2 Mexican officials assassinated: The Church expresses 'profound consternation'

Police patrol in Mexico City. / Credit: David Ramos/ACI PrensaPuebla, Mexico, May 21, 2025 / 19:22 pm (CNA).The Mexican Bishops' Conference expressed its "profound consternation" following the assassination of two senior officials of the Mexico City government, which occurred Tuesday in the Mexican capital.The victims of the shooting are Ximena Guzmán, private secretary to Clara Brugada, Mexico City's mayor, and José Muñoz, adviser to the city government. "We join in the grief of their families, friends, and colleagues. To them, we express our closeness, prayers, and solidarity, asking God to grant them comfort, hope, and strength in the face of this painful loss," the Mexican bishops expressed in a message following the assassinations.The Mexico City government reported in a statement that the "direct attack" occurred in the Moderna neighborhood of the Benito Juárez borough, approximately four miles south of Mexico City's historic Zócalo (main square)."Personnel from the ...

Pope Leo XIV to meet cardinals at consistory to approve canonizations

Pope Leo XIV smiles during his first general audience in St. Peter's Square on May 21, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNAVatican City, May 21, 2025 / 10:46 am (CNA).Pope Leo XIV will hold a meeting of cardinals on June 13 to give the final approval to the canonizations of several beatified men and women.The ordinary public consistory, as it is called, will be the first of Leo's pontificate. Pope Francis had called for the consistory in late February, when he was in the hospital, but the date was never set.At the consistory, cardinals will vote to approve the canonizations of five beatified men and women whose causes were advanced earlier this year by Pope Francis. The vote of the cardinals marks the final step in the canonization process and allows a date for the Mass of canonization to be set.Among the almost-canonized saints expected to be discussed on June 13 is Blessed Bartolo Longo (also known as Bartholomew Longo).Longo, an Italian layman and lawyer, was a former Sata...

Pontifical Academy for Life signs elderly care declaration with Muslim council, AARP

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia speaks at a press conference for a Vatican summit on longevity on March 24, 2025, at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNAWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 21, 2025 / 15:22 pm (CNA).The Pontifical Academy for Life, the elderly advocacy group AARP, and the Muslim Council of Elders this month signed a declaration promising to support elderly populations and promote research on brain health. The organizations launched the initiative in order to help safeguard the elderly from discrimination and abuse and to protect their human dignity, right to independence, and engagement in society. The leaders met at a two-day global symposium held at the Vatican titled "The Memory: Addressing the Opportunities and Challenges of an Aging Global Population."Representatives from the Vatican and AARP talked with doctors, scientists, academics, nongovernmental organizations, and nonprofits from more than 20 countries about the future of the elderly population an...

Pope Leo XIV: 'Salvation does not come about by magic but by grace and faith'

Pope Leo XIV at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on May 20, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN NewsVatican City, May 21, 2025 / 14:32 pm (CNA).Pope Leo XIV on May 20 visited St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica, one of the papal basilicas located outside Rome, to pray at the tomb of the "apostle to the Gentiles."Upon his arrival, the Holy Father was welcomed by basilca abbot Father Donato Ogliari, OSB, and the archpriest of the basilica, Cardinal James Michael Harvey.Accompanied by Benedictine monks, custodians of the church built over the tomb of St. Paul the Apostle, Pope Leo XIV entered the basilica through the Holy Door amid the chants of the Sistine Chapel choir and the Benedictine community.He then descended to the altar of confession to venerate the tomb of St. Paul, kneeling in silence. After returning to the apse of the church, a passage from St. Paul the Apostle's Letter to the Romans was read.In his homily, delivered in Italian, the Holy Father emphasized th...

UPDATE: New York Catholic health system to pay $3.3 million over alleged Medicare claim violations

Catholic Health building in Buffalo, New York. / Credit: Andre Carrotflower, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsCNA Staff, May 21, 2025 / 14:01 pm (CNA).A Catholic health care system in New York state has agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar settlement over allegations that it violated federal Medicare reporting laws. The U.S. attorney's office for the western district of New York said in a press release that Catholic Health Systems agreed to pay nearly $3.3 million in order to resolve allegations that the network "knowingly submitted or caused to be submitted false claims to the Medicare program" in violation of federal law. The government had alleged that the Catholic hospital system violated the Stark Law, a federal rule that prohibits health care entities from receiving Medicare payments for services referred by a physician with "a financial relationship to the health care entity."The prosecutor's office claimed that the Catholic health provider "had financial rela...

