2025

A Long Island scientist is sharing his lifelong research into the cloth he believes wrapped Jesus on the day of His crucifixion.

The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office has identified three more victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks through DNA testing.

Nearly 200 Catholic leaders and parishioners are meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah to talk about ways to make churches more accessible to people with disabilities.

St. Joseph’s Church in Maplewood, New Jersey, has created a sensory room inside its sanctuary, giving neurodivergent parishioners a calming space so they can fully participate in Mass.

Catholic News Headlines for Thursday 8/7/2025

Dorothy Day’s legacy of service is living on through the Catholic Worker Movement, a community that is meeting a growing need in New York City by feeding newly arrived migrants.

Catholic officials in Florida have been given the green light to offer pastoral care to the detainees in Alligator Alcatraz, the temporary detention center in the Everglades.

Nine people were taken from an orphanage in Haiti, including a three-year-old child. The search for them is ongoing.

An 11-year-old who is battling cancer got to live out his Red Sox baseball dream this week by throwing out the first pitch at Fenway Park.

Catholic News Headlines for Wednesday 8/6/2025

80 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Catholic leaders are honoring victims and survivors with prayer and calling for nuclear disarmament.

The Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome is continuing a centuries-old tradition, marking the Marian miracle behind the feast of Our Lady of the Snows.

Pope Leo XIV is thanking the Knights of Columbus for their legacy of service and urging them to be signs of hope during their 143rd Supreme Convention.

After her newborn daughter was diagnosed with a rare illness called Powassan virus, a mother is raising awareness about the disease.

Pilgrims From the Diocese of Brooklyn Relive Memories From the Jubilee of Youth

By Katie Vasquez

Pilgrims from across the Diocese of Brooklyn spent nine days in the Eternal City, joining together in prayer and fellowship with more than 1 million other young people.

“It was very uplifting to see the praise and the worship throughout the streets of Rome, and it’s my first time seeing this magnitude,” Luis Sanchez, a pilgrim from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Queens told Currents News.

For fellow Queens pilgrim Amy Vu, walking through the Holy Doors of St. Peter’s Basilica was an experience she will never forget.

“It felt like spiritually nurturing, but it’s also like I sometimes felt emotional from it,” said Vu.

JP Marasigan said his life-changing moment came before the Body of Christ, when thousands upon thousands of other Jubilee pilgrims went silent.

“It’s a testament to everyone that says that young people aren’t falling in love with Catholicism. To show them that yes, we are,” said Marasigan, a pilgrim from St. Mary Gate of Heaven Church in Queens.

Being so close to the first American Holy Father was a highlight for many.

“I couldn’t believe that I was looking at the pope, that was like 50 feet away from me,” Felicity Morel, a young pilgrim from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, told Currents News. “It was honestly amazing.”

“We were like, front row to see the pope. And then we celebrated Mass with the pope,” said Vu. “And that was like maybe a once or twice in a lifetime opportunity. So I’m really grateful to have experienced that.”

Morel said she was influenced by her time with Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan.

“Knowing that he was there, interacting with not only the other priests, but also all the young people. It was very comforting,” she said.

Now these young people hope to share what they have learned with other faithful.

“I think going to Mass every day and going to adoration that was led by the pope at the vigil was amazing,” added Morel. “And I really did feel like I did strengthen my love for the Eucharist.”

“One of the things that I don’t want to dwindle or lose is my faith. So I want to try to really, give back to the community and college and work on my faith,” said Vu.

Catholic News Headlines for Tuesday 8/5/2025

Youth from the Diocese of Brooklyn are back from Rome, where they joined hundreds of thousands of other young Catholics for the Jubilee of Youth. Now, they’re reflecting on the spiritual impact of their pilgrimage.

Pope Leo XIV made a surprise visit to a young Spanish pilgrim who is in intensive care at the Vatican’s children’s hospital. He fell ill just before the Jubilee celebrations.

While in the Eternal City for the Jubilee of Youth, Bishop Robert Brennan recorded a special episode of his podcast “Big City Catholics,” offering a behind-the-scenes look at the pilgrimage.

For 35 years, 95-year-old Alice Tritle has brought music and healing to Mercy Medical Center in Iowa as a volunteer pianist — and although she’s retiring, she’s ending on a high note.

