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CHICLAYO, Peru — Pope Leo XIV ended his first day back in his former diocese on Friday, Nov. 13, at dinner with about 140 of its priests, one of whom said the pope "was very happy" to be with them.

"There were about 140 of us priests. He arrived very cheerful and told us that he was very glad to be with us, that he wanted to see us," Father Jorge Millán told EWTN News. Millán was pastor of Chiclayo's cathedral when Leo was bishop of the diocese.

The dinner took place at the Colegio Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo in Chiclayo.

'A beautiful gesture'

Millán said the Holy Father made "a beautiful gesture" toward the priests at the end of the meal.

"Instead of us asking him for a photo, he said, 'I want to take a photo with each one of you.' And one by one we went up, and he greeted us with great patience and affection, with a welcoming look, recognizing us by our names. He hasn't lost his memory. He was very content and happy," the priest said.

Leo "wanted to stay, I think," Millán added, "but we were happy with this gesture, because he was the one who asked us to have dinner with him."

'A task'

According to Millán, the pope encouraged the priests "to keep the parishes alive, to love one another very much, to stay together and to always work for evangelization and for the love of God."

A cake served at the dinner showed the pope beside Chiclayo's cathedral with the inscription "Leo XIV, Messenger of Peace."

It was "a very familial dinner, very much among brothers," Millán said. "And of course we had to remind ourselves that the one there with us is the pope, nothing more and nothing less."

Leo led the Diocese of Chiclayo as bishop from 2015 to 2023. Earlier on Friday, he celebrated Mass for about 500,000 people in the Pampas de Pimentel, crowned the image of Our Lady of Peace at her shrine and addressed students and professors at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University.

On Saturday, Nov. 14, he is scheduled to crown the image of the Immaculate Virgin at Chiclayo's cathedral, celebrate Mass in Santa Cruz de Succhabamba in the Cajamarca region and close the jubilee year of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo in Zaña.

This story was first published by EWTN News Español and has been adapted by EWTN News English.

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Joaquín José Martínez takes the long view when it comes to abolishing the death penalty: "One step at a time."

Convicted of murder in 1997 and sentenced to death, Martínez — a Catholic — was exonerated in 2001. Since then he has spent years advocating against the death penalty in Florida and elsewhere.

At a press conference on Nov. 12, Martínez urged Florida's Gov.-elect Byron Donalds to halt executions in the state, something Catholics and other advocates have been calling on the government to do for years.

The advocate said the sociopolitical landscape around capital punishment has changed radically over the years, particularly in schools, where Martínez himself regularly speaks to students about abolishing the death penalty.

"We didn't have anyone come out [when I was a child] to teach us and speak to us about how horrible the death penalty was," he said. "To see this change now, I'm overwhelmed by it."

Florida is among the most active states in putting prisoners to death. Data from the Death Penalty Information Center show 23 executions there over the last year alone.

Catholic bishops in the state have been active in speaking out against executions, urging the government to halt death sentences in part by regularly pointing to the humanity of the condemned.

In 2025, for instance, the bishops called for the commutation of one death sentence by arguing that the governor should "recognize with awe that God is the author of life, and to reserve to him the taking of human life except where it is otherwise impossible to maintain the common good."

In the press conference, Martínez — who was joined by his fellow exonerees Herman Lindsey and Seth Penalver — acknowledged that it is "difficult" for people to "accept that the death penalty is not perfect."

"It has faults," he said. But "I'm one more reason why we should abolish the death penalty."

A native of Spain, Martínez told EWTN News that he loves his adopted home of the United States. "And I would really love to see the United States put an end to the death penalty," he said.

"I think we're an example to the rest of the world. The rest of the world looks to the U.S. for what they do."

At the press conference he compared executions in the U.S. to those carried out in ancient Rome's Colosseum.

"I mean, how barbaric!" he said at the conference. He argued that the U.S. and Florida are "not barbaric," but he argued of the country: "It just needs to evolve. It just needs to grow."

He told EWTN News, meanwhile, that anti-death penalty advocacy is much more united and focused than it was years ago when he himself was on death row.

"When I was sentenced to death, we didn't have so many organizations working together against the death penalty," he said. The media, too, now offers much fairer coverage of that advocacy than it used to, he said.

He also pointed to California Gov. Gavin Newsom's recent historic exoneration of every prisoner on that state's death row.

"It's going to take a long time to change," he said. "But we do see change. It's good."

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada — A national initiative is urgently needed to address the "real problem" of Catholics accessing medical assistance in dying (MAID), said Father Thomas Lynch, president of Priests for Life Canada.

Lynch, who serves in the Diocese of Peterborough, Ontario, said the majority of priests with whom he has spoken "have experience with [Catholic] people being killed — I refuse to say, 'dying by MAiD.'"

"This is a real problem," Lynch told Canadian Catholic News (CCN) in an interview. "I can say this, categorically, because I've presented at a large number of priest study days, speaking on this specifically, and if you ask priests if they've had any firsthand experience [with the problem], the majority put up their hands."

