilize their capabilities to encourage Catholics to regularly spend time in silence before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.”

Jaynes said he believes that eCatholic’s patron saint, Carlo Acutis, would be supportive of the Adore Movement, as Carlo believed that “technology should be a tool to bring people offline and back to the Church.”

‘Adore Him’ film in production

Greco explained that the “Adore Him” film will feature interviews with prominent clergy and lay Catholics, including Chris Stefanick of Real Life Catholic, Father Chris Alar and Father Donald Calloway of the Marian Fathers, Deacon Larry Oney of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Curtis Martin of FOCUS, and Mark Hart of Life Teen, as well as Grbavac and DeMatte. Filming is scheduled through April, with the final release in October.

Greco said he hopes the Adore Movement will help Catholics nationwide to grow in their relationship with Christ and begin attending Eucharistic adoration on a regular basis.

“By allowing Jesus to fill your heart with his love, he will lead you to a better participation in the Mass and to more fully appreciate the blessings of Eucharistic adoration,” he said.

The deacon also noted that the work of Spirit Filled Hearts was funded entirely by donors and welcomed donations in support of the Adore Movement, which will begin in the U.S. before being launched overseas.

The meeting of the Tex-Mex bishops is now “the longest-running international gathering of Catholic bishops anywhere in the world,” according to a press release from the Diocese of El Paso on behalf of the bishops. The group has met twice a year for more than 40 years.

At the press conference, San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, the group’s coordinator, said the bishops were concerned with the “plight of our brothers and sisters, migrants, which are on both sides of the border.”

The prelate said immigration enforcement has “changed drastically” in recent years. Because of these changes, García-Siller emphasized that the bishops “need to learn new ways to serve well” migrants and refugees in order to “bring solutions” and “some solace, some peace, some kind of understanding.”

“You need to know that God loves you, and that we love you, too,” he said before beginning to address his listeners in Spanish.

At their meeting, the bishops were guided by the November Special Message from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on immigration and the recently released statement of 20 U.S. Catholic bishops from border states and others, who recommended immigration enforcement reforms to the Trump administration.

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso said, however, that “bishops are not politicians. That is not our role … our role is to be pastors.”

Echoing García-Siller, Seitz said that “our role is to love the people that we serve. And … it doesn’t matter to us whether they’ve lived here a long time or they’re simply passing through. When we see that other person, we see a person created by God and given a special dignity, a value that is unparalleled and unrepeatable.”

The bishops also discussed ongoing unrest in Mexico after this week’s killing by the Mexican military of cartel leader Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho,” and the violence that ensued. They discussed the necessity of a continued pastoral response for those affected.

Among the other bishops who participated in Friday’s meeting were Bishop Brendan Cahill of Victoria, Texas, the chair of the USCCB Committee on Migration and Refugees, and Bishop Alfonso Gerardo Miranda Guardiola of Piedras Negras, Mexico.

Others in attendance included Bishop Michael Sis of San Angelo, Texas, and Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas. Father Francisco Gallardo from the Diocese of Matamoros Reynosa in Mexico and the executive secretary of the Mexican Bishops’ Committee on Migration also participated.

Minnesota Mass in solidarity with migrants

Meanwhile, in Minnesota on Friday, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C.; Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey; Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the U.S.; and Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis along with more than 30 other Catholic bishops participated in a Mass said in solidarity with migrants in conjunction with the Way Forward conference at the University of St. Thomas.

In remarks made following the Mass, addressing the recent immigration enforcement-related violence in Minnesota, McElroy said: “We all need to engage in healing and reconciliation. It will take a long time.”

Hebda agreed, saying: “That ministry of reconciliation has to be ours, in the Twin Cities and around the world.”

In January, following the shooting deaths of two civilian protesters, Hebda called on all “to lower the temperature of rhetoric” and “rid our hearts of the hatreds and prejudices that prevent us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters,” referring both to immigrants without legal status in the country as well as immigration enforcement personnel who “have the unenviable responsibility of enforcing our laws.”

On Friday, McElroy called ICE’s enforcement actions this past winter “almost a siege” in “the heartland of our country.”

“Catholic teaching supports the nation’s right to control its border and, in these cases, to deport those who’ve been convicted of serious crimes,” he said.

However, he continued: “Seeking to deport millions of men and women and children — families who often lived here for decades, many children who don’t know other countries — is contrary to Catholic faith and, more fundamentally, contrary to basic human dignity.”

Raj Peter Bhakta, a whiskey entrepreneur and former contestant on “The Apprentice,” has announced his intention to relinquish the former Green Mountain College campus and surrounding land in Poultney, Vermont, to a qualified Catholic mission-based nonprofit organization.

“I felt five years ago when I bought the place that there was something more important that God was calling me to do with my talents and capacities than business alone,” Bhakta told EWTN News. He said he had originally hoped to turn the abandoned campus into a debt-free work-agriculture college himself but found the task to be more work than he anticipated.

Bhakta, a Catholic, said he also realized that “the biggest need in civilization was not necessarily another trade school” but rather “a spiritual revival,” which he said is necessary for the U.S. “to turn itself around.”

Finding an organization that will use the campus to this end by following the Catholic faith, he said, “is the highest and best use that I could possibly achieve for the place.” Bhakta said his vision for the campus is for it to foster “long-term faith formation.”

“If we want the future, we have to get the young,” he said. “I think what the young people are looking for is something that is not a lukewarm version of our faith, which is in vogue in many places, but the stiff old brew of the Catholic faith.” He further emphasized the need for would-be recipients of the campus to be dedicated to the pursuit of “capital T” truth “that’s not mitigated by politically correct terminology.”

Bhakta said the recipient will need to display the financial capacity to maintain the property. Rebuilding, he said, “will easily cost $200 [million] or $300 million.”

So far, he said there have been more than 20 applicants, some which he described as “quite inspired and interesting.”

If no applicants prove suitable, Bhakta said he plans to sell the property.

Bhakta is also the founder of BHAKTA Spirits and WhistlePig Whiskey.

The entrepreneur announced in a Feb. 17 release that he is seeking a Catholic entity “with demonstrated leadership, vision, and long-term operational capacity” that can maintain the property’s yearly expenses of about $1.5 million.

The release said eligible recipients include dioceses, religious orders, Catholic colleges or seminaries, and faith-based nonprofits or apostolates for the more than 500,000-square-foot property. It also cited satellite campuses, classical schools, youth, family or clergy retreat and formation programs, and Catholic outreach, arts, or cultural centers as ideal uses.

March 31 application deadline

The entrepreneur and hopeful donor is inviting prospective recipients to vie for the Georgian-style brick campus situated along the “crystal-clear Poultney River” by submitting a proposal through a website by March 31. According to the website, interviews and negotiations are scheduled to take place in early April, with the recipient to be announced on April 20.

“Estimated to be worth in excess of $20 million in value by prior Maltz Auctions assessments, the offered properties present a rare chance to repurpose a historically rich, aesthetically beautiful, and strategically located campus for meaningful Catholic mission, education, and service,” the release said.

Green Mountain College was founded in 1834 and includes several academic buildings, dormitories, a library, a gymnasium, as well as surrounding land and nearly a mile of river frontage. The campus is also within walking distance of the historic downtown Poultney.

“This is not just a gift of architecturally remarkable buildings — or even of [a] historic, singular campus site originally founded for Christian purpose[s] nearly two centuries ago,” Bhakta said in the release. “It’s a gift of opportunity — the chance to revive a campus for mission, formation, and future generations of the Catholic Church.”

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prevent children from automatically receiving United States citizenship at birth if their parents entered the country illegally and were residing in the country unlawfully when the child was born.

The order faced an immediate legal challenge from parents of children denied citizenship based on the order. That lawsuit argues that birthright citizenship is a constitutional right, protected by the 14th Amendment. The case is currently before the Supreme Court.

In an amicus or “friend of the court” brief, lawyers for the bishops argued that ending birthright citizenship is not legal, based on the 14th Amendment, and lacks historical support from Western legal tradition.

They wrote that birthright citizenship is also backed by Catholic teaching, “which affirms the inherent dignity of every human person, especially the innocent child.”

“As Catholics, our faith compels us to protest laws that deny the dignity of the human person and harm innocent children, particularly when such laws resurrect the very injustices the 14th Amendment was enacted to repudiate,” the amicus brief stated.

“At its core, this case is not solely a question about citizenship status or the 14th Amendment,” it added. “It is a question of whether the law will affirm or deny the equal worth of those born within our common community — whether the law will protect the human dignity of all God’s children.”

The Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) joined the bishops in the amicus brief.

The U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 with the primary purpose of ensuring formerly enslaved people were recognized as citizens. The amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a broad right to birthright citizenship, based on the amendment, with very limited exceptions. However, the nation’s highest court has never directly ruled on a case in which a person was denied birthright citizenship because his or her parents were in the country unlawfully.

The bishops’ amicus brief was mostly focused on morality, highlighting their interpretation that abandoning the practice would deny the innate dignity and freedom of the person, would inflict harm on vulnerable people, and would weaken and threaten the family.

“Because every person is created in the image and likeness of God, the Church rejects the notion that some people are considered ‘others’ and do not possess intrinsic God-given human dignity,” the amicus brief stated.

“The executive order is antithetical to the import of the Church’s teachings because it deprives people whose parents were not born here, or whose mother has temporary status, of the legal rights necessary to participate in the society of their birth,” it added.

Some Catholics push back

The amicus brief prompted some sharp pushback from Catholics who questioned the bishops’ interpretation of the 14th Amendment and of Catholic social teaching.

In a post on X, Joshua Hochschild, a philosophy professor at Mount St. Mary’s University, suggested there be “another amicus brief for the citizenship case” signed by priests and scholars to reflect what he called “actual Catholic social thought on the political, moral, and legal question of citizenship.”

“[It] could easily be conspicuously bipartisan too: The brief should explain actual Catholic teaching, moral principles, the nature of political prudence, and come to the conclusion that Church teaching is compatible with a variety of interpretations and applications of the 14th Amendment,” Hochschild added.

Kevin Roberts, a Catholic and president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, posted on X that “none of this is Church teaching” but rather “just a poor argument.”

“It’s interesting how the ‘human dignity’ argument is always a one-way street: Everything for the foreigner, including lawbreakers, at the expense of the citizen,” Roberts said.

He noted that the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that political authorities “may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption.”

The catechism also states that prosperous nations have a greater obligation to accept migrants but that migrants also have an obligation to that nation’s laws and customs.

Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies and a former immigration judge, told EWTN News that he “respect[s] what [the bishops] have to say” but thinks the amicus brief is “more of a political statement than it is a moral one.”

He noted that most Catholic countries — apart from the Western Hemisphere — do not have unrestricted birthright citizenship. He added that “the Holy See doesn’t have birthright citizenship” and most European countries have moved away from it in recent years.

According to the World Population Review, only 36 countries — including the United States — have unrestricted birthright citizenship. Another 45 have birthright citizenship that is restricted, meaning that it only applies under certain conditions.

Arthur said “the government does have a good argument” but thinks the Supreme Court could rule in a variety of ways. If the ruling is favorable to the administration, he said it is more likely that the court narrows birthright citizenship than that it abandons it altogether. He said it’s also possible that the justices find that Congress, rather than the executive, has the authority to limit it.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in about a month, on April 1, in the case of Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case.

The report “Which U.S. religious groups are most highly educated?” found that 35% of U.S. Catholics have received a bachelor’s degree or higher education.

The report was based on Pew’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS). The RLS is a survey with 36,908 American respondents from all 50 states that examines their religious affiliations, beliefs, and practices and their social and political views. The margin of error is plus or minus 0.8 percentage points.

According to the research, 35% of U.S. Catholics are college graduates, which  matches the share for all U.S. adults. Catholics’ education levels tend to vary by race and ethnicity, social and political views, and religious practices.

The research found Asian Catholics were most likely to be college educated, with 53% of the group holding a bachelor’s degree or more education. About 43% of white Catholics and 20% of Hispanic Catholics are college educated.

The RLS did not include enough Black Catholics to show their results separately, but based on analysis of 2019-20 Pew Research Center survey data, Pew reported that 38% of Black Catholics (defined as those who report being one race and are not Hispanic) were college educated.

Findings among other religious groups

Based on the RLS, Pew found that Hindus and Jews are more likely to have a four-year college degree than Americans in other religious groups. Of the Hindu population, 70% hold a bachelor’s degree or more education, and 65% of the Jewish population does.

Fewer evangelical Protestants (29%) and members of historically Black Protestant denominations (24%) hold college degrees.

Among the evangelical denominations Pew analyzed, those with the highest shares of college graduates were the Global Methodist Church (57%) and the Presbyterian Church in America (57%).

