“Jesus spoke to the crowd of the kingdom of God and cured those who needed healing” (John 9:11)

Before miraculously multiplying food for the five thousand, Jesus was teaching and healing them. His disciples, predicting a problem, wanted to send them away. But Jesus instead tells them to provide for the crowd, and helps them achieve it, so that he can keep close to his flock: he wanted to keep teaching and healing them.

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged politicians to take inspiration from St Thomas More as a perfect example of a public servant.

The American-born pontiff said that the former Lord Chancellor of England, who was beheaded by King Henry VIII on 6th July 1534, was so committed to the service of truth that he was willing to die for it.

Leo said: “During the Jubilee of the Year 2000, St John Paul II indicated St Thomas More as a witness for political leaders to revere and an intercessor under whose protection to place their work.

There’s a difference between doubt and defiance. One builds faith. The other destroys it.

We live in an age where religious obedience is mistaken for oppression, and moral clarity for arrogance. Among Catholics, this confusion has spawned something quietly devastating: cafeteria Catholicism, the bespoke, pick-and-choose approach to doctrine that sanctifies dissent by calling it discernment.

In his sermon at a Pontifical Mass on 11 June 2025 at Northampton Cathedral, Bishop Athanasius Schneider described the Holy Mass as the eternal sacrifice of Christ and the Church’s greatest treasure. Preaching during his visit to the UK for the Latin Mass Society’s 60th anniversary celebrations, which culminated in the Faith and Culture conference on Saturday, he urged Catholics to approach the Eucharist with deep reverence, interior purity, and outward humility, following the example of saints, martyrs, and monarchs.
Northampton Cathedral, 11 June 2025

Once upon a time, shows with an obviously Biblical message had one thing in their favour – almost no-one watched them. This meant that the pressure to live up to high standards or chase ratings was minimal. That changed with The Chosen, a sleeper hit that gained traction five seasons in. It was surprising that such an overtly religious show, one that made the life of Jesus its central theme, found such a large audience – yet it pushed the bar higher for any successors in the genre.

President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration “is not policy, it is punishment”, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gómez has said.

Last week, Trump ordered the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles following sometimes violent protests stemming from his increased efforts to deport unregistered immigrants from the city.

The President’s move has been opposed by both Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Israel’s Ambassador to the Holy See has defended the country’s new military offensive against Iran as a service to global peace and security, and said the Pope can be an “influential” moral voice in advocating for justice and nuclear disarmament in the region.

Speaking to Crux, Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See Yaron Sideman said there is “absolutely foolproof concrete” evidence that Iran is close to achieving nuclear capabilities, and that any nuclear weapons produced would be used to attack Israel.

ROME – Reviving a tradition that reaches back to the 1600s, Pope Leo will spend most of July and at least part of August at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, located about an hour’s drive south of the Vatican in the hills above Lake Albano.

The Prefecture of the Papal Household issued an announcement today that Pope Leo will begin his stay at Castel Gandolfo on Sunday, July 6.

Bono has finally done it. After four decades of swagger, sermons, and sunglasses, the U2 frontman has scored his first UK number-one hit as a solo artist. The track is a reimagined version of “Desire”, an old flame reignited, tied to his recent documentary Stories of Surrender

For most artists, reinvention is the beginning of the end. For Bono, it’s proof that he’s still got gas in the tank—and God on his mind.

U2, meanwhile, is having a modest chart revival of its own. “Atomic City” just clawed its way back into the UK’s physical singles chart, like a ghost returning to remind you it never left. There’s something poetic about it. Bono goes number one on his own—but never really alone. When he rises, so does the band. They’re a package deal. Like faith and doubt. Or Ireland and rain.

Pope Leo XIV has warned the Church about the challenges being created by artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and social media In today’s world.

Speaking to the bishops of Italy, the pontiff said such developments, along with the data economy, “are profoundly transforming our perception and experience of life”.

“In this scenario, the dignity of the human being risks being flattened or forgotten, replaced by functions, automatisms, simulations,” he said today.

“But the person is not a system of algorithms: He is a creature, a relationship, a mystery,” he explained.

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.