St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church

A child holds a phone with the Replika app open and an image of an AI companion. Apps that promise to help recreate digital versions of deceased family members using AI pose a “spiritual danger” to Catholics and others who may use the technology in place of healthy grief, experts say. / Credit: Generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system on Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Dec 27, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Apps that promise to help re-create digital versions of deceased family members using AI pose a “spiritual danger” to Catholics and others who may use the technology in place of healthy grief, experts say.

The AI company 2wai ignited a controversy on social media in November after it revealed its eponymous app, which will allow users to fabricate digital versions of their loved ones using video and audio footage.

App co-founder Calum Worthy said in a viral X post that the tech could permit “loved ones we’ve lost [to] be part of our future.” The accompanying video shows a family continuously interacting with the digital projection of a deceased mother and grandmother even years after she died.

The reveal of the app brought praise from some tech commentators, though there was also considerable negative reaction. Many critics denounced it as “vile,” “demonic,” and “terrifying,” with others predicting that the app would be used to ghoulish ends such as using dead relatives to promote internet advertisements. 

Tech ‘could disrupt the grieving process’

2wai did not respond to requests for comment on the controversy, though company CEO Mason Geyser told the Independent that the ad was deliberately meant to be “controversial” in order to “spark this kind of online debate.” 

Geyser himself said he views the app as a tool to be used with his children to help preserve the memories of earlier generations rather than as a means to having a relationship with an AI avatar. “I see it … as a way to just kind of pass on some of those really good memories that I had with my grandparents,” he said. 

Whether or not such an app is compatible with the Catholic understanding of death — and of more diffuse, esoteric topics like grief — is unclear. Father Michael Baggot, LC, an associate professor of bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, acknowledged that AI avatars “could potentially remind us of certain aspects of our loved ones and help us learn from their examples.”

But such digital replicas “cannot capture the full richness of the embodied human being,” he said, and they risk “distorting the dead’s legacy” by fabricating conversations and interactions beyond the dead’s control. 

Catholic leaders have regularly remarked on both the heavy burden of grief and its redemptive power. Pope Francis in 2020 acknowledged that grief is ”a bitter path,” but it can “serve to open our eyes to life and the sacred and irreplaceable value of each person,” while helping one realize “how short time is.”

In October, meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV told a grieving father that those mourning the death of a loved one must “remain connected to the Lord, going through the greatest pain with the help of his grace.” 

The Resurrection, he said, “knows no discouragement or pain that imprisons us in the extreme difficulty of not finding meaning in our existence.”

Brett Robinson, the associate director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, warned that there is “spiritual danger” in technology that outwardly appears to bring loved ones back from the dead. 

Technology is not a neutral product, he said, but one that “has a profound ability to shape our perception of reality, regardless of the content being displayed.”

“In the case of re-presenting dead loved ones we meet one such case where prior conceptions about identity, vitality, and presence are being reshaped along technological lines,” he said.  

“If someone who no longer exists in human form, body and soul, can be ‘resurrected’ from an archive of the digital traces of their life, who or what are we actually engaging with?” he said. 

Robinson argued that present modes of technology have echoes of earlier centuries “when the cosmos was filled with presence — the presence of God, of angels, of demons, and of magic.” 

The problem at hand, he said, is that the “new magic” of modern technology “is divorced from the hierarchical, ordered cosmos of creation and the spiritual realm.”

Donna MacLeod has worked in grief ministry for decades. She first became involved in Catholic grief counseling after the death of her youngest daughter in 1988. The funeral ministry evolved into Seasons of Hope, a grief support program for Catholics that “focuses on the spiritual side of grieving the death of a loved one.”

MacLeod said the program is one of “hospitality and spirituality” that arises in an intensive community of individuals suffering from grief. 

“It builds parish communities,” she said. “People discover they’re not alone. That’s a big deal to grieving people — a lot of people feel very alone in their loss.” 

“And society expects everybody to move on,” she continued. “But grief has its own timetable. Those who are grieving start to understand that the Lord is with them and that he really cares about them. There’s hope and healing at the end of it.” 

“It’s doing what Christ asks us to do — walking with each other in hard times,” she said. 

Regarding the AI avatar technology, MacLeod acknowledged that those who have lost a loved one make it a “very high priority” to “seek connection” with the deceased. 

“People will say, ‘I’m not taking my loved one’s voice off of my answering machine,’” she said. “Or we have people taking out videos of family gatherings so they can see their loved ones again.”

“Everyone seeks to still be connected with their loved ones,” she said. “It’s related to our Catholic faith and the communion of saints — people feel this spiritual connection with their loved ones.”

MacLeod described herself as “on the fence” about how people could be affected by AI avatar apps. There could be “emotional and psychological risks interacting with AI versions of loved ones,” she admitted, though she said that many users “might look at it, but not get hung up on it,” unless they have underlying mental health issues. 