The research also concluded that about 40% of mainline Protestants are college graduates, which is slightly higher than U.S. adults overall.

Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, agnostics (53%) and atheists (48%) are more likely than U.S. adults overall to have completed college. In contrast, people who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” (29%) are less likely than Americans overall to hold a bachelor’s degree.

Save Our Buffalo Churches said in a Feb. 26 press statement that it would pursue a “papal petition” against Fisher and his “executive team” over alleged “canonical violations.”

“Bishop Fisher’s ministry has become increasingly ineffective and harmful,” the group claimed in its statement. “He has lost his good reputation among Catholics, and his actions have harmed the reputation of the Catholic Church to both Catholics and non-Catholics.”

The dispute “has reached the point of necessity for intervention by the Holy See,” the statement said.

The group said it was “principally” requesting that the Vatican investigate the diocese’s management of its sexual abuse settlement — including alleged “misrepresentation of information to the Vatican Dicastery for Clergy” — as well as what the group claimed was “malevolence toward the spiritual health of our clergy and all Catholics in western New York.”

In a Feb. 26 statement, the diocese said it “categorically rejects” the allegations the group has made regarding “mismanagement” and “misrepresentation.”

“Bishop Fisher and his leadership team continue to work constructively with the Dicastery for the Clergy to provide all relevant information and detail as required to address questions about individual parish mergers and closures, and to also address the objections of individual parishes that have appealed specific decrees, as is their right,” the statement said.

Ongoing dispute over closures, diocesan policy

The charges appear to be at least partly in reference to the Buffalo group’s long-running criticism of Fisher and the diocese over both parish closures and church property management, a dispute that has played out both at the Vatican and in the New York Supreme Court.

The state high court in July 2025 briefly ruled in favor of a group of Buffalo parishes that had protested the diocese’s requirements that they pay into an abuse fund amid a larger dispute about potential parish closures.

The parishes had objected to the diocese’s requirement that they pay huge portions of cash into the diocese’s $150 million clergy abuse settlement even as they waited for the Vatican to hear their appeal concerning the diocesan merger plan.

The state Supreme Court ultimately tossed the lawsuit, citing a “long-recognized and sensible prohibition against court involvement in the governance and administration of a hierarchal church.”

Fisher had also drawn criticism for his 2024 decision to ban parishioners from using church facilities while working against diocesan-mandated parish mergers and closures. Fisher reversed that decision in November 2025 after meeting with Vatican officials about the dispute.

In December 2025, meanwhile, the Vatican ordered that several parishes in the Buffalo Diocese could remain open amid the diocesan merger plan after advocates petitioned the Holy See over the orders.

In its Feb. 26 statement, the diocese said it “fully complies with all judgments rendered by the Dicastery for the Clergy and has not appealed any revocation of merger or closure decrees issued by the dicastery.”

The City of St. Jude Parish, which sits on the outskirts of Montgomery, is home to “Campsite 4” on the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail — a 54-mile commemorative path that marks the route taken by Civil Rights marchers in 1965.

The marches, which took place across roughly three weeks in March of that year, were led by figures including Martin Luther King Jr., Diane Nash, James Bevel, and others; the demonstrations included the violent Bloody Sunday conflict on March 7, which saw the brutal beating of peaceful protesters by local police.

Several locations along the route were utilized as overnight campgrounds at which thousands of marchers were able to sleep. The last campsite on the route before the state capital in Montgomery was located on the City of St. Jude’s 40-acre campus.

‘A place set apart’

A plantation prior to the Civil War, and for years a local picnic spot, the site of St. Jude was purchased in 1936 by Father Harold Purcell. A sprawling campus would develop in the following decades, including a “social center” that hosted a medical clinic, community rooms, and clergy living quarters.

A community of Dominican nuns eventually moved to the site, establishing what the parish says was the first interracial Catholic religious congregation in the country.

The parish entered U.S. Civil Rights history on March 24 when thousands of marchers convened on its campus to rest at the makeshift campsite there.

That trek was the third attempt to march to the state Capitol; the two other attempts had both been abandoned, one after the Bloody Sunday incident and one after a judge issued a temporary injunction against the marchers.

At the St. Jude site on March 24, an improbable concert took place featuring what was at the time an all-star lineup including Harry Belafonte; Tony Bennett; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Sammy Davis Jr.; and many others, an event the National Park Service has dubbed “the night ‘the stars’ came out in Alabama.”

Among the campers at the site was Viola Liuzzo, a white woman who took part in local Civil Rights efforts. She would be killed the following day by Ku Klux Klan members in revenge for her role in the demonstrations. 

The marchers would proceed to the state Capitol on March 25 to demonstrate for voting rights; several months later, on Aug. 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson would sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark U.S. civil rights law. Johnson himself referred to the Selma marches as “a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.”

The church did suffer for its bold stand in the segregated South: Donations reportedly dropped after the parish allowed the campers to stay there, while some medical workers at the attached hospital reportedly quit their jobs.

But St. Jude today remains a vibrant parish, one that saw 40 infant baptisms and 30 confirmations in the fall of 2025 alone. It retains most of its historical features, including the expansive campus, as well as a dedicated “interpretive center” that offers visitors historical insight and context.

Numerous witnesses to the 1965 demonstrations are still present in the community, meanwhile, while the campsite itself remains largely unchanged from how it appeared more than six decades ago.

In a visitor’s guide published by the church, parish pastor Father Andrew Jones said the site is considered “doubly sacred” by many visitors.

It remains “a functioning Roman Catholic parish dedicated to worship of God and service of his people,” the priest writes.

It is also, he noted, “a place set apart where the struggle for true racial and social justice in our country was worked out in the prayer, song, planning, and action of brave men and women over the course of those chilly and wet March days in 1965.”

Now, he’s on the path to sainthood, with the Vatican recently announcing that his beatification — the second of three major steps in the canonization process — will be moving forward following a six-year delay.

A theologian who explained heady ideas in practical language to millions of listeners, Sheen had a mission: “to know what the modern world was thinking and how to answer its problems using the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas,” according to Sheen expert Peter Howard, founder and president of the Fulton Sheen Institute and Fulton Sheen Movement.

“Sheen was a modern-day St. Thomas Aquinas,” Howard told EWTN News.

Fulton Sheen was born to a family of farmers in El Paso, Illinois. Christened Peter John, he later became known by his mother’s maiden name, “Fulton.” After studying at parochial schools in Peoria and attending St. Viator’s College in Kankakee, Illinois, Sheen was ordained a priest at St. Mary’s Cathedral in the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, in 1919. He then studied at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and graduated as an associate professor of philosophy in 1925 from the University of Louvain in Belgium.

For more than 20 years, from 1927 until 1950, Sheen taught theology and philosophy at The Catholic University of America — the only pontifical university in the U.S. He wrote more than 60 books, more than half of which were published during his time as a professor.

In 1951, Sheen was appointed an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, then later became bishop of Rochester, New York, in 1966, and was named archbishop of the Titular See of Newport Wales in 1969.

‘Our modern world needs Sheen’

Monsignor Jason Gray, executive director of The Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation, called Sheen “the most powerful and effective evangelizer in the United States.”

“His television program, ‘Life Is Worth Living,’ reached 30 million viewers during its run in the 1950s,” Gray said. “However, more important than his fame or his telegenic personality, Sheen had a personal connection with Jesus Christ and a deep faith that radiated through his preaching.”

His media career began in 1930 with the Sunday evening “Catholic Hour” on NBC, which drew 4 million listeners. On Easter Sunday on March 24, 1940, he appeared in the world’s first television broadcast of a Catholic religious service.

“Much like Jesus’ use of parables, Sheen drew his audience in by common experience and then connected them to the divine,” Gray said. “However, Sheen was courageous in preaching countercultural truths as well.”

“Our modern world needs Sheen, and today’s preachers who are inspired by Sheen, to answer the questions posed by our modern culture with the timeless truth of the Gospel,” Gray continued.

Sheen is credited with making anti-Catholicism mostly a thing of the past in American culture, thanks to his widespread audience, which reached not only Catholics but also Protestants and Jews.

“Archbishop Sheen contributed to overcoming an anti-Catholic bias present during his lifetime since his television program was so popular,” Gray said. “His ‘indirect approach,’ as he called it, spoke about eternal truths by approaching them through common experiences.

When Sheen became auxiliary bishop of New York in 1951, he transitioned from radio to television.

“In this way, Sheen’s ‘Life Is Worth Living’ was considered must-see TV by many Catholics, but also by Protestants and Jews, among whom Sheen was very popular,” Gray continued.

Sheen vocally opposed communism while also advocating for social justice.

“He was extremely relevant when he was in his prime on Catholic radio and television through most of the 20th century,” Howard said. “But as time has proven, he was ahead of his times as his teachings and cultural forecasts for the world and for the Church have proven to be remarkably on target.”

“He understood the philosophical foundations for the modern world that were anti-God, anti-family, anti-human,” Howard continued.

Sheen participated in the Second Vatican Council on the Commission on Missions and helped implement Vatican II’s reforms as bishop of Rochester.

“Sheen was a man of the Church and stood in the middle at a time when factions after the council were pulling the Church in different directions,” Gray said.

During his time as bishop of Rochester from 1966 to 1969, he “worked to implement the authentic teaching of the Second Vatican Council,” Gray said.

“However, he was not liberal enough for the liberals or conservative enough for the conservatives,” he said.

This principle also applied to Sheen’s politics. While Sheen was outspoken against socialism, he also “warned about the dangers of capitalism if the value of a human person was reduced to the value of what he or she could produce,” according to Gray.

“Sheen recognized the merits of the positions of the left and right and found harmonization by elevating them to the divine,” he continued.

“Sheen had a third way, a higher way, which favored neither the left nor the right. He went up to God,” Gray said.

Sheen’s ‘secret’

Behind the fame, the thousands of letters from fans, and even the 1953 Primetime Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Personality, was a man who dedicated himself to Christ in prayer every day.

Sheen prayed before Jesus in the Eucharist for at least an hour each day. He contributed his entire salary to missionary activity in the Church. Sheen also had a deep connection to Mary.

Sheen’s mother consecrated him to Mary after his baptism, and he dedicated himself to her at his first Communion. He had a devotion to Mary for the rest of his life and made great theological contributions to the study of Mary.

“Fulton Sheen’s relationship with Mary was one of a little child with his mother,” Howard said.

“His contributions to unveiling the mystery of Mary are among the most profound and complete as is presented in his masterwork on Mary, ‘The World’s First Love,’” said Howard, who is a Mariologist.

Howard and Gray credit Sheen’s time in prayer for the success of his work.

“The secret to Sheen’s immediate and lasting impact through his work in the secular media was his unbroken promise and commitment to making a daily Holy Hour before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament,” Howard said.

“Because he spent so much time looking at Jesus, he was able to keep perspective and not become preoccupied by his media success,” Gray added. “His prayer life also helped him keep a spiritual focus by preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God and not the gospel of the world.”

“Those who preach the gospel of the world attempt to win people over by telling them what they want to hear,” Gray said. “Sheen preached what people needed to hear.”

Howard described Sheen as “America’s saint.”

If canonized, the former televangelist will become one of the few saints born in the U.S.; he would join Sts. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Katharine Drexel, and Kateri Tekakwitha.

In front of the Eucharist, in his private chapel while in prayer, Sheen died at the age of 84 on Dec. 9 after a long struggle with heart disease.

According to court records, Judge Trevor N. McFadden dismissed the lawsuit on Jan. 23, one day after the bishops requested the federal District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss it.

“The government has reimbursed the USCCB for all services and costs associated with the programs, and the conference has no remaining monetary losses related to the activities at issue in the lawsuit,” USCCB spokesperson Chieko Noguchi told EWTN News, without stating the exact dollar amount paid.

President Donald Trump’s administration froze State Department payments for refugee resettlement services in January 2025. The following month, the State Department sent “notice of termination” letters, which instructed the USCCB, its affiliates, and other organizations participating in the programs to halt all work.

The bishops then sued the State Department, asking the court to force the department to honor those contracts.

At the time, the USCCB had contracts worth about $65 million. The bishops said in April that the government still owed them more than $24 million for work that was already finished. In July, the USCCB asked the court to pause the lawsuit after both parties reached an agreement on winding down the refugee resettlement work.

The contracts were never reinstated.

“The USCCB completed the process for winding down the work done as part of the cooperative grant agreements with the federal government,” Noguchi said. “The government has now paid the amounts owed to the conference for the essential services that were provided to newly arrived refugees placed in our care, and the case has been dismissed.”

