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The Diocese of Camden has agreed to pay $180 million in a settlement to resolve claims of clergy sexual abuse by over 300 survivors whose allegations span decades. The diocese covers 62 parishes in six counties in South Jersey.
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The cardinals’ statement was striking for several reasons. Atypically, it showed U.S. prelates weighing in on foreign affairs. (McElroy is an expert; he earned a Ph.D. in political science at Stanford, with a thesis on morality and U.S. foreign policy.) It came directly from the leaders of three archdioceses, not from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—which has about four hundred members and a complex process for the drafting of such statements—and it was released a week after that group’s new president, Archbishop Paul Coakley, of Oklahoma City, met with President Donald Trump and Vice-President J. D. Vance, at the White House. And the new Pope is close to all three of its authors: Tobin; Cupich, who served alongside Prevost in Rome in the powerful Dicastery for Bishops; and McElroy, whom Prevost, when he was the head of that office, tapped last year for the high-profile role of Archbishop in the nation’s capital. Their statement suggested that, even if Leo is not the “anti-Trump,” as his statements on peace, immigration, the climate, and the rule of law have led a number of observers to propose, his compadres in the U.S. are speaking up in a strong, clear voice.
On Friday, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in Manhattan, will host the installation of a new Archbishop of New York, who is likely to round out what might be called Leo’s Team U.S.A. Ronald Hicks, the former Bishop of Joliet, Illinois, succeeds Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who reached the nominal retirement age of seventy-five last year. Hicks was born in 1967, grew up in the placid Chicago suburb of South Holland, studied at a seminary on the Southwest Side, spent a year in Mexico, and served in the Archdiocese of Chicago’s parishes and seminaries. In 2005, at the age of thirty-seven, he went to El Salvador, where he worked as a regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (Our Little Brothers and Sisters), a group of residences for orphans and at-risk children which was founded by an American missionary in Mexico in 1954.
Hicks spent five years in El Salvador—a long time for a cleric on the executive track. He has said that his favorite saint is Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, who, as Hicks put it, “walked with his people for justice and peace.” (Romero denounced the military regime in a series of Sunday homilies broadcast nationally on the radio—in effect, scrawling “no” on the church steps. He was murdered while saying Mass, in 1980; in 2018, Pope Francis canonized him.) After returning to Chicago, Hicks served as Cardinal Cupich’s vicar-general, or deputy, then as a bishop, and was known for unshowy efficiency. The initial take on him has been that he is akin to Pope Leo, a Chicagoan who spent his thirties working with the poor as a missionary in Peru and then brought that experience to a series of leadership roles. Hicks has been involved in prison ministry since the nineteen-eighties and, as bishop of Joliet, he took steps to address the climate emergency, following Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical on the issue. He appears boyishly pious—on plane flights, he prays the Rosary and watches unobjectionable movies, such as “Harold and the Purple Crayon”—but he is likely to fit right in with the more worldly trio whose company he’ll now keep.
Hicks’s relative youth and low profile make his elevation to big-city archbishop significant. But what’s particularly notable is where he’s becoming an archbishop. Cupich is now seventy-six, so in Chicago it was assumed that Hicks would succeed him. Instead, he’ll be Archbishop of New York—historically, the most prominent post in the U.S. Church. In 1984, Pope John Paul II entrusted it to the bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, John J. O’Connor, who was little known to the public but shared the Pope’s culture-warrior style. “I want a man just like me in New York,” John Paul was said to have remarked. With Hicks, Leo is appointing a cleric who seems both like himself and distinctly different from the boisterous Cardinal Dolan.
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Monday gave a final accounting of its 2025 Holy Year, saying more than 33 million pilgrims had participated and that the only real dispute with the city of Rome concerned the style of fountains built for the event’s main public works project.
Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday will officially close out the Holy Year and shut the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, capping a rare Jubilee that was opened by one pope and closed by another.
For the Vatican, a Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition of the faithful making pilgrimages to Rome every 25 years to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and receive indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins.
Participation grew after Francis’ death
The Vatican said 33,475,369 pilgrims had participated and Italy, the U.S. and Spain were the top nationalities represented.
But the Vatican’s Holy Year organizer, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, acknowledged the number was only an estimate and could include double counting. There was no breakdown between Holy Year pilgrims and Rome’s overall tourism numbers.
The Vatican arrived at the figure by combining the number of people who officially registered for Jubilee events, volunteer crowd counters at Rome-area basilicas and closed-circuit television cameras at St. Peter’s Basilica, which recorded around 25,000 to 30,000 people a day crossing the threshold of the Holy Door.
Assuming that number every day for the past year, around 10 million pilgrims would have crossed through the Holy Door. Officials said they never envisioned more, given its limited capacity and that pilgrims would have visited Holy Doors at other Rome basilicas.
The official number exceeded the 31.7 million people originally forecast by a study conducted by the Roma Tre University.
The Vatican said it recorded a steady increase in participation following the death of Pope Francis in April and the election of Leo, a transition that made this Holy Year only the second in history to be opened by one pope and closed by another. In 1700, Pope Innocent XII opened the Jubilee and Pope Clement XI closed it after Innocent’s death.
Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said 110 of the 117 public works projects initially associated with the Jubilee had been completed, including the most audacious: a pedestrian piazza at the end of the Via della Conciliazione boulevard, opposite St. Peter’s Basilica, that required the rerouting of traffic to an underground tunnel.
The design of Piazza Pia, as the square is known, also saw the major point of disagreement between Fisichella and Gualtieri over the two fountains that frame the view along Conciliazione toward the basilica.
Gualtieri liked the fountains. Fisichella didn’t, but had to put his preferences aside because the piazza is on Italian soil.
“This was probably the only point on which we had to say, laughing and smiling, that we didn’t completely agree,” Fisichella said. “He liked those two fountains, I liked others, but I had to back down.”
Fisichella said he didn’t think the contemporary stone fountains suited a piazza that looks toward the baroque splendor of St. Peter’s Basilica and along the fascist-era architecture of Via della Conciliazione, which was itself created by razing a neighborhood for the 1950 Jubilee.
One year later, Fisichella has gotten used to them but still doesn’t love them.
“I always thought they looked like foot baths,” he said.
A long history of Jubilees and public works
Rome’s relationship with Jubilees dates to 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated the first Holy Year in what historians say marked the definitive designation of Rome as the center of Christianity.
Even then, the number of pilgrims was so significant that Dante referred to them in his “Inferno.”
Massive public works projects have long accompanied Holy Years, including the creation of the Sistine Chapel, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV for the Jubilee of 1475, and the big Vatican garage, for the 2000 Jubilee under Pope John Paul II.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Three Palestinians have been arrested on suspicion of setting fire to a Christmas tree and damaging part of a Nativity scene at a Catholic Church in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Jenin, Palestinian Authority police said.
Police said late Wednesday that the arrests were made after reviewing surveillance footage. Police said they seized tools from the suspects that they believe were used in the attack, and condemned the apparent attempt to incite sectarian and religious tensions in the West Bank.
The Holy Redeemer Church of Jenin posted photos on social media of the arson, showing the skeleton of a synthetic Christmas tree that had been gutted of the green plastic branches, with red and gold ornaments strewn across the courtyard. The church said that the attack occurred around 3 a.m. Monday and also damaged part of the Nativity scene.
The church quickly cleaned the burned tree and erected a new Christmas tree a day later, in time for Christmas Mass. The church held a special ceremony with the presence of local Muslim and Christian leaders and politicians. Rev. Amer Jubran, the local priest at the church, said that the torching was an isolated incident and stressed the city’s unity.
“This occasion reaffirmed that attempts to harm religious symbols will never diminish the spirit of the city nor the faith of its people,” the Holy Redeemer Church said in a statement. The church didn’t respond to additional requests for comment.
The tiny Christian community in the West Bank is facing growing threats of extremism from multiple sides, including both Israeli settlers and Palestinian extremists, leading them to leave the region in droves.
