A member of the protest group FEMEN was arrested after she jumped the barricade around the Vatican Nativity scene, took off her shirt and tried to grab the statue of the baby Jesus.

A passenger plane arriving from Bangkok exploded after skidding off the runway at a South Korean airport of Muan Dec. 29, crashing into a concrete fence, claiming the lives of most of the 181 people on board.

In a dark sign of descending security in Africa’s most populous country, a Catholic priest has been shot dead on the open road in southeast Nigeria on Boxing Day.

Thoughtfulness is slow-going, though, and other parts of my “wish list” seem stuck in a stifling inertia of bureaucracy, material reluctance or perhaps (to be charitable) indecision.

From Nigeria to Mozambique, Sudan and Congo to Burkina Faso, Christians across Africa were victims of horrific persecution in 2024, mainly because of their faith.