We at CatholicVote have lost donors, supporters, and a political editor over claims that we are either not sufficiently pro-Israel on the one hand, or that we are too critical of Israel on the other.

During an interview with Tucker Carlson Wednesday evening, that editor, Mr. Stephen Herreid, with whom we parted ways in what we believed was a friendly and Christian manner, made false allegations regarding our coverage of Israel. Those fallacies require correction.

The bottom line is this: we are dealing here with an editor who does not want to be edited.

One thing is true: I made the decision to supervise some of Mr. Herreid’s editorial decisions after a long period of observation that his coverage was increasingly focused on one issue to the neglect of other worthy topics, including the persecution of Christians in other parts of the world, important domestic issues, and genocides in China and the Ukraine. That one issue was the question of Israeli conduct.

This change in editorial policy applied specifically to Mr. Herreid and followed months of back and forth with the news team on questions of balance, tone, and basic fairness.

Mr. Herreid wrongly asserted to Tucker Carlson that this policy was as a result of donor pressure at the Napa Institute Conference.

No donor at the Napa Institute pressured Zeale News to change its coverage of Israel. What is true is that I had several conversations with donors and friends of the organization on how to handle the gap in perceptions about Israel between age groups, exploring the possibility of creating a listening salon that could bridge these gaps, all in an effort to be ever more balanced in our coverage of this issue.

Mr. Herreid further accused Ambassador Brian Burch, the co-founder of CatholicVote, of pressuring us to change our coverage. Herreid even agreed with Tucker’s absolutely slanderous statement that Ambassador Burch was “aiding and abetting the genocide of Christians in the Holy Land.”

Mr. Herreid’s statements are completely false and pure speculation. He was not in the meeting with Ambassador Brian Burch, who did not intervene in Zeale’s editorial policy in any way. During my approximately 35-minute meeting with Ambassador Burch, attended by two other CatholicVote staff members, I—not the Ambassador—initiated a barely five-minute discussion about Israel. At no point did the Ambassador ask, suggest, or insinuate that Zeale should change its editorial coverage. His only observation was that reporting accurately from Israel can be difficult because information often passes through multiple sources before it can be independently verified.

At issue is Mr. Herreid’s reliance on material sourced from the Vulnerable People Project (VPP), which he published with unusual frequency. We repeatedly asked him to moderate that coverage—not because of its viewpoint, but to maintain editorial balance with other issues.

When—for the first time in three years—Zeale declined to publish a story pitched to Herreid by VPP—a simple story about Christian scouts, certainly not a hard news story—VPP’s founder threatened to “bury” me in The Washington Post for being unfair to Christians and surrendering to “the Zionists.”

The impropriety of that threat underscored the point that had been repeatedly stressed to Mr. Herreid, namely the importance of maintaining normal editorial independence from any outside organization.

One final comment: there never was and never will be a Zeale-wide prohibition on covering Israel.

The additional review of certain stories applied only to Mr. Herreid because of the concerns described above.

Ultimately, this was not a dispute over whether Zeale would report on suffering in Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank. It was a dispute over ordinary editorial standards: balance, sourcing, supervision, and adherence to the editorial process.

Zeale will continue to cover Israel and the suffering of Christians throughout the world without fear or favor, and with the seriousness such stories deserve.

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The morning after Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel, after women were raped, children were burned, and families were dragged into tunnels, demonstrators took to the streets and college campuses across the US, not in mourning, but in celebration. 

Progressive activists marched alongside Islamist organizers. Transgender flags flew next to keffiyehs. Students at elite universities declared a sadistic massacre to be the opening act of a revolution.

It was, as one observer noted, Bolshevik demagoguery at its finest. The raped and murdered were recast as oppressors. The rapists and murderers became the oppressed.

What you were witnessing has a name.

Scholars and analysts call it “the red-green alliance”:  a working coalition between the radical secular left and Islamist political movements. It is not a formal organization. It has no single headquarters. But it is real, it is growing, and its ambitions are not modest.

