By going to Mass, we encounter God in the flesh through the eucharistic sacrifice, and there is nothing more fitting than the feasts of Christmas and the Mother of God to emphasize the reality of God taking on our flesh.

Life issues are perennially critical to the robust public witness of the Catholic Church, but 2025 nonetheless proved a particularly eventful year across a wide spectrum of related concerns.

For Archbishop Rino Fisichella, organizer of the Jubilee 2025 events and pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, the pope’s death “created a silence that was felt in the streets of Rome and the world, as well as in every Christian community.”

Well before he was a University of Maryland transfer who used his final year of college football eligibility to become a major success story as a running back at Indiana University, Roman Hemby said he owed much credit to The John Carroll School for instilling vital Catholic values that guide him today. 

In a year that brought both a new U.S. president and a new pope, the issue of immigration emerged as a flashpoint between them and as a key issue for the U.S. church.