The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, which means the bishops could try to bring another case against the State Department if they wanted to do so.

USCCB refugee resettlement work

Prior to the Trump administration’s policy changes, the USCCB had partnered with the State Department on refugee resettlement for about four and a half decades.

During President Joe Biden’s administration, the federal government provided the USCCB with more than $100 million most years, which was redirected to affiliated Catholic organizations that directly provided the services. During Trump’s first term, the USCCB received more than $45 million annually each year.

In most recent years, federal money accounted for more than 95% of the costs for the refugee resettlement programs the USCCB provided money for.

The USCCB announced in April that it was not seeking to renew its contracts amid the Trump policy changes and called that decision “difficult” at the time.

“While this marks a painful end to a life-sustaining partnership with our government that has spanned decades across administrations of both political parties, it offers every Catholic an opportunity to search our hearts for new ways to assist,” then-USCCB President Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio said in an April 7, 2025, statement.

Trump has drastically reduced the number of refugees admitted into the United States. For fiscal 2026, the number of refugees that can enter the country is capped at 7,500. This stands in stark contrast with the Biden administration, which admitted nearly 200,000 refugees over four years.

Lourdes University in Ohio will shut down due to declining enrollment, rising costs, and an “unsustainable funding model,” the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio, and the school’s board of trustees revealed this week.

The university will continue operations through the remainder of the 2025–2026 academic year, according to a message addressed to faculty and staff.

The sisters and board announced William Bisset would be stepping down as the university’s president and that the Sisters of St. Francis have appointed Sister Nancy Linenkugel, OSF, to serve in his place during the transition.

Bisset is the former vice president for enrollment management and student affairs at Marymount University.

“For decades, the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania have supported and sustained Lourdes University with extraordinary generosity, faith, and commitment,” the message said. “That support has been both steadfast and sacrificial. However, the sisters can no longer continue to subsidize the university at the level required to sustain its operations.”

The sisters and board said they plan to address how the decision will affect faculty, staff, and students “directly.”

Lourdes University was founded in 1958 as a sponsored ministry of the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio, as “a liberal arts-based institution inspired by Catholic and Franciscan traditions,” its website states.

Federal lawsuit challenges Colorado ban on state funding for religious schools

A leading religious freedom law firm has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a Colorado state law that bans public funding for religious education.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Education ReEnvisioned and Riverstone Academy, a Christian school, asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado to declare the statewide ban on funding for religious schools unconstitutional.

The suit comes after the Colorado Department of Education denied an attempt by ReEnvisioned to obtain funding for Riverstone.

“Colorado law requires the state to unconstitutionally discriminate on the basis of religion when awarding government contracts,” the complaint argues. “The state constitution and statutes prohibit school districts and BOCES [Board of Cooperative Educational Services] from contracting with religious schools to provide educational services, in violation of religious schools’ free exercise rights as well as the rights of the religious students and parents who would attend that school.”

First Liberty Institute announced the filing alongside law firms Miller Farmer Carlson, First & Fourteenth PLLC, and Dechert LLP.

“Parents have the constitutional right to seek out innovative government programs and be treated fairly when they do,” said First Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys in a Feb. 16 press release.

Civil rights leader, former Xavier University President Norman Francis dies at 94

Norman Francis, a civil rights advocate who famously became the first lay president of Xavier University of Louisiana on the day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, has passed away at 94 years old.

Francis “dedicated his astounding effort to the flourishing of the human community, to full freedom of the oppressed, especially the descendants of the enslaved — it is the love to which we are called as disciples of Christ,” Xavier’s current president, Reynold Verret, said in a Feb. 18 memorial posted by the university.

“The nation is better and richer for his having lived among us,” Verret said.

Prior to Francis’ 47-year tenure as president of Xavier, he served as the university’s dean of men. He was also notable as the first Black law school graduate of the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

He was the co-founder of Liberty Bank and Trust Company, one of the oldest Black-owned banks in the U.S. He was also credited with helping bring the NFL’s Saints franchise to New Orleans.

Francis’ family said in a statement following his passing that his Catholic faith “was the foundation of his life, guiding the way he loved, served, and cared for others.”

“We find comfort in knowing that he is now reunited in eternal rest with his beloved wife, our mother, Blanche; his parents; his brother, Bishop Joseph Francis; and sisters Velma and Pauline, and many cherished members of our extended family who have gone before him marked with the sign of faith,” the family said.

Santa Clara University to relocate Jesuit theology school to main campus

Santa Clara University in California is moving its Jesuit School of Theology from Berkeley to its main campus, a decision that has been endorsed by the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.

“The decision to move the theologate follows more than a year of assessment and intentional discernment regarding the future and optimal location of the school for student support, academic integration, and future growth,” the school said in a Feb. 25 press release.

The move also comes after the university received a $10 million grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. to expand its theological formation, which it plans to do through various initiatives, including the launch of a new Pope Francis Institute for Pastoral Flourishing.

The university said bringing the theology school’s faculty, staff, and students to its main campus will “help breathe life into the new Pope Francis Institute for Pastoral Flourishing, an important hub for expanding pastoral formation, synodal leadership, and ecclesial innovation.”

It also emphasized that the Jesuit school, combined with Santa Clara’s existing religious studies and pastoral ministries, “will comprise the largest faculty of Catholic theology and ministry in the western U.S.”

“The benefits to our campus from this move will be immeasurable, from the rich global perspectives shared by JST-SCU students, to the faculty collaborations that will be sparked, to new expertise brought to bear on the challenges facing our world,” Santa Clara University President Julie Sullivan said in the release.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Wendy Kinsella gave the green light for the $176 million settlement, the diocese said in a press release on Feb. 25, marking the “official conclusion” of the diocese’s effort to provide “reparation and compensation to survivors of sexual abuse.”

The diocese had announced the terms of the settlement in August 2025, with Bishop Douglas Lucia revealing that the diocese itself would contribute $50 million of the settlement, while parishes and “other Catholic entities” would contribute an additional $50 million.

The remainder will come from diocesan insurance providers, the diocese said.

“I again offer my most heartfelt apology to those who have suffered such harm and for any past neglect in addressing it,” Lucia said on Feb. 25.

The news comes amid a wave of recent abuse settlements in the Northeast.

The Archdiocese of New York announced in December 2025 that it would pursue a $300 million payout as part of a “global settlement” with victims.

Then-archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan said at the time that the archdiocese would partly fund the settlement by the sale of “significant real estate assets.”

In February, meanwhile, the Diocese of Brooklyn said it would pursue a settlement with more than 1,000 alleged victims of Church abuse. Both Brooklyn and New York said they would use retired Judge Daniel Buckley as a mediator.

Also in February, the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, said it would fund a $180 million settlement for abuse victims, an amount that more than doubled an earlier proposal by the diocese.

But for the first time in its history, RECongress hosted an Arabic Mass put on by the Arab American Catholic Community (AACC), based out of St. Joseph Church in Pomona, California. Started in 1989, the community comprises an estimated 6,000 families with backgrounds mostly from six countries: Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt.

“I want to thank RECongress for giving us this opportunity to show our faith because sometimes, unfortunately, when we think of Arabs, what do we think about?” said Father Ala Musharbash, a Jordanian Catholic priest who is now the chaplain for the AACC.

“So our intention is to show our beautiful Arabic culture and Catholic and Christian culture. We have a very nice, beautiful culture. Maybe it’s messed up a little bit with social media and the news. But if you go more deeply, you will find a beautiful culture.”

Flourishes of the culture were present in the Mass in several ways. The liturgy was bilingual, with the Gospel proclaimed in English, but several parts of the Mass — the Confiteor, the first reading, the consecration — were spoken in Arabic.

Many of the songs and prayers were displayed on video screens, with the words in English and Arabic, along with a guide on how to pronounce the Arabic phrases. Musharbash also told the crowd that the Arabic language is a close cousin of Aramaic.

“So when we pray the Our Father, it’s the closest to Jesus’ language,” Musharbash said.

The icon on the altar, Our Lady of the Holy Land — also displayed on prayer cards handed out to Massgoers — featured a customized image of Mary dressed as a Palestinian woman and Jesus wearing a keffiyeh, Musharbash said. The image was blessed by Archbishop José H. Gomez in 2025.

In his homily to the hundreds who packed the large conference room, Musharbash said that sometimes we hesitate to follow the Lord, or feel we are not worthy, but that Jesus calls us still.

“Something in every human heart is a desire to see the Lord,” he said. “Many of us carry heavy struggles.

“Sometimes we feel misunderstood or judged. But the Lord sees us completely and still calls us today. He is not scandalized by our weakness and he sees beyond it. He sees our heart.”

At the end of the Mass, Musharbash called for those attending to pray for “peace for the whole world, especially for the Middle East, and to end wars and wars and wars because I think the political agreements will not do anything. Believe me, not any president will do anything. Don’t trust in any political case, just trust in God.”

The Arab American Catholic Community hosts Masses at 7 p.m. Saturdays at St. Joseph Church in Pomona and at 1 p.m. Sundays at Holy Name of Jesus Church in Redlands, California.

This story was first published by Angelus News and is reprinted here with permission.

Mary Gallagher, the dean of the university’s Keough School of Global Affairs, wrote in an email on Feb. 26 that Professor Susan Ostermann “has decided not to move forward as director” of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.

Gallagher said she was “grateful for [Ostermann’s] willingness to serve and for the thoughtfulness with which she approached this decision,” according to the email, a copy of which was obtained by EWTN News.

Ostermann in the announcement said the “focus on my appointment risks overshadowing the vital work the institute performs, which it should be allowed to pursue without undue distraction.”

She claimed that it was “clear that there is work to do at Notre Dame to build a community where a variety of voices can flourish.”

The Notre Dame Observer first reported the news on Feb. 26.

The announcement comes after weeks of mounting criticism against the university following Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, Bishop Kevin Rhoades’ statement calling for the school to drop the appointment.

The school had announced Ostermann’s appointment as director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies in early January. Gallagher at the time described Ostermann as an “exceptional scholar and a deeply engaged teacher” and an “outstanding choice” to lead the institute.

On Feb. 11 Rhoades in a statement expressed “dismay” and “strong opposition” to the appointment, arguing that the school’s decision was “causing scandal to the faithful of our diocese and beyond.”

The bishop pointed to Ostermann’s well-documented public support of abortion, as well as her sometimes-caustic criticism of the pro-life movement, which she has at times linked to racism and misogyny.

Her beliefs on abortion “go against a core principle of justice that is central to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity and mission,” Rhoades said.

Rhoades’ statement was quickly backed by multiple U.S. prelates. Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila; Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Bishop Robert Barron; San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone; Green Bay, Wisconsin, Bishop David Ricken; and several others praised Rhoades’ remarks and called on Notre Dame to rescind the appointment.

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops President Archbishop Paul Coakley also urged the school to back down, arguing that Ostermann “openly stands against Catholic teaching when it comes to the sanctity of life, in this case protection of the unborn.”

In a Feb. 26 statement, Rhoades said he was “grateful” to learn of Ostermann’s backing away from the position.

“The reason I opposed the appointment is because the appointment of persons to leadership positions at a Catholic university is an act of institutional witness, a mission-governance issue,” the bishop said, arguing that a Catholic university’s mission is “compromised” when it installs leaders who “act or speak against fundamental teachings of the Church.”

“This is not an issue about academic freedom or scholarly engagement,” the bishop said. “Academic freedom protects inquiry. It does not require institutional self-contradiction.”

As late as Feb. 8, the university was still refusing to rescind Ostermann’s appointment. The school told the Irish Rover that it had “not changed its position” on Ostermann’s leadership of the department.

In the interim, two scholars announced their disaffiliation with the school, with professors Robert Gimello and Diane Desierto both citing Ostermann’s appointment as their reason for leaving.

Former sociology professor Christian Smith in a Feb. 13 essay at First Things also revealed he had left the school; though he said he left the university “at the end of 2025,” before the Ostermann controversy erupted, he wrote that Notre Dame’s leaders are “equivocal about [the school’s] Catholic mission and make decisions and pursue practices that ­undermine it.”

Update: This story was updated with the Feb. 26 statement from Bishop Kevin Rhoades. (Published at 12:44 p.m. ET on Feb. 27, 2026)

Former Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski and Alfonso Aguilar, America First Policy Institute director of Hispanic engagement, both of whom are Catholic, gave different views on the country’s economic outlook and the best way to approach immigration questions during an interview with “EWTN News Nightly” the day after the president’s Feb. 24 address.

“I think American people … are not seeing Donald Trump really accomplishing very much for them,” Lipinski said. “I mean, he’s a great showman.”

