Pope Leo XIV greets pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for the recitation of the Angelus on Dec. 28, 2025. | Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Dec 28, 2025 / 08:30 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday urged Christian families to “cherish the values of the Gospel” and protect the “flame of love” in their homes against modern myths of success, power, and comfort that he said often leave people isolated and divided.

Speaking to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square before the Angelus on Dec. 28, the feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth, the pope reflected on the Gospel account of the family’s flight into Egypt and contrasted the trust of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph with what he called the fear-driven cruelty of King Herod.

“It is a moment of trial for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Leo said, adding that “the bright image of Christmas is suddenly almost eclipsed by the disturbing shadow of a deadly threat.”

The pope described Herod as “a cruel and bloodthirsty man” who is “deeply lonely and gripped with the fear of being deposed.” After hearing from the Magi that the “king of the Jews” had been born, Herod “decrees that all children of the same age as Jesus should be killed,” the pope said.

“In Bethlehem there is light and joy,” Leo noted, recalling the shepherds who “have glorified God before the manger,” but he said “none of this can penetrate the armored defenses of the royal palace, except as a distorted echo of a threat to be stifled with blind violence.”

Against that backdrop, the pope said the Holy Family reveals “the only possible answer of salvation,” namely, “God who, in total gratuitousness, gives himself to men without reserve and without pretension.”

Leo pointed to St. Joseph’s obedience in protecting Mary and Jesus, saying that “the gesture of Joseph is revealed in all its redemptive significance.” He added: “In Egypt, the flame of domestic love, to which the Lord has entrusted his presence in the world, grows and gains strength in order to bring light to the whole world.”

Turning to families today, the pope warned that “the world always has its ‘Herods,’ its myths of success at any cost, of unscrupulous power, of empty and superficial well-being” and said societies often “pay the price in the form of loneliness, despair, divisions, and conflicts.”

“Let us not allow these mirages to suffocate the flame of love in Christian families,” he said.

Instead, Leo urged families to cultivate “prayer, frequent reception of the sacraments, especially confession and Communion, healthy affections, sincere dialogue, fidelity, and the simple and beautiful concreteness of everyday words and gestures.” He said such family life can make homes “a light of hope for the places in which we live; a school of love and an instrument of salvation in God’s hands.”

After the Angelus, the pope greeted pilgrims from several Italian parishes and groups. He also renewed his appeal for peace, asking Catholics to remember those suffering because of conflict.

“In the light of the Nativity of the Lord, let us continue to pray for peace,” he said. “Today, in particular, let us pray for families suffering because of war, especially for children, elderly, and the most vulnerable.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Monsignor Maurizio Gronchi. Credit: EWTN Noticias

, Dec 28, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Vatican expert explains that the titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix” will no longer be used in the liturgy or official documents but can be used in popular piety.

Empty wheelchairs were used during a Nov. 4, 2025, anti-assisted suicide event in Rome. | Credit: Photo courtesy of ProVita & Famiglia

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 28, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Despite opposition from advocacy groups and Catholic leaders, multiple states and countries advanced legislation in 2025 to expand access to physician-assisted suicide.

Delaware

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer signed a bill in May legalizing physician-assisted suicidefor terminally ill adults with a prognosis of six months or less to live. The law will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026, allowing patients to self-administer lethal medication.

After the bill was signed, several disability and patient advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Delaware on Dec. 8 alleging that the law discriminates against people with disabilities.

Illinois

The House passed a bill in May to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Illinois, and it stalled in the Senate during the regular session. After it was taken up during the fall veto session, senators passed it on Oct. 31.

The bill, which allows doctors to give terminally ill patients life-ending drugs if they request them, was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker on Dec. 12. The law “ignores the very real failures in access to quality care that drive vulnerable people to despair,” according to the Catholic Conference of Illinois.

Illinois joined states that permit the practice including California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.

New York

The New York State Assembly advanced an assisted suicide measure in May, which Cardinal Timothy Dolan called “a disaster waiting to happen.” Despite calls from Catholic bishops, the New York Legislature passed the “ Medical Aid in Dying Act” in June.

The legislation is expected to be signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Colorado

Assisted suicide has been legal in Colorado since 2016. In June 2025, a coalition of advocacy groups sued the state over its assisted suicide law, claiming the statute is unconstitutional for allegedly discriminating against those who suffer from disabilities.

