Posted on 12/19/2025 20:22 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Bishop of San Diego Michael Pham dedicates “Angels Unawares,” a new sculpture on the campus of the University of San Diego (USD), on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. / Credit: Photo courtesy of University of San Diego
San Diego, California, Dec 19, 2025 / 15:22 pm (CNA).
Bishop of San Diego Michael Pham dedicated “Angels Unawares,” a new sculpture on the campus of the University of San Diego (USD), on Thursday. The 8-foot-tall bronze sculpture by artist Timothy Schmalz is a scaled version of one in St. Peter’s Square in Rome commissioned by Pope Francis in 2019 and depicts 140 migrants of varying backgrounds on board a boat with a pair of angel wings in their midst.
According to USD President Jim Harris, the sculpture is intended to remind the viewer “of how biblical teachings encourage us to care for our most poor and vulnerable communities, including those who flee their countries in search of a better life.”
Located in front of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies on the western edge of campus, the new sculpture is situated in the perfect position, said Michael Lovette-Colyer, USD vice president of mission integration.
“It will be the first thing visitors see when they enter our campus,” he explained. “It overlooks the Pacific Ocean, with the boat pointing towards the heart of our campus. It calls to mind that our campus is a welcoming place.”
Lovette-Colyer also noted that the campus was located near a United States international border with Mexico, “so our geographic location calls for all people to respect human dignity.”
Victor Carmona, USD associate professor of theology and religious studies for the past eight years, also said he believes the installation reflects “a desire for USD to continue being a welcoming place.” He said he is “excited” about the sculpture’s installation, believing “it connects USD to the global Church in terms of priorities and mission.”
The sculpture is the creation of Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz, who attended the event and has created images in bronze for historical churches in Rome as well as worldwide.
Schmalz is also known for his “Homeless Jesus” sculpture depicting Jesus as a homeless man sleeping on a park bench and his “When I Was in Prison,” depicting Jesus behind bars.
The original “Homeless Jesus” sculpture was installed at Regis College in Toronto; the statue has been copied and installed at more than 90 other locations worldwide since. “When I Was in Prison” can be found at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.
The “Angels Unawares” piece, Schmalz said, was inspired by the Scripture passage “Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels [or “angels unawares” in other translations]” (Heb 13:2). Schmalz got the idea for the piece after a conversation with Jesuit Father (now Cardinal) Michael Czerny, former undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
In 2017, Schmalz recalled, Czerny “suggested that I start thinking about creating a sculpture on migrants and refugees, not just because it is a crisis today but as always important throughout human history.”
He explained that the work “depicts a group of migrants and refugees from different cultural and racial backgrounds and from diverse historic periods of time. They stand together, shoulder to shoulder, huddled on a raft.”
The angel wings emerge from their midst, “suggesting the presence of the sacred among them.”
Replicas of the work have since gone on tour for viewing by the faithful throughout the U.S.; replicas have been installed at both The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and St. Joseph’s Oratory in Canada. USD president Harris wanted a replica installed on his campus after viewing “Angels Unawares” in Rome, as “it aligned with USD’s Catholic mission and values,” he said. The sculpture was funded by an anonymous donor.
“I hope this sculpture can provide our Torero community with feelings of compassion that transcend all borders and politics,” Harris said.
Schmalz said the purpose of “Angels Unawares” as well as all his art “is to evangelize and preach the Gospel.” Nearly all of the 140 migrants featured on the boat are of actual people he researched; some are based on the faces of live models who came to his Toronto-area studio. Many of his ideas came from photographs of migrants who passed through New York Harbor’s Ellis Island. And two of the figures are based on the parents of Czerny, who were once migrants from Hungary fleeing communism.
The artist said he believes “Angels Unawares” is in the same category as the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, “but with faces and a spiritual centering.” He added that art was an effective tool that the Catholic Church can use to convey the “Christian message” and described himself as “an artist soldier for the Vatican.”
The blessing of the sculpture by Pham coincided with the United Nations’ International Migrants Day. Pham was invited not only because he is the bishop of San Diego and a member of the college’s board of trustees but also because he, too, was a migrant, having fled Vietnam in 1980.
Thursday’s blessing began with 12:15 p.m. Mass, with Pham as presider, followed by the unveiling of the sculpture. Harris offered remarks; participants included members of the USD faculty, staff, and student body.
