Author: Eric Deabill

ROME (CNS) – Making his customary visit to the Rome Basilica of St. Mary Major to pray before his trip to the French island of Corsica, Pope Francis also met and prayed with dozens of actors staging a living Nativity scene.

For the third year in a row, the basilica and an Italian association that promotes the tradition of Nativity scenes, including living representations, turned the neighborhood around the basilica into a small Bethlehem with the manger on the basilica’s steps.

After a noon Mass Dec. 14 celebrated by new Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, coadjutor archpriest of the basilica, parishes, prayer groups, confraternities and Italian folklore groups provided the actors and the tableau. Marching bands, musicians, singers and dancers performed for the crowd.

Later, after Pope Francis prayed before the Marian icon “Salus Populi Romani,” as he does before and after every foreign trip, he met inside the basilica with the living Nativity participants.

With the couple playing Mary and Joseph holding a baby and standing alongside him, Pope Francis told participants, “Christmas always brings us joy. Christmas brings us the tenderness of a baby.”

Gazing at a Nativity scene, he said, the newborn baby Jesus “gives us hope,” and the image of Mary is a reminder that people can count on “the care of a mother, Our Lady, who accompanies us throughout our lives” and on the example of St. Joseph, who worked to support his family.

Pope Francis also told the crowd that if there was anyone present “who does not have peace in your heart, remember that God forgives everything and God forgives always. Do not be afraid to ask the Lord’s pardon because he forgives everything, and he forgives always.”

“He came for us, with so much tenderness,” the pope said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In a letter to his nuncio in Russia, Pope Francis called out those who would claim Russia’s war on Ukraine had any spiritual justification.

Saying he wanted to speak on behalf of the war’s victims, Pope Francis said that “their cry rises to God, invoking peace instead of war, dialogue instead of the din of weapons, solidarity instead of partisan interests, because one cannot kill in the name of God.”

Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow have both claimed God is on Russia’s side as they promoted the war as, in part, a fight against the “evil” West.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill had had a 40-minute Zoom conversation a month after the war began in 2022. The pope later told a reporter, “I listened to him” read a list of reasons justifying the war, “and I told him, ‘I don’t know anything about this. Brother, we are not clerics of the state, we cannot use the language of politics, but of Jesus. We are shepherds of the same holy people of God. That is why we must seek the path of peace, to cease the blast of weapons.'”

“The patriarch cannot turn himself into Putin’s altar boy,” Pope Francis said in the May 2022 interview with the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera.

The pope had written in November to his nuncio in Ukraine, sending assurances of his sorrow and his prayers on the 1,000th day since Russia began its large-scale invasion in February 2022.

His letter to Archbishop Giovanni d’Aniello, the nuncio in Russia, was dated Dec. 12 and printed on the front page of the Vatican newspaper Dec. 14.

As people prepare for Christmas, “the day on which the son of God, prince of peace, appeared on the earth,” Pope Francis said he wanted to share with his nuncio in Russia “my prayer and my heartfelt appeal that peace would reign among people and would be reborn in the hearts of all men and women, who are loved by the Lord.”

The continued fighting, the pope said, “urgently challenges us, reminding us of the duty to reflect together on how to alleviate the suffering of those affected and rebuild peace.”

Pope Francis also said that he hoped people’s prayers and the humanitarian efforts to alleviate people’s suffering would “pave the way for renewed diplomatic efforts, which are necessary to halt the progression of the conflict and to achieve the long-awaited peace.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – State laws of interest to Catholics spanned policy areas from abortion to IVF to immigration in 2024. An expected ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2025 could have an impact on state laws across the country banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender.

– State ballot initiatives on abortion reshape map of restrictions –

Voters in seven of 10 states with ballot referendums on abortion voted to codify abortion as a right in their state constitution, but three states — Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — defied that trend, marking the first victories on such measures for pro-life activists since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022.

In the same election that saw former President Donald Trump elected to another term in the White House, voters approved most of the referendums to expand legal protections for abortion in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Missouri, and related measures in Maryland and New York, continuing a trend also seen in elections in 2022 and 2023.

According to a tally by KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of Dec. 3 most abortions are currently banned in 13 states, although Missouri voters opted to overturn that restriction.

Another type of legislation that emerged in 2024 was what proponents call a medical education bill. South Dakota passed the first such effort that would direct the state’s Department of Health to create a video explaining the state’s abortion regulations for health care professionals and the general public.

– Alabama sparks IVF controversy –

In March, Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a law granting legal protection to in vitro fertilization clinics after a ruling by that state’s Supreme Court found that frozen embryos qualify as children under the state law’s wrongful death law. The ensuing controversy over that ruling prompted the law.

