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Pope visits Istanbul’s Blue Mosque for meeting with Turkish religious leaders
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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
Papal visits to Blue Mosque often raise questions
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.
Hagia Sophia left off itinerary
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.
The Airbus software update doesn’t spare pope
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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Pope Leo Heads to Turkey and Lebanon for His First Foreign Trip
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ISTANBUL—After a low-profile start to his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV is stepping into the limelight.
The first American pope begins his first foreign trip on Thursday, touring Turkey and Lebanon. It is a chance for him to set out his spiritual and geopolitical vision after six months as pontiff, notable for its relative quiet after years of turbulence in the Catholic Church.
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Margherita Stancati
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Pope Leo XIV meets with rescued Ukrainian children as Vatican ramps up efforts to bring more home
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Pope Leo XIV met with some of the rescued Ukrainian children who were kidnapped by Russian forces throughout the war as the Vatican ramps up its efforts to get all of the nearly 20,000 abducted kids home to Ukraine.
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar meets with Pope Leo in push to free Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia
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Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Friday in the push to get kidnapped Ukrainian children out of Russia.
Klobuchar, who met with the pope for about 20 minutes along with a Ukrainian delegation, said it was an honor to meet him, calling him “a true moral force for peace and justice.”
The pope and Klobuchar were joined by some Ukrainian families whose children were kidnapped by Russian forces and have since been reunited with their families. More than 19,000 Ukrainian children were abducted by Russia during the invasion, according to Ukraine’s state-run program “Bring Kids Back.”
Klobuchar, Hennepin County’s former top prosecutor, has led on human trafficking issues in the Senate.
“Any path towards peace must start with returning the kidnapped children,” Klobuchar said. “A lot of this are children that are in bombed out areas, orphanages that were bombed out.”
About 1,800 of the 19,000-plus kidnapped Ukrainian children have been returned.
While at the Vatican on Friday, Klobuchar gave the pope a copy of the Senate resolution that honors the victims and survivors of the mass shooting in August at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis. The pope sent a “heartfelt condolence” to Archbishop Bernard Hebda, head of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, in the shooting’s aftermath.
The resolution says everyone deserves to feel safe in their sacred places of worship and schools.
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Pope Leo XIV celebrates cinema with Hollywood stars and urges inclusion of marginal voices
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV welcomed Spike Lee, Cate Blanchett, Greta Gerwig and dozens of other Hollywood luminaries to a special Vatican audience Saturday celebrating cinema and its ability to inspire and unite.
Leo encouraged the filmmakers and celebrities gathered in a frescoed Vatican audience hall to use their art to include marginal voices, calling film “a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all.”
“When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges,” he told the stars. “It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we didn’t know we needed to shed.”
The encounter, organized by the Vatican’s culture ministry, followed similar audiences Pope Francis had in recent years with famous artists and comedians. It’s part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular world.
But the gathering also seemed to have particular meaning for history’s first American pope, who grew up in the heyday of Hollywood. The 70-year-old, Chicago-born Leo just this week identified his four favorite films: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Sound of Music,” “Ordinary People,” and “Life Is Beautiful.”
In a sign of how seemingly star-struck he was, Leo spent nearly an hour after the audience greeting and chatting amiably with each of the participants, something he rarely does for large audiences.
Drawing applause from the celebrities, Leo acknowledged that the film industry and cinemas around the world were experiencing a decline, with theaters that had once been important social and cultural meeting points disappearing from neighborhoods.
“I urge institutions not to give up, but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value” of movie theaters, he said.
Celebrities just happy to be invited
Many celebrities said they found Leo’s words inspiring, and expressed awe as they walked through the halls of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, where a light luncheon reception awaited them after the audience.
“It was a surprise to me that I even got invited,” Spike Lee told reporters along the red carpet gauntlet in the palace.
During the audience, Lee had presented Leo with a jersey from his beloved Knicks basketball team, featuring the number 14 and Leo’s name on the back. Leo is a known Chicago Bulls fan, but Lee said he told the pope that the Knicks now boast three players from the pope’s alma mater, Villanova University.
Blanchett, for her part, said the pope’s comments were inspiring because he understood the crucial role cinema can play in transcending borders and exploring sometimes difficult subjects in ways that aren’t divisive.
