Vatican City, Dec 30, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

2025 began with Catholics around the world uniting in prayer for Pope Francis’ health as he entered the hospital on Feb. 14. He was admitted to Gemelli Hospital in Rome for a respiratory infection that progressed to bilateral pneumonia, requiring a prolonged hospitalization that lasted almost six weeks.

Soon after, on March 29, the pontiff was readmitted into the hospital with difficulty breathing. On April 21, the day after Easter, Pope Francis passed away at the age of 88 from a stroke, coma, and irreversible cardiovascular collapse, according to the death certificate published just over 12 hours after his death.

On April 26, more than 400,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square for the funeral of Pope Francis as the world said goodbye to the first Latin American pope who led the Catholic Church for 12 years. 

Then on May 7, 133 cardinal electors gathered from all corners of the globe in the Sistine Chapel for the start of the conclave to elect a new pope. After four ballots, Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected on May 8 as the 267th bishop of Rome and leader of the Catholic Church. He took the name Pope Leo XIV. A Chicago native, he became the first American pope in Church history.

Here are some of the most impactful images from the papal transition — beginning with Pope Francis’ last general audience before being admitted to the hospital, the start of the conclave, and the election of Pope Leo:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Close to 3 million pilgrims and visitors attended audiences, liturgies or meetings at the Vatican with Pope Leo XIV from the time of his election in May through December, according to the Prefecture of the Papal Household.

The prefecture, which handles the free tickets to audiences and Masses, as well as arranges the pope's daily schedule of meetings, published statistics for the year Dec. 30. 

The numbers did not include events outside the Vatican -- for instance, it did not count the Mass with more than 1 million people the pope celebrated Aug. 3 at Tor Vergata on the outskirts of Rome to conclude the Jubilee of Youth, nor did the tabulations include the crowds who came to see him in Turkey and Lebanon during his first foreign trip as pope Nov. 27-Dec. 2.

The prefecture did include people who came to see Pope Francis before his death April 21. The pope, who was hospitalized from Feb. 14 to March 23, was present for eight Wednesday or Jubilee general audiences at the Vatican, welcoming 60,500 people.

In special audiences with groups, Pope Francis encountered more than 10,000 people; some 62,000 people joined Pope Francis for Masses and prayer services and an estimated 130,000 joined him for the midday recitation of the Angelus prayer on Sundays, the prefecture said. That means he encountered 262,820 people in 2025.

Pope Leo held 36 general and Jubilee audiences during the year since his election May 8, encountering just over 1 million people, the prefecture reported.

In special audiences with smaller groups, the office said, he met with another 148,300 people. 

Some 796,500 people attended liturgies celebrated by Pope Leo at the Vatican during the year, and an estimated 900,000 people joined him for the recitation of the Angelus on Sundays and holy days.

The prefecture said that meant 2,913,800 people had encountered Pope Leo at the Vatican in 2025.

The total for 2024, which was not a Holy Year, was close to 1.7 million people at audiences and prayers with Pope Francis.
 

Reflecting on Pope Leo XIV’s first World Day of Peace message, Marie Dennis, the director of Pax Christi’s Catholic Institute for Nonviolence, highlights a vision of peace that is unarmed, disarming, humble, and persevering. In a world marked by fear and conflict, she points to Gospel nonviolence as a concrete, hopeful path already being lived in communities across the globe.

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The Vatican's Fides News Agency releases its annual report on missionaries and pastoral workers killed in the last year, recording 17 deaths across the globe, with the African continent, and Nigeria especially, the most affected.

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Data released by the Prefecture of the Papal Household shows that over 250,000 people attended papal audiences and liturgical celebrations in the Vatican in the period to April. Following the election of Pope Leo XIV in early May, nearly three million faithful took part in Masses and ceremonies.

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The Jubilee Year for the particular Churches concluded worldwide on Sunday, 28 December 2025. In Guinea, however, the Church anticipated this conclusion by one day due to the national electoral calendar. Between spiritual fervour, homage to the pioneers of faith in the country, and a call to civic responsibility, Archbishop Vincent Coulibaly alluded to a church continuing its mission for the next 25 years and beyond.

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As the ongoing mental health crisis presents a significant pastoral challenge for the Church, US Bishop John Dolan of Phoenix calls for true support for people, rather than oversimplifications or quick solutions.

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Dec 29, 2025 / 17:51 pm (CNA).