The suit was filed on June 30 in U.S. district court by organizations including Not Dead Yet and the Institute for Patients’ Rights. It calls Colorado’s assisted suicide regime “a deadly and discriminatory system that steers people with life-threatening disabilities away from necessary lifesaving and preserving mental health care.”

France

The National Assembly approved a bill in May that would allow certain terminally ill adults to receive lethal medication. The bill passed with 305 votes in favor and 199 against.

In a statement released after the vote, the French Bishops’ Conference expressed its “deep concern” over the so-called “right to assistance in dying.”

United Kingdom

British lawmakers in the House of Commons passed a bill in June to legalize assisted suicide for terminally ill patients in England and Wales.

In order to become law, the bill must pass the second chamber of Parliament, the unelected House of Lords. The Lords can amend legislation, but because the bill has the support of the Commons, it is likely to pass.

Uruguay

Legislators in Uruguay passed a bill in August to legalize euthanasia in the country. In October, Uruguay’s Parliament approved the “Dignified Death Bill,” making the bill law and allowing adults in the terminal stage of a disease to request euthanasia.

Canada

A Cardus Health report released in September found the legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada led to disproportionately high rates of premature deaths among vulnerable groups.

MAID passed in 2012 with safeguards and provisions that the report said Canada has not upheld. It said: “Those who died from MAID were more likely to have been living with a disability than those who did not die from MAID, even though both groups had similar medical conditions and experienced diminished capability.”

People suffering from mental illness are also dying by assisted suicide at disproportionate rates, the report said.

Bottega Ferrigno is located in the iconic “Christmas Alley,” part of the southern Italian city of Naples’ historic San Gregorio Armeno neighborhood. | Credit: Gianpiero Passalia/EWTN News

Rome Newsroom, Dec 28, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Neapolitan Nativity scenes reflect the style and dress of the 1700s in Naples, the century in which they became popularized by the nobles of the era.

Sister Carla Venditti of the Sacred Heart of Jesus helps women and girls who are victims of human trafficking. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Giulio Gargiullo

CNA Staff, Dec 27, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Sister Carla Venditti of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus lives in Avezzano, Italy, and is known as the “anti-trafficking nun.”

Vladimir Borovikovsky (1757–1825), “St. John the Evangelist,” ca. 1804-1809. | Credit: Public domain

National Catholic Register, Dec 27, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

St. John, both an apostle and an evangelist, played a very prominent role in many of the New Testament narratives. He was part of an inner-circle trio with his brother James (the Greater) and Peter, partaking in privileged incidents with Jesus: the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the Transfiguration, and the agony at Gethsemane.

John and his brother James were nicknamed “Sons of Thunder” by Jesus. Exactly why they were given this title is not explained. However, the two brothers did exhibit at least two instances of audacious behavior: wanting to bring fire from heaven down upon some Samaritans who refused to listen to the message of Christ and asking Jesus for special places of honor in heaven.

Within the Gospel of John, there are five different references to “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 21:20). Over the centuries, the vast majority of biblical scholars have deemed this beloved disciple to be John himself. These mysterious references actually point to a less thunderous personality; for example, the beloved disciple resting his head on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper and Jesus requesting the beloved disciple to take care of his mother, Mary.

Tradition places John in Ephesus (in modern Turkey) after Pentecost, where he cared for Mary and perhaps wrote the fourth Gospel. John’s Gospel stands out from the other three, offering a unique portrayal of Christ and his message. This Gospel is symbolized with an eagle; its opening words urge the thoughts of readers to soar upward — sort of like an eagle — toward God (John 1:1).

It is probable that either John himself or a disciple of his wrote the three Epistles of John. Many claim that he also wrote the Book of Revelation, a work chock full of mystical imagery, during an exile on the island of Patmos (Greece).

John is believed to have lived to an old age and died of natural causes. A basilica in Ephesus reportedly held his remains for a time, but that church is now in ruins.

The feast of St. John the Evangelist is Dec. 27. He is the patron of many things including writers, booksellers, and friendships.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

A child holds a phone with the Replika app open and an image of an AI companion. Apps that promise to help recreate digital versions of deceased family members using AI pose a “spiritual danger” to Catholics and others who may use the technology in place of healthy grief, experts say. | Credit: Generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system on Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Dec 27, 2025 / 02:00 am (CNA).

Apps that promise to help re-create digital versions of deceased family members using AI pose a “spiritual danger” to Catholics and others who may use the technology in place of healthy grief, experts say.

