Catholic faithful gather on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, in St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral in Dublin to celebrate two milestones: a decree from Pope Leo XIV formally designating St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral as the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Dublin and the cathedral’s bicentenary. / Credit: John McElroy/Dublin Archdiocese

Dublin, Ireland, Dec 18, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Following a report in one of Ireland’s mainstream media publications, the Archdiocese of Dublin has moved to clarify questions raised about its financial security.

I like snakes, which is a good thing, since I’ve encountered a lot of them, often in unexpected places. Most memorable was the black rat snake that got into our bathroom and coiled majestically around the toilet. There was also the rat snake that chased a mouse through the kitchen and the garter snake that […]

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U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (at right) meets with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (at left) and then-National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (at center). / Credit: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Dec 17, 2025 / 20:05 pm (CNA).

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that he has issued a directive aimed at reforming the military’s Chaplain Corps, beginning with the elimination of the U.S. Army’s current Spiritual Fitness Guide.

In a video post, Hegseth described a “real problem” facing the nation’s military forces: “the weakening of our Chaplain Corps,” which has “been going on for far too long.”

“In an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism, chaplains have been minimized, viewed by many as therapists instead of ministers,” he said. “Faith and virtue were traded for self help and self care.”

Hegseth said that “chaplains are intended to be the spiritual and moral backbone of our nation’s forces,” recalling that at the outset of the American Revolution, Gen. George Washington, in one of his first acts as commander of the Continental Army, established the Chaplain Corps because he saw the need for “the blessing and protection of heaven … especially in times of public distress and danger.”

“For about 200 years, the Chaplain Corps continued its role as the spiritual leader of our service members, serving our men and women in times of hardship and ministering to their souls,” he said.

In what he described as an “ongoing war on warriors” in recent years, Hegseth said the role of chaplains “has been degraded.”

He cited the current Army Spiritual Fitness Guide, which he said mentions God only once and has “zero” references to virtue, relying instead “on New Age notions, saying that the soldier’s spirit consists of consciousness, creativity, and connection.”

According to the guide, Hegseth said, about “82% of the military are religious, yet, ironically, [the guide] alienates our war fighters of faith by pushing secular humanism. In short, it’s unacceptable and unserious. So we’re tossing it.”

“Our chaplains are chaplains, not emotional support officers,” he said.

According to Hegseth, the reforms will be “a top-down cultural shift, putting spiritual well-being on the same footing as mental and physical health.”

He said initial reforms will result in the removal of training materials that “have no place in the War Department” as well as the streamlining of religious affiliation coding practices, with more changes in the coming weeks and months.

“We’re going to restore the esteemed position of chaplains as moral anchors for our fighting force,” Hegseth said.

Quoting the 1956 army chaplain’s manual, Hegseth said: “‘The chaplain is the pastor and the shepherd of the souls entrusted to his care.’”

“This is a high and sacred calling,” he continued, “but this only works if our shepherds are actually given the freedom to boldly guide and care for their flock.”

This image is preserved in the Church of San Vital, built in 386, in Rome. / Credit: Victoria Cardiel/EWTN News

Rome Newsroom, Dec 17, 2025 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

The Church of St. Vitale is the oldest Christian church still standing in the center of Rome and contains the first image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Rome.

Disabilities advocates in Buffalo, New York, during a candlelight vigil in opposition to assisted suicide. / Credit: New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide

CNA Staff, Dec 17, 2025 / 17:00 pm (CNA).

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will sign into law an assisted suicide bill that Catholic leaders have ardently opposed, making New York the 13th state to allow the practice. 

Hochul, who called it an “incredibly difficult decision,” said she will sign the bill after lawmakers add some “guardrails.” The bill allows doctors to give terminally ill patients drugs to end their lives. Hochul’s additions to the law include requiring a waiting period, a recorded oral request for death, and a health evaluation. The law will go into effect six months after signing.    

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and other New York bishops have been outspoken against the legislation, issuing several statements opposing it. In a brief meeting with Hochul over the summer, Dolan urged her not to sign the measure. 

Earlier this month, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law similar assisted suicide legislation. Other jurisdictions that permit assisted suicide include: California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

Hochul, who is a Catholic University of America alumna, said in a Dec. 17 statement that the bill will enable people “to suffer less — to shorten not their lives, but their deaths.”