Paul Kim, a highly popular Catholic youth and young adult speaker, continues to share updates on his 5-year-old son, Micah, who remains on life support following a sudden medical emergency just days before Christmas.

Entering his ninth day in the hospital, Micah’s condition has sparked an outpouring of prayers across the globe, with the family invoking the intercession of Venerable Fulton Sheen for a miracle amid grim medical prognoses.

The ordeal began when Micah was rushed to the hospital last week after experiencing severe internal bleeding and other complications. Kim, a devoted husband and father of six known for his engaging talks on faith and family at Catholic conferences, first alerted followers via social media on Dec. 22: “My son Micah is having a medical emergency right now and headed to the hospital in an ambulance.”

By Dec. 24, Micah underwent emergency chest surgery to address the bleeding, which successfully stabilized his heart function. Kim shared on social media that after the surgery, his son’s heart began beating independently and his vital signs remained steady.

Doctors gradually reduced life support, with Micah’s lungs showing slow improvement on a ventilator. However, a subsequent MRI revealed severe brain damage, leading physicians to conclude there is “no medical possibility” of recovery.

“Micah is fighting for his life,” Kim said in a Dec. 29 update on Instagram. “We’re waiting on the Lord, and we don’t give up trust.”

Micah received the sacrament of anointing of the sick on Dec. 23 at 3 p.m., “when divine mercy redeemed us all,” and Kim invited all Catholics to join with his family in praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet, humbly requesting a miracle “through the intercession of Archbishop Fulton Sheen.”

In addition to an outpouring of prayer for Micah, a GoFundMe campaign was begun to support the family amid mounting medical costs.

“Praying that all is stable and the parents are resting,” one supporter posted on social media platform X, echoing widespread sentiment.

As of Dec. 29, Micah’s kidney function remains a concern, but the family is holding fast to hope. “Please keep praying! God has the ultimate say. He is the Divine Physician,” Kim noted on Instagram.

Dec 29, 2025 / 17:21 pm (CNA).

In a new sit-down interview with Father Mike Schmitz, who is best known for the “Bible in a Year” podcast and YouTube videos on Ascension Presents, actor Jonathan Roumie spoke in depth about his role portraying Jesus in the hit series “The Chosen.”

“Everything in my life has prepared me for this role,” Roumie told Schmitz in the 43-minute-long interview, which aired Dec. 28 on the Ascension Presents YouTube channel.

Looking back at his childhood, Roumie recalled a couple of moments and experiences that deeply impacted him and his own portrayal of Jesus. He said at 12 years old he reenacted Christ’s passion and crucifixion in his backyard after watching Robert Powell’s portrayal of Jesus in “Jesus of Nazareth.”

“I had 2-by-8 planks that I found and I hammered them together and I hammered the nails where the hands would go and I painted the blood and the same thing with the feet,” he recalled. “And then I grabbed like a bush, a piece of a branch of a bush, and made my own crown of thorns and I painted blood on it and everything and I processed around to the side of my garage.”

Roumie also opened up about his experience being bullied as a child and how it led him to offer up his past trauma to God as he was reenacting the Crucifixion during filming of Season 6 of “The Chosen,” which focuses on Jesus’ passion and crucifixion.

“I was bullied as a kid a lot and I had to kind of look at what Jesus went through as a righteous man and a peaceful man and meek and humble and see just the level of devastation and terrorized bullying that he received to the point of death,” he said.

“So for me, I think, and I’ll go back and look at all those experiences I had as a kid, which might have been part of the reason that led me to reenact the Passion, as something that I could relate to and I think all of that prepared me for this role.”

He added: “I understand it now a bit more, at least I think, in my own sort of human ignorance and pride… Of course I don’t know exactly what all of this is about but it feels authentic. Like, ‘Well, I went through that as a kid and my compassion increased and my empathy increased and now I’m playing the most compassionate, empathetic human being that was God in the universe for all time.’ So I can lend that experience in his suffering and in his empathy even in wanting to forgive his enemies, which I had to do.”

“I was beaten pretty bad. So, I had to offer up all of my past trauma to him as I was recreating it, knowing that that was part of my own personal sacrifice — was my own offering for him on behalf of what he suffered for humanity.”

The actor shared that before beginning the filming of Season 6, he asked God in prayer that “if it were his will to allow me a fraction of a fraction of what he went through.”

