Here are seven fascinating facts about this inspiring saint:

1. His father refused to acknowledge him.

Martin de Porres was born in Lima, Peru, in 1579. He was the son of a Spanish nobleman and former Panamanian Black slave. His father, Don Juan de Porres, refused to publicly acknowledge the boy as his own because Martin had darker skin, like his mother. Being biracial would prove challenging for Martin throughout his life.

2. He started practicing medicine before he was 13.

Martin served as an apprentice to a doctor, and before the age of 13 he began to learn the practice of medicine. He would eventually become a barber, which at the time performed minor medical and surgical procedures like pulling teeth or emptying abscesses.

3. He faced prejudice and discrimination as a Dominican.

Martin entered the Dominican order in 1603. Becoming a Dominican brother proved to be challenging for Martin because a Peruvian law at the time prevented people of mixed race from joining religious orders. Therefore, he lived with the community and did manual work, earning himself the nickname “the saint of the broom” for his diligence in cleaning the Dominicans’ quarters.

Eventually he was allowed to enter the order, despite the law, and worked in the infirmary tending to the sick and among the impoverished of Peru. “I cure them, but God heals them,” Martin would say when curing the sick.

He also had the task of begging for alms that the community would use to clothe and feed the poor. He also established an orphanage and planted an orchard from which those in need could freely take a day’s supply of fruit.

4. He levitated and bilocated.

Martin was deeply prayerful, so much so that many of the brothers witnessed him levitating in intense prayer and embracing the cross.

Martin reportedly also had the gift of bilocation, and some of his contemporaries said they encountered him in places as far off as Japan even as he remained in Lima. Some claimed he had appeared to them supernaturally behind locked doors or under otherwise impossible circumstances.

5. He refused to eat meat.

Martin loved animals and had a deep compassion for all living creatures. He refused to eat meat and ran a veterinary hospital for sick animals that seemed to seek out his help. Portrayals of the saint often include cats, dogs, and even the rats to whom he showed compassion.

6. He is the patron saint of multiple manual labor occupations.

Martin was known for the various assignments he carried out and which earned him the title of patron saint of barbers, the sick, and street cleaners. On the 50th anniversary of St. Martin de Porres’ canonization, Father Juan Anguerri, director of the St. Martin de Porres Home for the Poor, said: “These are often thankless tasks, but yet through his humble service, St. Martin sent a message to revitalize these jobs.”

7. He was canonized more than 300 years after his death.

Martin de Porres died on Nov. 3, 1639, at the age of 60. He was canonized by Pope John XXIII on May 16, 1962. At his canonization Mass, John XXIII called him “Martin of Charity.”

This story was first published on Nov. 3, 2021, and was updated on Nov 3, 2026.

“Smoke haze from Indonesia forced schools to close in Timor-Leste for three days,” said Isaura Barros, 24, who serves on the executive board of the Laudato Si' Movement in Timor-Leste.

The government suspended classes nationwide Oct. 15–17 because of poor air quality.

Barros spoke at the movementʼs Asia-Pacific chapters retreat, held Oct. 24–27 at the CBCP-Caritas Philippines Development Center in Tagaytay City, south of Manila. Seventeen delegates from Myanmar, South Korea, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines took part, Radio Veritas Asia reported.

The Laudato Si‘ Movement is a Catholic network founded in 2015 and named after Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for creation. It says it has more than 8,000 trained volunteers, called animators, and nearly 900 member organizations.

Asian bishops back the work

Bishop Allwyn DʼSilva, auxiliary bishop emeritus of Bombay, India, addressed the retreat by video. He chairs the Office of Human Development of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC). He pointed to heat waves, flash floods, and unpredictable cold waves across Asia and thanked grassroots animators for their work.

“We all know that there is an ecological crisis in Asia, as well as in the world. The Laudato Si' movement has played a very important part in making people aware and care for creation, to take care of their common home. We are happy that we are collaborating, and I see a great future in our networking and taking care of creation,” DʼSilva said.

Climate activist Lorna Gold, the movementʼs executive director, also spoke by video, from Ireland. She recalled St. Francis of Assisi praying before the crucifix in the ruined church of San Damiano, where he heard the words “Go and repair my house.” Ecological conversion, she said, is a conversion of the whole community, not only of the individual.

A road map to 2030

Cheryl Dugan, the movementʼs Asia-Pacific director, and Christina Leaño, its associate director, presented a global strategic road map for 2027–2030 that leads toward a “Vision 2035.”

The movement, they said, drew up this map over an 18-month process of listening to grassroots communities.

The plan puts ecological conversion at the center, symbolized by the ichthys, the early Christian fish sign. Three pillars meet there: eco-spirituality, rooted in catechesis, liturgy, and faith formation; sustainable and resilient communities; and prophetic advocacy, which includes pressing for fair public policies and an end to investment in fossil fuels. A fourth pillar, organizational strengthening, supports the other three.

Yeb Saño, a Filipino climate activist who chairs the movementʼs board, urged delegates to decentralize leadership so the movement better reflects the synodal spirit of a Church that walks together. Saño led Greenpeace Southeast Asia from 2016 to 2025 and was once the Philippines' chief climate negotiator at the United Nations.

5 countries, 5 settings

In the Philippines, the chapter is known for its annual Walk for Earth and its Deep Journey to Laudato Si' programs. It works with the bishops' conferenceʼs Laudato Si' program and wants to draw in more young people.

In Myanmar, the movement works amid ongoing political and humanitarian conflict. Based mainly around Yangon, the chapter helped write care for creation into the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Myanmarʼs socio-pastoral framework for 2026–2030. It runs the BEES Network, which offers interfaith ecological education for young people and supports people displaced by the fighting.

In South Korea, the chapter has held a Friday climate action in Seoulʼs Gwanghwamun Square since 2020. It has organized ecological Stations of the Cross and protested against the Samcheok coal-fired power plant. Ahead of World Youth Day in Seoul in 2027, it is pressing the countryʼs bishops and dioceses to bring parishes to net-zero carbon emissions.

In Timor-Leste, the chapter grew out of a youth group of 16- to 18-year-olds started by Dircia Sarmento. It now has legal status, works with U.N. agencies and the government, helps run the countryʼs Local Conference of Youth, and reaches remote districts across the nation.

In Indonesia, the movement, known by its Indonesian initials GLSI, is organized in seven diocesan chapters as well as in schools and religious communities. It has set up Laudato Si' centers with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. With partners in the Archdiocese of Jakarta, it plants mangroves, trains parishes in composting, and runs courses for animators.

Young people and a farm

Delegates agreed on two priorities for the region: giving young people a bigger role, including in the run-up to World Youth Day, and strengthening national chapters and the movementʼs Asia-Pacific secretariat.

The retreat ended with a visit to the SVD Laudato Si' Farm in Tagaytay, a 5.8-hectare (about 14-acre) site run by the Society of the Divine Word. It serves as an ecological education center, a pilgrimage site, and an ecotourism destination. Father Samuel “Sam” Naceno-Agcaracar, SVD, started it in 2020.

Participants ranged in age from baby boomers to Generation Z. The retreat closed with words from Laudato Si': “May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.”

Editor’s note: Cyprianus Lilik Krismantoro Putro coordinates the national working team of the Laudato Si' Movement Indonesia and took part in the retreat.

“Some of you know what it means to experience loneliness, disappointment, or the fear of not being good enough,” Leo said in his message. “It is in circumstances like these that we hear the Gospel’s invitation to take courage.”

The Vatican released his message on Tuesday ahead of WYD 2026, to be celebrated locally on Nov. 22, coinciding with the solemnity of Christ the King. The Vatican also published the message ahead of WYD 2027 in Seoul, South Korea, which the pope is expected to attend.

In his message, Leo noted the modern challenges young people face, including anxiety, self-doubt, and the difficulty of maintaining a personal identity in an age of social media.

“Under the influence of carefully curated images on social media, you may find it difficult to recognize and accept who you truly are,” the pope said.

“Perhaps you are anxious about the future, feel pressured to succeed and appear perfect, or experience the stress of constantly comparing yourselves with others or with unattainable, manufactured ideals.”

Leo then explained the need for young people to be vulnerable and to depend on Christ when lonely, citing the apostles’ fear when the risen Christ appeared to them.

“Faith does not immediately dispel the darkness, but neither does it leave us alone in it,” Leo explained. “Open your lives to Christ. Open your communities to Christ.”

“Allow yourselves to be united and transformed by his love.”

As he did in a video message for WYD 2027 in October, the pope also encouraged people to register for the event in Seoul, which will run from Aug. 3–8, 2027.

Susan Middleton was delighted. Maria was already an articulate, precocious child, and Susan eagerly anticipated whatever heartfelt message her daughter had prepared.

The card was decorated with flowers. On the front, Maria had written, “Happy Mother’s Day.” On the inside, it read, “To the second-best mother in the world.”

Susan laughed when she recounted the story in an interview with the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, but the card also reflected something she had tried to instill in Maria from an early age: that while she had an earthly mother who “makes mistakes,” she also had a perfect mother in heaven.

Six years after Maria’s death from a brain tumor at the age of 18, hundreds gathered Oct. 5 at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, as Archbishop Nelson Pérez of Philadelphia celebrated Mass marking the anniversary of her passing.

It was to this shrine that Susan had brought Maria every week to Eucharistic adoration, starting at age 3. Here, Maria learned the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the rosary and developed a deep love for the Blessed Mother, to whom she was consecrated at her baptism.

At the anniversary Mass, Pérez recalled first encountering Maria during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she wrote to him after public Masses had been suspended. She wanted to receive the Eucharist, which she described as the grace she needed amid her illness.

Pérez responded that same day, offering to bring her Communion himself.

“She definitely lived a life that exemplified” Christ’s command to love “God with all your heart,” Pérez said. “That’s why we’re here today.”

Since her death on Oct. 8, 2020, Brian and Susan Middleton have received dozens of messages each week from people who say their daughter has affected their lives, including people who have returned to the Church, rediscovered the sacraments, or deepened their faith through her example.

In June, Pérez was presented with a petition seeking the introduction of the Bucks County teenager’s cause for canonization, beginning the Church’s preliminary process of consultation.

Father Griffen Schlaepfer, a 28-year-old Philadelphia priest who first learned about Maria after her death, encountered her story through a holy card at his parish bearing one of her sayings: “You don’t have to be weird to be holy.”

The line has stayed with him as he has come to know her witness. “You don’t have to be joyless to be holy,” Schlaepfer said. “You can have a full, attractive life and also live in accordance with God’s will completely.”

Faith from an early age

Maria was born Sept. 10, 2002, when Susan was 44, after she and Brian had married following the annulment of their previous marriages and blended their families together. Her parents describe her as an unexpected gift from God. She was also, in many ways, an ordinary teenager.

She loved music, Irish dance, and sports. She excelled academically, was elected class president, and belonged to the National Honor Society, all while serving in various roles at her parish.

Maggie McArdle, a childhood friend, met Maria in first grade. She remembers Maria as funny, witty, and kind — a girl who made silly music videos with her friends and loved making duct-tape wallets.

“I can remember belly laughs, just laughing until our bellies hurt,” McArdle said. “I like to talk to her today and read through our old texts. Those are so special to me.”

Kim O’Grady, Maria’s sister, remembers that relatability as well. Fifteen years older than Maria, O’Grady watched her grow into a teenager who loved Taylor Swift, the Jonas Brothers, and Shawn Mendes and, like other teenagers her age, had Snapchat and Instagram.

Although she had many of the same interests as her teenage peers, there were signs that Maria had her priorities in order when it came to faith and self-growth.

“She knew what her North Star was,” O’Grady said, explaining that Maria seemed to know who she was and what she believed. “If you just have that relationship with God and just focus and hone in on that, you can be who you are and live out to your full potential.”

Maria, conscious of pressures many young people face today, demonstrated in her writings a desire for growth. After watching old videos of herself as a child, for instance, she reflected on how much she had changed and how social media had affected the way she thought about herself.

“I think seeing the videos of me made me realize there’s no reason for me not to be like the way I was when I was little,” she wrote in her journal. “Even if that means to cut out social media a little or do more stuff for fun and just enjoy the little things, that’s what I’ll train myself to do.”

Stephanie Weaver, who taught Maria in Catholic social teaching and moral theology at Villa Joseph Marie High School, saw that combination of faith and action firsthand. As a freshman, Maria started a coat drive benefiting Mother of Mercy House in Kensington and co-chaired the school’s mini-thon — now called Hope-A-Thon in Maria’s honor — a dance marathon that raises money to support children battling cancer.

“There was something so different about Maria because she didn’t just talk the talk,” Weaver said. Instead, she “walked the walk.”

A good student who was involved in various charitable activities, Brian said Maria never confused her accomplishments with her identity.

“Her holiness wasn’t exposed when she was diagnosed” with brain cancer, Brian said. “Her holiness came and grew throughout her lifetime in her pursuit of virtues and offering up her talents to God.”

For Maria, that kind of holiness would soon be tested. In January 2019, when she was 16, she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor on her brainstem. Doctors told her family she might have nine to 12 months to live.

Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Father Simione Volavola, who knew Maria from childhood through the family’s parish, was in the room when she received the diagnosis.

“She was the most peaceful person in the room,” Volavola said. “She just took it very calmly and accepted it very quickly.”

That peace remained as Maria’s illness progressed, even as her physical suffering increased. “She never lost that peace,” Volavola said. “The body was failing. She was really suffering, but very graceful in the way she carried her cross.”

Maria hoped for a miraculous healing throughout her illness. At the same time, however, she sought to surrender herself to God’s will.

Her journals, which she began keeping as a child, reveal a spiritual life that her parents say they only fully understood after her death. Her first recorded words in a journal at age 11 were simple: “God is merciful.”

Her final written words, as the effects of the tumor made writing increasingly difficult, were two words that would become the name of the foundation established in her memory: “Think hope.”

‘She did not despair’

As Maria’s physical abilities disappeared, her concern for other people did not.

Nine months after her diagnosis, she traveled with her parents to Uganda, where students at Pope John Paul II Academy had been praying for her. One girl, Patience, wrote Maria a letter asking her to pray for her brother, who had sickle cell anemia.

When Maria later received an opportunity through Make-A-Wish, she chose to use it to help Patience’s family and the school.

Back home, during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, friends organized virtual rosaries for Maria’s healing, including one Zoom meeting that drew more than 2,000 people. In another show of care for the teenager, more than 500 cars participated in a parade outside the Middleton home.

Even as Maria’s condition worsened, Susan said, she never lost hope.

“She watched when her legs didn’t work and her arms didn’t work,” Susan said. “And she could no longer hear. And she could no longer swallow. And she could no longer speak. She knew all this was happening and she did not despair.”

Maria died Oct. 8, 2020, at the age of 18. Her parents now devote much of their lives to sharing her story. Their book, “Think Hope: Maria Middleton’s Life of Unyielding Trust in God,” was published by Ascension in 2025.

At the anniversary Mass, Pérez emphasized that the Church’s discernment about Maria’s possible sainthood is ultimately secondary to the witness she already offers.

“Faith is like a ripple,” he said, quoting Maria. “When you have faith and show it, it will impact other people’s lives.”

“Maria says to young people, you too can have great faith,” he told the Register. “You too can be holy. You too could have hope.”

“You too can live a life of hope and a love of life,” Pérez continued, “of faith and a love for the Lord and for his Church.”

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

The trip will take him to three countries, including Uruguay and Argentina, and culminate in Peru, where he served as a missionary and bishop for about 20 years.

Like most papal trips, this will be a mix of the pastoral and the political, featuring meetings with heads of state and other dignitaries; addresses to the local hierarchy, clergy, and religious; large outdoor Masses; youth vigils; and visits to Church-affiliated charitable institutions.

But this journey will be extraordinary in at least two ways. For one thing, it comes a little more than three weeks after Leo underwent surgery for lung cancer. His doctors have said he needs no further treatment, but his decision not to reduce his schedule, which features more than 40 public and private events, is nonetheless striking. The itinerary will take him to 14 cities and towns, including Cusco, Peru, which lies more than 11,000 feet above sea level.

The other distinctive aspect of the trip, which may help explain Leo’s determination to make it, is its highly personal nature. The pope will spend five of his 11 days on the continent in Peru, two of them in his former diocese of Chiclayo. The first U.S.-born pontiff, Leo is also a naturalized citizen of Peru, where he spent almost half of his 43 years as a priest before becoming pope.

Leo is the first pope in centuries to have served as a foreign missionary, and that experience is central to his identity. As he said upon arriving in Rome in 2023 to take up a new role as a Vatican official: “I still consider myself a missionary. My vocation, like that of every Christian, is to be a missionary, to proclaim the Gospel wherever one is.”

His return to his former mission field will highlight the history of his vocation, as he retraces key steps on his path to leadership of the Church.

According to Father Arthur Purcaro, a fellow Augustinian and companion of then-Father Robert Prevost in Peru, the future pope was changed by his experience in the country, where he encountered a new culture, served the poor amid great social turbulence, and “learned that the Church is for the world and we’re not self-referential.”

Returning now as pontiff, Leo “will be reaching out, to have the eyes of the world see somebody’s knocking at the door,” Purcaro said in an interview. “That perhaps might help people anywhere around the world understand that that’s part of what the mission of the Church is: to open our door, to embrace. … That’s part of who he learned to be and is. And I believe it’s part of why he’s going to these three countries now.”

Leo’s journey to his adoptive continent will also showcase diverse forms of evangelization that the Church practices today.

Catholic missionary work, strictly speaking, has traditionally been aimed at peoples and places where the Church is absent or not well established. But especially since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has increasingly spoken of mission more broadly to include, among other activities, “the new evangelization,” or efforts to revive the faith among baptized people who have drifted away from religious practice or who no longer identify as Catholic.

Such efforts are particularly relevant to the first country on Leo’s itinerary, Uruguay, one of the most secular countries in Latin America, where more than half the population has no religious affiliation and 28% are agnostic or atheist. Under a law dating to 1919, the state’s official calendar lists Christmas as “Family Day,” Holy Week as “Tourism Week,” the Epiphany as “Children’s Day,” and the Immaculate Conception as “Beaches Day.”

Evangelization in such an environment is “a very great challenge,” Bishop Milton Tróccoli of Maldonado-Punta del Este-Minas, president of the Uruguayan Bishops’ Conference, told “EWTN Noticias” in September. The local Church considers Uruguay “a mission country where we must proclaim the Gospel extensively,” Tróccoli said.

Uruguayan secularism reflects the influence of the French model of “laïcité,” and Leo’s approach to the matter could well echo his remarks on his last international trip, to France in September. There, in his speech to President Emmanuel Macron and other dignitaries, the pope argued that religious believers and institutions should have a role in public life.

In another echo of his visit to France, where he denounced the country’s recent legalization of assisted dying, Leo is also likely to criticize Uruguay’s recent legalization of euthanasia. (Euthanasia is the intentional ending of a human life for the purpose of relieving suffering. In assisted dying, a patient takes life-ending drugs himself under the guidance of a physician. Catholic moral teaching prohibits both practices.)

In Argentina, Leo’s visit will inevitably be seen in light of the memory of its native son Pope Francis, who never visited the country during his 12-year pontificate. Leo has vowed to continue his predecessor’s signature initiative of synodality, which seeks to give lay Catholics a greater voice in Church governance and teaching.

Francis said that “synodality is essentially missionary” and that mission is “always synodal,” suggesting that clergy, religious, and laypeople should listen to one another and work together in proclaiming the Gospel. At Leo’s meetings with the bishops of Argentina and Peru, a standard feature of papal visits, local teams responsible for implementing the synodal process will also be included, a sign of the importance that the current pope gives to the topic.

Although Pope Francis was known as an innovator, and even a disruptor of tradition, he was also a champion of popular piety, particularly devotion to the Virgin Mary. Pope Leo XIV will honor that practice on his upcoming pilgrimage to the Argentine city of Luján, home to a revered image of Mary that draws millions of pilgrims each year, and drew more than 2.8 million for a youth pilgrimage in October.

