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Pope Leo XIV meets with Italian tennis star Jannick Sinner on May 14, 2025, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican MediaCNA Staff, May 14, 2025 / 14:48 pm (CNA).Pope Leo XIV met Italian tennis star Jannik Sinner at the Vatican on Wednesday. Photos shared by Vatican News show the newly elected pope, who has described himself as "quite the amateur tennis player," warmly greeting the 23-year-old Italian and his family as well as the president of the Italian Tennis Federation, Alberto Binaghi.Sinner, who is ranked No. 1 in the world, is from a predominantly German-speaking region in Italy's far north. He became the first Italian man to win a major tennis title since 1976 when he bested Daniil Medvedev at the Australian Open in 2024, earning kudos from the late Pope Francis. Sinner is currently competing in the 2025 Italian Open, taking place in Rome. Greeting the pope in a room off the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall, Sinner presented Pope Leo with a tennis racket and bal...
Auxiliary Bishop Kevin Kenney of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and MinneapolisWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 13, 2025 / 16:49 pm (CNA).Auxiliary Bishop Kevin Kenney of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis and other Catholics on Monday spoke at the Minnesota Capitol, where they urged lawmakers to continue allowing illegal immigrants access to MinnesotaCare, a state-funded program that provides health care to low-income families.Kenney told CNA that illegal immigrants "are brothers and sisters, and we need to care for all people. Basic health care is an important feature of who we are as Christians, as Catholics ... We're not advocating for free health care for undocumented but simply access to it."The Minnesota Catholic Conference lobbied for the establishment of MinnesotaCare, which in 1992 began providing coverage for low-income working families who earn above the Medicaid threshold (known as Medical Ass...
Pope Leo XIV, when he was bishop of Chiclayo (Peru), recites the prayer of consecration before Our Lady of Fátima. / Credit: Courtesy of Fátima Mission PeruLima Newsroom, May 13, 2025 / 17:19 pm (CNA).Pope Leo XIV, when he was bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, offered a special prayer of consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary before the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fátima, whose feast day the Catholic Church celebrates on May 13.On Jan. 7, 2019, after having requested a year earlier that the Marian image be brought to Chiclayo from the Fátima shrine in Portugal, then-Bishop Robert Prevost offered a special Mass in St. Mary's Cathedral that was attended by a large number of faithful."My memory of the January 2019 consecration is that the bishop [Prevost] agreed to it very easily, out of love for the Virgin. I remember that we priests were on a retreat and we asked him for permission so that we too could receive the image and consecrate ourselves, and he agreed," said Father Jorge...
Credit: ivanko80/ShutterstockCNA Staff, May 12, 2025 / 16:06 pm (CNA).California pregnancy centers filed an appeal last week asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to stop the state from censoring pro-life pregnancy centers that provide abortion pill reversals.The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) and the SCV Pregnancy Center in Santa Clarita, California, are asking the court to stop the state of California from censoring pro-life pregnancy centers that provide information about abortion pill reversal. In 2023 California's attorney general, Rob Bonta, sued five pro-life pregnancy centers over their promotion of a drug that is meant to reverse chemical abortions. In the suit, Bonta accused the pregnancy centers of using fraudulent and misleading claims when advertising the abortion pill reversal drug. The lawsuit accused the pregnancy centers of violating California's False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law. The May 7 a...
Pope Leo XIV smiles as a jubilant crowd joins in prayer on Sunday, May 11, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNAWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 12, 2025 / 16:36 pm (CNA).As the world celebrates the election of the first pope born in the United States, the president of the only U.S.-based charitable organization dedicated to carrying out the Holy Father's humanitarian aid projects speculates that Leo XIV's papacy could increase charitable giving within the Church. "I do think that because Pope Leo is American, he will have a special rapport with Americans that it should lead to increased donation for his causes of the poor and the vulnerable and the marginalized," said Ward Fitzgerald, the Papal Foundation's board president. Funded by donations from its "Stewards of St. Peter," the Papal Foundation supports humanitarian aid projects designated by the pope and the continuing education of priests and religious. "Ninety to 95% of these benefactors are American," according to F...