Looking Back: Highlights From the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Journey to the Jubilee of Youth

By Currents News

We’re sharing some of the best moments from the Jubilee of Youth.

Young people from the Diocese of Brooklyn united with fellow pilgrims in prayer and fellowship, walked through St. Peter’s Basilica’s Holy Doors, shared moments of silence before the Eucharist, and attended a Mass celebrated by Pope Leo XIV.

Catholic News Headlines for Monday 8/4/2025

More than one million young people became pilgrims as they joined Pope Leo XIV in celebrating the Jubilee of Youth.

Parishioners from the Diocese of Brooklyn were in Italy for the weeklong Jubilee, and also visited the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi.

Back-to-school season is soon approaching, and one Christian school superintendent is putting a new spin on school year prep.

‘God Is Waiting To Transform Your Life,’ Pope Says During Closing Mass for Jubilee of Youth

By Currents News and Carol Glatz

ROME (CNS) – The fullness of life depends on how much one joyfully welcomes and shares in life while also living with a constant yearning for those things that only come from God, Pope Leo XIV told young people.

“Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Do not settle for less. You will then see the light of the Gospel growing every day, in you and around you,” he said in his homily during Mass concluding the Jubilee of Youth Aug. 3.

The outdoor Mass, held in Rome’s Tor Vergata neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, marked the culmination of a week-long series of events for the Jubilee of Youth.

More than 1 million people were estimated to be gathered across the 130 acres that had been prepared for the morning Mass, the prayer vigil the evening before, and for the hundreds of thousands of people sleeping overnight.

After touching down by helicopter less than 12 hours after leaving the evening vigil, the pope rode in the popemobile throughout the open areas – dotted with tents and tarps, and filled with young people, cheering, waving their nation’s flag, and sometimes launching at him shirts and gifts.

“Good morning!” he said in six languages from the massive stage set up for the Mass.

“I hope you all rested a little bit,” he said in English. “We will shortly begin the greatest celebration that Christ left us: his very presence in the Eucharist.”

He said he hoped the concluding Mass would be “a truly memorable occasion for each and every one of us” because “when together, as Christ’s church, we follow, we walk together, we live with Jesus Christ.”

In his homily during the Mass, the pope again highlighted the importance of the Eucharist, as “the sacrament of the Lord’s total gift of himself to us.”

It is Christ, the Risen One, he said, “who transforms our lives and enlightens our affections, desires and thoughts.”

“We are not made for a life where everything is taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through the gift of self in love,” he said.

Much like a field of flowers, where each small, delicate stem may dry out, become bent and crushed, he said, each flower is “immediately replaced by others that sprout up after them, generously nourished and fertilized by the first ones as they decay on the ground. This is how the field survives: through constant regeneration.”

“This is why we continually aspire to something ‘more’ that no created reality can give us; we feel a deep and burning thirst that no drink in this world can satisfy,” he said. “Knowing this, let us not deceive our hearts by trying to satisfy them with cheap imitations!”

Pope Leo urged the young people to listen to that yearning and “turn this thirst into a step stool, like children who stand on tiptoe, in order to peer through the window of encounter with God,” who has been “waiting for us, knocking gently on the window of our soul.”

“It is truly beautiful, especially at a young age, to open wide your hearts, to allow him to enter, and to set out on this adventure with him towards eternity,” he said.

Speaking briefly in English, the pope said, “There is a burning question in our hearts, a need for truth that we cannot ignore, which leads us to ask ourselves: what is true happiness? What is the true meaning of life? What can free us from being trapped in meaninglessness, boredom and mediocrity?”

“Buying, hoarding and consuming are not enough,” he said. The fullness of existence “has to do with what we joyfully welcome and share.”

“We need to lift our eyes, to look upwards, to the ‘things that are above,’ to realize that everything in the world has meaning only insofar as it serves to unite us to God and to our brothers and sisters in charity, helping us to grow in ‘compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience,’ forgiveness and peace, all in imitation of Christ,” he said.

Evoking St. John Paul II’s words during the XV World Youth Day prayer vigil held in the same spot 25 years ago, Pope Leo reminded the young people that “Jesus is our hope.”