Leo’s visits to Uruguay and Peru will likewise include important Marian shrines: the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three in Uruguay and the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace in Peru. Leo will also crown an image of the Immaculate Virgin at the cathedral in his former diocese of Chiclayo.

According to Bishop Edinson Farfán, Leo’s successor as bishop of Chiclayo, popular piety is a “great ally” in facing one of the greatest challenges to Catholicism in Latin America today: competition from Pentecostal churches. “Popular piety reaches everywhere, especially peripheral areas,” where priests seldom visit but Pentecostals are well-established, Farfán told reporters at a briefing last month organized by the charitable organization Aid to the Church in Need.

The Peru leg of the pope’s trip will highlight an important element of evangelization: the practice of inculturation, or expressing Catholic teachings and forms of worship in terms of local cultures. A key figure in this tradition is St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, a Spanish missionary who served as archbishop of Lima from 1581 until his death in 1606 and who promoted the use of the Indigenous languages Quechua and Aymara in evangelization.

Pope Leo, who studied Quechua during his time in Peru, has a particular devotion to St. Turibius. Then-Father Prevost spent the night before his ordination as a bishop in December 2014 praying before a relic of the saint in a chapel in the town of Zaña. Now pope, he will return to the town, a historic center of Afro-Peruvian culture, on Nov. 14 for a closing celebration of the jubilee year marking the 300th anniversary of St. Turibius’ canonization.

During his visit to South America, the pope will visit centers of the Church’s charitable activity, a traditional concomitant of mission work, including homes for disabled people near Buenos Aires, Argentina, and for abandoned elderly people in Lima, Peru.

Leo will also engage in a form of outreach that has become especially urgent in recent years, following scandals over clerical sexual abuse. The Vatican has said Leo will hold some meetings with abuse victims during his time in South America. These could include people involved in the Sodalitium case. As bishop of Chiclayo, Leo personally assisted victims of abuse by members of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a Catholic organization suppressed by the Vatican in 2025.

The pope’s last full day in Peru before returning to Rome will be in some ways the most ambitious, and a dramatic illustration of the Church’s missionary efforts. In the morning, he will fly to Cusco in the Andean highlands, where he will meet representatives of popular Catholic devotion at an Inca archaeological site. A few hours later, he will meet missionaries and representatives of Amazonian Indigenous peoples and celebrate Mass in the rainforest. The difficulty of providing the sacraments to remote parts of the Amazon was a major theme of the Amazon Synod that Pope Francis called at the Vatican in 2019.

“The popeʼs presence will make us visible,” said Father David Farfán, a priest of the Diocese of Chiclayo (with no family relation to the bishop of the same surname). “It will draw attention to those places in the heartland of Peru — and indeed anywhere in the world — where communities have been forgotten, rejected, and left behind.”

Bishops’ conferences at the state level are organizations jointly run by every diocesan bishop in that state, which are active in every state with more than one diocese. A conference will often comment on bills and referendums that implicate Catholic teaching and put out statements on matters specific to their state.

In some states with contentious referendums on the ballot, bishops’ conferences have taken a clear position on initiatives, urging Catholics to either support or oppose the measures. Some of these measures are related to abortion, gender and sexuality, human trafficking, and gambling.

American bishops do not campaign for specific candidates in elections. Yet, advocating for and against referendums is classified in the tax code as “lobbying” instead of campaigning, which is permitted for dioceses and jointly run Catholic conferences. However, there are legal restrictions on the amount of lobbying in which they can engage.

Taking on abortion

Three conferences have taken strong stances on ballot initiatives related to abortion: Virginia, Nevada, and Missouri. Diocese of Boise Bishop Peter Christensen also took a strong stance on an abortion referendum in Idaho, though the state has only one diocese and no conference.

In Virginia and Nevada, the bishops’ conferences are asking the faithful to vote no on proposed constitutional amendments to establish a legal right to abortion in their states. The conferences have produced printed material offered at parishes that discuss Church teaching on the sanctity of human life, and the bishops have released joint statements. Both states have two dioceses.

Amy McInerny, director of Respect Life at the Diocese of Arlington’s Office of Marriage, Family, and Respect Life, told EWTN News the dioceses coordinated on the referendum for two years, “coming up with a battle plan” to oppose the measure.

Las Vegas Archbishop George Leo Thomas told EWTN News that in Nevada, the bishops meet during years with legislative sessions. The conference contracts much of the work to attorneys who are aligned with the Church’s legislative priorities and follow the sessions.

Bishops in Missouri are urging voters to back a pro-life initiative to repeal a state constitutional right to abortion. This also includes producing printed material and offering joint statements by the bishops.

Jamie Morris, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, told EWTN News “it has been a major focus of all four dioceses and of all four bishops.” He said the conference works directly with the bishops, providing them with information about legislative issues so they can take informed stances on the subjects.

Gender and sexuality

Several conferences have also taken positions on issues that implicate Catholic teachings on gender and sexuality, which includes same-sex marriage, transgender people participating in sports, and parental rights.

In addition to the abortion referendum in Virginia, the bishops are fighting against a referendum to enshrine same-sex marriage into the state constitution. Much of the material urging Catholics to oppose the abortion referendum also urges them to oppose this referendum.

The Colorado Catholic Conference, which represents the state’s three dioceses, has taken a stance on two referendums on this subject, encouraging the faithful to support two initiatives.

One referendum would ensure interscholastic and intramural athletics are separated on the basis of biological sex rather than purported gender identity. The other would ban surgeries on children meant to alter their sex characteristics to facilitate a gender transition.

Nebraskans will vote on a referendum to separate sports on the basis of biological sex rather than purported gender identity. The Nebraska Catholic Conference did not officially take a stance on this but did issue a statement that said the conference supported legislation that was nearly identical and urged the faithful to “please keep in mind Catholic social teaching on human sexuality” when voting on the measure.

The Washington State Catholic Conference has spoken positively of a proposed referendum to also separate athletics on the basis of biological sex as opposed to purported gender identity. In a statement to EWTN News, the conference called the initiative “consistent with Catholic teaching on the complementarity and divine design of women and men.”

The conference spoke positively about a separate referendum to restore parental rights to access information related to their child’s mental health, telling EWTN News it “ensures that parents are not kept in the dark about an issue that impacts their childʼs health.” This may include information about a child’s sexuality and gender identity.

Other issues on the ballot

The other issues bishops have taken positions on include human trafficking, gambling, and procedures for changing the state constitution.

The Colorado Catholic Conference has asked Catholics to support a referendum that would mandate life imprisonment for any person convicted of human trafficking of a minor.

The Nebraska Catholic Conference has encouraged Catholics to vote against two referendums that would legalize and regulate sports gambling in the state, warning it would “expand predatory online sports gambling in our state,” which “can lead to family problems, debt, bankruptcy, homelessness, and mental health issues.”

The South Dakota Catholic Conference has backed a referendum that would increase the threshold needed for adopting a constitutional amendment via referendum, from a majority vote to a 60% threshold. This is meant to prevent future referendums to establish legal rights to abortion from succeeding.

The North Dakota Catholic Conference backed a similar referendum to increase the threshold to adopt a constitutional amendment via referendum from a majority vote to 60%, citing the same concerns.

Now, as Pope Leo XIV, he is scheduled to return to the city of Chiclayo on Nov. 13 during his apostolic journey to Peru. He served as bishop there from 2015 to 2023, during which time he traveled to communities across the coastal and highland regions of Lambayeque.

The official program includes events at the Chiclayo Cathedral and the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace as well as events in Pimentel, St. Turibius of Mogrovejo Catholic University, and in Zaña. Some of these locations were part of his ministry; others hold special significance for the history of the Church in the region.

The Chiclayo Cathedral

Facing the city’s main square stands St. Mary’s Cathedral, one of the central hubs of diocesan life during the years Prevost served as bishop and where he celebrated Mass every Sunday as well as other sacraments. The cathedral contains the bishop’s “cathedra” or chair, which symbolizes his governing authority.

During his upcoming visit on Saturday, Nov. 14, Leo XIV will preside over the rite of the coronation of the Immaculate Virgin at the cathedral. In preparation for the celebration, on Oct. 29 the new altar was consecrated and the ambo blessed.

A chapel where he used to pray to St. Nicholas of Tolentino

In the district of San Nicolás, near Zaña, there is a small chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas of Tolentino, an Augustinian friar for whom Leo XIV holds a special devotion.

Father David Farfán Guerrero, a friend of the pope, told EWTN News Español, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, that Prevost used to go there to pray before the image of the saint. “This is where, as I often say, he ‘put his knees to the test,’” he recalled.

The then-bishop also encouraged pilgrimages of Augustinian novices to the chapel as part of their spiritual formation. Although this site is not listed as a separate stop on the official itinerary, it helps in understanding a devotion that is important to the pontiff.

Zaña and St. Turibius of Mogrovejo

Zaña holds a special place in the life of Leo XIV and of the Church in Peru. It was there that St. Turibius of Mogrovejo died on March 23, 1606, after spending years traveling throughout his vast ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The saint served as archbishop of Lima from 1580 to 1606.

Prevost made a pilgrimage to this town before departing for Rome, following his election as prior general of the Order of St. Augustine. Farfán has noted his particular affection for Zaña and his devotion to St. Turibius, whom he regards as a model for pastoral life.

On Saturday, Nov. 14, Leo XIV will return to the area to take part in a prayer gathering marking the conclusion of the Jubilee Year of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo at the shrine dedicated to the saint.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Peace

At the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace, Robert Prevost entrusted his episcopal ministry to the Virgin Mary, as noted in a handwritten message in the shrine’s guest book dated Oct. 21, 2015.

Furthermore, the then-bishop would frequently visit the shrine to pray and spend time with the religious there. He also took part in meetings and retreats there with priests and would visit the pre-seminary located next to the complex.

On Nov. 13, during his visit to Chiclayo, Leo XIV will meet with bishops, priests, religious, seminarians, and representatives of the Church’s pastoral life at this shrine.

St. Turibius of Mogrovejo Catholic University

The relationship between Leo XIV and St. Turibius Mogrovejo Catholic University (USAT, by its Spanish acronym) is also part of his years in Chiclayo. The institution awarded him an honorary doctorate in law and recognized him as grand chancellor emeritus.

According to the university itself, Prevost received an honorary doctorate in recognition of his accomplishments and service to the Church. In 2023, the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference also awarded him the Gold Medal of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, one of its highest honors.

On Friday, Nov. 13, he will meet there with representatives of the university community.

Pimentel and Santa Cruz de Succhabamba

The visit will also take the pope to other locations in the region. On Friday, Nov. 13, he will celebrate Mass on the esplanade of the Pimentel plains and make a private visit to St. Óscar A. Romero Chapel.

The following day, he will travel to Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, where he will celebrate another Mass. The town is within the Diocese of Chiclayo, and Prevost visited it regularly between 2015 and 2023. During his time there, he traveled throughout the province, administered the sacrament of confirmation to young people and students, and built and consecrated the shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Remedies in the small rural community of Litcán.

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

“We have gathered to celebrate the Eucharist in this place of prayer and remembrance, of affection and hope. We offer it in suffrage for the faithful departed, particularly for those who rest here and for those whom each of us carries in our hearts,” the pontiff said during Mass celebrated on the central avenue of Rome’s Verano Cemetery.

The altar from which he presided over the celebration was flanked by a row of tombs. Located in the Tiburtino neighborhood, the cemetery, built in the 19th century during the Napoleonic era, is Italy’s second-largest civil cemetery and the largest in Rome.

The grounds, which include an area designated for non-Catholics, suffered severe damage during the Allied bombing of Rome in 1943 and were rebuilt in 1949.

Upon his arrival, Leo XIV placed a bouquet of white and yellow roses on the marble headstone of a randomly chosen grave belonging to an Italian family and bearing the name Antonia Coccia Nicolini.

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During his homily, the pontiff explained that the commemoration of the faithful departed, celebrated the day after the solemnity of All Saints, guides the prayer of the Church.

“We turn to the heavenly Father so that the life of holiness and blessedness already enjoyed by so many of his sons and daughters may envelop the souls of those who sleep the sleep of peace,” said the pope, who wore purple liturgical vestments, a symbol of penance, prayer, and hope in the Resurrection.

He also emphasized that faith in Christ is illuminated “by the word that has been proclaimed and that strengthens our trust in God’s hands.”

The Beatitudes, the ‘self-portrait of Jesus’

About 1,500 people attended the celebration, according to figures provided by the Vatican.

Reflecting on the Gospel of the Beatitudes proclaimed during the Mass, Leo XIV said they constitute the “self-portrait of Jesus” and reveal the path to a fully realized life, both on this earth and in eternity.

“The risen Lord tells us: Blessed are those who live according to this path, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he said.

He also observed that this message takes on particular force in a cemetery, which he described as “a threshold between this world and the next,” where faith enables believers to view death through the hope of the Resurrection.

In this context, he stressed that “faith in Christ tells us that our bond with the faithful departed has not been broken but transformed.”

‘The absurd violence of war’

The Holy Father also offered prayers for the deceased and made a special appeal for those suffering the consequences of armed conflicts.

He prayed that “the tears of so many mothers, so many children, and so many elderly people” would move the consciences of those who have the power to end wars.

Reflecting on the beatitude “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” he offered a special remembrance for those who have recently lost a loved one.

“At this moment we wish to pray for those who have recently lost a loved one, especially for those from whom a loved one has been taken by the absurd violence of war,” he said.

He then renewed his appeal for peace: “May the tears of so many mothers, so many children, and so many elderly people move the consciences of those who have the power to silence the weapons.”

Christian hope in the face of death

Speaking during the 800th anniversary year of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, Leo XIV recalled the praise the saint added to the “Canticle of Creatures” near the end of his life, when he referred to “Sister Bodily Death” and proclaimed blessed those who are found doing God’s will.

In his homily, the pontiff underscored Christian hope in eternal life and reaffirmed that God keeps forever those who have departed this world. Citing the Book of Wisdom, he recalled that the souls of the just are secure in the Lord’s hands and that “no torment shall ever touch them.”

The pope explained that this promise of salvation lies at the heart of the Church’s prayer on All Souls’ Day, when the faithful entrust their loved ones to divine mercy so that they may attain full communion with God.

Leo XIV also invoked the words of the Book of Revelation, which proclaims that God will dwell forever with his people, as well as the promise of the Good Shepherd that no one can snatch his sheep from his hand.

The pope concluded his homily with a reference to Revelation and God’s definitive promise for humanity: the day when “death shall be no more, neither mourning nor crying nor pain,” because all suffering will have been overcome forever.

With this Mass, Leo XIV, as he did last year, continued a tradition promoted by St. John Paul II, who visited the same cemetery on 12 occasions for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. Pope Benedict XVI also celebrated a Mass at the Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, located next to the cemetery, though without visiting its graves.

Pope Francis, for his part, maintained the custom of celebrating the All Souls’ Day Mass in various cemeteries throughout Rome during his pontificate.

In addition to Monday’s celebration, Leo XIV is scheduled to preside on Thursday, Nov. 5, at St. Peter’s Basilica, one day before departing on his apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru, at a Mass offered for the cardinals and bishops who have died during the past year.

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

By the conclusion of Mass, blue skies and large white clouds had replaced the rain. Inside the cathedral, a spirit of joy and thanksgiving marked the celebration, held on the solemnity of All Saints, one day after the friars were declared blessed at the Savannah Convention Center.

Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer of Atlanta presided, and Savannah Bishop Stephen D. Parkes delivered the homily. Cardinal Frank Leo of Toronto, who had presided over Saturday’s beatification as Pope Leo XIV’s representative, was among the concelebrants. Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, also attended.

Parkes urged those celebrating to consider how they would carry the gift of the martyrs’ witness beyond the weekend’s events.

“We have received a gift,” he said.

The bishop suggested introducing couples preparing for sacramental marriage to the newly beatified friars. He spoke of engaged couples learning their story, receiving an image of them and praying for their intercession for faithfulness in marriage. He also proposed prayers at weddings for the newly married couple.

“There are many other ways we can continue to honor these holy men,” he said.

The newly beatified friars are Pedro de Corpa, Blas Rodríguez de Cuacos, Miguel de Añón, Antonio de Badajoz, and Francisco de Veráscola. Four were priests; de Badajoz was a lay brother. All came from Spain and served in missions among the Indigenous Guale people in what is now coastal Georgia.

According to the Diocese of Savannah’s account, the violence began in 1597 after de Corpa opposed a baptized Guale leader’s decision to take a second wife. The account identifies Juanillo, who was in line for leadership, as the man who killed Pedro. Juanillo then led a war party against other missions. Five friars died during the uprising.

Pope Francis authorized recognition of their martyrdom on Jan. 27, 2025. The decree identified their deaths as having occurred in hatred of the faith, clearing the way for their beatification. The diocesan investigation had opened in 1984 and concluded in 2007.

Beatification confers the title “blessed” on a person and permits public veneration within the places or religious communities authorized by the Church. It is distinct from canonization, which extends that recognition to the universal Church.

The Georgia Martyrs’ liturgical memorial is Sept. 22.

The celebration also received attention in Rome. After the Nov. 1 Angelus in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo recalled the friars’ missionary service and their deaths.

“Let us invoke the intercession of these martyrs for all missionaries of the Gospel,” he said.

In Savannah, Parkes described the response to the beatification in terms of stewardship.

“We should always accept it with gratitude, with thanksgiving in our hearts,” he said.

“When we receive a gift, we should tend it responsibly,” he continued, “and also return it with increase.”

“It is not the role of the Church to adjudicate the causes of this dispute or the responsibility for the lack of its resolution,” the Presidium of the Polish Bishops' Conference, headed by Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda of Gdańsk, said in an Oct. 31 statement.

The Polish prelates called on politicians to calm the conflict and asked for “the initiation of constructive dialogue and the peaceful resolution of all difficulties."

The bishops appealed to the faithful to pray “for light and wisdom for the rulers and all those responsible for public life.”

Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno, Polandʼs primate, urged all sides of the political dispute to “seek a common solution” through talks. The heads of Polandʼs religious orders called for dialogue “on the basis of respect for the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and the applicable legal order.”

Archbishop Andrzej Przybylski of Katowice and military Bishop Wiesław Lechowicz also urged prayer.

A fight over the bench

The tribunal decides whether Polish laws are constitutional. Who gets to sit on it has been contested since 2015.

This term the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, elected eight judges. President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the opposition Law and Justice party, swore in three. The other five took their oath in parliament instead, and Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski barred them from ruling.

On Oct. 30 one of the five, Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, struck back. She suspended Święczkowski and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, for one month. The courtʼs official account on X replied that she “is not a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal.” Many legal experts doubt she had the power to issue the order, though some say it can be justified as a case of “higher constitutional necessity.”

Nawrocki turned his plane around on the way to Senegal and was inside the building in the early hours of Oct. 31. A statement in his name, read out by Paweł Szefernaker, head of the presidentʼs cabinet, called the nightʼs events “a forcible takeover of a constitutional body.” Hundreds of people gathered outside.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk was just as blunt in a televised address: “In certain matters, there can be no compromise.”

Others want to start over. Szymon Hołownia, whose Poland 2050 party sits in Tuskʼs coalition, has backed a “constitutional reset” — a move that would replace the entire bench. This idea has long been pushed by the opposition right-wing Confederation and left-wing Together parties.

Either way, Tuesday may not settle anything: The daily Rzeczpospolita reported that none of the judges seated before the current parliament will attend the assembly Korwin-Piotrowska has called for Nov. 3. Without them, it would fall short of its quorum of 10.

European Union reactions

In Brussels and Strasbourg, reactions split along political lines: Michael McGrath, the EU justice commissioner, told Politico the tribunal “needs to be able to function in accordance with the Polish constitution and the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU” and that “the Venice Commission has been clear that appointing the new judges lies within the power of the Sejm.”

The Venice Commission is the Council of Europeʼs advisory body on constitutional law.

However, McGrath stopped short of backing the suspensions, and conservatives in the European Parliament saw it the other way.