Meanwhile, Trump has pledged to implement universal coverage for IVF in his second term.

IVF is a form of fertility treatment opposed by the Catholic Church on the grounds that it separates procreation from sex and often involves the destruction of human embryos, among other concerns.

The ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court found that embryos were considered children under the terms of the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, a statute that allows parents of a deceased child to recover punitive damages for their child’s death, in response to appeals brought by couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020 after being improperly removed from storage equipment. While the ruling itself was limited in scope, it was met with backlash, as it created complex legal questions about whether IVF treatments were permitted in the state. Multiple IVF providers in the state paused treatments after it was issued.

Trump distanced himself from the controversy, arguing Republicans should support IVF. He later made a campaign pledge that his administration would protect access to IVF but would have either the government or insurance companies cover the costly treatment. A Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet estimated that a single cycle of IVF can cost $15,000 to $20,000 and can exceed $30,000.

The 1987 document from the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith known as “Donum Vitae,” or “The Gift of Life,” states the church opposes IVF and related practices, including gestational surrogacy, in part because “the connection between in vitro fertilization and the voluntary destruction of human embryos occurs too often.”

– Texas law making crossing border without authorization a state crime blocked –

Federal courts in 2024 blocked Texas from enforcing its controversial law making it a state crime for unauthorized migrants to cross into Texas from Mexico.

The legislation, known as Senate Bill 4, is currently facing legal challenges, as federal law already makes it illegal to enter the U.S. without authorization. Most portions of a similar 2010 Arizona law were later struck down by the Supreme Court.

Supporters of the legislation argue it would deter unauthorized entry into the state by empowering its own law enforcement, while opponents argue the law is unconstitutional and inhumane, wading into a power reserved for federal authorities. Catholic organizations have opposed the law, arguing it was an inhumane response to issues at the border.

– Expected SCOTUS ’25 ruling could impact over two dozen state laws on gender transitions for minors –

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Dec. 4 in a case concerning a challenge to a Tennessee state law banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender. Taking up the case marked the high court’s first major step toward weighing in on the controversial issue.

Although it is not yet clear how the court will rule, or what the scope of that ruling will be, a ruling is expected before the end of the court’s term, typically in June. Its ruling could impact whether similar laws passed by at least 25 Republican-led states are ultimately enforced or overturned across the country.

Supporters of prohibitions on gender transition surgeries or hormonal treatments for minors who identify as transgender say such restrictions will prevent them from making irreversible decisions as children that they may later come to regret as adults. Critics of such bans argue that preventing those interventions could cause other harm to minors, such as mental health issues or physical self-harm.

In guidance on health care policy and practices released in March 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine outlined the church’s opposition to interventions that “involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof.”

A 2022 study by the UCLA Williams Institute found that there are approximately 1.6 million people in the U.S. who identify as transgender, with nearly half of that population between the ages of 13 and 24.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Reducing the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe to anything other than an expression of Mary’s universal motherhood diminishes the true essence of the iconic Marian devotion, Pope Francis said.

“The mystery of Guadalupe is to venerate her and to hear in our ears: ‘Am I not here, I who am your mother?'” the pope said, referencing the words Mary is said to have spoken to St. Juan Diego.

“This is the whole message of Guadalupe. All others are ideologies,” he said in his homily at Mass for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Pope Francis presided over the Mass while seated, delivering a brief homily without reading from a prepared text. Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, was the main celebrant at the altar.

“On this mystery of Guadalupe, unfortunately many ideologies have sought to derive ideological benefit,” the pope said in Spanish, recalling that the true message of Guadalupe lies in its simplicity.

Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is deeply rooted in Latin America and connected to 16th-century Marian apparitions in Mexico. According to tradition, Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego, an Indigenous Mexican, and left her image imprinted on his cloak. The image depicts Mary as pregnant, and it is said that roses – foreign to the region – miraculously spilled from his cloak when he presented it to the bishop.

“Mary’s motherhood is recorded on that cloak, that simple cloak,” Pope Francis said. “Mary’s motherhood is shown in the beauty of the roses that the Indian finds and takes with him, and Mary’s motherhood performs the miracle of bringing faith to the somewhat incredulous hearts of prelates.”

The mystery of the Marian apparitions in Mexico, the pope said, is to hear Mary’s message to St. Juan Diego — “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” — in “the different moments of life, the various difficult moments of life, the joyful moments of life, the ordinary moments of life.”

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which displays the cloak on which Mary’s image appeared, draws some 20 million pilgrims each year. Inscribed above its entrance are the words Mary is said to have spoken to St. Juan Diego.

“Anything else that is said about the mystery of Guadalupe beyond this is false and seeks to exploit it for ideologies,” Pope Francis said.