Lynch said the Church "needs to be far clearer" about promoting life. "It can't just be diocese by diocese" or a letter from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), he said.

Because the federal MAID reporting system does not track the religious affiliation of those who die by euthanasia, there is no way to determine how many of the 16,499 Canadians who received MAID in 2024 were practicing or lapsed Catholics.

However, the acceptance of MAID among Catholics is sufficiently significant that Deacon Laurence Worthen, executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Association of Canada, agrees that much more needs to be done to educate the laity about the moral peril posed by MAID.

"Yes, it is a huge problem," Worthen said in an interview. "We need information sheets passed out at the parishes, we need our priests preaching about it. We need a full-court press."

Worthen, who lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, traveled throughout Canada for two weeks in November giving talks about the issue to 15 groups.

His association offers a three-part program called "Dying with Christ — Living with Hope." Emphasizing human dignity, it presents a Christian view of dying rooted in the belief that life is a gift from God and must be cared for, not intentionally ended.

The CCCB's strong opposition to legalized euthanasia was evident well before Parliament passed MAID legislation in 2016 and has continued over the past decade with formal statements, briefs, letters to government, and pastoral messages.

In an emailed response to questions from CCN, a spokesperson for the communications office of the CCCB said the organization continues to publicly voice its strong objection to MAID.

"In addition, the CCCB does offer the free resource 'Horizons of Hope: A Toolkit for Catholic Parishes on Palliative Care,'" the spokesperson said. "This resource seeks to empower and educate the faithful by addressing questions surrounding palliative care, dying, death, suffering, accompaniment, and bereavement in a holistic fashion."

As well, the CCCB formed the Joint Ad hoc Committee on Palliative Care with a variety of partners and experts to address the increasing complexities regarding end-of-life issues in Canada, the spokesperson said. Committee members included representatives from Pallium Canada, Dominican University College, Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute, Catholic Health Alliance of Canada, and the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.

In a statement issued in June on the 10th anniversary of Canada's legalization of MAID, the CCCB said euthanasia and assisted dying "can never be morally acceptable, for they are gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to God, the Creator and Lord of Life."

Despite such moral injunctions, a June 2023 Ipsos poll, commissioned by the pro-MAID group Dying with Dignity, found that support for MAID among Canadian Catholics for patients whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable was almost identical to the national rate — 83% compared with 84% overall.

Support among Catholics for MAID is more than just philosophical. In Vancouver, Father Joseph D'Souza, pastor of St. Mary Parish, told CCN he was greatly troubled two years ago when he learned that an elderly, ailing religious sister living in his parish was planning to access MAID to precipitate her death.

D'Souza said he refused the sister's request for the sacrament of anointing of the sick and then, after checking with the chancery, also refused to celebrate a funeral Mass when the sister followed through on her MAID death.

Church doctrine clearly supports his actions, he said. "But as a gesture of goodwill, we can go to the cemetery and bless the grave, which I did," he said.

D'Souza said he used the graveside blessing "as an opportunity to make [the mourners] aware that the Church is against MAID … because the Church values life and life is created by God and he alone has the right to take it away. So when I made that, in my homily, very clear, all the friends understood the fact."

At Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Father Paul Moret devoted a homily last March to Catholic teaching about the sanctity of life in response to persistent rumors that two parishioners had died by MAID, he told CCN.

He said the families of these two parishioners — a longtime member of the Knights of Columbus and a member of the Catholic Women's League — had allegedly kept secret the fact the two had accessed MAID so that they could have funeral Masses.

"I just wanted to make it very clear to people what the Church believes in this regard, so that when they are making end-of-life decisions, they don't make that decision, to go for MAID," Moret told CCN.

He said he believes the lingering negative influence of the Canadian bishops' pronouncements about personal conscience is partly to blame for the support for MAID among some Catholics.

Moret referred directly to the 1968 "Winnipeg Statement" issued by the Canadian bishops in response to Humanae Vitae, the encyclical of Pope Paul VI that banned the use of artificial contraception.

He said the bishops' statement created the faulty impression that a person acting in good conscience could choose not to adhere to official Church teaching.

Nevertheless, Moret said pastoral issues surrounding MAID are not always clear-cut. He said when MAID was first legalized, his pastoral response was clear: It's wrong in all circumstances.

Now, however, his response is being influenced by news reports that some Canadians are being pressured to choose MAID and that some are turning to assisted death because of inadequate healthcare.

"People are being pushed into it," Moret said. "People are being pushed over the cliff either by the medical profession itself, or by family members, or by whatever happens to be. So I don't think it's possible for us to make the assumption that the person has chosen freely."

He likened such changed circumstances to the Church's shift in the understanding of suicide. It used to be that the Church presumed all those who committed suicide did so with the full knowledge of the moral consequence of their action — that it was a grave sin in direct violation of the Fifth Commandment and the dignity of human life.