“The Tusk governmentʼs actions constitute a clear and grave violation of the rule of law,” said Nicola Procaccini, co-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists group. “We support President Nawrocki in defending Polandʼs constitutional order.”

Such wakes show how Chinese and Catholic customs around death sit side by side, said Bryan Goh, a historian at the National University of Singapore who studies the history of Christianity in insular Southeast Asia.

Catholics, he said, “find no problem offering joss-sticks at Taoist/Buddhist funeral wakes, focusing on the prayers they say in their heart rather than the form of the action.”

Clergy in Singapore did not see these customs as “something in dire need of correction,” Goh said, “mostly because they viewed certain actions and rituals as performance of filiality, rather than religiosity.”

‘Love transcends death’

Father John Chen, a priest of the Archdiocese of Singapore, told EWTN News that the Catholic faith and Chinese culture share one attitude toward the dead: “Love for our departed loved ones does not end with death. Indeed, love transcends death,” he said.

Students from Buddhist or Taoist families often ask him: “If my parents or grandparents are not Catholic, how can I show them respect without compromising my faith?”

Becoming Catholic means “discerning which cultural practices express values compatible with the Gospel and which may need to be reinterpreted or modified in the light of Christian faith,” he said.

Father Luke Zhang, of the Church of the Holy Trinity, a priest of the Congregation of the Disciples of the Lord, founded in China in 1928 by Archbishop Celso Costantini, who later became a cardinal, said some Catholics keep ancestral tablets at home because they live with relatives who are not Catholic. He encourages them to bow before the tablets, offer flowers and fruit, light candles, and pray for the dead with Catholic prayers.

“Through these practices, we express our respect for and remembrance of the deceased, pray for them, and entrust them to Godʼs merciful hands,” he said.

Burning joss paper or spirit money, however, is “strictly prohibited,” he said.

‘Simply go along’

Matthew Tserng Jia Uei, 61, a semi-retired shipping container assistant who leads the Mandarin-language Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, grew up in a Taoist family and was baptized in 1984. His relatives never insisted that he bow before the family altar.

“They only asked me to do my duty as one of the younger generation and simply go along as a gesture,” he said in written answers in Chinese.

Polly Ng Eng Lan, 65, a retired clerk who accompanies catechumens in the Mandarin-language RCIA at the Church of St. Alphonsus (Novena Church), said priests and catechists generally teach Catholics not to take part in rites of worship, and “only to offer incense to the deceased and pray.”

Michael Robert Tan, 57, an IT director baptized in April 2024, said his RCIA classes touched on what was allowed, including taking part in other faiths' ways of remembering the dead. He keeps no altar or photographs at home. “Nothing, only in my memories,” he said.

Serene Xu, 63, an administrator baptized in 1991, still visits the temple where her familyʼs ashes are kept each Qingming (a traditional Chinese holiday observed to honor ancestors and welcome spring) and on death anniversaries, “to pay my respects and remember them.” Her children, baptized as infants, join the familyʼs Buddhist and Taoist funerals.

“I firmly believe that faith and family traditions can coexist harmoniously when there is mutual respect, understanding, and acceptance,” she said.

Prayer ‘on the couch’

“There has never been a single Chinese way of practicing ancestral worship,” said Michel Chambon of the Initiative for the Study of Asian Catholics.

“Increasingly, people seem to prefer praying privately, in the intimacy of their own hearts, whether on the couch or in bed, rather than gathering before a formal altar,” he said.

Zhang said young Catholics seem “less enthusiastic about memorial activities for the deceased” than their parents' generation, but “perhaps they have their own ways of remembering them, such as a simple prayer in the heart.”

Chen said younger Catholics may seek “to preserve the values of filial piety, gratitude, and family unity while finding contemporary ways to express them.”

For Xu, one hope remains. “Deep in my heart, I continue to hold on to the hope that one day, we will be reunited in our Heavenly Fatherʼs house,” she said.

Fans, students, faculty, staff, and alumni from Villanova University and the University of Notre Dame filled Rome’s Palazzo dello Sport, a massive arena that seats more than 11,000, to cheer on their men’s and women’s teams in a matchup that was inspired by Pope Leo’s election as the first American pope. After a weekend of welcome receptions, tourism opportunities, and scheduled events, including a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and a papal audience, energy in the stadium was high before the men’s tipoff at 3:30 p.m. local time.

Before the game, Villanova fans confidently expected a Wildcat win: Tom McKernan, a Villanova alumnus from Philadelphia, joked: “We’re not playing [Notre Dame] in football, so I think we have the upper hand. We definitely have more crowd support today, so I’m looking for a big Villanova win.”

But while Notre Dame trailed Villanova for most of the men’s game, they came back with a minute left, pulling ahead for a score of 72-70 after Logan Duncomb’s three-point shot. After a suspenseful final minute, the Fighting Irish secured the game, upsetting the Wildcats by two points. Notre Dame fans erupted into cheers and chants of “Let’s go, Irish!” as Villanova’s much larger fan section sat in shock.

The Fighting Irish win came as a surprise for even Notre Dame fans, since the Wildcats came into the weekend with a few advantages: Besides boasting a storied basketball program, their fan presence in the stadium outnumbered Notre Dame’s supporters by a staggering majority. Most importantly for Villanova, however, was feeling that the pope was on their side: Pope Leo XIV, who graduated from the university in 1977, jokingly told both teams on Saturday that while “the pope doesn’t take sides… Prevost has another opinion.”

But whichever team Pope Leo was rooting for, fans of both sides were thrilled to see the pope during this weekend’s events, with Wildcats and Fighting Irish alike emphasizing that a visit to the Vatican was what made the Eternal City Tip-Off truly special.

Allen and Joanne Herda, parents of a Notre Dame senior from Dallas, said that when they bought their tickets for the game in Rome, they “knew that it would be a pilgrimage.” And while the Herdas were excited to cheer on their basketball team, they said the real main event of the Eternal City Tip-Off was the papal audience Oct. 31.

During the audience, Joanne was able to shake Pope Leo’s hand as he exited the audience hall, a moment she recalled with excitement.

“You got a reflection, a shock of gentleness and peace,” she said. “For me, [this weekend] has been otherworldly and extremely spiritual. I never dreamt that I would have touched the Holy Father, and we went to Mass this morning, and that was so spiritual too. … It’s hard to find the words.”

Father Francisco Carrillo, a priest from Mexico City who lives in Rome while studying for his master’s degree in biblical theology, was invited to the game by friends who are Villanova alumni. “For today, I’m a Villanova fan,” he said. But like the Herdas, Carrillo described the events of the weekend as more than simply a basketball game, calling them “providential.”

He said: “The first time that there’s an American pope, and that he studied in a Catholic university in the States, and then the fact that they organized this NCAA game here in Rome for the pope… it’s a huge event, not only on a human level but also spiritually.”

Second win for Notre Dame

The weekend got even better for the Irish when the women’s game ended in a second victory for Notre Dame — this time more expected. The Indiana school is known for having a higher-ranking women’s basketball team than its men’s team, in large part due to senior guard Hannah Hidalgo, who is expected to be a top lottery pick in the 2027 WNBA draft. Hidalgo contributed 32 of Notre Dame’s 99 points against Villanova.

Notre Dame fans celebrated their second win of the night with cheers as the buzzer sounded, the culmination of a victory that was more than just a basketball win: Opening the college basketball season with a triumph in the storied city of Rome, just kilometers away from Pope Leo, was a once-in-a-lifetime feeling for the excited Notre Dame teams, fans, and students present.

Hidalgo’s parents, Tamara and Orlando Hidalgo, were thrilled with Notre Dame’s season opener win. And while watching their daughter play will always be reason enough for them to travel around the world, Tamara commented that their experience in Rome has been “spectacular” for more reasons than basketball.

“I was actually taken to the prison where Paul was held,” she said. “For me, it was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime [experience]. It really touched my heart to know that I’m standing right above where he wrote the Book of Timothy. So I’ve had a phenomenal experience.”

For Villanova, the evening certainly held a fair share of disappointment from the basketball loss. But despite inevitable regret at the games’ outcome, Wildcat fans won’t be going home despondent.

Linda Hodgson, a Villanova alumna who was at the game with her daughter, shared her mixed feelings after the game: “[I’m] very disappointed. What else can I say? We were really expecting a Villanova win, especially with the pope’s blessing,” she said.

But, Hodgson added, “it was great meeting the pope. It was fun walking around Rome and seeing all the landmarks and coming to the basketball game. It was a great trip.”

For Hodgson and the other Villanova fans, the Eternal City Tip-Off loss may have been disappointing, but the weekend remained an amazing opportunity to be present in Rome for a historic visit to the Vatican, a competitive matchup with another Catholic school, and a chance to experience the excitement of basketball in the context of the faith.

In a statement to EWTN News before the game, Notre Dame president Father Robert Dowd, CSC, described the weekend as an expression of “shared commitment” to Catholic higher education between the universities, saying: “[W]e are united in our deep devotion to our faith and appreciation for the power of sport to elevate the human spirit.”

His hope that the matchup would deepen “a spirit of joy and communion” between Notre Dame and Villanova echoed the words of Pope Leo, who said on Saturday that “the members of two teams, even when they have a competitive rivalry, are certainly not enemies” and encouraged the “fraternity, solidarity, and peace” that athletics can promote.

And while Notre Dame has the scoreboard as proof of its victory, the moments of fraternity, joyful competition, and prayer shared between both schools during the Eternal City Tip-Off weekend made the season opener a historical moment for Notre Dame and Villanova alike.

Catholics gathered at the CatholicPsych Institute’s Summit of Integration from Oct. 20–23 in Dallas. Its founder, Greg Bottaro, whose work centers on the integration of St. John Paul II’s teachings on the meaning and purpose of the body with the practice of psychology, told attendees that “St. John Paul II has written more for psychologists than any other psychologist in the last 150 years.”

“John Paul II didn’t use the language of psychology in his theology of the body, but everything he talked about was relatable to the field,” Bottaro told EWTN News. “Faith, reason, and science all come together in his work.”

The theology of the body teaches that the human person is a unity of body and soul, created male and female in the image of God and called to communion through the sincere gift of self. The body has a “nuptial” or spousal meaning: It expresses the person and is ordered toward loving self-gift, which is fully realized either in the permanent, exclusive, and life-giving union of marriage or in the celibate gift of self for the kingdom.

Speakers at the conference, which was timed to coincide with St. John Paul II’s feast day on Oct. 22, tied the saint’s writings to their own work and personal lives.

A love that is ‘stronger than death’

Christopher West, a Catholic author and educator who specializes in the theology of the body, gave an address called “My Interior Journey with St. John Paul II.”

West said the saint’s writings helped him make sense of a yearning that began when he was a child, a yearning that he explained was for a love that would never end.

He described this yearning as beginning with an innocent crush on a girl in his third grade class, but as he grew up, it led him to a disordered view of sexuality and the body: “I wanted a beauty; I wanted a joy; I wanted happiness that lasts forever, that does not die.”

“The Church calls this yearning eros,” the Greek word for romantic love, he said. “Eros cries out for a love that is ‘stronger than death,’” he continued, quoting the Song of Songs in the Old Testament.

“Christianity is an invitation to a wedding feast that corresponds to that cry of the heart,” he said.

St. John Paul II taught that “Christianity is not redemption from the body and sexuality. It is the redemption of the body and sexuality. Christ came into the world, not to condemn those whose eros is distorted, but to untwist it.”

“The most disastrous mistake of Christians is to view sexuality as trash and throw it away rather than redeem it,” he continued. “We have three choices with eros: Repress it, aim it at finite pleasure, or, by the grace of God, learn how to aim our desire for the infinite toward the infinite.”

He said he sees St. John Paul II not primarily as a theologian but as a spiritual father whose writings helped him confront his own fear of death.

“This boundless demand of eros expresses the basic problem of human existence: The heart demands infinity but cannot grant it. It claims eternity but is bound by death,” West continued. “Our deepest fear is staring into our own death.”

“John Paul II truly fathered me,” West said. “This is the gift of this man in my life: He has helped me face my deepest fear and gave me courage.”

West said he needed that courage to confront difficulties that fear caused in his 31-year marriage to his wife, Wendy, who sat in the front row as he spoke.

He said he had discovered “deep, unconscious wounds of rejection” he’d received from his brother during his childhood but that ultimately came from a fear of death that led him to “rejecting the true heart of my wife.”

“When I have caused you so much sorrow and suffering, it’s because I wanted you to do something you couldnʼt possibly do for me, which is to take away my fear of death,” he said. “I wanted you to take that existential threat away.”

“And weʼre aging, haven’t you noticed?” he asked her, laughing. “Weʼre in our late 50s, and all the gray hair is a reminder that weʼre dying; weʼre all on this conveyor belt, and weʼre all gonna fall off.”

An ‘inheritance to life’

In his keynote, Bottaro repeatedly returned to the idea that Christians receive an “inheritance to life” from God rather than an inheritance of fear and death.

“The inheritance of life, the legacy of life, of the Resurrection is the answer to the deepest fear in the human heart: death,” he said, pointing to St. John Paul II’s admonition to “‘Be not afraid!’”

Bottaro also described the saint as a spiritual father who shaped his life.

He spoke of a visit to Poland during a time he was struggling with discouragement in his work. He was sitting at the kitchen table where a young Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) had discovered his father dead. As Bottaro sat, he said he felt “John Paul II just put his arms around me,” after which he was able to return to his professional efforts with a renewed purpose.

He spent the next five years writing “The Personalist Cure,” a book that integrates the saint’s theological teachings with psychology. It was released during the conference, on St. John Paul II’s feast day.

Bottaro said the book is a manual for how to understand healing and mental health through a Catholic lens and is intended for anybody studying mental health or human formation.

Michelle Gardiner, a mother of four who attended the conference, told EWTN News the summit “surrounded me with the reality John Paul II gave his life to: Authentic healing begins with reverencing and protecting the inviolable gift of myself and every other human person.”

“We inadvertently turn away from God, the supreme lover who created us for delight, when we reject the gift because of interpersonal wounding,” she said. “John Paul II knew this: Authentic human flourishing requires receiving and protecting the inviolable gift of the human person.”

El-Sayed was responding to a question from Fox News host Jesse Watters about 2022 remarks in which El-Sayed appeared to equate opposition to sharia law with “white supremacy.” The Senate candidate said he wishes to “practice my faith as I choose.”

“Nobody is trying to push sharia law on anyone else,” he said. “Just like I hope nobody is trying to push canon law on anybody else, because we live in America, where you should have the freedom of your religion.”

El-Sayed brought the comparison up again during a campaign town hall in Muskegon, Michigan, telling a voter that the Constitution protects the right to live by canon law while barring anyone from enforcing it on others.

The remarks have generated controversy for El-Sayed’s apparent equation of sharia law to canon law — two disparate forms of socio-ecclesial governance that help govern the lives of billions of religious adherents worldwide.

Sharia law vs. canon law

Sharia law, which governs Islamic religious practice along with family matters and financial transactions, also deals with aspects of political governance and public law, forming part or all of the political and legal systems in several Muslim-majority countries.

Canon law, on the other hand, regulates only the Catholic Church’s internal structure and functions, including rules about clergy, sacraments, and other ecclesiastical and administrative norms. It does not function as a civil or political legal code for the state or for non-Catholics, as sharia can for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

David Long, dean of the school of professional studies at The Catholic University of America and an assistant professor in the university’s school of canon law, told EWTN News that canon law “governs an identifiable ecclesial community and orders the Church’s life and mission, including sacramental discipline and the exercise of ecclesiastical office.”

Canon law provides a framework for the Church to live out its identity and mission. Sharia, meanwhile — though it is often appended with the word “law” — actually has a broader scope than religious governance, Long said. It directs “life according to God’s will,” including both worship and moral conduct.

Sharia law is applied in various ways in numerous countries throughout the world through the principle of “fiqh” — Islamic jurisprudence that interprets sharia and puts it into practice. It is seen particularly in the Middle East and Africa, though no local or state government in the U.S. practices it.

There is “no single worldwide Islamic legislator,” Long said, and thus there is no “single, universally promulgated code” that can be described as a comprehensive sharia.

Both canon law and sharia can have civil implications, the professor said, noting that Catholic canon law affects issues that cross with civil law, such as marriage contracts.

He pointed to a 2020 Maryland court case, meanwhile, which found that a financial stipulation in an Islamic marriage contract could be enforced, though only if it “satisfied secular contract principles.”

Civil courts in such cases “can recognize legal arrangements made for religious reasons without deciding whether a religion’s teachings are true or binding on the public.”

He noted that Muslims “have the same right as other citizens to bring religious convictions into public debates” and that a law cannot be ruled unconstitutional simply because it happens to agree with a religious teaching.

He acknowledged the appropriateness of being concerned if “a proposal under sharia uses governmental authority to compel religious observance or deny equal citizenship.” But he noted that such concerns should apply equally to all religions.

“I would … resist both blanket reassurance and blanket suspicion when it comes to applying religious-law elements in political discourse, including sharia,” Long said. “Specific proposals deserve scrutiny on their merits.”

“A religious population deserves neither a presumption of political innocence for everything done in its name nor a presumption of collective intent to impose its faith,” he said.

His death was announced Sunday, Nov. 1, during a Mass at the Shrine of the Virgin of Candelaria in Puno. He had been hospitalized at a clinic in Lima.

The Peruvian bishops' conference issued a statement of condolence shortly afterward. “We join in prayer with the Church of Puno, his family and the entire Catholic community, thanking God for his life and his dedication to the service of the Church,” the bishops said, asking prayers for his eternal rest and for the consolation of his family.

Alarcón, 74, died Friday, Oct. 30, after a battle with cancer. He had been helping prepare for the popeʼs stop in Cusco on Nov. 15, and Pope Leo expressed sorrow at his death. Meanwhile, Leo, who served for two decades in Peru as a missionary and later as bishop of Chiclayo, will visit the country Nov. 11–16, according to the published schedule. Puno is not on the itinerary.

5 decades of service

Carrión was born in Tarma in Peruʼs central Andes. The Archdiocese of Lima noted that he had marked 50 years as a priest and more than 26 years as a bishop.

Pope John Paul II named him a bishop in May 2000, and he went on to lead the Diocese of Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, for more than 24 years. Before that, he served as assistant secretary of the Peruvian bishops' conference.

Funeral arrangements

A wake was held Nov. 1 at the Archdiocesan Shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Santiago de Surco, Lima. The vigil continues Nov. 2 in Puno, where his funeral Mass will be celebrated Nov. 3.

He will be buried Nov. 4 in the cemetery in his hometown of Tarma.

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

“The solemnity of All Saints, which we celebrate today, invites us to share in the joy of that countless family of men and women who, following the Lord Jesus, have made their lives a gift to God and to their neighbors,” the pope said.

Quoting Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe Salvi, Leo said the saints, along their different paths to holiness, “have longed for ‘the ocean of infinite love.’”

The pope noted that the Church celebrates not only canonized saints on Nov. 1 but also “the countless others who have not been formally recognized but are known to God.”

“It is indeed true that it is impossible to count this multitude of brothers and sisters, and not just in numerical terms,” he said. “Holiness, in fact, cannot be reduced to any calculation, for such is the good that all the saints have spread around them in the world.”

Leo said the saints brought forth “actions and choices of love that transcend the calculations of greed and the arrogance of evil, which at times seems to prevail.”

“The saints are the most beautiful and powerful sign of the kingdom of God that is coming — or rather, as Jesus teaches us, is already among us,” he said.

The pope emphasized that the multitude of saints includes people “from the most diverse backgrounds, cultures, and walks of life.”

“Holiness is not a privilege reserved for a few, but a universal vocation that speaks to each of us where we live,” Leo said.

“This is the hope-filled message of today’s feast: God sees the good that we do not see, knows stories that we do not know and reaches hearts to which we have no access.”

He entrusted the faithful to the Blessed Virgin Mary, praying that she would accompany them “along the path to holiness, so that we may never grow weary of fostering peace, both in the most important situations and in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life.”