“Filmmaking is about entertainment, but it’s about including voices that are often marginalized and not shy away from the pain and complexity that we’re all living through right now,” she said.
She said Leo, in his comments about the experience of watching a film in a dark theatre, clearly understood the culturally important role cinemas can play.
“Sitting in the dark with strangers is a way in which we can reconnect to what unites us rather than what divides us,” she said.
A ‘hit and miss’ guest list that grew
The gathering drew a diverse group of filmmakers and actors, including many from Italy, like Monica Bellucci and Alba Rohrwacher. American actors included Chris O’Donnell, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann, his wife.
Director Sally Potter said she was impressed that Leo took the time to speak with each one of them. And she said she loved his comments about the value of silence and slowness in film.
“It was a good model of how to be and how to think about cinema,” she said, noting especially Leo’s defense of “slow cinema” and to not see the moving image just in terms of algorithms.
Director Gus Van Sant said he liked Leo’s vibe.
“He was very laid back, you know, he had a fantastic message of beauty in cinema,” he said.
Archbishop Paul Tighe, the No. 2 in the Vatican culture ministry, said the guest list was pulled together just in the last three months, with the help of the handful of contacts Vatican officials had in Hollywood, including Martin Scorsese.
The biggest hurdle, Tighe said, was convincing Hollywood agents that the invitation to come meet Leo wasn’t a hoax. In the end, as word spread, some figures approached the Vatican and asked to be invited.
“It’s an industry where people have their commitments months in advance and years in advance, so obviously it was a little hit and miss, but we’re very pleased and very proud” by the turnout, he said.
The aim of the encounter, he said, was to encourage an ongoing conversation with the world of culture, of which film is a fundamental part.
“It’s a very democratic art form,” Tighe said. Saturday’s audience, he said, was “the celebration of an art form that I think is touching the lives of so many people and therefore recognizing it and giving it its true importance.”
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Visual journalists Trisha Thomas and Isaia Montelione contributed.
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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 celebrates the power of cinema with star-studded Vatican audience
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The Vatican shared the spotlight with Hollywood on Saturday as Pope Leo XIV hosted dozens of stars, including Cate Blanchett, Spike Lee and Monica Bellucci for a special audience celebrating the power of cinema.
The event, organized by the Vatican’s culture ministry, took place in a frescoed Vatican audience hall. Leo called on the attending artists to use their art to include marginalized voices and praised film to console and challenge audiences.
“It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express,” Leo said.
The first U.S.-born pope also acknowledged the financial difficulties facing movie theaters. He said institutions should not give up, but “cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value” of theaters, drawing applause from the audience.
Simone Risoluti – Vatican Media via Vatican Pool / Getty Images
“His speech was beautiful and very inspiring, about hope and our work in cinema. We’re glad we came,” said Judd Apatow, who attended the audience with his wife and fellow Hollywood star Leslie Mann.
“It was so inspiring,” Mann added.
Leo spent nearly an hour greeting guests and making conversation with each attendee. Lee, a basketball lover, gifted the pontiff a New York Knicks jersey that featured the No. 14 and Leo’s name on the back. Leo may be a known Chicago Bulls fan, but Lee said he told the pope that the Knicks’ current roster includes three players from Villanova University, the Holy Father’s alma mater. Lee said Leo’s words about film were “very, very moving.”
Pope Francis held similar audiences with artists and comedians. The audiences are part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular world.
Simone Risoluti – Vatican Media via Vatican Pool / Getty Images / Mario Tomassetti
A pope who “grew up with cinema”
Leo is the first American-born Pope and grew up during Hollywood’s heyday. Earlier this week, he listed his four favorite movies: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Sound of Music,” “Ordinary People,” and “Life Is Beautiful,” all classics that celebrate love and hope in the face of darkness. Leo will also be the subject of his own movie, a documentary from the Vatican that traces his life from Chicago to St. Peter’s.
“He is a pope who grew up with television and grew up with cinema, and it’s a natural (medium) to tell his story,” said Monsignor Paul Tighe, the Vatican’s culture secretary, in a conversation with CBS Saturday Morning.
