reuters
The White Sox beating the Cincinnati Reds this week in Chicago? There isn’t a bigger sure thing in sports, right?
Come on. Is the pope Catholic?
More to the point, is the pope a White Sox fan from Chicago?
As if that kind of divine firepower doesn’t already suggest some kind of winged assist from above for the White Sox’s sudden ascent into playoff contention this year after averaging 108 losses the past three, the White Sox promotions department rubbed it in with the Reds’ arrival to town for a series.
They brought out a nun for the ceremonial first pitch of the series and gave away “pope hats” to fans who shrugged off inclement weather forecasts to produce only the ninth sellout of the season at the Sox ballpark with 38,000 Pope Leo impersonators wearing their new hats for the beer-boosted, fun-loving – if perhaps a tad sacrilegious – promotion.
Several Catholic nursing homes in New York, including two in Westchester County, won’t have to comply with the state's newly-enacted Medical Aid in Dying Act while their lawsuit against it is underway.
The Vatican said on Thursday that priests and lay Catholics who are part of a breakaway right-wing Catholic group that ordained bishops without Pope Leo's approval were in schism with the wider Church and now excommunicated.
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Thursday for President Donald Trump's administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants of a humanitarian status that protects them from deportation, giving another boost to his hardline approach toward immigration.
Pope Leo XIV named an executive with U.S. Catholic media conglomerate EWTN as the new head of the Vatican’s communications department on Tuesday, in the first appointment of a woman to the senior Church role.
Two teenage gunmen opened fire on Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, killing a security guard and two other men outside the mosque before the suspects were found dead, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said local law enforcement and the FBI were investigating the attack on the largest mosque in San Diego County as a hate crime.
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a bid by the Archdiocese of Denver and other Catholic entities to be exempted from a Colorado preschool funding program’s nondiscrimination requirement.
The justices took up an appeal of a lower court’s decision that found that Colorado’s program did not violate the religious rights of the Catholic plaintiffs under the Constitution’s First Amendment.
The program provides state funds for preschools. The Catholic plaintiffs objected to the state’s requirement that schools receiving funding under the program give all children “equal opportunity” to enroll in preschool regardless of certain characteristics, including the sexual orientation or gender identity of students or their family members.
A high-level Vatican commission voted against allowing Catholic women to serve as deacons, maintaining the global Church's practice of all-male clergy, according to a report given to Pope Leo and released on Thursday.
The commission, in a 7-1 vote, said historical research and theological investigation “excludes the possibility” of allowing women to serve as deacons at this time but recommended further study of the issue.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a rare condemnation of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and advocated for “meaningful immigration reform.”
“We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” the bishops said in a special message, the first of its kind in 12 years.
Lights, camera, action, pope?
About three dozen Hollywood stars will meet Pope Leo this weekend, including actors Cate Blanchett, Chris Pine and Adam Scott, the Vatican said on Monday.
The Supreme Court rejected on Monday a bid by a former Kentucky county official to overturn its landmark 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, as the justices steered clear of the contentious case some 3.5 years after its conservative majority reversed abortion rights.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, turned away an appeal by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who was sued by a gay couple after refusing to issue any marriage licenses after the 2015 decision recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Davis has said same-sex marriage conflicts with her religious beliefs as an Apostolic Christian.
Jesus may have heard words of wisdom from his mother Mary, but she did not help him save the world from damnation, the Vatican said on Tuesday.
In a new decree approved by Pope Leo, the Vatican’s top doctrinal office instructed the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer” of the world.
Jesus alone saved the world, said the new instruction, settling an internal debate that had befuddled senior Church figures for decades, and even sparked rare open disagreement among recent popes.
Pope Leo called on Tuesday for "deep reflection" about the way migrants are being treated in the United States under President Donald Trump's administration and said the spiritual needs of those in detention needed to be respected.
Speaking to reporters in Castel Gandolfo, his residence outside Rome, the pope was asked about immigrants detained at a federal facility in Broadview, near Chicago, who have been refused the opportunity to receive holy Communion, an important religious obligation.
Joyous Palestinians rushed to embrace prisoners freed under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement as they arrived by bus to the occupied West Bank and Gaza on Monday.
The prisoners were released after the Hamas militant group freed the last 20 living hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that precipitated the war in Gaza.
Under the deal, Israel is set to release 250 Palestinians convicted of murder and other serious crimes as well as 1,700 Palestinians detained in Gaza since the war began, 22 Palestinian minors, and the bodies of 360 militants.
Several thousand people gathered inside and around the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, awaiting the arrival of freed prisoners, with some waving Palestinian flags and others holding pictures of their relatives.
Fighting back tears, one woman who asked to be identified as Um Ahmed said she said that despite her joy at the release, she still had “mixed feelings” about the day.
Pope Leo told U.S. bishops visiting him at the Vatican on Wednesday that they should firmly address how immigrants are being treated by President Donald Trump's hardline policies, attendees said, in the latest push by the pontiff on the issue.
Leo, the first U.S. pope, was handed dozens of letters from immigrants describing their fears of deportation under the Trump administration's policies during the meeting, which included bishops and social workers from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Hamas said on Friday it would agree to some aspects of U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to end the Gaza war, including releasing hostages and handing over administration of the enclave, but that it would seek negotiations over many of its other terms.
In a copy of the statement seen by Reuters, Hamas issued its response to Trump's 20-point plan after the U.S. president gave the Palestinian militant group until Sunday to accept or reject the proposal. Trump has not said whether the terms would be subject to negotiation, as Hamas is seeking.
The Church of England named Sarah Mullally on Friday as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to hold the 1,400-year-old office, prompting criticism from conservative Anglicans mainly based in Africa who oppose women bishops.
Mullally will also become the ceremonial head of 85 million Anglicans worldwide and, like her predecessors, faces a tough challenge in bridging the divide between conservatives - especially in Africa, where homosexuality is outlawed in some countries - and generally more liberal Christians in the West.
Pope Leo on Tuesday appeared to offer his strongest criticism yet of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, questioning whether they were in line with the Catholic Church’s pro-life teachings.
“Someone who says I am against abortion, but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” the pontiff told journalists outside his residence in Castel Gandolfo.
A teenager who died of leukemia in 2006 became the first Catholic saint of the millennial generation on Sunday, in a Vatican ceremony led by Pope Leo XIV and attended by an estimated 70,000 young worshippers from dozens of countries.
Carlo Acutis, a British-born Italian boy who died aged 15, learned computer code to build websites to spread his faith. His story has drawn wide attention from Catholic youth, and he is now at the same level as Mother Teresa and Francis of Assisi.
Leo, the first U.S. pontiff, canonized Acutis on Sunday along with Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young Italian man who was known for helping those in need and died of polio in the 1920s.