Catholic News

PARIS — Pope Leo XIV told his congregation at an open-air Mass in Paris on Saturday that "none of us is merely a number or an entry in a register but a unique and irreplaceable person" in the eyes of God.

Local authorities estimated the size of the crowd at 800,000, the Vatican said.

Six young men with Down syndrome were among the many altar servers assisting Leo during the celebration Sept. 26.

Numerous families with children sprawled on picnic blankets, babies slept in strollers, and gray-haired women sat in camp chairs as they waited for Mass to start.

Some Catholics described waiting four to five hours to try to catch a glimpse of Leo as he drove nearly two miles down the Avenue of Champs-Élysées in the popemobile on his way from the Arche de Triomphe to the altar at the Place de la Concorde. Priests heard confessions on the sidewalk along the famous avenue.

Once the site of one of the guillotines that decapitated more than 1,000 people during the French Revolution, including King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, the square was bathed in sunlight, the thick clouds of the morning having parted only 10 minutes before the start of Mass.

Jean Noizet, his parents, and five siblings ages 9 to 22 were among those who waited hours along the route for the papal Mass, traveling in from a Paris suburb.

The 15-year-old said his family wanted to show their unity with "all the Catholic Church."

"From this beautiful city of Paris, I pray fervently that the living water of the Holy Spirit may flow throughout France," Leo said in his homily.

"Seeing you gathered here … heirs to France's long and beautiful history of faith, I say to you: Drink from the source that is the pierced heart of Jesus," he said.

"Yes, you thirst for God, for life, for truth, for unity, for peace, for communion, and for happiness. You long to rediscover a horizon filled with light and to build a renewed nation upon roots nourished by faith."

Thibault Lecauchois left home at 9 a.m. to travel two hours into the city for the Mass. He and his wife brought their 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son to see Pope Leo.

He told EWTN News the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the pope in Paris was worth the challenges of the journey and waiting hours with two young children.

"We wanted the kids to have the blessing of the pope, and we wanted to share the moment with the rest of the community of Catholics," he said, noting that his daughter was delighted and shouted "Pape Leon" when she saw him.

With tired kids, he was unsure they would be able to stay for the entire Mass, which started at 3 p.m. local time.

"I think he's a pope of hope. I think a message of peace is very important nowadays, and I'm eager for him to show it to the rest of the world. And I think Paris is a very good place to do so."

Lourdes

Following the Mass, Pope Leo embarked on the second leg of his trip, flying to Lourdes, at the foot of the Pyrénées in southwest France, where he will spend a day and half in prayer at the shrine where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette.

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world, draws more than 3 million people every year — many in search of miraculous physical healing.

The 136-acre property includes the Grotto of Massabielle, where a young St. Bernadette Soubirous saw 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary starting on Feb. 11, 1858. Today, pilgrims to the sanctuary drink and bathe in the healing water Mary revealed to Bernadette.

Pope Leo XIV arrived Saturday evening at the Lourdes shrine, which was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with cheering pilgrims from France and around the world.

His first stop was to the grotto of the apparitions for a brief prayer service, which began with a moment of private prayer. The loud and excited crowds fell completely silent as Leo knelt in prayer for nearly four minutes.

Leo touched the rock of the grotto and drank a glass of the shrine's spring water. He placed a lit candle before the statue of the Virgin Mary.

"We pray to you, our Mother, for France, for you are her patroness and have protected her for so many centuries," the pontiff prayed aloud.

"May the most disadvantaged and the poorest always be supported," he said. "Obtain for France wise and generous leaders, ready to make sacrifices, capable of responding to challenges, and eager to serve the common good. May they keep France at peace within the family of nations, and may they make her voice heard in promoting the defense of fundamental human rights and peace in the world, rejecting the mentality of war once and for all."

"Mother full of love, we entrust to you our most urgent personal intentions, especially those of the sick and suffering, as well as all those who accompany them, who have come together to find strength and healing at the spring of Massabielle," Leo said.

He then honored the statue of the Immaculate Conception with a Golden Rose — one of the highest distinctions a pope can bestow upon a Marian image or shrine.

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LOURDES, France — The exceptional fervor that marked the pope's visit to Paris — the first stage of his Sept. 25–28 apostolic journey to France — should show no sign of waning in Lourdes, where tens of thousands of faithful are expected to gather around the famous grotto of Massabielle when Leo XIV comes to pray there on the evening of Sept. 26, ahead of an outdoor Mass on the sanctuary's meadow and the traditional torchlight procession the following day. 

