In Bethlehem, everything is ready to begin the restoration works of the Grotto of the Nativity, occurring for the first time in 600 years. The announcement was made jointly by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Custody of the Holy Land. They expressed their joy at the initiative, which also involves the cooperation of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarchate and is carried out under the auspices of the Presidency of the State of Palestine.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had referred to the restoration works while visiting Rome in November 2025, both during his meeting with Pope Leo XIV and at the inauguration of the exhibition “Bethlehem Reborn.” He said that the renovation of the place where Christ was born was “a sign of great hope and rebirth for the whole Holy Land.”

Thus, in compliance with the presidential decree on the restoration of the site already issued in 2024, and with the historic status quo governing the holy places, the Grotto—venerated across Christian faiths—will finally receive the care it needs.

The works will be carried out by an Italian company from Prato, which only two years ago restored the Basilica of the Nativity, according to a major and meticulous rehabilitation project.

The choice is based on the need to ensure continuity of method, craftsmanship, and artistic sensitivity toward a site of unparalleled sacred value. According to the Custody’s website, the preliminary preparations have been completed, and the works are now about to begin.

In addition to interventions in the Grotto itself—on the bare rock, the marble floors, columns and decorations, and the star marking the exact spot where Jesus was born—the project includes technical reinforcement measures in adjacent sections. This reflects both the architectural unity of the sanctuary and the spirit of cooperation that preserves it for all humanity.

“The Church remains credible not because of power, numbers, or strategies, but when faith becomes a lived witness, expressed and translated into concrete acts of liberation, justice, and mercy that restore dignity and open paths to true freedom.” Cardinal Pietro Parolin made this statement when presiding over Mass on January 25, at the Cathedral of Copenhagen as the Papal Legate for the celebrations of the 12th centenary of Saint Ansgar’s mission in Denmark.

The Secretary of State recalled that it was in the 9th century when the Benedictine monk arrived in Northern Europe for a mission founded not on “strategies or success, but on fidelity to Jesus,” and that the first thing he did was redeem the freedom of some slaves. Importantly, Cardinal Parolin pointed out, his action, in a world “wounded by new forms of slavery—economic, cultural, spiritual—and marked by exclusion and indifference,” speaks today with “renewed relevance.”

The Cardinal emphasized the strength of a bond forged in the past and the ongoing presence of pastoral care and the evangelical zeal that animated Ansgar’s mission twelve centuries ago. A mission that arose from an “extraordinary experience of liberation” in his own life, Cardinal Parolin said.

Drawing from the reading of Isaiah (52:7-10), he observed, that it is not so much about the message but about the messenger, whose feet “are beautiful not for the ideas or explanations they bring, but because they bring the good news, capable of saving people by transforming the hearts of those who listen and making them free.”

In the same way, he continued, Ansgar had experienced the joy of being forgiven by God and desired to “share that joy with others,” because that was “the good news he carried with him.”

Against a backdrop of escalating conflict and a renewed reliance on the “logic of brute force,” the Holy See’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, led by Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See, hosted its 17th Annual Interreligious Service for Peace on 28 January, bringing together around 300 diplomats, ambassadors, and religious leaders. Held at the Church of St. Nicolas de Flüe and co-organised with the Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg, the service centred on Pope Leo XIV’s 2026 World Day of Peace Message, “Peace be with you all: Towards an ‘unarmed and disarming’ peace.”

In his welcoming remarks, Archbishop Balestrero described the service as a counter-narrative to the logic of violence and conflict. “An ‘unarmed and disarming’ peace conquers without conquest, and trains not for battle, but for reconciliation and cooperation,” he said, urging diplomats to resist the “weaponisation” of thoughts and words and calling believers to “refute these forms of blasphemy” in which faith is manipulated to justify violence.

Arriving from Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, urged the international community to resist resignation in the face of violence. “Giving up on peace would mean accepting war as the ‘normal language’ in human and international relations,” he said. “To welcome Pope Leo XIV’s message is not naïve optimism, but a demanding hope.” Reflecting on the Holy Land, he stressed that ceasefires alone are insufficient: “There is no lasting peace without justice, but there is no real justice unless the other is recognised as a person, not a tool or an obstacle.”

More Christians were killed in Nigeria last year than any-where else in the world combined, a new report has found, placing the country at the centre of a growing global persecution crisis. Of the 4,849 Christians killed for their faith worldwide, 3,490 were in Nigeria, according to Open Doors’ World Watch List 2026.

Open Doors is a Netherlands-based international Christian mission that tracks global perse-cution and supports persecuted Christians worldwide. The orga-nization’s annual World Watch List ranks 50 countries by the severity of persecution faced by active Christians.

The new report also shows a global increase of 8 million Christians facing high levels of persecution and discrimination between October 2024 and September 2025, bringing the total to 388 million.

Speaking at the report’s launch, Henrietta Blyth, CEO at Open Doors UK & Ireland, said: “Nigeria is in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that represents a death trap for Christians,” while expre-ssing relief that people are finally talking about what’s going on in the country.

In recent months the situation in Nigeria has been back in the spotlight after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to go “guns a-blazing” into the country and subsequently launched strikes on militants linked to the Islamic State group in the northwest of the country.

