Australian Cardinal George Pell holds a copy of his book, "Prison Journal," during an interview with Catholic News Service at his residence in Rome Dec. 18, 2020. (CNS photo/Robert Duncan) Editor’s note:You can read Part 1 of this column here. In 2014, the newly elected Pope Francis decided to improve the state of the Vatican’s finances. He appointed the Australian cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) to be the first prefect of his new Secretariat for the Economy. Pell was seen as the sort of no-nonsense, thorough, and intelligent cardinal who could corral other cardinals into cleaning up their mess. Pell ordered audits, established policy guidelines, and began to investigate the financial affairs of different Vatican offices. One would think that simply trying to introduce transparency into the Vatican finances would be non-controversial. One would be wrong. Just as Pell began to uncover problems, a series of child sexual abuse charges from Australia were leveled at Pell in 2017. While …
"Exactly when he was investigating financial improprieties in the Vatican, he was forced to leave Rome and face trial on charges that are so weak as to be barely believable."
Saicy Hualde led her group of transgender women carrying a large replica of the Black Nazarene ahead of the annual feast at Quiapo Church in the Philippine capital, Manila, on Jan. 9. Hualde and her companions are eager to join millions of Filipinos in the historic annual procession honouring the 17th-century dark-colored statue of Jesus.
Lexington’s Bishop Stowe on Venezuela: “I lament how the Pope’s words for January 1, the World Day of Prayer for Peace, in which he reiterated the call for an ‘unarmed and disarming peace’ were completely ignored by the US administration in pursuit of its own ill-defined goals and with reckless disregard for human life and rule of law.”
Fri Jan 2, 2026 - 12:51 pm EST (LifeSiteNews) — After the Indiana Hoosiers’ huge win at the Rose Bowl on New Years Day, quarterback Fernando Mendoza, a devout Catholic, once again began a post-game interview by giving glory to God. “First of all, my team and I want to give all the glory to God,” he said. “The first thing football superstar Fernando Mendoza did after winning the Rose Bowl was praise God,” noted conservative social media commentator Anna Lulis. “This is one of the greatest interviews you will ever see,” said Lulis. The first thing football superstar Fernando Mendoza did after winning the Rose Bowl was praise God “First of all, my team and I want to give all the glory to God.” This is one of the greatest interviews you will ever see. pic.twitter.com/tXOqqZMYb6 — Anna Lulis (@annamlulis) January 2, 2026 As usual, Mendoza, fresh off being awarded the coveted Heisman Trophy, pointed not to his own achievements, but to those of his teammates and coaches, while ultimately …
By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 31, 2025 As the year 2025 comes to an end, so does my career as editor of Catholic World News. I am retiring from the daily-news business, effective January 1. CWN was born during the height of the “dot.com” era. Dozens of online enterprises sprang up in the 1990s, made sensational claims, earned millions for their founders, and then disappeared without a trace, never having produced a saleable product. Thirty-odd years later, little CWN is still chugging along, providing reliable headline news coverage for thousands of readers every weekday. But beginning this week, CWN will be chugging along without me. Thirty years is a long time to plow through news releases, write up stories, check sources, and read Vatican news releases every day. Although I still love my work, and feel the urge to keep writing, I also recognize a need to step away from the daily grind and work on my own projects, on my own schedule. As I bow out, I owe a debt …
“Tina Thompson found a different way to be Catholic,” reads the lede of a sympathetic story in the Kansas City Reflector The heroine of the story had strayed from her Catholic faith, but now announces that she has returned, as a priest. And the reporter takes her seriously, adding that “she is one of hundreds of women Catholic priests around the world.”
“Analysts say the choice of Chicago native Ronald Hicks as Dolan’s successor is a clear signal of Pope Leo’s desire for a course correction in the US church, which many progressive Catholics, including some in the Vatican, felt had allied itself too closely with the Republican party.”
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.
Brigitte Macron can clearly be seen receiving Communion while the commentator says: “She has the perfect right to do so.” He adds that Emmanuel Macron did not approach to receive the Host out of “total respect” for “secularism,” the separation between Church and state that the French call “laïcité.”