Among them will be a 27-year-old woman who will attend alongside a group of Cistercian nuns, hoping the visit will confirm the call to contemplative life she has felt since returning to the faith during the COVID-19 crisis. 

It is no coincidence that Yohanna, a sign-language interpreter for deaf people, has chosen Lourdes to mark this new beginning after years of volunteering with people with disabilities. It is a few dozen miles from here, at the Abbey of Sainte-Marie de Boulaur, one of the strongholds of monastic renewal in France, that her vocation took shape. And it is to join this community as an aspirant that she quit her job in Paris, just in time not to miss the Holy Father's visit.

Her story reflects a broader generational movement in France, where adult baptisms reached a new record this year, driven largely by young adults. 

'I wanted to give God everything'

But Yohanna's story is a singular testament to divine grace. Placed in foster care at the age of 4, she grew up far from any religious practice in a life marked early on by bereavement and solitude.

Like so many of her generation, she first went looking for answers in the spiritual movements close to the New Age that flourish among young French people — an exploration that left its mark, literally, in the tattoos she still carries. She evokes these wanderings today with a smile rather than regret, for it was through them, she believes, that she eventually found her way back to God.

That way opened in the spring of 2020, in a university residence emptied by the first COVID-19 lockdown.

"All the students had left, and it felt a bit like the end of the world," she recalled. "I had nothing; I had no one. And suddenly there was this thought of God that took hold of me. I became really eager to know more about him."

She began learning how to pray through online resources and quickly made prayer part of her daily life. Once the lockdown was lifted, she developed a taste for stepping into every church she encountered to pray alone, while avoiding Masses, since she didn't know any of the customs. The turning point came in 2023, when she moved to Paris and walked into a church on a weekday, just as a Mass was beginning.

"I didn't even know there was a consecration, although it is the heart of the Catholic Mass. But I spent that whole celebration crying at the back of the church," she remembered. "And at the end I said to the Lord: OK, I've understood. Now I want to give you everything, really everything, my whole life. Do what you want with me. And from that moment on, everything changed."

After settling in a parish in Paris's 10th arrondissement, she undertook a period of catechetical formation and received the sacrament of confirmation.

During the National Pilgrimage each August, she serves as an interpreter for deaf-blind pilgrims — an experience that transformed her understanding of the sanctuary. "The real miracle of Lourdes," she said, "is perhaps simply that we all end up together."

Her conversion was followed by the call to consecrated life almost immediately, but she was determined not to rush her decision, having been warned that new converts "might be very enthusiastic and immediately think of consecrated life, only to give it up quickly."

An unexpected call

Guided by her parish priest and the vocations service of the Archdiocese of Paris, she began discerning with apostolic sisters, cloistered life being the last thing on her mind. "Given my personal background, I had enormous clichés about monastic life," she said. "I imagined all sorts of old-fashioned things."

It was in the middle of a difficult university year, at the end of December 2024, that she first went to the Cistercian abbey of Boulaur, simply because she "had always heard that monasteries were a good place to rest and get some air." She has returned every holiday since. When the sisters offered her a stay inside the enclosure, she accepted with the thought that it would only confirm her prejudices.

"I thought that going inside the cloister for the first time would help me understand that this was not my path at all, and that would settle it," she said. "But when I experienced the cloister for the first time, it was incredible. I felt completely in my place."

"The Lord knows us better than we know ourselves," she continued. "Sometimes he leads us to things that at first seem absurd, and afterward you realize that it fits perfectly."

At the 2025 Jubilee of Youth in Rome, she encountered the universal Church for the first time among thousands of young people "so different from each other, and all there for the Lord." That experience now shapes her expectations for Leo's visit to a France witnessing record numbers of adult baptisms. 

Reflecting on the pope's forthcoming visit to Lourdes, which Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes has described as that of "a simple pilgrim," she said: "Pope Leo knows what is happening in our country, and I'm sure his words will help us on our way." The official program already includes a special prayer for France, asking the Virgin Mary for the renewal of Christian families and the flourishing of vocations, "especially priestly and religious."

Yohanna's own vocation initially alarmed her foster parents. But faced with her perseverance and joy, they agreed to drive her to Boulaur themselves, giving them an opportunity to meet the sisters and discover the life she is preparing to embrace. From there, they will travel together to Lourdes for the pope's visit.

"It will be a chance for them to meet the sisters and to see what a monastery really is, not just what people imagine," she said. "That's already a big step."