The Mass, celebrated in Spanish, included a reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians read in Portuguese. U.S.-born Cardinal Prevost, who previously served as a bishop in Peru, venerated an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe with incense upon arriving at the altar.

Among those presenting the gifts during Mass were people wearing traditional Andean headwear, an alpaca wool poncho and a woman with a cloak bearing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe draped around her back.

After Mass, the pope spent ample time greeting the faithful as he left the basilica in a wheelchair, blessing and receiving images of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has called on all nations to eliminate the death penalty, to divert a fixed percentage of arms spending to a global fund to fight hunger and climate change, and to cancel the international debt of developing nations as concrete ways to usher in a new era of hope.

“Sporadic acts of philanthropy are not enough. Cultural and structural changes are necessary, so that enduring change may come about,” the pope said in his message for World Peace Day 2025.

The message, “Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace,” was released Dec. 12 at a Vatican news conference ahead of the Jan. 1 commemoration.

Offering his “cordial good wishes for the New Year to the heads of state and government, to the leaders of international organizations, to the leaders of the various religions and to every person of goodwill,” the pope made three proposals for bringing about “much-needed changes” during the Jubilee Year, which focuses on “Pilgrims of Hope.”

The proposals, he wrote, are “capable of restoring dignity to the lives of entire peoples and enabling them to set out anew on the journey of hope.”

The first proposal, he wrote, is renewing the appeal launched by St. John Paul II for the Holy Year 2000 to consider “reducing substantially, if not canceling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations.”

Foreign debt, Pope Francis wrote, “has become a means of control whereby certain governments and private financial institutions of the richer countries unscrupulously and indiscriminately exploit the human and natural resources of poorer countries, simply to satisfy the demands of their own markets.”

Pope Francis also said wealthier nations must recognize their own “ecological debt” to the global south due to the exploitation of resources, the destruction of ecosystems and the effects of climate change. “The more prosperous countries ought to feel called to do everything possible to forgive the debts of those countries that are in no condition to repay the amount they owe.”

“A new financial framework must be devised, leading to the creation of a global financial charter based on solidarity and harmony between peoples,” he wrote, so that debt forgiveness is not just “an isolated act of charity that simply reboots the vicious cycle of financing and indebtedness.”

The pope’s second proposal is for “a firm commitment” to respecting “the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person can cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to a future of prosperity and happiness for themselves and for their children.”

“Without hope for the future, it becomes hard for the young to look forward to bringing new lives into the world,” he wrote. And a “concrete gesture that can help foster the culture of life” is the elimination of the death penalty in all nations.

The death penalty “not only compromises the inviolability of life but eliminates every human hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation,” he wrote.

The pope’s third appeal follows “in the footsteps of St. Paul VI and Benedict XVI,” he wrote. “In this time marked by wars, let us use at least a fixed percentage of the money earmarked for armaments to establish a global fund.”

The fund should finance initiatives “to eradicate hunger” and facilitate educational activities in poor countries to promote sustainable development and combat climate change, he wrote. “We need to work at eliminating every pretext that encourages young people to regard their future as hopeless or dominated by the thirst to avenge the blood of their dear ones.”

Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told reporters at the Vatican Dec. 12 that Caritas Internationalis was launching a global campaign called “‘Turn debt into hope’ with a global petition aimed at raising awareness about the systemic change needed.”

The Jubilee Year and the Christian call for conversion are invitations, not “to a moralistic effort at self-improvement, but to a radical change in how we look at reality,” he said.

“Conversion is a path traced by that love for Christ that inspires, transforms, orients, energizes us,” the cardinal said. Faith in the merciful and providential hands of God “frees our hearts from anguish, to respond and to serve.”

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, which promotes restorative justice and the end to capital punishment, said “the death penalty’s very existence epitomizes a throwaway culture.”

“Capital punishment is a ‘structural sin’ existing in at least 55 nations across the globe, where nearly 28,000 people find themselves on death row,” she told reporters, adding that this number “does not include cases in countries where there are no official statistics reported.”

In the United States, in addition to the federal death penalty, “27 of the 50 states have the death penalty,” she said.

Also speaking at the news conference was Vito Alfieri Fontana, an engineer who worked at Italian companies producing grenades and anti-tank and anti-personnel mines.

He said he experienced a personal conversion and began working for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines after his children kept asking about what he did and why, and amid growing public opposition to the use of anti-personnel mines and the promptings of the late Father Tonino Bello to reflect on his life.

“What for me had been normal, became a burden,” he said. He was able to emerge from “a privileged bubble — home to 1% of the population who produce, control and distribute arms” — and enter into the world of the 99% — those who do not want war and want to live in peace.