Mon Dec 8, 2025 - 12:21 pm EST (LifeSiteNews) — Father Guy Pagès is a priest of the diocese of Paris well known for his work on Islam, its incoherence, and its total incompatibility with the Catholic faith. He recently wrote an open letter to Pope Leo XIV asking him to impose sanctions on those who allowed a profanation of the Holy Eucharist when France’s first lady was publicly given Communion during a special Mass celebrated by the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, in Notre Dame Cathedral. The occasion was the cathedral’s official reopening after the terrible fire, beginning on the Monday of Holy Week in 2019, that could have destroyed it. Pagè’s letter is full of anguish regarding the eternal fate of those who made this sacrilege possible and, mentioning the assessment of Benedict XVI, warns that a parallel can be made between the abuse of children within the Church and contempt for the Body of Christ. READ: Bishop Eleganti: Vatican trying to play both sides of the women deacons …
Unfortunately, such a business model is no longer viable today. Over the past 20 years, as people turned to the internet to get instant news and analysis, more than 2000 newspapers in North America closed.
Mesečnik Catholic Family News v ZDA zapira svoja vrata. Decembrska številka bo zadnja, s tem pa se bo končalo obdobje, ki se je začelo leta 1993 in pod vodstvom pokojnega Johna Vennarija (+2017) postalo znan katoliški apostolat. Publikacija, znana po poglobljenih analizah o cerkvenih vprašanjih, pravi, da je njen model zastarel: "V zadnjih 20 letih, ko so se ljudje za takojšnje novice in analize obrnili na internet, se je v Severni Ameriki zaprlo več kot 2.000 časopisov." Število naročnin se je zdaj zmanjšalo pod raven, ki je finančno upravičena, kar je spodbudilo ukinitev časopisa.
Americký mesačník Catholic Family News končí svoju činnosť. Decembrové číslo bude jeho posledným, čím sa končí činnosť, ktorá sa začala v roku 1993 a stala sa známym katolíckym apoštolátom pod vedením zosnulého Johna Vennariho (+2017). Publikácia, známa svojimi hĺbkovými analýzami o cirkevných otázkach, tvrdí, že jej model je zastaraný: "Za posledných 20 rokov, keď sa ľudia obrátili na internet, aby získali okamžité správy a analýzy, viac ako 2 000 novín v Severnej Amerike zaniklo." Úroveň predplatného v súčasnosti klesla pod úroveň, ktorá je finančne únosná, čo bolo dôvodom na ukončenie činnosti.
Mon Dec 1, 2025 - 7:11 pm EST CALGARY, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian pastor who received one year’s house arrest for protesting a “drag queen story hour” event marketed to children at a public library in 2023 might soon face jail time after refusing to apologize to a local librarian. Pastor Derek Reimer of Calgary, Alberta, is currently serving a one-year house arrest, which he had previously appealed, as reported by LifeSiteNews. Last Wednesday, he was in court to go over his sentence conditions. As reported by LifeSiteNews, in 2023, Reimer’s Mission 7 Ministries lawyer Andrew MacKenzie filed an appeal to a sentence of one year’s house arrest and two years’ probation handed to the pastor before Christmas for protesting a “drag queen story hour” event targeting kids at Calgary’s Saddletown Library in the spring of 2023. Government lawyers had been seeking to sentence Reimer to jail time for his protest against the LGBT agenda. Reimer told LifeSiteNews at the time of his …
German Catholic writer and sociologist Gabriele Kuby also believes the Hamburg framework is “in accordance with the resolutions” of the Synodal Way, a four-year consultation with the laity in which the clerical sex-abuse scandal was used to usher in radical changes to the Church in Germany. She also sees it as a consequence not only of what she has called a societal “relapse into the barbarism of paganism” but also a failure to adequately counter the abandonment of Catholic sexual morality.
Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church, Istanbul. Image credit: By Alessandro57 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Ephrem_Syriac_Orthodox_Church_In_Ye%C5%9Filk%C3%B6y,_Istanbul.jpg Pope Leo XIV hopes to visit Jerusalem in 2033, to mark the 2000th anniversary of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. In his closing remarks at Saturday morning’s ecumenical meeting in the Church of Mor Ephrem – the Syriac Orthodox church in Istanbul that was the first new church building erected since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 – Pope Leo XIV invited everyone present at the ecumenical gathering “to journey together on the spiritual journey leading to the Jubilee of Redemption in 2033, with the prospect of a return to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room.” That’s according to a statement from the press office of the Holy See, given to journalists traveling with Leo in Turkey, where the pontiff has been since Thursday to mark the 1700th anniversary of the …