Support for Americans’ right to practice the religion of their choice rose dramatically this year, a new study by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty found.
Becket’s “2022 Religious Freedom Index,” released Dec. 7, showed a substantial increase in support for “religious pluralism” — the ability to choose and practice one’s religion without fear of persecution.
“Support for the right to choose and practice the religion of your choice has never been higher,” Becket’s index reports.
Becket’s index published the results of a 21-question online survey taken by Heart+Strategies this fall. The survey polled a nationally representative sample of 1,004 American adults.
Only 3% of Americans could correctly identify all five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (speech, religion, assembly, press, petition).
Americans’ opinion on religious people is at an all-time low, with a 50-50 split in viewing them as part of the problem versus part of the solution.
The U.S. government’s treatment of religious communities contributed to a decrease in trust in the government among 26% of those surveyed, while it increased trust in the government in 9%.
59% of Americans believe the government should not force employers or medical workers to pay for or provide abortions again-st their consciences. Meanwhile, 41% of Americans believe the opposite.
54% of respondents believed that the government should not force businesses or medical workers to pay for or provide sex-change procedures, while 46% believed the opposite.

It is no secret that Pope Francis has been ruffling feathers on the global stage in recent weeks. He has angered Russia, Ukraine and China over his comments in the last month alone. So when the Vatican’s official website went dark on Wednesday, it was hard to determine just which of the pope’s enemies might be behind it.
While the Vatican spokes-person initially said the site was undergoing maintenance and technical difficulties, he finally admitted that the Holy See had been hacked. “Technical investigations are ongoing due to abnormal attempts to access the site,” Matteo Bruni said in a statement late Wednesday.
But those “abnormal attempts” could be a warning of more to come. The prime suspect is Russia, which has a history of conducting cyber warfare against enemies of its state. The holy hack came just 24 hours after Francis angered the Kremlin by singling out Chechens and Buryati troops within the military contingent invading Ukraine, leading to accusations of ”race baiting” against the pontiff.
Ukraine Angry After Pope Francis Calls Darya Dugina ‘Innocent’ War Victim.

The interview was held on November 22 at his Vatican residence at Santa Marta and was conducted in Spanish by five represen-tatives of the American Jesuit magazine including its outgoing editor in chief, Fr. Matt Malone, S.J., and Fr. Sam Sawyer, S.J., the incoming editor in chief. Questions ranged from polarization in the U.S. Church, racism, Church teaching on the ordination of women, the Pope’s stance on social issues, the war in Ukraine, the Vatican’s relations with China and his pontificate.
“I am happy because I feel God at my side.”
Fr. Malone introduced the interview by asking Pope Francis what makes him so peaceful and happy in his ministry. The Pope answered that being with people has always given him great joy, and that what makes him feel happy is having the assurance that “God is at his side.” “Throughout my life – he said – He has always guided me on His path, sometimes in difficult moments, but there is always the assurance that one does not walk alone.”
The Holy Father warned against the dangers of ideological partisanship in society, but especially within the Church, noting that U.S. society too has some “ideological Catho-lic groups.” “Polarization is not Catholic,” he stressed. “A Catholic cannot think either-or (aut-aut) and reduce everything to polari-zation. The essence of what is Catholic is both-and (et-et).” He recalled that Jesus went beyond the divisions among the Jews of the time between the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots. proposing the Beatitudes, “which are also something di-fferent.”
“The more polarization there is, the more one loses the Catholic spirit and falls into a sectarian spirit.”

The number of ordinations to the diocesan priesthood in England and Wales has fallen for the third year in a row, according to new figures released this week.
The statistics, published by the National Office for Vocation, showed a total of 21 ordinations in 2021 for the 22 Catholic dioceses in England and Wales, as well as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
In comparison, there were 35 ordinations in 2018, 32 in 2019, and 27 in 2020.
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An estimated 3.8 million adults in England and Wales identify as Catholic, while an autumn 2021 count found that 370,000 Catholics regularly attend Mass.
The number of ordinations in England and Wales has fluctuated considerably throughout the early 21st century, reaching a high of 44 in 2001 and a low of 15 in 2008.

The Church in Belgium has reported a sharp rise in the number of people asking for their names to be removed from baptismal registers. The Catholic Church in Belgium reported on a sharp rise in the number of people asking for their names to be removed from baptismal registers.
The Church’s latest annual report, published on Nov. 30, said there were 5,237 such requests in 2021, compared to 1,261 in 2020 and 1,800 in 2019.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark of his belonging to Christ.” While a person can lapse in the practice of the faith, or even renounce it altogether, it is impossible to reverse the effects of baptism.
Nevertheless, a rising move-ment in Europe promoting “deba-ptism” has encouraged Catholics to write to Church authorities asking to be removed from parish baptismal records. The movement is a consortium of several political and philosophical factions among European secularists.

A pioneering institute to investigate the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has been launched in the United Kingdom.
The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution is the brainchild of Dr. Martin Par-sons, a former aid worker to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He served in those two countries both under the Taliban and after the Taliban had been evicted from power.
The first of its kind, the center aims to generate research focused on countries like Nigeria, where Christians are currently being subjected to crimes against huma-nity and are at risk of genocide.
“The Lindisfarne Centre aims not just to describe what is ha-ppening but also to explain why it is happening, as well as seeking to predict where it is likely to spread to,” Dr. Parsons, a world-renowned expert on Islam and the persecution of Christians, told Church Militant.
“It is quite extraordinary that respected major human rights organizations and even the United Nations will simply ignore the persecution of Christians – pre-ferring to focus on other minority groups,” Parsons, who has a doct-orate in Islamic studies, explain-ed.
“It is urgent that the perse-cution of Christians, particularly in the Islamic world, is put back on the agenda of international bodies, governments and NGOs,” he emphasized.
“We are seeking to produce research that is both academically valid and accessible but without being merely anecdotal. We want to produce something that is sufficiently credible to be acce-pted as evidence in court cases involving persecuted Christians,” Parsons added.