Her aspirancy, the first step on the long road to the novitiate, is to last until June. She said her heart is "completely open" to what it will reveal. "If God calls me there, I'll be so happy that I'll offer him a big yes, with all my heart."

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Bishop Louis Tylka of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, announced at the end of a Mass celebrated on Saturday the first-ever parish named for Blessed Fulton Sheen.

The combined parish of St. Mary in El Paso, Illinois — where Sheen was baptized — and St. John in Benson, Illinois, will be the first parish in the world to be named after the new blessed. While the buildings themselves will retain their original names, the new parish name will take effect on Dec. 9, Sheen's feast day, Tylka said.

"This has been a remarkable week of firsts for the Diocese of Peoria and the universal Catholic Church," Tylka said in a statement released later on Sept. 26. "We have celebrated Archbishop Fulton Sheen becoming the first American-born bishop to be declared Blessed. For the first time, we have heard his name invoked as a Blessed in the Eucharistic Prayer. For the first time, we have prayed the Collect given to the Church for his feast. And today, I have the great joy of announcing another first: the establishment of the first parish in the world named Blessed Fulton Sheen Parish."

The Sept. 26 Mass — celebrated by Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, who was baptized as a baby by Sheen — was one of many celebrated in thanksgiving for the beatification of Sheen, who was beatified Sept. 24 in St. Louis.

"There is something profoundly fitting about this new parish carrying his name," Tylka continued in the statement. "It was at St. Mary Church in El Paso that Fulton John Sheen was baptized. There, his life in Christ began. From those waters of Baptism flowed a remarkable life of faith, priesthood, preaching, teaching, missionary discipleship and evangelization that eventually touched millions of people around the world."

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Sheen, despite his humble origins in small-town Illinois, aspired to great things as an academic and as a communicator of the Catholic faith. On Thursday, before a crowd of more than 50,000 at The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis, the farm-boy-turned-mass-media star was declared "blessed" after the reading of a decree signed by Pope Leo XIV, a fellow Midwesterner.

Via his decree, Pope Leo announced Blessed Sheen's feast day will be on Dec. 9, the anniversary of his death. His feast day is expected to be on the calendar of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Sheen was born in Illinois in 1895 and ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in 1919. He later became an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of New York and then bishop of Rochester, New York.

His international fame was largely due to his ability to use the new forms of media of his time to proclaim the Catholic faith.

Through his television program "Life Is Worth Living," broadcast during the 1950s, Sheen brought reflections on faith, morality, and the meaning of life into millions of homes, becoming one of the most recognizable Catholic figures on American television.

Mark Irons and Jonah McKeown contributed to this report.

This story was updated at 3:42 p.m. ET on Sept. 26, 2026, with the statement from the Diocese of Peoria/Bishop Tylka.

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PARIS — Pope Leo XIV met new and prospective Catholics and their leaders on Saturday as he encouraged the Catholic Church in France to "strike a wise balance" between welcoming new members as they are and educating them in the tenets of the faith.

"It may seem paradoxical that this phenomenon … is taking place against the backdrop of a society like that of France, which is marked by a deeply secularized culture," the pope said at the Catholic Institute of Paris on Sept. 26.

According to France's national demographic institute, more than half of French adults report no religious affiliation. While 29% of the population identifies as Catholic, the survey found only 8% say they go to Church regularly.

Despite this, the Catholic Church continues to see record-breaking numbers of baptisms every year. In 2026, France recorded more than 20,000 adult and adolescent baptisms, a 20% increase from the already record-high number in 2025, which saw a 45% increase from 2024 figures.

The pope said people approach the Church for a variety of reasons, from a search for meaning to personal hardship.

The Church must welcome newcomers while helping them embrace the demands of Christian life, he said.

Leo visited the Catholic university hall where the new Provincial Ecclesial Assembly of Île-de-France will hold its three sessions beginning in mid-October.

Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris said in his welcoming remarks that more than 350 people from eight dioceses of the Province of Paris and the Military Ordinariate will meet for a synodal discussion on "Catechumens and Neophytes: New Perspectives for the Life of Our Church in Our Dioceses."

Ulrich noted that 45,000 people responded in the assembly's consultation phase.

"This renewed request for the sacraments of Christian initiation has come as a surprise to us, and we see in it the work of the Lord," the archbishop said.

Leo said the increase in baptisms should be welcomed as the work of the Holy Spirit.