Tighe said the large group of filmmakers and actors was pulled together during the last three months. Vatican officials used contacts in Hollywood, including Martin Scorsese, to help craft the list of attendees. The hardest part, Tighe said, was convincing Hollywood agents that the invitation wasn’t a hoax. Tighe told CBS Saturday Morning that he hopes the event shows that the Church embraces the arts, instead of just tolerating them.
“We have to trust that the artist, even when he or she is being provocative, is trying to wake us up, grab our attention, and make us think about things that are important,” Tighe said.
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Pope returns 62 artifacts to Indigenous Canadians as
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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 accelerate on returning items
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.
A process of reckoning with abuses
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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Bible described as the ‘Mona Lisa of illuminated manuscripts’ goes on display in Rome
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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.
A detail of the 15th century Borso D’Este Bible, comprising two illuminated manuscripts, during 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)
A journalist flips through a faithful reproduction of the 15th century Borso D’Este Bible, comprising two illuminated manuscripts, during 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) 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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Opinion | AI Is a Tool, Not a Soul
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Pope Leo XIV tries to head off claims that chatbots are sentient beings with rights.
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Kristen Ziccarelli
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Vatican will return dozens of artifacts to Indigenous groups in Canada as part of reconciliation
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts sought by Indigenous communities in Canada as part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday.
The items, including an Inuit kayak, 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 artifacts taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.
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 Canada’s disastrous residential schools. During their visit, they were shown some objects in the collection, including 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 Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops said Wednesday it has been working with Indigenous groups on returning the items to their “originating communities.” It said it expected the Holy See to announce the return. Vatican and Canadian officials said they expected an announcement in the coming weeks, and that the items could arrive on Canadian soil before the end of the year.
The Globe and Mail newspaper first reported on the progress in the restitution negotiations.
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.
Doubt cast on whether the items were freely given
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 policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”
The return of the items will follow the “church-to-church” model the Vatican used in 2023, when it gave its Parthenon Marbles to the Orthodox Christian Church in Greece. The three fragments were described by the Vatican as a “donation” to the Orthodox church, not a state-to-state repatriation to the Greek government.
In this case, the Vatican is expected to hand over the items to the Canadian bishops conference, with the explicit understanding that the ultimate keepers will be the Indigenous communities, a Canadian official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are not concluded.
What happens after the items are returned
The items, accompanied by whatever provenance information the Vatican has, will 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, the official said.
The official declined to say how many items were under negotiation or who decided what would be returned, but said the total numbered “a few dozen.”
The aim is to get the items back this year, the official said, noting the 2025 Jubilee celebrating hope, and the centenary of the 1925 Holy Year that was the reason for the items to be brought to Rome in the first place.
The 1925 exhibit is now so controversial that its 100th anniversary has been virtually ignored by the Vatican, which celebrates a lot of anniversaries.
The Assembly of First Nations said some logistical issues need to be finalized before the objects can be returned, including establishing protocols.
“For First Nations, these items are not artifacts. They are living, sacred pieces of our cultures and ceremonies and must be treated as the invaluable objects that they are,” National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Canadian Press.
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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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Former Satanic priest and a
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Pope Leo XIV has created seven new saints, bringing the total number of people who posthumously received this title to nine since he was appointed to lead the Catholic Church earlier this year. Among the latest group honored was an attorney who at one point became a Satanic priest, before denouncing Satan and returning to his Christian faith.
Bells rang out over St. Peter’s Square for the ceremony on Sunday, which had an audience that the Vatican estimated at some 70,000 people. There, the pope canonized that ex-occultist priest, Bartolo Longo, alongside a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea, an archbishop killed in the Armenian genocide, a Venezuelan “doctor of the poor” and three nuns who dedicated their lives to the poor and sick.
The former Satanic priest Longo, an Italian lawyer born in 1841 and who died in 1926, rejoined Catholicism and went on to found the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii.
Claudia Greco / REUTERS
“Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new Saints, who, with God’s grace, kept the lamp of faith burning,” Leo told the crowd gathered at the Vatican during his homily. “May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness.”
Huge portraits of the seven were unfurled from windows over the square as Leo, the first U.S. pope, emerged from St. Peter’s Basilica dressed in a ceremonial white cassock with a miter on his head, preceded by white-clad bishops and cardinals.