Lovette-Colyer acknowledged that the sculpture installation coincided with a time of contentious debate over immigration in the United States and other countries, with Catholics passionately advocating on both sides of the issue.
Referencing recent statements and a video by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops promoting a more generous immigration policy, he said: “We’re on the side of Pope Francis and Pope Leo, our local Bishop Pham and his predecessor [Cardinal Robert] McElroy on the issue. We acknowledge there are political dimensions, but we don’t want to be partisan. As Pope Francis emphasized, we want to be humane and respect the dignity of all human persons.”
He continued: “Immigration is a topic that evokes strong feelings. It is an important issue for our students to learn about and consider. The sculpture can be a conversation starter in the classroom, where our students can discuss it critically and carefully.”
Posted on 12/19/2025 19:30 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Pope Leo XIV addresses employment consultants on Dec. 18, 2025, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media
ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 19, 2025 / 14:30 pm (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV advocated for a labor system that serves individuals and families so that the dignity of each employee is recognized and his or her real needs are met.
During a Dec. 18 audience at the Vatican with members of the Order of Employment Consultants, the Holy Father highlighted three aspects that he considers particularly important in the business world: the dignity of the person, mediation, and the promotion of safety.
At the beginning of his address in the Apostolic Palace, the pontiff emphasized that at the heart of any work dynamic “should neither be capital, nor the laws of the market, nor profit, but the person, the family, and their well-being, to which everything else is secondary.”
Consequently, he stated that workers must “be recognized in their dignity” and receive concrete responses to their real needs, such as the needs of young families, of parents with small children, “as well as the importance of helping those who, even while working, must care for elderly and sick family members.”
“These are needs,” he pointed out, “that no truly civilized society can afford to forget or neglect.” This is especially true today, when artificial intelligence and technology “increasingly manage and influence our activities.” Therefore, he emphasized the urgent need to ensure that companies are characterized “as humane and fraternal communities.”
He also urged the establishment of fair mediation between managers and employees, avoiding “excessive bureaucratization of relationships” and “distance and detachment and distance from reality.”
Thus, he invited employment consultants to pay close attention “to the people in front of you, especially those who are in difficulty and have fewer opportunities to express their needs and assert their interests.”
Finally, he emphasized the importance of promoting workplace safety and lamented the numerous accidents that occur at work. “Prevention is better than remediating,” he remarked.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Posted on 12/19/2025 17:54 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
null / Credit: New Africa/Shutterstock
CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2025 / 12:54 pm (CNA).
Massachusetts will no longer require prospective foster parents to affirm gender ideology in order to qualify for fostering children, with the move coming after a federal lawsuit from a religious liberty group.
Alliance Defending Freedom said Dec. 17 that the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families “will no longer exclude Christian and other religious families from foster care” because of their “commonly held beliefs that boys are boys and girls are girls.”
The legal group announced in September that it had filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court over the state policy, which required prospective parents to agree to affirm a child’s “sexual orientation and gender identity” before being permitted to foster.
Attorney Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse said at the time that the state’s foster system was “in crisis” with more than 1,400 children awaiting placement in foster homes.
Yet the state was “putting its ideological agenda ahead of the needs of these suffering kids,” Widmalm-Delphonse said.
The suit had been filed on behalf of two Massachusetts families who had been licensed to serve as foster parents in the state. They had provided homes for nearly three dozen foster children between them and were “in good standing” at the time of the policy change.
Yet the state policy required them to “promise to use a child’s chosen pronouns, verbally affirm a child’s gender identity contrary to biological sex, and even encourage a child to medically transition, forcing these families to speak against their core religious beliefs,” the lawsuit said.
With its policy change, Massachusetts will instead require foster parents to affirm a child’s “individual identity and needs,” with the LGBT-related language having been removed from the state code.
The amended language comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month that aims to improve the nation’s foster care system by modernizing the current child welfare system, developing partnerships with private sector organizations, and prioritizing the participation of those with sincerely held religious beliefs.
Families previously excluded by the state rule are “eager to reapply for their licenses,” Widmalm-Delphonse said on Dec. 17.