But “where the difficulty arises is that some people get stuck in the denial stage,” she said. Those suffering from grief can get desperate in such circumstances, she said, and sometimes resort to means such as mediums or psychics, which MacLeod pointed out the Church explicitly forbids. 

Whether or not AI avatars fall under that forbidden category is unclear. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly outlaws any efforts at “conjuring up the dead.” The use of mediums or clairvoyants “all conceal[s] a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings,” the Church says. 

Baggot said apps like 2wai’s “assemble data about the deceased without preserving the person.” 

He further argued that AI avatars “could also disrupt the grieving process by sending ambiguous signals about the survival of the departed person.”

Robinson, meanwhile, acknowledged that it is “good to want to connect to deceased loved ones,” which he pointed out we do “liturgically through prayer and memorials that honor those souls that are dear to us.” 

He warned, however, against “technocratic creators of complex computational machines that are becoming indistinguishable from magic.”

Such technology, he said, alters “the spiritual order” in ways “that are disordered and disembodied from the ritual forms that sustain religion and our belief that our eternal destiny rests with God in heaven and not in a database.”

Vladimir Borovikovsky (1757–1825), “St. John the Evangelist,” ca. 1804-1809. / Credit: Public domain

National Catholic Register, Dec 27, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

St. John, both an apostle and an evangelist, played a very prominent role in many of the New Testament narratives. He was part of an inner-circle trio with his brother James (the Greater) and Peter, partaking in privileged incidents with Jesus: the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the Transfiguration, and the agony at Gethsemane.

John and his brother James were nicknamed “Sons of Thunder” by Jesus. Exactly why they were given this title is not explained. However, the two brothers did exhibit at least two instances of audacious behavior: wanting to bring fire from heaven down upon some Samaritans who refused to listen to the message of Christ and asking Jesus for special places of honor in heaven.

Within the Gospel of John, there are five different references to “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 21:20). Over the centuries, the vast majority of biblical scholars have deemed this beloved disciple to be John himself. These mysterious references actually point to a less thunderous personality; for example, the beloved disciple resting his head on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper and Jesus requesting the beloved disciple to take care of his mother, Mary.

Tradition places John in Ephesus (in modern Turkey) after Pentecost, where he cared for Mary and perhaps wrote the fourth Gospel. John’s Gospel stands out from the other three, offering a unique portrayal of Christ and his message. This Gospel is symbolized with an eagle; its opening words urge the thoughts of readers to soar upward — sort of like an eagle — toward God (John 1:1).

It is probable that either John himself or a disciple of his wrote the three Epistles of John. Many claim that he also wrote the Book of Revelation, a work chock full of mystical imagery, during an exile on the island of Patmos (Greece).

John is believed to have lived to an old age and died of natural causes. A basilica in Ephesus reportedly held his remains for a time, but that church is now in ruins.

The feast of St. John the Evangelist is Dec. 27. He is the patron of many things including writers, booksellers, and friendships. 

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett. - Rachel Malehorn/wikimedia CC BY SA 3.0

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 26, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett says her Catholic faith “grounds her” and gives her “perspective.”

During an interview with Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Barrett tackled a number of topics including free speech, the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and her law career. The U.S. Supreme Court justice also opened up about her Catholic faith, including how she prays and her relationship with the saints.

A ‘love for the saints’

When asked which spiritual figures have influenced her, Barrett shared about her relationships with the saints, specifically her love for St. Catherine of Siena and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

“My favorite was Thérèse of Lisieux. We have a daughter named Thérèse,” Barrett said. “I was captivated when I was young by how young she was when she just completely gave her life over to the Lord.”

“Her Little Way is so accessible to so many,” she said. “I minored in French and I studied in France. It was actually Lisieux, where I was … that’s where I decided to go that summer. So I spent a lot of time in the gardens of the Martin home. I think those examples of faith were important to me.”

“One thing that we’ve tried to do with our children is really cultivate in them a love for the saints, because I do think they are great examples that can inspire our love of the faith.”

Barrett said she has “prayed in different ways at different phases” of her life. As a law professor, she often prayed a “ lectio divina.” Now as a judge, she said she tends “to do more reading reflections” and will “read the daily ‘ Magnificat.’”

A “personal struggle in these last couple of years has been an ability to quiet my mind so that I can pray in a very deep and focused way,” she said. Listening to reflections “helps me, if my mind is wandering, to be able to focus on reading something and the task at hand.”

The Constitution and the common good

Despite her faith, Barrett also discussed how it is not what can influence her decisions as a judge. “The Constitution distributes authority in a particular way,” she said. “The authority that I have is circumscribed.”

“I believe in natural law, and I certainly believe in the common good,” Barrett said. “I think legislators have the duty to pursue the common good within the confines of the Constitution and respect for religious freedom.”