Calling the sustained growth in conversions "God's surprising work," Leo encouraged the Church in Paris to ask where the Holy Spirit is leading them with regard to accompanying new Catholics and seekers.

He told catechumens and newly baptized Catholics that they represented hope for the future of the Church in France.

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New Catholic 22-year-old Loïs Barbichon told EWTN News that he came to faith during the COVID-19 pandemic, "largely through reading."

"I felt kind of an inner impulse, a desire to be baptized and to learn more." He was baptized at the Easter Vigil in 2023, and now he accompanies other young people entering the Church.

"Now the goal is to ensure that each newly baptized person finds a mission so that they do not feel abandoned by the community but rather find their place within it," he said. "Today, I am mainly involved in the Scripture readings at Mass, and I am very happy about that."

About Pope Leo's visit to France, Barbichon, who is studying history, heritage, and museum studies, said "it is very important that he be able to speak to young people."

Sister Christine Kohler will participate in the assembly as a representative of men and women religious in France.

She is superior general of the Little Sisters of the Gospel and lives in the Diocese of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris sometimes described as a "quartier sensibile" (vulnerable neighborhood).

"At Easter, we baptized 20 people during the Easter Vigil in a single parish in the Diocese of Saint-Denis," she told EWTN News. "I think there were more than 500 in total across the diocese. This is something that raises many questions for us. How is it that adults and teenagers, sometimes 18 years old and sometimes 70, are saying, 'I would like to become a Christian?'"

Kohler said many newcomers arrive after asking questions about meaning, suffering, and God.

One change the sister has seen in France in the last 15 years is a greater missionary impulse among local Catholics.

"It is no longer simply: 'I live my faith and I live it within my parish.' There is now this desire to share it, to become missionary disciples … this desire to bear witness and to say, 'This is what gives us life.'"

She said she hoped the assembly would help the Church become more welcoming to newcomers.

In her opinion, the pope's presence Saturday morning may have arisen not only from a desire to encourage the synodal assembly but also to listen and understand more about the "people who are questioning, searching, and wanting to become Christians."

During the event, a catechumen (baptized but not yet confirmed), a new Catholic, and a director of Christian initiation spoke about their experiences to Pope Leo.

New Catholic Marielle described the challenge of finding one's place in the community after formally entering the Church. A young man, Jaoide, shared about the winding path he took to get to his baptism last year. He said his journey began when he read both the Quran and the New Testament.

"I was struck by the figure of Jesus," he said, "above all, by his determination to show us the example through his life and through the trials he endured to the very end."

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A senior adviser to the Knights of Columbus discussed the need for men to have fraternal community at the Second Symposium on Young American Men held in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 25.

"We're social beings, so we want to join communities … where we can be our authentic selves," said Joseph McInerney, the Knights' chief strategy adviser and senior vice president for leader development.

The symposium, sponsored in part by the Knights, was focused on problems faced by young American men in 2026. The symposium focused primarily on public policy solutions advanced by both Republicans and Democrats but also included talks unrelated to government, such as McInerney's, which was about the role of fraternal community in helping strengthen men.

Other conference sponsors included the Institute for Family Studies, the National Parents Organization, and the Men's Health Network.

Although the Knights are known for being popular with older, retired men, McInerney noted significant growth in recent years with young men on college campuses and those who recently entered the workforce. He pointed out that men who are under 35 are the organization's fastest-growing membership segment, and there are now more than 300 active college Knights councils, with nearly half of those in the United States.

"The lifeblood of the Knights is young men," McInerney said, adding that "it's a place where they can … spend time with other men — their peers — and that, frankly, is very powerful."

McInerney pitched fraternal communities as a means to combat male loneliness and isolation but also to build up men into leaders and "better themselves so they can be better husbands, fathers, … and members of their community."

Warning against isolation, which McInerney said is amplified through the internet and media, he said: "We're not made for that." Rather, "we're made for rich and beautiful relationships with the people that we love."

Although the broader symposium was not primarily focused on matters of faith, McInerney said a major attraction of the Knights for young men is faith formation. He referenced in particular the Knights' Cor program, which develops small groups for men focused on prayer, formation, and fraternity. The Knights also run the McGivney Fellowship, which is a two-year leadership formation program.

"They become good people," McInerney said of the goals of the Knights' programs. "They become people who are worthy of trust, and those are the type of people we want to lead us."

Speaking to EWTN News after his talk, McInerney noted that the uniqueness of the Knights of Columbus is that it is a Catholic fraternal organization that is also focused on serving others through charity, which he sees as another attraction for young men.