While both the U.S. and Nigerian governments cooperated on the strikes, Trump has accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians from jihadist attacks, with some allies and campaign figures describing the situation as a “genocide.”

The Nigerian government is reluctant to address the religious aspect for fear of being designated a “country of particular concern,” which could “enable the Trump administration and other international governments to take measures including an embargo,” according to John Samuel, an expert on sub-Saharan Africa for Open Doors.

Pope Leo XIV addressed the Nigeria crisis in November 2025, acknowledging that “Christians and Muslims have been slaughtered” in the country. He told journalists at Castel Gandolfo that “many Christians have died” and called on the government to “promote authentic religious freedom.” The pope’s comments came after Trump designated Nigeria a country of particular concern for religious freedom violations.

The increasing number of people who do not see the Gospel as a fundamental resource for their life should inspire — not discourage — Catholics in rediscovering the joy of evangelization, Pope Leo XIV said. The transmission of the faith is “a topic of great urgency,” the pope said in remarks to members and officials of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and others participating in its plenary session at the Vatican Jan. 27-29.

Meeting with the group at the Vatican Jan. 29, Leo praised the dicastery for its “valuable service” of helping the pope and the world’s bishops proclaim the Gospel by promoting and safeguarding the integrity of Catholic teaching on faith and morals. “It does this by drawing upon the deposit of faith and seeking an ever deeper understanding of it in the face of new questions,” he said, citing Pope Francis’ apostolic constitution on the reform of the Roman Curia, Praedicate Evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”).

Of great importance today, he said, is the “transmission of the faith,” a topic discussed during the dicastery’s plenary. “We cannot ignore the fact that, in recent decades, there has been a breakdown in the way Catholics pass down the Christian faith” from generation to generation, he said, and that “there is an increasing number of people who no longer perceive the Gospel as a fundamental resource for their life, especially among the younger generations.”

In fact, he added, many young men and women “live without any reference to God and the Church, and while this causes us believers pain, it must also lead us to rediscover the ‘delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing,’ which is at the very heart of the life and mission” of the Catholic Church.

Reiterating his appeal during his extraordinary consistory with the College of Cardinals in early January, Leo said, the Catholic Church wants to be a missionary Church “that looks beyond itself, at others” and that proclaims the Gospel, “above all through the power of attraction,” reminding them that “it is not the Church that attracts, but Christ.”

On January 9, Pope Leo XIV stepped into an encounter with the Shroud of Turin unlike any experienced by his predecessors. Inside the Apostolic Palace, the Pontiff became the first person to explore a new digital reading of the Shroud, an initiative known as Avvolti, presented to him by Cardinal Roberto Repole, Archbishop of Turin and pontifical custodian of the relic. The moment marked a symbolic threshold: one of Christianity’s most studied and enigmatic images entering fully into the digital age. The initiative introduces a way of engaging with the Shroud that has never before been available to the general public. For the first time, the image can be explored online through a dedicated platform, accessible via the websites avvolti.org and sindone.org. The program works on smartphones, tablets, and computers, making the Shroud available globally without geographical or logistical barriers. What once required travel to Turin and access to rare exhibitions can now be approached from anywhere in the world. At the heart of the project lies an interactive digital reproduction that allows users to move across the surface of the Shroud as if tracing it with their own hands. Key details—the face, the marks associated with the crown of thorns, and other elements traditionally linked to the Passion—can be enlarged and examined closely. Each magnified section is accompanied by explanatory texts and direct references to Gospel passages describing the suffering and death of Jesus. The result is not a purely visual experience but a guided reading that combines image, Scripture, and interpretation. The architects of the project have been careful to define its audience. While the texts and images are grounded in scientific rigor and serious scholarship, the aim is not to produce a tool for specialists alone. Instead, the digital reading is designed to be intelligible to a broad public, including those with little prior familiarity with the Shroud. The ambition is catechetical as much as educational: to allow the image to speak beyond academic circles and reach ordinary believers, seekers, and the curious.

Cardinal José Francisco Robles Ortega, archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico, said that authorities have a “mandate to protect us” from violence and therefore encouraged the population to “demand” that they fulfill their duty.

“Bringing to justice those who commit violence, those who commit homicides or injustices, that is the responsibility of the authorities,” he said at a Jan. 1 press conference, according to the Archdiocese of Guadalajara’s press office.

The cardinal also denounced the fact that small-business owners are being extorted, pointing out that they “now don’t earn” enough “even to pay the protection money” demanded by criminals, which is why “many are closing their small businesses.”

Furthermore, to confront the violence, the cardinal reminded everyone that “peace is born and nurtured in the heart of each and every person,” since all forms of violence have the same point of origin, “from those who commit violence with an offensive word to those who commit violence by firing a weapon at a brother.”

In this way, each citizen’s contribution to ending violence begins with “being at peace in our own hearts, in harmony with God and his loving and merciful plan.”

It is also important “that families pay attention to what their children are doing, who they are associating with, and what opportunities they are being offered,” said the archbishop, who considered it “distressing that organized crime is recruitingteenagers who often do not find acceptance, support, or protection within their families.”