“New York has long been a beacon of freedom, and now it is time we extend that freedom to terminally ill New Yorkers who want the right to die comfortably and on their own terms,” Hochul said. 

“My mother died of ALS, and I am all too familiar with the pain of seeing someone you love suffer and being powerless to stop it,” she continued. 

In a joint statement, Dolan and the bishops of New York state said they were “extraordinarily troubled” by Hochul’s announcement. 

The bishops say the law endangers the vulnerable, calling assisted suicide “a grave moral evil” that “is in direct conflict with Catholic teaching on the sacredness and dignity of all human life.” 

“This new law signals our government’s abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens, telling people who are sick or disabled that suicide in their case is not only acceptable but is encouraged by our elected leaders,” the Dec. 17 statement said. 

The Patients’ Rights Action Fund, a nonpartisan group that opposes assisted suicide on the grounds that it is inherentaly discriminatory, said that “safeguards” in bills like the one Hochul said she would sign “are falling short” where they exist.

“The amendments added that try to address the serious dangers that come with legalizing assisted suicide do nothing to protect people who deserve care and support from the state and their medical teams,” Matt Vallière, who heads the group, said in a Dec. 17 statement shared with CNA. 

Citing the tragic case of Eileen Mihich, a woman struggling with mental illness who died under the assisted suicide law in Washington state, Vallière said that “it is impossible to prevent abuse of the law in which people not on the verge of dying can utilize assisted suicide.”

“There is no true accountability to protect patients from potential harm, abuse, or coercion,” Vallière continued.

The New York bishops also raised concerns about mental health, saying the law “will seriously undermine” anti-suicide and mental health care efforts made by Hochul. 

“How can any society have credibility to tell young people or people with depression that suicide is never the answer, while at the same time telling elderly and sick people that it is a compassionate choice to be celebrated?” the bishops stated. 

The bishops urged the state to instead invest in palliative care, which is medicine focused on relieving suffering and improving quality of life for people with serious illnesses. 

“We call on Catholics and all New Yorkers to reject physician-assisted suicide for themselves, their loved ones, and those in their care,” the bishops said. “And we pray that our state turns away from its promotion of a culture of death and invest instead in life-affirming, compassionate hospice and palliative care, which is seriously underutilized.”

Vallière also called for better access to palliative care. 

“Gov. Hochul’s statements undermine the importance of hospice and palliative care, which provides the compassionate end-of-life experience for which so many are advocating but is drastically underutilized in New York,” Vallière said. “We need more access to this care, not a fast track to death in the absence of it.”

Illinois state capitol in Springfield. / Credit: Paul Brady Photography/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Dec 17, 2025 / 12:34 pm (CNA).

Catholic leaders in Illinois are backing a coalition of pro-life pregnancy centers and doctors suing the state government over a law that requires them to refer women to abortion providers even if they object to the procedure on religious grounds. 

The lawsuit, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Treto, challenges a 2016 Illinois rule that requires health care providers who refuse to perform abortions to nevertheless tout the “benefits” of the procedure and refer women to abortion clinics. 

In April the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois partly blocked the law, ruling that it violates freedom of speech in forcing providers to relay the alleged benefits of abortion. The court, however, held that the abortion referral requirement is legal. 

The case is currently at appeal from both sides in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Dec. 16, the Catholic Conference of Illinois and the Illinois Catholic Health Association joined several Orthodox advocates in an amicus brief urging the court to offer the “highest level of protection” to the religious speech of the pro-life plaintiffs. 

“Providing the highest level of First Amendment protection to religious institutions gives them the predictability they need to pursue their religious missions,” the filing said, arguing that forcing health care providers to refer abortions “could lead people to believe that such conduct is morally acceptable.”

First Amendment jurisprudence, the filing argues, leaves “no doubt that the abortion-referral requirement burdens core religious speech without proper justification.”

Chicago archbishop Cardinal Blase Cupich said in a press statement that “every life deserves protection and care, no matter how fragile or dependent.” 

“The Church in Illinois is standing up for that eternal truth against Illinois’ effort to deny it,” the prelate said. 

Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki similarly argued that Catholics “must be free to live according to the 2,000-year-old teachings of our faith without government intrusion.” 