The AI company 2wai ignited a controversy on social media in November after it revealed its eponymous app, which will allow users to fabricate digital versions of their loved ones using video and audio footage.

App co-founder Calum Worthy said in a viral X post that the tech could permit “loved ones we’ve lost [to] be part of our future.” The accompanying video shows a family continuously interacting with the digital projection of a deceased mother and grandmother even years after she died.

The reveal of the app brought praise from some tech commentators, though there was also considerable negative reaction. Many critics denounced it as “vile,” “demonic,” and “terrifying,” with others predicting that the app would be used to ghoulish ends such as using dead relatives to promote internet advertisements.

Tech ‘could disrupt the grieving process’

2wai did not respond to requests for comment on the controversy, though company CEO Mason Geyser told the Independent that the ad was deliberately meant to be “controversial” in order to “spark this kind of online debate.”

Geyser himself said he views the app as a tool to be used with his children to help preserve the memories of earlier generations rather than as a means to having a relationship with an AI avatar. “I see it … as a way to just kind of pass on some of those really good memories that I had with my grandparents,” he said.

Whether or not such an app is compatible with the Catholic understanding of death — and of more diffuse, esoteric topics like grief — is unclear. Father Michael Baggot, LC, an associate professor of bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, acknowledged that AI avatars “could potentially remind us of certain aspects of our loved ones and help us learn from their examples.”

But such digital replicas “cannot capture the full richness of the embodied human being,” he said, and they risk “distorting the dead’s legacy” by fabricating conversations and interactions beyond the dead’s control.

Catholic leaders have regularly remarked on both the heavy burden of grief and its redemptive power. Pope Francis in 2020 acknowledged that grief is ”a bitter path,” but it can “serve to open our eyes to life and the sacred and irreplaceable value of each person,” while helping one realize “how short time is.”

In October, meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV told a grieving father that those mourning the death of a loved one must “remain connected to the Lord, going through the greatest pain with the help of his grace.”

The Resurrection, he said, “knows no discouragement or pain that imprisons us in the extreme difficulty of not finding meaning in our existence.”

Brett Robinson, the associate director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, warned that there is “spiritual danger” in technology that outwardly appears to bring loved ones back from the dead.

Technology is not a neutral product, he said, but one that “has a profound ability to shape our perception of reality, regardless of the content being displayed.”

“In the case of re-presenting dead loved ones we meet one such case where prior conceptions about identity, vitality, and presence are being reshaped along technological lines,” he said.

“If someone who no longer exists in human form, body and soul, can be ‘resurrected’ from an archive of the digital traces of their life, who or what are we actually engaging with?” he said.

Robinson argued that present modes of technology have echoes of earlier centuries “when the cosmos was filled with presence — the presence of God, of angels, of demons, and of magic.”

The problem at hand, he said, is that the “new magic” of modern technology “is divorced from the hierarchical, ordered cosmos of creation and the spiritual realm.”

Donna MacLeod has worked in grief ministry for decades. She first became involved in Catholic grief counseling after the death of her youngest daughter in 1988. The funeral ministry evolved into Seasons of Hope, a grief support program for Catholics that “focuses on the spiritual side of grieving the death of a loved one.”

MacLeod said the program is one of “hospitality and spirituality” that arises in an intensive community of individuals suffering from grief.

“It builds parish communities,” she said. “People discover they’re not alone. That’s a big deal to grieving people — a lot of people feel very alone in their loss.”

“And society expects everybody to move on,” she continued. “But grief has its own timetable. Those who are grieving start to understand that the Lord is with them and that he really cares about them. There’s hope and healing at the end of it.”

“It’s doing what Christ asks us to do — walking with each other in hard times,” she said.

Regarding the AI avatar technology, MacLeod acknowledged that those who have lost a loved one make it a “very high priority” to “seek connection” with the deceased.

“People will say, ‘I’m not taking my loved one’s voice off of my answering machine,’” she said. “Or we have people taking out videos of family gatherings so they can see their loved ones again.”

“Everyone seeks to still be connected with their loved ones,” she said. “It’s related to our Catholic faith and the communion of saints — people feel this spiritual connection with their loved ones.”

MacLeod described herself as “on the fence” about how people could be affected by AI avatar apps. There could be “emotional and psychological risks interacting with AI versions of loved ones,” she admitted, though she said that many users “might look at it, but not get hung up on it,” unless they have underlying mental health issues.

