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Notre Dame Appoints Abortion Advocate to Lead Asian Studies Institute...

The University of Notre Dame plans to install as director of a university-wide institute a scholar who has described laws prohibiting abortion as “violence,” “sexual abuse” and “trauma” and has linked efforts to end abortion to white supremacy. “Abortion access is freedom-enhancing, in the truest sense of the word,” states a column in Salon co-authored by Susan Ostermann...

Cardinal Roche Doubles Down on ‘Traditionis Custodes’...

In an undelivered address to cardinals last week, Cardinal Arthur Roche planned to voice opposition to the traditional Roman Rite, which he sees as a concession that needs to be eventually phased out in favor of the post-Vatican II liturgy as the unique expression of the Latin Rite. In a two-page text on Traditionis Custodes...

Why Are Mosques Burning in Tehran? In the Case of Iran, the Answer Is Complicated.....

Coming a few days after Christmas 2025, the protests erupting in Iran caught much of the Western world by surprise. Of course, Iran has had major protests before (2009-2010, 2011, 2019-2020, 2022-2023), which have often been brutally suppressed by the Islamic Republic’s security forces. This time, however, the protests appear to have been even larger...

Remembering Cardinal John O’Connor, a Saintly Hero...

For generations, the archbishop of New York has held a singular place in the life of the Catholic Church in the United States — standing at the crossroads of culture, conscience and public witness. Few shepherds embodied that national role more clearly than Cardinal John O’Connor, who died in May 2000 after nearly 16 years as archbishop of New York...

Scientists Create Robots Smaller Than a Grain of Sand...

In robotics, as in so many things, small is beautiful. The trouble is that making them really small is very nearly impossible. “Building robots that operate independently at sizes below one millimeter is incredibly difficult,” says roboticist Marc Miskin at the University of Pennsylvania. “The field has essentially been stuck on this problem for 40 years.”

Religious Art and Life: Recognizing the Beauty of Goodness...

A fine recent article on the late Renaissance painter Caravaggio* reminded me that artistic brilliance may not always be matched by moral achievement. This is a problem that plagues everyone in every walk in life, but it is particularly annoying when the moral reputation of an artist stands between his work and our ability to appreciate it...

Pontiff praises Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network, encourages it to invite youth to participate (CWN)

Noting that prayer is “not external to the evangelical work of the Body of Christ, but an integral part of it,” Pope Leo XIV praised the work of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and encouraged it to “invite young people to take part so that they may form the next generation of intercessors for the needs of the whole world.”

Pope encourages Regnum Christi to define its charism more clearly (CWN)

Pope Leo XIV encouraged participants in the general assemblies of the consecrated members of Regnum Christi to define their charism “with ever greater clarity,” to identify their own style of “authentically evangelical governance,” and to “promote ever deeper communion” within the Regnum Christi family.

Arkansas bishop sees 'similar patterns' between 1930s Nazi Germany, US today (Arkansas Catholic)

Although “Trump is no Hitler” and “the United States is not Germany in the 1930s,” the bishop of Little Rock, Arkansas, said that “it is sobering to see similar patterns reemerging from that fateful decade.”

Bishop Anthony Taylor, whose grandfather lost 20 cousins in the Holocaust, wrote in a recent diocesan newspaper column that “I fear that the same dynamics are now happening in our country with the decline of civil discourse.”

Hitler’s atrocities “ are not what is happening here today,” Bishop Taylor said. “But these are the kinds of atrocities to which the dehumanization of mass, indiscriminate deportation can naturally lead.”

The prelate concluded:

But aside from our political situation, I pray that we will begin to look at the immigrants and refugees in our midst not as enemies or as “other.” Not as different in color or in accent. Not as dangers or risks. But as created in the image and likeness of the same true God—as the stranger in our midst—as Jesus (Matthew 25:35). Peace be with you.