Christians account for between 1%-2% of the West Bank’s roughly 3 million residents, the vast majority of them Muslim. Across the wider Middle East, the Christian population has steadily declined as people have fled conflict and attacks.
Israel, whose founding declaration includes safeguarding freedom of religion and all holy places, sees itself as an island of religious tolerance in a volatile region. But some church authorities and monitoring groups have lamented a recent increase in anti-Christian sentiment and harassment, particularly in Jerusalem’s Old City. Extremist Israeli settlers have also vandalized and torched areas around churches and Christian villages.
The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in the West Bank, with the Israeli military targeting militants in large-scale operations that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. That has coincided with a rise in settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Palestinian militants have attacked and killed Israelis in Israel and the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in parts of the territory, including Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank known as a militant stronghold.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — In 2018, German artist Michael Triegel asked a homeless man in Rome to pose for a drawing, thinking that he would make an ideal model for St. Peter if he ever needed to paint the first pope.
Seven years on, the man’s likeness has gone on display in the Vatican, a reunion of sorts that came about by improbable chance.
This is a story both big and small, of art and faith and a human tragedy that caught the attention of Pope Francis: homeless German man Burkhard Scheffler died from the cold in 2022 on the edge of St. Peter’s Square.
The saga began in Germany, where Triegel in 2019 won a commission from the Protestant cathedral in the city of Naumburg to create a new central panel for its altar by Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder. The panel would replace an original that was destroyed in 1541 during the Reformation, the upheavals that convulsed parts of Europe as Protestantism emerged in the 16th century.
Cranach’s two side panels survived. Triegel, a Catholic convert, leapt at the prospect of a “collaboration with Cranach.”
“They had the idea of completing this altar again, in what I find a beautiful gesture — not to undo these wounds from the 16th century but to mitigate them, to heal them,” he said in an interview in his studio in Leipzig.
St. Peter finds his place
Triegel planned out his painting and drew on that encounter he had in 2018 with the homeless man in Rome.
The man took his place as St. Peter among the saints gathered around Mary and the infant Jesus. Triegel said it was important that his subjects not be idealized archetypes but figures the viewer would feel were people “who could have something to do with me in the here and now, who are not just historic.”
St. Paul was based on a rabbi Triegel drew in Jerusalem, while Mary was modeled on the artist’s daughter. In the back was Protestant pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an opponent of the Nazis who was executed in 1945.
Triegel’s St. Peter is bearded, wears a red baseball cap and holds a small key — a reference to the biblical keys of heaven that are often associated with the saint.
The artist found his saint sitting at the entrance of a Roman church begging. As he was about to give the man money, Triegel recalled, “he looked at me and at that moment I had the feeling, if you ever need a Peter for a picture, he would be your Peter — that flowing beard and those alert eyes.”
Triegel asked the man in Italian whether he could draw and photograph him, and the man just nodded — “so I had no idea what nation he was from.”
Unbeknown to Triegel, his St. Peter had a rough time after their 2018 encounter.
The man, Burkhard Scheffler, had suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under Italy’s harsh lockdowns, fewer and fewer people ventured out to provide handouts and food to those in need.
Scheffler was arrested in May 2020 after he apparently threatened someone with a knife for refusing to give him change. He was sentenced to three years in prison and released in late 2022.
Known to many in the Vatican, Scheffler had grown weak in prison. “His hands, which were always warm, had grown cold,” a Vatican journalist, Gudrun Sailer, would later recall.
On the night of Nov. 25, 2022, Scheffler died from the cold.
The pope honors the homeless
His death caught the attention of Francis, who had made a priority of caring for the homeless people around the Vatican. Under Francis’ watch, the Vatican installed showers, a barber shop and clinic in the colonnade of St. Peter’s. Francis’ almsgiver went out on cold nights to distribute sleeping bags.
Hours after Scheffler died, the Vatican spokesperson issued a statement saying he had been cared for by the Vatican’s charity office but “unfortunately, the rain and cold last night contributed to aggravate his fragile condition.” The spokesperson said Francis remembered in his prayer that day “Burkhard and all those who are forced to live without a home, in Rome and the world.”
Shortly after, Francis said in his weekly Sunday prayer: “I remember Burkhard Scheffler, who died three days ago under the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square: died of cold.”
And the pope returned to the theme in his Palm Sunday homily in April 2023. “I think of the German so-called street person, who died under the colonnade, alone and abandoned. He is Jesus for each of us. So many need our closeness, so many are abandoned.”
Francis asked that Scheffler be buried at the Teutonic cemetery on the grounds of the Vatican, alongside many German-speaking priests, pilgrims and notables. His simple tomb is in the small pilgrim section, in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica and just a few yards from the tomb of the real St. Peter.
Back in Germany, Triegel spent three years working on the altar for the Naumburg Cathedral, but a problem arose.
There were concerns that the Triegel-Cranach altar could cost the building its place on the UNESCO World Heritage List. UNESCO experts felt that it hindered the overall view of the west chapel, including famous statues. In July, regional authorities said the verdict was that the altar could stay — but would have to be shown elsewhere in the cathedral.
While that discussion played out, the idea arose of lending the altar to the Catholic chapel of the Teutonic pontifical college at the Vatican, a residence for German-speaking priests adjacent to the cemetery. The chapel has an altar of its own from the period of Cranach’s original.
Putting the pieces together
And it was then in the Teutonic chapel that a Vatican-affiliated art expert recognized Triegel’s St. Peter as none other than Scheffler.
“Someone said, ‘This guy with the red cap, we know him because he was living here at St. Peter’s Square,” said Monsignor Peter Klasvogt, rector of the Campo Santo Teutonico, as the complex is known. “That was a moment you never forget.”
The altar is now on a two-year loan to the chapel, a stone’s throw from Scheffler’s grave, itself just steps from the tomb of St. Peter.
When Triegel learned that his altar might end up next to Scheffler’s grave, he recalled thinking, “there can’t be so many coincidences.”
With the arrival of the painting, “the story gets another outcome and another exit, and this is so wonderful to see,” Klasvogt said. “We honor him with the altar, we honor him with his grave and we pray here in the church for him.”
After the argument about the altar’s placement in Germany, the coincidence also appeals to the artist.
“If this whole dispute was necessary for this picture to go to Rome and for this man to be seen again, for him to get a name, for … people to take notice of him and remember him, then this whole Naumburg project was really worth it for me,” Triegel said.
Geir Moulson and Kerstin Sopke reported from Leipzig, Germany. Pietro De Cristofaro contributed from Leipzig.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Pope Leo XIV visited Istanbul’s iconic Blue Mosque on Saturday but didn’t stop to pray, as he opened an intense day of meetings and liturgies with Turkey’s Christian leaders, where he again emphasized the need for Christians to be united.
Leo took his shoes off and, in his white socks, toured the 17th-century mosque, looking up at its soaring tiled domes and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns as an imam pointed them out to him.
The Vatican had said Leo would observe a “brief moment of silent prayer” in the mosque, but he didn’t. An imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray, since the mosque was “Allah’s house,” but the pope declined.
Later, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said: “The pope experienced his visit to the mosque in silence, in a spirit of contemplation and listening, with deep respect for the place and the faith of those who gather there in prayer.”
The Vatican then sent out a corrected version of its bulletin about the trip, removing reference to the planned “brief moment of silent prayer,” without further explanation.
Leo, history’s first American pope, was following in the footsteps of his recent predecessors, who all made high-profile visits to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, as it is officially known, in a gesture of respect to Turkey’s Muslim majority.
Domenico Stinellis / AP
Other visits have always raised questions about whether the pope would pray in the Muslim house of worship, or at the very least pause to gather thoughts in a meditative silence.
When Pope Benedict XVI visited Turkey in 2006, tensions were high because Benedict had offended many in the Muslim world a few months earlier with a speech in Regensburg, Germany that was widely interpreted as linking Islam and violence.
The Vatican added a visit to the Blue Mosque at the last minute in a bid to reach out to Muslims, and Benedict was warmly welcomed. He observed a moment of silent prayer, head bowed, as the imam prayed next to him, facing east.