Today, however, the Catechism of the Catholic Church maintains: "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide" (No. 2282).

Moret said he would appreciate some clarification on whether circumstances surrounding a person's euthanasia death can likewise help shape his pastoral response.

This story was first published by Canadian Catholic News and has been reprinted, with adaptations, with permission.

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CHICLAYO, Peru — Pope Leo XIV offered a mission statement for Catholic higher education as a bastion of truth-seeking and humanity in a world increasingly dominated by soulless technocratic utilitarianism.

Speaking Friday, Nov. 13, in his former diocese, the pope said a university is called to be "a forge of talents and a laboratory of meaning: a space where intelligence does not bow to utility but serves the truth faithfully" — above all, he added, "the Truth with a capital T, who is Christ, the Savior of the world."

"The Catholic university works to foster the fruitful encounter between faith and reason, and between religion and science," the pope continued. "This academic approach frees us from the temptation to produce only a skilled workforce for an exclusive and highly competitive market."

Leo made his remarks during a visit to Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, where as bishop he also served as the university's grand chancellor. Friday was his first time back in the city since his election as pope in May 2025.

The institution is named for St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, a Spanish missionary who served as archbishop of Lima from 1581 until his death in 1606 and who promoted the use of the Indigenous languages Quechua and Aymara in evangelization.

Leo has a particular devotion to St. Turibius and was scheduled to take part in a celebration closing the jubilee year for the 300th anniversary of the saint's canonization on Saturday, Nov. 14.

"Saint Turibius' great cultural work in this part of the world continues to inspire us," the pope said on Friday. "A university modeled on his example is called to use scientific innovation to bridge social divides and heal society's wounds."

He said such a university could be effective in dispelling what he called the mirage of transhumanism and posthumanism: "ideological currents according to which, sooner or later, technology will eliminate all disease and pain, as well as aging and even death itself."

Against such ideas, Christian anthropology "reminds us that a limitation is not a manufacturing defect, but rather the very condition of human grandeur," Leo said. While "the myth of self-sufficiency locks us in selfishness and leads us to discard the weak," he added, "recognizing our fragility makes us attentive to the needs of all."

Turning to the students, the pope urged them to see the opportunities of their time in the light of faith, which he called a bright beacon in "the confusion and darkness of loneliness, boredom and pain" and "a force that gives wisdom and strength, leading to what is essential."

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Public support for the death penalty in the United States has dropped below 50% for the first time since 1971, according to a new survey from Gallup.

The survey of 1,200 adults between Oct. 1–19 found that a plurality of Americans still support the death penalty, but the number sat at 49%. It found that 45% oppose the death penalty and 5% did not have an opinion. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Gallup's findings show a continued decline in public support for the death penalty since 1994 when 80% of Americans supported it. The last time support for the death penalty was at 49% was in 1971, after which public support steadily climbed up to the 1994 peak.

Only three surveys published by Gallup over the last 70 years found public support lower than 49%. This was in 1957 when support was 47%, in 1965 when support was 45%, and in 1966 when support was 42%.

From 1994 to 2026, a substantial decline in support for the death penalty came from Democrats and independents; however, Republican support has gone down as well. In the past 32 years, support of Democrats decreased from 75% to 28%, support of independents decreased from 79% to 50%, and support of Republicans decreased from 84% to 73%.

"We know that the death penalty is a life issue, not a political issue, which is why it's particularly encouraging to see that support for capital punishment has decreased among both Republicans and Democrats," Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, told EWTN News.

The Catholic Mobilizing Network works closely with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on efforts to oppose the death penalty.

It's particularly encouraging to see that support for capital punishment has decreased among both Republicans and Democrats."

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy

Catholic Mobilizing Network

"The decline is consistent with what we see traveling across the country and speaking with people in the pews and people of goodwill: More and more people realize that capital punishment neither deters crime nor brings healing for victims," Vaillancourt Murphy said.

"As the American public becomes less tolerant of this barbaric practice, God willing, more resources and attention can be focused on murder victims and their families to create pathways toward healing and possibly even forgiveness," she added.

According to the survey, younger people are less likely to support the death penalty than older people. It found support for the death penalty among those aged 18-29 at 39%, among those aged 30-49 at 49%, among those aged 50-64 at 54%, and among those aged 65 and older at 53%.

Although Gallup's survey suggests a strong decline in public support, a separate survey from Pew Research Center from July found that 66% of Americans support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, as do 65% of Catholic Americans. Gallup's survey did not break down results by religion.

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Pope Leo XIV returned to Chiclayo, Peru, on Nov. 13, visiting the South American diocese he led for nearly a decade and celebrating Mass there as pope for the first time.

The Holy Father led the Chiclayo Diocese from 2015 to 2023 before then-Pope Francis appointed him as the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. The pope has referred to Peru as his "homeland"; prior to leading the Diocese of Chiclayo he served as a missionary there for years.

Here are photos of Pope Leo in Chiclayo on Nov. 13:

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