The lawyer commended Massachusetts for taking a “step in the right direction,” though he said the legal group will continue its efforts until it is “positive that Massachusetts is committed to respecting religious persons and ideological diversity among foster parents.”
Other authorities have made efforts in recent years to exclude parents from state child care programs on the basis of gender ideology.
In July a federal appeals court ruled in a 2-1 decision that Oregon likely violated a Christian mother’s First Amendment rights by demanding that she embrace gender ideology and homosexuality in order to adopt children.
In April, meanwhile, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed legislation that would have prohibited the government from requiring parents to affirm support for gender ideology and homosexuality if they want to qualify to adopt or foster children.
In contrast, Arkansas in April enacted a law to prevent adoptive agencies and foster care providers from discriminating against potential parents on account of their religious beliefs.
The Arkansas law specifically prohibits the government from discriminating against parents over their refusal to accept “any government policy regarding sexual orientation or gender identity that conflicts with the person’s sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Posted on 12/19/2025 17:24 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Bishop Edward Scarfenberger. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Albany
National Catholic Register, Dec 19, 2025 / 12:24 pm (CNA).
A retired New York bishop has filed for personal bankruptcy protection in federal court after a state jury verdict found him, along with other officials, personally liable for the collapse of a Catholic hospital pension fund that left about 1,100 retirees without the lifetime monthly payments they were expecting.
It’s not clear whether a Catholic bishop in the United States has ever previously filed for personal bankruptcy protection.
Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, 77, who served as bishop of Albany from April 2014 until his retirement in October, is seeking protection from creditors for his assets valued at between $100,001 and $500,000, according to a filing Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York.
The seven-page filing does not list the bishop’s assets but states that he has between 100 and 199 creditors and debts totaling between $1,000,001 and $10 million.
Last week, a jury found Scharfenberger 10% liable in a $54.2 million judgment in a civil lawsuit over the failed pension plan once provided by St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, a Catholic hospital that operated from 1949 until 2008, according to The Evangelist, the diocese’s newspaper.
The verdict and judgment, issued Dec. 12, cover compensatory damages — the amount a court finds is owed to plaintiffs for harm they have suffered — but not punitive damages, which may be added in cases of recklessness, malice, or fraud. The bankruptcy filings by the bishop and another defendant in the state lawsuit over the pension plan failure forced a pause in a punitive damages hearing earlier this week, according to WNYT Channel 13 in Albany.
The National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, was unable to reach Scharfenberger before the publication of this story. A lawyer representing the bishop acknowledged a request for comment Dec. 17 but did not immediately provide one.
In recent decades, bankruptcies have occurred regularly in the Catholic Church in the United States. Between 2004 and November 2025, 39 of the country’s dioceses have filed for bankruptcy, almost all to protect assets from clergy sex-abuse lawsuits, as the Register reported last month. One of those is the Diocese of Albany, which filed for bankruptcy in March 2023.
But those diocesan cases were filed under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, which allows a corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship to reorganize and continue operating while developing a court-approved plan to repay creditors.
Scharfenberger filed under Chapter 13, which allows an individual with regular income who cannot pay debts to keep certain assets while working out a repayment plan.
“The rules in Chapter 13 permit a debtor to keep property and confirm a plan with payments to creditors based on the debtor’s ‘disposable income,’” said Marie Reilly, a bankruptcy expert and law professor at Penn State Dickinson Law, in an email. “If the debtor commits his disposable income to paying creditors for the term of a three- to five-year plan, he gets a discharge (forgiveness) of the unpaid balance.”
Reilly, who has researched several dozen diocesan bankruptcies for The Catholic Project, a lay initiative of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., told the Register that the bankruptcy filing does not necessarily solve all of the bishop’s money problems.
“There are exceptions — some debts don’t get discharged. Creditors can object to the plan if it does not meet the statutory requirements,” Reilly said. “And, it is possible that the pension fund creditor may move to dismiss the bishop’s Chapter 13 case as having been filed ‘in bad faith.’”
St. Clare’s Hospital was originally run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Albany maintains that it never owned the hospital and that the bishop of Albany merely provided “canonical oversight” to make sure the hospital met “its mission to serve all in accord with Catholic moral standards,” according to an August 2025 statement from the diocese.