AP Photo/Salih Zeki Fazlioglu 
Benedict later thanked him “for this moment of prayer” for what was only the second time a pope had visited a mosque, after St. John Paul II visited one briefly in Syria in 2001.
There were no doubts in 2014 when Pope Francis visited the Blue Mosque: He stood for two minutes of silent prayer facing east, his head bowed, eyes closed and hands clasped in front of him. The Grand Mufti of Istanbul, Rahmi Yaran, told the pope afterwards, “May God accept it.”
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images 
Speaking to reporters after the visit, the imam Tunca said he had told the Leo: “It’s not my house, not your house, (it’s the) house of Allah,” he said. He said he told the pope: “‘If you want, you can worship here,’ I said. But he said, ‘That’s OK.’”
“He wanted to see the mosque, wanted to feel (the) atmosphere of the mosque, I think. And was very pleased,” he said.
There was also another change to the official program, after the Vatican said the head of Turkey’s Diyanet religious affairs directorate would accompany Leo at the mosque. He didn’t come and a spokesman from the Diyanet said he wasn’t supposed to, since he had welcomed Leo in Ankara.
Past popes have also visited the nearby Hagia Sophia landmark, once one of the most important historic cathedrals in Christianity and a United Nations-designated world heritage site.
But Leo left that visit off his itinerary on his first trip as pope. In July 2020, Turkey converted Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque, a move that drew widespread international criticism, including from the Vatican.
After the mosque visit, Leo held a private meeting with Turkey’s Christian leaders at the Syriac Orthodox Church of Mor Ephrem. In the afternoon, he was expected to pray with the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew, at the patriarchal church of Saint George.
There, they were to sign a joint statement. The Vatican said in his remarks to the patriarchs gathered, Leo reminded them “that division among Christians is an obstacle to their witness.”
Emrah Gurel / AP 
He pointed to the next Holy Year to be celebrated by Christians, in 2033 on the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion, and invited them to go to Jerusalem on “a journey that leads to full unity.”
Leo was ending the day with a Catholic Mass in Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena for the country’s Catholic community, who number 33,000 in a country of more than 85 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslim.
While Leo was focusing on bolstering relations with Orthodox Christians and Muslims, trip organizers were dealing with more mundane issues.
Leo’s ITA Airways Airbus A320neo charter was among those caught up in the worldwide Airbus software update, ordered by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. The order came after an analysis found the computer code may have contributed to a sudden drop in the altitude of a JetBlue plane last month.
The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said Saturday that ITA was working on the issue. He said the necessary component to update the aircraft was on its way to Istanbul along with the technician who would install it.
Leo is scheduled to fly from Istanbul to Beirut, Lebanon, on Sunday afternoon for the second leg of his inaugural trip as pope.
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ANKARA — Pope Leo XIV arrived in Turkey on Thursday on his first foreign trip, fulfilling Pope Francis’ plans to mark an important Orthodox anniversary and bring a message of peace to the region at a crucial time in efforts to end the war in Ukraine and ease Mideast tensions.
Leo’s charter plane landed at Ankara’s international airport.
Later, he had a meeting planned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a speech to the country’s diplomatic corps. He’ll then move late Thursday on to Istanbul for three days of ecumenical and interfaith meetings that will be followed by the Lebanese leg of his trip.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is heading to Turkey on Thursday on his first foreign trip, fulfilling the late Pope Francis’ plans to mark an important Orthodox anniversary and bring a message of peace to the region at a crucial time for efforts to end the war in Ukraine and ease Mideast tensions.
Leo is arriving first in Ankara, where he has a meeting planned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a speech to the country’s diplomatic corps. He’ll then move on to Istanbul for three days of ecumenical and interfaith meetings that will be followed by the Lebanese leg of his trip.
Leo’s visit comes as Turkey, a country of more than 85 million people of predominantly Sunni Muslims, has cast itself as a key intermediary in peace negotiations for the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Ankara has hosted rounds of low-level talks between Russia and Ukraine and has offered to take part in the stabilization force in Gaza to help uphold the fragile ceasefire, engagements Leo may applaud in his arrival speech.
Turkey’s growing military weight, as NATO’s largest army after the U.S., has been drawing Western leaders closer to Erdogan even as critics warn of his crackdown on the country’s main opposition party.
Though support for Palestinians and an end to the war in Ukraine is widespread in Turkey, for Turks who face an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, owing to market turmoil induced by shake-ups in domestic politics, international politics is a secondary concern.
That could explain why Leo’s visit has largely escaped the attention of many in Turkey, at least outside the country’s small Christian community.
“I didn’t know he was coming. He is welcome,” said Sukran Celebi. “It would be good if he called for peace in the world, but I don’t think it will change anything.”
Some said they thought the visit by history’s first American pope was about advancing the interests of the United States, or perhaps to press for the reopening of a Greek Orthodox religious seminary that has become a focal point in the push for religious freedoms in Turkey.
“If the pope is visiting, that means America wants something from Turkey,” said Metin Erdem, a musical instruments shop owner in the touristic Galata district of Istanbul.
The main impetus for Leo to travel to Turkey is to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council.
Leo will pray with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, at the site of the 325 AD gathering, today’s Iznik in northwestern Turkey, and sign a joint declaration in a visible sign of Christian unity.
Eastern and Western churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.
While the visit is timed for the important Catholic-Orthodox anniversary, it will also allow Leo to reinforce the church’s relations with Muslims. Leo is due to visit the Blue Mosque and preside over an interfaith meeting in Istanbul.
Asgın Tunca, a Blue Mosque imam who will be receiving the pope, said the visit would help advance Christian-Muslim ties and dispel popular prejudices about Islam.
“We want to reflect that image by showing the beauty of our religion through our hospitality — that is God’s command,” Tunca said.
Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan’s government has enacted reforms to improve the rights of religious groups, including opening places of worship and returning property that were confiscated.
Still, some Christian groups face legal and bureaucratic problems when trying to register churches, according to a U.S. State Department report on religious freedoms.
The Catholic Church, which counts around 33,000 members in Turkey, has no formal legal recognition in the country “and this is the source of many problems,” said the Rev. Paolo Pugliese, superior of the Capuchin Catholic friars in Turkey.
“But the Catholic Church enjoys a rather notable importance because we have an international profile … and we have the pope holding our backs,” he said.
One of the more delicate moments of Leo’s visit will come Sunday, when he visits the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral in Istanbul. The cathedral has hosted all popes who have visited Turkey since Paul VI, with the exception of Francis who visited Turkey in 2014 when its patriarch was sick.
Francis visited him at the hospital, and a few months later he greatly angered Turkey in 2015 when he declared that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was “the first genocide of the 20th century.” Turkey, which has long denied a genocide took place, recalled its ambassador to the Holy See in protest.
Leo has tended to be far more prudent than Francis in his public comments, and using such terms on Turkish soil would spark a diplomatic incident. But the Vatican is also navigating a difficult moment in its ties with Armenia, after its interfaith overtures to Azerbaijan have been criticized.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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HEYBELIADA, Turkey (AP) — As Pope Leo XIV prepares to embark on his first trip abroad with a visit to Turkey to mark a key event that shaped the foundations of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, there has been a surge of renewed optimism over the possible reopening of a Greek Orthodox religious seminary that has been closed since 1971.
The Halki Theological School has become a symbol of Orthodox heritage and a focal point in the push for religious freedoms in Turkey.
Located on Heybeliada Island, off the coast of Istanbul, the seminary once trained generations of Greek Orthodox patriarchs and clergy. They include Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.
Turkey closed the school under laws restricting private higher education, and despite repeated appeals from international religious leaders and human rights advocates — as well as subsequent legal changes that allowed private universities to flourish — it has remained shut ever since.
Momentum for reopening it appeared to grow after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in September. Erdogan said Turkey would “do our part” regarding its reopening. Erdogan had previously linked the move to reciprocal measures from Greece to improve the rights of Muslims there.