“You have to imagine, ‘What if I didn’t like the composition of the court I was in front of, the court that was making these decisions, and they view the common good quite differently than I do?’ That’s the reason why we have a document like the Constitution, because it’s a point of consensus and common ground.”

“And if we start veering away from that and reading into it our own individual ideas of the common good, it’s going to go nowhere good fast.”

Roe v. Wade

Barrett said both people who agreed with the Dobbs decision and those who did not “may well assume” she cast her vote based on her “faith” and “personal views about abortion.”

“But especially given the framework with which I view the Constitution, there are plenty of people who support abortion rights but who recognize that Roe was ill-reasoned and inconsistent with the Constitution itself,” she said.

Barrett further discussed “the trouble with Roe.”

“There’s nothing in the Constitution … that speaks to abortion, that speaks to medical procedures,” she said. “The best defense of Roe, the commonly thought defense of Roe, was that it was grounded in the word ‘liberty’ and the due process clause, that we protect life, liberty, and property and it can’t be taken away without due process of law.”

The “word ‘liberty’ can’t be an open vessel or an empty vessel in which judges can just read into it whatever rights they want, because otherwise, we lose the democracy in our democratic society,” Barrett said.

The problem with Roe “is that it was a free-floating, free-wheeling decision that read into the Constitution.”

The reason why it’s difficult to amend the Constitution is because “it reflects a super-majority consensus,” she said. “The rights that are protected in the Constitution, as well as the structural guarantees that are made in that Constitution, are not of my making. They are ones that Americans have agreed to.”

“Roe told Americans what they should agree to rather than what they have already agreed to in the Constitution.”

Free speech and freedom of religion

“I think the First Amendment protects, guarantees, forces us to respect one another and to respect disagreement,” Barrett said. “There’s a tolerance of different faiths, a tolerance of different ideas … we can see what would happen if you didn’t have the guarantee to hold that in place.”

“Think about what’s happening with respect to free speech rights in the U.K.,” Barrett said. “Contrary opinions or opinions that are not in the mainstream are not being tolerated, and they’re even being criminalized. Because of the First Amendment, that can’t happen here.”

If the United States were to have “an established religion, then it would be very difficult to simultaneously guarantee freedom of religion because there would be one voice with which the government was speaking,” Barrett explained.

An established religion would “sacrifice the religious liberty,” she said. “But by the same token, the religious liberty, it would become self-defeating if the logical end to it was to force everyone to see things your way.”

Discernment

At the end of the conversation, Barron asked Barrett what advice she would give young Catholics who want to be involved in public life, law, or the government.

“Discern first,” Barrett said. Ask: “What are you called to do?”

“If you do feel like this is a vocation and something you’re called to do, I think it can never be the most important thing,” Barrett said. “I think being grounded in your faith and who you are and being right in the Lord, so that you’re not tossed like a ship everywhere because there are enormous pressures.”

Faith “grounds me as a person,” Barrett said. “Not because my faith informs the substance of the decisions that I make, it emphatically does not, but I think it grounds me as a person. It’s who I am as a person.”

“So it’s what enables me to keep my job in public life in perspective and remain the person who I am and continue to try to be the person I hope to be despite the pressures of public life,” she said.

Credit: FotoDax/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Dec 26, 2025 / 01:00 am (CNA).

Amid heavy immigration enforcement by the Trump administration, several bishops in the U.S. have recently issued broad dispensations to Catholics in their dioceses, allowing them to refrain from attending Mass on Sundays if they fear arrest or deportation from federal officials.

Bishops in North Carolina, California, and elsewhere have issued such dispensations, stating that those with legitimate concerns of being detained by immigration agents are free from the usual Sunday obligation.

The Church’s canon law dictates that Sunday is considered the “primordial holy day of obligation,” one on which all Catholics are “obliged to participate in the Mass.” Several other holy days of obligation exist throughout the liturgical year, though Sunday (or the Saturday evening prior) is always considered obligatory for Mass attendance.

The numerous dispensations issued recently in dioceses around the country have underscored, however, that bishops have some discretion in allowing Catholics to stay home from Mass for legitimate reasons.

Dispensation must be ‘just,’ ‘reasonable’

David Long, an assistant professor in the school of canon law at The Catholic University of America as well as the director of the school’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, told CNA that bishops have the authority to dispense the faithful in their diocese with, as the Code of Canon Law puts it, a “just and reasonable cause.”

“This generally applies when a holy day of obligation falls on a Saturday or Monday, during severe weather events (snowstorms, hurricanes, floods, etc.), when there is no reasonable access to Mass, or during public emergencies such as pandemics or plagues,” he said. Once such circumstances end, he noted, the dispensation itself would cease.

By virtue of their office, diocesan administrators, vicars general, and episcopal vicars also have the power to issue dispensations, Long said.

Priests, however, normally do not have that authority “unless expressly granted by a higher authority, such as their diocesan bishop,” he said.