In the State of the Union, Trump boasted about the economic outlook, saying inflation has gone down, the prices of some foods have decreased, and the stock market has gone up. He took credit for signing tax cuts into law, more investments in the United States, and the stock market hitting record highs.

Lipinski said he believes “people are still struggling with affordability [and] inflation,” arguing that former President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers also “did a terrible job” on inflation, but that “it hasn’t changed,” and “I think people are still struggling economically.”

“I think for a lot of people, the showmanship has become stale for them because, what they are seeing, what they’re feeling in the country right now, they’re not happy with,” he said.

As of January 2026, the inflation rate stood at 2.6%, which is slightly lower than January 2025, when the inflation rate was 3%. Under Biden, inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, but went down significantly before the end of his presidency.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, groceries increased by 2.1% from January 2025 to January 2026. Some grocery items, such as eggs, have gone down, as noted by Trump in his speech. Some other costs, such as gasoline, have also gone down. Real wages increased by 1.2% in that time frame.

Aguilar said “some people may not be feeling those dropped prices, but [Trump] did say that we’re going to see an economic boom,” and argued that Trump performed “very well in [his address] … stressing how the economy is really changing and we’re entering a golden era.”

“People are going to start feeling [the economic changes],” Aguilar said. “When that happens, then the entire dynamic changes and public opinion will change.”

Trump’s immigration policy

The president also spoke at length about his mass deportation efforts and highlighted instances in which immigrants who entered the country illegally committed serious crimes. He also spoke about Somali immigrants and ongoing federal fraud investigations in Minnesota, which the president alleged was primarily orchestrated by that community.

Lipinski gave credit to Trump for “what he’s done at the border” and called Biden’s border policy tragic, saying he “essentially announced that the border is open.” Yet, the former congressman took issue with the broader mass deportation efforts and rhetoric about immigration.

Although Lipinski said he is glad Trump affirmed the country “will always allow people to come in legally,” the former congressman said “that has not been the message that has continually come out from him or from the administration.”

He said the president’s rhetoric has suggested “all immigrants are bad” and “all immigrants are criminals.” He said Congress needs to address immigration in a bipartisan manner, which does not include deportations of everyone who entered the country illegally, adding that “some are criminals; some are not.”

“This idea that somehow all of our problems are caused by illegal immigrants is really not, once again, addressing the problem,” Lipinski said. “It’s just demonizing people.”

Alternatively, Aguilar argued that in the 2024 election “immigration was the No. 1 issue — not only about controlling the border but also removing criminals.”

“That’s what the administration is doing,” he said. “Again, he’s putting the house in order. The immigration dynamic has changed completely after four years of open borders. You have many — not a small number of people — who entered the country [who] had ties to drug cartels, to criminal organizations, [or] even were on terrorist watchlist.”

Scholars at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that “237 foreign-born terrorists were responsible for 3,046 murders on U.S. soil from 1975 through the end of 2024.” In that time frame, tens of millions of immigrants have entered the United States. FBI stats in December 2025 show participation in operations targeting about 3,000 people associated with criminal networks who are eligible for deportation or removal.

Aguilar said “we have to end sanctuary cities,” which was one of the priorities Trump laid out in his address. He blamed local officials’ refusal to cooperate with immigration enforcement for the deaths of two people killed by federal immigration agents at protests. Minnesota local law enforcement interacts with federal officials in limited ways through jail intake procedures or sheriffs’ cooperation agreements in certain counties.

“The local government, the governor, and the mayor there created the circumstances by not allowing the local police to do its job,” he said. “They have to support federal enforcement. They have to do the policing work. If they don’t, [immigration enforcement is] still going to do its job. They’re going to go in without the police. Plus, you had all these leftist activists going in to agitate, to provoke, creating the circumstances for what happened.”

Aguilar also argued that immigration policy is an affordability issue because cities “already have limited resources [and] limited housing.”

Kaiser, who survived being shot in the head, shared her story at a Feb. 24 news conference on gun violence where Gov. Tim Walz announced a series of gun control and violence prevention proposals.

“On Aug. 27, I was in church attending the first school Mass of the year when a gun fired 116 rounds of bullets through the stained-glass windows,” Kaiser said. “Two students were shot and killed. Two students survived gunshot injuries to the head. I’m one of them.”

“Many more students were injured by bullets and flying glass,” Kaiser recalled. “We all hid under the pews. The older students covered the younger students to protect them.”

“I was taken to the hospital and rushed into surgery,” she said. “The doctor removed a large piece, almost half of my skull, to let my brain swell and to remove bone and bullet fragments from my head.”

“I had a second surgery three weeks later to put the piece of my skull back in my head,” she continued. “All children have the right to live free from gun violence in schools, churches, and in our communities.”

“No one should have to go through what we went through,” Kaiser said.

At the conference, Walz proposed 11 different gun restrictions as well as a few proposals to increase mental health support, security, and safety resources at schools.

The desks of Harper Moyski and Fletcher Merkel, the two students killed in the Annunciation shooting, were brought to the state Capitol this week as a reminder “as a reminder of the horror of gun violence,” according to a post on Walz’s social media.

Walz’s proposal included banning binary triggers, firearms without serial numbers, and magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. He also proposed required reporting of lost or stolen guns, increased safe storage requirements, and mandated firearm insurance, as well as a tax on the sale of guns and ammunition.

Minnesota is ranked the 14th most-strict state for gun laws, requiring background checks, concealed carry permits, waiting periods for purchases, and secure storage. Guns are banned from K–12 schools in Minnesota. The state has an Extreme Risk Law, which allows judges to take an individual’s gun if the family or law enforcement believe they are a threat.

Walz also proposed a repeal of preemption laws to enable local governments to ban more guns, laws to “implement gun industry accountability,” and a measure to allow public colleges and universities to restrict visitors from carrying firearms, on penalty of a misdemeanor.

The proposal also included increased mental health support by adding a medical assistance benefit for coordinated specialty care for individuals in early stages of psychosis, as well as creating school support, intervention, and resource teams, defined as “multidisciplinary teams composed of counselors, nurses, mental health professionals, teachers, administrators, and law enforcement [who] will help ensure safe, inclusive, and supportive learning environments where students have access to proactive, research-based support.”

Citing increased political violence, Walz also proposed adding staff positions to the Minnesota School Safety Center “ensuring equitable access to safety and security resources statewide.”

“In the past year we have seen gun violence inflict immense heartbreak and loss in Minnesota. It’s time for us to come together to take real, actionable steps toward commonsense gun laws,” Walz said.

On Tuesday, two gun control measures failed to advance in the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Rob Doar, president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Center, said the bill was based on a false premise.

“Every time the government has attempted to ban something … it does not eliminate those things,” Doar said. “It drives them underground, creates a lucrative illicit market, and only empowers those who are already willing to ignore the law.”

The group opposed Walz’s recent gun control proposals, according to a statement by Chair Bryan Strawser, who said the measures “target peaceable gun owners … while doing little to stop violent criminals who already ignore the law.”

But Strawser noted there is “potential for common ground” on issues like improving mental health resources, crisis response, and school safety measures, as well as “enforcing existing laws against violent offenders.”

“Public safety and constitutional rights can coexist without conflict,” Strawser said.

Thigpen’s death was announced by several media outlets, including TAN Books, the publisher of many of his works.

Conor Gallagher, the CEO of the publishing company, said in a Facebook post that Thigpen was “one of the most respected Catholic authors in our industry” and “a man who never left a conversation without making you a better person.”

Born May 18, 1954, in Savannah, Georgia, Thigpen was raised Presbyterian and briefly identified with atheism before returning to Christianity. He would go on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from Yale University and a master’s degree and doctorate in historical theology from Emory University.

He would eventually become a Protestant pastor before ultimately converting to Catholicism in 1993. He told the Catholic News Herald in 2016 that while an atheist he encountered “powerful, malicious nonhuman intelligences” that caused him to turn to Scripture and eventually back to faith in God.

“In a sense, you could say that I came to believe in the devil before I came to believe in God,” he said, adding that the realization “sent [him] running back into the arms of Our Lord.”

That conversion experience eventually inspired him to write the “Manual for Spiritual Warfare,” one that explains “who the enemy is, what weapons and armor the Christian possesses, and how to remain steadfast in the fight of faith, rooted in the teaching of Scripture and the Church’s tradition.”

Thigpen said in writing the work he “wanted to help readers identify their spiritual enemy and his strategies, then tell them about the spiritual comrades, weapons, and armor that God has given us to be victorious in this battle.”

The “Manual” was one of the many Catholic faith-centric books Thigpen composed over the course of his career. Others included “A Year With the Saints,” “Saints Who Saw Hell,” “The Biblical Names of Jesus,” and several books for children.

Thigpen was also the author of “Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith: Are We Alone in the Universe with God and the Angels?”

He wrote in 2024 that the debate over intelligent alien life “stretches back at least 26 centuries” and has included input from “fathers and doctors of the Church, Catholic philosophers and theologians, popes and bishops, friars and priests, scientists and saints.”

Pointing to St. Albert the Great’s reflection on the “wondrous and noble question” of other worlds in the universe, Thigpen said the Catholic Church has “left the door wide open” for scientists, theologians, and philosophers to explore whether or not intelligent life can or does exist elsewhere.”

‘Everyone’s godfather’

A prolific editor and the writer of dozens of books, Thigpen was working until just before his passing; he was scheduled to be interviewed by EWTN News on the topic of extraterrestrial life the day before he died.

His death is being mourned in Catholic media. Gallagher said Thigpen will be remembered “for his intellectual clarity, faithful witness, and generous dedication to sharing the truth of the Catholic faith.” He was a devoted husband, father, and grandfather, Gallagher said.

The Coming Home Network also mourned his death, with network founder Marcus Grodi — the longtime host of “The Journey Home” on EWTN on which Thigpen appeared multiple times — saying that Thigpen had “long been a model of kindness and joy.”

“When I think of him, I see his broad smile and contagious laugh,” Grodi wrote. “May God rest his soul.”

Matt Swaim, the network’s outreach manager, told EWTN News that “everybody” knew Thigpen, who was also a frequent guest on the “Son Rise Morning Show.” Describing the author as “magnanimous, brilliant, and kind,” Swaim wrote: “Knowing how much he loved to reflect on the mystery of God, it makes me smile to think of what kinds of things he must know now.”

Katie Warner, a Catholic author from Georgia, told EWTN News that Thigpen was “unequaled in kindness, humility, and wisdom.”

“He seemed to be everyone’s godfather, sponsor, mentor, and friend,” she said. “He’ll undoubtedly be remembered for his prolific writings and teachings, but for those of us who were blessed to know him personally, we will also treasure the memories of his contagious joy, his warm smile, and his cheerful feast day texts (replete with all the relevant emojis).”

Thigpen will further be remembered “through his beautiful wife and family — including the little army of faithful grandchildren he shepherded — and, mostly, for the holy witness of a life truly well lived,” Warner said, describing him as “the consummate ‘good and faithful servant.’”

Theologian and professor Luke Togni told EWTN News that Thigpen’s life was “a testament to the strength of gentleness.”

“As of late, it shone brightly in his engagement with the question of nonhuman intelligences or extraterrestrial life,” he said.

“His openness to the grandeur of God and quiet trust in Jesus Christ allowed him to navigate rooms full of people whose views so often differed from his own and earn not only their respect but their sincere confidence.”

“His voice and guidance will be terribly missed,” Togni said.

Speaking to Shalom Tidings in 2018, Thigpen acknowledged that “those who read and think deeply about spiritual warfare are often tempted to anxiety and fear,” but he argued that we “must place all our trust in God.”

He cited 1 John 3:2-3 as among his favorite Scripture passages: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”

“Despite my failures, which are many, I cling to that promise,” he said.

Since its opening in 2006, St. Andrew Catholic Parish has operated out of nontraditional spaces — from the basement of a house to a local movie theater, then finally to the gym.

The parish began with a bilingual group of about 15 attendees in 2006 but has since become a home to about 1,400 registered families.

About 20 miles south of Salt Lake City proper, the bilingual parish draws about 400 attendees each for its Sunday English and Spanish Masses, and drew about 700 attendees at each Mass on Easter Sunday last year.

The Byzantine-inspired church will be built in a cruciform design, a traditional feature of many basilicas that will also serve as a nod to the parish’s patron saint, St. Andrew, who was crucified on an X-shaped cross.

The building plans, designed by MHTN Architects, show an eight-sided dome and a wooden “baldachin,” or ceremonial canopy, over an altar. 

The building plans for the 10-acre plot of land would also include an adoration chapel, social hall, and expanded food pantry as well as offices, education space, and a rectory — in all, a $35 million project.

