Catholic News

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Vatican City, Feb 6, 2025 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis will hold the next few days of meetings in rooms at his Vatican residence while sick with bronchitis, the Vatican said Thursday.

"Due to bronchitis, from which he is suffering at this time, and in order to continue his activities, on Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, Pope Francis' audiences will be held at Casa Santa Marta," the Feb. 6 message from the Holy See Press Office said.

The 88-year-old Francis' meetings with an association of Italian midwives and with Eastern Orthodox priests and monks on Feb. 6 were also held at his Santa Marta home instead of the Apostolic Palace as planned. The pope also did not read aloud his prepared speeches for those audiences.

Due to the light illness, the day prior, the pope had an aide to read his catechesis at his weekly public audience in the Paul VI Hall.

On Sunday, Feb. 9, the pontiff is scheduled to preside over a Mass in St. Peter's Square for the second special weekend of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope: the Jubilee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Security Personnel.

Pope Francis also kept his schedule while remaining indoors when he had a cold right before Christmas. His Angelus prayer and message on Dec. 22, 2024, were livestreamed from the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta.

The pope, who has been suffering from visible breathlessness during recent meetings, has more and more frequently declined to read his prepared remarks to audiences or opted to have the remarks read by a priest aide.

He has faced several health challenges in recent years, including knee problems requiring a wheelchair, respiratory infections, and a fall resulting in a forearm contusion.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 6, 2025 / 15:20 pm (CNA).

President Donald Trump has announced the launch of a new Department of Justice task force dedicated to fighting anti-Christian bias.

During remarks delivered at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, Trump said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi would head the task force to "eradicate anti-Christian bias" and halt "all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government."

According to Trump, Bondi and the commission will "fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and ... move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide."

"While I'm in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals, and in our public squares," he said. "And we will bring our country back together as one nation under God."

Trump further announced that he plans to establish a new presidential commission on religious liberty as well as a White House faith office to be led by televangelist Rev. Paula White, his longtime adviser on religion. 

Also present at the event were several families of Israeli hostages who were taken by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. Trump addressed them, saying: "We are joined today by several brave families whose loved ones were taken hostage during the horrible Oct. 7 attack. We are keeping you in our hearts and our prayers. As president, I will not rest until every last hostage is returned."  

Noa Argamani, a former hostage who was freed during a raid by Israeli forces over the summer, was also present at the event. Trump called her survival "unbelievable," attributing her freedom to "the grace of God." 

"Innocent civilians [that were] attacked on Oct. 7 were targeted for one reason: because they were Jews," Trump continued. "They were murdered and kidnapped because of their faith, and these events remind us of how blessed we are to live in a nation that has thrived for two and a half centuries as a haven of religious freedom."

The bipartisan National Prayer Breakfast has been split into two events since 2023 when a dispute between lawmakers and the event's coordinators led to the establishment of a separate smaller event on Capitol Hill that is mostly attended by members of Congress and other government officials. 

Trump attended the Capitol Hill breakfast in addition to the main event, which was hosted at the Washington Hilton.

"I really believe you can't be happy without religion, without that belief," Trump told lawmakers during his remarks on Capitol Hill, stating: "Let's bring religion back, let's bring God back into our lives."

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CNA Staff, Feb 6, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Miami and St. Thomas University (STU) in Florida have collaborated on a unique program designed to train handpicked teachers, creating a "bench of new leaders" for Catholic education in the archdiocese. 

Jim Rigg, the superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Miami, developed the two-year, cohort-based master's program in partnership with David Armstrong, the president of St. Thomas University, the archdiocesan university in Miami. 

"Given the critical importance of leadership, the STU program is helping to build our 'bench' of new leaders," Rigg told CNA. "As principal and other administrative positions open up in future years, we will have a ready group of leaders who have been formed through a local program focused specifically on Catholic education in the Archdiocese of Miami."

The archdiocese supports 65 schools serving more than 36,000 students, according to its website. Florida's school choice program has made private school increasingly accessible to Floridians, making strong Catholic leadership all the more essential. 

The master's program is a fusion of St. Thomas University's educational master's program with courses exclusively targeted toward mission and ministry. Students involved in the Catholic Educational Leadership Cohort — most of them handpicked by Rigg — receive scholarships to attend the program from STU and the archdiocese. 

"We came together to integrate the best of our respective organizations," Rigg said. "We took the existing master's in educational leadership program at STU and 'baptized' it, infusing each course with Catholic-focused content."  

