35+ min ago (1464+ words) Pope Leo XIV arrives in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (Credit: Vatican Media.) BEIRUT " After arriving in Lebanon Sunday, Pope Leo XIV offered an ode to peace in a speech to national authorities, telling a country flirting with war to make peacemaking their primary priority, and to persevere in healing current and historic wounds, and in fostering reconciliation. Speaking to national civil authorities and members of the diplomatic corps after his arrival in Beirut Nov. 30, the pope noted that "Blessed are the peacemakers" is the theme of his trip, saying peace in Lebanon "is a desire and a vocation; it is a gift and a work in progress." "You, who have important institutional tasks within this nation, are destined for a special beatitude if you can say that you have put the goal of peace above all else," he said. Pope…...

1+ hour, 42+ min ago (1085+ words) Pope Leo XIV spoke to leaders of Christianity's divided Churches and communities on Friday afternoon in Nicaea " modern-day Iznik, Turkey " telling them, "We must strongly reject the use of religion for justifying war, violence, or any form of fundamentalism or fanaticism." No one from the Patriarchate of Moscow was there to hear it. That was because, "The Catholics have invited Catholics, and the Orthodox invite[d] Orthodox," as the head of the Vatican's ecumenical dicastery, Cardinal Kurt Koch, told Crux on Friday. "I respect the decision of the Orthodox," Koch said. The absence of representatives from the Russian Orthodox Church was nevertheless conspicuous, and a sign of the persistent chill both in the internal relations of the great Churches of global Orthodoxy and in relations between Rome and Moscow. The chill came after long-simmering tensions between the Patriarchates of Moscow…...

7+ hour, 1+ min ago (601+ words) Pope Leo XIV greets Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi at the Vatican on October 18, 2025. (Credit: Vatican Media.) Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and All the East Cardinal Beshara al-Rahi, the Patriarch of the Maronite Church, appealed to the Islamist group Hezbollah to "free itself from Iran" in an interview he did shortly before the arrival of Pope Leo XIV. He said the papal visit is a clear message from Leo to the people of the country: "I am with you. Take heart and preserve your land. Lebanon is a land of peace, not war." "The Holy Father is a man of prayer," he told the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. "He knows the worth of Lebanon and understands the looming danger of war. When asked about the security risks, he reaffirmed his determination to come," the cardinal said. He said the message of the pope…...

7+ hour, 34+ min ago (1219+ words) Pope Leo XIV and the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople Archbishop Sahag II Mashalian celebrate a liturgy in the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (Credit: Domenico Stinellis/AP.) ISTANBUL " On his last day in Turkey, Pope Leo XIV urged Christian leaders to work together to promote unity, care for creation, and promote a responsible use of new technologies amid their rapid development. Speaking to leaders and representatives of the various Christian communities present in the region Sunday, the pope said that given their shared faith, they must have a unified voice in the face of current global challenges. Most urgent is the promotion of peace, he said, saying, "at this time of bloodstained conflict and violence in places both near and far, Catholics and Orthodox are called to be peacemakers." "This certainly means taking action, making choices and…...

7+ hour, 35+ min ago (622+ words) Protestors walk in Manila, Philippines on Nov. 30, 2025. (Credit: Aaron Favila/AP.) MANILA, Philippines " Thousands of demonstrators including from the Catholic church clergy protested in the Philippines on Sunday, calling for the swift prosecution of top legislators and officials implicated in a corruption scandal that has buffeted the Asian democracy. Left-wing groups led a separate protest in Manila's main park with a blunt demand for all implicated government officials to immediately resign and face prosecution. More than 17,000 police officers were deployed in metropolitan Manila to secure the separate protests. The Malacanang presidential palace complex in Manila was in a security lockdown with key access roads and bridges blocked by anti-riot police forces, trucks and barbed wire railings. In a deeply divided democracy where two presidents have been separately overthrown in the last 39 years partly over allegations of plunder, there have been…...

7+ hour, 41+ min ago (704+ words) Pope Leo XIV speaks with journalists aboard the papal plane en route to Lebanon from Turkey, 30 Nov. 2025. Image credit: Elise Ann Allen/Crux ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE " While traveling from Istanbul to Beirut Sunday, Pope Leo XIV lamented that Israel has refused a two-state solution to its longstanding conflict with Palestine and voiced hope for progress in the Ukraine peace process. Responding to questions from two Turkish journalists on board his Nov. 30 flight, the pope said he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza during their private meeting on Thursday. "The Holy See for many years has publicly supported a proposal for a two-state solution," he said when asked specifically about the conflict in Gaza, where a tenuous ceasefire has been in place since Oct. 10, and about the longstanding Israel-Palestine conflict. "We all…...

7+ hour, 44+ min ago (692+ words) A worker prepares a handmade Christmas bauble at GlitterLab in Czestochowa, Poland on Nov. 21, 2025. (Credit: Czarek Sokolowski/AP.) CZ'STOCHOWA, Poland " If you could design a bauble for your own Christmas tree, what would it be " a teddy bear dressed as a ballerina, a hummingbird, or a crimson phoenix? The workers at GlitterLab, a company producing Christmas decorations in southern Poland, vow to turn those fantasies into reality. Calling themselves "the magicians of glass," their clients have included Swarovski, the French chain Galeries Lafayette, and Harrods, the iconic London department store. "We have the ability to create shapes and designs that glass will not normally take," the company promises on its website. And the whole production process, "our closely guarded trade secret," is manual, making each product unique, it says. Despite its modest appearance, GlitterLab's workshop has been operating for more…...

1+ day, 22+ min ago (388+ words) ISTANBUL " As part of the global Airbus recall on most of their a320 aircrafts, one of the most widely used passenger planes in use, the ITA Airways plane Pope Leo is using during his trip to Turkey and Lebanon had to undergo a technical fix before departing for Beirut. On Saturday the Airbus airline company announced that it was grounding some 6,000 planes for modifications of monitors related to a risk of solar flares on Thanksgiving weekend " one of the most highly trafficked weekends of the year. It also coincided with Pope Leo's Nov. 27 " Dec. 2 visit to Turkey and Lebanon. The announcement was made the night before Leo is due to fly from Istanbul to Beirut for the last leg of his two-nation journey, the first international trip of his papacy. Airbus made the decision after discovering that computers installed on most…...

1+ day, 3+ hour ago (663+ words) The Advent season begins this Sunday, and that means The Sound of Music will soon be on television in the United States. The ABC network airs the film classic starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer each year before Christmas, a broadcasting tradition that began in 2002. (It would air before Easter when I was a child, which shows my age.) As I considered the latest contretemps involving the prefect of the Dicastery of for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fern'ndez, a song from the film came to mind. "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" sing the sisters of the convent in which the heroine of the story is an unlikely novice at the beginning of the story. Though they are reasonably unlikely to be breaking out in song anytime soon, Vatican types may be…...

1+ day, 3+ hour ago (953+ words) Ecumenical prayer attended by Pope Leo XIV and Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in modern-day Iznik on Nov. 28, 2025. (Credit: Vatican Media.) ISTANBUL " Pope Leo XIV and Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople issued a joint call for peace Saturday, condemning violence and urging faithful to work for a better world. "The goal of Christian unity includes the objective of contributing in a fundamental and life-giving manner to peace among all peoples," Leo and Bartholomew said in a joint declaration published Nov. 29. They issued a joint call for "God's gift of peace upon our world," noting that, "Tragically, in many regions of our world, conflict and violence continue to destroy the lives of so many." "We appeal to those who have civil and political responsibilities to do everything possible to ensure that the…...