Archbishop Julian Porteous. / Credit: Archdiocese of HobartWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 12, 2025 / 17:06 pm (CNA).A Catholic archbishop in Australia is calling attention to an ecumenical statement on human sexuality released last year as the group behind the project seeks to gain approval for the creed from "biblically orthodox leaders" worldwide.Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart is among some 6,000 initial signatories of the "Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity," a statement affirming fundamental Christian ethics on sex and gender that was drafted last October by a team of over 100 Christian faith leaders, including Catholic clergy.In a Catholic Weekly interview last week, Porteous explained his decision to back the initiative, saying: "I thought it was good ecumenically to show support. And from the Catholic point of view, I felt we had a lot to offer because we have been able to articulate a lot of this material through magisterial teaching, through the catechism and ...
U.S. Navy LSTs and other vessels unloading at low tide at Normandy, soon after the June 1944 invasion. USS LST-55 is in the center, behind the closest barrage balloon. USS LST-61 is at right. / Credit: Steck, U.S. Army Signal Corps, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 12, 2025 / 17:26 pm (CNA).Louis Marius Prevost, the father of Pope Leo XIV, served on a D-Day landing ship during World War II and was a junior lieutenant in the United States Navy.Since Pope Leo XIV became the new pontiff, the world has been eager to learn more about the first U.S.-born pope. The United States Department of Defense (DOD) released a statement about Pope Leo's late father and his role in the revered "greatest generation" that won World War II.Prevost was born on July 28, 1920, in Chicago. After he graduated from college, he joined the Navy in November 1943 when he was 23 years old. According to the Department of Defense, Prevost became the executive officer of a ...
Mikal Mahdi. / Credit: Federal Public Defenders (proof), Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 12, 2025 / 18:06 pm (CNA).Lawyers who represent the recently executed Mikal Mahdi are alleging that the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) "botched" their client's firing squad execution, which caused him to scream out in pain and remain conscious for nearly one minute until he eventually died.Mahdi, who was convicted of murdering a police officer and a convenience store worker, died on April 11 at age 42 in South Carolina's second firing squad execution in the state's history, both of which occurred this year just five weeks apart.Although firing squad executions in the United States are extremely rare, the state legalized this method of execution, along with executions by the electric chair, in 2021 amid shortages of the drugs needed for lethal injections. Death row inmates can now choose whether to die by firing squad, lethal injection, or ...
Pope Leo XIV speaks to journalists on May 12, 2025, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. / Credit: Veronica Giacometti/EWTN NewsVatican City, May 12, 2025 / 09:22 am (CNA).In his first address to international media on Monday, Pope Leo XIV thanked journalists for their service to the truth and for communicating peace in difficult times."We are living in times that are both difficult to navigate and to recount. They present a challenge for all of us, but it is one that we should not run away from," Leo said in the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall on May 12. "On the contrary, they demand that each one of us, in our different roles and services, never give in to mediocrity.""Thank you, dear friends, for your service to the truth," he said, also underlining the importance of preserving free speech and the free press.In one of his first audiences, Pope Leo XIV met with several thousand members of the international press to thank them for their "long and tiring days" of work over t...
A burnt scooter on May 9, 2025, stands on the spot where twins Zian Khan and Urwa Fatima died on May 7 during Pakistani artillery shelling in the main town of Poonch district. / Credit: PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP via Getty ImagesBangalore, India, May 12, 2025 / 10:40 am (CNA).A Catholic school and convent in India came under shelling from Pakistan military forces last week, with three students killed in the town of Poonch close to the Pakistan border, as fighting between the two countries' militaries broke out before ending quickly over the weekend."One shell fell near our Christ School campus at Poonch, killing a twin brother and sister. The siblings were our students," Jammu Bishop Ivan Pereira told CNA. The Jammu Diocese covers the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir."Another shell fell over the convent of the Carmelites of Mary Congregation. But it damaged only the water tank and solar panels. The school has been closed and the nuns have been moved to a distant convent," Pereira said...