To understand it, you have to understand what holds it together: because on the surface, it makes no sense at all.

The radical left champions women’s autonomy, sexual liberation, and secular governance. Islamist political theology holds to the authority of Sharia, traditional gender roles, and the supremacy of religious law. These are not minor differences. They are irreconcilable visions of human life and social order.

And yet they march together. They fundraise together. They are reshaping Democratic primaries together.

What binds them is not a shared vision of the future. It is a shared enemy: the Judeo-Christian foundations of Western civilization, our natural law tradition, our ordered liberty and our understanding of the human person as made in the image of God and therefore possessed of an inherent dignity that no state can confer or revoke.

Both movements, in their activist forms, are united by what they oppose. And that opposition has proven sufficient to make them allies.

This is not a new observation.

Muslim reformers and scholars have been raising alarms about this alliance for years, often at great personal cost.

Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian Muslim scholar and activist who fled her country after publicly criticizing Hamas’ October 7 attacks, has called this partnership a “sinful marriage.” She argues that both movements share a hatred of Western liberal democracy, but with incompatible end goals: Marxists want a Marxist system; Islamists want an Islamist one. The alliance is tactical, not philosophical. It is a coalition of grievance rather than a community of belief.

Asra Nomani, a Muslim reformer, journalist, and author of Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Destroying America’s Freedom, has documented extensively how this partnership operates through campus activism, political organizing, and social-justice rhetoric that obscures what is actually being advanced. 

Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, puts it plainly: in the hierarchy of progressive identity politics, Muslims have now been elevated to the position once reserved for other minority groups. This did not happen by accident. It reflects, she argues, decades of deliberate ideological preparation.

These are not voices from the political right. They are Muslim women who understand the tradition from the inside — and who see clearly what is being done in its name.

The logic of the alliance, once you see it, is not complicated.

Both movements are expert at weaponizing the freedoms of liberal societies against those societies themselves. The radical left has spent decades using Western institutions — courts, universities, media, corporate HR departments — to advance an agenda of a cultural revolution that does not seek to win arguments. 

Islamism, in its political form, pursues a parallel strategy. Analysts describe it as “jihad by democracy”: using Western legal systems, financial influence, and political organizing to infiltrate institutions, elevate sympathetic figures, and gradually reshape the landscape of what is permissible to say, fund, or believe. 

Both strategies share a common logic: exploit the openness of the system to close it.

This alliance is no longer theoretical.

Zohran Mamdani’s recent electoral success is its most significant political achievement to date. He has denied Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and proposes to govern by redistributionist means with the full support of the coalition’s activist infrastructure. The cooperation that produced this outcome is now being replicated in Democratic primaries across the country.

Just take a look at Michigan, with Socialist Abdul El-Sayed winning the Democratic U.S. Senate primary thanks in part to the massive vote of Muslims.

We should be clear-eyed about what this means. This is a revolutionary coalition whose constituent elements, for all their internal contradictions, agree on one thing: the civilization that produced constitutional self-government, freedom of conscience, and the inherent dignity of the human person must be dismantled.

The paradoxes are shocking, but also deliberate. LGBT activists rallying for a movement whose governing ideology would strip them of every freedom they have ever claimed is the logic of revolutionary alliance: you use whoever is useful, until the revolution is won.

Catholics, of all people, should not be surprised by this.

The Church has never promised that history moves only forward. It has always been known that civilizations can be lost. Pope Benedict XVI warned the West about building public life “as if God does not exist.”  When reason is severed from faith, and when faith is expelled from the public square, what remains is not neutral secularism. It is a vacuum. And vacuums are filled.

The cut flowers of Western culture can look beautiful for a long time after they have been severed from their roots. But they do not last.

Catholics should not respond with fear. Or with silence.

Fear is what this moment is designed to produce. Silence is what the coalition requires to advance. 