The select group of teachers obtains their master's degrees with a partial scholarship from STU and another from the archdiocese, while they pay for a third of it themselves. In return, participants pledge to continue working in the archdiocese for a minimum three-year period after graduation.

The program includes "two entirely new courses focused exclusively on the mission and ministry of Catholic education," Rigg said. Instructors include both STU professors and practitioners of Catholic education in the archdiocese.

Armstrong said the program is also infused with the ethical leadership program he established at STU.

"This program not only took advantage of our academic educational leadership program that we had — organizational leadership also — we've infused the ethical leadership component, which is in direct connection to our theology program," Armstrong explained. "All these things [are] working together to create this program to help the archdiocese develop its future leaders in its faith-based schools."

STU Provost Michelle Johnson-Garcia told CNA that the synergy is what makes the program unique and efficient. 

"We had a combination of our St. Thomas University faculty and some of the archdiocesan folks coming in as our faculty teaching in the program," Johnson-Garcia told CNA. "So, they got the industry folks and the industry views, people in the classroom already doing it alongside our current faculty, which made it pretty unique and dynamic."  

"What we look at when we're building our programs is where there's synergies in other programs that we can cross-collate courses," she said. "That's how we become more effective and more efficient at building our programs." 

Rigg has noticed a need for strong Catholic leaders in the archdiocese. 

"Numerous studies have affirmed that the most important factor in determining the success of a Catholic school is the quality of the leadership," Rigg said. "In my office, the Office of Catholic Schools, we are necessarily fixated on how we identify, recruit, onboard, and continuously develop the men and women who lead our schools." 

"We feel that, if we have an effective leader in place, a Catholic school can realize its full potential to provide excellence in faith formation and academics," Rigg said.

A growing program

The program has kicked off strong, with its first cohort graduating in December 2024. The second cohort began shortly after, beginning classes in early January. 

"The unique nature of this program emerged from its true partnership," Rigg said. "I am not aware of a Catholic university and a diocese partnering as coequal partners to create such a program from scratch. Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive!"

More than 40 candidates applied to the first cohort, and 14 were accepted, while the second cohort had more than 80 candidates interested, with 11 selected for the program, according to Rigg. 

Recent graduates are already in leadership roles in the area, Armstrong noted.

"They are creating that bench, as the provost said, of future leaders, and some of them have already been placed in leadership roles and assistant principalships and principalships," Armstrong said. "So it's working."

Armstrong said he ultimately hopes to grow the program to support other archdiocesan leadership.

"One of the things that we need to talk about with our team is now that we've done it with our own archdiocese, how can we expand this to other dioceses around the state of Florida, then South Florida, then the state of Florida, and then our region in the country?" Armstrong said. "Because we believe this is a model that can definitely expand."

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Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Various religious freedom advocates flagged fresh indicators of persecution against Christians who live out their faith in Western liberal democracies during a breakout session of the 2025 International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington, D.C., this week.

"People being arrested because of their faith and living out their faith is coming at odds with an increasingly secular and progressive [society]," said Alliance Defending Freedom International Legal Counsel Sean Nelson, who moderated the Feb. 4 panel.

Nelson was joined on stage by Todd Huizinga, a senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute focused on Europe; Janet Buckingham, the director of global advocacy at the World Evangelical Alliance; and Rabbi Emile Ackermann, a co-founder of Ayeka, the first Modern Orthodox Jewish community in France.

Nelson showed a brief five-minute clip that detailed stories of Christians facing persecution for speaking about or practicing their religious faith in Finland, the United Kingdom, and Malta — but panelists noted that the trend is widespread throughout Europe and North America.

The video referenced the hate speech charges brought against the former member of Finnish Parliament Päivi Räsänen for defending Christian teachings about homosexuality, which is now in the country's Supreme Court. It also discussed Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, who was arrested twice for praying silently outside of an abortion clinic in England, and Matthew Grech, who is facing charges in Malta for sharing his testimony about overcoming homosexual temptations and actions.

Huizinga said during the panel discussion that Christians in Western countries "face diametric disagreement … about many fundamental questions that societies must contend with" regarding social views in the highly secularized cultures that were once predominantly Christian.

One issue that has frequently caused tension between Christians and these governments, he noted, has been human sexuality because the belief that a family is built on the "exclusive union of one man and one woman" clashes with the concepts that "gender is fluid" and "sexuality is a human choice."