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — the Vatican department charged with beatification and canonization — read aloud profiles of the seven to applause from the crowd.
With Leo’s reading of the canonization formula, they were officially declared saints.
In his homily, Leo acknowledged the importance of the world’s “material, cultural, scientific and artistic treasures” but said “their true meaning is lost without faith,” according to the Vatican. Describing the new saints as either “martyrs for their faith,” “evangelizers and missionaries,” “charismatic founders” of congregations or “benefactors of humanity,” the pope also encouraged his followers to lean on their faith at times when the suffering around them could spark doubt.
“When we are ‘crucified’ by pain and violence, by hatred and war, Christ is already there, on the cross for us and with us,” he said. “There is no cry that God does not console; there is no tear that is far from His heart.”
Rite of canonization
The rite of canonization on Sunday was the second for the former Robert Prevost since he was made leader of the Catholic Church on May 8.
Last month, he proclaimed as saints Italians Carlo Acutis — a teenager dubbed “God’s Influencer” who spread the faith online before his death at age 15 in 2006 — and Pier Giorgio Frassati, considered a model of charity who died in 1925, aged 24.
Canonization is the final step towards sainthood in the Catholic Church, following beatification.
Three conditions are required — most crucially that the individual has performed at least two miracles. He or she must be deceased for at least five years and have led an exemplary Christian life.
Martyrs, humanitarians
Among those made saints Sunday were Peter To Rot, a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea killed during the Japanese occupation during World War II, Armenian bishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan killed by Turkish forces in 1915, and Venezuela’s Jose Gregorio Hernandez Cisneros, a layman who died in 1919, whom the late Pope Francis called a “doctor close to the weakest.”
Also from Venezuela was Maria Carmen Rendiles Martinez, a nun born without a left arm who overcame her disability to found the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus before her death in 1977. She becomes the South American country’s first female saint.
Andrew Medichini / AP
The Italian nuns canonized are Vincenza Maria Poloni, the 19th-century founder of Verona’s Institute of the Sisters of Mercy, which cares primarily for the sick in hospitals, and Maria Troncatti of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.
In the 1920s, Troncatti arrived in Ecuador to devote her life to helping its indigenous population.
Circling St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile after the service, Leo went far beyond its confines, traveling down the Via della Conciliazione linking the Vatican to Rome, stopping frequently to bless babies among the thousands of well-wishers.
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Pope Leo meets with Chicago students of viral ‘mock conclave’ of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy
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Wednesday, October 8, 2025 11:49AM
Pope Leo XIV is seen standing next to the students who were dressed in their conclave costumes.
CHICAGO (WLS) — An exciting day for students from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy.
ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch
On Wednesday, the children got to meet their hometown pope.
Video shows as Pope Leo XIV greets the students, who were dressed in their costumes of the viral “mock conclave.”
Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich was also at the meeting with the students.
Pope Leo XIV is seen standing next to the students who were dressed in their conclave costumes.
Leo was seen talking to the students and shook their hands.
They met in St. Peter’s Square as Leo addressed the general audience.
Video shows the group afterwards making their way through St. Peter’s Square.
Cate Cauguiran is following the school on their trip. Stay tuned for more updates.
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Cate Cauguiran
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Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy students to attend audience with Chicago native Pope Leo at Vatican
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CHICAGO (WLS) — On a beautiful Tuesday evening in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, excitement is building for a group of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy students, who are getting ready for Wednesday’s papal audience.
An ABC7 crew was on the flight with some of those students and Cardinal Blase Cupich. From the gate at O’Hare Airport to their tour of Vatican City and Rome, their energy is only growing.
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Swapping Lakeview for Vatican views, the students part of a class project gone viral are now walking the same places and spaces of the Catholic cardinals they once dressed up as.
“I get emotional when I think about it,” said Allison Foerster, who teaches at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy. “This feels like such a gift to get to be a part of this, to get to be a part of the team that puts together something like this for our students.”
And on Wednesday, they will get to stand in St. Peter’s Square as their hometown pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, addresses the general audience.
“We have no expectation of what will happen. We are just coming in faith and in joy to be in his presence and see what happens,” Foerster said.
On Monday, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy students in Rome took part in a special tour of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, getting a chance to see the tomb of Paul the Apostle.