On school, which was founded in 1844, stands surrounded by scaffolding as renovation work continues. Inside, one floor that serves as the clergy quarters and two classrooms have already been completed, standing ready to welcome students once the seminary reopens.
‘Political and diplomatic anachronism’
During his visit to Turkey, starting on Nov. 27, Leo is scheduled to meet Erdogan and join Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in commemorating the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, in a pilgrimage honoring Christianity’s theological roots. He will then travel to Lebanon for the second leg of his trip.
Turkey is now “ready to make the big step forward for the benefit of Turkey, for the benefit of the minorities and for the benefit of religious and minority rights in this country” by reopening the seminary, Archbishop Elpidophoros, head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, told The Associated Press in a video interview from his base in New York.
A committee of representatives from the Istanbul-based Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and the Turkish government has begun discussions on the reopening, Elpidophoros said, expressing optimism that the school could welcome students again by the start of the next academic year.
“Keeping this school closed after more than 50 years is a political and diplomatic anachronism that doesn’t help our country,” said the Istanbul-born archbishop. “We have so many private universities and private schools in Turkey, so keeping only Halki closed doesn’t help Turkey, doesn’t help anyone.”
A test of religious freedom
The fate of the seminary has long been viewed as a test of predominantly Muslim Turkey’s treatment of religious minorities, including the country’s Christian population, estimated at 200,000 to 370,000 out of nearly 86 million.
Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan’s government has enacted reforms to improve the rights of religious groups, including opening places of worship and returning some property that was confiscated — but problems linger.
Although the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, only Armenians, Greeks and Jews — non-Muslim minorities were recognized under a 1923 peace treaty that established modern Turkey’s borders — are allowed to operate places of worship and schools. Other Christian groups lack formal recognition and often face obstacles in registering churches or religious associations.
There have been isolated incidents of violence, including a 2024 attack on a Catholic church in Istanbul, where a worshipper was killed during Mass. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Turkey denied recent reports that claimed it had deported foreign nationals belonging to Protestant groups as national security threats. Turkey blamed what it said was “a deliberate disinformation campaign” against the country for the claims.
In July 2020, Turkey converted Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia — once of one of the most important historic cathedrals in Christianity and a United Nations-designated world heritage site — from a museum back into a mosque, a move that drew widespread international criticism. Although popes have visited Hagia Sophia in the past, the important landmark was left out of Leo’s itinerary.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, based in Istanbul, is internationally recognized as the “first among equals” in the Orthodox Christian world. Turkey however, does not recognize its ecumenical status, insisting that under the 1923 treaty, the patriarch is only head of the country’s ever-dwindling Greek Orthodox minority. The Patriarchate dates from the Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, in 1453.
‘A school with this spirit’
At the shuttered seminary, Agnes Kaltsogianni, a visitor from Greece, said the seminary was important for both Greece and Turkey and its reopening could be a basis for improved ties between the two longtime rival countries.
“There should be a gradual improvement between the two countries on all levels, and this (place) can be a starting point for major cultural development and affinity,” said the 48-year-old English teacher.
Elpidophoros, 57, was too young to make it to Halki and was forced to study to join the clergy in a Greek seminary. However, he served as abbot of the Halki monastery for eight years before his appointment as archbishop of America.
“The Theological School of Halki is in my heart,” he said.
Asked about the significance of the school for the Greek Orthodox community, Elpidophoros said Halki represents a “spirit” that is open to new ideas, dialogue and coexistence, while rejecting nationalist and religious prejudice, and hate speech.
“The entire world needs a school with this spirit,” he said.
Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Pope Leo XIV on Saturday accepted the resignation of an ailing Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s, the first known time the new pontiff removed a bishop accused of abuse.A one-line statement from the Vatican said Leo had accepted the resignation of Cádiz Bishop Rafael Zornoza, 76. It didn’t say why, but Zornoza submitted his resignation to the pope last year when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops.It hadn’t been accepted though until the El País newspaper reported earlier this month that Zornoza had been recently placed under investigation by a church tribunal. The daily, which since 2018 has exposed decades of abuse and cover-up in the Spanish Catholic Church, said Zornoza was accused of abusing a young former seminarian while he was a young priest and directed the diocesan seminary in Getafe.The report, quoting a letter the former seminarian wrote the Vatican over the summer, said Zornoza fondled him and regularly slept with him from when he was 14-21 years old. The former seminarian’s letter said Zornoza heard his confession and persuaded him to see a psychiatrist to “cure” his homosexuality.The diocese of Cádiz denied the accusations against Zornoza but confirmed the investigation was being carried out by the church court in Madrid, known as the Rota. In a Nov. 10 statement, the diocese said Zornoza was cooperating with the investigation and had suspended his agenda temporarily “to clarify the facts and to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of cancer.”“The accusations made, referring to events that took place almost 30 years ago, are very serious and also false,” the statement said.It is believed to be the first publicly known case of a bishop being retired, and being placed under investigation for alleged abuse, since the Spanish church began reckoning in recent years with a decades-long legacy of abuse and cover-up that has rocked the once-staunchly Catholic Spain.Leo didn’t immediately name a temporary leader of the diocese.In 2023, Spain’s first official probe of abuse indicated that the number of victims could run into hundreds of thousands, based on a survey that was part of a report by the office of Spain’s ombudsman. The ombudsman conducted an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman’s team.Spain’s Catholic bishops apologized but dismissed the interpretations of the ombudsman report as a “lie,” arguing that many more people had been abused outside of the church.The Spanish Catholic hierarchy then did its own report, saying in 2024 that it had found evidence of 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945. It then launched a plan to compensate victims, after Spain’s government approved a plan to force the church to pay economic reparations.
Pope Leo XIV on Saturday accepted the resignation of an ailing Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s, the first known time the new pontiff removed a bishop accused of abuse.
A one-line statement from the Vatican said Leo had accepted the resignation of Cádiz Bishop Rafael Zornoza, 76. It didn’t say why, but Zornoza submitted his resignation to the pope last year when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops.
It hadn’t been accepted though until the El País newspaper reported earlier this month that Zornoza had been recently placed under investigation by a church tribunal. The daily, which since 2018 has exposed decades of abuse and cover-up in the Spanish Catholic Church, said Zornoza was accused of abusing a young former seminarian while he was a young priest and directed the diocesan seminary in Getafe.
The report, quoting a letter the former seminarian wrote the Vatican over the summer, said Zornoza fondled him and regularly slept with him from when he was 14-21 years old. The former seminarian’s letter said Zornoza heard his confession and persuaded him to see a psychiatrist to “cure” his homosexuality.
The diocese of Cádiz denied the accusations against Zornoza but confirmed the investigation was being carried out by the church court in Madrid, known as the Rota. In a Nov. 10 statement, the diocese said Zornoza was cooperating with the investigation and had suspended his agenda temporarily “to clarify the facts and to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of cancer.”
“The accusations made, referring to events that took place almost 30 years ago, are very serious and also false,” the statement said.
It is believed to be the first publicly known case of a bishop being retired, and being placed under investigation for alleged abuse, since the Spanish church began reckoning in recent years with a decades-long legacy of abuse and cover-up that has rocked the once-staunchly Catholic Spain.
Leo didn’t immediately name a temporary leader of the diocese.
In 2023, Spain’s first official probe of abuse indicated that the number of victims could run into hundreds of thousands, based on a survey that was part of a report by the office of Spain’s ombudsman. The ombudsman conducted an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman’s team.
Spain’s Catholic bishops apologized but dismissed the interpretations of the ombudsman report as a “lie,” arguing that many more people had been abused outside of the church.
The Spanish Catholic hierarchy then did its own report, saying in 2024 that it had found evidence of 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945. It then launched a plan to compensate victims, after Spain’s government approved a plan to force the church to pay economic reparations.
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BARCELONA, Spain — And Rosalía said, “Let there be Lux.”
Rosalía, the global Spanish pop star loved by millions for fusing flamenco with Latin hip-hop and reggaeton, has amazed her fans with a radical shift.
