Trump’s “tough Cuba policy” breaks with recent efforts toward rapprochement supported by the Catholic Church, with the aim of overturning the Cuban revolution by year’s end.
The Weekly Dispatch
Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo shine light on church’s teaching on nuclear weapons
Mr. Trump—and perhaps many American Catholics—may be surprised to discover how far the church has moved in recent years on moral questions related to nuclear weapons.
Catholic aid groups hope for a recovery after 2025’s deep cuts in global health assistance
After a historic collapse of U.S. and E.U. humanitarian and development assistance in 2025, finding new money to address persistent global health problems may be more challenging in 2026.
Getting past headlines that pit the pope against the president: Leo has a bigger job in mind
The pope vs. the president melodrama has proved irresistible to global media; how could it not? It also produced a fair amount of backlash and whataboutism directed at Pope Leo XIV.
Christian groups appeal to IMF to do more for poor nations as global economy falters
Nations facing significant food insecurity may be pushed to the edge by debt, climate change, oil and food spikes, and US war on Iran: “Developing countries shouldn’t have to choose between paying off debt and funding schools, hospitals, or climate preparedness and response.”
Settler violence on West Bank threatens ancient Christian communities. Will U.S. help preserve them?
“What is happening to the Palestinians themselves is just sheer terror, designed to make the situation there so unlivable that they leave.”
On immigration and war, the U.S. bishops are echoing Oscar Romero
Decades after his martyrdom, Romero’s insistence that the laws of God stand above law created by humankind and the edicts and commands of political and military leaders has been repeated by bishops in the United States, speaking against war-making and mass deportation.
What the Middle East needs: Not more bombs, but ‘hard, focused diplomacy’
Lebanon stands to become the hardest-hit collateral casualty of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Archbishop Warda on Iran war: A refuge for Christians in Iraq is now under threat
A painful irony today is that Erbil—once a refuge for displaced Christian families—has become one of the Iraqi cities most frequently exposed to missile and drone attacks as war between U.S.-Israel and Iran continues.
A Catholic guide to understanding the war with Iran
The church’s just war tradition has been challenged by contemporary theologians as insufficient and outdated, yet it remains a worthy filter through which to judge the moral defensibility of a turn to war-making.