Last week, the jury found that the Diocese of Albany has no liability for the pension failure, instead holding the hospital corporation and certain officers and board members accountable.
In addition to Scharfenberger, the jury found two deceased employees of the diocese liable, according to The Evangelist: Former Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard (1938–2023), who led the diocese from 1977 to 2014, was found 20% liable; and Father David LeFort, a former vicar general of the diocese who died in August 2023, was found 5% liable.
Also found liable were St. Clare’s Corporation (20%), St. Clare’s president Joseph Pofit (25%), and former St. Clare’s president Robert Perry (20%), according to The Evangelist.
The judgments stem from a pension plan that operated for about 60 years.
In 1959, the hospital began offering employees a defined-benefit plan that provided a lifetime monthly pension after retirement.
Like most plans operated by Catholic institutions, the pension plan had a religious exemption from the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (known as ERISA), which sets minimum funding requirements for most nonreligious pension plans and also enables the federal government to step in and make payments to retirees of failed plans, using a fund financed by covered pension plans.
When the hospital closed in 2008, the officers of St. Clare’s “determined that the corporation would continue to exist for purposes of administering the pension plan,” according to a complaint filed in state court in Schenectady County by the New York attorney general’s office in May 2022.
“They also chose to continue treating the pension plan as a ‘Church plan’ — which it could do only if the corporation’s former employees and pensioners were designated as employees of the Church. This was all in order to avoid the contribution and insurance requirements of ERISA, and the duties imposed by ERISA upon corporation directors and trustees as fiduciaries,” the complaint states.
The bishop of Albany was automatically a member of the hospital’s board and served as its honorary chairman, and had authority to appoint most of the directors on the board, according to the state attorney general’s complaint.
The attorney general’s office alleged that St. Clare’s Corporation failed to make contributions to the pension fund “for all but three years from 2001 to 2019” and concealed from retirees “the insolvency of the pension plan.”
In 2018, the St. Clare’s board terminated the pension plan effective Feb. 1, 2019, because of an approximately $50 million shortfall. More than 1,100 employees lost retirement benefits, including about 650 who lost all pension payments and about 450 who received a lump-sum payment “equal to 70% of the value of their vested pension,” the complaint states. The retired employees include “nurses, lab technicians, social workers, EMTs, orderlies, housekeepers, and other essential workers” who worked at the hospital “between 10 and 50 years,” the complaint states.
On Dec. 9 during the civil trial, Scharfenberger testified that during his tenure no boards he sat on ever discussed the hospital’s pension plan, according to The Times-Union of Albany.
In a written statement issued in August, when Scharfenberger still led the Diocese of Albany, the diocese said the bishop “has actively sought ways to help the pensioners” while denying that the diocese ever “exercised any control over St. Clare’s Hospital operations or its pension.”
“He hosted a listening session with pensioners at Siena College to identify issues and consider ways to help those in need. He also reached out to the Mother Cabrini Foundation to try to secure funding for the pensioners, but that effort was unable to move forward once the pensioners filed the lawsuit,” the statement said.
“The diocese is eager to see the case move forward and promptly resolved,” the August statement continued. “Our prayers continue for all who are struggling in any way, and as we stated previously, our offer to connect those in need with services that can help, stands. No one should walk alone.”
His successor, Bishop Mark O’Connell, who was installed as bishop of Albany on Dec. 5, told reporters shortly before the verdict was announced last week: “I care deeply about their hurt [and] not having their pensions,” according to The Evangelist.
During the Dec. 12 press conference, when a reporter asked O’Connell what the diocese would do if the jury found the diocese liable for the pension fund collapse, the bishop noted that the diocese is already in the midst of a bankruptcy process.
“If we are liable, then we’ll do what we can to make amends, given that they are one creditor as a group among many people accusing the Diocese of Albany,” O’Connell said, according to WAMC Northeast Public Radio. “And that’s what bankruptcy process is. We obviously cannot pay a billion dollars. Right? So that’s what Chapter 11 is all about, to figure out what’s fair. And since you have a bankruptcy judge and mediators, it’s not up to us.”
