Saint Joseph Catholic Church

“We are living in a period of great division, of profound hatred, of contempt, of rejection of one another, of inability to think of ourselves alongside one another,” said Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM. “This has become something truly worrying and dramatic.”

“We must not seek immediate results, but the truth, first of all, which is the first form of charity, and in the truth build paths of reconciliation, of justice, where little by little hearts can be opened, and then eyes, to a different reality,” he added.

Pope Leo XIV attended a Christmas concert given by the Sistine Chapel Choir this evening and said at its conclusion, “There is no Christmas without songs” (video).

The relic, a bone of the saint’s foot, was venerated at the French national church in Rome during the 2025 jubilee year. “And now, after this ‘encounter’ with Pope Prevost, it will return home at the end of the jubilee,” said Father Emmanuel Schwab, rector of the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse in Lisieux.

“In order not to grow weary of defending Ukraine, love it,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. “In order not to grow weary of building relationships with your family and loved ones, learn to love them.”

“We draw the strength of perseverance in our relationships with people from our love for God,” he added. “God loves us, and from this love we draw strength.”

Led by Major Archbishop Shevchuk since 2011, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (CNEWA profile) is among the Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See.

Confirming an earlier announcement from government officials, the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles (OLA) said in a statement that all of the staff and children kidnapped from their school in Papiri, Nigeria, are now free.

In a front-page editorial in yesterday’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper’s director wrote that other people, sometimes perceived as our enemies, may be “our only possible opportunity for salvation, perhaps the last one left.”

In a Christmas address delivered in the presence of Myanmar’s ruler, Min Aung Hlaing, Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon proclaimed that God became incarnate and brought a message of peace.