Our answer is discernment — the capacity to see what is actually happening — and courage: the willingness to say true things in public, to support candidates and institutions that take the civilizational stakes seriously, and to refuse the moral blackmail that labels clarity as bigotry and principle as hatred.

And our answer is also prayer: prayer for conversion and renewal by rebuilding of a culture that remembers what it owes to the tradition that formed it. That work begins in families. In parishes. In the daily choices of ordinary Catholics who refuse to let their children grow up as cut flowers.

The civilization being contested is not ours to own. It is ours to pass on.

The post The Unholy Alliance You Weren’t Supposed to Notice appeared first on CatholicVote org.

A civilization can be measured not only by what it produces, but by what its beneficiaries choose to do with what they have received.

America has produced a generation of political candidates who represent something genuinely new. They call themselves Democratic Socialists. They are on the ballot in Colorado, in Michigan, in New York’s most competitive districts. And the story being told about them is that they are the voice of the working class — champions of the paycheck-to-paycheck laborer, tribunes of the forgotten American.

That story is not true.

Look at who they actually are.

Melat Kiros, running to represent Colorado’s 1st district, was born weeks before her father won the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery. She was raised in the coveted Cherry Creek school district, holds a bachelor’s from Washington College and a law degree from Notre Dame, and moved from summer associate to full associate at the elite global law firm of Sidley Austin — a path that describes not the American working class, but the American meritocracy at its most generous. She was let go after publicly defending the rhetoric of Israel’s elimination and telling a socialist streamer that the October 7 atrocities were an “inevitable consequence” of Israeli policy.

Claire Valdez, running in New York’s 7th district, holds a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and organizes at Columbia University — an institution that has spent the last decade discovering it is easier to fund radicalism than to teach the Western canon it was founded to transmit. In 2016 she wrote that “racism is the largest, most coherent, and most consistent aspect of American society.” Her campaign launch featured Mahmoud Khalil, whose deportation the current administration is seeking because, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Khalil’s pro-Hamas and antisemitic activities pose a “national security threat.” 

Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), came to the United States from Peru as a child, his parents built the American dream in Miami, allowing him to graduate from Yale. He built a career in the New York art world. He proudly describes his politics not as a critique of capitalism gone wrong, but as opposition to the American economic order in its healthy functioning. Gordillo believes that an economy that is inaccessible to the majority of workers is not a “malfunction” of capitalism, but its inevitable, “natural” consequence.  “It’s not a perversion of capitalism, it’s actually a perfection of capitalism — and that’s why I’m a socialist.”

Darializa Avila Chevalier, standing for New York’s 13th district, is a PhD candidate at Columbia, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, and has publicly described the United States as a “f—ing disgrace.” She helped organize the anti-Israel encampment on the same Columbia lawn where she is being educated. She has refused to condemn the October 7, 2023, attack. Raised Catholic, she has publicly announced her departure from her family’s faith to “revert” to Islam, a term used to convey the belief that all people are born with an innate path toward Islam. She is adamant in defending her position that all jails, political borders and police departments should immediately be banned.   

Abdul El-Sayed, running in Michigan for the U.S. Senate, attended the University of Michigan on a full-tuition scholarship and Oxford on a Rhodes. He received his medical degree from Columbia and taught epidemiology there. He describes himself as a champion of the Michigan working class, campaigns with radical anti-American Hasan Piker, and believes that housing and Medicare should be free for all, owns and manages several properties in India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while his household net worth is estimated between $700,000 and $2.1 million.

These are not paycheck-to-paycheck Americans.

They are the beneficiaries of the most generous institutional inheritance any generation of newcomers has ever received — Rhodes scholarships, Ivy League degrees, elite law firms, tenure-track professorships, the good school districts, the professional class. They ascended the American ladder in a single generation.

Nearly two decades ago, the political scientist Robert Leiken introduced a phrase for what we are watching: adversarial assimilation. 

