The Catholic Church should revise its celibacy requirement for Latin-rite priests, a senior official in the Vatican’s doctrinal office said.

In the Sistine Chapel, where popes are elected, Pope Francis baptized 16 infants, who, he said, “give us the witness of how to receive the faith: with innocence and with an open heart.”

Pope Francis called on the international community to ban surrogate pregnancy, calling it “deplorable” and a “grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which the court temporarily reinstated after the Justice Department asserted the law conflicted with a federal statute on emergency medical care.

Instead of splitting into ideological groups, members of the Catholic Church need to put God front and center, not their own personal ideas and plans, Pope Francis said.

Perinatal hospice and palliative care supports both mother and child from the time of diagnosis through the baby’s death while prioritizing quality of life and comfort.

In 2023, actor and comedian Rob Schneider celebrated his first Christmas as a Catholic.

A record number of attendees gathered at the Jan. 1-5 SEEK24 conference in downtown St. Louis, with excitement already mounting for the 2025 conference.

The Justice Department Jan. 3 sued Texas over a new law making it a state crime for unauthorized migrants to cross into Texas from Mexico. Catholic organizations have opposed the legislation, with the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops saying it could have “deadly consequences for innocent migrants.”

A multiyear investigation overseen by the Catholic Church into Archbishop John C. Nienstedt, who resigned from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2015, has ended with the Vatican finding that he acted “imprudently” in several instances but not criminally under canon law, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda said in a statement Jan. 5.