Canon law, he said, dictates that a dispensation can only be granted when a bishop “judges that it contributes to [the] spiritual good” of his flock, for a just cause, and “after taking into account the circumstances of the case and the gravity of the law from which dispensation is given.”

The lay faithful themselves can determine, in some cases, when they can refrain from going to Mass, though Long stressed that such instances do not constitute “dispensation,” as the laity “does not have the power to dispense at any time” that authority being tied to “executive power in the Church” via ordination.

Canon law dictates, however, that Catholics are not bound to attend Mass when “participation in the Eucharistic celebration becomes impossible.”

Long said such scenarios include “when [the faithful] are sick, contagious, or housebound, when they are the primary caregiver for someone else and cannot arrange coverage for that person, when traveling to Mass is dangerous, when there is no realistic access to Mass, or for some other grave cause.”

“This is not a dispensation,” he said, “but instead is a legal recognition of moral and physical impossibility at times.”

The recent immigration-related controversy isn’t the only large-scale dispensation in recent memory. Virtually every Catholic in the world was dispensed from Mass in the earliest days of the COVID-19 crisis, when government authorities sharply limited public gatherings, including religious gatherings, all over the world.

In 2024, on the other hand, the Vatican said that Catholics in the United States must still attend Mass on holy days of obligation even when they are transferred to Mondays or Saturdays, correcting a long-standing practice in the U.S. Church and ending a dispensation with which many Catholics were familiar.

‘The most incredible privilege we could possibly imagine’

Though the obligation to attend Mass is a major aspect of Church canon law, Father Daniel Brandenburg, LC, cautioned against interpreting it uncharitably.

“This ‘obligation’ is sort of like the obligation of eating,” he said. “If you don’t eat, you’ll die. Similarly, the Church simply recognizes that if we don’t nourish our soul, it withers away and dies. The bare minimum to survive is Mass once a week on Sundays.”

“Most people find the ‘obligation’ of eating to be quite pleasurable,” he continued, “and I think anyone with a modicum of spiritual awareness finds deep joy in attending Mass and receiving the Creator of the universe into their soul. At least I do.”

Like Long, Brandenburg stressed that the lay faithful lack the authority to “dispense” themselves from Mass. Instead, they are directed to follow their consciences when determining if they are incapable of attending Mass, particularly by applying the principle of moral theology “ad impossibilia, nemo tenetur” “(no one is obliged to do what is impossible”).

Being too sick, facing dangerous inclement weather, or lacking the ability to transport themselves are among the reasons the faithful might determine they are unable to attend Mass, he said.

“Here, beware the lax conscience which gives easy excuses,” Brandenburg warned, “and remember that the saints became holy not through excuses, but through heroic love.”

Credit: hyotographics/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Dec 25, 2025 / 17:08 pm (CNA).

With the support of the Nigerian government, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military has carried out strikes against elements of ISIS in Nigeria that “have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.”

“I have previously warned these terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” Trump said of the Dec. 25 action.

Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that “precision hits on terrorist targets” in the country’s northwestern Sokoto state were carried out in cooperation with the United States.

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said he was “grateful for Nigerian government support and cooperation” in the counterterrorism effort.

Upon announcing the action, Trump emphasized that “under my leadership, our country will not allow radical Islamic terrorism to prosper” and that further strikes will be carried out if the “slaughter of Christians” continues in Africa’s most populous country.

Applauding the action, Rep. Riley Moore, R-West Virginia, a Catholic who has championed the cause of persecuted Nigerian Christians in the U.S. House of Representatives, said that “tonight’s strike in coordination with the Nigerian government is just the first step to ending the slaughter of Christians and the security crisis affecting all Nigerians.”

This is a developing story.

null / Credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 24, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Abortion clinic workers across the country are once again receiving Christmas cards from religious sisters offering prayers, compassion, and an invitation to seek a career outside the abortion industry.

And Then There Were None (ATTWN), a pro-life organization dedicated to assisting abortion clinic workers leave their jobs and find life-affirming careers, carries out this ministry each Christmas season with help from convents around the country. The Christmas card project is a part of a larger mission of handwritten cards sent throughout the year.

This year, Dominican, Maronite, Benedictine, Carmelite, Capuchin, and Franciscan sisters, as well as Apostolic Sisters of St. John and Trinitarians of Mary, sent at least 1,030 handwritten Christmas cards to abortion clinic workers with loving messages and an image of the Holy Family. 

Reaching ‘quitters’

ATTWN has sent nearly 23,000 handwritten cards to abortion facilities in the last decade, encouraging workers to leave their jobs with ATTWN’s support.

“The clinics are hearing from us about once every four to five business days in some way, whether it’s through some gift, a little trinket, a handwritten card, a postcard, or something we send in,” Abby Johnson, ATTWN CEO and founder, told CNA.

Johnson herself once worked in the industry, serving as a clinic director of an abortion facility in Bryan, Texas, for eight years before leaving and starting ATTWN to help other “quitters” leave, find new employment, and heal from their experiences.