The singer and songwriter’s new album, “Lux” (“Light” in Latin), is unabashedly spiritual. Fifteen songs, sung in 13 different languages, including fragments in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew, are laden with a yearning for the divine.
And it is receiving praise from on high.
Xabier Gómez García, bishop of Sant Feliu de Llobregat which includes Rosalía’s hometown of Sant Esteve Sesrovires near Barcelona, was one of the first church leaders to laud her work in an open letter to his flock. Rosalía’s grandmother regularly attends mass in Sant Esteve Sesrovires, according to the diocese.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Gómez said that while some of her songs were “provocative,” Rosalía “speaks with absolute freedom and without hang-ups about what she feels God to be, and the desire, the thirst (to know God).”
“When I listened to ‘Lux’ and Rosalía speaking about her the context of her album and the creative process, I found myself faced with a process and a work that transcended the musical. Here was a spiritual search through the testimonies of women of immense spiritual maturity,” he said.
From her opening lyrics sung over piano and mournful cello, “Who could live between the two/ First love the world and later love God,” Rosalía announces that this album is a rupture from its Grammy-winning predecessors. “El mal querer (¨The Bad Loving” in Spanish) and “ Motomami ” had established Rosalía as one of the leading artists in the Spanish music world with her experimental urban beats.
Despite — or thanks to — its diversity of styles and song forms, ranging from classical strings, snippets of electronica with a cameo by Björk, a boys’ choir from a thousand-year-old monastery, an aria-like song in Italian, a Portuguese fado and, of course, modern flamenco and hip-hop beats, “Lux” is off to a powerful start among listeners. It has four songs in Spotify’s Top 50 global chart for this week, more than any artist, including Taylor Swift.
Madonna has declared herself a fan of “Lux,” and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has lavishly called it the “album of the decade.”
Rosalía, 33, has said that after her success in more popular music forms, she let her long-held longing for the spiritual guide her in making “Lux.”
“In the end, in an age that seems not to be the age of faith or certainty or truth, there is more need than ever for a faith, or a certainty, or a truth,” she told reporters in Mexico City last month.
She said that she was guided by the concept that “an artist doubts less of his vocation when he works in the service of God than when he works in the service of him or herself.”
Rosalía apparently has not had a revelatory “come-to-Jesus” moment common among evangelical believers in America. Like many Spaniards, she grew up in a once staunchly Catholic Spain that has quickly secularized in recent decades, especially among the younger generations, leaving churches mostly to elderly parishioners.
Even her early music flirted with medieval religious poetry, including one video clip from 2017 when she set a poem by 16th-century Spanish poet Saint John of the Cross to music.
While embracing Catholic symbols and expressing a fascination with female saints, Rosalía seems to eschew strictly organized practice and draws inspiration from other religions, as well. “Lux” responds to that diversity of interest, at one point quoting a Sufi poetess.
“I have read much more than I did years ago, reading many hagiographies of feminine saints from around the world,” she said. “They accompanied me throughout this process.”
Her style has also morphed. Gone are the hip-hop fashion and long fake nails Rosalía sported only a few years ago when she took the Latin Grammys by storm. Contrast that now with her look on the “Lux” album cover, where she is dressed in a solid white nun’s veil with her arms apparently trapped inside a white top, her gaze averted.
Despite the potentially controversial move of comparing God to an obsessed lover in the song “Dios es un stalker” (“God Is a Stalker” in Spanish), Rosalía has won over the equivalent of the Vatican’s culture minister.
Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education, told Spanish news agency EFE this month that Rosalía has detected a wider dissatisfaction with the secular world.
“When a creator like Rosalía speaks of spirituality,” he said, “it means that she captures a profound need in contemporary culture to approach spirituality, to cultivate an inner life.”
Among the songs about faith, Rosalía found the time to deliver tunes like “La Perla” (“The Pearl” in Spanish) that dishes out scorn for a former lover.
That deft mix of both high and pop culture is part of the allure of “Lux,” said Josep Oton, professor of religious history for the ISCREB theology school in Barcelona.
“She has succeeded in making popular music with very deep cultural roots,” Oton told the AP. “Anyone can listen to it, and people with different backgrounds can take away different things. It is pop music, but it is profound.”
“Lux” can be intimidating for listeners, both due to its elaborate orchestration and smattering of esoteric lyrics that Rosalía was inspired to write after reading medieval mystical poets and their accounts of undergoing a transformative union with God through deep prayer and meditation.
In the exhilarating “Reliquia” (“Relic” in Spanish), Rosalía compares herself to female saints, listing the parts of her body and life she has left in cities around the world as relics for others’ keeping. Her “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti,” (“My Christ Weeps Diamonds” in Italian), brims with the extravagant Baroque image of the jewels dripping from the eyes of the Messiah.
In “Divinize,” Rosalía sings of the “divina buidor” (“divine emptiness” in Catalan), a central concept of medieval mysticism which focused on how the soul must experience abandonment to open a space where God can enter.
Victoria Cirlot, professor of humanities at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University and expert in medieval feminine mystical tradition, liked “Lux” for its ability to introduce complex religious concepts to the general public, while noting it is “a minimalist” sample of the mystical tradition.
Cirlot said the moving “La Yugular” (“The Jugular” in Spanish) is rich in mystical thought because the throat, the home of the voice and the breath, is associated in many religious traditions as the body’s door to the divine.
But, for Cirlot, it’s the entire package that makes “Lux” so impactful.
“Rosalía is not just a great singer; she is a great actress, and her body language is full of these mystical gestures like contorting her face in an expression of ecstasy, of staring into nothing,” Cirlot said. “And then we have her amazing voice, which creates a sense of flight.”
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AP writer Berenice Bautista contributed from Mexico City.
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The Vatican on Saturday returned 62 artifacts to Indigenous peoples from Canada as part of the Catholic Church’s reckoning with its role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas.
Pope Leo XIV gave the artifacts, including an iconic Inuit kayak, and supporting documentation to a delegation of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops during an audience. According to a joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church, the pieces were a gift and a “concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity.”
The items were part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader museum debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.
Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens that was a highlight of that year’s Holy Year.
The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.
But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time. In those years, Catholic religious orders were helping to enforce the Canadian government’s forced assimilation policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”
Part of that policy included confiscating items used in Indigenous spiritual and traditional rituals, such as the 1885 potlatch ban that prohibited the integral First Nations ceremony. Those confiscated items ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as private collections.
Negotiations on returning the Vatican items accelerated after Pope Francis in 2022 met with Indigenous leaders who had traveled to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s role in running Canada’s disastrous residential schools. During their visit, they were shown some objects in the collection, including an Inuit kayak, wampum belts, war clubs and masks, and asked for them to be returned.
Eric Gay / AP
Francis later said he was in favor of returning the items and others in the Vatican collection on a case-by-case basis, saying: “In the case where you can return things, where it’s necessary to make a gesture, better to do it.”
The Vatican said Saturday the items were given back during the Holy Year, exactly 100 years after the 1925 exhibition where they were first exhibited in Rome.
“This is an act of ecclesial sharing, with which the Successor of Peter entrusts to the Church in Canada these artifacts, which bear witness to the history of the encounter between faith and the cultures of the Indigenous peoples,” said the joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church.
It added that the Canadian Catholic hierarchy committed to ensuring that the artifacts are “properly safeguarded, respected and preserved.” Officials had previously said the Canadian bishops would receive the artifacts with the explicit understanding that the ultimate keepers will be the Indigenous communities themselves.
The items are expected to be taken first to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. There, experts and Indigenous groups will try to identify where the items originated, down to the specific community, and what should be done with them, officials said previously.
As part of its broader reckoning with the Catholic Church’s colonial past, the Vatican in 2023 formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands that form the basis of some property laws today.
The statement marked a historic recognition of the Vatican’s own complicity in colonial-era abuses committed by European powers, even though it didn’t address Indigenous demands that the Vatican formally rescind the papal bulls themselves.