Pope recalls newly beatified Georgia Martyrs

After the Angelus, Leo recalled the beatification the previous day in Savannah, Georgia, of Pedro de Corpa and four companions, Franciscan friars killed “in odium fidei,” or “in hatred of the faith,” in 1597.

“Originally from Spain, they responded generously to the Lordʼs call to evangelize the peoples of the Americas, even to the point of giving their lives,” the pope said. “Let us invoke the intercession of these martyrs for all missionaries of the Gospel.”

Leo also spoke about a recent humanitarian operation to assist civilians in Oleshky, expressing hope that cooperation between the parties involved would lead to further steps toward peace.

“I hope that the cooperation between the parties, which made this necessary humanitarian act possible, will strengthen the desire for dialogue and lead to new concrete peace initiatives,” he said.

The pope then highlighted the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal, calling the first Olympic event held on the African continent “a sign of hope coming from the world of sport.”

He also noted that the Friars Minor will hold a Mission with the Poor in Rome from Nov. 8–15.

“I congratulate the sons of St. Francis who, through this initiative, are placing the poor at the center, as the Lord Jesus did and as St. Francis of Assisi did,” Leo said.

Finally, ahead of the Nov. 2 Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, the pope announced that he would celebrate Mass at Rome’s Verano Cemetery.

“During these days, let us feel united in the Communion of Saints with the immense family of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us on our earthly pilgrimage,” he said, “and let us pray for the departed, especially those whom no one remembers.”

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

According to the latest statistics published by Agenzia Fides, Africa’s Catholic population has now surpassed Europe’s, rising to 288.3 million compared with Europe’s 287.2 million. Africa now has the second-largest Catholic population, after the Americas, which the organization counts as one region.

The data Fides used comes from the Church’s Book of Statistics, which is updated yearly. The latest edition includes data through Dec. 31, 2024.

In responses shared with ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa,  Catholic leaders in Africa pointed to families, catechists, pastoral presence, and the witness of missionaries among factors they believe have contributed to the growth.

Catholics in the world numbered 1.4 billion, with an overall increase of 15.8 million Catholics compared with the previous year. As in previous years, increases were registered above all in Africa and in the Americas, followed by Asia, Europe, and Oceania.

The African continent recorded the largest increase in Catholics, adding 7.58 million compared with an increase of 6.99 million in the Americas. Africa gained 1,676 priests, the largest continental increase, compared with a worldwide net increase of 425 priests.

According to the Fides report, Africa was the only continent to register growth in seminarians, adding 786, while the global total declined by 2,891.

Sharing the gift of faith

For Bishop Edward Hiiboro Kussala of South Sudan’s Diocese of Tombura-Yambio, the findings are a reason for gratitude and renewed missionary responsibility.

“Having received the gift of faith through the missionary witness of others, we are now blessed to share that gift with the universal Church,” Hiiboro said.

As bishop of Tombura-Yambio since 2008, Hiiboro also serves as president of the Integral Human Development Commission of the Sudan and South Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference. He said that growth of faith is not a competition.

“Africa is not competing with any continent in the growth of faith. We are part of one universal Church, united in Christ and enriched by the gifts of different peoples and cultures,” he said.

Father Vincent Simba, rector of Nairobi-based St. Thomas Aquinas Senior Seminary, said the increase in Catholics and priests offers hope for Africa and the universal Church.

Simba expressed hope that Africa would have opportunities to send missionaries to places from which the continent received the Christian faith.

Bishop Joseph Kacou Aka of Ivory Coast’s Diocese of Yamoussoukro said the figures are an invitation to deepen communion among local Churches.

“Africa is called to share its gifts: its vocations, its community experience, its theological reflection, and its witness of faith,” he said. “But mission remains a fraternal exchange in which each Church both gives and receives.”

Aka, who was consecrated bishop in 2023, said pastoral action in his diocese is guided by the theme “Autonomous and Missionary Church, Communion of Communities.”

Families, communities, and pastoral presence

In his response to ACI Africa, Hiiboro pointed to family bonds, community life, and openness to God as among the conditions he believes have helped the growth of Christian faith in Africa, alongside the work of missionaries, catechists, priests, women and men religious, and laypeople.

In Nigeria, Bishop Gerald Mamman Musa of the Diocese of Katsina identified the continent’s youthful population, family life, liturgies, and the work of Catholic institutions among factors contributing to growth.

“In Nigeria, parish communities, Catholic schools, hospitals, and lay movements help transmit the faith across generations,” Musa said.

Musa, who also chairs the Communications Commission of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), said his diocese had seen its number of seminarians rise from about 21 in 2023 to more than 40 in 2026. 

He cautioned that “demographic growth alone does not explain conversion.”

Father George Omondi, a Kenyan-born member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, commonly known as the Spiritans, pointed to the accessibility of pastoral services.

Omondi, who previously served as vice provincial superior and councilor for formation in the Spiritans’ Kenya and South Sudan Province, recalled seeing an increase in parishes in Kenyan Catholic dioceses, bringing services closer to the faithful.

Omondi said during his parish ministry he also observed adult baptisms and received converts from other churches into the Catholic Church.

In his own response, Aka cautioned against assigning a single cause to the growth. The statistics, he said, “describe a development without, by themselves, establishing its causes,” and do not determine the respective contributions of family transmission, adult baptisms, and demographic factors.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

Led by Bishop David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay, the group visited the cities of Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, Dion-le-Val, and Leuven from Oct. 10–20 on the first-of-its-kind pilgrimage.

Among the stops were the Church of Our Lady, home to The Madonna of Bruges sculpture created by Michelangelo; the Basilica of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel, Belgium’s most visited Marian shrine; the tomb of St. Damien of Molokai, a Belgian priest known for his service to the leper community on the island of Molokai in Hawaii; the Catholic University of Leuven, the oldest Catholic university in the world; and several locations associated with Brice, including her hometown of Dion-le-Val, her home parish, the site of her confirmation, and the port where Brice and her family embarked for New York in 1855.

In an interview with EWTN News, Ricken described the pilgrimage for those who took part as a “discovering of roots.”

He explained that most of the pilgrims were from Door County in Wisconsin, which is one of the largest Belgian communities in the United States.

“Thereʼs a Belgian heritage center here and lots of deep connections, and they havenʼt forgotten those,” he shared. “And they just loved Adele from the time she came.”

With this in mind, and since Brice’s cause for canonization was officially opened in February, Ricken and others involved with the pilgrimage thought it could serve as a “moment of connecting with her [Brice’s] roots so that we can understand her better” as well as give the pilgrims in attendance “a chance to reconnect” with their Belgian roots.

Ricken recalled that one of the most impactful stops on the pilgrimage was the Mass celebrated at Brice’s home parish, the Church of St. Martin in Dion-le-Val. This small parish typically has roughly 20 people in attendance — as Catholicism in Belgium is currently at a low point, Ricken explained — but for this Mass, 250 people crammed into the space to celebrate the special occasion.

“I think it gave them a whole new sense of pride in their own history over there. So it was a renewal for them. You could see that. The people were so thrilled to have us,” he shared.

After the Mass — which was concelebrated by Ricken, several other priests from the Diocese of Green Bay who were on the pilgrimage, and local Belgian priests — a reception was held. Despite having a language barrier, Ricken said everyone was still able to communicate and many of the local Belgians recognized the family last names of the American pilgrims and found family connections. He shared that one of his priests from the diocese found a relative of his that he “never knew existed before.”

“It was just beautiful and itʼs going to take quite a while to unpack all of that and understand exactly what happened, but it was deeply enriching for everybody, including me,” he said.

The Church of St. Martin was also the recipient of the Our Lady of Champion Adele Brice icon done by Father Paul Czerwonka from the Diocese of La Crosse in Wisconsin. The icon depicts the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing to Brice and has two angels holding a banner with the message the Blessed Mother gave Brice: “I am the Queen of Heaven … Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation. Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the cross, and how to approach the sacraments. That is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing, I will help you.”

The icon is 8 feet tall by 4 feet wide and took two months to complete.

Ricken said one moment that was very personal for him during the pilgrimage was when the group visited the Catholic University of Leuven. The bishop received his graduate degree in sacred theology and completed his seminary formation at this university in 1980. While the seminary building is now used for student housing, the chapel from the seminary is still in use.

“We were able to arrange for an anointing service of the pilgrims … there in the seminary chapel where I attended Mass every day as a student and loved it so much,” he shared. “And I was able to lead the anointing service. And many people took advantage of that … not everybody, but many did, and it was so beautiful that right there in the former seminary chapel to be able to take care of my own people from here who went on that pilgrimage. That was very touching.”

Reflecting on the pilgrimage as a whole, Ricken said he believes “there will be a lot of answered prayers” through Brice’s intercession.

Ricken said he hopes those who went “see all of their instincts and their love of their culture and language as something thatʼs still alive, still vibrant in certain places, and that the shrine is their connection with home.”

“Theyʼve always felt that, but now they actually saw it themselves. They were able to go to her hometown and experience that connection,” he added.

“And my hope is that theyʼll continue to volunteer and do all the beautiful things they do and have even more commitment to it and be able to identify the work of grace and the Holy Spirit in everything thatʼs happening today in and around the shrine through Adele [Brice] and through the Blessed Mother.”

“We do well to lovingly speak their names, for they are holy members of the family of God,” said Cardinal Frank Leo of Toronto while declaring them “blessed” on Oct. 31 in Savannah, Georgia.

It was a milestone for the Catholic Church in America: The Georgia Martyrs are the first American martyrs for marriage and the first to be beatified in the southern U.S.

Approximately 9,000 people streamed through the doors of the Savannah Convention Center, breaking city attendance records for an indoor event. They traveled from all over Georgia, the U.S., and around the world, arriving by bus, car, and trolley. Some ferried across the Savannah River. Others flew, including priests and lay Catholics representing the hometowns of several friars.

María Isabel Inoriza De Villota, a 12th-generation descendent of one of Friar Francisco’s brothers, came from Spain with her 16-year-old son, Imanol.

“Ever since I was a child, I have witnessed the deep devotion my parents held for Francisco,” she said. “We have always turned to him, seeking his protection and help.”

Her mother prayed “fervently” for the beatification, which is “a dream come true,” she said.

Father Pablo Migone, the vicar for mission advancement in the Savannah Diocese and a longtime promoter of the cause, said 2,000 attendees “tops” were projected. But registrations kept pouring in.

U.S. beatifications are rare. But it was more than that. The diocese has been educating the faithful about the martyrs for a decade. “The fruit and the story are resonating in people’s hearts and minds,” Migone said.

Until learning of the beatification, many residents of La Albuera, Spain, where Friar Antonio was baptized, hadn’t heard of him. Now the town square is being renamed in his honor.

“God is full of surprises,” said Father Antonio Jesús Marín Romo, the town’s parish priest. “This comes at a crucial moment when we were in need of a catalyst for the work we wish to begin in the parish.”

The Franciscans’ story began in the 16th century when they arrived from Spain. By 1595, they had established missions along the Georgia coast, evangelizing the Indigenous Guale people. Serving like Peace Corps volunteers, they succeeded where other orders had failed.

Two years later, however, faith clashed with local custom. A baptized convert in line for chiefdom insisted on a second wife. When the friars refused to compromise Christ’s teaching on marriage, a war party murdered the friars, mission by mission. A sixth friar, Francisco de Ávila, was tortured but lived to tell the tale. The missions were eventually reestablished, and Catholicism thrived.

The bilingual service on Oct. 31 began with a procession down the runway-like aisle created from joining four exhibition spaces, the center’s largest configuration.

More than 200 clergy, including Franciscan Friars of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Cardinal Leo, 31 bishops and archbishops, over 100 deacons and seminarians, and the apostolic nuncio, were joined by nearly 200 members of the Knights of Columbus, the Knights of Malta, Knights (and Dames) of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Knights of Peter Claver. Seventy ciboria waited at the altar. 

Cardinal Leo read the apostolic letter and declared the Georgia Martyrs “blessed” by having “placed the saving truth of the Gospel before their own safety.”

Atlanta Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer and Archbishop Joan-Enric Vives i Sicilia, bishop emeritus of Urgell, who represented the Spanish Episcopal Conference, read English and Spanish translations of the apostolic letter, respectively.

The letter declared the martyrs’ feast day as Sept. 22, the octave day of Friar Pedro’s martyrdom. 

Thunderous applause erupted at the unveiling of the official portrait of the martyrs, showing them in humble repose and bathed in golden light. Before and after the beatification, the crowd toured the adjacent Georgia Martyrs Museum and art exhibition.

By worldly standards, it might seem like the martyrs failed, Cardinal Leo said during his homily. “But it is not so.”

They succeeded by embracing “the call to holiness, which further led them to embrace the call to consecrated life, the call to the sacred priesthood, the call to missionary work, the call to evangelize, the call to share and defend the faith and, ultimately, the call to give their very life.”

But “how compelled are we” to “follow Jesus’ call to follow him?” he asked.

A holy life requires defending the truth and “always put[ting] Christ first,” he stated, even while striving for unity in the world. “Polarization is not from God.”

The martyrs also bore witness to “the Christian doctrine of marriage and held to that divine truth to the shedding of their own blood,” he said, stressing the sacred nature of the family “founded upon the covenantal, sacramental, indissoluble union of one man and one woman.”

In his first public audience after recent surgery, Pope Leo XIV said that protecting marriage and family “is more urgent than ever before.”

The beatification itself was “perfect timing,” said Christine Camp, who came from Atlanta with more than a dozen other Catholics who had just attended a three-day retreat to pray for restoration of their marriages.

Moms and dads with children had traveled from near and far. “It’s our pilgrimage,” said Theodora Ferrant, who came from Pensacola, Florida, with her husband and two children.

“I truly believe through the intercession of Blessed Pedro de Corpa and four companions there will be greater respect for the dignity and character of holy matrimony,” Savannah Bishop Stephen Parkes said.

“May the witness of these holy men inspire fidelity between spouses called into the covenantal bond of holy matrimony and help create a renewed commitment to the growth of faith-filled families in the state of Georgia and beyond.”

The celebration will continue Nov. 1 with a Mass of thanksgiving at the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist.

The archbishop added his name to a lawsuit that includes Rockville Centre Bishop John Barres, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Hicks’ addition to the suit was announced by the religious liberty law firm Becket on Oct. 30.

The New York Archdiocese joins the suit after it was launched in July of this year by Catholic objectors to the state’s new suicide law. The Catholic plaintiffs in that suit argued that the state’s assisted suicide rules would force them to participate in the process of helping suicidal patients kill themselves, a violation of core Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life.

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, a federal court ordered that the state could not enforce the suicide rules against the Catholic objectors while the suit itself played out.

Hicks said on Oct. 30 that Catholics “are guided by the compassion of Jesus to serve those of every background who are in need of healing.”

“We refuse to allow New York to force us to harm the very ones we’ve been called to care for,” he said.

Hicks is the latest Catholic prelate to join the legal fight against assisted suicide in the U.S. A total of four bishops and dozens of religious sisters have sued the governments of New York and Illinois after the states enacted assisted suicide programs.

In addition to the New York ruling, the Catholic objectors in Illinois — which include the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Springfield — have secured victories at federal court, with a judge ordering the state to hold off on enforcing suicide rules against them while the suits play out.

In New York, the Catholic healthcare ministry ArchCare also joined the lawsuit against the state. Among ArchCare’s facilities is Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, which offers hospice care for those with six months or less to live.

Becket describes the Calvary facility as “the only fully-accredited acute care hospital in the U.S. devoted exclusively to the palliative care of adult patients with life-limiting illnesses.”

Fans of all ages packed into the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall in Rome for an audience with the pope, who is himself a Villanova graduate.

“Growing up on the south side of Chicago, we oftentimes heard, ‘Go Irish!’” Pope Leo told the crowd. “But as you all know, Prevost graduated from Villanova. So, the pope doesn’t take sides. Prevost has another opinion, but we won’t do that now,” he added, to cheers from the Villanova supporters.

The Nov. 1 event, called the Eternal City Tip-Off, will open the 2026-27 college basketball season for the Division 1 teams. Organized as a collaboration between Fox Sports, On Location, and Players Era, inspiration for the event came from Leo’s election as the first American pope.

Leading up to the Sunday games, supporters of both universities — including alumni, faculty, staff, students, and fans — were able to participate in a special Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica along with the papal audience.

Father Peter Donohue, OSA, president of Villanova, and Father Robert Dowd, CSC, president of Notre Dame, began the audience by addressing the pope on behalf of their universities. Four student-athletes from each school then presented the pope with gifts, including commemorative basketballs, jerseys, and a special prayer for athletes written by the late Holy Cross Father Theodore Hesburgh, a past president of Notre Dame.

Pope Leo drew laughs and cheers from the crowd when he began to dribble the basketball offered by Villanova team representatives.

The pope then addressed the gathered fans, speaking about a “vision of sport” proposed by the Catholic Church centered on “the dignity of the human person, on his or her integral development, on education, and on relationships with others.”

He pointed out that the games will take place on the feast of All Saints’ Day, saying that the occasion was a valuable reminder “that God calls everyone to be a saint. … We are invited, therefore, to ensure that every aspect of our lives, including our athletic endeavors, will help us to love God and our neighbor.”

Pope Leo emphasized the importance of sport as “a concrete means of bringing people together,” particularly in an age “marked by the distance that can be created by technology.”

He added: “Sport is a medicine for both body and spirit when it is practiced well.”

Ambrose Weidmann, an architecture student from the University of Notre Dame studying abroad in Rome, attended the papal audience with his friends. “It was great to hear each school’s president’s viewpoint on sports, school, and faith, and even better to hear the Holy Father’s comments on sports and especially our universal calling to sainthood,” he said.

Eric Heinz, who was at the audience with his wife and two sons — one of whom graduated from Villanova, the other from Notre Dame — echoed Weidmann’s sentiments.

“I think it’s really great to have so many people that you know [in the room],” he said, citing the thousands of supporters from both universities who filled the hall. “It’s really attributed, I think, to the love of not just their schools, but Pope Leo, and having an American as the pope. … Everyone’s in a great mood about it.”

Shannon Murphy and Gabriel Alvarez, sitting a few rows down from the Heinz family, had already planned on a trip to Rome for their honeymoon, but when they saw that the dates lined up perfectly with the Eternal City Tip-Off weekend, they were thrilled.

“We put it on the calendar, and the minute they went for sale we were refreshing [the page] to get the best tickets we could that were available… we’re very excited,” said Murphy, who is a Villanova alumna. She added that sharing both an alma mater and the Catholic faith with Pope Leo made seeing him “pretty great.”

Before the papal audience, fans had the chance to attend a special morning Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Mass was presided over by Archbishop Nelson Perez of Philadelphia and concelebrated by the presidents of both universities.

During the homily, Perez praised the discipline, perseverance, and sacrifice of the student-athletes, quoting St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians to remind the faithful that sport is a model for the spiritual life, and offering Mary as a model of this excellence: “She played the game of life, the game of grace, in such a beautiful, powerful, profound way,” he said, offering Mary’s humility and service as an example of “true greatness.”

Weidmann commented that the Vatican events on Saturday tied basketball and Catholicism together in an “ideal connection” between faith and sports, and even served as a means of evangelization.

“I know a few of my peers who are atheist or agnostic, but went to the papal audience and Mass today and got to hear the voice of the Church calling to them through the word of God and the pope’s words, which I thought was a really great way to expose more people to our faith,” he said.

Villanova and Notre Dame will face off on Sunday beginning with the men’s basketball game at 3:30 p.m. CET (9:30 a.m. EST), which can be viewed on Fox. The women’s game, aired on FS1, will follow at 6 p.m. CET (noon EST).

In an interview with Mark Irons of “EWTN News In Depth,” the 98-year-old Simoni explained how he escaped death through remaining steadfast in faith.

Simoni was imprisoned and tortured for practicing his faith, and eventually his death sentence was commuted to forced labor. Simoni continued secretly to say daily Mass as the Communist Party tried to eradicate religion across their region.

Though many understood the risks involved, no one informed the communist authorities. Had the regime discovered what he was doing, he said, he likely would have been hanged. He credited his survival solely to Godʼs grace.