Incorporation into the institutions of the West is producing not attachment to Western freedom, but hostility toward it. Not gratitude, instead, a grievance dressed in academic language.  

We have been here before.

St. John Paul II, writing to a Europe that had grown embarrassed by its own inheritance, warned that a culture severed from its roots does not remain fine for long. It goes on producing the outward achievements — the degrees, the institutions, the professions — while the interior soil dies. Cut flowers can look beautiful in the vase for a while. And then, they cannot.

That is what the rising DSA class represents. Not the arrival of a new working-class politics, but the arrival of an educated class that has been taught, by our own institutions, to despise the civilization that formed them.

There is a real question here, and it belongs not to a party but to the country: what kind of institutions have we built when Yale, Oxford, Columbia, and Sidley Austin produce, in a single decade, a political movement whose organizing conviction is that the American order should be dismantled?

It is not enough to defeat these candidates at the ballot box, though we should. The deeper work is cultural: to recover, in our schools, our parishes, and our own homes, the transmission of a civilization — rooted in Christianity —  worth being grateful for. 

Pray for our country. Speak plainly to your children about what we have inherited and why it is precious. Vote — and vote informed — as we approach the midterms. And encourage others to do so.

The post Cut flowers: a note on the DSA rising class appeared first on CatholicVote org.

That is precisely the spirit Catholics in the United States, especially our bishops, urgently need today.

I am not talking about panic, contempt or cruelty. Nor the dehumanizing language of the kind so often used when immigration is discussed. 

But, above all, for the spiritual peace of our nation we equally urgently need to avoid superficial slogans or grandstanding that pretend every question about immigration can be answered simply by repeating the word welcome; while ignoring the deeper demands of justice, prudence, security, culture, and evangelization.

Catholics should never mock the works of mercy toward the poor or the refugee. Active and effective charity towards the needy of any kind is an unavoidable duty to all Catholics, because our salvation depends on it. So no person in need should be reduced to a political abstraction.

But the American people should not be treated as abstractions either. And this is something many of our bishops need to examine their consciences on.

A bishop is not merely a spokesman for generic compassion. He is a shepherd who will one day answer before God for the flock entrusted to his care. And the good of that flock includes not only the immediate needs of those who arrive at our borders, but also the long-term spiritual, cultural, civic, and physical well-being of the people already entrusted to him.

That is why I respectfully ask our bishops to address the issue of immigration with the seriousness that this historic moment requires and move beyond the rhetoric that has become not only tiresome, but almost irrelevant.

The difficult question is not whether immigrants possess inherent human dignity. They do. And this truism is repeated as if the vast majority of Catholics are not aware of it.

The difficult question is whether every pattern of migration, every country of origin, every ideology, every cultural formation, and every legal pathway serves the common good of our nation; something which should be among our bishops’ foremost concerns.

The late Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi—a holy and wise man who cannot credibly be accused of ideological bias—took that question seriously. Speaking about Italy’s growing immigration in 2000, he warned that different immigrant communities do not arrive with identical capacities for integration. He did not say this as a racist. He did not say it as a partisan. He said it as a Catholic bishop concerned for the future of Christian people living in a nation and a culture shaped by Christianity.

Most controversially, he specifically argued that Muslim immigration must be examined “with eyes open and without illusions.”

That sentence proved remarkably prophetic for Europe, even if the prophet was not accepted in his own homeland.

The shocking reports recently released in the United Kingdom documenting the widespread sexual exploitation of over two hundred thousand English girls by organized grooming gangs, the absolute majority of whose members were of Pakistani Muslim background, illustrate just one aspect of the devastation that can result when cultural norms fundamentally incompatible with the core values of Western civilization take root.

We are also witnessing, here in our own country, the emergence of foreign communities that, once they reach a critical mass, deliberately and systematically import disorder and cultural contradictions—not to mention, all too often, crime and corruption—with the effect of creating areas where America ceases to function as America, and sometimes even against America because different rules, or no rules at all, prevail in practice.

