Attention to the Unseen

Pope Francis during the Palm Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023, in Vatican City. Antonio Masiello/Getty Images By Mathew Schmalz, College of the Holy Cross Pope Francis, the Catholic Church’s first Latin American pontiff, has died, the Vatican announced on April 21, 2025. He was 88. Francis had served as pope for 12 eventful years, after being elected on March 13, 2013 after the surprise resignation of Benedict XVI. Prior to becoming pope, he was Jorge…

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Joel Swanson writes: On Thursday of this past week, Vice President JD Vance visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, making him the latest in a string of American public officials to visit a former Nazi camp. The visit, timed to coincide with Vance’s trip to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, comes a year after Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and newly-installed most powerful person in the United States, visited Auschwitz last January. It’s worth recalling the circumstances that…

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The Daily Beast reports: President Donald Trump angered some of his Christian supporters on Friday when he named a televangelist who even some conservative evangelicals have labeled a “heretic” as part of his White House administration. The president signed an executive order establishing a White House Faith Office and chose Pastor Paula White-Cain, his ally and spiritual advisor, to lead it. White-Cain, 58, is a megachurch preacher from Florida who has endorsed biblical interpretations that some evangelical Christians believe go…

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  Just one day after she delivered her remarks in front of Trump, Bishop Mariann Budde said on The View on Wednesday morning that her responsibility on Tuesday was to reflect and “pray with the nation for unity”. “As I was pondering what are the foundations of unity, I wanted to emphasize respecting the honor and dignity of every human being, basic honesty and humility,” she said. “And then I also realized that in unity requires a certain degree of…

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  The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., implored newly inaugurated President Donald Trump on Tuesday “to have mercy upon” communities across the country “who are scared now” after his election. “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families — some who fear for their lives,” Budde said during remarks at an interfaith prayer service at Washington National Cathedral with the president, Vice President JD Vance and their spouses in attendance….

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Amanda Kadlec writes: The war in Gaza has forced a conversation about Israel among American Christians. Christians make up 72% of the United States electorate, and 56% of Americans who identify as Christian voted for Donald Trump in 2024, according to a report by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. Although this conservative segment initially signaled strong support for Israel’s war in Gaza, its thinking on the issue is becoming increasingly diverse. With the stratification of echo-chamber outlets…

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Stephanie McCrummen writes: On the Thursday night after Donald Trump won the presidential election, an obscure but telling celebration unfolded inside a converted barn off a highway stretching through the cornfields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The place was called Gateway House of Prayer, and it was not exactly a church, and did not exactly fit into the paradigms of what American Christianity has typically been. Inside, there were no hymnals, no images of Jesus Christ, no parables fixed in stained…

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CNN reports: There’s an image that captures the threat posed by the White Christian nationalist movement — and how it could become even more dangerous over the next four years. Taken during the Jan. 6 insurrection, the photo shows a solitary White man, his head pressed in prayer against a massive wooden cross, facing the domed US Capitol building. An American flag stands like a sentinel on a flagpole beside the Capitol under an ominously gray sky. The photograph depicts a foot soldier in an insurgent religious movement…

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The New York Times reports: Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, bishop of San Diego, to be the next Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, moving one of his most vocal allies on immigration to one of the most prominent posts in the American church. The move, announced in the Vatican’s daily bulletin, comes at a critical moment two weeks before President-elect Donald J. Trump is inaugurated and signals that Pope Francis is establishing his own priorities in…

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The Washington Post reports: The Lehigh Valley Barbershop was bustling with the next generation of American strivers. The mood among the young men, mostly first- or second-generation immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, was hopeful. Their candidate, Donald Trump, had just won the presidential election. Sitting in high-end silver chairs, the young men talked about the businesses they had built, or would build. That would be more possible, they hoped, with the return of Trump, someone to whom…

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By Jennifer Smith Richards and Megan O’Matz This story was originally published by ProPublica One by one, Catholic dioceses in key presidential swing states are putting out unusual statements: Newspapers whose titles include the word Catholic that are showing up in people’s mailboxes aren’t what they seem and aren’t connected to the church. With a classic typeface and traditional newspaper design, the mass-mailed Catholic Tribune newspapers carry signposts of legitimacy. But most of the articles in the papers are inflammatory…

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