Today is Ash Wednesday, and Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pontiff, has something he wants you to give up for Lent. “I would like to invite you to a very practical and frequently unappreciated form ...

Pope Leo XIV may be less inclined to stick his thumb in the eye of the conservative resistance, but he's no less committed to Pope Francis' agenda.

Pope Leo XIV led the traditional Ash Wednesday penitential procession on Rome’s Aventine Hill on Feb. 18, walking with clergy ...

ANALYSIS: What happens now that the leadership of the Society of St. Pius X has rejected the Vatican’s proposal to restart ...

CatholicPhilly presents a weekly roundup of international news from Vatican News, the official news portal of the Holy See. The following report on the week of Feb. 15, 2026 links to stories on ...

Catholics going to Mass on Ash Wednesday will leave church marked, but whether the ashes appear as a bold cross on the forehead or sprinkled atop the head depends largely on wher ...

Left unchecked, with no repentance, our many collective individual sins metastasize into what Saint Pope John Paul II called the “structures of sin” – those larger elements within our cultures, ...

This Ash Wednesday many Christians will arrive at work with a black cross smudged on their foreheads; countless more will ...

On Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18), an altar had been erected under a tent outside the church surrounded by a thick crush of 2,000 people who prayed, sang and jostled our way through the ritual. (Fifteen ...

Pope Leo XIV will visit ground zero of Europe’s migration drama, the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, in May and also minister to Italians poisoned by years of toxic dumping by the mafia.

From TikTok fasts to 5 a.m. wake-up calls, social media users are sharing how they are observing the 40-day Lenten season.