"We want to help people spiritually, but we also have this mandate to serve," he said. "That's why we exist, [it] is to help other people. And so, when you join the group, that's kind of part of the package deal that we offer."

"It's natural if you're working on your spiritual life, you want to share the grace that you're receiving in your relationship with God," McInerney said.

McInerney said Catholic men who wish to join can visit their website and get connected to a local council.

"Whatever council's closest to you, we'll get that person in contact," he said. "And then what's most important. … Entry might be online there, but what's most important is then getting that man in touch with a man face-to-face."

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PARIS — Pope Leo XIV listened to the stories of faith and hope of two migrants to France at an integration center in the Paris archdiocese on Saturday.

France is one of the European countries with the highest influx of immigrants — a highly divisive political issue that is also tied to next year's presidential election, with anti-immigration politician Marine Le Pen the current front-runner.

Roughly 8 million immigrants live in France, representing 11.6% of France's total population in 2025, according to the French national statistics institute.

Leo visited the Bakhita House, a center offering support and integration to immigrants in the Archdiocese of Paris. The pope's visit falls on the fifth anniversary of the center, which offers educational workshops in sewing, cooking, visual arts, and computer skills.

Named for St. Josephine Bakhita — a child victim of abduction and slavery from Sudan — the day home has welcomed 2,500 people of 84 different nationalities since opening its doors in late September 2021. It is run by five permanent staff members and 100 volunteers.

"The name of your center … which refers to St. Bakhita, inspires us to recognize the fundamental role of women in building a civilization of love, which is an alternative to a culture that tears communities apart and leaves cities sick with loneliness," the pope said Sept. 26.

The pope heard from a 31-year-old Nigerian woman named Blessing, who described the way her life has changed since receiving the help and friendship of the association Aux Captifs, la Libération, a Catholic charitable organization that helps the homeless and people in situations of prostitution.

Blessing described a complicated life in which she "was forced to do things I did not want to do." But through the assistance she received, she left that life behind and began to work in a restaurant.

"God has an important place in my life. Without God, nothing is possible," she said. "Even through the difficulties I have experienced, I never doubted his presence, and I knew that one day he would open a new path for me. Sometimes I wish God could erase everything like a magician, but I know that he will do everything in his own time."

The pope also heard from 35-year-old Meysam, a refugee from Afghanistan. Through Bakhita House, he was able to improve his French and his sewing skills. He is now a volunteer with the house: "I go on two street outreaches each week to meet undocumented exiles and refugees. It is a way of giving back what I myself received."

Pope Leo thanked everyone who works at the center, "as well as all those throughout France who carry out this service in similar institutions."

"Continue to bear witness to that care for one another which, through fraternal welcome, programs of formation, and dialogue with the city, elevates the spirit and makes the world more humane," he said.

"May St. Bakhita, together with the great witnesses of charity who have shaped the presence of the Church in France, especially during periods of tumultuous change, intercede on your behalf."

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Not many literary works in medieval Europe could lay claim to the status of "bestseller." Among them was "The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ."

That text, which was translated by English monk Nicholas Love from a 14th-century devotional work, enjoyed immense popularity among English Catholics in the years leading up to the Reformation; a few hundred surviving manuscripts attest to the public's love of the book.

One incomplete manuscript of the work, meanwhile, has finally been reunited with several long-lost pages thanks to recent work by English researchers Katie Walter and James Wade.

The two professors, who teach at the University of Sussex and Girton College at the University of Cambridge, respectively, recently published their findings in the journal Notes and Queries in which they detailed what Wade described as their successful effort to "piece together the history" of the manuscript.

Wade told EWTN News that it was known for years that the East Sussex public records office held fragments of a "Mirror" manuscript, though "no one knew where."

The researchers eventually identified the manuscript pages in the archive. Further investigation revealed that a fuller "Mirror" manuscript held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University was missing those exact pages.

That copy in the Beinecke archive had been known to scholars for years as having been owned by John Gage. A royal courtier in Tudor-era England, Gage's life was "almost cut in half by the English Reformation," Wade said.

"Half of his life he spent as a Catholic who was considered orthodox by the Church and the state," Wade said. "After the Reformation, he remained a Catholic and he didn't convert."

Such individuals were known as "recusants." Wade said that though Gage lived in post-Reformation England the rest of his life, he "refused to convert, he lived his life, didn't go into exile, wasn't executed, and didn't lose his job."

