CNA explains: How should we approach AI companionship?

null / Credit: Shutterstock AI/ShutterstockRome, Italy, Oct 22, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).As world leaders raise concerns about widespread loneliness and declining social skills, tech companies are offering increasingly realistic and immersive forms of AI-based life coaching, friendship, and romance through AI companions.  Meta's Mark Zuckerberg suggests that AI companions could supplement the lack of human friends; X's Elon Musk thinks romantic and sexually-charged AI companions could mitigate demographic decline; and OpenAI's Sam Altman promises that ChatGPT will provide erotica by the end of 2025. AI-simulated emotional connections are already embedded into children's toys, wearable pendants, and elderly care bots. Further advances in humanoid robots are on the horizon. Simulating emotional intimacyCurrently, most forms of AI companionship come through chatbots that simulate intimacy with users through text, voice, and video conversations for hundreds of millions ...

New bishop announced for Plymouth, England, after long vacancy

Bishop Nicholas Hudson was named the next bishop of Plymouth, England, by Pope Leo XIV on Oct. 21, 2025. / Credit: @mikedaviesPlymouth, England, Oct 22, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).Pope Leo XIV has named Bishop Nicholas Hudson, an auxiliary bishop of Westminster, as the next bishop of Plymouth, England.The news comes after the installation of a bishop in the Diocese of Plymouth was twice deferred last year. Canon Christopher Whitehead was due to be installed as the bishop of Plymouth on Feb. 22, 2024, but a diocesan statement suddenly announced on Feb. 1 that it was canceled, explaining that "a canonical process" had been started and that Whitehead had stepped back from active ministry. In September 2024, Pope Francis appointed Philip Moger as Plymouth's new bishop, but a "delay" to his installation was suddenly announced just days before it was due to take place on Nov. 9.Now Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday announced that Hudson, who was named by Pope Francis as a papal nominee to...

Report warns revoking churches' charitable status in Canada could devastate faith sector

The "halo effect" of churches' programs and facilities outweighs tax revenue roughly tenfold, says a new report on the risk to Canadian society if faith groups lose their charitable status, as recommended in a finance committee report. / Credit: Photo courtesy of The B.C. CatholicVancouver, Canada, Oct 22, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).A new report from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy warns that removing the "advancement of religion" from Canada's list of recognized charitable purposes could have far-reaching social and financial consequences for churches and other faith-based organizations.The 38-page report, "Revoking the Charitable Status for the Advancement of Religion: A Critical Assessment," by senior fellow Pierre Gilbert, responds to a December 2024 recommendation from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance to amend the Income Tax Act and eliminate the long-standing charitable category.If adopted, the recommendation in the committee's pre-budget report could s...

Pope Leo XIV to name St. John Henry Newman a patron saint of Catholic education

St. John Henry Newman near the end of his life, in 1887. / Credit: Babouba, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsVatican City, Oct 22, 2025 / 09:07 am (CNA).Pope Leo XIV will name St. John Henry Newman a patron saint of Catholic education in a document to be published on Oct. 28 for the 60th anniversary of Gravissimum Educationis, the Second Vatican Council's declaration on Christian education.The Holy Father will designate Newman as an official co-patron saint of education, together with St. Thomas Aquinas, during the Vatican's Jubilee of the World of Education from Oct. 27 to Nov. 1, which is expected to draw 20,000 pilgrims.The saint will also be declared the 38th doctor of the Church by Leo at the jubilee's closing Mass on Nov. 1, the solemnity of All Saints. Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, the prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, announced the upcoming designation during an Oct. 22 press conference.Newman, de Mendonça said, is an "extraordinary educ...

Catholic college graduates leading in purpose, belonging, financial stability, report says

null / Credit: RasyidArt/ShutterstockWashington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 22, 2025 / 10:07 am (CNA).Here's a roundup of the latest Catholic education news in the United States:Catholic college graduates leading in purpose, belonging, financial stability, report saysGraduates of Catholic colleges and universities are outperforming other students in purpose and belonging and are reporting higher levels of mental health and financial stability, a report has found. Students from Catholic institutions of higher education are 7% more likely to view their careers as meaningful, 14% more likely to report a strong sense of belonging, and 17% more likely to say they are satisfied with their mental health, according to this year's Holistic Impact Report.The annual report is published by the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary's University (San Antonio) in partnership with YouGov. The report also found that Catholic university graduates are more than 50% more likely to say their ed...

