Former President Jimmy Carter died Dec. 29 at his home in Plains, Georgia, his presidential library announced. At 100, Carter, who had been in hospice care since February 2023, was the longest-living U.S. president.

Just five days after Pope Francis opened the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and inaugurated a yearlong Jubilee of Hope, Archbishop William E. Lori welcomed the Holy Year locally with a Mass at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland Dec. 29.

A Missouri native, Father Augustus Tolton is recognized as the first African American to be ordained a priest. A candidate for sainthood, he has the title of “Venerable.”

When British parliamentarians approved a law to allow physician-assisted suicide on Nov. 29, it followed a year of legislative inroads against Catholic social teaching across Europe.

A year after “Fiducia Supplicans” whipped up a firestorm of controversy in the days before Christmas, the Vatican declaration remains a point of division in the U.S. church and worldwide. Meanwhile, it is unclear whether it has freshly prompted many Catholics in “irregular situations” to seek the kind of blessings it permits.