Catholic Relief Services said May 21 that most of its projects under a federal inter-national food aid program were terminated, leaving hundreds of thousands of children more vulnerable to hunger. The Trump administration said it was seeking to “align” its programs “with the President’s agenda.” More than 780,000 children across 11 countries will be left without their school meal, in many cases their only meal of the day, as a result of the termi-nation of 11 out of CRS’ 13 proje-cts under the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program being terminated, CRS said.
The program – named for the late Ambassador and Sen. George McGovern and former Sen. Robert Dole, both advo-cates of ending childhood hunger – purchases agricultural commo-dities grown in the U.S. to support school food programs and mater-nal and early childhood nutrition programs in countries around the world, with the stated purpose of reducing hunger and promoting literacy, preventing children from trying to learn with empty stomachs.
Commodities purchased by the program include flour from Oklahoma, bulgur from Kansas, beans and lentils from North Dakota, and vegetable oil from states including Arkansas, Flori-da, Illinois and Iowa, according to the Agriculture Department’s website.
Politico reported May 20 the program was among the major international food aid grants the Agriculture Department plans to cancel. The White House’s proposed fiscal 2026 spending plan called for entirely eliminating the McGovern-Dole program. The first Trump administration pro-posed a similar plan, but Congress continued to fund the program.

The Mexican bishops’ conference has condemned a massacre of seven young people – including minors – at a parish festival, while urging action on the part of authorities amid rising violence and warning the population to avoid indifference in the face of recurring atrocities.
The conference also expressed outrage at the assassination of two senior officials in the Mexico City government, who were gunned down in a vehicle after they stopped outside a metro station on a busy thoroughfare in the national capital May 20.
The attack on the seven youths occurred around 2:40 a.m. on May 19 in the town square of San Bartolo de Berrios in western Guanajuato state, where gunmen “from a cartel” arrived in trucks and “brazenly opened fire on the people they found there,” according to a statement from the Archdiocese of León, signed by Archbishop Jaime Calderón Calderón.
The Guanajuato state prosecutor’s office confirmed the number of deaths but offered no additional details, The Associated Press reported.
“We are outraged, shocked and we condemn this act,” Calderón continued. “I urge our authorities to find those responsible and seek justice so these incidents never happen again in our society. Uncovering the truth and applying justice is a duty to bring comfort to the families of the victims.”
The Mexican bishops’ conference said in a May 20 statement, “As pastors of the People of God, we cannot remain indifferent to the spiral of violence that is devastating so many communities in our country. … We cannot get used to living with violent death, nor allow impunity to become the norm.”

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the former head of Vatican ecumenism efforts, said he now believes there are reasons to create a women’s diaconate because a synodal Church will need a more “sibling-like” culture. “In my personal opinion, opening the permanent diaconate to women has good theological arguments in its favour and would be a sensible pastoral step,” wrote the former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in his autobiography, due to appear on 10 June. “Women and men have the same dignity before God and must therefore be recognised with their own charisms,” the 92-year-old German cardinal wrote in Der Wahrheit auf der Spur (“On the Trail of Truth”).
“We will continue to need good bishops and priests in the future, but in a synodal Church, the era of clericalism and arbitrary decisions by bishops is over,” he continued. “The laity want and should be heard, and they can also expect accountability from the bishops and priests.” Kasper said the drop in vocations could bring the institution back to the situation of the ancient Church. Advocates for a female diaconate often cite examples for this office in the letters of St Paul.
“The early Church was not a holy remnant that some dream of today; it was a holy beginning from which our Church has grown like a small mustard seed into a large tree,” he said. The Rome-based cardinal, noting changes in the world-wide faith, said developments in the Global South could “bring new momentum to the Church and soon make us Europeans look old”.
Kasper had long had doubts about women deacons, especially after the Anglican Communion split over the question of women priests and bishops while he was head of the Vatican’s ecumenism office–now the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity – in 2001-10, responsible for relations with other Chri-stian churches. But he said he now saw the question as a “megatopic” that Rome must face. “Without conversion, prayer, and repentance, all reforms, no matter how well-intentioned, have no future,” he said.