“Let us remain united to him, let us remain in his friendship, always, cultivating it through prayer, adoration, Eucharistic communion, frequent confession, and generous charity, following the examples of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed Carlo Acutis, who will soon be declared saints,” he said.

Wishing everyone “a good trip home,” he encouraged the young people to “continue to walk joyfully in the footsteps of the Savior, and spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith to everyo

Jubilee of Youth: Pope Leo XIV Urges Youth To Find Hope, Friendship in Christ in Uncertain Times

By Currents News and Junno Arocho Esteves

ROME (CNS) — Addressing an estimated 1 million young people, Pope Leo XIV urged them to forge genuine relationships rooted in Christ rather than ephemeral online connections that can reduce individuals to a commodity.

“When a tool controls someone, that person becomes a tool: a commodity on the market and, in turn, a piece of merchandise,” the pope said during the evening prayer vigil for the Jubilee of Youth Aug. 2. “Only genuine relationships and stable connections can build good lives.”

The pope arrived by helicopter at the Tor Vergata field, roughly eight miles southeast of Rome’s city center, and was greeted with cheers from young people waving flags. Many of the youth were going to camp out overnight, sleeping in tents and sleeping bags on the dusty field, much like the World Youth Day celebration held 25 years ago in the same location.

Countless young people kicked up the dust from the field as they ran alongside the popemobile to catch a glimpse of the pontiff. Pope Leo smiled and waved at the youth, occasionally catching objects and plush toys that were hurled his way.

Exiting the popemobile, he was handed the large Jubilee year cross, which he carried to the main altar, accompanied by dozens of young people.

After beginning the vigil with prayers, the pope engaged in a dialogue with several young people who asked him three questions.

Dulce Maria, a 23-year-old woman from Mexico, spoke of the excitement of online friendships but also of the loneliness that comes from connections that are “not true and lasting relationships, but rather fleeting and often illusory.”

“How can we find true friendship and genuine love that will lead us to true hope? How can faith help us build our future?” she asked.

Pope Leo acknowledged the potential of the internet and social media as “an extraordinary opportunity for dialogue,” but warned that these tools “are misleading when they are controlled by commercialism and interests that fragment our relationships.”

Young pilgrims smile as they await the start of a prayer vigil with Pope Leo XIV at Tor Vergata in Rome Aug. 2, 2025, during the Jubilee of Youth. (Photo: CNS/Lola Gomez)

Drawing from his Augustinian spirituality, Pope Leo urged young people to emulate St. Augustine, who had a “restless youth, but he did not settle for less.”

“How did he find true friendship and a love capable of giving hope? By finding the one who was already looking for him, Jesus Christ,” the pope said. “How did he build his future? By following the one who had always been his friend.”

Gaia, a 19-year-old woman from Italy, asked how young people can find the courage to make choices amid uncertainty.

“To choose is a fundamental human act,” the pope responded. “When we make a choice, in the strict sense, we decide who we want to become.”

He encouraged young people to remember the

Christian Educator Makes School Announcements Go Viral

By Jenna MacDermant

It’s back to school season, and for most administrators that means prep work, planning, and oversight.

But for one super creative southern Indiana school superintendent, it also means turning school business into show business.

“I tell people all the time: ‘I can’t believe I get to do this as part of my job as a superintendent,’ ” he said. “I’m Mike Allen, the superintendent of Evansville Christian School, but I’m also known as ‘the parody principal.’”

For more than a decade in educational administration, Allen has written and produced elaborate YouTube videos performing popular song parodies to keep his students, parents, and staff informed and entertained.

“I try to choose ones that are fun and recognizable and that work for the story I’m trying to tell,” he said.

These include “Snow Days, Two Hour Delays” to the tune of “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” by New Kids on the Block, “Christmas Breaks” to the tune of “The Christmas Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late” by Alvin and the Chipmunks, “Spring Break” to the tune of “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan, and more.

While his videos provide the natural showman a creative outlet, Allen says the biggest reward is the engagement with his students and staff.

“It’s not separate from my work – it’s for my work,” he said. “It’s a part of what I believe is part of my role which is to encourage and inspire and affirm.”