Georgia attorney general: LIFE Act doesn't require keeping pregnant brain-dead woman alive

Gold dome of the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta. / Credit: Rob Hainer/ShutterstockCNA Staff, May 21, 2025 / 17:33 pm (CNA).In response to national outcry over the case of Adriana Smith, a brain-dead pregnant woman on life support, the Georgia attorney general's office released a statement clarifying that the state's heartbeat law, which prohibits abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat, does not require Smith be kept alive."There is nothing in the LIFE act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death," said the statement, issued by Attorney General Chris Carr's office last week.  Quoting the law itself, the statement continued: "Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.'"Doctors at Emory University Hospital declared Smith, who was nine weeks pregnant at the time, brain dead in February after she was diagnosed with multiple blood clots in her brain. According to Smith's mother, Ap...

In new interview, JD Vance explains how his Catholic faith informs his political views

Pope Leo XIV shakes hands with U.S. President JD Vance in the papal library. The two had a private encounter before they were joined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 19, 2025. / Credit: Vatican MediaWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 21, 2025 / 17:02 pm (CNA).In a sit-down interview with the New York Times' Ross Douthat, Vice President JD Vance opened up about how his Catholic faith informs his political views and how he squares his religious beliefs with his hard-line views on immigration enforcement.Vance, an outspoken convert to the faith, appeared on Douthat's "Interesting Times" podcast while the two were in Rome for Pope Leo XIV's inaugural Mass this past weekend. Douthat, who is also a convert to Catholicism, is a conservative columnist at the Times.During the interview, Vance discussed how his faith and Catholic social teaching contribute to his views on governance. Yet, he also explained why he believes an American vice president cannot simply "do everything t...

Cardinal Goh: Pope Leo XIV is the 'right person' to bring unity, balance to the Church

Cardinal William Goh speaks to EWTN News Vice President Matthew Bunson in Rome on Monday, April 19, 2025. / Credit: EWTN NewsVatican City, May 20, 2025 / 11:20 am (CNA).Singapore's Cardinal William Goh believes Pope Leo XIV will build a greater unity within the Church, particularly for Catholic faithful often divided on matters of Church doctrine and morality.Calling the new pontiff a "gift of God" in an interview with EWTN News Vice President Matthew Bunson, Goh said the Holy Father is the "right person" to lead the Church toward synodality and explain the balance between "orthodoxy and being progressive.""Being traditional is not wrong [and] going back to the orthodoxy of the Church is not wrong," he said. "But, at the same time, we are not just asking our Church to be too legalistic about our moral doctrines in terms of practice."Describing the new pontiff as an active listener who is "very attentive to the concerns and sharings of the cardinals," Goh said the Holy Father's ...

Leo XIV names Cardinal Reina chancellor of John Paul II marriage and family institute in Rome

Italian Cardinal Baldassare Reina was created a cardinal by Pope Francis during the consistory at St. Peter's Basilica on Dec. 7, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNAVatican City, May 20, 2025 / 10:43 am (CNA).Pope Leo XIV, in one of his first personnel appointments, on Monday named Cardinal Baldassare Reina grand chancellor of the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II for Marriage and the Family, replacing Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who turned 80 on April 20.Reina, 54, is vicar general of the Diocese of Rome since 2024. As part of that role, he is also grand chancellor of the Pontifical Lateran University, the home of the John Paul II Institute.Pope Leo's May 19 appointment of Reina as grand chancellor appears to be a return to the former practice of linking the leadership of the institute to the vicar general of Rome. This practice had been changed under Pope Francis, who named Paglia to the role in 2016.The following year, in 2017, Francis made the controversial decisi...

Who is the patron saint of Pope Leo XIV's final vows?

Pope Leo XIV and St. Nicholas of Tolentine. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News; Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel of the Augustinian OrderLima Newsroom, May 20, 2025 / 09:21 am (CNA).Perhaps many Catholics wonder who Pope Leo XIV's favorite saint is. A Peruvian missionary priest who is a close friend and confidant of the pontiff said he knows the answer in this little-known devotion of the Holy Father, who used to pray to this saint on his knees in a small chapel near Chiclayo in northern Peru."St. Nicholas of Tolentine is, without a doubt, his favorite saint. He is the protector of his perpetual vows, his great devotion within Augustinian spirituality," said Peruvian priest Father David Farfán Guerrero, whom the Holy Father met in 1985 in Chulucanas in the Piura district of the country.Farfán, who has served as pastor of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo Parish for about 10 years, welcomed ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language news partner, to San Nicolás, a small settlement loc...