Pope Francis said in his message that the jubilee tradition is meant to remind all people, “rich and poor alike, that no one comes into this world doomed to oppression: all of us are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same Father, born to live in freedom, in accordance with the Lord’s will.”

Christians “feel bound to cry out and denounce the many situations in which the earth is exploited and our neighbors oppressed,” he wrote.

Calling for and implementing concrete solutions to systemic injustice is part of the Christian desire to “break the bonds of injustice and to proclaim God’s justice,” he added.

The full text of the Papal message in English can be found by clicking here.

The full text of the Papal message in Spanish can be found by clicking here.

(OSV News) – Catholic and Jewish leaders have created a new tool to tackle record-high levels of antisemitism through education and awareness.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Jewish Committee have teamed up to release “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition,” a resource that confronts antisemitism by cataloging anti-Jewish slurs, while providing Catholic teaching that counters such hatred.

The document was unveiled Dec. 11 by Bishop Joseph C. Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, and Rabbi Noam Marans, the AJC’s director of interreligious affairs.

The 61-page glossary of antisemitic terms and commentary, available in pdf format on the AJC’s website, builds on the AJC’s “Translate Hate” initiative, which was first released in 2019, said Rabbi Marans in a Dec. 10 interview with OSV News.

“It began with a few dozen (terms) as part of stopping antisemitism, (which) starts with understanding it,” he said. “Now it’s up to about 65-70 terms.”

The document uses the working definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA. That summation states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Among the contemporary examples of antisemitism listed by the IHRA are calling for the killing or harm of Jews; dehumanizing or demonizing them; accusing them of killing Jesus (known as the “deicide” charge); claims that Jews kill non-Jews for the ritual use of victims’ blood (the “blood libel” trope); denying or minimizing the Shoah (the preferred Hebrew term for the Holocaust); collectivizing them for real or imagined harm; implicating them in conspiratorial theories regarding economic, governmental or other sociocultural control; and accusing them of overriding or blind loyalty to the state of Israel.

The Catholic edition of “Translate Hate” begins with forewords by both Bishop Bambera and Rabbi Marans, and includes numerous images of antisemitic tropes culled from recent periodicals and social media posts.

Rounding out the detailed explications of each term is an extensive bibliography of Catholic resources on Catholic-Jewish relations, drawn from the Second Vatican Council, papal documents, pontifical commissions and councils, and the USCCB.

Rabbi Marans admitted that the process of compiling the glossary was a painful one.

“It’s not pleasant to flip through the industry of hating my people,” he said.

According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitism — which has been on the rise in recent years — spiked to historic levels following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when militants from the Gaza Strip gunned down more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took over 240 civilians and soldiers hostage. The ensuing Israel-Hamas war, which has threatened to become a wider regional conflict, saw numerous campus protests at U.S. colleges and universities during which antisemitic incidents were reported.

“We’re dealing with a three-headed monster with antisemitism,” Rabbi Marans said.

He listed “the skyrocketing toxicity of hate in the U.S. and in the world,” the historical “distance from the reality and the lessons of the Shoah,” and “social media.”

That last is “an enormous challenge,” said Rabbi Marans, since “it feeds on hate.

“It’s designed to do so because of its algorithms: keeping customers and sucking people in to escalate,” he said. “And secondly, it allows near or complete anonymity.”

He said the AJC is working “very closely with social media companies” to ensure “control of the excesses of certain types of hate speech, while assuring freedom of expression.”

Rabbi Marans noted the timing of the AJC-USCCB’s collaboration was “particularly poignant,” given the latter’s 2022 launch of an initiative titled “The Fruits of Dialogue: Catholics Confronting Antisemitism.”

Speaking to OSV News Dec. 10, Bishop Bambera said that “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition” is “one result of that” effort.

Rabbi Marans also said the new document’s release presages the upcoming 60th anniversary of “Nostra Aetate,” the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which featured the Catholic Church’s first formal denunciation of anti-Jewish hatred.

“Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Time”), promulgated in 1965 by St. Paul VI as part of Vatican II, deplored “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone,” while affirming the “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews.”

Specifically, “Nostra Aetate” refuted the historic deicide charge against the Jewish people, stating that while “Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ … what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”

In addition, said the text, “although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”

“All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ,” the document states.

That language marked a seismic shift from centuries of what French historian Jules Isaac had called a “teaching of contempt” toward the Jewish community by Catholic and other Christian theologians.

In 1948, Isaac, a renowned Jewish academic whose wife and daughter were murdered at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland, published “Jésus et Israel,” the first full analysis of Christian anti-Judaism. The year before, Isaac also helped to develop the International Council of Christians and Jews’ “Ten Points of Seelisburg,” which stressed Christianity’s need to recover a historically and theologically accurate understanding of Judaism.