Before traveling to Matera, Italy — the location where the Crucifixion was filmed — Roumie injured his right shoulder after falling while filming a scene. An X-ray and MRI showed that he had separated a bit of his AC joint from the clavicle, causing sharp pain.

“It was the right shoulder, so the shoulder that was carrying the beam [of the cross] on and it was extremely painful,” Roumie said. “And that was just one of many things.”

Roumie added that while filming the Crucifixion “certain adjustments” also had to be made due to pain being felt by the metal and real nails being used during filming.

“He [God] gave me exactly what I asked for — just a glimpse, just a glimpse,” he said. “And I think the thing that I got was that I got to enter into it in a way that I had never entered into it before.”

Schmitz asked Roumie how his experience portraying Jesus’ passion and crucifixion has impacted the way he attends or prays at Mass. Roumie shared that in the past year he began to feel “convicted to give more reverence to Christ in the Eucharist.”

“I started receiving on my knees and on the tongue, which I hadn’t before,” he said, adding that it was slightly “disorienting at first.”

He recalled an experience at Mass where he kneeled to receive the Eucharist but the priest asked him to stand up. He hesitated but rose and continued on with the Mass. Afterward, he asked his spiritual director if that was permissible, to which he responded that a priest “shouldn’t do that but it happens.”

After this experience, Roumie shared that he “doubled down on it and now I’m prepared to just wait as long as I need to until somebody concedes because I’m not going anywhere.”

Returning to his time portraying Jesus in the series, Schmitz told Roumie that “the show is called ‘The Chosen’ in the sense that it’s also about those who were chosen, but you were chosen and there’s something in that that has changed you. You being chosen to not only portray Jesus, but to be his disciple, an imitator of him, as St. Paul says, and that’s changed you.”

“That’s something I’m trying to wrap my head around and identify with,” Roumie responded. “It wasn’t somebody else. He picked me. And I, of course, said yes, because I needed the work initially. I didn’t know what it was going to do to me internally.”

Once the final season of “The Chosen” airs, it will have been a span of 10 years that Roumie will have been portraying Jesus. He said that this experience is something that might take “the rest of my life to unpack.”

“So, I have to give myself a little bit of grace, but it’s something that I think I will always live with. And in fact, I don’t know that I want to let it go because it keeps me connected to him, especially when the show ends.”

Dec 29, 2025 / 14:48 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Monday explained that in order to allow God’s action in our personal lives, people must “empty” themselves and cultivate a deep inner life.

The pontiff made the observation during a Dec. 29 audience at the Apostolic Palace with a group of pilgrims from St. Thomas of Villanova Parish in Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

The event took place in the context of the Jubilee Year of Hope, which the Holy Father described as “a particularly significant time for the Church.” Leo XIV thanked the pilgrims for their spiritual closeness and support for the successor of Peter “with their prayers and generosity,” emphasizing that this is “a gesture of communion and closeness.”

In his greeting, the pope recalled the figure of St. Thomas of Villanova, an Augustinian Spanish bishop and the patron saint of the pilgrims’ parish, highlighting that he was a man “open to God’s action in his life.”

“That openness led him to do much good,” Pope Leo said.

The pontiff invited the faithful to be inspired by some of the distinctive traits of the Spanish saint, beginning with his intense spiritual life.

Recognize talents, put them at service of community

“In his life and in his writings, he reveals to us an unceasing search for continuous prayer; that is, a holy restlessness to be in God’s presence at every moment,” he said. This attitude involves profound interiority, emptying yourself to listen to and allow the Lord to work.”

Leo XIV also highlighted the saint’s “sobriety and simplicity” as well as “his selfless labor,” especially in the university setting, and his “apostolic zeal.” The pope emphasized that all these attitudes lead us to believe that “we must recognize the talents we have received and put them at the service of the community, with effort and dedication, so that they may multiply for the benefit of all,” especially in a world that “seems to offer us everything more and more quickly and easily.”

He also highlighted the simplicity of St. Thomas of Villanova (1486–1555), historically known as the “Archbishop of the Poor” or the “Almsgiver of God” because of his immense charity. “I would like to emphasize his love for the poor,” he said.

Referring to the parish life of the pilgrims, Leo XIV expressed his gratitude for their concrete sensitivity toward those most in need, reminding them that “the poor are not only someone to be helped but the sacramental presence of the Lord.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.