After the Party of Labor of Albania was dissolved in 1991, Simoni was freed from manual labor under state surveillance. He doesn’t speak much about torture he experienced.

“They also took me into the army … and had me march, for 16 hours marching ... without eating, or drinking, I was dying,” Simoni said. “Thank God, he wanted me to be saved. There it was the hand of God that protected me.”

In 2014, Pope Francis was moved by this priest’s testimony and named him one of 17 international bishops and priests to the College of Cardinals in 2016. Pope Francis described him as “a living martyr.”

Simoni travels across countries bringing the Gospel to all people while also speaking of his experience in communist Albania. His visit to the United States this November comes 63 years after the assassination of Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Simoni said he holds no resentment toward those who persecuted him and his fellow Catholics. Earlier this year he returned to the prison where he was tortured and was able to celebrate Mass publicly.

"We are required to pray for every enemy, that God has mercy, to see them all in heaven, because Christ has shed his blood for us all,” he said.

“We express our sincere gratitude for all those who work to provide necessary resources to women, babies, and families during pregnancy and beyond,” Bishop Daniel Thomas, chair of the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said in an Oct. 27 statement.

“Pregnancy help organizations, maternity homes, medical and resource help centers, and adoption agencies provide heroic services every day to anyone in need,” he said. “Many pregnancy care centers offer free medical services, including ultrasounds, prenatal and postnatal care, and referrals for free or low-cost childbirth.”

“They also provide resources such as baby clothes and diapers, childcare, career services, referrals for housing, and much more,” the bishop said.

Pregnancy Help Appreciation Week, which will be celebrated from Nov. 9–13 this year, is a celebration created by Heartbeat International — a network of pregnancy centers that offer pregnancy help as an alternative to abortion clinics.

A report published last November by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that in 2024, pro-life pregnancy resource centers provided over $452 million worth of support to women in crisis pregnancies and struggling women with young children, including medical care, support and education services, and material goods.

The bishops’ statement noted that about 2,750 life-affirming pregnancy centers currently operate in the United States.

To mark the celebration, Thomas also recognized “the life-changing help being provided by the countless volunteers in our parishes that accompany vulnerable women and families through our nationwide Walking with Moms in Need initiative,” a parish-based initiative created by the bishops to provide support to pregnant women and mothers.

“May all those who serve and protect life be encouraged by our prayers, our good works and our financial support to build a culture of life,” the bishop said.

Florida attorney general talks fetal personhood with Lila Rose

Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who is Catholic, discussed the prospect of “fetal personhood” — the belief that unborn children should be legally recognized as persons at the moment of conception — on a podcast this month with Live Action President Lila Rose.

When Rose — who is also Catholic — asked Uthmeier whether there will be a day when abortion has fully come to an end in Florida, Uthmeier told her: “I certainly pray so; I do believe we have the truth on our side and the truth will prevail.”

“But we as faith-driven people, as pro-life advocates, weʼve got to continue going out and educating and explaining, getting people to soften their hearts and listen,” he said.

Uthmeier discussed his opposition to surrogacy and expressed concerns about people coming to Florida to “purchase a baby.” He called the practice “very dangerous and horrific” but said he hopes it can raise discussions about whether this is a form of slavery.

“It is going to bring the conversation of fetal personhood and life front and center,” Uthmeier said. “Is this a human being? Which I believe truthfully, factually, the answer is unequivocally yes. If it is a human being, you cannot contract to buy and sell this individual.”

Pro-life activists mark 59 years since UK’s Abortion Act

In London on Oct. 27, pro-life advocates gathered in Parliament Square to mark 59 years since the passing of the U.K.’s Abortion Act, which legalized abortion in England, Wales, and Scotland under certain conditions.

More than 11 million abortions have taken place in the U.K. since the act was passed, according to government statistics compiled by Right To Life UK.

Bede Teeton from March for Life UK told EWTN News: “It is our duty to commemorate those who have been affected by abortion, and those who have sadly lost their lives through it too.”

Former Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg told EWTN News: “Fifty-nine years ago was a black day in the civilization of the U.K. We did something that was fundamentally wrong, and itʼs gotten worse. We now allow abortion up to birth. We kill disabled babies because they are disabled. Society is quite schizophrenic about this, because we all have all sorts of disability rights acts, but then we murder disabled babies. So I think it is a day of infamy.”

Pro-life runners complete global relay

Thousands of pro-life runners cumulatively completed a 5,124-mile relay this week, which concluded at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, with the men’s and the women’s cross-country and track teams finishing the final stretch.

The 2026 A-Cross America Relay, which is organized by the pro-life organization LIFE Runners, had 26,257 participants in 4,061 cities across 53 nations. EWTN Global Catholic Network was a sponsor of the event.

Many of the runners wore jerseys displaying the Trinity and a cross with “Jer. 1:5,” written on it, in reference to the Bible verse: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.”

The jersey displays the text “REMEMBER The Unborn” as runners seek to promote a culture of life to the public in every location they run.

Elliot Hartley contributed to this story.

For centuries, the Catholic Church widely observed All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1) as an octave, extending the holy celebration to eight days.

The observance was established by Pope Sixtus IV in the 15th century and demoted in the liturgical calendar around the middle of the 20th century, although some Catholics still mark the eight-day observance.

Notably, the Church itself still indirectly acknowledges the ancient eight-day octave in its granting of plenary indulgences for the first week of November.

What is a plenary indulgence?

A plenary indulgence is a grace granted by the Catholic Church through the merits of Jesus Christ to remove the temporal punishment due to sin.

It is not a forgiveness of sin but the remission of punishment for sins already forgiven. It may apply either to oneself or to souls already in purgatory.

In order to obtain a plenary indulgence the faithful must — in addition to being in the state of grace — both have the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin (even venial sin), have sacramentally confessed their sins and received the Eucharist (either within or outside of Mass), and must pray for the intentions of the Holy Father.

What about the All Saints’ octave?

The Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary, in its “Enchiridion Indulgentiarum” (“Handbook of Indulgences”), states that the faithful can obtain a plenary indulgence for the faithful departed “every day, from the 1st to the 8th of November,” if, in addition to fulfilling the normal terms of a plenary indulgence, one “devoutly visit[s] a cemetery and at least mentally pray[s] for the dead.”

The conditions for a plenary indulgence can be fulfilled a few days before or after performing the works to gain the indulgence, but it is appropriate that Communion and the prayer take place on the same day that the work is completed.

The All Saints’ octave was notably extended throughout the entire month of November in both 2020 and 2021 amid concerns about avoiding large gatherings of people in churches or cemeteries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This story was updated on Oct. 31, 2026.

Father Edwin Limas Falcón, an Oblate of St. Joseph, presented the Spanish-language book titled “Itinerary of Faith: The Child of Eten Arrives in Lima and Callao" to the Holy Father.

The book summarizes the work of the lay group Eucharistic Miracle Peru 1649, led by researcher Jesús León Ángeles. The presentation took place during an audience held to mark the 150th anniversary of the Canon Law Department of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

The book documents a pilgrimage through 21 parishes in Lima and Callao including the cathedrals of Lima, Carabayllo, and St. Peter in Lurín as well as the parishes of St. John Mary Vianney and St. Luke, among others.

“We have witnessed the grace of God expressed through the piety of thousands of families who come to adore the Lord in the Eucharist. We know well that Pope Leo XIV deeply values ​​each of these steps, for he himself taught us in Chiclayo that Jesus continues to become alive and present among us in every Eucharistic celebration,” Ángeles told EWTN News Español, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.

When he was bishop of Chiclayo, Pope Leo encouraged the recognition of Ciudad Eten, the site of a Eucharistic miracle, as a “Eucharistic City.” He personally secured an 11-hectare plot of land (about 27 acres) for the construction of Peru’s first Eucharistic shrine.

In 2024, as Ángeles recalled, during the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress, he received a call from Monsignor Edgar Rimaycuna, personal secretary to the then-Cardinal Robert Prevost, who encouraged them to “seek every possible opportunity to make the miracle known.”

The Eucharistic miracle of Eten

On June 2, 1649, in the town of Santa Magdalena de Eten, during the Mass on the eve of the solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Divine Child appeared within the consecrated host.

The miracle occurred again on July 22 of the same year during the Mass celebrated in honor of the town’s patroness, St. Mary Magdalene. Two apparitions took place that day: first, the Child appeared once more, and in second, three intertwined hearts appeared, symbolizing the Most Holy Trinity.

Although the hosts in which the Divine Child of the Miracle appeared have not been preserved, the then-bishop of Chiclayo told ACI Prensa in 2019 that “the history, the data, and the devotion spanning these 370 years are quite well documented …. It was never submitted to the Vatican for formal Church approval, and we are working on that now."

Formal approval of the Eucharistic miracle by the Vatican now rests with Pope Leo XIV.

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

“In Jesus’ Name” takes viewers into the world of what an exorcist does and why exorcisms were established, and offers guidance on things that the faithful should consider staying away from in order to keep themselves safe.

The docuseries features prominent exorcists, theologians, and survivors of demonic oppression and examines how evil operates, how it enters human lives, and how it can be overcome. Through personal testimonies and expert insight, the docuseries explores the tension between good and evil, biblical teaching on exorcism, the reality of spiritual warfare, and, above all, the hope and power of Jesus Christ.

The creators of “In Jesus’ Name” seek to take exorcisms out of the sensational and instead provide an accurate view of how they are conducted and how people have found deliverance.

“With ‘In Jesus’ Name,’ we wanted to demystify the rite of exorcism and invite audiences to see how the Church responds to the presence of evil in an authoritative but compassionate and deeply human way,” Peter Gagnon, president of EWTN Studios, said in a press release.

“By giving viewers rare access to experienced exorcists, theologians and those who have confronted profound spiritual darkness firsthand, the series reveals not only the reality of spiritual warfare but the truth at its heart: the battle is real, but God’s love and grace is greater,” Gagnon said.

Father Dan Reehil, pastor at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Columbia, Tennessee, and an appointed exorcist for the Diocese of Nashville, is one of the authoritative figures in the docuseries, alongside Father Vincent Lampert, who served for nearly 20 years as the designated exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, as well as Archbishop Jeffrey Grob of Milwaukee, a theological expert on the history of the Catholic rite of exorcism.

In an interview with “EWTN News Nightly,” Reehil emphasized that “the devil is real" and that while “thereʼs a lot of banter on social media and also the internet about the devil,” the faithful should focus their time “on God, particularly on Jesus Christ, who is the one who crushes Satan.”

He explained that when Lucifer rejected Godʼs plan and one-third of the angels followed Lucifer, those angels became the demons that were cast down to earth.

“Theyʼre cast down to earth, and now they roam the earth, and their No. 1 enemy, according to Revelation Chapter 12, is theyʼre making war against those who keep Godʼs commands and bear witness to Jesus Christ,” he said. “So if thatʼs you, you should at least be aware thereʼs a target on your back, [but] not to be afraid of it. Itʼs actually a badge of honor because youʼre in this great elect group of people that he hates because of who we are.”

Reehil shared that “the best thing you can do is have a very robust prayer life, have a deep relationship with Jesus Christ as a true disciple. And we use the same weapons. We use obedience to God, we use humility, we use purity, all the aspects of Our Lady would be the weapons we use in this battle.”

Created by EWTN Studios and Cumberland Creative, “In Jesus’ Name” is available for streaming on EWTN+ and EWTN.com as of Oct. 28. The first episode will also be available on the EWTN YouTube channel.

The cardinal expressed his gratitude to those who “showed their solidarity through prayers and expressions of affection and appreciation for the community” of the Redemptorist priest, the pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, who passed away on Oct. 17.

“As a security measure, and in coordination with the fire department and other state institutions, we will proceed with a technical inspection of the structures of churches and parish buildings, as well as the mountings of religious objects that could potentially cause similar injuries,” Cabrera explained during an Oct. 28 press conference held in anticipation of the Mass marking the 100th anniversary of the feast of Christ the King, which he will celebrate on Saturday, Oct. 31.

“Accidents are not planned; they are chance occurrences … Some can be logically foreseen, and appropriate precautions can be taken to avoid them,” he added, noting that “there are 161 parishes, and each parish must ensure that its structures are in good condition.”

On Thursday, EWTN News Español, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, was told that the archdiocesan technical department, in collaboration with the fire department and other experts, will review the structural, electrical, water flow, and technical aspects of each parish.

This will be done, the archdiocese explained, according to the availability of the parish priests who will be present for the inspection, taking into account that with Advent approaching, there is an increase in church activities.

What will happen to the cross that fell on Sánchez?

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish told EWTN News Español that the cross that fell on Sánchez has not been put back up. “What the media are saying is false,” the parish noted, referring to some reports stating that the crucifix had been returned to the wall where it had previously hung.

Father Pedro Calle, a Redemptorist priest who was in Guayaquil to participate in the novena for Sánchez, told EWTN News Español on Oct. 29 that whether or not the crucifix is ​​put back up “depends on the new parish priest who will be assigned. It is a matter of time and internal organization.”

El Niño phenomenon

At the press conference, Cabrera also addressed the El Niño weather phenomenon that is wreaking havoc in Guayaquil with heavy rains. According to the National Secretariat for Risk Management, it is estimated that 32,000 people have been affected by the rains.

The cardinal stated that each parish has “a team of volunteers ready to assist those in need. Furthermore, in each of the seven episcopal vicariates, locations have been designated for the collection of food and other supplies.”

A collection taken up at the Mass on Saturday, Oct. 31, will assist those affected.

The 100th anniversary of the feast of Christ the King

On Oct. 31, Cabrera will celebrate the Mass to commemorate the feast of Christ the King, established 100 years ago by Pope Pius XI, which left a lasting mark on life in Guayaquil and led to the custom of the faithful adorning their balconies with an image of the Lord and the flag of Ecuador.

In Ecuador, this feast is celebrated with the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom the country was consecrated on March 25, 1874, a consecration that was renewed this June. Ecuador was the first country in the world to be officially consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At the conclusion of yesterday’s press conference, Cabrera blessed the image that will be displayed during Saturday’s Eucharist.

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

The shortwave service, which has operated under the call sign WEWN since its launch in 1992, will shut down on Oct. 31. EWTN’s board of governors recently confirmed the decision.

Warsaw pointed to the decline of shortwave radio consumption as one of the driving factors leading to the station’s closure. A widely used media source in the 20th century, shortwave’s popularity has decreased in the 21st century amid the rapid global uptake in streaming and digital platforms.

Operating costs at the WEWN network have been high relative to the declining number of shortwave listeners, Warsaw said, and the aging facility was in need of significant and expensive repairs, which he said would not be a “prudent stewardship of our resources.”

“As we shift the use of shortwave to newer and more far-reaching distribution channels, we remain grateful for the co-workers and benefactors who sustained the service for so long,” he said.

Among them, Warsaw recalled the late Dutch Catholic entrepreneur Piet Derkson and his wife, Trudy, whose $26 million gift made the construction of WEWN possible and helped Mother Angelica, EWTN’s foundress, advance the network’s mission of sharing the truth of the Gospel around the world.

“We are also mindful that it was Shortwave which inspired and allowed the growth of EWTN Radio,” he noted. Since its launch, EWTN Radio has grown to currently broadcast over 600 AM/FM stations worldwide, in addition to airing on satellite and digital platforms.

In 2008, EWTN had previously ceased direct shortwave broadcasts to North America. Since then, its English-language shortwave service had reached audiences primarily in Africa and the Middle East. The Spanish-language shortwave coverage was directed to Latin America.

EWTN Radio’s content continues to reach these audiences through its digital platforms, online streaming services, mobile applications, podcasts, satellite distribution, and its extensive network of AM/FM affiliates.

The award-winning team at the global Catholic network’s flagship nightly newscast, “EWTN News Nightly,” will kick off election night coverage at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Nov. 3, with an hourlong, scene-setting special.

Anchors Veronica Dudo and Erik Rosales will be joined by EWTN News Vice President and Editorial Director Matthew Bunson, along with correspondents Owen Jensen, Roselle Reyes, Paola Flynn, “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” host Abi Galván, and other colleagues on election night.

At 9 p.m. ET on election night, the network will return to the air with a half-hour special as early results come in.

The programming will include coverage of referendums on abortion in Virginia, Nevada, Idaho, and Missouri; key House, Senate, and gubernatorial races; and several other referendum questions Catholics are following closely.

Joining the team for analysis of the elections and the issues surrounding it will be Josh Altic of Ballotpedia, political analyst Tim Rosales, Kelsey Pritchard of SBA Pro-Life America, Alejandro Ramos of Ramos Research Institute, and Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life of America, among others.

"EWTN News offers vital and timely coverage and analysis of the midterm elections from the Catholic perspective,” Bunson said of the coverage.

“We provide reporting and commentary across multiple platforms and multiple languages, but above all we deliver professional award-winning journalism that is faithful to Catholic teaching and that touches on all of the issues that are of concern to Catholics,” he said.

“EWTN News is uniquely positioned to be the go-to news outlet for a proper understanding of the results of the vote and their implications for Catholics in the United States and around the world,” Bunson added.

To Bunson’s point, on Nov. 4, the network will also offer an expanded one-hour edition of “EWTN News Nightly” recapping all of the major results.

The coverage will be accessible on multiple platforms, including cable television, YouTube, EWTN.com, Roku, Amazon Fire, and the EWTN app, which is free in the Google Play and Apple stores.

The sisters of the Theological Institute of the Inter-Congregations of Lovers of the Holy Cross learned basic principles of Buddhist prayers and “practiced seated meditations” at the visit to Minh Dang Quang Buddhist Monastery on Oct. 26, according to a UCA News report. Controversy followed after photos circulated online of the visit, the report said.

Redemptorist Father Peter Nguyen Van Khai said the visit, which included offering incense and praying in front of a Buddhist statue, was inconsistent with Catholic teaching. “Good subjective intentions are not sufficient to justify an action that is objectively incompatible with the faith,” he said.

Number of bishops in Ireland to drop by a third following merger

The number of Catholic bishops in Ireland could decrease from 26 to 17 after a merger that was decided by Vatican consultations in which Pope Leo XIV participated prior to his election as pope.

The merger was planned during a meeting in February 2025 with Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin, Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly of Cashel and Emly, and Archbishop Francis Duffy of Tuam, according to an Oct. 27 report from the Irish Times.

“Since the meeting in Rome held in February 2025, between the four archbishops of Ireland with Cardinal Robert Prevost ... the subject of reconfiguration of dioceses within the province of Munster has been on the agenda of the regular meetings of the seven Munster bishops,” a spokesperson for the bishops said in the report, noting a consultative process is underway that could take “a number of years.”

At UN, Holy See calls for ‘peaceful uses of outer space’

The apostolic nuncio to the United Nations, Archbishop Christophe El-Kassis, spoke out against the expansion of space activity at the expense of environmental damage at the 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.

“Outer space is a common good entrusted to the responsibility of the entire human family. Its exploration and use hold extraordinary promise for scientific advancement and integral human development,” El-Kassis said in his Oct. 28 statement. “However, it is essential that such progress benefits all peoples, without creating new inequalities or exclusions.”

The nuncio further called for “greater international cooperation,” especially so that developing countries may benefit from any possible advances. “The Holy See therefore encourages States to pursue their common efforts to preserve outer space as a realm of peace, stability, and cooperation, for the benefit of present and future generations,” he said.

Displaced Christians in southern Lebanon appeal for protection, return home

Families from Qouzah, a Christian village in southern Lebanon, are appealing to the Vatican and the United States for help returning to their homes after months of displacement.

Residents have called for their village to be protected from further conflict, while Father Antonios Hanna, the parish priest, reported extensive damage to homes and the 120-year-old St. Joseph Church, ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News, reported on Oct. 27.

Before the latest displacement, approximately 54 families lived in the village. Many now face unemployment, rent payments, and difficulties meeting basic needs. Hanna emphasized that residents want neither conflict nor confrontation but lasting peace that will allow them to return to their homes, churches, and farmland.