Later that day, the jury found the diocese not liable in the pension fund collapse lawsuit. The diocese issued a written statement, according to The Evangelist, that said: “As grateful as we are for the jury’s informed decision, we are still very much aware of the hurt felt by the St. Clare’s pensioners who cared for the sick and the poor throughout the long history of St. Clare’s Hospital. This does not mean that we will turn our backs to the pensioners, for as Bishop O’Connell has noted, they are a part of our flock; they are still in need of healing.”
That same day, lead plaintiff Mary Hartshorne, who worked in the hospital’s radiology department for about 28 years, told WNYT Channel 13 in Albany that she and other hospital retirees were pleased with the jury’s verdict but did not feel they would be made whole.
“We’ve been playing this game for seven and a half years, and I think my question I ask everybody is: How do you get that back? You don’t,” she said.
This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.
Posted on 12/19/2025 16:52 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Colorado state capitol in Denver. / Credit: Shutterstock
CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2025 / 11:52 am (CNA).
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a coalition of Catholic families, and numerous other advocates are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in favor of Catholic schools seeking to be included in Colorado’s universal preschool funding program.
The religious liberty law group Becket said in a Dec. 18 release that the Catholic schools’ advocates — including numerous religious groups, legal organizations, and public policy groups — are urging the high court to rule against Colorado’s “discriminatory exclusion” of the faith-based schools.
The Archdiocese of Denver and a group of Catholic preschools asked the Supreme Court in November to allow them to access the Colorado program after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled in September that the state may continue to exclude the preschools from the education fund.
The state has barred those schools from the funding pool because they require teachers and families to sign a pledge promising to uphold their religious mission, including teachings on sexuality and gender identity.
In an amicus filing this week, the U.S. bishops said the Colorado rule “denies Catholic preschools access to a state-run tuition assistance program solely because those schools adhere to Catholic doctrine about human sexuality.”
Allowing the rule to stand will offer a “roadmap” for other governments to violate the First Amendment rights of religious Americans around the country, the bishops argued.
Permitting the schools’ exclusion “will impair the ability of Catholic organizations and other faith-based service providers to partner with state and local governments to serve the public,” the prelates said, arguing that the “resulting harm to the nation’s social support infrastructure would be immense.”
In another filing, a coalition of Catholic families said it regards Catholic schools as “essential partners” in their mission to impart the Catholic faith to their children. The Colorado rule, however, would force the Catholic schools to operate in a manner “inconsistent with their religious beliefs and mission.”
Multiple families in the filing — all of whom have four or more children — testified to the formative role that Catholic preschools have played for them. The families said they “want their children to embrace the Catholic Church’s teachings on the nature of the human person” and that the state rule impedes their ability to do so through Catholic schools.
Numerous other amicus filers include the Thomas More Society, the Center for American Liberty, and Concerned Women for America as well as religious groups representing Lutherans, Evangelicals, Jews, and Muslims.
Archdiocese of Denver School Superintendent Scott Elmer said via Becket that the archdiocese is “humbled” by the showing of support.
“Our preschools aren’t asking for special treatment, just equal treatment,” he said, expressing hope that the Supreme Court “takes this case and upholds the promise of universal preschool for every family in Colorado.”
The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether it will hear the case. Becket said the high court will likely decide whether or not to hear it “in early 2026.”
Posted on 12/19/2025 16:05 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass for the Jubilee of Prisoners in St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 14, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media
Vatican City, Dec 19, 2025 / 11:05 am (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV has written the preface to a new Vatican edition of the book “The Practice of the Presence of God,” a spiritual work he says is “one of the texts that has most shaped my spiritual life.”
“The Practice of the Presence of God” is a 17th-century spiritual classic written by the Carmelite friar Lawrence of the Resurrection.
The pontiff shared the personal importance of this work during the return flight to Rome at the end of his first international trip to Turkey and Lebanon earlier this month.
“It’s a very simple book, by someone who doesn’t even give his last name — Brother Lawrence — written many years ago,” he said at the time.
“But it describes, if you will, a type of prayer and spirituality where one simply gives his life to the Lord and allows the Lord to lead.”
In a preface to “The Practice of the Presence of God,” published by the Vatican Publishing House (LEV) in Italian, the pope goes deeper into this personal experience and places the work within his own journey of faith.
“As I have had occasion to say, together with the writings of St. Augustine and other books, this is one of the texts that has most shaped my spiritual life and has formed me in what the path for knowing and loving the Lord can be,” he writes.
