Kimberley Heatherington

Katie Holler, a Catholic mother of two, had for months been following news of the Trump administration's increasingly hardline immigration policies, but she still remembers when she felt compelled to do something more.

By July 2025, the U.S. Agency for International Development — established in 1961, and which in 2024 provided $187 million in humanitarian funding to Ghana — effectively ceased to exist, with 85% of its programs cut. The result was that many in-country aid organizations also ceased operations. But not CRS.

Why do so many people make an extra effort to get to church on Ash Wednesday — the first of Lent's 40 days — when it is not a holy day of obligation, and they are not required to receive ashes?

On the feast of the patron saint of immigrants — and a day after the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a special pastoral message on immigration — a coalition of Catholic organizations held a second wave of prayer vigils across the country Nov. 13 for what organizers called "a national day of public witness for our immigrant brothers and sisters."

Catholics across America have committed themselves to spiritual expeditions not on the well-worn pilgrimage routes of Europe, but in their own communities.

Pope Leo XIV's apostolic exhortation on love for the poor, Dilexi Te ("I Have Loved You"), released by the Vatican Oct. 9, "puts forth the pope's strategic plan for the rolling out of his pontificate," Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami said.

Since it was created in 1980, more than 3 million refugees have been welcomed to America through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, known as USRAP. That changed on Jan. 20 of this year when President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled, "Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program."

The platform allows both individuals and groups to offset some of their carbon footprint, encouraging lifestyle changes among members.

It's perhaps not the sort of 10th anniversary commemoration supporters of Pope Francis' landmark environmental encyclical Laudato Si' would hope for: That its auspicious June 18, 2015, publication date would 10 years later coincide with proposals by Congress to defund America's clean energy investments and pollution reduction programs, sell public lands to industry, establish legal permitting detours for potential polluters, and eliminate federal subsidies for energy-efficient technologies, among other not-so-green actions.

Supporters have insisted no one will lose Medicaid coverage and have characterized reductions in coverage not as "cuts" but rule changes designed to purge those taking advantage of the system.

Ethics and morality weren't merely a dusty collection of abstract rules for him, but a living tradition meant to vigorously inform and guide the individual and collective pursuit of the common good.

In a world economy rocked by the whiplash of American trade tariffs that has spared few countries, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Jubilee USA Network, an interfaith development group, have a proposition for President Donald Trump: Forgive some debts.

Among President Trump's more than 70 executive orders since the beginning of his second term are those involving withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the freezing of "clean energy" project funds in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. 

By the afternoon of Feb. 2, there were 67 crosses standing under a leaden gray sky — one for each victim from the Washington aviation disaster, 64 on the jet and three crew on the helicopter. Names will also be added to the crosses, crafted with concerned diligence by Dallas-based Roberto Marquez, a self-trained, immigrant artist originally from Mexico.

New York's fashion models — as some of the most visible faces of a $2.5 trillion global business — have long worked without the benefit of basic labor protections. The Fashion Workers Act, signed into law Dec. 21 by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, takes effect in June. It will afford models a host of employment safeguards in an industry where many say they have previously felt mute and isolated.

Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima, Washington, knows the gritty realities of the people he shepherds. The bishop's own diocese is located in central Washington, one of the world's leading sources of apples and other produce, largely harvested through migrant labor.

At the opening general session of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' 2025 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, had a message to share from Pope Francis, saying that "It is important that our pro-life focus encompass the whole spectrum of life." 
 

While "synodality" might be a new concept to Catholics surprised by the Vatican's request that dioceses worldwide engage in community discernment from 2021-2024, the U.S. friars of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe — humble as they are — would still like to gently remind us it's something Franciscans like themselves have been doing for centuries.

On Dec. 28, 10 Arizona faith leaders — including Catholic Bishops Edward J. Weisenburger of Tucson and John P. Dolan of Phoenix — put their concerns in writing in an op-ed column published in the Arizona Republic, the state's largest newspaper.