Unless you happened to grow up speaking Ancient Greek and Hebrew (with a smattering of Aramaic for good measure), the words you are familiar with from scripture, whether read aloud at Mass or silently at home, are not the same words divinely inspired millennia ago. They are the product of the work of countless translators […]

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Interior of the Church of Jesus and Mary in Rome, Italy / Credit: Mentnafunangann / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Rome, Italy, Nov 26, 2025 / 10:15 am (CNA).

At a Mass marking 25 years since the Holy See signed a foundational agreement with Slovakia, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch praised the “rich history” of Catholic peoples in Central Europe.

Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia (On Love in the Family), spoke of marriage as an encounter, a union, and a sacrament in which Christ himself meets the couple, giving them the “strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one […]

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A 3D rendering of the Living Wall: Monument to the Unborn by the architect of the Living Wall, bringing to life the painted design by Arkansas artist Lakey Goff. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Lakey Goff

CNA Staff, Nov 26, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Amid the sounds of Arkansas’ waterfalls, women who have had abortions will someday be able to find healing at a “living wall” memorial covered in flora and fauna, where the names of unborn children will be inscribed on the hexagonal stone floor thanks to local artist Lakey Goff, who submitted the living wall design, which was selected for Arkansas’ monument for the unborn.

The memorial will be on state property, but funding must come from the people. Now Goff and other Arkansians are fundraising for the living wall.

On Saturday morning, participants gathered at sunrise at Two Rivers Park in Little Rock to kick off the first annual Living Wall 5K — a race to fundraise for the memorial.

Several groups, both local and national — including LIFE Runners, Caring Hearts Pregnancy Center, and Arkansas Right to Life — showed up to kick off the first annual 5K. 

Fundraising began in May 2024 and has reached nearly $30,000; but the living wall’s proposed budget, as of 2025, is estimated to be $1 million.

November has been set aside as a month to remember the unborn in a proclamation signed by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Goff shared with CNA that her inspiration for the wall comes from her faith in Jesus. She hopes it will be a place of healing for women who have had abortions.

CNA: What inspired the design and the Bible message accompanying it? Why a living wall?

Lakey Goff: The monument itself is alive with plants, photosynthesis, and oxygen: There’ll be birds that live in it; there are the sound of seven different waterfalls that I’ve recorded from around Arkansas coming off the top of this wall in an audio loop. That is the sound of Jesus’ voice — the sound of many waters. 

Then, underneath, you’ll see on there are pavers where women have begun to name their babies that were aborted, to put dates when they were aborted and even Scriptures. It’s a way to be healed and set free and say this happened, where they’re no longer locked up in guilt and shame; and so the babies’ names will be underneath our feet in these hexagonal pavers. 

I believe this monument is from the heart of God, the heart of the Father, as he wants to heal our land from the bloodshed in our nation, starting in the state of Arkansas to lead the way. 

Why is this monument important? 

We don’t want to forget what happened during the 50 years of bloodshed, of innocent babies’ bloodshed in our state. It is an act of repentance, and it is saying, “This will not happen again.” We’re saying, “I’m sorry, God, and we want to honor you and honor life.”

This is the very first living wall monument to the unborn in our nation — and so that’s why it’s taking a little while, because it’s never been done before. 

What inspired you to send in a design after the 2023 bill passed? 

I’ve always been an artist, but I was not in any way involved, at least in my adult years, with the pro-life movement or in the political realm. 

I said, “Lord, is there anything that you want to do for this monument?” And I immediately received a blueprint from the Holy Spirit of the details about this living wall. 

I received clearly that the Lord wanted to heal women and families who had abortions and who were held captive by guilt and shame. And he gave me Isaiah 61: He wants to give us double honor for shame; he wants to set the captives free.

What do you hope people will take away from experiencing it?   

It will be an actual place for women, children, families to come and be healed. It’s a place for repentance. It’s a place of life, vitality. There’s nothing dead about Jesus — he’s the risen King.

Even in the process, women, children, families have already started to be healed. I believe what they will take away from it is an encounter with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and his healing: He came for the lost, not the righteous.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The main altar of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. / Credit: Jorge Royan (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Vatican City, Nov 26, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV has issued a new decree revising the financial and administrative norms governing the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Mary Major, bringing both institutions under the ordinary oversight of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, in the latest act of fine-tuning of economic reforms undertaken by his predecessor Pope Francis.