Leo emphasizes that the small book by Brother Lawrence places at the center not merely the experience but a true “practice” of the presence of God, lived in everyday life.
It is, he explains, a path that is “simple and arduous at the same time. Simple, because it requires nothing other than “constantly calling God to mind, with small, continual acts of praise, prayer, supplication, adoration, in every action and in every thought, with him alone as our horizon, source, and end.”
It is demanding because it requires “a journey of purification, of ascetic discipline, of renunciation and conversion of the most intimate part of ourselves — of our mind and our thoughts, even more than of our actions,” he explains.
In this context, the pontiff cites St. Paul’s exhortation to the Philippians: “Have in you the same sentiments as Christ Jesus” — to underscore that “it is not only our attitudes and behaviors that must be conformed to God, but our very sentiments, our very way of feeling.”
In the preface, Leo underscores that this spiritual path, in which the presence of God becomes “familiar and occupies our inner space,” is where “graces and spiritual riches blossom, and even daily tasks become easy and light.”
The pope situates Brother Lawrence’s message in the context of today’s world. The writings of this Carmelite, who lived with luminous faith through a century marked by conflicts and violence — “certainly no less violent than our own” — can, he affirms, “also be an inspiration and a help for the lives of us men and women of the third millennium.”
The writing of Brother Lawrence shows us “that there is no circumstance that can separate us from God, that each of our actions, each of our occupations, and even each of our mistakes acquires infinite value if lived in the presence of God, continually offered to him,” the Holy Father says.
The pope adds that the whole of Christian ethics “can truly be summed up in this continual calling to mind of the fact that God is present: He is here.”
“This remembrance, which is more than a simple memory because it involves our feelings and affections, overcomes all moralism and every reduction of the Gospel to a mere set of rules, and shows us that truly, as Jesus promised us, the experience of entrusting ourselves to God the Father already gives us a hundredfold here on earth,” he explains.
“Entrusting ourselves to the presence of God means tasting a foretaste of paradise,” Leo writes.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language partner agency. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Posted on 12/19/2025 15:35 PM (Catholic News Agency)
Servant of God Enrique Shaw. / Credit: Acdeano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 19, 2025 / 10:35 am (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV has approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of Venerable Enrique Shaw, an Argentine layman, husband, father, and businessman.
Posted on 12/19/2025 15:00 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
A new animated film titled “David” tells the story of King David — from his humble beginnings as a shepherd boy to his battle against Goliath. / Credit: Sunrise Animation Studios
CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).
A new animated film called “David” tells the story of King David, from his humble beginnings as a shepherd boy to his battle against Goliath. Created by Sunrise Animation Studios, the film aims to bring the story of David to life for both children and adults.
Released in theaters Dec. 19, the film features popular Christian singers including Phil Wickham and Lauren Daigle.
Brent Dawes, the writer and director of the film, told CNA in an interview that the inspiration for the film came 30 years ago when the founders of Sunrise Animation Studios first created the studio.
“The studio was started by a guy and his wife, Phil and Jacqui Cunningham, and one of the reasons they started a studio was because Phil had a desire to make a movie on David over 30 years ago,” said Dawes, who has been working with the Cunninghams for 25 years. “So it’s been a vision for more than 30 years for him.”
Originally planned to be a live-action film, Cunningham approached Dawes 11 years ago about making the film animated instead.
He said he thought making the film this way would “open the audience up hugely because families can watch it, kids can watch it, and it just allows so many more people to access it.”
“David, as you might know, is not the most PG-friendly story in the Bible. So if you’re going to do a live-action version it’s going to be pretty R-rated and pretty much for adults,” Dawes explained. “So, making it an animation allowed us to sort of turn it back a little bit, still tell the story authentically, but tell it in a sort of gentler way so it meant it could just reach a much wider audience, which is wonderful.”
Dawes pointed out that faith-based media, such as films like this one, are important to make, especially for children, because “Hollywood doesn’t tell stories from the heart anymore, and it tells it from a board room. Also, so many movies are told with an agenda, whether it’s political, whether it’s belief, all sorts of things.”
He added: “So telling a story like this, obviously we’re coming from a Christian point of view, but it was important for us that we tell this movie for a world audience. We also don’t want to alienate people who don’t believe. We believe this is a truly accessible story, whether you believe or not.”