But “where the difficulty arises is that some people get stuck in the denial stage,” she said. Those suffering from grief can get desperate in such circumstances, she said, and sometimes resort to means such as mediums or psychics, which MacLeod pointed out the Church explicitly forbids.

Whether or not AI avatars fall under that forbidden category is unclear. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly outlaws any efforts at “conjuring up the dead.” The use of mediums or clairvoyants “all conceal[s] a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings,” the Church says.

Baggot said apps like 2wai’s “assemble data about the deceased without preserving the person.”

He further argued that AI avatars “could also disrupt the grieving process by sending ambiguous signals about the survival of the departed person.”

Robinson, meanwhile, acknowledged that it is “good to want to connect to deceased loved ones,” which he pointed out we do “liturgically through prayer and memorials that honor those souls that are dear to us.”

He warned, however, against “technocratic creators of complex computational machines that are becoming indistinguishable from magic.”

Such technology, he said, alters “the spiritual order” in ways “that are disordered and disembodied from the ritual forms that sustain religion and our belief that our eternal destiny rests with God in heaven and not in a database.”

Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas closes the Holy Door at St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome on Dec. 25, 2025. | Credit: Vatican Media

, Dec 26, 2025 / 16:20 pm (CNA).

The Holy Door of St. Mary Major Basilica, one of five in Rome for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, was the first to close.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett. - Rachel Malehorn/wikimedia CC BY SA 3.0

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 26, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett says her Catholic faith “grounds her” and gives her “perspective.”

During an interview with Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Barrett tackled a number of topics including free speech, the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and her law career. The U.S. Supreme Court justice also opened up about her Catholic faith, including how she prays and her relationship with the saints.

A ‘love for the saints’

When asked which spiritual figures have influenced her, Barrett shared about her relationships with the saints, specifically her love for St. Catherine of Siena and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

“My favorite was Thérèse of Lisieux. We have a daughter named Thérèse,” Barrett said. “I was captivated when I was young by how young she was when she just completely gave her life over to the Lord.”

“Her Little Way is so accessible to so many,” she said. “I minored in French and I studied in France. It was actually Lisieux, where I was … that’s where I decided to go that summer. So I spent a lot of time in the gardens of the Martin home. I think those examples of faith were important to me.”

“One thing that we’ve tried to do with our children is really cultivate in them a love for the saints, because I do think they are great examples that can inspire our love of the faith.”

Barrett said she has “prayed in different ways at different phases” of her life. As a law professor, she often prayed a “ lectio divina.” Now as a judge, she said she tends “to do more reading reflections” and will “read the daily ‘ Magnificat.’”

A “personal struggle in these last couple of years has been an ability to quiet my mind so that I can pray in a very deep and focused way,” she said. Listening to reflections “helps me, if my mind is wandering, to be able to focus on reading something and the task at hand.”

The Constitution and the common good

Despite her faith, Barrett also discussed how it is not what can influence her decisions as a judge. “The Constitution distributes authority in a particular way,” she said. “The authority that I have is circumscribed.”

“I believe in natural law, and I certainly believe in the common good,” Barrett said. “I think legislators have the duty to pursue the common good within the confines of the Constitution and respect for religious freedom.”

“You have to imagine, ‘What if I didn’t like the composition of the court I was in front of, the court that was making these decisions, and they view the common good quite differently than I do?’ That’s the reason why we have a document like the Constitution, because it’s a point of consensus and common ground.”

“And if we start veering away from that and reading into it our own individual ideas of the common good, it’s going to go nowhere good fast.”

Roe v. Wade

Barrett said both people who agreed with the Dobbs decision and those who did not “may well assume” she cast her vote based on her “faith” and “personal views about abortion.”

“But especially given the framework with which I view the Constitution, there are plenty of people who support abortion rights but who recognize that Roe was ill-reasoned and inconsistent with the Constitution itself,” she said.

Barrett further discussed “the trouble with Roe.”

“There’s nothing in the Constitution … that speaks to abortion, that speaks to medical procedures,” she said. “The best defense of Roe, the commonly thought defense of Roe, was that it was grounded in the word ‘liberty’ and the due process clause, that we protect life, liberty, and property and it can’t be taken away without due process of law.”

The “word ‘liberty’ can’t be an open vessel or an empty vessel in which judges can just read into it whatever rights they want, because otherwise, we lose the democracy in our democratic society,” Barrett said.