That is why Cardinal Biffi’s observations are no less relevant in America today. Indeed, they apply to every assault on the common good brought about by large-scale demographic changes that overwhelm communities by imposing cultures fundamentally at odds with America’s civic inheritance.

Catholics—not only our bishops—should be able to say so.

We should be able to say that America has no obligation to import anti-American hatreds.

More importantly, we should be able to say that the pillar of national identity known as religious freedom is not a weapon to be exploited by those who reject religious liberty itself.

We should be able to say that a free society can welcome people of every faith only insofar as they accept the moral and civic foundations of that freedom: equal dignity before the law, the freedom to convert, the freedom to leave one’s religion, the equal dignity of women, the rejection of political violence, and the peaceful coexistence of religious communities.

One of the reasons for the success and uniqueness of the American experiment is because everyone coming to our shores and borders can become an American as long as they are willing to agree to honor our fundamental freedoms, religious freedom in particular.

That is not a religious test. It is a civic test—one that our nation, built upon an unprecedented civic consensus that has been indispensable to its success, has every right and every need to preserve.

Our bishops do not need to become political operatives. They do, however, need to exercise the courage proper to shepherds.

That may mean reassuring elected officials—not merely mentioning in passing—that secure borders matter. Better yet, it may mean refraining from chastising the faithful whenever they seek a serious discussion about the limits of accepting those whose cultural and religious beliefs prove difficult—or even impossible—to assimilate into our constitutional order.

We have a window of opportunity to protect America through an honest debate about the realities of immigration. And Western Europe is a perfect mirror of how tight that window is. 

We can defend religious liberty while rejecting ideologies that seek to undermine it. We can welcome the stranger while also asking whether certain forms of migration may harm the common good.

None of this implies a lack of charity or compassion toward those who seek to come to our country. The various tools available to address immigration, whether integration or deportation, can each be just, and lawful, provided they are guided by sound moral principles and carried out with compassion and respect for human dignity.

That is what we call Catholic realism.

And it is time for our bishops to speak with that realism before it is too late.

The post An Honest Conversation about Immigration, Islam, and Culture appeared first on CatholicVote org.

Pinckney and his girlfriend weren’t considering an abortion until they were told that if she took a pill, all she would experience at the end of the unexpected pregnancy was a little bleeding, Pregnancy Help News reported. 

They decided to have the chemical abortion. After one of Pinckney’s football games, his girlfriend was bleeding and cramping so badly that he carried her to the car. While his friends complimented him for his strength, only he knew what she was suffering.

“They, of course, didn’t know the full context as to what’s going on,” Pinckney said. “And while they’re saying what a great boyfriend I am and so strong, I’m feeling so much less than that because I’m feeling that I’m the reason she feels like that.”

A week later, Pinkney’s girlfriend texted him a photo while he was out of town for a game.

“The week before it was a blood clot, this time it was the embryo,” he said.

They never again discussed the abortion, and a year later, they broke up.

“We never had the conversation about our abortion experience,” Pinckney said. “She may have had some regret and anger. And it may not have been at me, or it may have been at me, but we never talked about our experience to where we could sift through that. We may have wanted to say something to each other, but we didn’t know how to say it or even what to say.”

About six years later, Pinkney started working as the men’s healing coordinator for Support After Abortion, a national nonprofit that helps both men and women heal after abortion.

“Nationally, one in five men will be impacted by abortion by age 45,” Pinckney said. “And in our research, 71 percent of men have seen changes in themselves. I’m a part of that 71 percent. Only 18 percent know where to go to for help.”

He said he meets men with compassion, and every person’s story is different.

“Some may have more grief. Some may have more anger. Some may not know what they’re dealing with,” Pinkney added. 