The Vatican on Saturday cited the 2023 repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery in its statement, saying Leo’s return of the artifacts concludes the “journey” initiated by Francis.
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Saturday returned 62 artifacts to Indigenous peoples from Canada as part of the Catholic Church’s reckoning with its role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas.
Pope Leo XIV gave the artifacts and supporting documentation to a delegation of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops during an audience. According to a joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church, the pieces were a gift and a “concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity.”
The items are part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader museum debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.
Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens that was a highlight of that year’s Holy Year.
The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.
But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time. In those years, Catholic religious orders were helping to enforce the Canadian government’s forced assimilation policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”
Part of that policy included confiscating items used in Indigenous spiritual and traditional rituals, such as the 1885 potlatch ban that prohibited the integral First Nations ceremony. Those confiscated items ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as private collections.
Negotiations on returning the Vatican items accelerated after Pope Francis in 2022 met with Indigenous leaders who had traveled to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s role in running Canada’s disastrous residential schools. During their visit, they were shown some objects in the collection, including an Inuit kayak, wampum belts, war clubs and masks, and asked for them to be returned.
Francis later said he was in favor of returning the items and others in the Vatican collection on a case-by-case basis, saying: “In the case where you can return things, where it’s necessary to make a gesture, better to do it.”
The Vatican said Saturday the items were given back during the Holy Year, exactly 100 years after the 1925 exhibition where they were first exhibited in Rome.
“This is an act of ecclesial sharing, with which the Successor of Peter entrusts to the Church in Canada these artifacts, which bear witness to the history of the encounter between faith and the cultures of the Indigenous peoples,” said the joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church.
It added that the Canadian Catholic hierarchy committed to ensuring that the artifacts are “properly safeguarded, respected and preserved.” Officials had previously said the Canadian bishops would receive the artifacts with the explicit understanding that the ultimate keepers will be the Indigenous communities themselves.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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ROME (AP) — A 15th-century Bible which is considered one of the most spectacular examples of Renaissance illuminated manuscripts went on display in Rome on Thursday as part of the Vatican’s Holy Year celebrations.
The two-volume Borso D’Este Bible, which is known for its opulent miniature paintings in gold and Afghan lapis lazuli, was unveiled in the Italian Senate, where it will remain on display until Jan. 16.
The Bible is usually kept in a safe at a library in Modena and is rarely seen in public. It was transported to Rome under heavy security and its arrival in the Senate was televised, as workers hauled two big red crates from an unmarked van and then extracted the volumes, which were covered in bubble wrap.
The Bible, commissioned by Duke Borso D’Este, was created between 1455 and 1461 by calligrapher Pietro Paolo Marone and illustrators Taddeo Crivelli and Franco dei Russi. The Italian Culture Ministry considers it one of the highest expressions of miniature art “that unites sacred value, historic relevance, precious materials and refined aesthetics.”
From right, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, Rome’s Mayor Roberto Gualtieri and Italian government undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano look at the 15th century Borso D’Este Bible, comprising two illuminated manuscripts, after its unveiling at the Italian Senate as part of the Vatican’s Holy Year celebrations in Rome, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
It will remain behind humidity-controlled plate glass during its Roman sojourn, but visitors can “read” it digitally via touch screen displays featuring ultra-high-resolution images.
Alessandra Necci, director of Gallerie Estense in Modena, where the Bible is usually kept, describes it as the “Mona Lisa of illuminated manuscripts” because of its exquisite artistry and religious inspiration.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who is in charge of the Vatican’s Jubilee celebrations, told the presentation Thursday he hoped visitors would be inspired to go home and read their own Bibles after seeing the beauty of the Borso D’Este version.
He said the splendor of the text was a “provocation” that forces contemplation not just of its beauty but of the word of God contained in the text.
The Bible was commissioned by Borso D’Este as part of his celebration of faith and his own prominence, and was kept in the Este family until the last duke, Francesco V of Austria-Este, took it with him when he fled to Vienna in 1859, according to a history of the Bible on the Italian Senate’s website.
Necci said Borso D’Este spent what was then an exorbitant amount of money to create the most expensive book of the time. By demonstrating such opulence, the duke “wanted to celebrate not only the sacred book par excellence but also the elevated idea he had of himself and his dynasty,” she said.
It remained in the possession of the Habsburgs even after the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved after World War I. In 1922, after Archduke Charles I died, his widow Zita of Bourbon-Parma decided to sell it to a Parisian antiquarian.
Giovanni Treccani, an Italian entrepreneur and arts patron, learned of the sale and travelled to Paris to buy it in 1923, paying 3,300,000 French francs. Treccani, whose name is famous today as the publisher of top Italian encyclopaedias, then donated it to the Italian state.
The Bible is being kept in a specially regulated display case that employs a conditioning system that maintains constant humidity to protect the parchment pages, which are particularly sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity, officials said.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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Pope Leo XIV tries to head off claims that chatbots are sentient beings with rights.
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Vice President JD Vance recently told a packed college arena that he hopes his Hindu wife would someday convert to Christianity, thrusting into the spotlight the deeply sensitive challenges facing interfaith couples.
Experts who have counseled hundreds of couples who don’t share religious beliefs say the key is respect for each other’s faith traditions and having honest discussions about how to raise their children. Most agree that pressuring or even hoping the other would convert could prove damaging to a relationship, and all the more so for a couple in the public arena.
“To respect your partner and everything they bring to the marriage — every part of their identity — is integral to the kind of honesty that you need to have in a marriage,” said Susan Katz Miller, author of the book “Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family.”
“Having secret agendas is not usually going to lead to success,” she said.
Vance, who converted to Catholicism five years into his marriage with Usha Chilukuri Vance, shared his hopes for her conversion while taking questions at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi. A woman asked how he and his wife raise their children without giving them the sense that his religion supersedes her beliefs.
“Do I hope that eventually she is somehow moved by what I was moved by in church? Yeah, honestly, I do wish that, because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way,” the vice president said. “But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.”
Vance’s comments received extensive criticism. The Hindu American Foundation, in a statement addressing the vice president, cited a history of Christians attempting to convert Hindus, and what it says is a rise in anti-Hindu online rhetoric often coming from Christian sources.
“Both of these underpin the sentiment that your statements re: your wife’s religious heritage are reflective of a belief that there is only one true path to salvation — a concept that Hinduism simply doesn’t have — and that path is through Christ,” the statement said.
Vance’s press office did not offer comment for this article. But Vance did engage on social media with a critic who accused him of throwing his wife’s religion under the bus, calling the comment “disgusting.” He said his wife is “the most amazing blessing” in his life and that she encouraged him to reengage with his faith.
“She is not a Christian and has no plans to convert, but like many people in an interfaith marriage — or any interfaith relationship — I hope she may one day see things as I do,” Vance said in his X post. “Regardless, I’ll continue to love and support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife.”
Interfaith marriage is more common today
A Pew Research Center survey in 2015, the most recent asking Americans about interfaith marriage, found that 39% of Americans who had married since 2010 have a spouse from a different religious group. By contrast, only 19% of those who wed before 1960 reported being in an interfaith marriage.
The number of interfaith couples in the U.S. has increased over the past decade, said Miller, whose mother was Christian and her father Jewish. Her mother chose to raise the children Jewish.
“Interfaith couples have different options,” Miller said. “They can choose one or both religions. They could choose a new religion or choose no religion, which is a choice a lot of couples are now making.”
But, she said, “pressuring one’s spouse to convert or even hoping they would convert is not a good basis for a successful marriage.”
At the Turning Point event, Vance told the audience that he and his wife decided to raise their children as Christian. He said they attend a Christian school and participate in milestone Catholic sacraments, such as his oldest son receiving his First Communion a year ago.
Vance has said that when he met his wife at Yale Law School, they were both atheist or agnostic. She grew up in a Hindu immigrant family that was not particularly religious, and they incorporated Hindu rites into their wedding ceremony in 2014. Vance became Catholic in 2019.