Gage is a notable historic figure, Wade said, in no small part because he worked for the king even as a practicing Catholic.

"There were plenty of people at the time of the Reformation who kept their Catholic faith," the researcher said. "But Gage was an administrator who was tasked with orchestrating the dissolution of the monasteries, which meant physically going into monastic houses and basically claiming all their properties for the Crown."

The "Mirror" manuscript is the only book historians can verify that Gage actually owned, Wade said. It likely came into his possession at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries.

The book would have been seen as heretical in post-Reformation England, as it affirms the validity of numerous sacraments including confession and the Eucharist.

Gage's signature is found in the manuscript, along with the names of two nuns who historians think owned the book prior to it coming into Gage's possession.

The book stands as a testament not just to its popularity during the time of its publication but also to Gage's faith during a period of extraordinary persecution of the Church — a persecution in which Gage himself took some part even as he maintained that faith.

Wade told the University of Cambridge that Gage may have gone to a monastic library and brought the book home. "Another [possibility] is that someone else smuggled it out, and it briefly circulated from hand to hand until Gage acquired it."

"The key thing is," Wade said, "he kept it safe when he was meant to destroy books precisely like this one."

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Prayer vigils led by the pro-life group 40 Days for Life are underway this week, from Sept. 23 - Nov. 1, across the nation.

40 Days for Life is a pro-life group that leads prayer vigils outside abortion clinics across the U.S. and around the world. The group prioritizes prayer and fasting, nonstop prayer vigils and community outreach. The group's most well-known event is likely their Lenten vigil campaign, but 40 Days for Life operates year-round.

For the current campaign, the group will rally against abortion pills, according to Shawn Carney, President and CEO of 40 Days for Life.

"We are saving more babies from abortion pills than ever before by offering abortion pill reversal," Carney told EWTN News. "We are also going on offense with a national billboard campaign that warns against the abortion pill and offers abortion pill reversal — including in some of the most pro-abortion cities in the country, like San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston."

When asked about what inspires people to join 40 Days for Life, Carney highlighted how the group saves lives.

"There is very little you can do in life that will literally save the life of another human being," he said. "There is nothing like it, and it is beautiful to see that it has been done nearly 27,000 times."

"People get involved in 40 Days for Life because it is proven," Carney continued. "It is proven to be peaceful. It is proven to deepen our spiritual lives. And it is proven to save babies."

"We have not only saved babies, but helped their mothers with medical care and follow-up," Carney said. "Former Planned Parenthood workers have said the no-show rate for an abortion appointment can go as high as 75 percent when we are outside praying."

Local leaders can volunteer to help lead vigils in their communities.

"One of the most beautiful things about 40 Days for Life is how many babies are born and named after the local 40 Days for Life leader — and in some cases, that local leader becomes the child's godfather or godmother," Carney said.

"It is beautiful, and it is one of the reasons demand for 40 Days for Life is at an all-time high," he said.

Man who poisoned pregnant girlfriend, killing baby, sentenced to six months

An Ohio man, Hassan-James Abbas, was sentenced to six months in prison after he allegedly forced abortion pills into his pregnant girlfriend's mouth in December 2024.

Jona Affholder was hospitalized and ultimately lost her baby.

Pro-life leader Marjorie Dannenfelser spoke out against the short sentence, saying U.S. law is behind on abortion poisonings, in an interview with Fox News Digital.

"The fact that this guy got only six months in prison for his crime says a lot about the state of our culture right now," Dannenfelser said. "This was a very much wanted pregnancy. She could support the baby on her own and didn't need his help. But he had other ideas in mind."

Virginians on both sides of abortion ballot measure raise funds

Abortion advocates have raised over $2.8 million to advocate for an abortion amendment in the state constitution, while opponents of the referendum have raised more than $400,000.

According to the Virginia Public Access Project, so far Virginians for Reproductive Freedom, a group largely funded by Planned Parenthood organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union, has raised over $2.8 million to advocate for the amendment.

The proposed abortion amendment would establish a "fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one's own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care."

The amendment, if passed, could jeopardize already-existing laws protecting unborn children as well as Virginia's parental notification law. Virginia's Catholic bishops have strongly opposed the amendment, as it could lead to unlimited abortion and would likely overturn parental involvement laws and cut safeguards for women.

Campaigns against the amendment include No Safeguards, No Deal and Protect Virginia 2026.

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The Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota officially launched a formal canonization cause for the 19th century Slovenian-born missionary priest, Monsignor Joseph Buh, who now holds the title of "servant of God" in the Catholic Church.

