Religion News Service

This was the year Francis tried to hold the tension between progressives and conservatives in the church.

According to Sister Norma Pimentel, she and Bishop Daniel Flores share an emphasis on a pastoral approach.

Trump’s top-level nominees for his second administration include pastors, Catholic converts and one who owes his spiritual rebirth to a book by a Swiss psychiatrist.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feast day falls on Dec. 12, has emerged as a symbol among Latino activists and artists in the U.S. and Mexico of their support for Palestinians in Gaza.

In an exclusive, RNS is publishing the leaked minutes of a heavenly committee on the future of humanity and the Earth, weighing in on global warming's progression, which if not stopped will have catastrophic consequences for the planet and its inhabitants.

Assuring the crowd of the sustainable harvesting of the tree, the pope compared the rings in the 98-foot-tall tree to the generations of believers gathering around the single image of Jesus.

In the future, a program like AI Jesus could be used to hear confessions around the clock. But with no experience of having a human body, it cannot engage or absolve human sins, writes Joanne M. Pierce. 

Vatican journalists were escorted inside the Vatican, passing through a parking lot with still-wrapped electric car charging stations, as the city-state continues in its effort to achieve zero emissions. Francis, sitting on his wheelchair, met with 15 members of the creative and directive team of Mercedes-Benz, which has been a key provider of popemobiles for the Vatican for almost 100 years, though this is the company’s first fully electric offering.

Pope Francis' plan to build an eco-village in the historic gardens of Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the popes, will be complete for the 2025 Jubilee. The "Borgo Laudato Sì" project, which combines sustainable agriculture with environmentally friendly teaching programs aimed especially at vulnerable and marginalized groups.

"The Scripture readings at the end of the liturgical year are the biblical equivalent of dystopian science fiction," writes Fr. Thomas Reese. Those ideas "can lead us to despair, to give up and do nothing."

The church depends on donations from nations whose better off have been educated on the baptismal equality of all persons.

Cardinal Miguel Ayuso Guixot, a leading Vatican expert on Islam, died on Monday (Nov. 25) at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, according to official Catholic Church news outlets. The cardinal was credited for rekindling the relationship between Sunni Islam and the Catholic Church. He was 72.

There is no perfect way of selecting bishops. Even Jesus got it wrong one out of 12 times.

How strongly will the U.S. bishops express their agreements and disagreements with the Trump administration? We can get some answers by looking at how the bishops dealt with the first Trump administration.

On the first day of the bishops’ recent meeting in Baltimore, Bishop Daniel Thomas — who was elected last fall to lead their Committee on Pro-Life Activities and began his three-year term on Nov. 13 —  sat down with RNS for an interview.

President-elect Trump promised to end all wars. The Vatican’s secretary of state cautioned that there are no ‘magic solutions’ to global conflicts.

A conference in London on Monday and Tuesday (Nov. 11-12) sought to bridge that gap by bringing together financial service industry experts with Anglican and Catholic leaders, who represent dioceses and congregations all over the world and an estimated portfolio of $1.75 trillion.

The host country for the annual summit has come under international scrutiny for human rights and religious freedom violations, leading some activists to question why there has not been more pushback from the global climate advocates, including faith organizations.

Conservative Christians have long celebrated what they see as the landmark successes of Trump’s first term, particularly his appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court and their overturning of Roe v. Wade to end nationwide abortion access. This time, however, evangelical advisers of Trump say they are hoping for more — although exactly what form those policies will take appears to be the subject of debate.

Instead of immediate blame or praise for the results, here are five takeaways that Fr. Tom Reese believes political scientists and historians will be pondering for years in an attempt to make sense out of this election.