A pall of gloom descended over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve as the Gaza war weighed heavily on the biblical city in the occupied West Bank and the usual crowds of pilgrims stayed away.
The traditional giant Christmas tree, marching bands and flamboyant nativity scene were all absent in the city celebrated as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
While there were few festive lights, a huge Palestinian flag was unfolded in the centre of town and a banner declared that “The bells of Bethlehem ring for a ceasefire in Gaza”.
Bethlehem usually throngs with pilgrims and tourists at this time of year. But many residents have fled and few visitors have come since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.
The bloody conflict was sparked when the Palestinian militants launched a deadly cross border attack on southern Israel, triggering a massive Israeli retaliation.

When asked to sum up the state of the American priesthood, Catholic University of America sociologist Brandon Vaidyanathan describes it as “fractured,” in that individually priests are doing well, but their assessment of the institutional Church “is not very good.”
What’s more, research conducted by Vaidyanathan and others has found that not only is there a striking deficit in the trust priests feel in their bishop, but there’s also a significant generational mistrust priests have in each other that relates to differing theological and political alignments.
“There’s a mutual distrust of each other that is driven by political differences, and so young priests view older priests with suspicion and vice versa,” Vaidyanathan told Crux. “The younger priests are more conservative, and don’t see the older priests as sort of a part of the same program.”
The insight became apparent to Vaidyanathan and other researchers in an analysis of data compiled for “The National Survey of Catholic Priests,” which was published in October 2022 by CUA’s Catholic Project. The survey, the largest of American Catholic priests in over 50 years, got responses from 3,516 priests across 191 dioceses/eparchies.
The survey also included interviews with more than 100 priests selected from respondents, and a census survey of U.S. bishops receiving 131 responses.
Among the findings were that priests’ morale is high and they have a strong view of their personal vocations, but a high percentage of priests expressed some level of distrust in their bishop, and young priests especially experience burnout. After first survey findings were published last year, researchers conducted a deeper analysis of the data, which was published in November in a report titled “Polarization, Generational Dynamics, and the Ongoing Impact of the Abuse Crisis: Further Insights from the National Study of Catholic Priests.”
“Since [the initial survey was published] we have analyzed the qualitative data from about 104 interviews that we did, and our team was also looking at other kinds of interesting findings, patterns, that seemed to be present in the survey data that could help quantify and give us a sense of the distribution of some of the things we were finding,” Vaidyanathan, the chair of CUA’s Department of Sociology, explained.

Catholic Bishops in Cameroon have added their voice to other Catholic Church leaders, who have prohibited the implementation of Fiducia Supplicans in their Episcopal Sees and territories they govern.
In a statement, members of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC) weigh in on the document that the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) released on December 18 permitting the blessing of “same-sex couples” and couples in other “irregular situations”.
NECC members take the stance that their counterparts in Malawi and Zambia have taken, barring members of the Clergy from imparting blessings upon “homosexual couples”, and term the DDF directive that such blessings be nonliturgical as “hypocritical”.
“We, the Bishops of Cameroon, reiterate our disapproval of homosexuality and homosexual unions,” they say, and go on to issue their directive, “Consequently, we formally forbid all blessings of ‘homosexual couples’ in the Church of Cameroon.”

Catholic bishops in Poland have ruled out the possibility of blessing “same-sex unions” but remain open to blessing individuals with homosexual tendencies, only if they are “living in complete abstinence” of sexual activities.
The Polish Episcopal Conference released the statement on Dec. 21, just three days after the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a declaration that allowed nonliturgical blessings of “same-sex couples.” The Polish bishops’ statement did not expressly criticize the Vatican declaration but appeared to conflict with the guidance contained within it.
“In response to the question ‘Does the Church have the authority to bless same-sex unions?’ the answer is negative,” the Polish bishops’ statement read, citing a March 2021 “responsum” from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“Since practicing sexual acts outside marriage, that is, outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open to the transmission of life, is always an offense against the will and wisdom of God expressed in the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue, people who are in such a relationship cannot receive a blessing,” the statement added. “This applies in particular to people in same-sex relationships.”

On a sunny morning at St. Benedict the African Catholic Church on Chicago’s South Side, the Rev. Rukulatwa Kiiguta stepped into the center of the sanctuary to preach.
“My brothers and sisters, yes, we do have this mission of saving souls by bringing them to Christ,” he told the assembly, looking around at the 50-odd people gathered in the Black Catholic parish, many of whom nodded as he spoke.
Kiiguta moved to the U.S. from his home in Tanzania for exactly that reason. After meeting an American priest who had traveled to East Africa to recruit seminarians, Kiiguta joined the ranks of about 15 African priests in Chicago. He sees his work in the Englewood neighborhood – where many families struggle to make ends meet, but Catholics pour their hearts into their parish – as God’s will.
This missionary’s story reflects a fundamental shift in the American Catholic church. After decades of U.S. missionaries traveling to Africa to convert and preach, the trend is reversing: Across the country, parishes now rely on the ministry of international priests, many from East Africa and Nigeria.
The Archdiocese of Chicago, one of the biggest American dioceses, is a case in point – almost two-thirds of its priests under 50 were born outside the U.S.
It’s difficult to estimate the number of foreign missionaries in the U.S. because their paths are so diverse. But recent studies by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) estimated the U.S. hosts some 6,600 international priests and more than 4,000 international nuns.
Meanwhile, the number of American priests is tumbling: there are 10,000 fewer priests now than there were two decades ago.
Sister Thu Do, a research associate at CARA, described the trend as “reverse missionary action.” She said the number of international priests and sisters has likely grown since the Georgetown center’s last study in 2019.
“Because of the shortage of vocations in the priesthood as well as in religious life, religious institutes and dioceses here in the U.S. go outside of the U.S. to recruit new members,” she said.