The two men sit side by side in front of microphones, Seitz wears black clerics.

Texas Supreme Court to decide legal battle over El Paso migrant shelter’s future

News

Justices on Monday heard arguments from Annunciation House, which is fighting to stay open, and the Texas Attorney General’s office, which claims the shelter’s work with migrants violates state law.

The Latest

Editors' Choice

Focus

A voting sign is posted in front of St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church, a polling location in Hyattsville, Md., on Election Day in 2024. (NCR photo/James Grimaldi)

In Focus

Editorial: The Catholic voter is NCR's Newsmaker of 2024

Given the importance the Catholic electorate has played in the discussion of the outcome of the 2024 national election, the National Catholic Reporter is naming the Catholic voter its Newsmaker of the Year.

Most Read Stories

Francis in wheelchair pictured from behind regarding the nativity scene.
Vatican News

#1
Vatican decides not to put keffiyeh back in Nativity

After receiving backlash from Jewish groups, the Vatican chose to not put the keffiyeh back in its original place on the manger of the Palestinian-made Nativity scene in the Paul VI Hall.

ByClaire Giangravé, Religion News Service
Cardinal Robert McElroy is pictured in a 2019 photo. Pope Francis appointed Cardinal McElroy as the next archbishop of Washington in an announcement publicized on Jan. 6. (OSV News/Catholic News Service/Paul Haring)
Editorial

#2
Editorial: McElroy is an antidote to a US capital and church riven by division

We are in a moment of unprecedented division and uncertainty in both the church and society. That's why Pope Francis could not have made a better choice to lead the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.

ByNCR Editorial Staff
In this picture taken through a window, from left, President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Vice President-elect JD Vance attend the NCAA college football game between Army and Navy at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Dec. 14, 2024. (AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)
NCR Voices

#3
Where in the world is JD Vance?

Our vice president-elect hasn't been making headlines since the election, at least not when compared to some others President-elect Donald Trump has selected to help him run the executive branch.

ByMichael Sean Winters

#4
Biden awards Pope Francis with Presidential Medal of Freedom

#5
Cardinal McElroy to face challenges in Trump's Washington

#6
'Black Doves' turns a religious symbol on its head

Opinion

The case against Opus Dei

Guest Voices

Christmas cards tell a story of the deeper dimensions of life

NCR Voices
Photos, clockwise from top center: Martin Sheen (CNS/Bob Roller); Bernard Lafayette (Wikimedia Commons); John Dear (Courtesy of John Dear); St. Joseph Sr. Helen Prejean (CNS/Paul Haring); Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr (CNS/Courtesy of Franciscan Media)

Actor and activist Martin Sheen: The Gospel is personal to me

Listen: "If we don't take the Gospel personally, then it's impersonal. And if it's impersonal, then so what?" Award-winning actor Martin Sheen talks with John Dear on "The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast."

Editorial: McElroy is an antidote to a US capital and church riven by division

Editorial

Your letters: Priests in Palestine, the Catholic voter and Pelosi's stance on Vatican-China relations

Letters to the Editor
The Jouyssance Early Music Ensemble performs "Convidando esta la noche," the closing song for "Spirit Child." (NCR screenshot/YouTube/Matthew Ian Welch)

My next year's Christmas playlist will draw on wonders of Mexico's past

Guest Voices

I couldn't understand all the lyrics — the Spanish was centuries old, and my family lost our Indigenous language long ago. But the 17th-century songs evoked not just the birth of Christ, but the birth of Mexico itself.

Vatican

Francis in wheelchair surrounded by people waves and smiles.
Vatican News

Holy Year pilgrimage is chance to begin again, pope says

Meeting more than 7,000 pilgrims who filled the Vatican audience hall or pressed against crowd-control barriers outside, Francis began a series of Saturday general audiences designed, as he said, to "welcome and embrace all those who are coming from all over the world in search of a new beginning."

Vatican News

Vatican diplomats discuss paths toward peace in Middle East

The Vatican's top diplomat met with papal representatives to various Middle Eastern countries to discuss possible avenues toward peace in the region and the state of the Catholic Church there.

ByJustin McLellan, Catholic News Service
Francis, the comic strip: Brother Leo asks Francis about the treasures that can be found at the Vatican.
Francis, the comic strip

Francis, the comic strip: Not for sale

Francis, the comic strip: Brother Leo asks Francis about the treasures that can be found at the Vatican.

ByPat Marrin
St. Peter's pictured in sunrise.
Vatican News

Pope appoints three US experts, two of them women, as dicastery members

Pope Francis has named three U.S. experts — two women and an abbot — to be members of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, a position once reserved for cardinals and bishops.

ByCarol Glatz, OSV News

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Vatican News

Vatican approves document allowing gay men to become priests in Italy

Vatican News

Best gift a child can receive is faith, pope says at baptisms

Vatican News

Biden awards Pope Francis with Presidential Medal of Freedom

Francis sits at desk marking pages with pen.