The pope writes that the Holy See’s economic and financial reform requires “periodic reevaluation and redefinition” of the applicable regulatory framework. 

The letter motu proprio, dated Sept. 29, 2025, was promulgated this month when it was posted in the San Damaso Courtyard of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. It has not previously been reported by the media.

The decree abrogates two earlier such decrees concerning the Fabric of St. Peter’s and the Chapter of St. Mary Major. Under the updated provisions, both the Fabbrica — which oversees the care, maintenance, and artistic patrimony of St. Peter’s Basilica — and the Chapter of St. Mary Major are now subject to the same forms of oversight established for other entities listed under the statutes of the Council for the Economy and in Praedicate Evangelium, the 2022 apostolic constitution that reorganized the Roman Curia.

To ensure what Pope Leo calls an “immediate and structured transition,” the Secretariat for the Economy will coordinate implementation along with a consultative group to help resolve questions or issues that might arise. The law will eventually be published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official gazette of the Holy See.

In October, Pope Leo XIV issued the decree Coniuncta Cura, a major financial reform that ended the Vatican Bank’s exclusive role in managing Holy See investments and allowed APSA and other accredited intermediaries to handle funds when advantageous. The change, which reverses a 2022 centralization under Pope Francis, aims to diversify management, improve returns, and strengthen the Holy See’s long-term financial sustainability amid rising operational costs.

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts According to several recent studies of health care systems across the globe, the U.S. health care system lags far behind those in other developed nations. The system is more expensive per person, but also for the nation as a whole. This high cost doesn’t translate into good access, high quality, or favorable […]

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Readings (Year A): Isaiah 2:1 – 5Psalm 122: 1 – 2, 3 – 4, 4 – 5, 6 – 7, 8 – 9Romans 13:11 – 14Matthew 24:37 – 44 Reflection: May we be the hope this Advent season The readings that open this Advent season and our new liturgical year are more apocalyptic than those […]

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Pope Leo XIV meets with Ukrainian children who were welcomed by Caritas Italy during the summer on July 3, 2025, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media

CNA Staff, Nov 26, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

At the forefront of the work of repatriation and recovery of Ukrainian children swept up in the country’s war with Russia is Caritas Ukraine.

null / Credit: Patrick Thomas/Shutterstock

EWTN News, Nov 26, 2025 / 05:00 am (CNA).

Slovenia rejected euthanasia legislation in a Nov. 23 referendum, with 53% voting against the law backed by Catholic bishops and civil groups.

Father Nils de Jesús Hernández speaks out for Nicaragua from exile in the United States. / Credit: “EWTN Noticias”/Screenshot

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 25, 2025 / 18:01 pm (CNA).

Nils de Jesús Hernández, 56, has lived in the United States for 36 years, far from his native Nicaragua. Forced to leave the country in 1988 in the midst of the civil war, he serves a parish in Iowa where he ministers to the Hispanic community and speaks out for the Nicaraguan people.

Hernández, known as the “vandal priest” for having led a student strike and supporting the 2018 protests in Nicaragua, is now the parish priest at Queen of Peace Church in Waterloo, Iowa, in the Archdiocese of Dubuque.

“Vandal priest” was the defamatory, derisive label the dictatorship gave to him for his role in the protests, but the title has now turned into a sort of badge of honor.

The pain of leaving Nicaragua

After being declared a target of the government at the age of 19 when he was a candidate for the priesthood, Hernández said in an interview with “EWTN Noticias,” the Spanish-language broadcast edition of EWTN News, that leaving the country “meant that I was never going to return to Nicaragua. Leaving my parents, my family, everything that was familiar to me: my language, my culture, my food, everything; that is, everything that is one’s own ... that was the cruelest thing I was experiencing.”

The priest said he inherited his fighting spirit from his mother, who also helped with the student protests at the time.

“In the 1980s, I was also fighting against those [the Sandinistas] who promised us that everything was going to be fine, and everything turned into a dictatorship, a government that was repressing the Nicaraguan people,” Hernández told “EWTN Noticias.”