The "misuse" of anti-discrimination laws in these nations, according to Huizinga, is "subjecting [Christians] to the threat of legal penalties for the full and free exercise of their faith."

"The cases are too many to name," he said.

Buckingham, a practicing lawyer in Canada, noted that the constitution in Canada guarantees a right to freedom of religion — but that courts have a mixed record on protecting religious liberty.

"It's all about interpretation [of the law]," she said.

In Canada, Buckingham argued that courts often uphold an individual's freedom of religion but that "collective" or "institutional" religious liberty has received fewer protections. As an example, she pointed to the Archdiocese of Montreal suing the government of Quebec for forcing its hospitals to provide euthanasia in a case that's still ongoing.

"I'm concerned about the lack of robust protection [for collective and institutional religious beliefs]," Buckingham added.

Ackermann emphasized a need to differentiate between disagreement and discrimination. 

He referenced debates in France about Islam, arguing that a "critic of the religion of Islam" is not necessarily acting in a discriminatory way. However, he said that some secular "extremists" view "any display of religious [faith as indicating that person is] on the path of becoming a dangerous fundamentalist who wants to force their religion on others."

Pope Francis, earlier in his papacy, referred to the discrimination against Christians in the West as a form of "polite persecution," which is "disguised as culture, disguised as modernity, disguised as progress."

"[Polite persecution is] when someone is persecuted not for confessing Christ's name but for wanting to demonstrate the values of the Son of God," the pontiff said in 2016.

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CNA Staff, Feb 6, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

An Indiana appeals court this week affirmed a prior ruling dismissing a professor's defamation lawsuit against an independent student newspaper at the University of Notre Dame.

Notre Dame sociology professor Tamara Kay in 2023 sued the Irish Rover over reports that depicted her as supportive of expanding access to abortion, with Kay arguing the paper's reporting misrepresented her views.

Kay filed the lawsuit over two articles that reported on the professor's alleged pro-abortion activism, including her alleged efforts, documented by the Rover, to help students obtain both emergency contraception and abortifacients.

In part, Kay argued that a sign she placed on her office door proclaiming it to be a "SAFE SPACE to get help and information on ALL health care issues and access" was related to "student sexual assaults" and "did not pertain to abortion" as the Rover claimed.

The Rover, in response to Kay's lawsuit, lodged an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) filing, a motion meant to prevent the use of courts and potential litigation to intimidate people exercising their First Amendment rights.

On Jan. 24, 2024, Judge Steven David of the Indiana Supreme Court dismissed the case under Indiana's anti-SLAPP law, ruling that Kay's defamation claim "fails as a matter of law."

The "alleged defamatory statements were true, within the meaning of the law, not made with actual malice, did not contain a defamatory inference, and there were no damages that were causally linked to the Irish Rover articles," David wrote in the ruling, concluding that "the statements in the articles were lawful." Kay filed an appeal in February 2024. 

The appellate court decision, handed down on Jan. 30 by Judge Paul D. Mathias, states that the trial court "properly dismissed Dr. Kay's complaint under Indiana's anti-SLAPP statute."

As evidence, Mathias said the Irish Rover submitted copies of the social media posts it referenced or quoted in its article, a transcript from a panel event on abortion bans Kay spoke at, as well as "articles published in 2022 and 2023 by (or co-authored by) Dr. Kay addressing access to abortion, and the burdens and negative effects of abortion bans."

Mathias ruled also that it was reasonable for the Irish Rover's reporters to conclude that Kay's office door sign was addressing access to abortion and that she was offering assistance to students who needed information about procuring an abortion.

"The designated evidence established that, when the Irish Rover published the articles, the authors of those articles believed that the statements and opinions expressed in it were fair and reasonable and that, in writing the articles, the Irish Rover based its information on reliable sources, particularly as the source for most of the information was gleaned from Dr. Kay's own statements, her social media, and publications," Mathias wrote.

The Irish Rover acted in "good faith," Mathias ruled, in part because the paper's stated mission is to articulate and defend the Catholic character of the University of Notre Dame, and publishing articles about a faculty member whose views on abortion appeared contrary to the university's position aligned with this mission. There was no evidence the newspaper asked the university to terminate Kay's employment or encourage others to do so, he noted.

"The designated evidence established as a matter of law that the Irish Rover acted in good faith and in reasonable basis in law and fact," Mathias wrote.