The gym ‘pulls people together’

Father Joseph Delka, the pastor, said the gym setup is part of what made the community unique.

“I think being in a gym has helped form a community that is very committed and welcoming,” Delka said.

“Having a ‘gym church’ is certainly a unique experience for people,” Delka said. “When you have to ‘put church away’ into a storage closet every weekend after the Masses and then set everything up again later in the week, it really pulls people together to work for the good of the community.”

“You can’t take anything for granted. If people don’t step up to help, then it doesn’t happen,” he said.

The gym space has not stopped locals from attending; nor has it prevented a beautiful liturgy, according to Delka.

“Being in a gym has not stopped us from celebrating Mass and other liturgies faithfully and beautifully,” Delka said. “Yes, the sanctuary is comprised of a folding stage with an altar and an ambo on wheels, but we do well at making it beautiful, decorating it with various icons to suit the liturgical seasons.”

“Our choirs in English and Spanish are amazing,” he added. “I don’t know of any other gym that has an organ in it!”

‘Not just for us’

The new church is not just for the community that already exists.

“[F]rom the beginning of this project, we have been making it a point that this is not just for us,” Delka said. “The front of the church sits on the street corner as an invitation to ‘come and see.’”

“We hope that the beauty of the building will draw people in to encounter the Lord,” Delka continued.

Delka also noted that there will be an emphasis on sacred music as acoustic engineers are involved in the project.

The parish also plans to incorporate a new food pantry into the site plan.

“We also hope to have greater outreach to serve those in need,” Delka said. “Our parish currently has a food pantry that has been operating out of the basement of the rectory since 2009.”

“Our patron St. Andrew declared to his brother, St. Peter: ‘We have found the Messiah!’ And then he brought Peter to Jesus,” Delka said. “We strive to follow that example by putting Christ at the center. Ultimately, I think that is what draws people here.”

Architecture that ‘proclaims the Gospel’

“Church art and architecture at its best proclaims the Gospel loud and clear and raises the heart and mind to God,” Delka said.

This, he said, is “at the heart and soul of this building project” — along with their patron, St. Andrew.

“The design of this building draws deeply from our Catholic tradition: the basilica-cruciform design, the portico typical of many ancient churches in Rome, the eight-sided Byzantine style dome,” he said.

“We have small side chapels which will be dedicated to various saints; we have a chapel in the apse to allow for perpetual adoration.”

Each design element will have “a theological meaning,” Delka said.

The architecture is heavily inspired by the Vatican II concept of “noble simplicity,” from the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, Delka explained.

The architecture should inspire virtue while having simplicity, or “singleness of purpose,” he explained.

“The art and architecture are to point to Christ the noble one without distraction,” he said.

The Byzantine-style dome “is a nod to the Christian East since our patron St. Andrew was martyred in Patras,” Delka noted.

Icons, which are easily transportable and “don’t take up much storage space,” have become a “practical” form of sacred art for the parish, according to Delka.

“Moreover and more importantly, the iconographic tradition is also very rich and truly helps raise the heart and mind to God,” he said.

Delka calls the project “ambitious.”

“We will need all the help we can get to make it a reality,” he said. “First and foremost, we entrust everything to Our Lord.”

Despite Salt Lake City’s deep historical connection to the Latter-day Saints, the city has a growing nonreligious population and the percent of Utah religiously unaffiliated adults is several points higher than the national average, according to Pew Research Center.

“The world needs more places to be an oasis in a desert: a refuge of peace where God is praised, people are renewed and re-created in Christ through the sacraments, and where the saving word of God is proclaimed,” Delka said.

Caritas Cuba and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) have been key players in dispersing U.S. government aid throughout Cuba, which may be a testament to the Church’s international reputation for trustworthiness but also highlights the strong ties between south Florida and Cuba.

Even before the U.S. arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, the December 2025 U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers inhibited the transportation of oil to Cuba, according to the Associated Press. With the goal of toppling the Cuban communist regime, a Jan. 29 U.S. executive order imposed tariffs on nations that provide oil to Cuba.

The strain on the island’s already fragile energy system has intensified.

The Cuba-Florida bond

Many Cubans went into exile in the years following Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Operation Pedro Pan enabled over 14,000 children to enter the U.S. as refugees between 1960–1962. Father José J. Espino, a former Pedro Pan refugee, was tasked as a Miami seminarian in 1980 with greeting Mariel Boatlift, a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba’s Mariel Harbor to the U.S. between April 15 and Oct. 31, 1980. 

Now as rector of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, a focal point of Espino’s ministry is to accompany Cuban immigrants at the shrine, which is named for Cuba’s patron saint.

Family histories like those of Samuel Rojas, a 21-year-old student at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, demonstrate that exiles come from widely varying backgrounds.

Rojas’ grandparents settled in New Jersey by way of Florida. His maternal grandfather arrived in the U.S. through Pedro Pan. His family was well-to-do until their land was seized after the revolution. In contrast, Rojas’ impoverished paternal grandfather was a “guajiro” (“cowboy”), aiding revolutionary forces as a courier before becoming disillusioned with the new government, couriering for anti-Castro efforts instead, and ending up “with a warrant for his arrest.”

In the midst of such hardships, the link between Cuba and south Florida has been strengthened.

As of 2023, according to FIU’s Cuban Research Institute, “Miami-Dade County has nearly twice as many residents of Cuban origin as the island’s second-largest city, Santiago de Cuba.” Western Union reports 2021 data showing “around 1.5 million [Cuban Americans] live in Florida and more than 400,000 live in just four other states: Texas, California, New Jersey, and New York. The remaining 20% live in other areas of the U.S.”

Elderly among those hardest hit by oil shortage

Scott Gale — program chair of political science at St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens — noted that Venezuelan oil is a key chess piece in international affairs relating to Cuba. Before Maduro was ousted, the communist government of China was accepting Venezuelan oil in repayment for debt.

“China was winning on both ends in Venezuela,” Gale, who has over 30 years of experience in U.S. government service, explained to EWTN News. “[China] was getting the oil cheap and … taking it off the money [Venezuela] owes them. Once the Trump administration put an embargo, it hurt China, but it hurt Cuba the most because Cuba is heavily dependent on Venezuelan oil.”

Juan T. O’Naghten, director of Cuba programs for the Cuban Association of the Order of Malta, explained how senior citizens are among those most impacted by the oil shortage.

Formed in 1952, the Cuban Association is headquartered in Coral Gables, with members in Florida and Cuba. Since 2000, they have been working with parishes and other institutions of the Church in Cuba, including Caritas Cuba, to provide free-of-charge services to the elderly, including “comedores.”

Comedores, operated by the Catholic Church, are places where the elderly can eat and socialize through activity programs like choral and exercise groups. In various locations, free laundry services are offered.

“Our aim is to let the elderly, who live very difficult lives in Cuba, have a more dignified existence,” O’Naghten said.

In Cuba today, the elderly are frequently left alone when younger family members depart the island. Current oil-related transportation issues have made it harder for seniors to access resources. Trash buildup in the streets has existed for years, further restricting seniors’ mobility.

Lingering effects of Hurricane Melissa

Another factor affecting Cuba is the lingering effects of Hurricane Melissa in October 2025.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami recognized early on that Category 5 Hurricane Melissa had deadly potential. According to Peter Routsis-Arroyo, CEO, they began calling for assistance to the Caribbean prior to the storm’s destructive strike on Jamaica on Oct. 28.

As Miami’s Florida Catholic reported, Jamaica and Haiti took the brunt of the storm. Catholic Charities of Miami’s Hurricane Melissa appeal focused on these two nations and Cuba. In Cuba, Catholic Charities’ supplies “go into the hands of the Catholic Church, and both governments recognize that and allow this to go on,” Routsis-Arroyo said.

Beginning in the early 2000s, Catholic Charities of Miami has provided a flow of resources to the Cuban Church, approximately 25-30 shipping containers of supplies per year.

Recently, the U.S. government began collaborating with CRS to transfer hurricane-related government aid to Caritas Cuba. Initial supplies reached the island Jan. 14. Catholic Charities of Miami is also involved with the continuing hurricane relief initiative.

Father Richard Vigoa is pastor of St. Augustine Parish in Coral Gables, a predominantly Cuban parish instrumental in arranging Catholic Charities’ initial Hurricane Melissa aid flights to Cuba.

“It is important to note that those affected by the hurricane, in one way or another, include almost the entire population of eastern Cuba; therefore, $3 million would amount to approximately $1 per person,” he explained. “Because of this, Caritas Cuba has had to visit the most affected areas and identify the most vulnerable individuals.”

Routsis-Arroyo explained that Caritas Cuba disperses the aid, such as food and cleaning kits, primarily to “single mothers, senior citizens, and people with disabilities.”

Espino and Sister Eva Puebla of the Daughters of Charity acted as guarantors accompanying a Jan. 28 aid transfer to Santiago’s Catholic Church representatives. Shortly thereafter, a pair of guarantors from St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Miami accompanied a drop-off to the area of Holguín: Father Elvis Gonzalez, pastor, and Father Esney Muñoz Diaz, parochial vicar.

The initial wave of U.S. aid to Cuba was $3 million, and since Feb. 5, the Trump administration has increased the total by $6 million. 

According to Jeremy P. Lewin, senior official for the Bureau of Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs, and Religious Freedom: “To my knowledge, this is the largest amount of direct assistance the United States has ever delivered to Cuba, at least in recent memory. I know in the past, in 2022, the Biden administration did $2 million for Hurricane Ian, so now we are far surpassing that.”

“The respect and the willingness from both governments to look to the Catholic Church to be the stewards of this aid speaks volumes as to the work that we do and the assurances we can provide to be the ones to get this immediate assistance out as quickly as possible,” Routsis-Arroyo said.

“The Church is the one that can unite the Cuban people, the ones here [in the U.S.] and the ones in Cuba,” agreed Tony Argiz, a former Pedro Pan participant. “I wouldn’t be here without them. I thank God every day.”

Tearing up, he shared that the Miami Catholic Church served as his legal guardian from 9 years old until he was 14, when his parents departed Cuba for the U.S.

He added: “Who else better [than the Church] to take care of the most vulnerable people in the island?”

“Our nation’s back: bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before,” Trump said, about one year and one month into his second nonconsecutive term in office.

The president also asserted there “has been a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity, and belief in God.” He credited “my great friend Charlie Kirk” with contributing to the trend. Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, was one of the guests in attendance.

“In Charlie’s memory, we must all come together to reaffirm that America is one nation, under God, and we must totally reject political violence of any kind,” Trump said. “... We love religion and we love bringing it back and it’s coming back at levels that nobody actually thought possible. It’s really a beautiful thing to see.”

The gender transition of minors

Some of Trump’s first actions as president focused on what he called “gender ideology,” such as policies that restrict hospitals from providing gender transition drugs and surgeries for minors, and restricting women’s high school and college sports to only biological women and girls.

One guest at the State of the Union was Sage Blair, a woman from Virginia who underwent a social transition when she was 14 years old in 2021. The public high school did not inform her parents when she began to identify as a boy.

Blair ran away from home and was lured into a sex trafficking operation in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. A judge withheld her parents’ custody after the public defender accused them of “misgendering her” and she was put in a children’s home in Texas, from which she also ran away and was again sex trafficked. She eventually returned home and she stopped identifying as male.

“A confused Sage ran away from home,” Trump said. “After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son.”

Trump said in his speech that lawmakers should agree “no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” adding: “We must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”

Trump asked lawmakers to stand up and applaud if they agree. Republicans stood, but most Democrats remained sitting, after which the president said: “Nobody stands up. These people are crazy, I’m telling you, they’re crazy.”

Mary Rice Hasson, the director of the Person and Identity Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told EWTN after the address that “it was hugely significant for the president to blast this evil aspect of gender ideology, which is much more pervasive than parents realize.”

“Many public schools continue to facilitate a child’s rejection of his or her sex and hide it from the child’s parents, often with tragic consequences,” she said.

Susan Hanssen, a history professor at the University of Dallas — a Catholic institution — said the president’s reaction to Blair’s story “seemed very genuine.”

“He expressed surprise that gender transitioning even needed to be brought up as an issue,” she said. “This has been an issue that he moved on immediately upon entering the White House, clarifying by executive order that there are only male and female.”

Mass deportations and immigration

Trump doubled down on mass deportation efforts during his address, derided immigrants from Somalia, took credit for stronger border security, and accused Democrats of supporting “open borders.”

“After four years in which millions and millions of illegal aliens poured across our borders totally unvetted and unchecked, we now have the strongest and most secure border in American history by far,” Trump said.

The president added that the United States “will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and work hard to maintain our country.”

