The ancestry of Pope Leo XIV has been traced across more than 15 generations and four continents, encompassing African American, French, Spanish, Sicilian and Cuban roots. According to a report published by The New York Times Magazine on 11 June 2025, his maternal grandparents from New Orleans’ Seventh Ward were described in early 20th-century records as “black,” “mulatto” and “free persons of colour.” His family tree includes enslaved individuals, slaveholders, Spanish hidalgos, French Canadian settlers and Sicilian immigrants. Genealogists have also confirmed that he is distantly related to a number of public figures, including Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Madonna, Justin Bieber and Jack Kerouac.

Blessed are the biohackers, for they shall inherit the cloud

Christian transhumanism sounds like a contradiction – and maybe it is. For decades, transhumanism has belonged to atheists and techno-futurists. It is a gospel of wires and willpower, where man becomes God, silicon replaces spirit, and immortality is engineered rather than earned. This is Prometheus 2.0, with better branding and venture capital. Yet in the land of megachurches and microchips, something strange is stirring. A growing number of Christians in America now argue that resurrection and mind-uploading might not be at odds. That CRISPR and salvation could coexist. That eternal life through technology is not a betrayal of faith, but its fulfilment – an upgrade, not a heresy.

“All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:15).

God is Father, Son and Spirit, and the three Divine Persons communicate with each other and with us.

There are many scriptural passages where Jesus speaks to his Father, but only a few in which the Father speaks to the Son: at his Baptism (“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3:21) and just before his Passion (“I have glorified [your name], and I will glorify it again.” John 12:28).

He has only been in office for a month, but every word and action of Pope Leo XIV has been analysed extensively by the media trying to determine the mentality of the new pontiff. Though as Leo himself pointed out on 24 May: “Popes pass away, but the Curia remains.”

Most of what Leo has done, since being elected pontiff on 8 May, just a few weeks after Pope Francis died on 21 April, was already prepared for his predecessor, including the men Leo has appointed bishops, and the meetings with officials he has held. Even many of his homilies and speeches were probably drawn from things originally written by or for Francis.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is trying to help counter the widespread violence that has broken out in the city during protests against federal immigration operations in LA.

Unrest in the city, home to a large Latino population, broke out on 6 June after immigration raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at multiple sites, resulted in dozens of arrests of what authorities claimed were illegal migrants and gang members.

As Pope Leo XIV settles into his new role on the Throne of Peter, early indications suggest that he will respect and maintain the direction of his predecessor’s reforms for the Roman Curia, but will do so with a much softer tone.

Over the past week, the Pope has met with two different groupings of the most significant curial and diplomatic bodies of the Holy See: papal diplomatic representatives and employees and officials of the Secretariat of State, and he has also celebrated a broader Jubilee of the Holy See.

While Pope Francis, a populist at heart who preferred to work around his system rather than with or through it, often chided and corrected his governing apparatus, using his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia in 2013 to outline 15 “diseases” he believed the organisation had, Leo has adopted a tone of gratitude.

A Catholic official with the Southern Africa Bishops’ Conference has responded to the recent controversy surrounding the meeting between the US and South African presidents, during which Donald Trump made claims about genocide being conducted against white people in South Africa.

Mike Pothier is the Program Manager at the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office of the Southern Africa Bishops’ Conference. Speaking to Crux, Pothier said the effects of apartheid for Black people are still very much present in South Africa, and that it would take a very long time to undo the injustices that apartheid created.

Christians “who feel lost and without a way out” should bring their pain to Jesus Christ, Pope Leo XIV has declared, describing how such a candid display of our vulnerability to Jesus is a fundamental step in any journey of healing.

The pontiff was speaking during his General Audience on Wednesday, 11 May, when he made his comments in reference to the parable of the blind beggar Bartimaeus that is found in the Gospel of Mark.

Images of artwork created by a disgraced celebrity cleric accused of rape have disappeared from official Vatican Media websites without explanation, almost a year after the head of the Vatican’s communications outfit strongly defended his department’s continued use of the images.

The offending images were digital reproductions of works created by Fr Marko Rupnik – a former Jesuit accused of spiritually, psychologically, and sexually abusing dozens of victims over a period of 30 years – mostly while based in Rome.

Most of Rupnik’s alleged victims were women religious, several of whom belonged at one time to a congregation of sisters he had helped to establish in his native Slovenia.

Paul McCartney turns 83 on June 18. And while most will toast the melodies—those ageless hooks, that grin that launched a thousand harmonies—fewer will remember the Masses. But they mattered. Because before there was Shea Stadium, before there were screaming girls and sitars and acid epiphanies, there was a boy in a church pew, fumbling for meaning beneath the stained glass. Raised Catholic in Liverpool, McCartney’s early life was shaped not just by music, but by mystery. The kind that only Catholicism—with its incense, its sorrow, its whispers of redemption—knows how to keep alive.