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Sister Tiziana Merletti, former Superior General of the Francis-can Sisters of the Poor, as Secre-tary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. The Dicastery is responsible for orders and religious congregations, as well as secular institutes.
As Secretary, Sr Merletti will serve under Sr Simona Brambilla, who was appointed to lead the Dicastery in January–becoming the first woman ever to lead a Vatican department.
From 2023 to 2025, Sr Bram-billa had served as Secretary of the Dicastery, the role now held by Sr. Merletti. The Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Consecrated Life is Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime.
Sr Merletti is the third woman to hold the position of Secretary within a dicastery of the Roman Curia, following Sister Alessandra Smerilli at the Dicastery for Pro-moting Integral Human Develop-ment, and her predecessor Sister Simona Brambilla.
With Pope Francis’ Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evan-gelium, laypeople, including women, can now lead dicasteries and become prefects, a role that had previously been reserved for cardinals and archbishops.

The official website of the Vatican for the first time has been refreshed since it was created in the 1990s, prominently featuring multimedia content and online links to other Vatican offices and ministries. A banner image of a waving Pope Leo XIV against a simple light blue background can now be found spread across the top half of the revamped Holy See website’s homepage published earlier this week.
Replacing the outdated dropdown mega menus found in the older version of the Holy See’s homepage is a large, clickable “Magisterium” button — which also features a small icon of the pontiff’s new coat of arms — to help online visitors find the pope’s prepared homilies and speeches and additional information about the Vatican.
Acquiring tickets for papal audiences and liturgical celebrations has also been made easier through the updated website. Earlier this year, the Prefecture of the Papal Household — which is one of four Vatican offices featured on vatican.va — launched its new website with digital registration forms for individuals and pilgrim groups wanting to see the pope.
The other three Vatican ministries featured on the updated website are the Church’s charitable organization Peter’s Pence, the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, and the yearlong 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope.
Daily news and calendar events related to Pope Leo XIV and the Vatican can also be viewed on the updated homepage in nine languages: Arabic, English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Additional information and Church documents that can be accessed from the new homepage include the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, codes of canon law, ecumenical councils, Catholic social teaching, and reports on the Church’s response to the abuse of minors.

Catholic immigration advo-cates said they were “disturbed” by a Supreme Court order allow-ing the Trump administration to end legal protections from depor-tation for about 350,000 Vene-zuelan immigrants. The Vene-zuelans, a typically Catholic population, were permitted to remain in the United States without risk of deportation due to dangerous conditions in their homeland. The high court’s May 19 order paused a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco that had blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from terminating the protections granted under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.
Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, also known as CLINIC, said in a May 20 statement, “We have said it before: arbitrarily revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people who expected to be able to remain safely in the United States is cruel and unwarranted.”
Earlier in May, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to revoke TPS for the group of Venezuelan immigrants. Noem “vacated” a renewal of their TPS status in January, but those plans were blocked by a judge when those impacted by the decision argued proper procedures were not followed by the government.

YouTube has removed a channel that amassed nearly a million views by publishing sermons supposedly delivered by Pope Leo XIV—sermons he never gave. The channel, titled «Sermons of Pope Leo XIV,» had gained a following of almost 18,000 subscribers before it was taken offline on May 21. Each of its 26 videos featured AI-generated texts delivered in a synthetic voice crafted to sound like the newly elected pontiff. While some scripts loosely drew inspiration from actual addresses, none were authentic papal messages.
Jack Malon, a spokesperson for YouTube, confirmed the takedown in comments to Aleteia. “We terminated the channel in question for violating our policies on spam, deceptive practices, and scams,” he said, noting that additional channels operated by the same creator were also removed. YouTube declined to identify those additional channels but emphasized that attempts to bypass bans by creating new accounts would be met with further enforcement.
The now-defunct channel had clearly struck a chord with unsuspecting viewers. Despite a disclaimer embedded by YouTube warning that the content had been digitally manipulated or generated, many comments revealed that users took the messages at face value.
The phenomenon underscores the increasingly complex challenges faced by digital platforms in an age when artificial intelligence can convincingly replicate public figures, including religious leaders. In the post-truth era, the boundary between reality and simulation is becoming harder to police, especially when deepfakes tap into the emotional and spiritual needs of believers.