The Catholic Church requires interfaith couples to raise their children Catholic, and it’s a commitment Catholics must make in order to receive permission to marry outside the faith, said John Grabowski, theology professor at The Catholic University of America. Along with his wife, Grabowski helps prepare interfaith couples for marriage.
“If your faith is the most important thing in your life, you want to share that with your spouse,” he said, adding that it is a natural expression of love for Christians to want their partners to join them in eternal life.
“However, the Catholic Church does insist that spouses should not be coerced or pressured into the faith,” he said. “It’s a delicate line.”
Religious conversion in interfaith relationships is a key theme of Netflix’s hit show “ Nobody Wants This.” The romantic comedy follows the relationship between a Reform rabbi and an agnostic woman, including the pressures they face as she considers converting to Judaism.
Vance’s comments offered a glimpse into a real-life example of this intimate decision-making. Grabowski believes the vice president handled the touchy question “fairly well” by generally addressing the challenges in his interfaith marriage, but not detailing how the couple handle their differences.
“It was fascinating listening to that exchange,” Grabowski said, “because we normally don’t get a prominent political figure thinking out loud about grappling with these issues as a Catholic while trying to respect his faith and his wife’s conviction.”
Interfaith spouses handle religious conversion in many ways
Dilip Amin, founder of InterfaithShaadi.org, an online forum serving mostly South Asians, believes that religious conversion for the sake of a marriage could derail the relationship.
“If you convert because you’ve had an authentic change of heart, that’s fine,” he said. “But if it occurs because of constant pressure and proselytizing, that’s wrong. My advice is: Don’t let a religious institution drive your actions. Talk with each other. You don’t need a third party to interpret the situation for you.”
There is also strife when one spouse’s religious beliefs shift after marriage, said Ani Zonneveld, founder and president of Muslims for Progressive Values. She has officiated many interfaith weddings.
“I’ve seen that strain … where a Muslim husband who didn’t care much about practicing Islam became orthodox after having children,” Zonneveld said. “That’s unfair to the other person.”
The Rev. J. Dana Trent was ordained a Southern Baptist minister, but married a man who was initiated into Hinduism and lived as a monk. They’ve been married 15 years and together wrote a memoir titled “Saffron Cross: The Unlikely Story of How a Christian Minister Married a Hindu Monk.”
Raised an evangelical, Trent knows the Bible verse from Corinthians 6:14, that some believe discourages interfaith marriage. In it, the Apostle Paul says: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”
Trent disagrees with that interpretation, saying its millennia-old context doesn’t apply in 2025 when being in an interfaith marriage often is not isolating.
“The goal of an interfaith marriage is not to convert each other,” she said, “but to support and deepen each other’s faith traditions and paths.”
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — “You get used to it.”
That was Pope Leo XIV ‘s matter-of-fact response when King Charles III asked about the swarms of televisions cameras documenting his historic visit to the Vatican last month.
Charles is no stranger to paparazzi, so Leo wasn’t telling the monarch anything he didn’t already know. But Leo’s blasé comment seemed to confirm what Vatican observers have noticed recently: that Leo has indeed gotten used to being pope, and is finding his footing six months into the job.
After his shock election in May and sharp learning curve over the summer, Leo’s key priorities are coming into focus, especially where he dovetails with his predecessor, Pope Francis, and where he diverges.
As his pontificate’s six-month mark arrives on Nov. 8, here’s a rundown of what we’ve learned about the first American pope, his style, substance and where he might take the Catholic Church.
Continuity with Francis on key social justice issues
Leo showed himself in perfect lockstep with Francis when he published his first major teaching document last month, on the church’s non-negotiable “preferential option for the poor.” Francis began writing the text before he died; Leo took it over and made it his own.
In it, Leo criticized how the wealthy live in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while poor people suffer on the margins. He urged a renewed commitment to fixing the structural causes of poverty.
Leo has also embraced Francis’ ecological legacy, presiding over the first Mass using a new prayer formula “for the care of creation.” He has given the go-ahead to Francis’ ambitious plan to turn a Vatican-owned property north of Rome into a massive solar farm that could make Vatican City the world’s first carbon-neutral state.
Perhaps nowhere was Leo more Francis-like than on Oct. 23, when he met at the Vatican with Indigenous groups and representatives of popular movements who had been championed by the Argentine Jesuit.
Francis had prioritized people on the margins, and exhorted the church to accompany them as they demanded the basic human necessities of “tierra, techo, trabajo,” – land, housing and work.
Leo repeated Francis’ mantra during his audience and put his own spin on it, noting that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, took up the issue of workers rights at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
“Echoing Francis’ words, I say today: land, housing and work are sacred rights. It is worthwhile to fight for them, and I would like you to hear me say, ‘I am here, I am with you!’” Leo said.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a top adviser to both popes, said Leo is in perfect continuity with Francis, implementing processes that Francis set in motion.
“The transition from one Holy Father to another is not primarily a transition in policies,” Czerny said in an interview. While a change in governments from one party to the next can signal a break, “here it would be a mistake to look for that.”
“The stylistic differences are in the person, not in the teaching,” he said.
Leo’s honeymoon with conservatives continues
On style, it’s now clear that Leo is happy to pope the old fashioned way, wearing the red mozzetta cape and embroidered stole for all but the most mundane occasions.
He sticks to the script of his prepared texts, shows discipline in his liturgical observance and doesn’t ad-lib with wisecracks the way Francis sometimes did.
That has endeared him to many of the Catholic conservatives who bristled at Francis’ informality. Even though Leo is echoing many of Francis’ Gospel-mandated social justice preaching points, his style and gestures have generally won them over so far.
“What I’m hearing and sensing is a real joy in the maturity, the discipline and the tradition that he brings back to the papacy,” said Patrick Reilly, founder and head of the conservative Cardinal Newman Society, which ranks Catholic colleges in the U.S. on upholding traditional doctrine.
“I don’t know of anyone who has any concerns or is disturbed or anything like we saw,” with Francis, he said.
The Latin Mass returns to St. Peter’s
Many credit Leo for allowing a traditional Latin Mass to be celebrated at the back altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, presided over by none other than the figurehead of the American Catholic right, Cardinal Raymond Burke.
Francis in 2021 cracked down on the spread of the ancient liturgy, saying it had become a source of division in dioceses. The crackdown fueled conservative and traditionalist opposition to Francis, leading to a new impasse in the age-old liturgical wars.
But Leo has expressed a willingness to engage in dialogue with traditionalists, suggesting a detente is possible.
“We love our pope, we pray for him,” said Christina Tignot, who attended the Latin Mass service during the traditionalists’ annual pilgrimage. With her was her husband and homeschooled daughter, who joined her mother in wearing a lace veil over her head.
A willingness to chart a new path
For all his continuity with Francis, Leo has charted his own path and even corrected Francis when necessary.
In one case of a reversal, Leo abrogated a 2022 law issued by Francis that concentrated financial power in the Vatican bank. Leo issued his own law allowing the Holy See’s investment committee to use other banks, outside the Vatican, if it made better financial sense.
Leo has also met with a group of activist survivors of clergy sexual abuse, who said he promised to engage in dialogue as they press the Vatican to adopt a zero-tolerance for abuse policy worldwide. Francis had met regularly with individual abuse survivors, but kept advocacy and activist groups at an arm’s length.
A new routine elicits a comment about abortion
At the six-month mark, Leo’s personal routine is also showing a break from that of the workaholic homebody Francis.
Leo has taken to spending Monday afternoons and Tuesdays at the papal country house in Castel Gandolfo, where he can take time off and get in a tennis game in the estate’s court. (He plays with his secretary).
To the news media’s delight, Leo has agreed to field some questions each Tuesday evening as he leaves from a gaggle of reporters gathered outside, weighing in on everything from the Gaza ceasefire to immigration enforcement raids in Chicago. his hometown.
His initially timid responses were noticed. They led to a biting television skit by Italian political satirist Maurizio Crozza, who suggested that the name “Leo” was perhaps a mismatch for a pope seemingly afraid of his own shadow.