Support After Abortion has a national hotline (833-403-4325) and online resources for people seeking help. It also connects people with both secular and faith-based resources.

>> ‘Pro-choice’ journalist interviews men grieving after abortions <<

The post Former college football star marks second year serving men healing from abortion appeared first on CatholicVote org.

According to court documents, Keshel Coates taught first grade classes at St. Peter Claver Catholic School in Macon for two years beginning in 2022. During her interview, she was told that she would need to take her class to Mass once a week and monitor their behavior. 

She was also required to sign work agreements that stated her employment was conditioned on adherence to Church teaching and contained an acknowledgement that her position as a teacher was ministerial. However, she claims that a conversation with the principal led her to believe that those statements only applied to Catholics.

Coates, who is African American, received positive performance reviews until 2024 when she participated in a police investigation into an incident concerning another teacher, identified in court documents as white, and a student. Coates had informed the student’s parents of the incident, a move that the principal and the diocese’s school superintendent reportedly questioned.

According to court documents, Coates alleged that after she participated in the investigation — which resulted in simple assault charges against the teacher — the school began scrutinizing her and claiming she committed various minor infractions. 

When she was informed her contract would not be renewed because she “did not fully participate in the religious aspects of [the] program as was stated upon hiring that needed to be done,” she sued the diocese.

Coates alleged discrimination on the basis of race, retaliation, breach of contract and wrongful termination, religious harassment, and “religious coercion and abuse of the ministerial exception,” among other claims.

Ruling April 6, a district court called Coates’ complaint “far too long and confusing” and dismissed all arguments except the ministerial exception claim. The court said that Coates plausibly claims that her role at the school was not ministerial since she did not participate in Catholic activities.

The court ruled that further litigation may show that the school “has a sincere mission to promote religious education, and that Coates, even as a non-Catholic, served a vital role in that mission,” which would subject her to the ministerial exception. Even so, the court refused the diocese’s request to dismiss the claim.

Charles Russo, a research professor of law at the University of Dayton, Ohio, wrote in an op-ed for the Catholic World Report that Coates is “very unlikely” to have a valid claim for retaliation under the ministerial exception. He said that the case will set a precedent “about the reach of the ministerial exception” and argued that the suit demonstrates the importance of Catholic and faith-based schools hiring individuals who agree or are aligned with the same values.

He added, “In light of the significant constitutional and statutory rights at issue under the ministerial exception in Coates, it would be surprising if the court did not rule in favor of the Diocese and St. Peter Claver, thereby securing its right, along with that of other Catholic and faith-based schools, to religious freedom.”

The post Fired teacher challenges religious exemption in suit against Georgia Catholic school appeared first on CatholicVote org.

Local outlet WIVB reported that Bishop Michael Fisher said in the letter that the diocese has revised its own contribution to the settlement and increased its payout from $30 million to $40 million. 

While parishes had previously been asked to contribute specific amounts based on their unrestricted cash and investment assets, as Zeale News previously reported, the formula for working out how much parishes should now contribute has changed slightly. According to WIVB, parishes will be asked to provide an amount based on their total available cash. 

“We regard this as a more equitable approach in keeping with essential canonical consideration,” Bishop Fisher said in the letter, according to WIVB.

Zeale News previously reported that the diocese is closing and merging more than half of its parishes, citing declining Mass attendance, a priest shortage, and the cost of reaching a settlement with the survivors. WIVB reported that merging parishes will combine their financial assets and be treated as one parish, meaning the diocese will only ask for one specific amount toward the settlement.

The outlet added that the remaining settlement money is expected to come from affiliate organizations, real estate sales, and the diocese’s insurers.

The post Buffalo diocese lowers amount it asks parishes to contribute toward $150M clergy abuse settlement appeared first on CatholicVote org.

