In a dark sign of descending security in Africa’s most populous country, a Catholic priest has been shot dead on the open road in southeast Nigeria on Boxing Day.

From Nigeria to Mozambique, Sudan and Congo to Burkina Faso, Christians across Africa were victims of horrific persecution in 2024, mainly because of their faith.

Former President Jimmy Carter died Dec. 29 at his home in Plains, Georgia, his presidential library announced. At 100, Carter, who had been in hospice care since February 2023, was the longest-living U.S. president.

When British parliamentarians approved a law to allow physician-assisted suicide on Nov. 29, it followed a year of legislative inroads against Catholic social teaching across Europe.

A Missouri native, Father Augustus Tolton is recognized as the first African American to be ordained a priest. A candidate for sainthood, he has the title of “Venerable.”

A year after “Fiducia Supplicans” whipped up a firestorm of controversy in the days before Christmas, the Vatican declaration remains a point of division in the U.S. church and worldwide. Meanwhile, it is unclear whether it has freshly prompted many Catholics in “irregular situations” to seek the kind of blessings it permits.

Just four states were responsible for three-quarters of the executions that took place in the U.S. in 2024, according to a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pope Francis, who celebrated his 88th birthday Dec. 17, mostly uses a wheelchair instead of walking and presides over rather than concelebrates most public liturgies. Still, he had a 2024 full of important engagements, the longest trip of his papacy and major preparations for the Holy Year 2025, which he is set to open Dec. 24.

Wearing red vestments for the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, Pope Francis knocked on the door of the church in Rome’s Rebibbia prison complex and walked over its threshold.

God wants to save each and every person, and Christians are called to give witness to that fact by praying even for people who have harmed them, Pope Francis said.