Syrian curriculum changes spark controversy over religion, women

Changes to Syrian school textbooks have sparked criticism over the removal or alteration of material concerning women, the arts, civic education, and national history.

According to documented comparisons of older and revised textbooks, images of women and girls were removed or digitally altered to include Islamic coverings, ACI MENA reported Oct. 26. References to traditional dances, famous artworks, and historical figures were also deleted. Some lessons on citizenship, democracy, and respect for the law were replaced or removed, while changes to historical and geographical references raised further concerns.

Critics argue that the revisions promote a narrower religious and cultural perspective at the expense of Syriaʼs diverse heritage. The controversy has renewed debate over the role of education in preserving historical accuracy, encouraging critical thinking, and respecting the countryʼs social and religious diversity.

African Church leaders urge quality formation as priestly vocations grow

Catholic leaders and formation personnel in Africa are calling for careful discernment of candidates, qualified formators, and continuing formation for clergy and laypeople as the continent records growth in priestly vocations.

In responses shared with ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, they said the increase in major seminarians calls for attention to candidates’ motivations, human and spiritual maturity, pastoral preparation, and safeguarding.

“Rigorous discernment at the entry level should be the norm,” Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama of Abuja, Nigeria, said. “Careful vetting matters more than recruitment drives.” The archbishop further urged psychological and human screening, and for willingness to turn away candidates who are deemed unfit for the priesthood.

Bishop reflects on 20 years of faith and service in Arabian Peninsula

After nearly two decades of service in the Arabian Peninsula, Swiss Capuchin Bishop Paul Hinder is preparing to return home, carrying with him memories of a diverse and deeply faithful Church.

Appointed apostolic vicar of Arabia in 2005 and of Southern Arabia in 2011, he served communities across six countries, visiting Christians in Yemen and witnessing the devotion of migrant Catholics in Saudi Arabia, ACI MENA reported Oct. 23.

Hinder helped build more than seven churches, supported the growth of the clergy, and encouraged lay participation, vocations, and Catholic education. He said his most lasting contribution was helping form people, whom he called the “living stones” of the Church. As he departs, he urged the faithful to remain united, resist hatred, and become peacemakers.

The state earlier this year became the latest in the U.S. to officially remove all limits on abortion. Lawmakers passed a law that permits abortion at any point in pregnancy for any reason; Democratic Gov. Maura Healey signed the bill on Aug. 10.

Opponents of abortion subsequently launched an effort to suspend and potentially repeal the law, seeking enough signatures to enact a “veto referendum” that would put the law up for a statewide vote in 2028.

The advocates needed to collect about 37,000 signatures to place the measure on the ballot; collecting just under 50,000 signatures, meanwhile, would suspend the law prior to that election.

Myrna Maloney Flynn, the president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, told EWTN News on Oct. 30 that the initiative had collected more than 100,000 signatures toward the effort.

The pro-life coalition will deliver the signatures to the Massachusetts secretary of state, she said. “Then we’ll wait for his office to formally confirm the results.”

“We do not know how long his office will take to verify,” she said.

She said the governor could enact an “emergency preamble” that would nullify the presumptive suspension of the law, though Healey “has not indicated her intentions” in that regard. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the initiative.

Upon its passage, the state abortion measure drew rebuke from the state’s Catholic bishops, who described it as “a radical measure which is gravely immoral.”

The advocacy group CatholicVote, meanwhile, called for Healey — who identifies as Catholic — to be excommunicated.

“Healey is a Catholic in a state of grave sin. She has publicly and now legislatively cooperated in the destruction of innocent human life,” CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt said at the time.

Commenting on the ad, Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of the advocacy organization CatholicVote, said: “I take him at his word that he is a man of prayer and he, as an American Muslim, deserves the same religious liberty we Catholics have fought to protect for two centuries.”

“What I question is something else,” Reinhardt continued. “El-Sayed has repeatedly answered fair questions with false equivalences, and he has put Catholics and our Church at the center of them.”

Reinhardt was referring to El-Sayed’s repeated equation of Catholic canon law with sharia. Addressing concerns about his Islamic faith and fears over the imposition of sharia, in a video shared on social media El-Sayed emphasized that if elected to the Senate, “I’m going to swear an oath to that U.S. Constitution.”

In the video, El-Sayed told a town hall questioner in Michigan, who identified himself as a Christian, that “because of the U.S. Constitution you have the right to live according to canon law and also because of the U.S. Constitution you don’t get to enforce canon law on anyone else.”

Reinhardt squarely accuses El-Sayed of drawing a “false equivalence” between the two systems. “The Code of Canon Law is the internal legal order of the Catholic Church. It governs how the Church administers sacraments, organizes dioceses, and disciplines its own clergy. It makes no claim over the criminal code of any nation,” she explained.

”Classical sharia is a different kind of thing. Many American Muslims understand it as a matter of personal devotion, and that is their right,” she continued. “In its historic jurisprudence, though, sharia is a comprehensive legal order. It reaches into family law, criminal punishment, and the governance of the state. That is why it is written into the constitutions of several nations, and canon law is written into none,” Reinhardt pointed out.

“One can respect both traditions and still see that they are not the same. A Senate candidate should know the difference,” she said.

The issue first came to the forefront during an Aug. 24 interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters, when El-Sayed asked, “Do you know what canon law is, Jesse? ... canon law is the name for Christian law … Nobody is trying to push sharia law on anyone else. Just like I hope nobody is trying to push canon law on anybody else, because we live in an America where you should have the freedom of your religion.”

Following that exchange, Catholic Answers’ Todd Aglialoro also pointed out the problematic comparison and why the issue is a relevant one.

"Sharia is a broad term for codes of Muslim conduct,” Aglialoro explained. “In many countries that are predominantly Muslim, Sharia is deeply embedded into civil and criminal law, with its prescriptions, judgments, and punishments serving a governing function.”

In the West, Aglialoro continued, sharia has become a flashpoint of controversy in places “where Muslim-dense locales experience conflict between local law enforcement, based on liberal Western values, and neighborhood Muslim councils dispensing gray-market Sharia judgments that often contradict those values.”

“The majority of these hot spots are in Europe, but as Islam grows in certain regions of the United States, there has been talk of measures to prevent that kind of ‘parallel justice’ from taking root here," he noted.

Gabriel Said Reynolds, who serves on the Vatican Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue with Muslims and is a professor of Islamic Studies and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, told EWTN News that for Muslims, “God’s will for humanity is sharia.”

Sharia includes explicit implications for non-Muslims. For example, Islamic law allows for a head tax known as “jizya” on Jews and Christians. At different times Christians in the Islamic world have suffered from abduction, enslavement, subjugation, and forced conversion.

In contrast, the Code of Canon Law is neither “Christian law” nor a civil code for all Christians, but orders the life of the Catholic Church. Unlike sharia, as Aglialoro points out, “Catholic canon law is not about superimposing a full spectrum of doctrinal and moral teaching onto the everyday life of religious adherents. It is more like a thick binder of organizational bylaws." 

Professor David Long, who teaches canon law at The Catholic University of America, told EWTN News that comparing canon law and sharia may help illustrate believers’ “freedom to observe religious obligations” but “does not establish that canon law and sharia share the same sources of authority or jurisdiction.”

Long said of El-Sayed’s comparison: “As an appeal to the religious freedom protected by the Constitution, the analogy makes a useful point: Catholics and Muslims alike may seek freedom to observe their religious obligations without thereby claiming authority to impose those obligations on their fellow citizens. That constitutional argument does not depend on the two legal traditions being equivalent.”

“Islamic jurisprudence also provides rules for civil government, including those affecting non-Muslims. The distinction is substantial, but it must be stated without reducing canon law to administrative rules or treating every Muslim’s religious observance as a proposal for state enforcement,” Long added.

For Christians, Long contends, the central issue concerning sharia is the distinction between religious freedom and coercive state authority.

At the time of publication, El-Sayed’s campaign staff had not responded to an EWTN News request for the candidate to clarify his position on the matter.

In an email to students that was reported on by the student-led publication at the college, The Dartmouth, on Wednesday, university president Sian Leah Beilock said Schnell had resigned and was “leaving the university” after an independent, faculty-led committee determined that Schnell may have violated university policies when he used AI in select academic works and popular articles without proper disclosure to the publications he was writing for. Dartmouth will have an interim provost through 2028, Beilock said. 

Several fellow Catholic scholars, including some who have criticized Schnell’s apparent use of AI in writing, expressed surprise at the news, which underscores the thorny questions surrounding the rapidly growing adoption of AI tools in professional writing, particularly in higher education.

“Obviously, I am against AI writing. And yet I feel whiplash here,” said Jennifer Frey, a Catholic philosopher at the University of Virginia, on social media. “Who can hang a man in the wild, wild west, which is an accurate description of AI in higher ed right now? Especially at Dartmouth, which has so strongly encouraged [AI] use in the name of ‘not being left behind’!”

A native of Venezuela, Schnell, a mathematical biologist, was named chief academic officer of the vaunted Ivy League school at the start of the 2025-26 academic year. His appointment generated positive attention among some Catholics in higher education, who expressed appreciation for Schnell’s push for a more classical vision of university life centered on formation in beauty, truth, and friendship.

“His promotion was such a ray of hope in higher education, especially at elite universities,” said Jeremy Tate, the founder and CEO of the Classical Learning Test (CLT), an alternative to the SAT and ACT designed around classical education.

Beyond the secular higher education world, Schnell, who formerly served as a dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, was also a leading voice of reform at Catholic universities.

In June, Schnell addressed members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) at the the group’s plenary assembly in Orlando, Florida, telling the bishops that they “could be more vocal” and “more pushy” when it comes to making sure that Catholic universities are faithful to their unique mission of forming saints.

Controversial AI usage

But controversy began to swirl following a September article by The Dartmouth, which reported that several of Schnell’s public writings since 2022, including academic papers and op-eds for various newspapers, had been flagged by Pangram, a leading AI-detection tool, as overwhelmingly “AI-written.”

The Dartmouth’s report was prompted by a prior investigative piece by the publication Semafor, which in a broader investigation of AI-generated writing in major newspapers had flagged one of Schnell’s op-eds — a piece for The Washington Post about combating AI-facilitated cheating in schools — as being “100%” AI-generated.

In response to The Dartmouth’s September investigative report, Schnell said in an emailed statement that he uses AI for “language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient,” but “review[s] the final text and take[s] responsibility for its content.”

“I develop ideas and arguments, conduct the research, evaluate the evidence and sources, determine the structure, prepare drafts and decide what appears in the final text,” Schnell wrote to The Dartmouth. “I regard these technologies as assistive tools. They do not identify the problem, design the research project, guarantee the validity of research results, interpretations, citations, conclusions or substitute for my research, intellectual judgment or authorship.”

He also added that AI detectors are “known to be unreliable.”

“There’s evidence that they’re biased against nonnative English speakers, such as myself,” Schnell wrote.

Schnell wrote three op-eds for the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, this year, two of which were on the theme of AI use and its effects on education. All three were flagged in The Dartmouth story on the provost’s AI usage. Schnell did not comment when asked Thursday if he used AI tools in drafting his commentaries for the Register. He referred questions about the Dartmouth College investigation and his resignation to his attorneys, who did not respond to an inquiry before publication but responded to the Register on Oct. 30.

“Dr. Schnell has decided to resign as Provost and from the Dartmouth faculty. He came to this difficult decision out of deep respect for his colleagues and the broader Dartmouth community, and so as not to bring further distraction to the institution. Although he was not afforded a meaningful opportunity to present his account during the College’s internal review, he has chosen to allow the Dartmouth community to move forward,” Andrew Miltenberg, Schnell’s attorney, told the Register in an email.

“He remains grateful to the colleagues and students who made his time at Dartmouth so meaningful. Over a distinguished academic career, Dr. Schnell has made lasting contributions to higher education, and he looks forward to continuing that work.”

In his public writings and in interviews, including with the Register, Schnell often addressed the current and future effects of AI on education, saying that he sees the rise of AI as an opportunity for classrooms to return to more low-tech, personalized modes of learning.

At the same time, Schnell has also written that he believes educators can make positive usage of large language model (LLM) AI tools.

“Used with discipline, [LLMs] can be genuinely useful,” he wrote, in part, for the Register in one of his op-eds. “A professor may use them to prepare discussion questions. A researcher may use them to survey literature more quickly. An administrator may use them to accelerate routine writing. It would be foolish to deny their utility.”

Catholic reaction

In the full investigative report into Schnell’s use of AI, published by Dartmouth, fellow faculty determined that Schnell had used AI to “meaningfully alter his writing in violation of at least one publication’s AI use and/or disclosure requirement, failed to disclose his use of AI in clear violation of a national newspaper’s stated policy, was not forthcoming about his AI use, and fell short of the standards set forth by” various academic codes of conduct. 

Some higher-ed reform advocates, however, have questioned whether the outspoken Catholic scholar was treated fairly in the process.

“Was he treated with extra scrutiny because of his disposition?” asked Tate, who suggested that AI usage is widespread among university administrators. “I think there’s a conversation to be had.”

“I’m not saying he didn’t make a mistake, but this is a huge loss,” Tate added. “I think everybody loses here.”

Frey told the Register that she found Dartmouth’s decision shocking, in part because the university appears to have “suddenly drawn very clear and sharp lines with the provost’s own use of AI” when the acceptable norms of AI use in higher education remain largely undefined.

Additionally, she noted that Dartmouth itself has actively promoted the use of LLMs to “augment” traditional methods of education. According to The New York Times, the Ivy League school even entered into an agreement last year with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services to provide its faculty and students access to AI tech.

“Perhaps a better outcome, for Dartmouth and for us all, would have been to use the revelation of Schnell’s AI use to start a serious and transparent conversation on our campuses about what we think the lines [about AI use] are and why people and institutions draw them where they do,” she said.

“I am inclined to the view that there is a lot more for us to figure out before we begin to discipline and punish,” she added.

Tate said that he hopes Schnell has additional opportunities to “have a big impact somewhere in higher ed,” noting that “he’s got a lot he can give.”

He also said that others must work to carry forward the vision of higher-education reform that Schnell helped reintroduce into the national discourse, including conversations about the fundamental purpose of a university education.

“He was entering into that in a way that was really beautiful, with really timeless wisdom,” Tate said. “So let’s hold on to this mission. It may be the only mission that can save higher ed right now.”

This story was updated at 5:28 p.m. ET on Oct. 30, 2026, with the statement from Schnell’s attorney.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

In his homily during Mass on Oct. 29, Bishop Wolfgang Pisa of the Lindi Diocese appealed for forgiveness for those held in connection with the October 2025 election violence, adding that acknowledging difficult realities should guide the country’s response to the violence that followed the disputed elections.

He was speaking at St. Andrew Kaggwa Cathedral in his Diocese of Lindi on the day TEC dedicated national prayers for victims a year after the Oct. 29, 2025, polls.

“If we say that the current electoral law and the present constitution cannot deliver elections that are fair, truthful, peaceful, and secure, then that is the truth that should guide us,” Pisa said.

He added: “We must defend the truth, not protect wrongdoing. Let us do what is good and seek it at all times, so that we may avoid evil and abandon it completely.”

Drawing on the account of John the Baptist in Mark 6:17–29, the TEC chairman called on Tanzanians to acknowledge and defend the truth, even at personal cost.

“John the Baptist acknowledged the truth, even though doing so came at a great personal sacrifice. He was prepared to acknowledge and defend the truth,” he said.

Pisa urged the people of God to allow themselves to “be possessed by the truth and guided by it.”

“Let us not attempt to distort the truth, because it will remain what it is,” the member of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (OFM Cap) said.

Turning to the responsibility of those in positions of influence, Pisa recalled how Queen Esther intervened when Haman plotted to destroy the Jewish people. He urged Tanzanians serving in public institutions and other sectors of society to use their positions to prevent further violence.

“The first form of influence is the influence of prayer: fasting and praying. The second is to make use of people who have the ability to influence decisions. They must exercise genuine influence to ensure that such events do not happen again,” he said.

“In all this, we must always seek what is good. But this is not the time merely to complain. It is time to call upon other people like Esther in every institution to do their part: to exercise influence and wisdom.”

The TEC chairman also called for repentance, inviting Tanzanians to examine both acts of wrongdoing and failures to act when others were in danger.

“Through my failure to act, my failure to speak, or my failure to give direction, perhaps killings occurred, people were injured, people went missing, or people were unable to bury their relatives,” he said.

Invoking the biblical account of Cain and Abel, Pisa urged Tanzanians to reflect on their responsibility toward those who suffered during the violence.

“Like Cain, we continue to be asked: ‘Where is your brother Abel?’” the bishop said.

He also appealed for forgiveness for people held, tortured, or arrested for political reasons and in connection with the previous year’s elections.

“If there are others who might also have made mistakes and are being held, tortured, or have been arrested for political reasons and in connection with the previous election, fundamentally, they should not be killed,” he said.

The bishop warned that killing them would not resolve the problem.

“That will not solve the problem; it will bring more hatred and greater division,” he said. “Therefore, just as we ask God to forgive our sins, they too should be granted forgiveness.”

Pisa concluded by calling on the faithful to continue praying for Tanzania and its leaders.

“Let us continue to ask for Godʼs mercy and pray for our nation. Let us pray for all government leaders, asking God, Our Lord, to guide their minds and hearts according to his will, so that all people may enjoy peace, justice, freedom, and truth,” he said.

This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, and has been adapted by EWTN News.

“Machines are tools, not persons,” Leo said in his address.

The pontiff held a private audience on Friday with participants in a meeting on “The Future of AI: A Dialogue Between the Vatican and the Scientific World on the Development and Applications of Intelligent Technologies” at the Vatican. The Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute organized the one-day conference.

AI cannot be given human rights or personhood

During the meeting, members of the Vatican Commission on Artificial Intelligence and scholars discussed ongoing concerns as AI continues to develop.

Noting this concern in his address, the pope warned against efforts to grant AI technologies rights and legal status comparable to those of human beings.

“Today, some propose granting these systems rights, or even legal personhood,” Leo said. “Such an approach risks obscuring human responsibility and leaving those who suffer harm to confront a faceless entity.”

Drawing on his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Leo explained that the future of AI technologies depends on the choices made today, choices he hopes will promote the dignity of the human person.

“As a technology developed by human beings, its future depends on the choices we make,” Leo said.

“A reliable system that serves the human person is of greater value than one that is exceptionally powerful but whose consequences cannot be adequately foreseen or controlled.”

Earlier in October, Leo explained the difference between classical art and AI-made art, saying there is an “ontological difference” that exists “even before an aesthetic one.”

Vatican AI leadership and calls to stop super-development

Several conference participants, according to an Oct. 30 press release, expressed hope in the Vatican’s leadership on AI ethical issues. One of those was Max Tegmark, a physicist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“With strong moral leadership, the Vatican can help steer AI development onto a better pro-human path,” Tegmark said.

Others called for an end to the super-development of AI amid fears that AI is making humans obsolete.

“We must turn aside from this trajectory before it is too late and pursue other trajectories,” said Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, adding that if AI developers succeed in super-development, “there’s a good chance that every human being will die.”

The changes were approved by the pontiff on Oct. 19 through a “Rescriptum ex Audientia Sanctissimi,” a Latin expression referring to a decision or provision approved by the pope following an audience granted to a curial official or ecclesiastical authority.

The document is signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state, and amends Articles 62 §3, 68 §2, and 68 §4 of the Regulations for Personnel of the Roman Curia.

Changes to the role of the disciplinary commission

The reform introduces a clarification to article 62 §3 to define more precisely the responsibilities of the Roman Curia’s Disciplinary Commission.

The new wording states that the commission shall act in determining certain disciplinary sanctions, “with the exception of suspension for a period of up to 30 days.” As a result, shorter suspensions will no longer require the commission’s involvement, while more serious sanctions will continue to be examined by the body.

The change means that, when an employee commits an offense, the head of a dicastery may now impose a sanction directly, including suspension from work for up to 30 days. Beyond that threshold, the Disciplinary Commission must be involved to assess the appropriateness of the sanction.

