Once a month, St. Patrick’s 54 middle school students meet with a staff mentor for 30 minutes to discuss their spiritual, intellectual, moral and physical formation.

Pro-life activists examined their cause as a global one and heard a keynote address about “clarifying” their position at the 26th annual Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life on Jan. 25.

On behalf of the CMA, of which Kaiser is a member, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit in early January arguing that the mandate violates members’ conscience rights and oversteps executive authority.

While the Holy Year 2025 refrain, “Hope does not disappoint,” can be difficult for those suffering from illness to embrace, Christians are called to recognize God’s closeness even in moments of weakness or despair, Pope Francis said.

Care for life in all its stages “should be seen as an unfolding and a building upon the defense of life in the womb,” said the homilist at the Washington Archdiocese’s 2025 Youth Mass for Life Jan. 24 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle.

On Jan. 27, as the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau — where 216,000 Jewish children, among 231,000 children from various nations, perished, Mother Matylda was being remembered as a beacon of hope in the midst of Nazi horrors and as one that saved hundreds of Jewish children.

Pope Francis has formally recognized that five Franciscan missionaries ministering in what is now the U.S. state of Georgia were killed for their faith.

Church leaders across Europe marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp with calls to remember German Nazi-inflicted sufferings and to counter a new rise in antisemitism and extremism.

Church communications cannot exist in an “enclosure” in which Catholics merely talk among themselves and do not engage with the outside world, Pope Francis said.

After reciting the Angelus prayer Jan. 26 with visitors in St. Peter’s Square, the pope drew their attention to the following day’s commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.