CNA attempted to email Kay for comment last year and again on Wednesday but received an automated notification that her Notre Dame mailbox was full.

Joseph DeReuil, who wrote one of the stories named in the suit, told CNA in 2023 that he was "not at all worried about the result of the lawsuit."

"The Rover's reporting simply brought her already public advocacy to the attention of the pro-life parts of the Notre Dame community, adding minimal context through her own statements to the Rover," DeReuil said.

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St. Louis, Mo., Feb 5, 2025 / 17:00 pm (CNA).

The Archdiocese of St. Louis this week distanced itself from comments a local pastor made in opposition to proposed legislation that would extend the state's ban on transgender procedures for minors.

Missouri bans the provision of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to minors for purposes of "gender transitions." The law took effect last summer and was subsequently upheld in court in the fall, but the law is currently due to expire in August 2027. Missouri lawmakers, amid a contentious debate, are currently considering bills that if passed would make the law permanent.

Father Mitchell Doyen, pastor at St. Josephine Bakhita Parish in north St. Louis City, testified during a Missouri House committee hearing Feb. 3 that the "bills which you contemplate today are dehumanizing our brothers and sisters."

"I have had the privilege of knowing and befriending transgender youth and adults and their parents and their friends and their brothers and sisters. I have listened to their stories and the stories of their doctors and their counselors. Their desire to live fully human, authentic, grace-filled and gifted lives in our community is a profound blessing for us," Doyen said.

"I believe in a loving God who has fashioned each human person as a unique reflection of God's love in the world. I am not afraid to imagine a world more profound than male and female. And I trust the parents, the families, the doctors, the counselors — all who love our trangender youth — to make these decisions more than [I trust] you."

In a statement shared with CNA Wednesday, the Archdiocese of St. Louis said Doyen "was speaking on his own behalf, and his comments did not accurately reflect Church teaching."

The Catholic Church teaches that the human person is an intrinsic unity of body and soul, and that the body is a gift to be received, respected, and cared for. The U.S. bishops reiterated in 2023 that surgical or chemical interventions that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of the body into those of the opposite sex represent a rejection of the "fundamental order of the human body" as being "sexually differentiated."

"The Catholic Church consistently reaffirms the compassion and inherent dignity of all men and women, including those who experience gender dysphoria. We do not discriminate against anyone based on how they identify or what they believe," the statement from the archdiocese reads. 

"However, our pastoral care and support of individuals who identify as transgender does not mean that we condone chemical treatment or surgical procedures that are designed to alter the appearance of one's gender. The Church has been consistent on this issue, and any suggestion to the contrary is a misrepresentation."

St. Josephine Bakhita Parish, which is historically African American, was formed from a merger of three former parishes that came into effect in October 2023. The parish played a prominent role last summer as an official stop for the National Eucharistic Pilgrimages as part of the National Eucharistic Revival.

'I don't think the Church has anything to say'

Speaking prior to Doyen at the hearing on Monday was Guillermo Villa Trueba, a lobbyist with the Missouri Catholic Conference, which represents the state's bishops. He said the Church supports the bills because they would continue to protect minors from procedures that "based on a false understanding of human nature" are designed to attempt to change a child's sex. 

Minors are not capable of giving true informed consent to procedures that can lead to infertility and lifelong dependence on transgender medications, Villa Trueba noted, quoting Pope Francis in Laudato Si' on the importance of "learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning."

"Young people struggling with gender dysphoria are loved by God and possess the same inherent dignity that all persons do. They deserve help that heals rather than harms. Using puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for the purpose of gender transition can and will only inflict harm and cause suffering," Villa Trueba said. 

During the hearing, Republican State Rep. Brad Christ, a fellow Catholic, probed Doyen about what he described as a "disconnect" between Doyen's testimony and Villa Trueba's. 

"I'm not saying 'change Church teaching.' But I don't think the Church has anything to say about these bills. It's too intimate among the lives of families," Doyen replied.

"[The] Church teaches chastity. [The] Church teaches the dignity of the human person. The Church teaches the value of the sacrament of marriage and the beauty of a love between man and woman that reveals God's love in the world. All of that is true. But why then, because all of that is true, do we have to say that nothing else can be true? It's a lack of imagination, and it's really a failure to trust God's promises to us," the priest continued.

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Washington D.C., Feb 5, 2025 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

Placing countries that violate religious liberties on a watchlist of the world's worst offenders is not enough to prevent future violations, according to a panel discussion at the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit held in Washington, D.C., this week. 

