Pope Leo XIV has blessed more than 2,500 seminarians who have converged in Rome this week.

Drawn from 57 countries, ranging from Albania to Argentina, India to Italy, the United States to Ukraine, the seminarians came to the Eternal City to pray at the tomb of St. Peter and to take part in the Jubilee of Seminarians, reports the Catholic News Agency (CNA). The Vatican estimated that the number of seminarians taking part could have been as high as 4,000.

Pope Leo XIV has urged Catholics to trust in Jesus’s healing power in order to deal with the “fatigue of living” that increasingly afflicts modern societies.

Speaking on Wednesday, 25 June, the pontiff cautioned that Christians sometimes approach Jesus in a superficial way, “without truly believing in his power” – a power that includes being able to heal the very real problems and afflictions people face and wrestle with today.

“A very widespread ailment of our time is the fatigue of living,” the Pope said. “Reality seems to us to be too complex, burdensome, difficult to face.

Pope Leo XIV has said that the leadership of the Church must focus on helping the Catholic faithful who are often facing despairing situations, highlighting the need for bishops to do so “with closeness” and not just through their words.

“When families are greatly burdened and public institutions fail to provide adequate support; when young people are disillusioned and fed up with empty promises; when the elderly and those with grave disabilities feel abandoned, the Bishop is close to them,” the pontiff said in St. Peter’s Basilica during his meeting on Wednesday with bishops who were in Rome for the Jubilee of Bishops.

Bishop Robert Barron has addressed the issue of the separation of Church and State and taking one’s faith into the public space after being critiqued on the matter by a columnist with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a well-known and respected legacy media publication in the US.

The bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota and founder of Word on Fire Ministries, who is one of the US Catholic Church’s most prominent voices on social media, hit back at the columnist for espousing a position that Barron said is prominent among an “elite liberal class” that controls many of society’s institutions and which, he said, fears “confident and assertive religious people” who refuse to conform to secular mantras.

A young Muslim “democratic socialist” has declared victory in the Democratic Party’s primary for the mayorship of New York City, defeating a far more established and senior politician who comes from a Catholic political dynasty.

In what is being heralded as a stunning victory, 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani defeated political veteran Andrew Cuomo who previously served as state governor, reports the BBC.

Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was a Catholic politician who served as the 56th governor of New York from 1983 to 1994; Cuomo senior was a prominent figure in the Democratic Party who was known for his progressive policies and powerful oratory skills.

When Angus Hanton released Vassal State in April last year, he aimed his crosshairs at Britain’s economic servitude. It’s a sharp, absorbing read – a forensic dissection of how the UK has been reduced to little more than a corporate outpost for American capital.

But if you stop at the spreadsheets, you miss the real story. Hanton tracks the economic collapse with precision. Vassal State is, in many ways, an autopsy of sovereignty. It catalogs the institutions gutted, the utilities sold off, the high streets bulldozed to make way for yet another Starbucks. It reveals how American investors dictate British policy, how US tech firms extract rents from a country they don’t even bother to live in. Every page feels like a ledger of loss.

Pope Leo XIV has described a terrorist attack on a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus as “vile” during his Wednesday general audience at the Vatican.

Authorities say at least 25 people were killed on Sunday, 22 June, after a suicide bombing at Prophet Elias Church. Dozens of people were also injured. Syrian authorities say ISIS is believed responsible for the attack.

“We entrust the victims to the mercy of God and raise our prayers for the injured and their families,” Pope Leo said in St. Peter’s Square.

All Saints Catholic Church in the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, has been at the centre of increasing public controversy after hosting a “Pride Mass” on June 15, Trinity Sunday.

The Mass, which saw the sanctuary decorated with a rainbow flag, began with 70-year-old Fr Fred Daley – who openly identifies as gay – bowing to the congregation and saying “Namaste”. The priest then encouraged parishioners to wave at those joining from home and acknowledged that the service was taking place on the “territory of the Onondaga nation”. After the introduction, Fr Daley asked the congregation, as it is Pride Month, to give a round of applause to the “LGBTQ folks”.

Pope Leo XIV recently issued a stark warning that deserves far more attention than it received. Speaking at a conference on AI and ethics, the pontiff warned that artificial intelligence could disrupt the cognitive, emotional and moral growth of young people. Then, without elaboration, he moved on, leaving the audience to quietly wrestle with the weight of what had just been said.

This restraint is quintessentially papal – diplomatically measured, carefully worded and devastatingly understated. When the leader of 1.3 billion Catholics expresses concern about something affecting children, the reality is invariably worse than his measured language suggests.

YoungHoon Kim, a South Korean scientist reputed to have the highest recorded IQ in the world, has publicly affirmed his Christian faith on social media. On 18 June, Kim posted a message on X declaring: “As the world’s highest IQ record holder, I believe that Jesus Christ is God, the way and the truth and the life.” The post quickly went viral, amassing over 14 million views and more than a quarter of a million “likes” within two days.

“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.