US President Donald Trump has pardoned 23 peaceful pro-life activists jailed under the previous presidency of Joe Biden.

Mr Trump signed an executive order on the eve of the national March for Life and announced: “They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honour to sign this.”

Pope Francis says AI – artificial intelligence – poses “a unique set of questions and challenges” for humanity.

In a message sent to the 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) taking place in Davos, Switzerland, the pontiff said AI is intended to imitate the human intelligence that designed it.

The president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has criticised various executive orders signed by President Trump.

Speaking for the USCCB as a whole, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio stated: “It is our hope that the leadership of our country will reconsider those actions which disregard not only the human dignity of a few, but of us all.”

On his first day back in office, President Trump signed 26 executive orders, which included rescinding 78 orders from the previous administration.

The law is a powerful teacher: for good or ill, it forms as well as follows social mores. Among the effects but also the causes of the Sexual Revolution was the landmark US Supreme Court case of Griswold vs Connecticut (1965), which concerned two doctors who were arrested after opening a birth control clinic. 

Connecticut law had created a crime for “any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception”. The US Supreme Court found that such a law – not used in practice to arrest couples – was unconstitutional. Yet there seemed to be nothing in the US Constitution that e.g. a ban on sale of contraceptives violated. The judges could find no such provision in the Constitution so were reduced to claiming that implicit in it was what Judge William Douglas called a “right to marital privacy.”  

One of the more interesting passages in Pope Francis’s television interview on Sunday was his statement that sins of the flesh are less damaging than “angelic” sins, such as lying or committing fraud.

Speaking to Italian journalist Fabio Fazio on the show Che Tempo Che Fa, Francis said the “most serious sins” are those of which angels are capable.

One of the most extraordinary phenoma of the last ten years has been the explosive growth of Catholic spirituality on the Internet in the form of podcasts and other broadcasts.

Thomas Casemore recently described the astonishing growth of religious podcasts in general and Catholic ones in particular in this magazine.

Most people won’t be aware of the extraordinary success that Fr. Mike Schmidt had when, in 2021, he provided the opportunity to read the Bible in a year via his “Ascension” app. It has since been downloaded over 700 million times. Its companion app, the Rosary in a year, achieved a million downloads within four days of its launch on January 1 2025.

President Donald Trump has criticised the sermon given by the Episcopal bishop who presided over a post-inauguration interfaith prayer service at Washington National Cathedral.

A federal policy preventing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from making arrests at places deemed as sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals, looks set to end under the new Trump administration.

President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the United States has raised “urgent moral and human concerns”, says Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, who highlighted how the proposed change to the long-standing policy over sensitive locations is striking “fear into the heart” of border communities.

Pope Francis has discussed how those who have been trapped in Gaza’s only Catholic parish have had their first decent meal in a long time following the ceasefire established between Israel and Hamas.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that aims to restore “biological truth to the federal government” of the United States.

It accompanies a pledge by the new administration to “defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognise women are biologically female, and men are biologically male”.

A retired priest from the Diocese of Brooklyn has given the closing benediction at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration ceremony today.

Wearing a red-and-gold-coloured stole, during his benediction Fr Frank Mann, a former priest at St Sebastian Catholic Church in Woodside, Queens, described the inauguration as a “pivotal moment in history”.

Pope Francis is well known for shunning the glitz and the glam that goes with the office of Pope. But, in case there was any doubt, he doubled down on this stance in his recent autobiography “Hope”. His comments on how he prefers his orthopaedic footwear to the iconic papal red shoes much favoured by Pope Benedict XVI made the Catholic news headlines last week. In a similar vein, in his autobiography, the Pope reflects, “I didn’t want the velvet mozzetta, nor the linen rochet…They were not for me. Two days later they told me I would have to change my trousers, wear white ones. They made me laugh. ‘I don’t want to be an ice-cream seller,’ I said. And I kept my own.”

When Pope Francis announced the Jubilee for 2025, he said “we must fan the flame of hope that has been given us.” He explained that the Jubilee can restore a “climate of hope and trust as a prelude to the renewal and rebirth that we so urgently desire”.

Looking at the state of our troubled world, we can see just how desperate and in urgent need we are for a restoration of hope and trust. 

War continues to destroy lives and trample hope, from the Holy Land to Ukraine and in other countries where conflict reigns. 

Today the Church commemorates Saint Sebastian, a 3rd-century member of the Pretorian Guard of the pagan emperor Diocletian, who, on discovering that his personal soldier was a Christian, ordered him to be shot by archers. They, believing Sebastian to have been finished off, left the scene. Along came Irene, a fellow Christian known to Sebastian, who took him to a secret location, tended his wounds and nursed him back to health.

President Donald Trump said he was “saved by God to make America great again” during his inauguration today, referring to the assassination attempt against him in Pennsylvania during his election campaign.

“The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you,” the new president said after swearing his oath of office.

Pope Francis has said it would be a “disgrace” for incoming US president Donald Trump to make good on promises to expel undocumented immigrants.

“We have not spoken [of this], but if it is true, it will be a disgrace, because he will make these poor unfortunates, who have nothing, pay the bill of disorder,” the Pope told Italian TV host Fabio Fazio during a conversation on Fazio’s Che Tempo Che Fa program on 19 January.

Pope Francis has marked today’s inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States of America by sending him a special inauguration telegram.

In the 20 January telegram sent ahead of Trump starting his second term in office, the Pope said, “I offer cordial greetings and the assurance of my prayers that Almighty God will grant you wisdom, strength and protection in the exercise of your high duties.”

Pope Francis has made the Vatican’s first public statement about the ceasefire agreement to the war in Gaza since it was announced last week.

As the ceasefire took effect on Sunday, Pope Francis praised the milestone, voicing hope that the authorities involved, alongside international leaders, can achieve a lasting peace. The pontiff also advocated for a two-state solution.

Pope Francis has said he will soon name another women to a key role overseeing administration of the Vatican City State. It comes in the wake of him recently appointing the first-ever woman prefect of a Vatican department.

The Pope’s remarks came in an interview with Italian journalist Fabio Fazio on the popular evening television program Che tempo che fa that aired 19 January.

As the United States prepares for the second term of President Donald Trump, the city of Washington, DC, is preparing to welcome its new archbishop, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy.

Many observers thought Pope Francis would appoint a more centrist bishop to the post, but the pontiff placed a cardinal considered a leading figure of the Catholic Church’s liberal wing in the United States.