“Illinois’ mandate threatens that freedom by forcing Catholic ministries and health care professionals to promote a practice we believe is gravely wrong,” he said. “We pray the court will put a swift stop to it.”

The amicus brief was filed by the religious liberty law group Becket. 

Lawyers for the pro-life plaintiffs have argued that the abortion referral requirement violates the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, which was brought by the same organization at the head of the Illinois dispute. 

The Supreme Court held in that decision that a similar California rule appeared to violate the First Amendment by “requiring [pro-life providers] to inform women how they can obtain state-subsidized abortions.”

San Diego Auxiliary Bishop Ramón Bejarano celebrates Mass at St. Augustine’s School on Dec. 5, 2021, to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe. / Credit: John Gastaldo/Catholic Diocese of San Diego

Vatican City, Dec 17, 2025 / 10:18 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Bishop Ramón Bejarano, currently auxiliary bishop of San Diego, as the next bishop of Monterey in California. The appointment was publicized on Dec. 17 by the Holy See Press Office at the Vatican and by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

Bejarano succeeds Bishop Daniel E. Garcia, who led Monterey before being appointed bishop of Austin, Texas, on July 2 and installed there on Sept. 18.

Bejarano was born July 17, 1969, in Laredo, Texas, and completed ecclesiastical studies at the diocesan seminary in Tijuana, Mexico, and at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon, the Vatican said. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Stockton on Aug. 15, 1998.

Named titular bishop of Carpi and auxiliary bishop of San Diego on Feb. 27, 2020, he received episcopal consecration on July 14, 2020.

The Diocese of Monterey is comprised of 21,916 square miles in California and has a total population of 1,042,464, of which 368,150 are Catholic, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Bishop Ronald A. Hicks of Joliet, Illinois. / Credit: Diocese of Joliet YouTube video

Vatican City, Dec 17, 2025 / 09:58 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV has chosen Bishop Ronald Hicks of the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois, to be the next archbishop of New York — the most consequential U.S. episcopal appointment of Leo’s pontificate thus far.

The appointment was confirmed by EWTN News with two independent sources with direct knowledge of the appointment.

Hicks, 58, will succeed Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has led New York, the second-largest U.S. archdiocese by population — with 2.5 million Catholics — since 2009.

The choice of Hicks for one of the most important U.S. archdioceses is likely to be heavily scrutinized for the insight it may give into the direction Pope Leo wishes to take the Church in the U.S.

A native of Illinois, Hicks has led the Joliet Diocese since September 2020. He was an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago from 2018 to 2020, following three years as the archdiocese’s vicar general from 2015 to 2018.

Hicks was born on Aug. 4, 1967, in the town of Harvey, Illinois, south of Chicago, and grew up in South Holland, one suburb over from Dolton, where Pope Leo XIV grew up.

“I recognize a lot of similarities between [Pope Leo] and me,” Hicks told WGN in an interview in May. “So we grew up literally in the same radius, in the same neighborhood together. We played in the same parks, went swimming in the same pools, liked the same pizza places to go to.”

Ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1994, Hicks’ priestly ministry included time as an associate pastor and pastor, and dean of formation as St. Joseph College Seminary.

In 2005, he began a five-year term as regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH) in Central America. Based in El Salvador, he oversaw the care of more than 3,400 orphaned and abandoned children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries.

He returned to Chicago in 2010 to serve as dean of formation at Mundelein Seminary before Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago appointed him vicar general of the archdiocese on Jan. 1, 2015.

As bishop, Hicks serves on the Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations for the U.S. bishops’ conference, and as the conference liaison to the Association of Ongoing Formation of Priests and the National Association of Diaconate Directors.

The Archdiocese of New York serves Catholics in the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, and in seven counties to the north.

“It just doesn’t feel like a holiday without pasta,” my mother-in-law told us as she set a steaming bowl of tortellini onto the table in preparation for Christmas dinner. Now, I love pasta almost as much as an Italian. My husband, Eric, and I make it easily twice a week for dinner. But that statement […]

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Maybe you haven’t noticed him. Essentially a means to someone else’s ends, Mr. Potter’s anonymous manservant in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life has a simple job: getting the wheelchair-bound Potter from here to there. Captive to the tyrant in the beloved Christmas movie, he might be a patron saint of Advent. Throughout my many […]

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