"It is humbling to know that we stand in a moment of history that the Holy Spirit has chosen to be able to bring forth Monsignor Joseph Buh, not only for days past, but for the present moment, as we are experiencing once again a Catholic revival in the Diocese of Duluth," Bishop Daniel Felton said at the opening of the Sept. 22 Mass for Buh's cause for canonization.

Felton celebrated the Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Duluth. He was joined by a representative of the Slovenian government, a representative of the Catholic Church in Slovenia, representatives for local indigenous communities, and representatives of the Slovenian American community.

A person's official cause for canonization typically begins at the local level, with the diocesan bishop launching the investigation. In June, Felton consulted with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which voted to support Felton's inquiry into Buh's cause.

Buh, who was born in 1833 and died in 1922, ministered to poor immigrants and indigenous people, including the Ojibwe, and helped establish more than 50 parishes in the area. If Buh were canonized, he would be the first saint from Minnesota.

"As Monsignor Buh is with us, he would be the first one to say, 'this isn't about me — it's about the way that God chose me to bring the healing, to bring the hope, to bring the joy of Jesus to others,'" Felton said. "And so we too acknowledge tonight, it's not about us. It's all about Jesus."

In his homily, Felton said there is no better description of Buh than "servant of God," which now is his official title. He said, "that was his one desire, [it] was to be a servant of God." He said Buh "wanted to be a disciple of Christ, just growing closer to Jesus in all ways."

Felton referenced the Gospel reading of the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and "would carry them to the place that the Holy Spirit desired for them." He said in the early 1900s, "that same Spirit was hovering over the Diocese of Duluth in a great moment of revival."

The bishop noted that Buh, when ministering to the indigenous communities and others, would always live with that community and learn the language, "and it was only when he knew that language, the language of the people, that ultimately he would know their hurts and their pains, he would know how they were filled with despair, he would know their tribulations in life."

"And only when he actually knew that in his heart and he could speak that language of the people, only then secondly, did he always begin to talk about Jesus, to put Jesus on center stage, to say Jesus is healing to your hurts, Jesus is hope to your despair, Jesus is joy to your tribulations," Felton said.

Now that Buh is a servant of God, the diocese will perform an inquiry into his life and submit its findings to the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, which will determine whether to move forward with his cause.

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For Archbishop Fulton Sheen's beatification in St. Louis, teenager James Fulton Engstrom presented Cardinal Luis Tagle, the main celebrant, with a first-class relic of Sheen: the mandible, the jawbone that forms the chin and lower jawline and is the only moving bone in the human skull.

Engstrom was the recipient of the miracle in 2010 for Sheen's beatification. Minutes after being born, he was not breathing nor could emergency workers or hospital staff help him. He was dead for 61 minutes — and as doctors were about to record his time of death, James came to life. As the Church has officially proclaimed, through Sheen's intercession, the baby began breathing and was healed of any abnormalities that could occur in a way medical science could not explain.

The mandible was chosen because of Sheen's speaking prowess.

"Using the jawbone is very significant because of his ability to communicate the faith," Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Illinois, Sheen's home diocese, told the National Catholic Register, a sister publication of EWTN News.

"And, of course, his ability to proclaim the faith, to speak out, the faith to preach and to teach" was paramount for Sheen, Tylka, who concelebrated the beatification Mass, said.

"It's pretty common for the one who was healed, if they're available, to have some part to play," Msgr. Jason Gray, the executive director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation in Peoria, Illinois, told the Register.

Part of preparing for a beatification or canonization is obtaining first-class relics of the new blessed or saint. Msgr. Gray explained how the Diocese of Peoria obtained these first-class relics that are always parts or fragments of the body.

Now-Blessed Fulton Sheen died on Dec. 9, 1979.

"The important thing is to know that he's been buried for 47 years at this point, and the body does decompose," Msgr. Gray noted. "In his case, we're not dealing with an incorrupt body, so after 47 years, essentially, all the soft tissue had decomposed. When we did the actual canonical recognition, which is always done in a very respectful way and following the norms that are laid out by Rome, and we did open the casket, essentially, it was just bones. Pretty much everything else had disintegrated. We were able to take some bone that we could use for first-class relics."