In Nigeria, you can be put to death under the law for the “cri-me” of blasphemy. Sufi musici-an Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, current-ly imprisoned for blasphemy, has petitioned the Nigerian Supreme Court to put an end to his criminal case, which centres on his sharing religious lyrics on the popular messaging platform WhatsApp. For exerci-sing his fundamental rights to free expression and reli-gious freedom, Yahaya’s life is on the line. This potentially land-mark case could abolish once and for all Northern Nigeria’s Sharia blasphemy law — an urgently needed step for the peaceful co-existence of faiths in the country.
In March 2020 Yahaya shared song lyrics via WhatsApp that others viewed as insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. His house was burned to the ground by a mob, and he was promptly arrest-ed and charged with blasphemy under the Sharia Penal Code of Kano State. Without legal repre-sentation, he was tried, convict-ed and sentenced to death by hanging by a local Sharia judge.
Nobody should be punished, much less killed, for their religi-ous ideas. Any person of faith or no faith at all can be sanctioned, and even killed, as a result of a blasphemy accusation. In a country of over 200 million, split nearly evenly between Christians and Muslims, everyone stands to lose under these laws. Their abolishment would dramatically improve the prospects for human rights in Nigeria.

Pope Francis enthusiastically greeted Italian actor and come-dian Roberto Benigni at the Va-tican on Wednesday morning.
Benigni, best known for his Oscar-winning film “Life is Beautiful,” met privately with the pope to tell him about his latest project, a new show about St. Francis of Assisi.
The comic, who recited a line from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy from memory on the Oscars stage in 1999, now serves as the host of the Italian program based on St. Francis’ poem “The Canticle of the Sun.”
The show, “Francesco Il Cantico,” is currently streaming on Paramount Plus in Italy. Benigni also gave the pope a copy of the program on DVD, accor-ding to Reuters.
Pope Francis meeting with Roberto Benigni, Dec. 7, 2022. Vatican Media.
Greeting the pope with a hug, Benigni joked that the pontiff was “emanating light.”
Pope Francis told him not to exaggerate, to which the actor replied: “I have to exaggerate, I’m happy to be here.”

Pope Francis has firmly slammed the door on admitting women to holy orders on the grounds that women’s ordination constitutes a “theological problem” and a violation of the “Petrine principle.”
In an interview published Monday with left-wing Jesuit magazine America, the pontiff categorically stated that a woman “cannot enter ordained ministry … because the Petrine principle has no place for that.”
The pope was responding to a question that asked what he “would say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the Church but who still feels called to be a priest,” especially since “many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests.”
Francis stressed that focusing exclusively on “the ministerial dimension of the life of the Church” or the “Petrine principle” of the “ordained ministry” would be to “amputate the being of the Church.”
Instead, the “Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity in the Church, of the woman in the Church, where the Church sees a mirror of Herself because She is a woman and a spouse,” was “still more important” but sadly ignored, the pope explained.
“The ministerial dimension, we can say, is that of the Petrine Church. I am using a category of theologians,” Francis reiterated. “A church with only the Petrine principle would be a church that one would think is reduced to its ministerial dimension, nothing else.” Francis said the Church had failed “to develop a theology of woman that reflects” the “Marian principle, which is that of the spousal Church” and had neglected to explain through catechesis how a woman “looks more like the Church, which is mother and spouse.”

Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen was found guilty of failing to register a pro-democracy charity in the Chinese territory and ordered to pay a $512 fine.
A court in the West Kowloon area of Hong Kong Nov.25 convicted Cardinal Zen, age 90, and other trustees of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund of violating the Societies Ordinance, which requires local organizations to register or apply for an exemption within a month of their establishment.
The 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund was set up to help people who had been arrested during protests three years ago pay for medical and legal fees. The number 612 refers to June 12, 2019, the date of a major protest against a Beijing-sponsored extradition bill in Hong Kong. The fund has since shut down.
Cardinal Zen, the bishop emeritus of Hong Kong and an outspoken advocate of religious freedom and civil liberties, was first arrested in May on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces under a Beijing-imposed National Security Law.
A number of trustees, including the cardinal, were each fined 4,000 Hong Kong dollars ($512). A sixth defendant, Sze Ching-wee, the fund’s secretary, was fined HK$2500 ($320) for his lesser role.
Zen’s lawyer, Robert Pang, argued in court last month that imposing “criminal sanctions on the failure to register must be an infringement of freedom of association,” according to Catholic News Agency.
Principal Magistrate Ada Yim said that the fund was not set up purely for charitable purposes but “clearly came into contact with matters of the public interest and zealously raised funds from the public to achieve their objectives.”
But she decided to impose a fine lower than the $1,200 for which the law calls.
According to former pro-democracy lawmaker and fellow defendant Margaret Ng, the case was the first time residents had to face a charge under the Societies Ordinance for failing to register.