The Tuesday afternoon panel, "Rallying Behind the CPC Designation: Enhancing Collaboration for Greater Impact," discussed the limitations of the State Department's tool for combatting global religious persecution: the country of particular concern (CPC) designation.

United States Commission on International Religious (USCIRF) Chairman Stephen Schneck explained: "The CPC designation really only works as an instrument for naming and shaming." 

"Real sanctions, real consequences on the ground in some practical way of effectiveness — that's just not there in the way that the CPC designations currently work," Schneck said. "We need to change the CPC designation in such a fashion that it has actionable consequences on the ground."

Since the United States adopted the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the State Department has issued annual reports designating countries of particular concern. The designation is reserved for countries with "systematic, ongoing, and egregious" violations of religious liberty, such as torture and other types of inhumane treatment, prolonged detentions, abductions and disappearances, and other flagrant denials of life, liberty, or security of persons.

According to the USCIRF chairman, many countries that receive a CPC designation can "largely ignore" it through waivers that have been put in place for diplomatic geopolitical reasons.

"There needs to be something — whether a waiver is applied or not — that has meaningful consequences for these countries, regardless of the larger geopolitical situation in the world and U.S. foreign policy, and so forth," Schneck said. 

He further suggested application of the Global Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law that allows the government to issue sanctions against religious freedom violators at an individual rather than national or statewide level so as not to cause economic suffering to those already experiencing religious persecution in those countries. 

Piero Tozzi, staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, called for the State Department to exercise more comprehensive oversight over countries it designates as CPCs. He also suggested its officials receive more training on how to recognize religious freedom violations. 

"Sometimes they see the world and they think the rest of the world has the same secular outlook that they do," Tozzi said, explaining that if State Department officials are not trained to recognize religious persecution, issuing a designation and holding countries accountable becomes more difficult. 

Tozzi gave the example of the persecution of Christian farmers by Muslim Fulani herdsmen in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. He said that some at the State Department had incorrectly described it as a land resource dispute brought on by climate change.

The Biden administration notably left Nigeria off its CPC designation list despite its own reports highlighting the violent persecution of Christians taking place in the country. 

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CNA Staff, Feb 5, 2025 / 18:35 pm (CNA).

President Donald Trump signed an order to keep men out of women's sports on Wednesday afternoon in a move intended "to protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports," according to the order.   

"With this executive order, the war on women's sports is over," Trump said as, surrounded by young female athletes, he signed the order, titled "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports." 

"Under the Trump administration we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes and we will not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and our girls," Trump continued. "From now on, women's sports will be only for women." 

The order rescinds funding from educational programs "that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy."  

In recent years, a growing number of women and girls have been harmed by the inclusion of men in women's sports. For instance, Payton McNabb was 17 when she became partially paralyzed after a biologically male athlete spiked a volleyball into her face. McNabb has brain damage and paralysis on her right side and has difficulty walking without falling.

In recent years, women have begun to speak out against men competing in women-only sports. For instance, swimmer Riley Gaines and more than a dozen other female athletes filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) last year alleging that allowing men to compete in women's competitions denies women protections promised under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.  

The Executive order is based on Title IX, which bans discrimination based on sex in schools and was designed to protect women's rights in higher education. The order notes that under Title IX, "educational institutions receiving Federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports."

Federal funding will be pulled from any schools that don't comply. 

"If you let men take over women's sports teams or invade your locker rooms you will be investigated for violations of  Title IX and you will risk your federal funding," Trump said. "There will be no federal funding." 

The order is designed to "defend the safety of athletes, protect competitive integrity, and uphold the promise of Title IX," press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Wednesday briefing prior to Trump's signing of the order.  

The order also looks ahead to the Olympics, which will be held in Italy in 2026 and in Los Angeles in 2028. 

Last year's Summer Olympics in France was peppered with controversies about requirements for participation in women's sports when an Algerian boxer with male chromosomes defeated an Italian woman boxer in an Olympics boxing match after landing a devastating punch to the woman's face in the brief 46-second fight.

The order instructs the Secretary of State to "use all appropriate and available measures to see that the International Olympic Committee amends the standards governing Olympic sporting events to promote fairness, safety, and the best interests of female athletes by ensuring that eligibility for participation in women's sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone."  

The order follows Trump's Jan. 20 executive order "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" that asserted that the federal government recognizes two sexes, male and female, and that those sexes are unchangeable and grounded in reality. In another executive order, Trump restricted transgender surgeries and treatments for minors.