“I don’t want to leave. I want to learn more, but I can’t, because we have to go see other stuff,” said fifth-grader Max Schnakenberg.
Schnakenberg, 10, says the time between first putting on his conclave costume to being able to walk into walls of Vatican City was fast.
“They were like ‘Hey guys, we’re going to make our own conclave.’ And now, ‘Hey, were going to meet the pope.’ Like, that’s a big jump,” Schnakenberg said. “Coming here, to Rome, is insane itself. Meeting the pope is a whole other level.”
Chicago native Pope Leo showed off his catching skills at a special greeting for Croatian pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square on Monday.
It is still anyone’s guess if these students will get more than just a general audience with the Holy Father.
But for Foerster, one the teachers who envisioned the idea of the mock conclave, says this trip itself is a blessing she and her fellow teachers never imagined.
“They’re really looking forward to just being a part of the experience. We know that no matter what, we get to see him and that in itself feels like such a gift,” Foerster said. “To be able to be here doing this, knowing this is a watershed moment for our church for our school… It’s such a gift to get be a part of this community, and to get to teach these sweet young people and to know that this is going to be a life-changing moment for them.”
Meanwhile, ABC News has learned the pope will make his first foreign trip.
The Vatican told reporters that Pope Leo XIV will travel to Turkey and Lebanon. His trip is set for late November into December.
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Cate Cauguiran
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Mike Sweeney tried to get Pope Leo XIV to convert — to the Royals
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The White Sox have leaned in heavily on Pope Leo XIV being a fan of the Major League Baseball team.
Pope Leo XIV grew up on the south side of Chicago and was at the 2005 World Series, which the White Sox won over the Astros. Shortly after being elected Pope in May, vendors in the Windy City cranked out “Chicago Pope” T-shirts.
At Rate Field, the White Sox home stadium, there is a mural of the pope in Section 114. Pope Leo XIV recorded a video message that was played at Rate Field in May at a special Mass.
One member of the Royals Hall of Fame took a shot at getting Pope Leo XIV to convert. But it wasn’t to change from being a Catholic. No, Mike Sweeney tried to sway the Pope to support the Royals.
The Catholic News Service Rome shared a photo Wednesday of Sweeney with a Royals jersey that he presented to Pope Leo XIV. The website ANSA said Sweeney also gave a personalized baseball bat to the Pope in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
It’s doubtful the Pope would change sports allegiances, but it’s kind of cool to know he now has a Royals jersey.
While playing for the Royals from 1995-2007, Sweeney was known for being one of baseball’s best hitters and for his faith. After retiring from baseball in 2010, Sweeney co-founded Catholic Sports Camps.
“It’s not a what, it’s who. It’s Jesus Christ. Body, blood, soul and divinity. We’re going to teach them that praying the rosary is actually holding hands with the Mother of God and worshiping her Son,” Sweeney told the Southern Nebraska Register in 2022 of his camps. “Going to a Catholic Baseball Camp is going to teach you about virtue and playing baseball and getting dirty and going to confession on the baseball field. We did it.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2025 at 5:55 PM.
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Pete Grathoff
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Pope Francis’ Catholic church reform process ends without giving more equity to women
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Pope Francis’ yearslong process to reform the Catholic Church closed Saturday with recommendations that fell short of giving women more equity as hoped but reflected the pope’s aims for a church that at least listens more to its followers.
In a significant move, the pope said he would not issue a teaching document from the recommendations, which called for women to be allowed all opportunities that Church law already provides while leaving open the contentious question of allowing women to be ordained as deacons.
As a result, it remains unclear what if any authority or impact the synod’s final recommendations will have, given the purpose of the exercise was to provide the pope with specific proposals on reform.
“In this time of war, we must be witnesses to peace” and give an example of living with differences, the pope said in explaining his decision.
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Francis said he would continue to listen to the bishops’ counsel, adding “this is not a classic way of endlessly delaying decisions.”
Deacons perform many of the same functions as priests, such as presiding over baptisms, weddings and funerals, but they cannot celebrate Mass. Advocates say allowing women to be deacons would help offset the shortage of priests. Opponents say it would signal the start of a slippery slope toward ordaining women to the all-male priesthood that Francis has repeatedly reaffirmed.
