"Lebanon needed this embrace." The words went out over a social media platform, made more poignant for the accompanying image of Pope Leo XIV consoling a weeping Lebanese woman. I couldn't help thinking "perhaps the whole world needed it, and needs this pope, for this time." Leo's papacy, of nine months gestation, has revealed itself slowly...

Jimmy Lai, the Catholic human rights advocate whose long-running national security trial in China has drawn criticism and charges of persecution, was found guilty on Dec. 15 of multiple violations of China’s national security laws, bringing an end to several years of what advocates have described as a politically motivated show trial against a popular Hong Kong publisher.

It was Newman himself who observed in one of his most celebrated sermons that “one little deed, done against natural inclination for God’s sake” is a stronger proof of Christian character than “all the dust and chaff of mere profession.” And in Jane Austen’s more virtuous characters, we find ample support for the conclusion that, while most eminently delighting her readers, she sought also to instruct them.

Pope Leo XIV is expected to appoint Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet as the next Archbishop of New York, The Pillar has confirmed, with an announcement expected as early as Dec. 18.

In his most significant U.S. episcopal appointment to date, Pope Leo XIV is going back to his Chicago roots, tapping a young prelate with a remarkably similar background to his own as the next archbishop of New York. The Pope’s pick for the Big Apple is Bishop Ronald Hicks, 58, the current ordinary of the Diocese of Joliet...

When it was first published in 1993, Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical on the reform of Catholic moral theology, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), dealt a severe blow to the pride of many German theologians, who had long thought themselves the cutting edge of Catholic intellectual life...

Catholic leaders in Australia have responded with prayer and condemnation of antisemitism following what police described as a terrorist attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday that left 12 people dead and 29 others injured.

The Holy See said on Dec. 19 that Pope Leo XIV had made two new episcopal appointments in the United States, with the Vatican announcing a new bishop for the Diocese of Palm Beach as well as an auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Phoenix.

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...

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Bishop Richard Moth, a former bishop of Britain’s military ordinariate, as the 12th Archbishop of Westminster, succeeding Cardinal Vincent Nichols who is retiring at the age of 80. A canon lawyer, Bishop Moth, 67, has served as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton in southern England for the past decade...