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CNA Staff, Feb 5, 2025 / 14:55 pm (CNA).

A teenager has been arrested and charged with murder after police say he stabbed a fellow student to death at a Catholic high school in England on Monday. 

The alleged attacker, whom police have not named because of his age, reportedly stabbed 15-year-old Harvey Willgoose to death Feb. 3 at All Saints Catholic High School in the South Yorkshire city of Sheffield. The school has about 1,300 pupils, aged between 11 and 18, the Guardian reported. 

The local Diocese of Hallam, which encompasses all of Sheffield, released a statement Feb. 4 paying tribute to "our much-loved student, Harvey Willgoose."

Bishop Ralph Heskett of Hallam said he will be asking all priests of the diocese to offer Mass for Willgoose. In addition, the bishop said, St. Marie's Cathedral is open for those wanting a place for private prayer.

A Mass at St. Joseph's Parish in Handsworth at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 8, will be celebrated for Willgoose's intention, he continued. Willgoose was a former pupil at the elementary school there. 

"Our prayers, and those of every parish and school, are with Harvey, his parents, family, and friends for a young life lost and all those affected by this tragedy," the bishop said. 

"My thoughts are also with the students, staff, and community of All Saints Catholic High School at this time. In God's peace, and in God's presence, we must come together as a community of faith to comfort each other."

Steve Davies, the CEO of the trust that runs the school, expressed his "heartfelt condolences."

"Harvey was an invaluable part of our school community. An immensely popular young man with his fellow students and teachers alike, he had a smile that would light up the room. Harvey was young. He was precious. He was loved," Davies said. 

"A tragic and shocking incident such as this shakes us to our core and is the opposite of the ethos of what All Saints stands for — a loving, caring school community."

"We are assisting the police in their ongoing investigation and echo their call to refrain from engaging in speculation and misinformation whilst they establish the facts behind this tragic incident," he concluded. 

Members of the community continue to contribute to a makeshift shrine honoring Willgoose with flowers, balloons, and tributes at a spot outside the gates of the school. 

Prior to the Feb. 3 incident, the school went into lockdown Jan. 29 after staff and students were informed of "threats of violence" between a "small number of students," the Yorkshire Post reported. Local police have not announced if the two incidents are linked. 

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Vatican City, Feb 5, 2025 / 09:40 am (CNA).

Pope Francis on Wednesday continued his catechesis on "Jesus Christ Our Hope," saying love is the force that compels people, including the Blessed Virgin Mary, to share their faith in God with others. 

Unable to read his prepared catechesis due to a cold, the Holy Father asked an aide to read his reflection on St. Luke's Gospel account of the Visitation at his Feb. 5 general audience held inside the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall.

"The Virgin Mary visits St. Elizabeth, but it is above all Jesus, in his mother's womb, who visits his people (cf. Lk 1:68)," he said. "Mary gets up and sets out on a journey, like all those who are called to in the Bible."

During the audience, the pope explained that the "unlimited readiness" of the men and women of the Bible is "the only act" that enabled them to respond to God's call, particularly during times of uncertainty. 

"This young daughter of Israel does not choose to protect herself from the world," he said. "She does not fear dangers and the judgments of others but goes out toward other people."

Highlighting the need for people to know and feel loved by God, the 88-year-old pope encouraged Christians to be open to receiving God's love, "a force that sets love in motion," and, like the Mother of God, passing it on to others.

"Mary feels the push of this love and goes to help a woman who is her relative but also an elderly woman who, after a long wait, is welcoming an unhoped-for pregnancy, difficult to deal with at her age," he said.

"But the Virgin also goes to Elizabeth to share her faith in the God of the impossible and her hope in the fulfillment of his promises," he continued.

The Holy Father also praised the impact of Mary's humility expressed in her hymn of praise, the Magnificat, in salvation history.

"Mary does not want to sing 'out of the choir' but to tune in with the forefathers," he told pilgrims. "Mary sings of the grace of the past, but she is the woman of the present who carries the future in her womb."

After asking pilgrims at the Vatican to pray for peace in Ukraine and for all countries at war, the Holy Father invited his listeners to also welcome Mary into their lives and to ask "for the grace to be able to wait for the fulfillment of every one of his promises."

"By following her example, may we all discover that every soul that believes and hopes conceives and begets the Word of God," he said.

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