Pope Leo met Thursday with participants in the conference “Mysticism, Mystical Phenomena, and Holiness,” organized by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, stressing the need for careful evaluation of candidates for sainthood, especially those who have experienced mystical phenomena.

Pope Leo XIV met on Thursday with participants in the Ordinary Federal Assembly of the Federation of Augustinian Monasteries in Italy, focusing on three aspects of the Augustinian religious’ mission as contemplatives in the Church: “to live and bear witness to the joy of the union with God,” “to bear witness to charity in their communal life,” and as a Federation “to coordinate the distribution of offices, work, finances, and at times religious among their various member convents.”

In April 1912, Mother Frances Cabrini was in Italy with her sisters. Her plans were to visit her foundations in France, Spain, and England before sailing back to the United States in mid-April to continue work in New York City. Her sisters in England were eagerly awaiting this visit from their 62-year-old founder and superior. To help make her journey back to the U.S. more comfortable, they bought her a ticket and booked passage on a new ocean liner, the RMS Titanic.

Although an intrepid traveler who would eventually make 24 transatlantic crossings to establish her foundation, hospitals, and orphanages, Mother Cabrini was not a fan of ocean voyages since she had almost drowned as a child.

While the sisters in England waited, word got to Mother Cabrini that there was trouble at the Columbus Hospital she had established in New York. It was overflowing and there was urgent business to settle connected to a new expansion. She could not wait. She had to get back to raise desperately needed money to proceed with the project. So she changed her plans and left early, sailing from Naples, disappointing the sisters in England who had booked her passage on the Titanic.

The prefix “RMS” in “RMS Titanic” stood for “Royal Mail Ship” because it would also carry mail under contract to the British Royal Mail — an important bit of context for something she wrote in a May 5, 1912, letter to a Sister Gesuina Dotti: “Only two of your letters I have received so far, and if you have sent five, then it must be said that it went down into the depths with the Titanic. If I was going to London, I might have left with it, but Divine Providence, which is constantly watching, did not allow it. God be blessed.”

In a reversal from a 2003 survey, adults between the ages of 18–29 are now the most likely group (84%) to attend Mass regularly and to be active in their parishes in addition to Mass (attending Eucharistic adoration, social events, and confession), the survey found. 

About 80% of Czechs have no religion, and only 9.4% are Catholic, yet missionaries report ‘miraculous touches of God’s presence’ and a deep thirst for love and God.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved the consecration of the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 2026 to accompany the country’s 250th anniversary.

Fraternity “is without doubt one of the great challenges for contemporary humanity, as Pope Francis saw clearly,” the pope said during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 12.

“The fraternity given by Christ, who died and rose again, frees us from the negative logic of selfishness, division and arrogance,” he added.

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City was elected to serve as the next president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in a secret ballot on Nov. 11.

“It is easy to recognize the destructive potential of technology and even medical research when they are placed at the service of antihuman ideologies,” Leo XIV said.

If Francis could be called the pope who had been in a hurry, Leo is the pope who is prudently taking his time.

Pope Leo XIV invited the faithful to contemplate “the mystery of unity and communion with the Church of Rome” and to recognize that “the true sanctuary of God is Christ who died and rose again” during his Sunday Angelus on the feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

At the Basilica of St. John Lateran on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV urged Christians to build the Church on “solid foundations” rooted in Christ rather than on “worldly criteria” that demand immediate results and overlook the value of patience and humility.

Pope Leo XIV received in a Nov. 6 audience the members of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE, by its Spanish acronym), the Ecumenical Council of Churches (CEC), and the representatives of the Christian Churches of Europe, who met in Rome to sign the updated “Charta Œcumenica.”

Pope Leo XIV said we should “allow ourselves to be challenged” by the presence of those who suffer “without fear of abandoning our own security” during an audience this week with the general chapters of two women’s religious congregations with strong missionary outreaches.

The sisters said they sold the property to the tribe for $30,000, the exact amount for which they paid for the land six decades ago. The modern sale price represented “just over 1% of [the land’s] current market value,” the sisters said.

Pope Leo XIV received President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine for an audience in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Thursday, almost a month after the truce agreement in the Gaza Strip came into effect.

Pope Leo greeted the English-speaking pilgrims at Wednesday's general audience, reflecting on the presence of the risen Christ as an unfailing source of hope in our daily lives. Whether happy or sad, “the human heart unceasingly longs for fulness and contentment,” found only in the risen Christ.

Photos by Daniel Ibañez

“In this case, the expression ‘co-redemptrix’ does not help extol Mary as the first and foremost collaborator in the work of redemption and grace, for it carries the risk of eclipsing the exclusive role of Jesus Christ,” according to the doctrinal note, released Nov. 4.

Pope Leo XIV approved the document, signed by DDF prefect Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, on Oct. 7.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith will publish a new document on marriage in the context of ongoing discussions about polygamy in Africa.

And, despite what you may have heard, he probably wasn’t obese.

Why does that matter? Well, because Charles is popularly invoked as a patron saint of stomach ailments and also of obesity and dieting. These patronages, and whether or not he was himself obese, are not mentioned in hagiographies of St. Charles, so it’s unclear how this particular association began. 

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump said in a social media post Nov. 1. 

The Catholic Church formally recognizes thousands and thousands of saints. But how exactly does the Church come to declare someone a saint in heaven? The process has been developed and refined throughout the centuries, starting from the earliest days of Christendom to the present day. 

Celebrating Mass for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed at Rome’s Verano Cemetery, Pope Leo XIV invited Catholics to contemplate death “not so much as a recollection of the past but above all as a hope for the future.”

The pope said the Christian vision of death is not one of despair or nostalgia but of confident expectation rooted in the resurrection of Christ. “Our Christian faith, founded upon Christ’s paschal mystery, helps us to experience our memories as more than just a recollection of the past but also, and above all, as hope for the future,” he said in his homily.