Trump recalled specific crimes committed by immigrants who were in the country illegally and called on Congress to ban sanctuary cities, which refuse to assist in deportations and impose penalties on public officials who block immigration enforcement.

The president also called on Congress to pass a law that bans states from providing driver’s licenses to immigrants who are residing in the country illegally.

“Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to directions, speed, danger, and location,” he said after referencing the injuries suffered by Dalilah Coleman, a child who was struck by an 18-wheeler driven by an immigrant who was in the country illegally.

Trump reserved his most aggressive rhetoric for Somali immigrants. The federal government is currently investigating fraud schemes in Minnesota, which the administration alleges was done primarily by Somalis.

“The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,” the president said.

“Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the U.S.A. and it is the American people who pay the price in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly crime,” he said. “We will take care of this problem. We’re going to take care of this problem. We are not playing games.”

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who provided the Democrats’ response to the State of the Union, criticized Trump for his rhetoric and policies on immigration.

“They have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans and they have done it without a warrant,” she said. “They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies. They have sent children … to far off detention centers and they have killed American citizens in our streets and they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability.”

John White, a professor emeritus of politics at The Catholic University of America, also criticized the president’s rhetoric on Somalis, telling EWTN News: “He is demeaning a group of Americans, many of whom supported him in 2024.”

In November 2025, the USCCB issued a special message that opposed “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and called for an end to “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.” The message was approved by a vote of 216-5.

Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, prayed the rosary with a crowd of about 50 who gathered at the Catholic university’s iconic Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in freezing temperatures in the early evening. Participants included students, priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and members of the local South Bend community.

During the rosary, Rhoades knelt before the Marian grotto alongside student organizers Luke Woodyard and Gabriel Ortner, while the crowd huddled close behind.

“I am very proud of you,” Rhoades told gathered students at the conclusion of the rosary. “It’s so cold, and you’ve come out. So keep up the good work.”

The prayer service was held nearly two weeks after Rhoades issued a forceful rebuke of Notre Dame for appointing Susan Ostermann to head the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. Ostermann, a faculty member at Notre Dame, has a lengthy track record of actively advocating for abortion.

In his Feb. 11 letter, Rhoades expressed his “dismay and strong opposition” to the appointment, stating that Ostermann’s abortion advocacy should disqualify her from leading an institute charged with promoting “integral human development” in Asia.

“I call upon the leadership of Notre Dame to rectify this situation,” the bishop wrote, noting that the appointment does not go into effect until July 1. “There is still time to make things right.”

The Ostermann appointment was not explicitly mentioned by Rhoades at the prayer service. In a statement to the National Catholic Register, the sister news partner of EWTN News, he shared his gratitude for “Notre Dame’s pro-life witness reflected in the students and faculty who work to foster a culture of life through their organizations, programs, and daily example.”

“I entrust the Notre Dame community and its leaders to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes. I invite all the faithful to join in prayer — perhaps by lighting a candle at the Grotto — asking our Blessed Mother to intercede for Notre Dame and its proclamation and service of the Gospel of her Son, the gospel of life,” Rhoades said.

Sabrina Richter, a freshman at Notre Dame, said she came to the prayer service because “the Catholic character of Notre Dame is worth preserving and worth fighting for.”

“If we let one thing slip, another thing might slip,” she said, referring to the Ostermann appointment.

Background on the appointment

Ostermann, whose appointment was announced in January, has authored 11 articles advocating for abortion access, calling it “freedom-enhancing” and “consistent with integral human development that emphasizes social justice and human dignity.” She has also argued that the pro-life movement was founded in “white supremacy and racism” and has called pregnancy resource centers “anti-abortion propaganda sites.”

Since the appointment was announced in January, the university has faced backlash from Catholics across the country. Eighteen bishops have publicly backed Rhoades’ opposition to the appointment, according to the Sycamore Trust, a Notre Dame alumni group that has tracked the controversy. The list includes Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City — the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops — as well as two bishops with degrees from Notre Dame: Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, and Bishop Michael Sis of San Angelo, Texas.

Despite pushback from alumni, faculty members, media, and bishops, as well as the resignation of two faculty fellows from their roles at the Liu Institute, the university has continued to defend the appointment.

“[Ostermann] has stated clearly that she respects the university’s position on the sanctity of life and that as director, she understands her role is to support the diverse research of the institute’s scholars and students, not advance a personal agenda,” a university spokesperson told The Observer, Notre Dame’s student newspaper, on Feb. 24.

Student march planned

Notre Dame students, however, are not giving up. A student-organized “March on the Dome” will take place on Friday to protest what organizers call “the demolition of our Catholic identity.” It will include student speeches and a candlelight procession to the grotto.

Woodyard, a sophomore who co-organized both events, said the prayer service with Rhoades set the correct tone for Friday’s march.

“We’re not trying to knock Notre Dame down,” he said. “We’re trying to say, ‘Hey, we love you, and we just want what’s best for you.’ And this is actually what students think … we want Notre Dame to be Catholic, and we want to preserve its Catholic identity in a real sense.”

Eighteen Catholic bishops and archbishops said Feb. 24 they “speak out as pastors in border states and beyond concerned about the impact of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) recent and ongoing immigration enforcement activities against individuals and families who are without legal status in our country.”

The statement comes from bishops from a number of states including Texas, Arizona, California, and New Mexico. The group is a subset of the hundreds of bishops and archbishops in the U.S.

“While we acknowledge the right and duty of a sovereign nation to enforce its laws, we also believe that those laws should be upheld in a manner that protects the God-given human dignity and rights of the human person,” the bishops wrote. They noted the facility known as Alligator Alcatraz in Florida “is of grave concern” to them.

The bishops called for Congress to consider specific immigration policy changes  that they believe “will help protect the human rights of immigrants and their families.” The recommendations included:

• Honor the right to apply for asylum at the border.
• Protect “sensitive locations” such as churches.
• Restore due process in the immigration system.
• Step back from focusing enforcement on immigrants contributing to the common good.
• Minimize the separation of families.
• End the use of masks and tactics “designed to intimidate immigrants and create fear.”
• Fund reintegration programs for deportees.
• Enforce detention facility standards.

Policy recommendations

The bishops said they are “very concerned with bona fide asylum-seekers being denied the opportunity to apply for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.” The bishops demand access to asylum at the border “be fully restored.”

The statement expressed concern over the “fear of immigration enforcement" deterring Catholics from worship. Calling for the protection of “sensitive locations,” the bishops said they want to ensure Catholics are not denied Mass or the sacraments. One day after taking office for his second term, Trump rescinded policies protecting “sensitive locations” including churches, schools, and hospitals from immigration enforcement.

The bishops also emphasized that immigration enforcement “not focus on those who are contributing to the nation.” They also said “immigrant families should be kept together” to ensure that “the separation of families, which can have detrimental effects on the family unit, is minimized by allowing them, to the greatest extent possible, to remain together in the U.S.”

“Due process should be restored in the immigration system,” and “the use of tactics to intimidate and create fear in the community should be halted,” the bishops wrote. They specifically detailed that the use of masks by enforcement officers, random stops without probable cause, roving patrols, and physical abuse of immigrants and others must be stopped. Such tactics “can intimidate immigrants” and may “prevent them from asserting their rights.”

“Detention standards should be enforced and vulnerable groups should not be detained,” they said. Many facilities “are being built in remote locations, incarcerating immigrants in substandard conditions and in some cases without access to appropriate medical care and religious services.”

A detainee in Illinois testified he spent six days in a federal immigration facility before a judge ordered bedding, three meals a day, free water, and hygiene products. The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly said allegations of subprime conditions at facilities are false.

The bishops urged Congress and the administration to “fund reintegration programs for deportees” to “mitigate the root causes of irregular migration … as well as to invest in reintegration programs to ensure that immigrants can safely and humanely reintegrate into their original homes and support themselves and their families in dignity.”

“As always, we stand ready to work with them to create an immigration system which ensures public safety, protects human rights, encourages economic growth and justice, and upholds our heritage as a nation of immigrants,” they concluded.

The USCCB approved a special message in November 2025 that expressed unified opposition to “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.” The message was approved 216-5.

Four Christian foster parents who lost their licenses for refusing to sign off on the requirement had sued the department, accusing it of violating their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of religion and of putting “gender ideology over children’s best interests.”

On Feb. 18, after more than a year and a half of litigation, the DCF finally ended the policy and the two parties reached a settlement.

According to the now-defunct policy, any person who wanted a license to foster children had to agree to affirm a child’s decision to identify as a gender different from his or her biological sex and a child’s sexuality if he or she identified as homosexual.

The guidelines that were previously in place encouraged foster parents to “support children’s identities even if it feels uncomfortable” and “bring young people to LGBTQ organizations and events in the community.” The guidelines instructed foster parents to use “appropriate pronouns” — which would be inconsistent with the child’s biological sex if the child identified as transgender — and “support young people’s gender expression.”

Prospective and current foster parents were required to agree to that policy as a condition of fostering children, even if they were not caring for children who identified as either homosexual or transgender.

With that requirement gone, the new policy clearly states DCF will not consider an applicant’s “sincerely held personal, cultural, religious, moral, or philosophical beliefs” when determining whether the department will approve a license.

The new policy states that DCF will no longer require the “endorsement or affirmation of specific identities” or the “use of particular vocabulary, prescribed language, or preferred pronouns related to gender identity, sexual orientation, or identity expression.”

In a court settlement, DCF also agreed to reinstate the licenses of the four foster parents who filed the lawsuit: Brian Wuoti, a pastor, and his wife, Katy; and Bryan Gantt, who is also a pastor, and his wife, Rebecca. All four were represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

“This is an incredible victory for children in Vermont’s foster-care system,” ADF Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse said in a statement following the settlement and policy change.

“No parent should be forced to lie to a vulnerable child about who they are, much less promote irreversible and life-altering procedures that don’t have any proven health benefits,” he said. “And, unfortunately, other loving families have been unable to open their homes to children in need just because of their Christian worldview. We commend Vermont for respecting the religious diversity of foster parents and ending its exclusionary policy that deprived children of opportunities to find loving homes.”

“This winter, the harshest in years, has been deliberately exploited to break the spirit of a nation,” the bishops said in a letter shared with EWTN News. “It is a war against the people. The genocidal intent is manifest.”

Ukrainian Church leaders in the U.S. charged Russia with using “Mother Nature as an accomplice in state-sponsored terrorism” and “systematically target[ing] Ukraine’s social and spiritual infrastructure” through various documented attacks on hospitals, schools, and places of worship.

The bishops cited “tens of thousands” of Ukrainian children being abducted and deported to Russia, the torture of civilian prisoners, including clergy, and the damage or destruction of more than 600 churches and places of worship since the start of the war.

“Everywhere Russian occupation has taken hold, the Ukrainian Catholic Church has been banned, and all religious confessions except the Moscow Patriarchate are persecuted,” the bishops said.

The church leaders noted 2,881 documented attacks on Ukraine’s health care system, “affecting medical personnel, hospitals and clinics, ambulances, and medical warehouses across the country.” They also highlighted attacks on educational institutions, which have left 4,048 of them damaged and 408 buildings destroyed.

“In a world that Pope Benedict described as living under the dictatorship of relativism, where seemingly everything is up for sale and relationships or principles are reduced to deals or transactions, Ukrainians assert: This is not the will of God!” the bishops said.

The letter, which thanked Americans and “all who stand in partnership” with the people of Ukraine, is signed by Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Metropolitan of Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S.; Bishop Paul Chomnycky, OSBM, of the Eparchy of Stamford, Connecticut; Bishop Benedict Aleksiychuk of the Eparchy of St. Nicholas in Chicago; and Bishop Bohdan Danylo of the Eparchy of St. Josaphat in Parma, Ohio.

Several Catholic leaders from Ukraine have spoken out about the impact of Russian aggression, particularly throughout the winter, during visits to the U.S. ahead of the war’s four-year anniversary on Feb. 24, including Bishop Vitaliy Kryvytskyi, SDB, of Kyiv–Zhytomyr and Bishop Pavlo Honcharuk of Kharkiv.

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered the pro-life movement one of its biggest wins in 2022 by overturning Roe v. Wade, which had previously mandated legal abortion nationwide. In her speech, Dannenfelser highlighted this decision as a major win but warned that more than 1 million abortions are still performed annually.

“The handcuffs are off,” she said. “We are free to protect the human rights of people. We live in a new, fresh moment filled with hope for our children. And yet, there are now more abortions than before Dobbs — at least 1.1 million a year.”

In spite of this achievement, Dannenfelser said the current strategy of leaving this issue to the states clearly does not work.” She cited as a major concern the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone through the mail, which has led to out-of-state abortionists mailing the drugs into states with pro-life laws.