Previously, even suspensions of less than 30 days required review by the Disciplinary Commission. Under the new rules, such review is necessary only for suspensions exceeding 30 days.

Another significant change concerns proceedings that could result in a lengthy suspension or dismissal.

Until now, the regulations provided employees with 10 days to submit their explanations after receiving notice of the alleged violations.

The new rule maintains that deadline for ordinary cases but introduces an additional safeguard for more serious situations. Specifically, when the alleged conduct is considered by the head of the department to be “liable to result in a suspension exceeding 30 days or dismissal,” the employee will be granted “15 days to present his or her defense.”

Right to legal assistance

The reform also explicitly incorporates the employee’s right to legal assistance in the most serious disciplinary proceedings.

The new text states that the employee may present a defense “making use, if appropriate, of a lawyer chosen from among the members of the Corps of Lawyers of the Holy See or the Register of Lawyers of the Roman Curia.”

This is a significant innovation within the Curia’s internal regulations, as it expressly provides for legal representation when the potential sanction could involve a lengthy suspension or termination of employment.

Obligation to inform the employee

The amendment to article 68 §4 also establishes new notification requirements for heads of Vatican departments and institutions.

When the head of an entity considers that a “suspension exceeding 30 days or dismissal” is warranted, he or she must forward the case file to the Roman Curia’s Disciplinary Commission and inform the employee “of the measure adopted and of the possibility of making use of his or her own lawyer” from among those authorized under the regulations.

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

The appointments mark a leadership change at the body responsible for overseeing the Catholic Churchʼs synodal process. They follow the departure of Sister Nathalie Becquart, who had served as undersecretary since February 2021.

In recent years, Becquart became one of the most prominent figures in the synodal process initiated by Pope Francis and continued by Leo XIV. She was also the first woman to have voting rights at an assembly of the Synod of Bishops, a milestone in the Churchʼs recent history.

A Jesuit deeply involved in the synodal process

Costa, the new undersecretary, was born in Genoa in 1967 and entered the Society of Jesus in 1992. Trained as a sociologist, he earned a diploma of advanced studies in political and moral sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Costa is well known in Italian Church circles. From 2010 to 2021, he served as editor of the journal Aggiornamenti Sociali, and from 2007 to 2025, he chaired the San Fedele Cultural Foundation in Milan.

He has been closely involved in the synodal process, serving as special secretary for both the 15th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to young people in 2018, and the 16th Ordinary General Assembly on synodality, held from 2021 to 2024.

Until now, he had served as a consultor to the General Secretariat of the Synod.

A liturgy expert

Alongside Costa, the pope appointed Sister Elena Massimi, a member of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, also known as the Salesian Sisters, as undersecretary.

Born in Rome in 1975, Massimi made her perpetual profession in 2009 and earned a doctorate in theology, specializing in pastoral liturgy, from the Santa Giustina Institute of Pastoral Liturgy in Padua, Italy, which is affiliated with the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm.

She currently teaches liturgy and sacramental theology at the Pontifical Salesian University, serves as president of the Italian Association of Professors and Scholars of Liturgy, and oversees music for the liturgy at the National Liturgical Office of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

Her appointment strengthens womenʼs representation in one of the Roman Curiaʼs most important bodies and brings recognized academic and pastoral expertise in liturgy to the synodal leadership team.

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

A district court in Tarnów, southern Poland, on Oct. 29 found Bishop Andrzej Jeż of Tarnów guilty and sentenced him to two years' “restriction of liberty,” a noncustodial penalty. Instead of prison, 1,000 zlotys (about $254) of his monthly salary will go to a childrenʼs charity.

The court also ordered him to pay 10,000 zlotys (about $2,538) on each count into a state victims' fund. Prosecutor Marcin Stępień had sought a suspended sentence and a fine of 20,000 zlotys (about $5,075).

The verdict is the outcome of the first criminal trial of a Polish bishop on that charge. The diocese has announced it will appeal.

The courtʼs reasoning

“The court believes that the defendantʼs task was merely, and yet as much as, to file the appropriate notifications, not to assess individual cases,” Judge Małgorzata Adamczyk said.

She found the bishopʼs testimony not credible.

The curia said it “does not agree with the courtʼs decision” and stressed that, in both cases, the curia made formal notifications to law enforcement authorities. It expressed “deep regret for the harm and suffering of all persons harmed by sexual crimes.”

At the trialʼs opening in February, Jeż, who has led the diocese since 2012, pleaded not guilty and apologized to those harmed.

Since July 2017, Polish law has required that authorities be immediately informed of credible knowledge of the sexual abuse of a child under 15.

The first case concerns former priest Stanisław P., who prosecutors found had harmed at least 95 children in Poland and Ukraine. Prosecutors closed the case in 2022 as time-barred.

The curia said the bishop had concrete information only in 2019 and notified prosecutors in 2020. Stępień countered that a Church tribunal had found the priest guilty in a 2013 decree issued by Jeż and that this earlier finding meant the delay left the abuse of 23 boys time-barred.

The second case concerns a priest, Tomasz K., accused of abusing minors between 2008 and 2010. The curia said the bishop learned only in late 2021 that a victim may have been under 15 and reported it that December, while prosecutors said the curia knew in 2017. The priestʼs case is pending in Nowy Sącz.

Other Polish bishops, including Bishop Jan Tyrawa and Archbishop Andrzej Dzięga, have resigned after Vatican inquiries into their handling of abuse claims. None faced criminal charges.

Leo, who has mostly lived outside of the U.S. since the 1980s, “has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen, whenever he was eligible to do so,” the Holy See said in a statement provided to EWTN News.

The Vatican confirmed that “in keeping with this long-standing practice of civic participation, [Leo] has submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago” ahead of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections.

Leo confirmed through the Vatican’s statement that “during his years of residence in Peru he exercised his right to vote whenever he was eligible to do so.”

“The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes,” the statement added.

Leo’s absentee ballot marks the first time a Catholic pope has voted in a U.S. election in Church history. The United States was established in 1776, about 18 centuries after the founding of the Catholic Church.

The Holy Father, the first pope from the United States, is still a U.S. citizen and also holds Peruvian citizenship, though his election to the papacy raised esoteric questions about those national statuses, such as whether or not he would still pay taxes in the U.S. while serving as head of the Catholic Church.

A 2025 bill proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives moved to “protect the citizenship of, and provide tax-exempt status to, any American elected as the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church,” a clear reference to Leo’s then-new papacy. The bill ultimately stalled in committee.

Unique among world leaders, the pope serves simultaneously as the universal spiritual head of the Catholic Church and as the head of the Holy See, a distinct sovereign entity under international law that serves as the central government of the Catholic Church.

Following the news of the pope’s vote, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement that Catholic Americans “are blessed to be able to participate in our nation’s political and public life.”

“With the midterm elections approaching in the United States, the Conference has been encouraging Catholics to exercise their right to vote and to do so in a way that places our faith before our politics,” the bishops said. “In voting, our Holy Father sets the example that encourages each citizen to exercise their civic responsibility.”

Voting history obtained by EWTN News from the Illinois government shows that, prior to being elected pope, Leo voted in multiple U.S. elections while living outside the country, including primary and general elections in 2012, 2016, and 2024.

It is not clear what type of ballot Leo received for the 2026 election. The U.S. government says that overseas citizens whose “intent to return [to the U.S.] is uncertain” are only eligible to receive a “federal-only” ballot, meaning Leo may not have voted in state or local elections on the ballot he cast this year.

This story was updated at 12:40 p.m. ET on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, with information on Pope Leo XIV’s voting history and information on overseas ballot rules, and at 1:20 p.m. ET with a statement from the U.S. bishops.

“The Holy See has postponed it until next year with no specific date set as of yet because the appropriate conditions do not exist for the bishops who are members of the episcopal conference,” explained the prelate, who also serves as the bishop of Jinotega, in a statement to EWTN News Español, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.

The “ad limina apostolorum” visit (“to the threshold of the apostles”) is a visit made to the Vatican by bishops from around the world, organized by country and occurring every five years to report to the various dicasteries on the situation in their respective dioceses. These visits conclude with an audience with the pope, who recently met separately with the bishops from Honduras and Panama.

Herrera, who has been in exile since November 2024 after being expelled by the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, in Nicaragua, participated in a recent meeting regarding the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which brought together the presidents of bishops’ conferences from around the world. In that context, the Nicaraguan prelate was able to meet personally with Pope Leo XIV on Oct. 12.

‘We would be left without shepherds’

When asked about the suspension of the ad limina visit, a priest currently serving in Nicaragua, who requested anonymity to avoid reprisals from the regime, told EWTN News Español that there is a factor “related to the reality, the context in which we live here in Nicaragua, that must be taken into account: [the bishops] can’t leave, and the fear is real. If someone leaves [to go to Rome], it‘s possible they might not be allowed to return.”

“Imagine if all the bishops currently in the country were to leave, and the government suddenly decided not to allow them back in — we would be left without a single bishop. Therefore, it’s a matter of prudence not to go on the ad limina visit, because we would be left without shepherds here in the Church” of Nicaragua, he added.

“In any case, the Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference was already represented there, in a sense, through its president, Bishop Herrera,” the priest said.

Another Nicaraguan priest in exile, who also requested anonymity for the safety of his family and friends in Nicaragua, concurred, stating that “the bishops did indeed have the visit scheduled, but there are two factors at play: government pressure against them and the fear of being stuck outside the country.”

Nicaragua currently has nine active bishops, four of whom are in exile: Herrera; Bishop Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, who was forced to leave the country in 2019 for being critical of the dictatorship; Bishop Isidoro Mora of Siuna; and Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Estelí. The latter two were expelled from the country in January 2024.

The dictatorship maintains a ban on the ordination of deacons and priests in the dioceses of Jinotega, Siuna, Matagalpa, and Estelí, where bishops are not present.

Furthermore, Bishop Abelardo Mata, the 80-year-old bishop emeritus of Estelí, has become the latest target of the dictatorship in recent months. He was arrested for praying for the persecuted Church in Nicaragua and confined to his home in Tisma (Masaya district), from which he is apparently not allowed to leave.

Dictatorship doesnʼt allow any mention of ‘bishops in exile’

Martha Patricia Molina, author of the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church,” which documents thousands of attacks by the dictatorship against the Catholic Church since 2018, told EWTN News Español that, according to her sources, “the visit was suspended because the relationship between the Church and the Nicaraguan dictatorship is undergoing serious problems, and for that reason, it was not considered appropriate to carry it out.”

Molina also noted that the last ad limina visit by the bishops of Nicaragua took place nine years ago in 2017 and that “given the current context in which the Church in Nicaragua finds itself, it’s impossible for the bishops to meet especially when the dictatorship doesn’t even allow the names of the exiled bishops to be mentioned.”

“If the bishops currently in Nicaragua were to travel, they would be denied reentry into the country. I believe the Holy See is aware of this situation and chose not to take that risk,” she emphasized. Molina described this as a “prudent” decision, given the “severe conditions of religious persecution that our Church in Nicaragua is facing.”

The Holy See Press Office has not yet responded to an inquiry from EWTN News Español regarding the suspension of the ad limina visit by the Nicaraguan episcopate.

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

The date is not just another day on the calendar: The Holy Fatherʼs visit to Uruguay coincides with the feast day of the country’s patroness, Our Lady of the Thirty-Three, a figure deeply rooted in the spirituality and history of the most secular republic in the region.

Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Uruguay experienced an unusually harsh process of separating church and state, which is why there are officially no religious holidays or symbols in public institutions. In Uruguay, presidents do not take their oath of office on the Bible, there are no chaplains for the armed forces, Holy Week is referred to as “Tourism Week,” and Christmas is called “Family Day.”

Nevertheless, in anticipation of the pope’s arrival, the Church and the state are currently working side by side and with “great expectation” to welcome him and to offer the best possible experience, explained the archbishop of Montevideo, Cardinal Daniel Sturla, during a conference titled “Pope Leo XIV’s Visit to South America,” organized by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN International).

In a continent with a strong Catholic presence, the cardinal acknowledged, “Uruguay is the exception, a country that has experienced intense secularization for over 100 years.”

Citing data from the latest survey, while noting that survey results should be viewed with some caution, Sturla explained that “only 33% of Uruguayans identify as Catholic; 28% believe in God but do not belong to any specific church or religion; 11% follow other religions; and 28% are agnostics or atheists.” These figures “set it apart from the rest of Latin America,” he observed.

However, he described Uruguayan society as “pluralistic and democratic,” with 3.5 million inhabitants, nearly half of whom live in the city of Montevideo.

In Uruguay, “the Church has freedom of action,” he acknowledged. “Although it has often been sidelined, there are high expectations; in fact, the current president of Uruguay himself traveled to Rome and extended an invitation to Pope Leo to come and visit us,” he noted.

When addressing the reasons for the country’s extensive secularization, he acknowledged that there are several, some rooted in history, among other factors, and noted that this process “has taken deep root among the population; it has been very intense and has left its mark on Uruguayan culture.” Nevertheless, he observed that, within this context, “the Church proclaims Jesus Christ and maintains a presence throughout the entire national territory.”

A Church that works tirelessly

“I like to say that in this context, the Church in Uruguay ‘keeps on rowing,’ [works tirelessly]. It is a Church that I describe as poor and free, small and beautiful,” he noted.

In Uruguay, “being a priest is not, let’s put it this way, a badge of honor; ambition is not involved. Rather, it is a service rendered with great simplicity. It’s not necessarily a position of prestige simply by virtue of being a priest, but rather through how he lives his life and his self-giving,” he explained.

“We await the pope with great affection, while also working, as I mentioned, in coordination with the state,” he said, noting that the visit “will have a civic dimension, but it will be, above all, a pastoral visit.”

One aspect of the visit that the cardinal said he finds particularly beautiful is that “in Montevideo, the pope will visit a very needy, impoverished neighborhood, the area with the highest concentration of the Catholic Church’s presence in the entire country,” he said, referring to the Borro neighborhood, located in the Casavalle basin.

“There, in the parish that the pope will visit [Our Lady of Guadalupe] within an area spanning just a few blocks, a few hundred meters, there are around 20 Catholic initiatives, including parishes and chapels, but above all social projects that address issues such as housing, education, care for the elderly, and vocational training,” he enumerated. “In other words, there is a very tangible, very vibrant reality.”

In Uruguay, Sturla noted, “there is an expectation that extends beyond the 33% who are Catholic. Surveys indicate that 60% of Uruguayans are very hopeful about the pope’s visit; there is virtually no opposition to it — on the contrary, there is a desire to welcome him in the best way possible.”

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

On Saturday, Oct. 31, and on Sunday, Nov. 1, Evening Prayer 1 of the Liturgy of the Hours is for All Saints and the vigil Mass on Saturday will observe the Mass of All Saints.

What is the solemnity of All Saints?

Solemnities rank above feasts and memorials and are the highest liturgical celebrations in the Catholic Church. They honor significant mysteries of the Christian faith, including events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, as well as key saints.

The solemnity of All Saints celebrates all Christian saints — those formally canonized by the Church and those who are not but have attained heaven. It is typically a holy day of obligation.

The observance of the solemnity begins with evening prayer (first vespers) the evening before on Oct. 31 — known as All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween — and is followed on Nov. 2 by All Souls' Day, a day in which the entire Church prays for all of the dead.

Solemnities that fall on Saturdays and Mondays

Sometimes a solemnity that falls on a Sunday will be moved to a Monday.

For example, in 2024, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8 fell on a Sunday in Advent so the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) transferred the solemnity to the Monday.

The Vatican has clarified that Catholics in the United States must still attend Mass on holy days of obligation even when they are transferred to Mondays or Saturdays, correcting a long-standing practice in the U.S. Church.

The USCCB liturgical calendars for 2026 and 2027 can be found here and here.

The archdiocese announced it will give the Nostra Aetate Award to the billionaire businessman and philanthropist Michael Sacks at the Oct. 29 banquet. He is CEO of the investment firm GCM Grosvenor, the president of Sacks Family Foundation, and a board member of the Obama Foundation.

Sacks, through his foundation, has donated to philanthropic efforts related to education, arts, veterans, and other issues. His contributions also include $500,000 to Planned Parenthood of Illinois from 2020 to 2022 and $600,000 to the Prairie State Access Fund in 2026, which was created by Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker with the help of philanthropists to support the “reproductive health ecosystem” of the state and combat federal restrictions “on abortion and gender affirming care.”

Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, has not publicly referenced Sacks’ support for these organizations. Rather, in a statement, he described Sacks as a “well-respected leader in Chicago and in the Jewish community.”

His statement explained the Nostra Aetate Award is named after the Second Vatican Council document of the same name, which was intended to build stronger relations with non-Christian religions, including Judaism.

“Honoring a leader, shaped by his Jewish faith, for the gifts he brings to society through his leadership, generosity and talent, acknowledges this shared divine heritage, distinct from specific contemporary political or doctrinal disputes,” Cupich said in his statement.

Cupich said the honor “recognizes [the personʼs] dignity” and role in the community “without implying an endorsement of every statement or stance” the person has. He said the recognition helps bring about “conditions necessary for principled dialogue” and that such dialogue “cannot occur if respect is contingent upon complete agreement on Church doctrine or political policy.”

The primary purpose of the banquet is to raise money for seminarians.

‘Scandalizing the faithful’

Pushback against Cupich for his decision to give the award to Sacks has come from the Chicago-based Illinois Right to Life, which was founded in 1968 to “honor the dignity and sanctity of human life at all stages.”

The pro-life group launched a petition “demanding [Cupich] withdraw his award to Planned Parenthood Financier Michael Sacks,” which has garnered nearly 4,000 signatures as of the day of the banquet.

Illinois Right to Life President Mary Kate Zander told EWTN News that the archdiocese has not responded to the petition. Because Cupich stood by his plan to give Sacks the award, the group will hold a protest outside of the IBEW Local 134 in Chicago, where the banquet will be held.

"Weʼre concerned about the scandal that it creates,” Zander, who is Catholic, told EWTN News when asked about the primary motivation for the protest.

In addition to concerns about the funding of organizations that promote abortion access, Illinois Right to Life has noted Sacks in 2013 signed a letter endorsing same-sex marriage and helped organize business leaders to advocate for it, according to local media reports. Equality Illinois, an LGBT advocacy group, gave Sacks its 2015 Equality Illinois Business Leadership Award in recognition of his role.

Zander said Cupich is “leading people astray and is scandalizing the faithful” by honoring Sacks. She said “we’re also concerned with this man’s soul” and said the cardinal has a responsibility to “hold people accountable … on their public stances.”

Illinois Right to Life alleged granting Sacks the award violates rules set by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

The USCCB document “Catholics in Political Life” states: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

The USCCB did not immediately reply to a request for comment on whether Cupich’s decision violates any USCCB rules. EWTN News also reached out to GCM Grosvenor to request a comment from Sacks but did not receive a response.

Cupich doubles down

In his Oct. 26 statement about the Nostra Aetate Award, Cupich acknowledged his decision created backlash but did not mention any concerns related to Sacks’ position on abortion or same-sex marriage.

Rather, Cupich said the archdiocese received criticism for its decision to “honor a person who does not hold to core beliefs of the Catholic Church, primary among them being the divinity of Jesus Christ” and said the backlash was about Sacks’ Jewish faith.

“Refusing to honor or engage with Jews solely because they hold conflicting religious or political positions can risk mimicking historic patterns of antisemitism through exclusion and bigotry, which, frighteningly, is on the rise,” he said. “Nostra Aetate urges us to be proactive in separating personal and community respect from doctrinal agreement, ensuring that disagreement does not regress into hostility or social ostracization. This we cannot tolerate.”

Nostra Aetate states that the Church “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.” On the 60th anniversary of the document, Pope Leo XIV said “all of my predecessors have condemned antisemitism with clear words” since the Second Vatican Council, “and so I too confirm that the Church does not tolerate antisemitism and fights against it, on the basis of the Gospel itself.”

Cupich’s statement does not name the critics he is referring to. The archdiocese did not immediately respond to an inquiry for clarification.