“The patron saints span continents and eras, offering concrete paths for young people to live their faith amid today’s challenges,” said Archbishop Chung Soon-taick, the chairman of the WYD local organizing committee, according to the Korean newspaper The Chosun Daily. “We hope youth discover their examples in their own lives and form deep spiritual bonds as they prepare for the World Youth Day.”

The patron saints are: 

• Pope John Paul II
• Andrew Kim Taegon and companions
• Frances Xavier Cabrini
• Josephine Bakhita
• Carlo Acutis

The World Youth Day website features a biography, symbol, and special prayer for each patron. 

Pope John Paul II established World Youth Day in 1985, after witnessing more than 300,000 young people gathered at the Vatican for the International Jubilee of Youth, according to the WYD Foundation. At the 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, Pope John Paul II said that when he initially wanted to start the event, he “imagined a powerful moment in which the young people of the world could meet Christ, who is eternally young, and could learn from him how to be bearers of the Gospel to other young people.” 

Andrew Kim Taegon was the first Korean priest and is credited with helping build the foundations of the Korean Catholic Church, according to the WYD website. Born in 1821 and ordained in 1845, he worked to help missionaries spread the faith in Korea amid intense persecution and was arrested not long after beginning his ministry. He endured torture in prison but continued to send letters of encouragement to the faithful beyond the cell walls, marking a deep witness of faith and hope. He was martyred in 1846. Pope Saint John Paul II canonized him in 1984. 

Carlo Acutis, who was born in England and raised in Italy, is known as the first Millennial saint. He developed a deep love for the Eucharist at an early age and used his self-taught computer programming talents to evangelize online. He died at age 15 from leukemia and was canonized in 2025 by Pope Leo XIV. 

Frances Cabrini was born in Italy in 1850, and persevered in answering a call to a religious vocation amid significant health struggles. In 1880, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, originally wanting to serve as a missionary in China. However, at the request of Pope Leo XIII, she journeyed to New York, where she ministered to marginalized Italian immigrants, according to her bio on the site. She made 30 trips across the Atlantic Ocean and founded hospitals, schools, convents, and orphanages in the U.S., South America, and Europe. 

Josephine Bakhita was born in Sudan around 1869. She suffered intensely, from a young age, when she was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Sudan. In 1883, she was sold to Callisto Legnani, Italian consul in Khartoum, Sudan, who moved to Italy two years later, according to Franciscan Media. In Italy, Josephine became the babysitter of Mimmina Michieli, the child of Legnani’s friend. She accompanied Michieli to a catechetical institute operated by the Canossian Daughters of Charity, where she became drawn to Catholicism. She was baptized and confirmed in 1890, according to the outlet. 

Later, Josephine was freed from slavery at the conclusion of an Italian court case in which the Canossian Sisters and the Patriarch of Venice intervened in her defense. She entered the order in 1893 and lived as a witness of faith and hope. She died in 1947 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000, according to her bio.

The Local Organizing Committee started the search for the right patrons in late 2024 by surveying young people and pastoral workers, according to an April 27 Vatican News report. 

Though the event will not take place until August 2027, the patron saints have a role to play even now, according to Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life. 

“The patron saints play a fundamental role in the preparation for every World Youth Day,” Cardinal Farrell said, according to Vatican News. “They invite young people, formators, and pastors to reflect on the gift of God’s call, on our baptismal, priestly, religious, and marital vocations, encouraging us to respond to it with generosity and courage in following Christ, who has conquered the world, as the theme of the upcoming WYD reminds us.”

The post Meet the 5 patron saints for World Youth Day 2027 appeared first on CatholicVote org.

“Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work! Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within [the Iranians’] ‘leadership,’” Trump said in an April 25 Truth Social post. “Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

Zeale News previously reported that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said April 24 that Trump was sending Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and peace envoy Jared Kushner to the meeting, which Iranian officials had requested. She said Trump is “always willing to give diplomacy a chance” and that the White House was hopeful that the conversation would be productive and advance efforts toward reaching a deal. 

