Brian Fraga

Three-quarters of U.S. Catholics view Pope Francis favorably, but that figure is down 8 percentage points from 2021 and reflects growing polarization between Republicans and Democrats, a new Pew Research survey finds.

Donning special protective glasses, millions of Americans on Monday gazed into the heavens for an encounter with totality. But the total solar eclipse prompted others, including a few Catholics, to think of more ominous omens.

In 2017 the U.S. bishops formed an Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, amid rising white nationalist activity. The current realities of racism demand a deeper commitment from the bishops, Black Catholic leaders told NCR.

Speaking to CBS News, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory likened President Joe Biden to a "cafeteria Catholic" who is "sincere" in his faith but ignores some of its teachings as do "a number of other Catholics."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's legal efforts to shut down a Catholic migrant shelter network in El Paso, Texas, is the latest example of the state trying to criminalize migrants and migration, said Bishop Mark Seitz.

Featuring apocalyptic rhetoric tinged with Christian nationalism and far-right grievances, the March 19 "Catholic Prayer for Trump" event at Mar-a-Lago presented a bleak portrait of life in the United States. 

Facing a shrinking group of priests, the Paulist Fathers on March 13 announced the society will close three national offices and leave two campus ministry programs, including its 117-year ministry in Berkeley, California.

"Catholics for Catholics" is a small nonprofit that has made a quick impact in Catholic political involvement. It's now set to take its combative vision of the faith to former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

Some of former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's fellow alumni at St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati want the young Republican politician removed from the Jesuit school's board of trustees. 

At the annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 8, Bishop William Byrne cited Dr. Anthony Fauci as someone who identifies as Catholic but does "not recognize the beauty and the power of their baptism."

Frustrations over changes at Manhattan College, established by the De La Salle Christian Brothers in 1853, boiled over in January, as faculty members approved a no-confidence vote in president Milo Riverso.

Bishop Joseph Strickland will speak Feb. 23 at the Conservative Political Action Conference's Ronald Reagan Dinner in Washington, a little more than three months after Pope Francis removed him from diocesan leadership.

Catholic leaders in Oklahoma are proceeding with plans to operate the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious public charter school. Critics say the effort is "brazenly unconstitutional."

Colleagues from Catholic reform group Call to Action are remembering Robert Heineman, a staff veteran who died Dec. 13. "He believed in the possibility of the people of God, the church, to make change," said his partner Eileen.

Watch: "I know where my heart is," fired Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland tells NCR in a video interview. 

The U.S. Catholic bishops decided on Nov. 15 at their general assembly that "the threat of abortion" will remain the "preeminent priority" for their political guidance to Catholic voters in the year leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

The Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. urged the nation's Catholic bishops to step out of their "comfort zones" and embrace the open-ended discussions at Pope Francis' Synod of Bishops. 

The Vatican announced Nov. 11 that Pope Francis had effectively fired Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland, a firebrand prelate who called synodality "garbage" and endorsed a video that attacked Francis as a "diabolically disoriented clown."

The Nov. 7 passage of an abortion rights amendment for the Ohio state constitution was the latest in several significant electoral defeats for the Catholic Church.

A little more than two weeks after Pope Francis wrapped up the first of two major Rome summits on the future of the Catholic Church, the U.S. bishops will meet for their fall assembly in Baltimore Nov. 13-16.