“Our handwritten card ministry is one of the most effective ministries we have in reaching abortion clinic workers and having them leave,” she said. “There’s just something very personal about a handwritten note. Somebody took the time to sit down and write to you.” 

ATTWN has “dozens and dozens” of volunteers who send the messages regularly, Johnson said. “We have a really accurate database of abortion clinics and abortion referral facilities. I think there’s about 850 facilities on there, and this group of women are constantly writing notes.” 

When workers receive the notes, “they leave,” Johnson said. “Workers will say, ‘I got this letter. I folded it up, I kept it in my purse, I put it in my scrub pocket, and I went home and I called you guys.’ So it is very powerful. We see that it does truly make a difference.”

“I received a handwritten note from one of my sidewalk counselors when I worked at the clinic, and I still have it in my wallet,” Johnson said. “It’s just a Bible verse on it, but it says, ‘The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.’ And I still have that little card in my wallet from 18 years ago.”

The note “meant enough at that time to keep it,” Johnson said. “I pull it out and remind myself why I’m doing [pro-life work] and how God has blessed me so much. It’s just a powerful reminder that someone out there took the time to think about you, specifically.”

Christmas card ministry 

The letters create “by far the most overwhelming response … and we have the highest response from them at Christmastime, which is when they are receiving the notes from the sisters,” Johnson said. 

Five years ago, Johnson decided to incorporate the Christmas season into the ministry, specifically with the help of religious sisters. 

“The idea came to me because I was very moved by a Franciscan sister who used to pray in front of the facility where I used to work in Bryan, Texas. It was the first time that I had ever seen a nun in public in my life.”

“I was so struck by her being out there and her presence,” she said. “It was so hot outside, and she was in her full habit, and her little face was so red. It was over 100 degrees. I remember I just watched her all day outside my window.”

“I remember the first patient that left that day after having an abortion, she fell to her knees and was just weeping. I thought: ‘Wow, this has really impacted her in a way that I just can’t understand. She has a sorrow that I just don’t understand.’”

“That’s always stayed with me ever since I was working there … So when we started the ministry,  we started thinking: ‘How could we incorporate nuns in some way?’” 

If workers started speaking with religious sisters, it could “make an impact on their heart,” Johnson thought. “We started reaching out to convents across the country, asking them if they would partner with us.”

Several reached back out to ATTWN and eagerly wanted to be a part of the project.

A ‘perfect partnership’

ATTWN shares its database of clinics with the sisters, “then they just start writing,” Johnson said. “It’s just been really beautiful to see the fruit of that.”

Some of the participating sisters live in cloistered convents. “They don’t go out. They spend their lives in contemplative prayer,” Johnson said. “So their only real correspondence is through mail, through writing. So it’s beautiful work for them.”

“This is what they do. They write notes, they send letters, they pray. That’s what they do all day long. So it’s a perfect ministry for them. It’s a perfect partnership.”

ATTWN will send the sister some ideas of what they can write so they know the proper resources to share with the workers, but then they can add any additional messages.

“They fill in other things that they would like to say, different spiritual things that they feel led to say,” Johnson said. Their messages are “from their hearts and are just so prayerful and beautiful.”

After the sisters write the Christmas cards, they are “put on the altar, they’re blessed, they’re prayed over, and they’re sent in.”

“We always make sure that we send them a card that has the image of the Holy Family on it. We just want to remind them that that’s what God wants for them, and this is what Christmas is about — it’s about the Lord.”

The image is a reminder that “this is what we’re designed for,” Johnson said. “We’re designed for families, and God wants families for them as well. He wants families for the women who are walking into those clinics.” 

“He created us for good, for family, for love, and for creation, not for destruction. We make sure that the cards that we send in have an image that really defines that.”

Johnson plans for ATTWN to continue to send the annual cards from the sisters. “For so many of these convents, being pro-life is a part of who they are. It’s part of their charism,” she said. “So we would love to have as many as we can participate.

A variety of fish dishes served on Christmas Eve. / Credit: Francesca Pollio Fenton/CNA

CNA Staff, Dec 24, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

There are numerous Christmas Eve traditions families around the world take part in, whether it’s watching a certain movie together, baking cookies for Santa, opening one present before going to bed, or eating a specific meal for dinner. The Feast of the Seven Fishes — in Italian “La Vigilia,” which means “The Eve” — is one of these Christmas Eve traditions.

So, where does this tradition come from?

This feast stems from the southern part of Italy and spans generations. Before 1861, Italy was made up of different regions. Each had its own government, however, and the southern regions were the poorest. This remained true before and after the unification of the country. The new unified government allocated many of its resources to northern Italy, which caused poverty and organized crime in the south. The area, however, though poor, was plentiful in fish since it was so close to the ocean.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes tradition is also tied to the Catholic Church’s practice of not eating meat during certain times of the year — for example, on Fridays during Lent and on the eve of some holidays.