Indifference, pride fuel world's horrors; selfishness is suicide

"An economy that kills, that excludes, that starves, that concentrates enormous wealth in a few to the detriment of many, that multiplies poverty and grinds down salaries, that pollutes, that produces war, is not an economy," he said in an autobiography released Jan. 14. It is a perversion, "an emptiness, an absence, a sickness."

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland addresses the Tribal Nations Summit from an auditorium on the White House campus in Washington Nov. 15, 2021.
Politics

Deb Haaland, America's first Native Cabinet secretary, considers her legacy

"Growing up in my mother's Pueblo household made me fierce. I'll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land," Haaland said in 2021 ahead of her congressional confirmation vote. 

ByAnita Hofschneider, Grist
Burning house and trees.
Viewpoints

Pointing fingers will not fight California's fires nor preserve its future

The Los Angeles fire is the kind of crisis that also is an opportunity to do something dramatic.

ByThomas Reese, Religion News Service
The Swannanoa Christian Church holds its first Sunday service since Hurricane Helene.
Justice

Faith organizations have a complex relationship to disaster relief

Church volunteers feel called by Christ to help those impacted by Helene. For some, that means fulfilling a mandate to alleviate suffering. For others, it also means proselytizing.

ByKatie Myers, Grist

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Faith

Pope offers prayers for those impacted by LA wildfires

Justice

U.S. sister killed in the Amazon honored at Rome 'new martyrs' shrine

Viewpoints

When you want to call it quits, find hope for creation in your own small actions

Culture

"Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata," an 1513-1515 painting by Domenico Beccafumi (J. Paul Getty Museum, public domain)
Book Reviews

Trans theology is subject of recently released book, 'Glorious Bodies'

In Colby Gordon's first book, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature," the author's political theology implicates transphobia as a crucial underpinning of colonialism, white supremacy and Christian hegemony.

"Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata," an 1513-1515 painting by Domenico Beccafumi (J. Paul Getty Museum, public domain)
Book Reviews

Trans theology is subject of recently released book, 'Glorious Bodies'

In Colby Gordon's first book, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature," the author's political theology implicates transphobia as a crucial underpinning of colonialism, white supremacy and Christian hegemony.

ByJeromiah Taylor
Black and white portrait of Borel standing in front of Notre Dame de Pari.

Notre Dame's first concert a 'moment of grace' for young composer of Marian choral piece

After 10 days of solemn reopening Masses, the cathedral's choir La Maîtrise Notre Dame de Paris gave its first sacred music concert in the renovated French Gothic structure Dec. 17. In the audience was a young French composer Lise Borel, who had brought her entire family with her. 

ByOSV News
"The Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Aurea, and Patriarchs and Prophets" by Duccio di Buoninsegna, ca. 1312-15 (Michael Centore)

Sienese exhibition at MET illuminates pivotal moment in history of religious painting

A current exhibition at the MET reveals a humanity that will shift people's perception of religious art — and with it their understanding of themselves.

ByMichael Centore

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Book Reviews

Mysticism is the 'fiery core and beating heart' of religion, new book says

In 2024, cinema was all about prayer — whether or not we noticed

Joint Ukrainian-Polish icon painting initiative goes where liturgists fear to tread

Canossian Sr. Grasy Rodrigues discusses a rape case with police personnel at Mandarem, Goa, western India. (Courtesy of Grasy Rodrigues)

Q&A with Sr. Grasy Rodrigues, award-winning anti-trafficking activist

In Goa, India, Canossian Sr. Grasy Rodrigues organizes human trafficking awareness campaigns in hotels, colleges, villages, schools and slums, as well as helps rehabilitate rescued trafficking victims.

U.S. President Joe Biden walks to deliver remarks on the election results and the upcoming presidential transition of power, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington Nov. 7, 2024. His speech took place the day after Republican President-elect Donald Trump was declared to have been elected the 47th president of the United States. (OSV News/Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz)

Monday Starter: St. Joseph Sisters ask Biden to end term with care for immigrants

Also, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's shrine celebrates the 50th anniversary of her canonization. Network lobby will host a webinar strategizing on responses to Trump's first 100 days, as it names new interim executive director.

ByDan Stockman
Benedictine Srs. Helen Mueting, left, and Barbara Smith harvest green beans from the Benedictine Sisters' garden in Atchison, Kansas, during the summer of 2024. (Courtesy of the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica)
Viewpoints

When you want to call it quits, find hope for creation in your own small actions

In my work for ecology in my religious community, I can become depressed and want to give up. Why fight a losing battle? But to a small degree, we are acting with hope for creation, and we have seen some progress.

ByHelen Mueting
Children are pictured at Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús, a church-run shelter for potentially trafficked children and unaccompanied minors trying to cross the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. (GSR photo/Chris Herlinger)

At Haitian-Dominican border, shelter protects children vulnerable to human trafficking

The Sisters of St. John the Evangelist combat human trafficking in Haiti through Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús, a shelter for potentially trafficked children and unaccompanied minors trying to cross the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

ByChris Herlinger

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Sisters help educate tribal girls through hostel service in Bangladesh

New year: A time of promise and fulfillment

Medical Mission Sisters in India embrace 'holistic healing mission'

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