The priest traveled to Guatemala, then on to Tijuana, Mexico, and continuing to San Diego. He spent six years in Los Angeles before being sent to Iowa.

Having already obtained U.S. citizenship, he was ordained a priest in 2004 for the Archdiocese of Dubuque, and now in his parish he serves Mexicans, Guatemalans, Venezuelans, Chileans, Hondurans, and, of course, members of the Nicaraguan diaspora.

“I have organized marches here against laws that are very aggressive against immigrants under this administration of President Donald Trump,” the priest said. “This has also been my battleground here to continue denouncing the dictatorship of [Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario] Murillo and [President] Daniel Ortega,” he added.

The persecution against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua

“I believe that the persecution against the Church in Nicaragua is becoming much more aggressive, with confiscations [of Church property] that they have carried out and continue to carry out,” the priest lamented.

According to Hernández, the dictatorship wants to “eradicate the Church.”

“But I always say the following: They will steal all the buildings, they can close all the churches they want to close … but they cannot take away the faith from the hearts of every Nicaraguan, because wherever there is a Nicaraguan in Nicaragua, even though they are being repressed and oppressed, there is the Catholic faith, because all of us Nicaraguans are devoted to Mary and we trust in the will of God.”

“We also have great faith that the Lord will prevail and will be victorious, because the Lord triumphed on the cross and overcame death with his resurrection,” he said.

“We will be returning to Nicaragua triumphantly, because we will indeed return to Nicaragua, because this dictatorship will not last forever. They’re old and they’re not going to continue [in power] for all eternity,” he predicted.

Silence of the Church in Nicaragua and reality in Venezuela

“The silence in Nicaragua is due to the repression that exists. The people are silent,” Hernández pointed out. “But that doesn’t mean the people are content. The silence reflects the discontent of the people, because when the drums sound, Nicaragua will roar. That’s a very Nicaraguan saying,” he explained.

“The Nicaraguan people, when they muster the courage, overthrow any dictatorship. This silence is a preparatory silence for what could happen at any moment in Nicaragua,” the exiled priest continued.

“If Nicolás Maduro falls [in Venezuela], the Nicaraguan and Cuban dictatorships will also fall. So the silence on the part of the Church is out of prudence, but here in the United States there are voices that are trying to make people aware that the repression in Nicaragua is not good. We have Bishop [Silvio] Báez, who is a prophetic and very strong voice: He continues to speak very consistently about all the deception that this dictatorship is engaging in,” Hernández told EWTN.

Pope Leo XIV, Nicaragua, and the award to Bishop Silvio Báez

The priest also referred to the meetings that Pope Leo XIV has held with the bishops of Nicaragua, first with bishops Silvio Báez, Carlos Enrique Herrera, and Isidoro Mora; and later with Rolando Álvarez, all of whom are in exile.

In his opinion, these meetings “are a slap in the face to the dictatorship. That’s what grieves them the most, that the Holy Father is saying, ‘Catholic Nicaragua, persecuted Church, your mother is with you. The Holy Father loves you and you are not alone.’”

“That is a very powerful message that the Holy Father is giving to the Nicaraguan people and also to the Church, and that is the most wonderful thing that we must understand. Nicaraguan people, you’ve got to have a lot of courage, because this is not going to continue forever. Once again, these old men are going to die,” he emphasized.

Hernández also shared that it was he who nominated Báez for the 2025 Pacem in Terris Award for peace and freedom — which has also been awarded to Martin Luther King Jr. and St. Teresa of Calcutta and which was presented to him in July of this year in Davenport — to recognize “the role that the prelate has played in the struggle in Nicaragua and from exile” at St. Agatha Parish in Miami.

“My dream for the Nicaraguan Church is that we continue praying for the unity of all the opposition, so that there may be authentic and genuine unity, that they set aside all their political agendas, and that we all unite to fight to overthrow the dictatorship,” he said.

The priest finally emphasized that for him it is “a great source of pride to be the ‘vandal priest,’ because I continue to denounce this criminal dictatorship for crimes against humanity, because they will not escape God’s justice. They will escape human justice, but not God’s justice.

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