In a video with more than five million views, college football stars Fernando Mendoza and Carson Beck drop to their knees in prayer on the field before the CFP Championship.

The Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Agnes (c. 304). St. Agnes, like St. Cecilia, is to be numbered among the most famous martyrs of Rome. When the Diocletian persecution was at its height, and when priests as well as laymen were apostatizing from the faith, Agnes, a girl of twelve, freely chose to die for Christ. When she was commanded to offer incense to false gods, she raised her hand to Christ and made the Sign of the Cross. When the heathens threatened to bind her hand and foot, she herself hastened to the place of torture as a bride to her wedding feast. Pain had no terror for her--although the fetters slipped from her small hands while even the pagan bystanders were moved to tears.

"Thank you, Archbishop Gomez, for introducing me to her!” David Henrie wrote about his wife, Maria, after the red carpet premiere of his EWTN+ series, "Seeking Beauty."

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- People of faith and goodwill need to take time to acknowledge the needs and suffering of those around them and be moved by love and compassion to offer others concrete help, Pope Leo XIV said.

To love one's neighbor -- whom Jesus identifies as anyone who has need of us -- is within everyone's reach, he said in his message for the 34th World Day of the Sick, observed by the church Feb. 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

"The pain that moves us to compassion is not the pain of a stranger; it is the pain of a member of our own body, to whom Christ, our head, commands us attend, for the good of all," the pope wrote in the message released Jan. 20. 

The theme chosen for the 2026 observance is inspired by the parable of the good Samaritan and Pope Francis' encyclical on human fraternity, "Fratelli Tutti."

Titled, "The compassion of the Samaritan: Loving by bearing the pain of the other," the message focuses on the importance of: encountering and listening to others; being moved by compassion; and loving God through concrete action in solidarity with others.

While traditionally addressed to Catholic health care and pastoral workers, this year's message is offered to everyone, Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said at a Vatican news conference to present the message Jan. 20.

The message is offered to everyone because "we're one body, one humanity of brothers and sisters, and when someone's sick and suffering, all the other categories -- which tend to divide -- fade away into insignificance," the cardinal said.

Asked to comment about how people in the United States should best respond when witnessing violence toward immigrants, Cardinal Czerny said, "I don't know what to say about the larger picture," but he said it would be helpful to focus on "the underview" or what should or is happening on the ground.

"There are many situations in which the individual Christian, the individual citizen, can extend their hand or lend their support. And that's extremely important," he said. "I suppose we could all hope that those many gestures, many Samaritan gestures, can also translate into better politics." 

The Catholic "struggle for justice," he told Catholic News Service, gets "its real depth and its real meaning" from daily lived experience helping real people.

Advocacy work, for example, should "evolve out of real experience," he said. "When, let's say, your visits to the sick reveal, for example, the injustice of inaccessibility to health care, well then you take it up as an issue, but on the basis of your lived -- and indeed pastoral and Christian -- experience."

The good Samaritan shows that "we are all in a position to respond" to anyone in need, he said. "And the mystery, which you can discover whether you are a Christian or not, is that by responding, in a sense, your own suffering is also addressed."

"Since the major suffering for so many today, young and not so young, is loneliness and hopelessness, by worrying about it less and reaching out to someone who needs you, you will discover that there's more life than you imagined," he added.

In his message, Pope Leo said, "To serve one’s neighbor is to love God through deeds." 

In fact, the "true meaning of loving ourselves," he wrote, involves "setting aside any attempt to base our self-esteem or sense of dignity on worldly stereotypes -- such as success, career, status or family background -- and recovering our proper place before God and neighbor."

"I genuinely hope that our Christian lifestyle will always reflect this fraternal, 'Samaritan' spirit -- one that is welcoming, courageous, committed and supportive, rooted in our union with God and our faith in Jesus Christ," Pope Leo wrote.

"Enkindled by this divine love, we will surely be able to give of ourselves for the good of all who suffer, especially our brothers and sisters who are sick, elderly or afflicted," he wrote.

St. Fabian and St. Sebastian have always been paired together, with their names coupled in the ancient martyrologies, and still paired in the Litany of Saints. The Church today celebrates separate Optional Memorials for Sts. Fabian and Sebastian:

The Roman Martyrology commemorates Sts. Marius (Maris), Martha, Audifax, and Abachum (d. 270), a group of Persian martyrs of the third century who died for the faith in Rome.

Today is Day One of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18-25. The theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2026 is taken from Ephesians 4:4, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling."

The Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Anthony, Abbot (251-356) from the 3rd century. St. Anthony, the Father of the monastics, retired to the desert at about the age of eighteen in order to live in perfect solitude. Many heard about his ascetic life and came to join him in his hermitage, He laid the foundations of community life, and gave to his disciples that profound broad and sane instruction, the mature result of solitude and prayer, which forms the surest basis of Christian asceticism.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Leo XIV, who plays the daily online puzzle Wordle, is not the only papal puzzle lover.

His predecessor and namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was also passionate about wordplay, anonymously publishing riddles in Latin.

Going by the pseudonym "X," the Italian-born Pope Leo used to craft poetic puzzles for a Roman periodical at the turn of the 19th century.

The modern-day Pope Leo from Chicago, however, is a fan of the New York Times' popular online word game in which players get six chances to guess a five-letter word. 

During a live link-up with thousands of young people taking part in the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis and millions more online Nov. 21, Pope Leo was asked about and shared his gaming strategy.

"I use a different word for Wordle every day. So there is no set starting word in case you're wondering," he said, laughing. His older brother, John Prevost, has said the two of them also play the multiplayer game, Words with Friends, online regularly and compare scores.

So while Pope Leo XIV likes to play word games, his 19th-century predecessor liked to create them.

Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903, created lengthy riddles, known as "charades," in Latin in which readers had to guess a rebus-like answer from two or more words that together formed the syllables of a new word.

Eight of his puzzles were published anonymously in "Vox Urbis," a Rome newspaper that was printed entirely in Latin between 1898 and 1913. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published an article about this historical detail in 2014.

According to the article, any "Vox Urbis" reader who submitted the correct answer to the riddle received a book of Latin poetry written by either Pope Leo or another noted Catholic figure.  

The identity of the mysterious riddle-maker, however, was eventually revealed by a French reporter covering the Vatican for the daily newspaper Le Figaro.

Felix Ziegler published his scoop Jan. 9, 1899, a year after the puzzles started appearing, revealing that "Mr. X" was, in fact, the reigning pope, the Vatican newspaper said. 

In the pope's hometown, Carpineto Romano, which is about 35 miles southeast of Rome, students at the middle school named for him published 26 of the pope's Latin puzzles in a book titled, "Aenigmata: The Charades of Pope Leo XIII." It includes puzzles that teachers and pupils found, but which had never been published before.

One example of the pope's Latin riddles talked of a "little boat nimbly dancing," which sprang a leak as it "welcomed the shore so near advancing."

"The whole your eyes have known, your pallid cheeks have shown; for oh! the swelling tide no bravest heart could hide, when your dear mother died," continues the translation of part of the riddle-poem.

The answer, "lacrima," ("teardrop") merges clues elsewhere in the poem for "lac" ("milk") and "rima" ("leak" or "fissure").

Pope Leo XIII, who headed the universal church from 1878 to 1903, was a trained Vatican diplomat and a man of culture.

He was even a member of an exclusive society of learning founded in Rome in 1690 called the Academy of Arcadia, whose purpose was to "wage war on the bad taste" engulfing baroque Italy. Pope Leo, whose club name was "Neandro Ecateo," was the last pope to be a member of the circle of poets, artists, musicians and highly cultured aristocrats and religious. 

The pope was also passionate about hunting and viniculture. Unable to leave the confines of the Vatican after Italy was unified and the papal states brought to an end in 1870, he pursued his hobbies in the Vatican Gardens.

He had a wooden blind set up to hide in while trapping birds, which he then would set free immediately.

He also had his own small vineyard, which, according to one historical account, he tended himself, hoeing out the weeds, and visiting often for moments of prayer and writing poetry.

Apparently, one day, gunfire was heard from the pope's vineyard, triggering fears of a papal assassination attempt.

Instead, it turned out the pope had ordered a papal guard to send a salvo of bullets into the air to scare off the sparrows who were threatening his grape harvest.

Pope Leo XIII has the fourth-longest pontificate in history -- at 25 years -- after being nudged out of third place by St. John Paul II, who was pope for more than 26 years. St. Peter is considered the longest-reigning pontiff at 34 years. 

Pope Leo XIII wrote 86 encyclicals, including the church's groundbreaking "Rerum Novarum," which ushered in the era of Catholic social teaching.

Known for his openness to historical sciences, Pope Leo ordered in 1881 that the Vatican Secret Archives be open to researchers, and he formally established the Vatican Observatory in 1891 as a visible sign of the church's centuries-old support for science.

The Roman Martyrology commemorates Pope St. Marcellus I (d. 309), who was elected Pope in 308, just at the time when the Emperor Diocletian had spent somewhat his first violence against the Church. In Rome he reorganized the Catholic hierarchy disrupted by the persecution. He was exiled and put to labor. He is considered a martyr as he died in 309 because of his treatment during his exile.