The number seven is also symbolic in that it is repeated more than 700 times in the Bible, and in Catholicism there are seven sacraments, seven days of creation, and seven deadly sins.

Although it is not an actual feast day on the Catholic liturgical calendar, it is definitely a feast in terms of the amount of food on the table!

Put all these things together and that is how the Feast of the Seven Fishes began in the 1900s.

Additionally, many Italians who fled the country due to poverty and immigrated to the United States brought this tradition with them, so the feast continued among many Italian Americans.

So what is eaten during this seven-course meal?

While there is no specific menu, there are some guidelines that are followed. The first being, of course, having seven different fish dishes. These dishes can include any type of seafood including shellfish. Based on the fish you plan to prepare, you can then determine the different courses that typically include appetizers, a soup, pasta, a side salad, and the main entrees.

Many families may also include a palette cleanser, or a small fruit dish, before bringing out the highly-anticipated desserts!

Some dishes include “insalata di mare” (“ocean salad”), which typically has shrimp and mussels; “insalata di polipo” (“salad with octopus”); “capestante,” which are clam shells filled with salmon, shrimp, and bechamel sauce; “linguine con frutti di mare,” which is a pasta with several different kinds of fish; and other dishes that include fried fish, eel, crab, and lobster.

And we can’t forget dessert! “Struffoli” are little balls of fried dough covered in honey and sprinkles and are considered a Neapolitan dessert. Others include “mostaccioli” and “roccocò,” which are types of cookies, and “pandoro” and “panettone” are sweet breads.

This is just a glimpse into the variety of dishes southern Italian families will spend hours preparing ahead of Christmas Eve dinner. Each family has its own fish dishes and ways of cooking them; however, one thing is for sure: You can expect to be filled to the brim with delicious food before heading off to bed.

This story was first published Dec. 23, 2022, and has been updated.

After delaying restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass for three months, Bishop Michael Martin said in a Sept. 26, 2025, letter that the Chapel of the Little Flower in the St. Therese Parish in Mooresville, North Carolina, which was recently renovated by the diocese and can seat just over 350 people, will have two Masses each Sunday and on holy days of obligation, / Credit: Diocese of Charlotte

CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2025 / 16:55 pm (CNA).

Priests as well as the lay faithful are voicing criticisms after Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, issued a pastoral letter last week prohibiting the use of altar rails and kneelers in the reception of Communion in the diocese.

In the Dec. 17 letter, Martin said that by Jan. 16, 2026, the use of altar rails, kneelers, and prie-dieus (movable kneelers) will no longer be permitted in the diocese, and any “temporary or movable fixtures used for kneeling for the reception of Communion” must be removed.

In the letter, Martin said while an “individual member of the faithful” is free to kneel to receive and should not be denied Communion, the “normative posture for all the faithful in the United States is standing,” per guidelines from the U.S. bishops.

In May, a leaked draft of a letter detailed Martin’s intended reforms of traditional practices in the diocese. In the letter, the bishop said that because “there is no mention in the conciliar documents, the reform of the liturgy, or current liturgical documents concerning the use of altar rails or kneelers for the distribution of holy Communion, they are not to be employed in the Diocese of Charlotte.”

Also in the May letter, Martin said it was “simply absurd” to suggest that “kneeling is more reverent than standing.”

Martin said in his Dec.17 letter that it is his “intention to continue to facilitate ‘peace and unity’ in our liturgies.”

A Charlotte priest who spoke to CNA on the condition of anonymity said of Martin’s “heavy-handed” approach to reform: “Everybody’s had it.”

“If the priests of the diocese were asked for a vote of no confidence, a vast majority would vote that way,” he said. 

“Unfortunately, Bishop Martin’s style of leadership has been a source of division for the diocese since his arrival and there does not seem to be any course correction after many appeals. It has been painful for many across the diocese,” he continued.

“Why is kneeling a problem? Why go to such lengths to force these changes?” he asked. Receiving communion is “the most intimate moment of the week for people, who are receiving their God. Why go through all this bad PR? I don’t understand it.”

“It’s going to be a train wreck,” he continued, speaking of the continued opposition to the bishop’s reforms. 

He told CNA he is hopeful the matter will be addressed at the upcoming consistory of cardinals in Rome.

A letter by an anonymous canon lawyer also began circulating last week throughout the Charlotte Diocese in response to Martin’s Dec. 17 letter.

In the anonymous letter, Martin is accused of ignoring the role of synodality in his decision-making. He is also accused of ignoring the feedback of his presbyteral council. 

Writing to Martin, the letter-writer told him that the “decision to prohibit altar rails and aids to kneeling relies on your own preference rather than the law or the tradition of the Church.”