Cardinal, Vatican journalists condemn threat to free press after assaults on journalists

Cardinal Pietro Parolin celebrates a Mass for peace in Ukraine on Nov. 17, 2022, in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNAVatican City, Oct 22, 2025 / 10:54 am (CNA).Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and an organization of Vatican-accredited journalists have spoken out in support of a free press after the recent attacks on two journalists in Italy.In a statement released Tuesday, the International Association of Journalists Accredited to the Vatican (AIGAV) condemned last week's assault on Venezuelan Vatican journalist Edgar Beltrán by businessman Ricardo Cisneros, a member of the Venezuelan government delegation present in Rome for the Oct. 19 canonization of two Venezuelan saints.During an Oct. 17 event at the Vatican-connected Lateran University in Rome, Beltrán's interview with the Vatican's substitute for the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, was forcibly interrupted by Cisneros after the prelate was a...

5 ways St. John Paul II changed the Catholic Church forever

In 1984, Pope John Paul II met in Rome with 300,000 young people from all over the world in a meeting that laid the foundations for today's World Youth Day. / Credit: Gregorini Demetrio, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsVatican City, Oct 22, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).You probably know that St. John Paul II was the second-longest-serving pope in modern history with 27 years of pontificate, and he was the first non-Italian pontiff since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI in 1523.But did you know that he also changed the Catholic Church in lasting ways during those 27 years? Here are five ways he did that:1. He helped bring about the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe.The pope's official biographer, George Weigel, who for decades chronicled the pope's engagement with civic leaders, noted that the way Pope John Paul II influenced the political landscape was enormous. His political influence is seen best in the way his engagement with world leaders assisted the downfall of the U.S.S.R...

U.S. Army to reexamine canceled chapel contracts

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, meets with reporters in Baltimore on Nov. 15, 2022. / Credit: Joe Bukuras/CNAWashington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 21, 2025 / 13:37 pm (CNA).The U.S. Army is reexamining canceled religious contracts after Archbishop for the Military Services, USA, Timothy Broglio lamented that cuts strained Catholic ministry to the armed forces.Broglio criticized the cancellations of chapel contracts for religious educators, administrators, and musicians. He wrote in a letter to Congress that the contracts were essential to assisting Catholic priest chaplains in their duties.A March memorandum by the U.S. Army Installation Management Command directed the cancellation of the chapel contracts, Broglio said. In his Oct. 17 letter, the archbishop wrote that he was assured directors of religious education and religious affairs specialists would "cover down" on the work of contractors, but "that has not happened" and ...

Aid to the Church in Need: Authoritarian regimes are greatest threat to religious freedom

Cardinal Pietro Parolin speaks at the release of Aid to the Church in Need's "Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025" at the Vatican on Oct. 21, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Iba´n~ez/CNAVatican City, Oct 21, 2025 / 14:07 pm (CNA).Authoritarian regimes are among the main drivers of religious discrimination and persecution in 52 countries, according to an Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) report. The pontifical foundation, alongside Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, released the Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025 at the Vatican on Tuesday, highlighting the need for the Church to bear witness to the millions of people who face threats of persecution and violence.The cardinal decried the "year on year" increase of violations affecting more than 5.4 billion people worldwide at the report's launch and stressed the need for governments to acknowledge religious freedom as an "inalienable right," as asserted by both the Second Vatican Council document Dignitat...

Fact check: Did the Vatican Library open a prayer room for Muslims?

A view of the Vatican Apostolic Library in 2021. / Credit: Franco Origlia/Getty ImagesCNA Staff, Oct 21, 2025 / 15:56 pm (CNA).Reports circulating in media outlets and on social media in October 2025 allege that the Vatican has opened a prayer room for Muslims in the Apostolic Library.Claim: The Vatican Library has opened a prayer room for Muslims.CNA finds: The library does allow Muslim scholars a room in which to pray while they are on site doing research in the Vatican's extensive archives.Breakdown: In mid-October 2025, sensational news coverage rocketed around internet media outlets and social media feeds: The Vatican is "allow[ing]" a "designated Muslim prayer room" in its Apostolic Library (National Review); the library has "add[ed] a Muslim prayer room" (The Dallas Express); the Vatican has "[set] up [a] dedicated Muslim prayer room at [the] heart of [the] pope's 500-year-old library" (GB News); the Holy See has "open[ed]" a "Muslim prayer room in [the] Apostolic Librar...