Scholars have documented a brief but pivotal June 13, 1960, meeting between Isaac and St. John XXIII as the major catalyst behind “Nostra Aetate.” Soon after, the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity — led by Cardinal Augustin Bea, a Jesuit — was specifically tasked with addressing Catholic-Jewish relations, a project that ultimately led to the secretariat drafting Vatican II’s “Nostra Aetate.”

Bishop Bambera told OSV News the full reception of “Nostra Aetate” at every level of the Catholic Church remains far from complete.

“I think the substance of ‘Nostra Aetate’ … has resonated with church leaders for the most part, and with a fair number of the Christian faithful,” he said. “I think where we have fallen short is we simply have not communicated and taught well the substance of this document.”

Bishop Bambera said that “the only way in which we will ever combat antisemitism is to understand it.”

“Part of the problem we face is that people don’t even realize at times that the comments that are made, and the attitudes (held), and just common references to the Jewish people in particular, have been passed down from one generation to the next in families and neighborhoods, in various communities,” he said. “I think people don’t even realize how hurtful those things are.”

Some anti-Jewish tropes, said Bishop Bambera, “have the potential to unleash tremendous hatred and destruction to a community of people.”

He said that reading through “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition” highlights the historical sweep of antisemitism.

“It reflects centuries and centuries of hatred, of discrimination and of persecution,” said Bishop Bambera.

Combating antisemitism is also part of the church’s responsibility to foster ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, which is not “an add-on,” but “at the core of who we are called to be,” said Bishop Bambera.

“We never feign any sense of unity for the sake of the term,” he said. “But we (are) true to who we are, and in the process, work with who we are and our partners in dialogue.”

Learning and listening are crucial to that task, said the bishop.

“We have to know who we are as Catholic Christians, and what the church teaches about our relationships with other Christian communities, particularly in light of this conversation that we’re having with our Jewish brothers and sisters,” he said. “They are our partners. We share a patrimony. Our roots as Christians are in the Jewish tradition, and we need to know that. We need to be able to embrace that.”

Healing the centuries-old wounds between the Jewish and Catholic communities will take time and effort, said Bishop Bambera, emphasizing that “anything that is worthwhile is worth working for.”

He said, “If we listen with care, if we open our own hearts and minds to what we can learn from one another, I think we’re well on the way to achieving a more peaceful coexistence.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – “With tears in our eyes, let us raise our prayer for peace,” Pope Francis said as he thanked the people of Bethlehem and Palestinian authorities for a Nativity scene to decorate the Vatican audience hall.

A Christmas creche conveys the “message of peace and love that Jesus left us,” the pope said Dec. 7 during a meeting with the artisans, volunteers and government representatives responsible for the Christmas decorations in the Paul VI Audience Hall and in St. Peter’s Square.

Pope Francis asked them all to remember the people in the Holy Land and in other parts of the world who are “suffering from the tragedy of war.”

“Enough war, enough violence,” he said. “Do you know that one of the most profitable investments here is in arms production? Profit for killing — But why? Enough wars! May there be peace in all the world and for all people, whom God loves.”

In the creche in the audience hall Dec. 7, the olive-wood baby Jesus was lying on a white and black kaffiyeh, a Palestinian headdress. Some commentators remarked that the choice seemed to imply that Jesus was born a Palestinian rather than a Jew. And The Times of Israel called it “provocative.”

In a tweet describing the Nativity scene, the American Jewish Committee wrote, “We are disappointed and troubled that a meaningful religious tradition has been politicized in this way.”

When the pope stopped to pray before the Bethlehem creche at the end of his general audience Dec. 11, the baby Jesus statue and kaffiyeh-draped manger were gone. The Vatican press office offered no comment beyond a reminder that traditionally the baby is not placed in a Nativity scene until Christmas Eve.

In the meantime, the Vatican announced Dec. 10 that Pope Francis would meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Dec. 12. The two last met in 2021 at the Vatican.

Neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian embassies to the Holy See responded to a request Dec. 10 for comment about the kaffiyeh in the creche.

The Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square for 2024 came from Grado, Italy, an island surrounded by a lagoon dotted with other tiny islands where the people have “casoni” or mud and thatch huts; traditionally people out fishing would stop to rest and fix lunch in the huts.

The townspeople, with 40 volunteer artists and craftspeople, recreated a casone for the Holy Family in St. Peter’s Square. And the three Magi journey toward the baby Jesus in a flat-bottomed boat piloted by an old fisherwoman.