“We’re not telling the audience, ‘You have to believe what our character believes,’ but our story is based 3,000 years ago, and this is what he believed, and this is how he lived his life. So, let us tell you that story. And however you want to engage with that, that’s up to you.”
Dawes shared that during all the time working with the story of David, he has learned several things from the famous king, specifically that “when a challenge comes up, it’s something to be faced with confidence, not with nervousness or fear — like David when he faced Goliath … He had a faith and a confidence and a childlike faith at that.”
Dawes said he hopes viewers will not only be entertained but also left inspired. He hopes the film “speaks to each individual where they are in their life.”
Posted on 12/19/2025 14:26 PM (Catholic News Agency)
Bishop Richard Moth, a former bishop of Britain’s military ordinariate, was appointed as the 12th archbishop of Westminster on Dec. 19, 2025. / Credit: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
London, England, Dec 19, 2025 / 09:26 am (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV has appointed Bishop Richard Moth, a former bishop of Britain’s military ordinariate, as the 12th archbishop of Westminster.
Posted on 12/19/2025 12:30 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Palm Beach Bishop-designate Manuel de Jesus Rodriguez. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Diocese of Palm Beach
CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2025 / 07:30 am (CNA).
The Holy See said on Dec. 19 that Pope Leo XIV had made two new episcopal appointments in the United States, with the Vatican announcing a new bishop for the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, as well as an auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Phoenix.
Father Manuel de Jesus Rodriguez will lead the Palm Beach Diocese after the resignation of Bishop Gerald Barbarito, the Vatican said. At 75, Barbarito has reached the customary age at which bishops retire.
Bishop-designate Rodriguez is currently a priest in the Diocese of Brooklyn, where he serves at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Queens.
Born Jan. 15, 1974, in the Dominican Republic, Rodriguez studied at the Pontifical University Madre y Maestra in that country, receiving philosophy and law degrees there before obtaining several other degrees and certificates, including a doctorate in legal studies from the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome and a licentiate in canon law from The Catholic University of America.
Admitted to the Salesians of Don Bosco in 1993, he made his final profession to that religious order in 2002 and was ordained on July 3, 2004. He was incardinated in the Diocese of Brooklyn in 2012.
Rodriguez became a U.S. citizen in 2018. He has served multiple roles in Brooklyn, including as pastor and administrator of several churches as well as defender of the bond at the diocesan tribunal. The bishop-designate speaks English, Spanish, Italian, and French.
Outgoing Palm Beach Bishop Barbarito said in a Dec. 19 statement that the diocese will be ”greatly blessed” by Rodriguez’s ministry and that he has “shown himself to be a deeply spiritual and exceptional priest.”
The Holy See also announced on Dec. 19 that Pope Leo XIV has appointed Monsignor Peter Dai Bui as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix.
Bishop-designate Bui is currently the diocesan vicar for clergy for the Phoenix Diocese. A native of Vietnam, he entered the Legion of Christ novitiate in 1989 and made his first profession in 1991. He attended the Pontifical Athenaeum in Rome, where he earned degrees in philosophy and theology and a licentiate in philosophy.
He was ultimately ordained for the Legionaries of Christ on Dec. 24, 2003.
Bui served for several years as the chaplain of a private Catholic school in Venezuela, where he organized international mission trips. Incardinated in the Phoenix Diocese in 2009, he has served as pastor at multiple parishes and since 2022 as the vicar for clergy.
The bishop-designate speaks English, Vietnamese, Spanish, Italian, and German.
Bui said in a Dec. 19 statement that he was “honestly in shock” when Apostolic Nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre called him with the news.
“I even forgot he couldn’t see me nodding through the phone!” he joked. He expressed a “profound gratitude to God” for the appointment.
“I just want to be a good priest, now called to serve in a new way,” he said.
Phoenix Bishop John Dolan, meanwhile, said he was “deeply grateful” to the pope for the appointment.
“As one of the largest and most rapidly growing dioceses in the nation, Phoenix faces increasing pastoral and administrative complexity, and Bishop-elect Bui’s experience in governance, his deep care for priests, and his commitment to accompaniment will be invaluable,” the bishop said.