“Twenty pro-life states can’t even enforce their laws because of mail-order abortion drugs,” she said.

Prior to 2023, a woman needed an in-person doctor’s visit to obtain mifepristone and it could only be dispensed in the presence of a doctor. President Joe Biden’s administration removed these safeguards.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced in May 2025 that the administration would review those changes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began a review in September 2025, but as of February, no action has been taken to further regulate the drug.

“Weekly horror stories of coercion, forced abortion, and harms to women are surfacing,” Dannenfelser said.

“It’s a horror,” she continued. “But HHS and the FDA are unmoved. They could easily, today, reestablish in-person dispensing and get the drug out of the mail. They are deaf to the cries of the House, and the Senate, attorneys general in half of their states, and of women and unborn children.”

The delivery of drugs into pro-life states has prompted lawsuits. In Louisiana, Attorney General Liz Murrill sued the FDA over the policy after residents — including Rosalie Markezich, who is named in the lawsuit — said they were coerced into taking abortion pills by boyfriends or others who obtained them through the mail.

In January, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the federal district court to pause the lawsuit, arguing that the internal FDA study is evaluating the concerns with the removal of safeguards.

“Half a dozen states are in court fighting for justice for women and children who are poisoned and coerced by pimps and abusers and traffickers, boyfriends, exes, buying drugs online,” Dannenfelser said. “This abortion drug atrocity denies the Dobbs victory and other historic victories like the first-ever defunding of the Big Abortion lobby by Congress last year.”

Dannenfelser also expressed concerns about Trump asking Republicans to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment — which prohibits federal taxpayer funds for abortion — when negotiating an extension to Affordable Care Act subsidies in January. In addition, in January the White House also said it intends to negotiate pro-life protections into Trump’s recently announced health care plan.

“That’s the bedrock principle that’s been around for 50 years that taxpayers should never be forced to fund the violence of abortion,” Dannenfelser said.

In spite of these setbacks, the pro-life leader said “our movement is strong” and cited public polling that opposes taxpayer-funded abortion and the mail delivery of abortion drugs.

“There is a flourishing of new, courageous, and convincing voices at all levels: our churches, local communities, digital influencers, strong advocates in state and federal government — and this is all very good,” she said.

“We have great days ahead, because our movement is growing in numbers, youth, and diversity,” Dannenfelser said.

“We have everything we need to accomplish victory for women and children: strong and convincing leaders,” she said. “Faith in God’s goodness. Inspiration and lessons from history to guide us. The tools of democracy which give us voice and power. And most of all, the riveting vision of the one child — precious, irreplaceable, so very needed and with rights to protect. Out of love and determination, we will never stop until we save her and each and every one.”

The group of men — which includes Dale Ahlquist, president of the G.K. Chesterton Society; Daniel Kerr, president of St. Martin’s Academy; author Joseph Pearce, and Thomas More College President William Fahey — produce the “Tuesdays with the Troubadours” podcast, an outgrowth of their annual Prairie Troubadour conference, which took place in mid-February in Fort Scott, Kansas, on the theme “For Love of God and Country,” focusing on the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.

EWTN News sat down with all five men on a Zoom interview the week after the Prairie Troubadour for a spirited discussion about friendship, the joy they find meeting together and on the podcast, and a rousing rendition of “Flower of Scotland” sung by Pearce, an Englishman.

The group is a “dear friendship among five men who’ve known each other a long time,” said Check, who lives in Southern California. “I marvel that I am one of this group because all those guys are great scholars and here I am in there with them, and I am deeply grateful.”

Kerr, who founded St. Martin’s Academy, a Catholic boys’ boarding school in Kerr’s hometown of Fort Scott that focuses on educating boys to love Jesus Christ through classical academics, farm work, and prayer, started the conference in 2016 in honor of his father, Gerald Francis Kerr, who passed away in 2015.

“These men here have been my mentors,” Kerr said, referring to the other four men on the Zoom call. “Since my father’s passing, you guys are somewhere between older brothers and father figures for me.”

“In Dale’s case, a grandfather,” Check quipped.

Fahey, who lives in New Hampshire, told EWTN News he suggested the podcast in 2020, during what Kerr called the “dark period of the spring of 2020,” the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the podcast, the Troubadours are “inspired to live and share the joy of Christ through stories, songs, and good red wine.” Its annual symposium aims for “lively discourse punctuated by earnest prayer, toothsome food, strong drink, and the real mirth found in friendship,” according to the group’s website.

During the interview, Fahey teased Pearce, who was sitting on his back deck at his home in South Carolina, about the “beautiful” view of his backyard. Fahey said the view put him in the mood for a song: “Can you sing ‘Oh Flower of Scotland’ for me right now?”, he asked.

Pearce obliged, singing in a deep baritone.

‘Prairie Troubadour feels like home’

To Fahey, the Prairie Troubadour conference “feels like home.”

“I love coming to Fort Scott. Every year, the town has been healed a little bit more, it’s becoming more of itself, and Dan is the chief architect of that, whether he will admit it or not,” Fahey said.

Fort Scott is a small, historic town of fewer than 8,000 people in southeastern Kansas, serving as the county seat of Bourbon County. It is the home of the Fort Scott National Historic Site, managed by the National Park Service and serving as an example of a mid-19th-century U.S. Army fort on the frontier.

The downtown business district has seen revitalization in the last several years.

“I feel like we’re participants in the renewal of this town,” Fahey said, “and in seeing St. Martin’s grow, and that couldn’t happen if it wasn’t in the same place with these particular people.”

“It’s a whole conference of kindred spirits,” Pearce told EWTN News in his strong British accent. “I like the location. Fort Scott still has that sort of character, it’s a bit of a backwards place, it’s got a lot of history. It hasn’t been replaced with a lot of concrete and strip malls. It’s like going back to the real America.”

“It’s a retro conference in a retro place with retro people,” Pearce said, laughing.

Ahlquist said the Prairie Troubadour conference is one of his favorites — “and I go to a lot of conferences!” — because the evenings are unique. The St. Martin’s boys, current students and alumni, belt out American and Irish folk songs and play guitars and fiddles while attendees dance or catch up with old friends. He said people who experience it want to experience it again, and they come back.

He said one word to describe when the Troubadours get together is “joy.”

Check agreed. “It’s palpable for the whole weekend. There has to be something at work here because Dan [Kerr] gets hundreds of people to come from all over the country to this small town in Kansas in the middle of February,” he said with a laugh.

“On the Tuesday podcast, as anyone who’s watched will realize, whether the conversation is about what frying pan do we like to cook with or what we are doing for our summer reading, all of these questions have a Catholic answer to them. I think we provide that,” Check said.

“We’re not doing it for the viewers,” he said. “We’re doing it as an excuse to get together with four other people that we love.”

“Yet, everywhere we go, we meet people who tell us how much of an impact Tuesdays with the Troubadours has,” Kerr said. “It is amazing.”

‘An example of fraternity and friendship’

“There’s a lot of loneliness in the modern world, especially because of screens,” Check said. “If we can be something of an example of fraternity and friendship in this age of loneliness, well, glory to God.”

Ahlquist noted that “the great irony is we were able to maintain this great friendship through the screen.”

“But every one of these friendships began incarnate first! I remember the very day I met each one of you,” Check, who described himself as the “sentimental one,” said.

“The conference and podcast are very much a glimpse of what life will be like on the other side of the veil, when we’re united,” he continued. “The two things Pope Benedict says make us human, the worship of God and friendship, and we’ll be united together in those things for eternity.”

Check said his favorite moment of the weekend was Friday afternoon before the conference began, when the five friends sat on the back porch of a historic mansion on an old brick-paved street in downtown and just talked about “all kinds of things,” including listing their favorite Robert Duvall movies. The actor died on Feb. 15 at the age of 95.

The Catholic Ave Maria University near Naples, Florida, reported a measles outbreak on its campus starting in late January. The school quickly moved to isolate and quarantine those who had been exposed to or infected with the disease.

Washington, D.C.’s health department on Feb. 8 also reported “multiple confirmed cases of measles” at numerous Catholic-related locations in the District, including the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the National March for Life, and The Catholic University of America.

Health officials amid the outbreaks have been urging the public to ensure they are up to date on their vaccinations, particularly for measles, which is obtained via the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the United States.

Church recommends vaccination, recognizes autonomy

Public health experts have raised alarms about the rise of partially or fully unvaccinated individuals throughout the U.S. in recent years.

Other health advocates and commentators have voiced concerns over vaccines and the U.S. vaccine schedule, arguing that infants and young babies are subject to an undue number of shots in the earliest months of their lives and recent vaccine schedules should be examined and abbreviated in closer alignment with other countries’ recommendations.

Some Catholic and pro-life advocates have also criticized vaccines on the grounds that some of them are developed using cell lines derived from unborn humans who were aborted decades ago.

Deacon Tim Flanigan, a medical doctor and professor of infectious diseases at Brown Medical School, described vaccines as “the most effective way to prevent many severe viral illnesses,” particularly among children.

He described current measles numbers in the U.S. as a “terrible ... epidemic,” including more than 2,000 cases in 2025. He noted that up to 5% of children with measles face hospitalization, and “complications, including seizures, brain infection, and pneumonia, can occur.”

For pro-life objectors who wish to avoid vaccines produced using fetal cells, Flanigan noted that the Church “encourages the use of vaccines whenever possible that are not derived from cell lines from an aborted fetus.”

“When it is not available, and the only available vaccine has been cultured from cell lines that were originally derived in the distant past from an aborted fetus, then the Church does not advise avoiding the use of that effective vaccine,” he said.

Catholics still obliged to call for ethical vaccine production

Joseph Capizzi, a professor of moral theology and ethics at The Catholic University of America, said the relationship of vaccines to abortion “has concerned the Church from the moment of vaccine development.”

“The Church has cautioned against using vaccines that illicitly rely (or relied) on cells derived from the destruction of human beings and the mistreatment of the human body,” he said.

Yet “the Church has also said that in certain circumstances, a concern for public health as a part of the common good might lead one to make use of an ethically problematic vaccine where no alternative was present, so long as one also advocated for the production of ethical alternatives.”

This balancing act, Capizzi said, underscores “how important the obligation to serve the common good is in Catholic teaching.”

Both Capizzi and Flanigan acknowledged that the Church ultimately leaves such discernment up to the individual. The Church “upholds the right of an individual in conscience to object to compulsory vaccination,” Capizzi said.

But “if my objection is a mere ‘concern,’ and given the needs of public health, the Church continues to exhort Catholics that they have obligations to receive the ‘basic care’ of their communities, including reasonable vaccination,” he said.

Flanigan said the Church “recognizes the importance of autonomy and that the final decision to accept a vaccine or any medical intervention rests with the judgment of that individual.”

But, he noted, the teachings of the Catholic Church “ask that we all strongly consider advice of medical experts both for our own health, the health of our families, and the health of the community.”

Approaching vaccines with a ‘virtuous’ mindset

John Brehany, the executive vice president at the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), told EWTN News that the magisterium “has never condemned the theory or practice of immunization” and “often has promoted both over the last 200 years.”

“Magisterial teachings on ethical issues surrounding immunization have focused on vaccine products manufactured using abortion-derived cell lines,” he said.

The Church “has condemned the practice of taking and using these human cells,” he said, but it has also taught “that vaccines produced with them may be utilized under certain conditions.”

Brehany said the issue is a “very complex topic.” He noted that Church leaders “at times have encouraged or required those subject to their authority to accept vaccination,” and the Church itself “does teach that citizens should obey just laws, and some laws require immunizations.” Yet there appears to be “no formal magisterial teaching and no specific statement in the catechism about vaccines,” he said.

The bioethics center, he said, “holds that it is important to transcend extreme positions and contentious terminology” such as “anti-vaxxer” and “vaccine zealot.” The NCBC, he said, “strives to remain faithful to the teachings of the Church, drawing upon the deepest resources of the Catholic moral tradition to address the most complex, contemporary issues in health care and biomedical research — including immunization.”

Brehany said Catholics could consider taking a “virtuous” approach to the question of vaccines, which he described as including a “careful assessment of the available information about all of the benefits and risks (or side effects)” of any one vaccine, along with ensuring that one’s sources are “true and trustworthy.”

A patient might then make “a decision that best promotes health, first and foremost of oneself or one’s dependents and then of the community.”

When it comes to whether a Catholic can refuse a vaccine, Brehany said there is not a simple answer to the question.