Pope Francis noted that “a ‘batela,’ the typical flat-bottomed boat” is needed to cross the water.

Today, too, “a boat is needed to reach Jesus,” he said. “The church is the boat. One does not reach Jesus alone — never — we reach him together, we reach him as a community, on that great little boat that Peter continues to lead and on which, huddling together a little, there is room for everyone.”

“In the church, there is always room for everyone,” Pope Francis insisted. “One might say, ‘But what about sinners?’ They are the first, they are the privileged, because Jesus came for the sinners, for all of us, not for the saints. For everyone. Do not forget this. Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone inside.”

Antonio Boemo, the designer of the Nativity scene in the square, told reporters the scene is composed of 102 pieces of recycled material which will be dismantled and taken back to Grado after Christmas.

He also noted that Mary is holding a lily in her lap. On Christmas Eve, the lily will be replaced with a statue of the baby Jesus.

Pope Francis, at the morning audience, and officials from the small mountain town of Ledro in northern Italy, speaking in the evening, insisted the red pine Christmas tree the town sent to the Vatican was cut down as part of an ecologically sound forest management project.

A local group had launched a petition in October to prevent what they called “fir tree-icide.”

Pope Francis said the old tree giving its life to provide the space and light the younger trees need to grow “can be a beautiful image of the church,” which spreads the light of Christ “precisely due to the succession of generations of believers who gather around the single origin, Jesus: the old gave life to the young, the young embrace and protect the old, in a mission in the world and on a journey toward Heaven.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The U.S. bishops’ conference was among the groups that urged President Joe Biden on Dec. 9 to commute existing federal death sentences before President-elect Donald Trump, who has sought to expand the use of capital punishment, returns to the White House.

Opponents of capital punishment have argued that Biden, a Catholic and the first U.S. president to have campaigned on an openly anti-death penalty platform, should follow through with concrete action in the post-election lame-duck period.

Pope Francis also indicated support for that effort, writing in a Dec. 8 post on X, formerly Twitter, “Let us #PrayTogether for those on death row in the United States. Let us pray that their sentences may be commuted, changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”

An action alert from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops stated, “As President Biden prepares to leave office, please urge him to commute all current federal death sentences to terms of imprisonment before his term ends.”

It stated, “President Biden has an extraordinary opportunity to advance the cause of human dignity by commuting all federal death sentences to terms of imprisonment and sparing the lives of the 40 men currently on federal death row.”

The message added the U.S. Catholic bishops “have long called for an end to the use of the death penalty,” citing a 1980 statement calling for its abolition, as well as the conference’s vote in 1974 to oppose the practice.

“They outlined concerns with the death penalty that remain relevant today, including that the death penalty extinguishes possibilities for reform and rehabilitation; the imposition of capital punishment involves the possibility of mistakes; the legal imposition of capital punishment in our society involves long and unavoidable delays; carrying out the death penalty brings with it great and avoidable anguish for everyone involved; and that capital punishment is carried out in an unfair and discriminatory manner,” the USCCB action alert said.

The Catholic Church’s official magisterium opposes the use of the death penalty as inconsistent with the inherent sanctity of human life, and advocates for the practice’s abolition worldwide. In his 2020 encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis addressed the moral problem of capital punishment by citing St. John Paul II, writing that his predecessor “stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice.”

“There can be no stepping back from this position,” Pope Francis wrote. Echoing the teaching he clarified in his 2018 revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the pontiff said, “Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.”

In a separate message, a bipartisan coalition including Catholic Mobilizing Network, former prison officials, family members of homicide victims, civil rights advocates and pro-life advocates circulated a joint effort urging Biden to commute existing death sentences.

“As Catholics, we understand that every person is made in the image of God and that our Heavenly Father does not shut the door on anyone,” Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of CMN and Sister Rita Ann Teichman, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph and chair of the group’s board of directors, wrote in the letter. “By commuting these sentences, you could use your constitutional authority in a way that would mirror the spirit of reconciliation during this special Jubilee 2025 year.”

“The death penalty has for generations been a veiled extension of our national legacy of racial terror and lynchings,” said Jamila Hodge, CEO of Equal Justice USA, another group involved in the effort, in that group’s message. “President Biden, like me a person of deep faith in God, has a historic opportunity to demonstrate mercy and the belief that we are all redeemable, by preventing an execution spree that will not make us safer, while moving us closer to reckoning with a system that unfairly targets Black people.”

Joia Thornton, founder and national director of the Faith Leaders of Color Coalition (flocc), said in the group’s letter that Biden “has a deep-rooted relationship with Black faith communities, and flocc represents more than 500 Black faith leaders, conventions, congregations and convocations in America.”