Matthew Hazell, a British liturgy scholar, told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, in May that Martin’s perspective was consistent with what Pope Benedict XVI famously described as a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” 

“Rather than allow the novus ordo to be celebrated in a manner in keeping with its own rubrics and with the Church’s tradition, Bishop Martin seems to see it as an entirely new creation that cannot even be seen to have anything in common with what came before,” Hazell told the Register.

Parishes that kneel reportedly provide lion’s share of vocations

According to Brian Williams, an advocate for Charlotte’s Traditional Latin Mass community, of the diocese’s 44 seminarians, “at least 75% are from parishes where kneeling has been the practice to receive holy Communion.”

Williams said his small parish, where kneeling is the norm, has produced seven seminarians recently. 

He told CNA that the ”mega parishes that have embraced these liturgical changes” have provided “maybe two of the 44 seminarians even though they account for tens of thousands of families.” 

One of the largest Catholic parishes in the country, St. Matthew Catholic Church, does not have altar rails. Willliams said there is “one seminarian from there right now, and not more than six men ordained from there in its entire history.” 

“They do a lot of great things, but they’re not providing vocations,” Williams said.

In September, despite a great deal of pushback, Martin canceled the Traditional Latin Mass in all but one small chapel that is not large enough to house the diocese’s burgeoning Latin Mass community. 

He initially tried to cancel the Mass several months earlier than the timeline set by his predecessor, Bishop Peter Jugis, but decided in the summer to allow the Mass to continue.

“It falls to every member of the body of Christ to facilitate unity in our celebrations. These norms for our diocese move us together toward the Church’s vision for the fuller and more active participation of the faithful, especially emphasized by our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, at the beginning of his Petrine ministry,” Martin wrote in the December letter.

In the May letter, Martin described how priestly vestments with too much lace or decoration would be prohibited in the diocese. That letter also decried the use of Latin in any Masses other than ones in which most of the attendees understand Latin, such as “a specific gathering of scholars, clergy, or those trained in classical music.”

Martin said pastors who incorporate Latin into their Masses are not being “pastorally sensitive,” writing that “the faithful’s full, conscious, and active participation is hindered wherever Latin is employed.” 

“Most of our faithful do not understand and will never comprehend the Latin language, especially those on the periphery. It is fallacious to think that if we employ Latin more frequently, the faithful will get used to it and finally understand it,” he claimed. 

When Martin concelebrated the Mass with several other bishops this summer at a parish that traditionally kneels at an altar rail to receive, per his direction, Communion was distributed in front of the altar rail to discourage parishioners from kneeling. 

Nevertheless, a video showed parishioners kneeling anyway, many of them elderly women who needed assistance standing up after receiving.

The Diocese of Charlotte declined multiple requests for comment.

Pope Leo meets with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in November 2025. / Credit: Courtesy of the Office of Gov. JB Pritzker

Castel Gandolfo, Italy, Dec 23, 2025 / 14:55 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV appealed to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to veto a bill legalizing assisted suicide during a Vatican meeting last month, the pope told reporters Tuesday.

The pope, responding to a question from Rudolf Gehrig of EWTN News, said he made his opposition to the bill clear in the November conversation with the governor. 

Leo told Pritzker it was important to defend the value of life and that every life is sacred, the pope told reporters outside the papal villa of Castel Gandolfo before his return to Rome.

The Vatican had not earlier provided details of the meeting.

Pritzker signed the assisted suicide measure, ardently opposed by Catholic leaders, into law Dec. 12.

“I spoke very explicitly with Gov. Pritzker about that,” the pope said, and he said Cardinal Blase Cupich also expressed his views. “But we were very clear about the necessity to respect the sacredness of life from the very beginning to the very end. And unfortunately, for different reasons, he decided to sign that bill. Very disappointed about that.”

People should use Christmastime to think about the value of life, the pope added.

“I would invite all people, especially in this Christmas feast days, to reflect upon the nature of human life, the goodness of human life. God became human like us to show us what it means really to live human life. And I hope and pray that the respect for life will once again grow in all moments of human existence, from conception to natural death,” the pope said.

Catholic bishops had objected to the Illinois law.

“This law ignores the very real failures in access to quality care that drive vulnerable people to despair,” according to the Catholic Conference of Illinois. “It does nothing to ensure patients are offered services, protected from coercion, or surrounded by loved ones when they kill themselves.” 

Several states and countries also have advanced legislation to expand access to physician-assisted suicide besides Illinois.

Other U.S. jurisdictions with assisted suicide laws include California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia. 

British lawmakers in the House of Commons passed a bill in June to legalize assisted suicide for terminally ill patients in England and Wales. Legislators in Uruguay passed a bill in August to legalize euthanasia in the country.

A Canadian law allowing medical assistance in dying led to disproportionately high rates of premature deaths among vulnerable groups, a report showed.

Rudolf Gehrig contributed to this story.

This story was updated at 3:15 p.m. ET on Dec. 23, 2025, with the quotations from the pope.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance. / Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2025 / 14:27 pm (CNA).