Pope Leo XIV met with the College of Cardinals on May 10 for his first official address since his election, outlining key priorities for his pontificate in the age of artificial intelligence while emphasizing continuity with his predecessors and commitment to the Church’s social teaching.
The U.S.-born pontiff, speaking in Italian, explained his choice of papal name, noting that Pope Leo XIII “addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution” with his encyclical Rerum Novarum. “In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour,” Pope Leo said.
The 69-year-old pope began the meeting with a prayer, expressing his gratitude to the cardinals while acknowledging his own limitations in assuming the papacy. “You, dear cardinals, are the closest collaborators of the pope. This has proved a great comfort to me in accepting a yoke clearly far beyond my own limited powers, as it would be for any of us,” he said. The pope specifically thanked Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, and Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, for their service during the sede vacante period.
In his address, Pope Leo emphasized his commitment to continuing the Church’s path following the Second Vatican Council, specifically highlighting Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium as providing “masterful and concrete” direction.
The pope identified several fundamental principles to guide his pontificate, “the return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation; the missionary conversion of the entire Christian community; growth in collegiality and synodality; attention to the sensus fidei, especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety; loving care for the least and the rejected; courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world.”
After his prepared remarks, the Holy Father engaged in a dialogue session with the cardinals, discussing “advice, suggestions, proposals, concrete things” raised during the pre-conclave meetings. Pope Leo concluded by quoting St. Paul VI’s hope expressed at the beginning of his pontificate in 1963, praying that the Church would “pass over the whole world like a great flame of faith and love kindled in all men and women of goodwill.”

The official coat of arms and motto of Pope Leo XIV were made public on May 10. Rooted in Augustinian spirituality, the symbols the pontiff chose represent a sign of continuity with his episcopal past, confirming elements already adopted during his consecration.
The papal coat of arms is presented with a shield divided diagonally: in the upper section, on a blue background, stands a white lily, a symbol of purity and spiritual dedication. In the lower section, on a light background, is depicted a heart pierced by an arrow, resting on a closed book. The latter element recalls the Order of St. Augustine and, in particular, evokes the intense conversion experience lived by the saint from Hippo.
The symbol is inspired by the Latin expression “Vulnerasti cor meum verbo tuo”  – “You pierced my heart with your Word” – uttered by St. Augustine to describe the transforming effect of the scriptures on his life.
Leo’s motto, visible under the shield, is “In Illo uno unum.” The phrase, taken from a sermon by St. Augustine on the Exposition of Psalm 127, means “Although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.” This choice highlights the pontiff’s fidelity to the Augustinian heri-tage, but calls for spiritual unity of the church under one shepherd.
In his first speech as pope, Leo expressed his desire to lead God’s people by following the example of St. Augustine, whose thought and spirituality profoundly influenced his religious journey.

In his first address to international media on May 12, Pope Leo XIV thanked journalists for their service to the truth and for communicating peace in difficult times.
“We are living in times that are both difficult to navigate and to recount. They present a challenge for all of us, but it is one that we should not run away from,” Leo said in the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall on May 12. “On the contrary, they demand that each one of us, in our different roles and services, never give in to mediocrity.” The pontiff, elected May 8, also emphasized the important role of communications for promoting peace. ”In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaimed: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ (Mt 5:9). This is a beatitude that challenges all of us, but it is particularly relevant to you, calling each one of you to strive for a different kind of communication, one that does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition, and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it,” Leo said.
“Peace,” he continued, “begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others, and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.”
According to the pope, one of the most important challenges for media today is promoting communication that moves away from the confusion of the “Tower of Babel” and the “loveless languages that are often ideological or partisan.”
“Your service, with the words you use and the style you adopt, is crucial,” he underlined. “As you know, communication is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and discussion. In looking at how technology is developing, this mission becomes ever more necessary.”