Despite a significant decrease in homicides in 2025, reaching the lowest figure in a decade, Mexico remains a country heavily affected by violence, especially from organized crime. Impunity is one of the most serious factors in the fight against crime in Mexico. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography(INEGI), in 2024, “93.2% of the 33.5 million crimes that occurred were not reported, or the authorities did not open an investigation file. This underreporting is known as the dark figure of crime.”

In the list of the 50 most violent cities in the world in 2024, 20 cities were in Mexico.

Eighty years after the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia, a Czech bishop has declared a local Year of Reconciliation to address wounds that remain from World War II and its aftermath. Bishop Stanislav Přibyl of Litoměřice announced the initiative in a pastoral letter dated Dec. 31, 2025, following the end of the Jubilee of Hope on Jan. 6. The year marks two anniversaries on Jan. 13: the 1866 healing of Magdalena Kade and the 1946 founding of Ackermann-Gemeinde, a Catholic reconciliation group established by expelled Germans.

“The end of World War II brought not just joy and relief but also reckoning with people and the past,” Přibyl wrote in his letter. The war’s aftermath caused displacement and resettlement of populations across Central Europe, leaving lasting scars on the region.

After Nazi Germany annexed the Sudetenland in 1938 and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the majority-German region became part of the Reich. Following Germany’s defeat, Czechoslovakia expelled approximately 3 million ethnic Germans between 1945 and 1946, primarily from the Sudetenland region that now forms part of the Diocese of Litoměřice.

The bishop acknowledged that the question of whether the expulsions were justified remains a matter for historical debate. However, the displacement remains visible in demolished houses without owners and in churches that are abandoned or slowly being rebuilt.

The bishop emphasized that collective guilt, anger, and desire for revenge accompanied the displacement, along with “the sudden acquisition of property without work and closer ties to the place.” Some departing Germans were robbed, raped, or humiliated, a few committed suicide, and there were several massacres, Přibyl wrote.

Following a meeting of the diocese’s priests’ council in November, Přibyl declared the local jubilee of forgiveness and reconciliation. Monthly gatherings will take place in locations where the deportation was particularly cruel, including Terezín (Theresienstadt), which hosted a Nazi transit camp during World War II. The events will include Christian-Jewish prayer services and Masses of reconciliation. The bishop hopes for “an ecumenical and interfaith spirit” at these gatherings, welcoming Christians, Jews, and Heimatsleute — Germans with deep historical ties to the region.

“It is necessary, although difficult, to maintain serenity, peace, and above all, a climate of prayer” is the appeal of Bishop Juan Carlos Bravo Salazar of Petare, Venezuela, following the U.S. law enforcement and military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in the early hours of Saturday, Jan. 3.

In a statement released through the diocese’s Instagram account, Bravo said that in the country, “we are experiencing moments of confusion, uncertainty, and pain, in which we do not clearly understand what is happening. Our strength and hope are in the Lord of Life and Peace.”

The prelate requested, “for the good of our people,” that no “calls for street protests” be made and that “unverified and unconfirmed information, or information from unreliable or unofficial sources,” not be disseminated. “Let us stay in communication with one another, among pastoral zones and with our closest collaborators,” he urged. Bravo, who has served as bishop of Petare since January 2022, asked that “the Holy Spirit grant us the necessary graces to make a faithful interpretation of this historical moment and of our reality as disciples and shepherds of the faithful.”

The January edition of the Italian magazine, Piazza San Pietro, is dedicated to the theme of peace and in it, Pope Leo XIV responds to Nunzia, a 50-year-old Swiss catechist who wrote him a letter detailing her struggle to get families involved in the parish.  In her letter Nunzia – who lives in Laufenburg, a small municipality with 620 inhabitants – explains how “in Switzerland, it is difficult to get parents involved and, sometimes, even children and young people to trust in God.” “I sow seeds, but the seedlings struggle to grow. Children and families prefer sports and parties,” she writes, adding how families are often indifferent to religious practice and Churches seem to be increasingly emptier or populated by the elderly.  Nunzia ends her letter by asking Pope Leo XIV to pray for the young people entrusted to her care and for herself, so that she may not be discouraged.

In the same edition, Pope Leo acknowledges Nunzia’s concerns and places them in a wider context: “The situation in which you live is no different from that of other countries with ancient Christian traditions.” The Pope invites us to look beyond the numbers of attendance: “The hours dedicated to catechesis are never wasted, even if there are very few participants.”

He also relaunches an ecclesial challenge: “The problem is not the numbers — which, of course, make one reflect — but the increasingly evident lack of awareness in feeling part of the Church, that is, of being living members of the Body of Christ, all with unique gifts and roles, and not merely users of the sacred, of the sacraments, perhaps out of mere habit.”

The Pope also offers an encouragement to Nunzia, and all who experience similar difficulties. “As Christians, we always need conversion. And we must seek it together,” he writes. He recalls that the true door of faith “is the Heart of Christ, always wide open.” Pope Leo’s concluding appeal is rooted in the legacy of Paul VI: “What we can do is bear witness to the joy of Christ’s Gospel, the joy of rebirth and resurrection.”