The Vatican is commemorating the third anniversary of the death of Pope Benedict XVI with two memorial Masses.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2012 to 2017, was the principal celebrant at the memorial Mass last evening at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica (video). Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, celebrates Mass today at the late Pontiff’s tomb.

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The mayor of Rome expressed a “very positive” assessment of the jubilee year, which draws to a close on January 6.

The jubilee “has been—and continues to be—an extraordinary jubilee in terms of the level of participation and in terms of the spirit of genuine, tangible hope we have seen in the millions of pilgrims who have come, and who continue to come, to Rome,” Roberto Gualtieri said in an interview with Vatican News. “Rome gave the jubilee great commitment and many volunteers, but we must not forget that the city received an enormous amount from this jubilee, thanks to which the face of the city has improved.”

In his 2023 year-end homily, Pope Francis criticized the city of Rome for its deficient functionality. In his 2024 year-end homily, Pope Francis thanked the city’s mayor for “moving the city forward” through construction projects.

In an unsigned, front-page editorial in its December 30 edition, the Vatican newspaper said that this image by illustrator Filippo Sassoli “perfectly summarizes the meaning of a year that is about to end.”

“The dove of peace invites us to look upwards, towards that star that leads to Life and Truth,” according to L’Osservatore Romano. “But the man-machine, instead, stubbornly turns its gaze downwards, closed in on itself and its own selfishness.”

The editorial continued:

It is a machine with human features, increasingly human, with ever greater potential, almost without limits. And it looks (with astonishment?) at the being it holds in its hands: the dove of peace. Peace is in its hands. It can suffocate it or release it to realize its dream of hope.

Citing Pope Leo’s Message for the World Day of Peace, the Vatican newspaper added that while AI has had promising results in health care, there have also been “disturbing signs: let us think of its use in the military field.”

The Prefecture of the Papal Household announced that 3,176,620 people attended papal Masses, audiences, and other events at the Vatican in 2025: 262,820 during the last months of Pope Francis’s papacy, and 2,913,800 during the beginning of Pope Leo’s.

In 2024, 1,682,100 people attended papal events at the Vatican, according to ZENIT News’s compilation of data from the Prefecture. The last time the attendance figure surpassed 3 million was in 2016.

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An Anglican prelate has broken with one conservative splinter group in the US to form another.

Bishop Derek Jones, who split from the Anglican Church of North America, has announced the formation of a new Anglican Reformed Catholic Church. The new group claims 14 parishes. The group from which it has seceded, the Anglican Church in North America, was established in 2009 by Anglicans dismayed by the liberal trends in the worldwide Anglican communion. The latest schism has been marked by lawsuits over contested property and legal authority.

Bishop Jones says of his new group:

We seek to provide a stable church home characterized by clear leadership accountability, uncompromising doctrinal standards, biblical stewardship of resources, and an abiding connection to Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The group has affiliated itself with the Union of Scranton, a coalition of “Old Catholic” churches that broke with the Vatican in the 19th century.

At his final public audience of 2025, on December 31, Pope Leo XIV looked across at the Jubilee Year and exhorted the faithful to be thankful to God for past blessings and ask the Lord “to renew, in us and around us, in the coming days, the wonders of his grace and mercy.”

The past year, the Pope remarked, has seen memorable days: “Some of them joyful, such as the pilgrimage of so many of the faithful on the occasion of the Holy Year; others painful, such as the passing of the late Pope Francis, and the scenarios of war that continue to convulse the planet.”

Reminding his audience of the traditional singing of the Te Deum on December 31 in thanks for the year’s blessings, the Pope said that the year’s end also is a time for examination of conscience, asking God’s forgiveness for “all the times we have failed to treasure his inspirations and invest the talents he has entrusted to us in the best possible way.”

Reflecting on the pilgrimages that so many Catholics made during the Jubilee Year, the Pope said: “Our whole life is a journey whose final destination transcends space and time.” That journey finds its end “in the encounter with God and in full and eternal communion with Him.”

With that hopeful attitude, the Holy Father encouraged the faithful to join in the thankful praise that marks the year’s end, saying:

God is Love! God loves me! God awaited me, and I have found him! God is mercy! God is forgiveness! God is salvation! God, yes, God is life!