She said, “Commuting the federal death row would be an incredible milestone for those who believe life has value, mercy is encompassing and grace covers a multitude of sin.”

ROME (CNS) – With the city of Rome presenting a gauntlet of major roadworks and construction projects ahead of the opening of the Holy Year 2025, Pope Francis used the disruptions as an opportunity to encourage people to do some spiritual renovation before the jubilee.

On a cloudy afternoon with the threat of rain Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Francis went to the center of Rome to continue the tradition of praying before a statue of Mary high atop a column near the Spanish Steps.

At dawn that morning, Rome firefighters climbed nearly 90 feet using a truck and ladder to place a ring of white flowers on Mary’s outstretched arm and bouquets at her feet, continuing a Roman tradition that began in 1949.

Pope Francis brought his own basket of white roses tied with a yellow and white Vatican ribbon, and, as is his custom, he recited a prayer to Mary rather than giving a speech to the thousands of Romans, visitors and tourists who joined him.

Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri was there. He has been dogged with criticism about how the major jubilee projects, most of which are still incomplete, have snarled traffic and disappointed tourists hoping to see sights now covered in scaffolding.

Pope Francis said Mary knows the work is causing “quite a few inconveniences, yet it is a sign that Rome is alive, renewing itself, trying to adapt to needs, to being more welcoming and more functional.”

Speaking to Mary, he said her “mother’s gaze” sees beyond the construction chaos. “And I seem to hear your voice that with wisdom tells us, ‘My children, these works are fine, however, be careful: do not forget the worksites of the soul!”

“‘The real Jubilee is not outside,'” he imagined her saying, “‘it is inside: inside you, inside hearts, in family and social relationships. It is within that you must work to prepare the way for the coming Lord.'”

And, the pope added, “it’s a good opportunity to make a good confession, to ask forgiveness for all our sins. God forgives everything. God forgives always.”

Pope Francis thanked Mary for the suggestion “because, without wanting to, we risk being totally caught up in organizing, in all the things to be done,” with the risk that “the grace of the Holy Year, which is a time of spiritual rebirth, of forgiveness and social liberation,” can be stifled.

He also asked people to pray for the mayor, “who has so much to do.”

With the theme, “Pilgrims of Hope,” the pope plans to open the Holy Year at St. Peter’s Basilica before Mass Dec. 24. He also will open a Holy Door at Rome’s Rebibbia prison Dec. 26. The Holy Door at the Basilica of St. John Lateran will open Dec. 29; at the Basilica of St. Mary Major Jan. 1; and at St. Paul Outside the Walls Jan. 5.

Pope Francis thanked Mary “because still, in this time poor in hope, you give us Jesus, our hope!”

He also told Mary that “the flowers we offer you are meant to express our love and gratitude; but you especially see and appreciate those hidden flowers, which are the prayers, the sighs (and) the tears, especially of the little ones and the poor.”

As the pope’s car approached the Spanish Steps, a woman jumped the metal barrier along the street, sending security scrambling. Part of a group of women who want the pope to condemn bull fighting and have interrupted other services, she was apprehended immediately.

PARIS (OSV News) – Chilling rain and the “City of Lights” completely locked down due to high profile guests did not stop the crowds from arriving as close to Notre Dame Cathedral as possible for its inaugural Mass celebrated Dec. 8. The beloved Paris icon also opened its doors to the public for the first time after the devastating fire in 2019, with the second Mass that Sunday for Parisians and tourists.

The first solemn Mass witnessed the consecration of the cathedral’s new bronze altar by Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris, with France’s president and his wife watching in the first row.

After a spectacular evening reopening ceremony Dec. 7, the cathedral was illuminated by daylight this time, when the procession of 170 bishops entered Notre Dame Sunday morning, followed by more than 100 banner bearers representing all of Paris’ parishes, and seven priest representatives of the various Eastern Catholic churches.

The bishops wore vestments adorned with golden crosses, created by star French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, who was inspired by the large golden cross at the back of the cathedral over its Pieta. Castelbajac is known for his friendship with the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, longtime archbishop of Paris.

The celebrants took their places in the carved oak stalls of the cathedral’s canons’ choir, whose 18th-century upper panels depict scenes from the life of Virgin Mary. They were placed on either side of the group of children of the Maîtrise Notre Dame de Paris choir, dressed in blue albs.

The cathedral was packed when Archbishop Ulrich sprinkled the crowd with holy water, before blessing the altar, ambo and the lectern from which the texts of the Scripture were read.

As President Emmanuel Macron with his wife, first lady of France Brigitte Macron, sat in the first row with Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg, the cathedral was filled with invited guests, including presidents of French fashion companies and top politicians.