The diocese received permission from Rome to take something more sizable because Bishop Tylka wanted to make sure that there was a significant relic given to the Archdiocese of New York, where Sheen served as an auxiliary bishop from 1951 until 1966, and to the Diocese of Rochester, New York, where Sheen served from October 1966 to October 1969. "Both [Rochester] Bishop John Bonnici and [New York] Archbishop Ronald Hicks have been very happy to have that news," Gray said.

Gray described those relics as the longest bones in the palm area of both right and left hands (the second metacarpal bone of the index finger).

"Those are going to be given to Rochester and New York," he said. "They will have a significant relic."

Tylka explained that they were "taking the relics from particularly his right hand because he was right-handed. It was always an iconic image of him writing, especially the 'JMJ' on the blackboard as part of his" "Life Is Worth Living" television program. It seems a significant opportunity to use bones from his right hand. That was such a familiar and iconic image of him that so many people knew." 

"The reality is that although Fulton Sheen was a priest of the Diocese of Peoria, his episcopal ministry and much of his life centered around being in New York," noted Tylka to the Register.

"And, of course, he was the diocesan bishop of Rochester. So it seems important to me that those two dioceses, in particular the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Rochester, each have a significant relic for their use and veneration in the diocese. And knowing that they've been supportive of our efforts to move the beatification forward and the cause of Fulton Sheen, I just thought it would be an important gesture that I, myself, as the bishop, would go and present those relics."

Tylka will personally present the relics to Bishop Bonnici in Rochester next Tuesday and to Archbishop Hicks in New York next Thursday.

"Each of those dioceses are planning celebrations on those days," he said. "They both have great devotion and support of the cause for Fulton Sheen, so they'll be the first two dioceses to receive a relic, a substantial relic," Tylka explained.

He elaborated on the particular choice of relics for these two dioceses. "Knowing that Fulton Sheen was so demonstrative in not only writing 'JMJ,' but often he would make his gesture pointing up to heaven, each of them will receive a bone from his hand. One gets the left and one gets the right."

In addition to these bones, Msgr. Gray explained another longer bone was also taken to prepare small relics. Each will be in a theca (small round reliquary) in which a tiny chip of bone is placed with the inscription ex ossibus Beati Fultoni Sheen — from "the bones of Blessed Fulton Sheen." None could be distributed until Sept. 24.

Gray clarified these relics are not for private collections but meant for public veneration. Requests from Catholic institutions such as a parish, seminary, religious house, convent or shrine must include a testimonial letter from a diocesan bishop.

"We need to know that this is a legitimate request from an institution that will respectfully preserve the relic and that it is meant to be made available for veneration by the faithful," he said.

Second-class relics — an item the blessed or saint owned, wore or touched, such as a shirt or book or pieces of these — are available from the foundation, which has a number of Sheen's vestments (ex indumentis, "from the clothing"). Such second-class relics can be given to private individuals.

"That's perfectly fine," Gray said. "We just ask people to make some sort of a donation because it takes us time to prepare these things — either a relic card, where we actually tape the fragment of vestment inside a holy card; or if people have contributed and been more generous, we've prepared an actual theca with a fragment of cloth in it from the vestments of Fulton Sheen."

"We have an ample supply, so there's no difficulty in honoring that," he said. Because of the many requests the foundation receives, "we do ask people to be a little patient because we're trying to fulfill them as best we can." (People may make requests and include a donation by mail to the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation, 419 NE Madison Ave., Peoria, IL, 61603, or via the website CelebrateSheen.com.)

There are also third-class relics — items like holy cards, religious medals and rosaries that have been touched to a first-class relic.

"Right now, the principal means of creating a third-class is by touching something to the tomb," explained Msgr. Gray of the current resting place of Bishop Sheen's mortal remains in a side chapel at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria. "The tomb itself is a first-class relic." People touch their "rosaries and holy cards all the time when they come to Peoria and make a visit in front of the tomb."

During the beatification at St. Louis' The Dome at America's Center, more than one first-class relic was available for the faithful to venerate.

Another major relic will also travel to Rome — and will be presented to Pope Leo XIV. "That is planned," Tylka confirmed to the Register. "I've received confirmation that I will be given an audience to do so on Oct. 5."

Because Leo grew up only about 168 miles from Peoria, he might have visited Bishop Sheen's home diocese and cathedral church growing up.

"Quite possibly," said Tylka. "He grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, as I did. And certainly, as an Augustinian, we did have a parish where the Augustinians were serving for a part of some time. So it's very likely that he probably could have come down for a visit."

This article was first published by the National Catholic Register, an EWTN News sister publication, and has been adapted for EWTN News English.

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