According to FOX News, just before boarding Air Force One April 25, Trump told reporters that Tehran gave a new proposal shortly after he canceled the Islamabad trip.

“They gave us a paper that should have been better,” the President explained, according to FOX News. “And interestingly, immediately when I canceled it, within ten minutes, we got a new paper that was much better.”

The President also indicated that lengthy travel times played a role in the decision to cancel, telling reporters, “There’s no reason to wait two days — have people traveling for 16, 17 hours — we’re not doing it that way.”

He later added, “When they want, they can call me. We have all the cards. We’ve won everything. We have all the cards.”

Meanwhile, Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, said in an April 25 X post that he had a phone conversation that day with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. He described the call as “warm and constructive” and said it related to “the evolving regional situation.” 

Sharif reiterated in the post that Pakistan intends to continue being a genuine facilitator in the situation. 

“I appreciated Iran’s continued engagement, including the high-level delegation to Islamabad led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, whom I had the pleasure of meeting earlier today,” Sharif said. “I reaffirmed that, with the support of friends and partners, Pakistan remains committed to serve as an honest and sincere facilitator — working tirelessly to advance durable peace and lasting stability in the region.”

The post Trump cancels representatives’ trip to meet with Iranian officials in Pakistan appeared first on CatholicVote org.

“This is a momentous occasion not only for our diocese, but for the Church in the United States and throughout the world,” Peoria Bishop Louis Tylka said in a press release. “The Beatification of Archbishop Sheen is a recognition of a life lived in heroic virtue — a life that brought countless souls closer to Jesus Christ through preaching, teaching, and witness.”

“For many, he was a familiar voice on television and radio; for all of us, he remains a powerful example of what it means to live the Gospel with clarity, courage, and love,” the bishop added. “This celebration is not simply about honoring his legacy — it is an invitation for each of us to deepen our own relationship with Christ.”

As Zeale News previously reported, the beatification was originally scheduled to take place in 2019 but. was postponed weeks before the ceremony following a request for further investigation into his ministry. The diocese announced earlier this year that the beatification would move forward, prompting a joyous moment for many who have been waiting years for the news. 

His beatification Mass is set for 2 p.m. local time Sept. 24 at the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, according to a full schedule now available through the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation. The Mass will be livestreamed, and tickets are required to attend in person. Before Mass, a special show begins at 10 a.m., and Confession and Adoration will also be available. Following the Mass, there will be a relic available for veneration from 4 to 6 p.m. 

The foundation also explains why he will be beatified on Sept. 24, the feast of Our Lady of Mercy. 

“Archbishop Sheen often spoke of his love for the Blessed Mother and his desire to die on a feast associated with Our Lady,” it states. “It is fitting that his Beatification will take place on a date connected with Mary.”

The night before, on Sept. 23, vespers will be prayed at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis as part of the occasion. Tickets are required to attend that event also. 

In the Diocese of Peoria, from Sept. 15 to Sept. 23, there will be a nine-day novena of Holy Hours at the Cathedral of St. Mary. On Sept. 20, there will be an anniversary Mass of Venerable Sheen’s ordination at the cathedral at 3pm, with tickets required. 

On Sept. 25, the day after the beatification in St. Louis, there will be several Masses of Thanksgiving celebrated at various local churches in Peoria. The same day at 6pm at the Peoria Civic Center, there will be an award gala, for which tickets are required. Finally, on Sept. 26, there will be a Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated in the Byzantine Rite at the cathedral. 

The foundation is encouraging the faithful who are attending events in Peoria to make the journey a pilgrimage, not just a trip. 

“Whether you come for a day or the entire week, this is an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of a remarkable spiritual leader and grow in faith alongside pilgrims from around the world,” the foundation stated. “Enter into prayer, community, and celebration as we mark this historic moment in the life of the Church.”

>> EXCLUSIVE: Inside the Fulton Sheen beatification announcement with Msgr. Jason Gray <<

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