Outside, on the quayside behind the Seine River, hundreds of worshippers gathered near the picturesque second-hand bookshops, closed at the time, to follow the Mass on a big screen, despite the rain.

“Whether you are in this building or in front of a screen, or outside in the rain, you are recipients of God’s benevolence,” the archbishop said at the beginning of Mass. He also paid tribute to those “who face the rigors of war,” and prayed for France, “which scans its future with concern,” referring to the political crisis the French are experiencing these days.

The French government was officially forced to resign Dec. 5, after parliament ousted the prime minister in a no-confidence vote over his fiscal plans.

Given the large presence of political representatives, the archbishop of Paris addressed everyone in his homily, believers and non-believers alike.

“Do not be content to simply enjoy the pleasure of being here on such a special day when the cathedral of Paris regains its splendor, such as no one has ever known it before,” he told those gathered. “Whether you are believers or not, you are welcome to participate in the joy of the believers here who give glory to God for having found their mother church.”

“Do not only remain dazzled by the beauty of the stones found, but let yourselves be led to the greatest joys, to the most beautiful gift that God gives you and gives us of his loving presence, of his closeness to the poorest, of his transforming power in the sacraments,” Archbishop Ulrich said.

“This morning, the pain of April 15, 2019, is erased,” he said of the fire, which caused the cathedral’s spire to collapse, leaving Parisians in tears on the streets, praying for firefighters who went to battle the flames. The firefighters were applauded by a standing crowd for five minutes straight, as they walked through Notre Dame between dozens of heads of state, including President-elect Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the reopening ceremonies Dec. 7.

“Even if the shock caused by the fire may have been lasting, the pain was already overcome when prayer rose from the banks of the Seine and from hundreds of millions of hearts around the world,” Archbishop Ulrich emphasized.

What happened with Notre Dame — a speedy 5-year resurrection from the ashes — is not the only example of God’s grace through the centuries, Archbishop Ulrich stressed.

“Generation after generation — believers experience it — the Lord does not abandon his own,” he said. Even if “distress and violence do not cease throughout the history of men,” it is God and his disciples “who feed on his strength to show the way to the victory of life.”

The consecration of the new main altar was a central part of the inaugural Mass. The bronze modern structure designed by French artist Guillame Bardet stunned anyone entering the renewed cathedral as an example of contemporary architecture gently completing the centuries-old design.

First, the archbishop placed the relics of five holy men and women inside the altar, three women and two men, whose history is linked to the church in Paris, including those of St. Marie Eugénie Milleret, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, St. Charles de Foucauld and Blessed Vladimir Ghika. Among the relics were also those of St. Catherine Labouré, who was especially connected to the day of the altar’s consecration.

St. Catherine is known to the world for having received apparitions from the Virgin Mary in 1830 in her convent on rue du Bac, in Paris, after which the religious sister asked, following Mary’s request, that the Miraculous Medal, also known as the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, be struck. The feast of the Immaculate Conception ordinarily is celebrated Dec. 8 in the Roman calendar; this year, however, as it fell on the Second Sunday of Advent, it’s been moved to Dec. 9.

After a long prayer of dedication, Archbishop Ulrich anointed the altar with the blessed oil of the holy chrism, spreading it at length over the entire surface with his bare hands. Then, incense candles were lit at five points on the altar, on the five crosses engraved in bronze. Finally, the deacons covered the altar with the white cloth and lit the candles to continue with Mass, accompanied by the choir’s singing.

In a message sent to the archbishop of Paris on Dec. 7, the night of the reopening ceremony, Pope Francis said that soon Notre Dame will “be visited and admired once again” by huge crowds of people from all walks of life.

“I know, Your Excellency, that your doors will be wide open to them, and that you will be committed to welcoming them generously and freely, as brothers and sisters,” he wrote, making waves of comments in France that the pope himself spoke up against the cathedral’s entrance fee proposed by France’s Ministry of Culture.

“May they, lifting their eyes to these vaults that have regained their light, share his invincible hope,” the pope said of 15 million people expected to visit Notre Dame every year from now on.

Notre Dame’s inaugural Sunday wrapped in Paris with a second cathedral Mass, this time open to the public, and celebrated by Notre Dame’s rector-archpriest, Father Olivier Ribadeau Dumas. To attend, it was necessary to have reserved a place in a new digital application set up for Notre Dame de Paris.

On Dec. 3, the day the application went live, the 1,500 places on offer for this first Mass had all been reserved within 25 minutes, The Associated Press confirmed. Father Ribadeau Dumas had long been looking forward to returning to the cathedral to celebrate such a simple Mass, once the “pomp” of the reopening ceremonies had been replaced by “humble normality,” he told OSV News several times.