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, America’s second Catholic vice president, laid out a distinctly Christian vision for American politics in a speech this week, declaring that “the only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been and, by the grace of God, we always will be a Christian nation.”

Speaking to more than 30,000 young conservatives at Turning Point USA’s AmFest 2025 some three months after the death of its founder Charlie Kirk, Vance called for a politics rooted in a Christian faith that honors the family, protects the weak, and rejects what he described as a decades-long “war” on Christianity in public life.

The Christian faith has provided a “shared moral language” since the nation’s founding, the Yale-trained lawyer argued, which led to “our understanding of natural law and rights, our sense of duty to one’s neighbor, the conviction that the strong must protect the weak, and the belief in individual conscience.”

“Christianity is America’s creed,” the vice president said to loud cheers, while acknowledging that not everyone needs to be a Christian and “we must respect each individual’s pathway” to God. Even so, he said, “even our famously American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept.” 

Vance described how, over the past several decades, “freedom of religion transformed into freedom from religion” as a result of the cultural assault on Christian faith from those on “the left” who have “labored to push Christianity out of national life. They’ve kicked it out of the schools, out of the workplace, out of the fundamental parts of the public square.”

He continued: “And in a public square devoid of God, we got a vacuum. And the ideas that filled that void preyed on the very worst of human nature rather than uplifting it.”

Vance said cultural voices opposed to Christian faith “told us not that we were children of God, but children of this or that identity group. They replaced God’s beautiful design for the family that men and women could rely on … with the idea that men could turn into women so long as they bought the right bunch of pills from Big Pharma.” 

The former U.S. senator and Catholic convert credited President Donald Trump for ending the cultural “war that has been waged on Christians and Christianity in the United States of America,” touting the administration’s policy priorities as the fruit of Christian motivation.

“We help older Americans in retirement, including by ending taxes on Social Security, because we believe in honoring your father and mother rather than shipping all of their money off to Ukraine,” he said. “We believe in taking care of the poor, which is why we have Medicaid, so that the least among us can afford their prescriptions or to take their kids to see a doctor.”

Speaking of the despair he felt after the assassination of his friend Kirk, he said: “What saved me was realizing that the story of the Christian faith … is one of immense loss followed by even bigger victory. It’s a story of very dark nights followed by very bright dawns. What saved me was remembering the inherent goodness of God and that his grace overflows when we least expect it.”

Of masculinity, Vance said: “The fruits of true Christianity are good husbands, patient fathers, builders of great things, and slayers of dragons. And yes, men who are willing to die for a principle if that’s what God asked them to do.”

He described how he saw the fruits of Christian men living out their faith during a recent visit to a men’s ministry that aids those who struggle with addiction and homelessness: “They feed them. They clothe them. They give them shelter and financial advice. They live out the very best part of Christ’s commission.”

After eating lunch with some of the men who were “all back on their feet” after receiving help, Vance said he saw that the answer to “What saved them?” was not “racial commonality or grievance … a DEI prep course” or “a welfare check.”

“It was the fact that a carpenter died 2,000 years ago and changed the world in the process.” 

“A true Christian politics,” he said, “cannot just be about the protection of the unborn or the promotion of the family. As important as those things absolutely are, it must be at the heart of our full understanding of government.” 

On immigration policy, Vance has challenged U.S. bishops, popes

The vice president has publicly disagreed with the U.S. bishops on their reaction to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, as well as with Pope Leo XIV and the late Pope Francis, who seemed to criticize Vance in a letter the pontiff penned to the U.S. bishops last winter. 

In defense of the administration’s approach to immigration, Vance had in a late January interview invoked an “old school … Christian concept” he later identified as the “ordo amoris,” or “rightly ordered love.” 

He said that according to the concept, one’s “compassion belongs first” to one’s family and fellow citizens, “and then after that” to the rest of the world.

After Pope Leo on Nov. 18 asked Americans to listen to U.S. bishops’ message opposing “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and urging the humane treatment of migrants, Vance countered: “Border security is not just good for American citizens. It is the humanitarian thing to do for the entire world.”

Vance continued: “Open borders” do not promote “[human] dignity, even of the illegal migrants themselves,” citing drug and sex trafficking.

“When you empower the cartels and when you empower the human traffickers, whether in the United States or anywhere else, you’re empowering the very worst people in the world,” Vance said.

In this week’s AmFest speech, he touted the administration’s successes regarding immigration: “December marks seven months straight of zero releases at the southern border. More than 2.5 million illegal immigrants have left the United States. The first time in over 50 years that we have had negative net migration.”

At the end of the speech, Vance told the thousands of young people that while “only God can promise you salvation in heaven” if they have faith in God, “I promise you closed borders and safe communities. I promise you good jobs and a dignified life … together, we can fulfill the promise of the greatest nation in the history of the earth.”