The so-called “Rorschach test” stage of the papacy – in which people can project whatever they want onto the Pope in this early period – continues and will likely last for some time, as Leo seems to be easing his way into his reign.

With just four weeks at the helm, Pope Leo has demonstrated a sense of calm and restraint, preferring to get the lay of the land and understand how things work before making any big decisions. However, he has also wasted no time in getting down to business on certain lingering issues from the Francis papacy related to personnel and some matters of reform.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) – the largest Protestant denomination in the United States – is convening its annual meeting in Dallas this week and will vote on a series of resolutions addressing contentious moral and social issues. 

Chief among these is a measure urging efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalised same-sex marriage nationwide. While the SBC has long opposed same-sex unions, this marks the first time the denomination is formally calling on representatives of its tens of thousands of member churches to work towards ending legally recognised same-sex marriage. 

The rainbow flag, flown everywhere in “Pride month”, is not what it pretends to be. Its ubiquitous success feeds off our naivety and gullibility. It presents us with the challenge of distinguishing God from evil.

Jesus never took it for granted that the Church would find this task easy. His own experience was set in the context of a desert confrontation with the Devil at the beginning of his public ministry. During these confrontations, evil lied to him under the pretence of offering good outcomes. Jesus was to later warn his followers not to take people and their mission at face value, since evil could be expected to masquerade as good.

St Paul begged the early Christians to “test the spirits”. The presumption is that we will be faced with different strategies of evil presenting itself as good.

Pope Leo XIV has marked Pentecost Sunday by describing how the Holy Spirit “is the Gift that opens our lives to love” and opens borders in people’s hearts. This is in sharp contrast to what he discussed as the isolating impact of social media and modern communication platforms that leave people “confused and solitary travellers” overwhelmed by the crowd.

“The Spirit accomplished something extraordinary in the lives of the Apostles,” said the Pope, speaking on the Solemnity of Pentecost that marks the day when the Holy Spirit came down on the 12 Apostles, ten days after the Ascension of Jesus.

Cosima Gillhammer’s new book about the liturgy may well foster a renewed appreciation for what has, for many, become routine; Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy has certainly taken its place on my list of books to recommend to anyone curious to learning more about the Christian Faith.

Whether to a cradle Catholic who never really had the rigorous formation that a catechist receives, or someone just star ting their journey, Gillhammer’s work will sit alongside George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic as one to highlight the riches to be found in Christianity, and which Christianity has given to wider culture.

Pentecost was a feast when the Jews offered burnt sacrifices of animals and bread made from new grain at the harvest (Leviticus 23:15-20). So when the flames of the Holy Spirit appeared on that feast day upon the twelve apostles, it seemed that they too were being offered up as burnt sacrifices.

The burning of offerings was a way to give them to God completely, and when the Holy Spirit came, he took total possession of the apostles. They were unharmed by the flames but their minds and hearts were filled with divine gifts, so they could preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit wants to consume us with his fire too: he wants to take possession of us, which, paradoxically, is the only way we can be truly free.

Pope Leo XIV has discussed how unity in the Church won’t come from “our own efforts” nor “through any preconceived model or blueprint”, rather it depends on the will of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

His comments came during a conference at the Vatican to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, in which he discussed the relationship between the Western and Eastern Churches.

Meeting on Saturday with members of the Symposium “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity”, the pontiff said that unity will be a gift received as Christ wills and by the working of the Holy Spirit.

On 12 May 2025, Pope Leo XIV addressed journalists who had come from all over the world to the Vatican to hear from the new pontiff.

In his address, Pope Leo discussed the great challenges of the modern media landscape, especially the impact of artificial intelligence, highlighting the vital importance for those shaping narratives of maintaining values and ethics when covering the ever shifting and increasingly technologically driven world we live in.

He also highlighted the need to move “beyond stereotypes and clichés” when it comes to media representations of Christian life and the life of the Church itself.

The incense is rising again.

Not just in Gothic cathedrals or Latin Mass enclaves—but in the hearts of young Americans who, against every cultural current, are swimming upstream toward Catholicism. It’s a phenomenon that baffles secular elites and liberal Protestants alike. How, in this age of deconstruction and digital nihilism, could the Church of hierarchy, ritual, and confession be considered—of all things—cool?

Yet it is. Quietly, steadily, and then suddenly. The Latin Mass is trending. Catechisms are bookmarked. Young adults are quoting Aquinas in the same breath as Camus. It’s not ironic. It’s not aesthetic. It’s not cosplay. It’s a revolt against rootlessness.

Pope Leo XIV has had his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call on the afternoon of Wednesday, 4 June, comes as tensions between Russia and Ukraine continue to escalate despite international efforts to broker a ceasefire.

The Pope’s phone conversation with Putin, confirmed by a Vatican spokesman late on Wednesday night, came the same day that United States President Donald Trump had a call with the Russian president also.