But with the passage of time, Leo seems to be getting into his groove. He sparked a brief but seemingly temporary alarm in conservative circles when, during one recent Tuesday evening Q&A, he chimed in on the U.S. abortion debate by challenging abortion opponents about what it really means to be pro-life.
In a more formal setting, he also showed some chutzpah when Queen Rania of Jordan asked him if it was really safe to travel to Lebanon. Leo plans to visit Lebanon and Turkey on his first foreign trip at the end of the month.
They were posing for a formal photo in Leo’s library after an official state audience. Rania’s question was picked up by the Vatican camera’s hot mic, as was Leo’s response.
“Well, we’re going,” Leo said matter-of-factly, while smiling for the cameras.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The man accused of fatally stabbing a Catholic priest during a break-in at his home beside the church he served in a small Nebraska town pleaded guilty to murder and other charges Tuesday in the December 2023 killing.
Kierre Williams changed his plea to guilty on murder, burglary and weapons charges during a routine pretrial hearing. He will be sentenced on Nov. 12 for killing the Rev. Stephen Gutgsell, 65, in the rectory next door to St. John the Baptist Church in Fort Calhoun. The killing occurred just hours before Gutgsell was scheduled to celebrate Mass.
Williams’ attorney didn’t immediately respond to a message from The Associated Press on Tuesday.
On the day of the attack, Gutgsell called 911 before dawn to report that a man had broken into the rectory and was in his kitchen holding a knife. A deputy who arrived at the home minutes later said he found Gutgsell lying near the kitchen, bleeding profusely from stab wounds. Gutgsell was rushed to a hospital in Omaha, where he died.
Williams didn’t have a weapon at the time, but investigators later found a broken knife with a serrated blade lying in blood on the floor of Gutgsell’s bedroom.
Williams has several felony convictions in other states, authorities said. At the time of the killing, he was working in a meatpacking plant in Sioux City, Iowa.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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The Shrine of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic church in D.C., was intended to be a sanctuary for worshippers. Now, its mostly immigrant congregation is steeped in fear.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The imposing Shrine of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic church a short drive from the White House, was intended to be a sanctuary for worshippers. Now, its mostly immigrant congregation is steeped in fear.
Church leaders say more than 40 members of their parish have been detained, deported or both since federal law enforcement stepped up their deployment in August.
Many parishioners are too scared to leave home to attend Mass, buy food or seek medical care, as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown targets their communities.
Cardinal Robert McElroy, who leads the Archdiocese of Washington, said the government was using fear to rob immigrants “of any sense of real peace or security.”
“It really is an instrument of terror,” he told The Associated Press.
Trump’s federal law enforcement surge technically ended on Sept. 10. But National Guard troops and federal agents remain in the nation’s capital. That includes immigration authorities, who continue to prowl near Sacred Heart, which sits in a vibrant Latino community flanked by two neighborhoods — Columbia Heights and Mt. Pleasant — that have been home to successive waves of immigrants.
The parish was established more than 100 years ago by Irish, Italian and German immigrants. Today, most of its 5,600 members came from El Salvador, but also from Haiti, Brazil and Vietnam.
The immigration raids have upended lives and worship at Sacred Heart. Families grieve for missing loved ones. Attendance at Masses, which are held in several languages, has dropped dramatically, visible in the many empty pews under the domed church’s colorful mosaics.
“About half the people are afraid to come,” said the Rev. Emilio Biosca, the church’s pastor.
But the church community rejects being reduced to powerless victims. During the crisis, pastors and church volunteers have attended immigration court hearings, covered rent and legal fees, and donated and delivered food to those fearful of leaving home.
“Our role here at the church has changed, also dramatically,” Biosca said. “Because we have so many people who are adversely affected by that situation, we cannot possibly go on as business as usual.”
On a recent day, parishioners dedicated a rosary to the detained and deported church members. They pray daily on Zoom because so many are fearful of stepping outside their homes.
Among them was a woman who hasn’t returned to the church since last month, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her husband while the couple sold fruits and vegetables from a stand that was their main source of income.
They entered the U.S. illegally nearly two decades ago to escape gang violence in El Salvador. They met at Sacred Heart, where they both have been active volunteers, often leading retreats and programs. For years, her husband helped coordinate popular Holy Week processions.
When her husband was detained, the first person the woman called was her pastor. Since then, the church has helped to pay her rent. She is now preparing to move to Boston with family members as her husband faces deportation from a Louisiana detention center. Barring some unforeseen change that would allow him to stay in the U.S., she plans to move back to El Salvador to be with him.
“It’s been a very difficult, bitter month of crying and suffering,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear she could be deported. “Our lives changed from one day to the next. We had so many dreams.”
In her apartment, she clutched rosary beads, surrounded by the cardboard boxes she had been packing with their belongings. On her desk near a makeshift altar of the Virgin Mary, she keeps a prayer card of Pope Leo XIV, who has vowed to “stand with” migrants.
When someone on the Zoom worship read a name from a long list of the detained, she flinched and whispered sadly: “That’s my husband.” Above her hung a framed photo of the couple, smiling joyfully on their wedding day at Sacred Heart.
A top archdiocesan leader, Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar, crossed into the U.S. illegally in 1990 after fleeing El Salvador. His journey to the church hierarchy — after working odd jobs and obtaining asylum and then U.S. citizenship — has made him an important symbol for the area’s Catholic immigrants.
Of the recent ICE detainments, Menjivar said, “That could have been me, you know.”
He recently helped lead a procession in support of migrants and refugees that began at Sacred Heart.
He said the parish feels like home to him. “It holds a very special place not just for me, but for many, many immigrants.”
The Catholic Church staunchly defends the rights of migrants, even as it acknowledges the rights of nations to control their borders. U.S. Catholics depend on foreign-born priests to serve parishes. In the Washington Archdiocese, which includes D.C. and parts of Maryland, more than 40% of parishioners are Latino.
Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said via email that “DHS law enforcement in Washington, D.C. is targeting the worst of the worst violent criminal aliens.”
Biosca, Sacred Heart’s pastor, had thought the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement would target violent criminals. But then, he said, they began to go after his congregation.
“It became very unbearable,” he said, adding that the targets seemed like anyone who “just looked Hispanic.”
At the Sacred Heart School, principal Elias Blanco said at least two families withdrew their children because they didn’t want to risk being detained while dropping them off.
“There’s certainly a lot of fear with our parents,” he said.
Many of the children at the school are U.S. citizens who have parents in the country illegally. In case they are detained, some parents have signed caregiver affidavits, which designate a legal guardian, in hopes their children stay out of foster care.
“It’s like a ripple effect,” Blanco said of the immigration detentions. “It might be one person, but that individual is the father of someone, the husband of someone, the brother, and then it impacts the whole family.”
Church leaders have accompanied congregants to immigration court, where, in cities nationwide, masked ICE officers have arrested immigrants as they leave hearings.
The Rev. Carlos Reyes, a Sacred Heart priest originally from El Salvador, attended a hearing with a 20-year-old congregant who recently arrived in the U.S. illegally from Bolivia.
Thanks to support from Reyes and Sacred Heart, she said her hope and her Catholic faith have deepened.
“It’s a refuge for me because it’s all I have here, because I don’t have anyone,” she said, sobbing after a Sunday Mass. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she has another court hearing soon and fears deportation.
On a recent Saturday, volunteers gathered in the church basement. They formed a circle to pray before they packed bags of donated food.
Then they made deliveries to immigrant congregants who hadn’t left their homes in weeks, not even to buy groceries. Some recipients stepped out to thank the volunteers, cautiously looking around for ICE personnel.
“These people are losing their dignity,” said a congregant who helped deliver the food and is a legal U.S. resident. She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing her U.S. citizenship process could still be disrupted.
“As people of God, we can’t just sit and watch,” she said. “We have to do what we can.”
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Associated Press video journalist Jessie Wardarski contributed to this report.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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