Zander said Illinois Right to Life is “the only organization that has formally put out any kind of statement” about the award and their concern “has nothing to do with that.” She said Cupich’s statement “is confusing for people” who may infer that his decision to double down “is a response to antisemitism” and the disagreement is “an issue of this man not being Catholic.”

“[Cupich is] distracting from the fact that this man is clearly a supporter of abortion at a very grand scale,” Zander said. “... He’s trying to distract from the fact that [he is also] a same-sex marriage supporter.”

“The cardinal doesn’t want that to be the conversation,” she said. “He wants the conversation to be about that man’s faith background; his ethnic background.”

None of the criticisms published by Illinois Right to Life comment on Sacks’ Jewish faith or ethnic identity.

Last year, Illinois Right to Life launched a similar campaign against Cupich’s decision to give an award to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who consistently voted in favor of abortion access. Durbin, who is Catholic, declined the award amid the backlash, which included criticisms from other bishops.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the proposed rule changes would remove demographic questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, and would count for congressional apportionment only citizens and lawful permanent residents.

The proposal says “illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, as they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a ‘usual residence’ in the United States.”

In an Oct. 20 letter submitted to Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, among other points, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ general counsel argued that excluding noncitizens from the apportionment count "is effectively to deny they are ‘persons’.” The letter said that this “denial of personhood recalls the ‘overtly sinful and gravely unjust’ Three-fifths Compromise.”

The Three-fifths Compromise was the political deal reached at the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention that held the nascent Union together. It set a formula for apportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is determined by each state’s population: free persons, including free Black people, counted fully, and “all other persons” (the enslaved population) counted as three-fifths.

Several legal scholars and other experts strongly disagreed with the bishops’ comparison.

Historian Susan Hanssen of the University of Dallas told EWTN News she thinks the bishops’ reference to the Three-fifths Compromise is “an egregious mis-reading of American history.”

“That compromise did not aim at the denial of the personhood of slaves,” she argued, pointing to the compromiseʼs text, which consistently calls both free and enslaved people “persons.”

She said the compromise was intended to mitigate “the power of the slave-owning states in the national government, refusing to award them greater political weight based on subjugated populations without a voice or vote.”

Hanssen said the Census Bureau’s aims regarding the proposed changes are similarly aimed at mitigating political power, arguing that the bureau is refusing “to grant political clout to states that allow a larger number of undocumented illegal workers to be used for labor without the protection of the law.”

David Upham, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Dallas whose work focuses heavily on the 14th Amendment — which established citizenship rights, including the rights to due process and equal protection under the law, particularly for recently freed slaves — told EWTN News that the proposed rule changes do not mean noncitizens are not persons. He called the bishops’ interpretation of persons an “overstatement.”

“If that’s the case, every human being not being counted in the census is not a person,” he said, noting that the principal purpose of the census is to count people in order to determine the allocation of political power in the U.S. House of Representatives, whose members are supposed to be selected by the citizens.

“The question really is, besides bona fide citizens, what other human beings within the state’s border are counted as members of the people,” he said, and noted the president has the constitutional authority to address the question.

“The executive branch has substantial authority to determine whether an individual who isn’t a citizen” should be counted in the census for the purpose of political representation, he said.

“I think the danger the Trump administration is seeking to redress is that those states most enthusiastic about encouraging unlawful migrants will, as result of their disinterest in enforcing federal law, receive more votes in Congress and the electoral college,” he said.

Harvard Law School constitutional law professor Adrian Vermeule also weighed in, writing on X: “The analogy to slavery is utterly absurd unless the USCCB believes that all distinctions based on citizenship are unjust.”

“With all due respect, ‘personhood’ is not a magical trump card that overrides the basic principles of the republican form of government,” he wrote. “One cannot conclude from the bare fact of personhood that anyone and everyone has a right to be counted in the census, to vote, or to stand for office.”

“Why exactly should noncitizens with no status be counted for the apportionment of seats in the representative body?” he asked. He suggested the bishops’ public comment “really should be withdrawn” and added that he hopes “cooler heads prevail.”

Scholars at various major think tanks were also quick to take aim at the bishops’ personhood argument.

Mike Fragoso, a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture program, called the bishops “unserious,” while Jay Richards, vice president of social and domestic policy and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, called the bishops’ position “absurd.”

Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told EWTN News that “our inherent recognition as persons — personhood — does not come from the governmentʼs census as to who is in the country.”

“As Catholics, we believe that unborn children are people,” he continued, “but the bishops do not extend their logic to demand that the unborn be counted in the census notwithstanding the fact that a killing that results in the death of a pregnant mother is, in many places, considered to be two murders. Why not?”

The proposed rule changes, published Sept. 10, are open to public comment until Nov. 2. The U.S. bishops did not respond to requests for comment on the backlash.

The feast coincides with the second to the last procession of the “Cristo Moreno” (the dark-skinned Christ).

The original image of the Lord of the Miracles was painted by an African slave on an adobe wall around 1651 and survived the massive earthquake of 1655, which was considered miraculous given the scale of destruction. Subsequently, additional miracles were associated with the image.

Addressing the sea of ​​devotees gathered outside the Church of the Nazarenas in the historic center of Lima, where the sacred image of the Christ of Pachacamilla (another name for the image) is kept, the prelate posed a question that reached beyond the celebration itself: “Do you come for the miracles of the Lord, or for the Lord who is capable of performing the miracle of your salvation?”

Drawing from the day’s Gospel, in which Jesus speaks with Nicodemus about God’s love and eternal life, Elías invited the faithful to look upon the Cristo Moreno with a faith that does not stop at the image itself nor come to an end when the processions conclude.

“What is the foundation of your faith? Do you come for the miracles of the Lord or for the Lord who performs miracles?” he reiterated.

A faith demonstrated through works

For Elías, devotion must also be evident in how one treats others. During his homily, he recalled a statement by 20th-century Chilean St. Alberto Hurtado, which was cited by Pope Francis: “Not doing evil is good, but not doing good is evil.”

The bishop warned that observing religious practices is not enough if they do not lead to love: “You can do many good things, follow so many precepts, so many good deeds, but if you lack love, it’s not enough,” he stated.

He also addressed the violence in Lima and other parts of the country, lamenting that a person could lose his life during an assault or an attack on a bus, and noted that “a city like ours is in great need of our witness.”

Faced with this reality, he encouraged the faithful not to remain indifferent. “Let us ask that we, too, may bring salvation by loving the vulnerable, those who have nothing, those who have lost hope, by offering them the very best of ourselves,” he urged.

Preparing hearts for Pope Leo XIV

Elías also touched on the upcoming visit of Pope Leo XIV to Peru, recalling he motto of the trip, “Let us open our hearts,” and asked whether the Peruvian people are truly preparing themselves to receive the pontiff.

The call to open your heart, he explained, is not limited to welcoming the pope; rather, it is an invitation to live out Christian values ​​in one’s personal, family, and community life.

“Let us open our hearts to the values ​​of the kingdom — to peace, justice, and solidarity,” he stated.

The second to the last procession of the image of the Lord of Miracles in 2026 made its way through the center of Lima, reaching Archbishop Loayza National Hospital.

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

In a video released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Portland, Oregon, Archbishop Alexander Sample suggested Catholics should think of themselves as “disciples of Jesus first, Americans second … and, if you’re going to belong to a political party, that is third.”

“Start with your relationship with Jesus. Start with your faith,” the archbishop said. “And then see how that shapes your view on social and political issues.”

The archbishop’s video comes just days before the 2026 U.S. midterms, which could serve as a sharp referendum on U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, particularly his administration’s launching of a war with Iran, which brought with it major increases in fuel costs and other prices.

Multiple U.S. bishops have urged the faithful to pray ahead of the elections, including regarding major ballot initiatives involving abortion and other issues.

In his Oct. 26 video, Sample — who serves as the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ religious liberty committee — noted that “none of the political parties” in the U.S. “embody all the Catholic social teaching.”

“We don’t start with our party’s political platform,” he said. “We start with Catholic social teaching — the Catholic social doctrine of the Church, and all of those principles of Catholic social teaching.”

Conscience ‘tells us to pursue the good’

In a related video also released on Oct. 26, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori — who previously served as vice president of the USCCB — said the “importance of a properly formed conscience cannot be overstated.”

The archbishop described conscience as “that part of us that tells us to pursue the good and to avoid evil,” a place where “God speaks to us and his word echoes in our hearts.”

“It is vital that in this time when there is so much back-and-forth politically, when the news cycles never cease, when life is moving along rapidly — that in the exercise of our citizenship, we would slow down and engage in discernment.”

The prelate pointed to St. Paul’s admonishment to “cling to what is good.” He described faithful citizenship as “an invitation to know what the Church teaches and then, when you’re faced with ballot issues or the question of for whom to vote, you’re equipped to engage in prayerful discernment.”

He noted that the U.S. bishops issue messages about voting periodically. “[We] have a lot of faith in our people,” he said.

The question of faithful citizenship was “never meant to be simply a list of dos and don’ts, or ‘vote this way or vote that way,’” Lori said. “It’s not a voter guide.” Rather, the principle “strives to present a beautiful vision of the United States as the best version of itself.”

Archbishop Shelton Fabre of Louisville, Kentucky, meanwhile, in a separate video urged Catholics to keep the “desire to be the best disciple of Jesus Christ” at the center of all their decisions.

“We participate in public life and in political life to advance the common good, and to also remind everyone in public life and in politics that the common good and the human dignity of each and every person are paramount,” he said.

Some analysts are predicting a major Democratic victory in the 2026 midterms, particularly amid low approval ratings for Trump halfway through his second term.

As of Oct. 29 the forecast and election-tracking outlet Decision Desk HQ was predicting likely Democratic victories in both the U.S. House and Senate, including an 80% probability of victory in the House.

The conference “The Holy See in the Face of Totalitarian Systems in the 20th Century: New Perspectives and Research Directions” was held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome from Oct. 28–29. Over the two days, scholars discussed how the Vatican responded to oppressive governments, particularly from the time of Pope Pius XII to the Second Vatican Council.

The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation and the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, which organized the event, also presented a new exhibit at the Gregorian on the 1966 celebrations of the 1,000th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland in 966.

Totalitarianism: Temptation to be like God

As reported by Vatican News, the conference opened with a keynote address from Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who warned nations against asserting themselves in the place of God.

“[Totalitarianism] arises from the human temptation to want to ‘be like God,’ to control how humanity lives and thinks, and to impose one’s own ideological convictions on it,” Parolin said.

He also criticized the tendency of countries to elevate the state and certain constructs in place of religion.

“By elevating social class, race, or the state to the altar in God’s place, [totalitarian regimes] sacralized their ideological concepts and created political religions, with their own ‘liturgies,’ prophets, martyrs, and ethical norms,” Parolin added.

Pius XII’s Vatican and the Nazi regime

Among the topics discussed at the conference was the Holy See’s stance under Venerable Pius XII toward Nazi Germany during the Second World War, including the Holocaust.

Parolin maintained that Pius XII condemned wars in a way “that would not provoke even greater persecution” and that he displayed “a diplomacy of charity on an unprecedented scale.”

Others at the conference described the Church’s stance during this period as “sustainable.”

“I would say that the Church, and the Holy See in particular, did what it considered possible and sustainable during the periods we have discussed, just as it does today,” said Father Nicola Spinato, a theologian from Padua, Italy.

“The Holy See and the Church are not simply political actors competing within the political arena. Their role is pastoral and ecclesial,” Spinato added.

Vatican totalitarian resistance under Vatican II and John Paul II

During the conference, several participants presented on the influence of the Second Vatican Council on the Holy See’s vocal resistance to totalitarian regimes.

Spinato presented on how the Church, through the council, formulated its opposition to racism and all forms of discrimination.

“The confrontation with the totalitarianism and racism of the 20th century contributed to the development of the Church’s social teaching,” Spinato said.

Others noted St. John Paul II’s influence on Vatican diplomacy, particularly in Poland and Latin America.

“John Paul II actively intervened to end dictatorships and to promote the return to democracy. From April 1-6, 1987, he visited Chile — a trip that would change the country’s history,” Gianni La Bella, a member of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, said.

“Following John Paul’s pilgrimages to Poland in 1983 and 1987, efforts began to overcome the crisis. His influence and laws guaranteeing religious freedom paved the way for Poland and the Holy See to restore full diplomatic relations on July 17, 1989,” Father Albert Warso, a professor at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, said.

Antonio García Condado, 78, the town pharmacist, was one of the first to see dozens of bodies trapped beneath the wreckage and to assist injured passengers who did not even have the strength to cry out for help.

He was finishing breakfast when his daughter alerted him that a train accident had occurred. Without a second thought, he got into his car and drove toward the area. At first, he believed it was only a minor incident.

“When I got there, it all seemed very minor. There was no traffic, hardly any cars. I said to myself, ‘Well, this can’t be very serious.’ But as I got closer to the AVE train’s cab, there was no cab. It was a mass of twisted metal, bodies, and dying people,” he recalled a day after the tragedy, still visibly shaken, in an interview with EWTN News Español, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.

‘Some were moving their hands among the bodies’

What struck him most was the deathly silence that hung over the scene.

“There were no screams. Perhaps they didn’t even have the strength to speak. Some were moving their hands among the bodies,” he explained.

Journalists from various news outlets repeatedly asked García what he had witnessed. But repeating the story did nothing to lessen the impact of the scenes he had seen. Every time he told it, García became emotional once again.

“I was deeply affected by the farewell of a dying man to his wife: ‘Maite, I love you very much. Take care of the children.’ The last words he said moved me greatly: ‘God is good,’” he recalled.

Shortly afterward, he noticed another survivor who was calmly asking for help despite the severity of his injuries. García described a young man standing behind him, remarkably composed, asking for an ambulance.

“Then I noticed that his arm had been severed. He had lost his arm. I broke down. I think I even cried,” he said.

After that initial shock, he realized just how serious the situation was and immediately returned to his pharmacy. He gathered all the medical supplies he could and mobilized his entire family.

“I came back here empty-handed to get supplies, especially painkillers. My son came with me, my daughter too, my wife, and my assistant. We practically emptied out the pharmacy and all went back, trying to solve whatever problems we could,” he explained.

When he returned to the accident site, security forces directed him to enter from another access point. There he encountered an even more devastating scene on the other side of the train.

“One carriage had been crushed into another. Just imagine the bodies that were in there. It was horrifying,” he said.

Within minutes, the disaster area involving the two crashed trains, a Renfe AVE carrying 397 people and an Iryo train carrying 147 passengers, filled with the activity that accompanies major catastrophes: dozens of ambulances crossing paths with funeral-home vehicles, fire trucks, Civil Protection units, and officers of the civil guard.

Faith, the only comfort in the midst of tragedy

Throughout the morning, García assisted emergency teams however he could, supplying medicines and medical materials when stocks began to run low.

“What affected me most was that first moment, when I saw people asking for help and I couldn’t do anything, because I was practically alone. It was a tremendous feeling of helplessness,” explained the man of deep religious conviction.

For him, faith in Christ has been and remains his greatest source of support.

“When believers experience traumas this great, we always turn to the same thing. I think it brings tremendous comfort. It’s the only way to keep going forward.”

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

Bill C-41, the MAID Safeguards Act, would amend the Criminal Code to protect practitioners from prosecution “for culpable homicide or administering a noxious thing” to provide MAID to patients who consent in advance to receiving the procedure if they are diagnosed with an illness expected to cause them to lose decision-making capacity in the future. The applicant must prepare the request with the assistance of a medical or nurse practitioner.

The legislation states that MAID cannot be carried out until the patient has lost all capacity to grant consent for euthanasia, is experiencing unbearable suffering, and is in a state of irreversible decline.

According to the text of the legislation, a practitioner cannot administer a MAID substance based on an advance request if the patient “demonstrates, by words, sounds or gestures, refusal or resistance to have the substance administered to them.” If the provider doubts that the patient was exhibiting refusal or resistance, they are mandated to wait 30 days before making another attempt. Per the bill, involuntary words, sounds, and gestures are not considered a demonstration of noncompliance.

Minister of Justice and Attorney General Sean Fraser announced that provinces will decide whether or not to fulfill these advance requests. Alberta has already banned the practice and Quebec has had an advance request MAID regime in place for two years.

Fraser said that the federal government “will work with provinces and territories on implementation, with rigorous safeguards to protect people and ensure the decision remains voluntary and free from external pressure.”

Daniel Zekveld, a policy analyst serving the Association of Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada, declared that “ advance consent is not informed consent. It is based only on fear of a future condition that the person has never experienced.”

He further called out this move to legalize advance requests because it places a “future life-and-death decision to third parties to determine when a person should die by MAID.”

Krista Carr, the CEO of the disability rights organization Inclusion Canada, stated that “an advance request is written by someone who cannot know what their future will hold. Consent at the time is the most basic protection a person has. Parliament should not take it away.”

As for the decision to put an indefinite halt to broadening euthanasia access to individuals living solely with a mental illness, Fraser said it wasn’t “reached out of thin air,” alluding to several months of work from a special joint parliamentary committee that arrived at this resolution.

Campaign Life Coalition National President Jeff Gunnarson criticized the decision to pair the MAID for mental illness exclusion with the advance requests decriminalization.

“The government is offering protection for those with mental illness at the expense of those with dementia,” Gunnarson said. “It’s literally trading human lives, and it’s simply immoral.”

Read the text of Bill C-41 here.

This story was first published by The Catholic Register, has been adapted by EWTN News, and is reprinted here with permission.

The front of a Renfe train traveling at 200 km/hr (124 mph) had slammed into the last cars of an Iryo train at kilometer 118 of the Madrid-Seville railway line, leaving behind a horrific scene with dozens dead and injured. As of Thursday, the preliminary death toll was 69.

Without hesitation, the priest went to the site to accompany the victims trapped in the train cars.

According to his account, he arrived around 11 a.m., two hours after the collision, and joined the relief effort improvised by dozens of volunteers, many of them members of his parish.

‘Our minds turn to God and we look up to heaven’

The first thing he saw was “a huge line of injured people emerging from the train cars,” he told Nicolás de Cárdenas, correspondent for EWTN News Español, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.

Residents of the town did what they could to help, transporting the injured in their own vehicles to Urda so they could receive medical care.

“These are moments that, humanly speaking, break your heart, but very quickly our minds turn to God and we look up to heaven,” Fernández said.

Among the injured, he especially remembered a man who approached him and said: “Father, give me a hug, I’m alive.”

That encounter set the tone for the entire day.

“I said to myself, well, this is how you can draw near today: by giving a hug. So that’s what I spent the entire morning doing while I was at ground zero, holding people’s hands and giving them a hug.”

‘Trust in God, for God is good’

He later went to Urda’s municipal sports hall, which had been converted into a field hospital. Many desperate relatives arrived there looking for news about their loved ones.

“There is no consolation for them. They want to know immediately what has happened. Where is my relative? Where is my loved one? And so what I tried to do was calm them, reassure them, and tell them: What matters is hope. Have hope. Trust in God, for God is good,” he recounted.

‘We are priests, but we are human’

For hours, the priest continued the same mission he had begun beside the railway tracks: accompanying the suffering of people who had lost everything in a matter of seconds.

He also acknowledged that on “many occasions” he ended up crying with them.

“We are priests, of course, but we are human, and the pain and sorrow of our brothers and sisters affect us too,” he explained.

The pope’s affection

From the Vatican, the Holy Father’s spiritual closeness was not long in coming. Pope Leo XIV said he was “deeply saddened” by the tragic railway accident.

In a telegram signed, as is customary, by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, he assured his prayers “for the eternal repose of the deceased” and expressed his “heartfelt condolences to the families of those who lost their lives,” together with words of comfort and his hope for a speedy recovery for the injured.

In the message, addressed to Chaves, the pontiff acknowledged the work of those involved in the emergency response, encouraging “members of the rescue teams to persevere in their relief and assistance efforts” following the disaster.

Finally, the pope imparted his heartfelt apostolic blessing to all those affected as “a sign of hope in the risen Lord.”

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