The problem with Roe “is that it was a free-floating, free-wheeling decision that read into the Constitution.”

The reason why it’s difficult to amend the Constitution is because “it reflects a super-majority consensus,” she said. “The rights that are protected in the Constitution, as well as the structural guarantees that are made in that Constitution, are not of my making. They are ones that Americans have agreed to.”

“Roe told Americans what they should agree to rather than what they have already agreed to in the Constitution.”

Free speech and freedom of religion

“I think the First Amendment protects, guarantees, forces us to respect one another and to respect disagreement,” Barrett said. “There’s a tolerance of different faiths, a tolerance of different ideas … we can see what would happen if you didn’t have the guarantee to hold that in place.”

“Think about what’s happening with respect to free speech rights in the U.K.,” Barrett said. “Contrary opinions or opinions that are not in the mainstream are not being tolerated, and they’re even being criminalized. Because of the First Amendment, that can’t happen here.”

If the United States were to have “an established religion, then it would be very difficult to simultaneously guarantee freedom of religion because there would be one voice with which the government was speaking,” Barrett explained.

An established religion would “sacrifice the religious liberty,” she said. “But by the same token, the religious liberty, it would become self-defeating if the logical end to it was to force everyone to see things your way.”

Discernment

At the end of the conversation, Barron asked Barrett what advice she would give young Catholics who want to be involved in public life, law, or the government.

“Discern first,” Barrett said. Ask: “What are you called to do?”

“If you do feel like this is a vocation and something you’re called to do, I think it can never be the most important thing,” Barrett said. “I think being grounded in your faith and who you are and being right in the Lord, so that you’re not tossed like a ship everywhere because there are enormous pressures.”

Faith “grounds me as a person,” Barrett said. “Not because my faith informs the substance of the decisions that I make, it emphatically does not, but I think it grounds me as a person. It’s who I am as a person.”

“So it’s what enables me to keep my job in public life in perspective and remain the person who I am and continue to try to be the person I hope to be despite the pressures of public life,” she said.

Pope Leo XIV addresses pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for the recitation of the Angelus on Dec. 26, 2025. | Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Dec 26, 2025 / 02:17 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Friday urged Christians to resist the temptation to treat others as enemies, saying the mystery of Christmas calls believers to recognize the God-given dignity of every person, even in their adversaries.

“Christians, however, have no enemies, but brothers and sisters, who remain so even when they do not understand each other,” the pope said Dec. 26 during his Angelus address from the Apostolic Palace on the feast of St. Stephen, the Church’s first martyr.

Leo acknowledged that “those who believe in peace and have chosen the unarmed path of Jesus and the martyrs are often ridiculed, excluded from public discourse,” and sometimes even “accused of favoring adversaries and enemies.” Yet, he said Christian joy is sustained by “the tenacity of those who already live in fraternity.”

Reflecting on St. Stephen’s martyrdom, the pope noted that early Christians spoke of the saint’s “birthday,” convinced “that we are not born just once” and that “martyrdom is a birth into heaven.”

Citing the Acts of the Apostles, Leo recalled that those who witnessed Stephen’s trial and death “saw that his face was like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15), calling it “the face of one who does not leave history indifferently but responds to it with love.”

The pope linked Stephen’s witness to the meaning of Christmas, saying “the birth of the Son of God among us calls us to live as children of God,” drawing believers through the humility of Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds of Bethlehem.

At the same time, he said, the beauty of Christ and of those who imitate him can be rejected because it exposes injustice and threatens those “who struggle for power.”

“To this day, however, no power can prevail over the work of God,” Leo said, pointing to people around the world who choose justice “even at great cost,” who “put peace before their fears,” and who serve the poor.

“In the current conditions of uncertainty and suffering in the world, joy might seem impossible,” he added, but insisted hope still “sprouts” and “it makes sense to celebrate despite everything.”

The pope said Stephen’s final act of forgiveness mirrors Jesus’ own, flowing from “a force more real than that of weapons,” a “gratuitous force” rekindled when people learn to look at their neighbor with “attention and recognition.”

“Yes, this is what it means to be reborn, to come once more into the light, this is our ‘Christmas!’” he said.

After the Angelus, Leo renewed his Christmas wishes “for peace and serenity,” greeted pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, and asked St. Stephen’s intercession for persecuted Christians and communities suffering for their faith. He also encouraged those working amid conflict to pursue “dialogue, reconciliation, and peace.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.