Earlier this week, the Vatican’s top doctrinal officer, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, told the extraordinary assembly of 368 bishops and laypeople that Francis had said the moment “is not ripe” for allowing the ordination of women as deacons. He did not respond directly to a request to define what would determine “ripeness” for a greater role for women.
The multi-year synod process had sparked great hopes for change, especially for women, who have long complained that they are treated as second-class citizens in the church. Women are barred from the church’s highest ministerial positions, yet do the lion’s share of the work running Catholic hospitals and schools and passing the faith onto future generations.
Speaking to the synod on Thursday, Fernandez explained that a special working group would continue beyond the closing of the meeting, but that its focus would be on discussing the role of women in the church — not in the diaconate, or the office of deacon. He added that while working with women in previous pastoral roles, “most did not ask for or want the diaconate, which would be cumbersome for their lay work.”
The meeting asked for “full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in Canon Law with regard to the role of women, particularly in those places where they remain under-explored.” It leaves open “the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry.”
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It was the most contested paragraph of the final document, with 258 votes for and 97 against. It was not clear if the “no” votes were because the language went too far or not far enough.
The outcome is a disappointment for Catholics who have been campaigning for recognition that women share a spiritual calling that is no different than a man’s. They also noted that despite the inclusion of women in the synodal process, the working group that is guiding discussions on women’s role is being run by the Roman curia, operating outside the synod.
“I think the final document will be received with much disappointment and frustration by many women around the world who are hoping for concrete changes,” said Kate McElwee, the executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference.
While she acknowledged a “cultural shift,” she said “the pace of that shift is perhaps too slow for many women.”
The first phase of the synod process ended last year by concluding it was “urgent” to guarantee fuller participation by women in church governance positions, and calling for theological and pastoral research to continue about allowing women to be deacons.
If before the synod the idea of allowing women to be deacons was a fringe proposal pushed by Western progressives, the idea gained attention during the debate. It became something of a litmus test of how far the church was going to go, or not, to address demands of women for greater equality and representation in the church’s highest ranks.
Francis, had other ideas, insisting that ordaining women would just “clericalize” them and that there were plenty of other ways to empower women in the church, even leading Catholic communities, without resorting to ordination.
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Tone deaf and color blind? Catholic Church struggles to keep accused abusers out of religious art
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BRUSSELS (AP) — Little brings more heavenly bliss to the faithful or otherworldly wonder to casual visitors than ethereal hymns cascading amid the columns of Catholic cathedrals. That is, unless the composer is a known molester or someone accused of sexual abuse.
A few days before the highlight of Pope Francis’ visit to Belgium — a Mass at the biggest stadium in Brussels — the specially selected choir of 120 was rehearsing a brand-new closing hymn when it became known that the composer was a priest accused of molesting young women.
The hymn was hastily removed from the order of service and replaced with another composition but it was too late to reprint the official Magnificat booklet for the Mass because of the number of copies required. The name of the alleged abuser, who died two weeks ago, is right there at the bottom of page 52, next to a request for donations, with a bank account number and a QR code.
It was the latest controversy in the Belgian church’s decades-long struggle to come to terms with an appalling history of sex abuse and cover-ups by its priests and clergy — a legacy Francis will confront in person when he meets with survivors of the abuse during his visit.
“I pointed it out to them,” said the Rev. Rik Deville, a retired priest who has been a torchbearer for survivors of church abuse for three decades. “What happened with the hymn is only a symptom of a much wider problem. They still cannot deal with the issue,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
For over two decades, Belgium has been facing a continual cascade of abuse reports that officially total several hundred known cases but which, advocates say, are only the tip of the iceberg: Many of the victims and perpetrators have died, or the alleged crimes have exceeded their statute of limitations.
Deville said victims in villages come face to face with such issues on a weekly basis. The Sunday Mass scandal only started to roll early this week when an abuse victim pointed out to a local bishop that he had warmly eulogized the recently deceased priest-composer who had, in fact, been an abuser.
As a result, the Bishop of Limburg, Patrick Hoogmartens, announced he wouldn’t take part in celebratory papal events. It set off the chain of events leading to the change in the Mass program.