“There are many practical considerations — details about the individual circumstances of the recipient (age, health status, etc.); about the nature of the disease(s) from which one is seeking protection (some highly contagious, like measles; others not contagious, such as tetanus); the nature of the shots, some of which contain antigens for five different diseases at one time, etc.,” he said.

“There are different sources of obligation as well, including laws or rules which demand acceptance of various vaccines. Some of these relate to educational settings; others to employment settings; still others to travel.”

He added: “All of these things are important to consider, whether in terms of the health and ethical goals one is pursuing or because of the opportunities that one may be denied if a vaccine is declined.”

“Still, in the end, a vaccine is a medical intervention which can impact one’s body for decades. Decisions about medical interventions should be made with free and informed consent. When consent is withheld or a treatment declined for sound reasons, that decision should be respected.”

Brehany stressed that “virtue also requires finding an optimal, balanced approach between extremes — not being swayed by emotions like fear; not, because of laziness, accepting a superficial answer; not taking an ‘all or nothing’ approach,” he said. “The virtue of prudence can help people to make good decisions about concrete options.”

He also pointed out that the focus should not be solely on the patient or parents when it comes to vaccines, and that “other persons and organizations have significant ethical obligations.”

“For example, health care professionals have the ethical and legal duty to obtain informed consent from patients and parents,” he said. “Governments and pharmaceutical companies have ethical and legal obligations to ensure that vaccine products truly are safe and effective, are improved whenever possible, and that adverse events are properly investigated.”

“And schools and state public health agencies have ethical obligations to ensure that their policies on unvaccinated students are well founded and applied with justice.”

“Of course, fulfilling these ethical responsibilities can be very challenging,” he said. “But it is essential to respecting the good of persons and promoting the common good.”

Inspired by the President’s Council on Bioethics, the council’s “purpose will be to provide practical resources that aim to balance innovation with prudence, freedom with responsibility, and ensure technological capability promotes human dignity,” Anthony Mills, director for the Center for Technology, Science, and Energy at AEI, said at a launch event for the council on Feb. 23.

AEI is a public policy think tank “dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world,” according to the organization’s website.

Mills will lead the council made up of an interdisciplinary team who “come from a diverse array of institutions and work out of a range of differing, sometimes opposing, philosophical traditions: secular, religious, liberal, conservative, or other,” Mills said.

The council’s membership includes Brian Boyd, a Roman Catholic theologian who is director for the Center for Ethics and Economic Justice at Loyola University New Orleans.

The “goal is not to forge artificial consensus but to create a forum in which to examine and debate the ethical demands of our moment,” Mills said. “In a pluralistic and deeply divided society, consensus is not always achievable or even desirable, and we welcome dissent in order to create space for genuine moral inquiry and embrace the complexity of ethical questions that resist easy answers,” he said.

While inspired by the President’s Council on Bioethics, AEI’s council does have differing aspects. Mills said: “Our intended audience includes but is not limited to lawmakers and technical experts, and our focus is not only on the applications of AI, but specialist domains such as science and medicine, important as these are.”

“We are equally concerned with the ethical issues raised by the development and deployment of AI in a vast range of societal contexts, and hope that our work can provide useful resources not only to doctors, scientists, and federal policymakers but also to business leaders, parents, teachers, community leaders, and all those who are grappling day to day with the challenges and opportunities posed by this transformative technology,” Mills said.

‘A future that’s ordered to the goods of our nature’

Boyd and other council members participated in a panel moderated by Luke Burgis, founder and director of Cluny Institute, that included panelists Matthew Crawford, senior fellow at Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture; and Nita Farahany, professor at Duke Law School.

To portray the different angles the council members hold, each shared their unique interest and reason for their work in AI.

“The interest here, ultimately, it comes down to my five children,” said Boyd, U.S. faith liaison for Future of Life Institute. “I want all of our children, and all the families that we care about, to have a future that’s ordered to the goods of our nature and not determined simply by a handful of people saying, ‘Well, here’s what we can build and be most efficient, most effective, most powerful.’”

Crawford said he is interested in the “anthropological concerns” and said he believes “we need to put on our political economy hats when thinking about AI.”

He added: “Because I think it’s going to be an intensification of certain trends that are already well established.”

Farahany said she wants to explore how AI tools can be used “in ways that promote my autonomy, don’t erode my overall confidence, enable me to continue to have purpose and meaning, and continue to be generative in the ways that are meaningful to me, and to think about what it means for human thought more generally.”

The group discussed some of the guiding framework document for the council that explains “it’s not the job of an AI ethics committee to give an understanding of human nature; it’s a task for traditions. But in our document we try to draw on different traditions,” Boyd said.

“So everything from Aristotle and Augustine ... to finding what are the transcultural fundamental capabilities that we all agree on being essential to the human person, even if we would inflect them differently or break them down in different ways,” Boyd said.

It discusses the “idea of ‘what does it mean to have self-determination as a human being?’” Farahany said. “What does it need to have self-determination? To be the author of your own thoughts, to have the capacity to direct your own life. To know that when you say, I want to do something, that that want comes from you? That you are the author.”

Farahany further discussed that society can have more say and choice in the conversation on technology and AI if it is started on “a policy level.” 

A council like this can help “to say here are the questions that we think you’re not asking. Here are some of the policy interventions that we’re not kind of appropriately exploring. And so rather than just looking at an endpoint saying it can be more capable to replace you human jobs, we can ask questions like, ‘Is it eroding human intellect at the same time that we’re growing the capacities of AI models?’” Farahany said.

Amazon MGM reportedly produced the documentary for $40 million, with Melania Trump serving as one of its executive producers. It has grossed roughly $15 million since its release on Jan. 30. The news media has been sharply critical, not for what Melania Trump reveals to the public but for what she does not. “She wanted to look gorgeous in every frame and not reveal anything,” sniped Maureen Dowd of The New York Times.

One aspect she did choose to reveal somewhat: her faith. Specifically, the scene takes place on Jan. 9, 2025. Still reeling from her husband’s comeback victory, Mrs. Trump is also bracing for a somber anniversary: the passing of her mother, Amalija Knavs.

The film’s director, Brett Ratner, tracks Mrs. Trump with her designer, Herve Pierre, fussing over her inaugural outfits, approving menus for the events, and interviewing candidates for East Wing positions. However, an underlying sadness remains. The first lady explained that being at President Jimmy Carter’s funeral the same week had deepened her feelings of sorrow and need for spiritual solace.

That evening, a car is seen pulling up in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Despite the crowds hovering in the cold, Mrs. Trump maintains a vacant expression as she is greeted at the door by Father Enrique Salvo, rector of the cathedral, and Monsignor Joseph LaMorte, vicar general of the Archdiocese of New York.

Mrs. Trump, sans the president-elect, proceeds to make her way down the long aisle to the altar. She stands reverently in front of the cross and then proceeds to light a candle while the viewer hears Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace.”

Before exiting the church, she tells LaMorte and Salvo that her mother would often visit St. Patrick’s and in this holy place, she feels a deep sense of comfort. The camera captures Salvo offering to say Mass for her mother and imparting a blessing upon the first lady. 

Mysterious spiritual life

Melania Trump’s spiritual life has remained as mysterious as the first lady herself, but she has sent subtle cues of her Catholicism through her years in the public eye.

When she married the president in an Episcopalian church in 2005, she carried a rosary down the aisle in her wedding bouquet. In 2017, during an audience with Pope Francis, she had her rosary blessed and was photographed praying before the Blessed Mother in Rome.

At the time, media outlets reported that she was Catholic; however, her office did not provide any information regarding her status within the Church. That same year, she also very solemnly led the audience in praying the Our Father at a Trump rally.

Subsequently, pro-lifers were deeply disappointed when she gave an unapologetic pro-choice exposition in her 2024 memoir. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty … grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,” she wrote.

Earlier this year, she was captured in a photograph at Francis’ funeral with her eyes closed and her head tilted upward toward the sky. With her latest documentary, speculation about her faith continues.

At this year’s event, held Feb. 12–14, Fernandes moderated a panel hosted by Communion and Liberation titled “A Home in the Storm” with Bishop Pavlo Honcharuk of Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Father Wojciech Stasiewicz, director of Caritas-Spes of the Kharkiv-Zaporizhia Diocese.

Previous panels Fernandes moderated featured priests from India and Myanmar as well as a bishop from Nigeria.

Fernandes told EWTN News in an interview at the event about the time he spent with the Ukrainian bishop and priest before the panel, what he thinks about their witness as wartime faith leaders, and what he took away from the experience as a bishop who “lives in comfort.”

‘I wanted to reach out and just touch him so I could be holier’

“I never met them before this morning,” Fernandes said of Honcharuk and Stasiewicz the day of the panel, noting that they could only communicate through a Polish-language translator. “I wanted to find out what is the reality there, [because] sometimes what we see on the news [is] only a short clip.”

Fernandes said Honcharuk described to him the “devastation of war on individuals and families,” and how power outages across the country have impacted the lives of Ukrainians as temperatures dip well below freezing.

“It’s very moving to see in the face of the crisis how the faith is actually being lived,” Fernandes said, reflecting on what the Ukrainian bishop told him. Despite living in constant fear, he said, Ukrainian Catholics have transformed every parish into a Caritas center.

“As I was moderating this panel, I began to think of the men who were behind the Iron Curtain, whom I knew as a child, like the bishops and priests who suffered or were imprisoned, who were true confessors of the faith,” Fernandes said. “I wanted to reach out and just touch him so I could be holier.”

Fernandes is the son of Indian immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1970. He said that during his childhood, he knew people who had relatives behind the Iron Curtain who suffered greatly. He has been bishop of Columbus since May 2022 and has been involved with the Italian movement that organizes the New York Encounter, Communion and Liberation (Communione e Liberazione), since 2004.

Fernandes noted that throughout the panel and his visit, the Ukrainian bishop’s message was never about political pressure or asking for financial assistance from the U.S. “What [was] at the center of his message [was] Christ, ultimately.”

Though Fernandes said it would be easy to start thinking of the Church as a social system rather than a religion in the current situation in Ukraine, he praised Honcharuk for centering his message on Christ and being willing to die for his people.

As bishops, Fernandes said, “we give our consent [to die] all the time, but do we understand the implications of our consent? What does it mean to be baptized, to be immersed in the life of the Trinity? What does it mean when you’re on the floor prostrated?”

“You’re saying, ‘Yes, I’m a priest; I’m configured in Jesus Christ,” he continued. “I am ready to embrace the cross in that way for the sake of my people to be a good shepherd.”

This reality is what Fernandes said he witnessed in his encounter with Honcharuk and Stasiewicz. “We see how much, in fact, Christ has impacted their lives, and their own sense of helplessness also then makes them rely upon him even more,” he said.

Fernandes said that in addition to their humanitarian work, he spoke with the Ukrainian bishop and priest about what they are doing to combat “invisible forces.”

“I had been an exorcist in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, so I asked the bishop, ‘What have you done?’ and he said, ‘I authorized all of my priests, and I myself went over the whole diocese because there are invisible forces that are bent on dominating us.’”

Fernandes said Honcharuk told him several stories of instances where he saw “the hand of God [and] divine providence” protecting the Ukrainian people. “In my conversation with them, it helped me to realize that there is divine providence, and God does have a plan.”

Personal influence

Tying their witness to his own life and ministry as a bishop, Fernandes reflected that while “it’s always easier to stick our head in the ground or to live in a fantasy world with lots of illusions,” Father Luigi Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation, would say: “Reality has never betrayed me.”

The Ukrainian bishops have their reality, Fernandes said, “and we have our own reality here.” In the end, he emphasized, “we have to live in this world and bring God’s grace to this reality. That’s why this bishop, this priest, would not abandon their people.”

He said Honcharuk also “emphasized that to be is to have dignity,” in their private conversation. “I think this is also an important thing,” Fernandes said. “So, all of these things were swirling through my head as I thought, ‘I’m here; I am in the midst of two living saints.’”

Facing conflict in the U.S.

Ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, Fernandes reflected on what it means to live in peace and harmony in the U.S. today. “I think it’s recognizing the other person is our brother,” he said.

“When we continue to wage violence upon children in the womb, should we not expect violence against children outside of the womb?” he said. “When we pit mother against child, why would we not pit ourselves against our neighbors?”

Fernandes stressed that “the Church has a critical role to play” in diffusing polarization in the U.S.

“So often in the desire to be right, in the contentiousness and litigiousness of American society, we forget charity,” he said. “Charity in speech, charity in thinking the best of others, or at least giving them the benefit of the doubt.”

“But the charity of Christ urges me on,” he concluded. “And that’s what it has to urge us on to meet the needs of our brothers and sisters, regardless of whether they agree with our politics, because we are Americans, but also because we are Catholic.”