“It is only now because it is an international event that something is done about it,” said Deville. “But such things happen on a weekly basis in parishes across the nation that victims are confronted like that. And then nothing is done about it.”
Church authorities said the hymns were chosen in coordination with the musicians who were unaware of the case, which only came to public attention after the recent death of the priest. Hundreds of churches across Belgium still have hymnbooks with his works.
Archbishop Luc Terlinden promised the church would look into it as soon as the Pope leaves.
“Every Sunday in every parish his songs are sung. So it is a wider problem. And I want to look into this as of Monday to see what we will do in the future with our policy on culprits, on facts out of respect for the victims,” Terlinden told VRT network.
Debates over what to do with art, be it music or paintings, when the artist has engaged in problematic or even criminal behavior, have confronted the church and society at large for centuries, long before “cancel culture” became a buzzword.
Few people argue that Caravaggio’s religious masterpieces should be destroyed or taken down because of his criminal life: The man he killed is dead, as is he.
But in Los Angeles four years ago, the archdiocese banned the music of Catholic composer David Haas amid an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, allegations Haas strenuously denied.
And more recently, the mosaics of one of the Catholic Church’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, the Rev. Marko Rupnik, have come under scrutiny.
Rupnik’s Jesuit religious order expelled him in 2023 after more than two dozen women accused him of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuses, some while he was creating the artwork. Francis reopened a church investigation amid suspicions that Rupnik had escaped punishment in Francis’ Jesuit-friendly Vatican.
Rupnik hasn’t responded publicly to the allegations, but his art studio has defended him and denounced what it has called a media “lynching.”
The issue about what to do with his artwork is not minor, since Rupnik’s mosaics decorate the facades and altars of some of the most-visited basilicas and churches around the world, including at Lourdes, France; in Fatima, Portugal and even in the Vatican’s apostolic palace.
So far, the bishop of Lourdes decided to keep the Rupnik mosaics — for now — because there was no consensus within a committee of experts he formed about what to do with them. The Knights of Columbus religious fraternity decided this summer to cover the mosaics at its shrine in Washington, and chapel in Connecticut.
But earlier this year, the head of the Vatican’s communications department created an uproar when he defended the continued use of images of Rupnik’s mosaics on the Vatican’s own news portal, Vatican News, even as a canonical investigation is underway at the Vatican’s sex crimes office.
He argued, as have others, that one must separate the art from the artist.
That argument did not sit well with the pope’s top adviser on child protection and fighting clergy abuse, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He penned a letter to the heads of all Vatican offices in June urging them to refrain from displaying Rupnik’s artwork as a gesture to abuse victims.
“Pastoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense,” he wrote in June. “We must avoid sending a message that the Holy See is oblivious to the psychological distress that so many are suffering.”
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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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Ruins of ancient garden likely owned by Emperor Caligula uncovered near Vatican during excavations
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ROME (AP) — Archaeological excavations near the Vatican uncovered the remains of an ancient garden overlooking the right bank of the Tiber River that was likely owned by Roman Emperor Caligula, Italy’s culture ministry said Thursday.
The discovery was made during construction work to create a pedestrian piazza linking Castel Sant’Angelo to St. Peter’s Basilica and its Via della Conciliazione boulevard, some of Rome’s most visited tourist sites.
In ancient times the area housed prestigious imperial residences overlooking the Tiber with spectacular porticos, promenades and gardens. What remains underground are a travertine wall, the foundations of a colonnaded portico and a garden, the ministry said.
The excavations also uncovered a lead water pipe stamped with the name of the owner of the water supply and likely of the garden.
The details point to Caligula, son of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, and emperor of Rome from 37 to 41, the ministry said, adding that there are literary references that seem to confirm the connection of the site to Caligula.
The excavation also revealed an important series of figurative terracottas used to decorate roofs, with unusual mythological scenes, reused as covers for the sewers, but originally probably made for the covering of some structure in the garden, the ministry said.
The construction project is part of the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, a holy year that is expected to draw some 32 million pilgrims to Rome. The runup to the Jubilee has involved launching dozens of long-delayed construction projects, including the 79.5 million euro piazza, with a tunnel below it redirecting traffic underground.
The project, located at Piazza Pia, is expected to be completed by December.
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