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National Catholic Register
Vatican meeting: Why young people seem reluctant to marry
By Victoria Cardiel/ACI Prensa/EWTN, October 9, 2026
Why are fewer young people choosing to marry in the Catholic Church, and how does contemporary society understand the relationship between sexuality, procreation, and the sacrament of marriage? Those are among the questions being addressed at an international gathering on the family at the Vatican, taking place behind closed doors through Oct. 14, with presidents of bishops’ conferences from around the world participating. Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said in his presentation Friday, Oct. 9, that in his country, and possibly many others, “the concept of a necessary link between sexual activity and procreation, and the importance of this in Christian marriage, is no longer widely understood or accepted.” Costelloe said this reflects tension between Church teaching and prevailing cultural attitudes, reinforced by social media, entertainment, peer culture, and online influencers, which promote relationships that prioritize “personal fulfillment, autonomy, and immediate happiness over permanence, sacrifice, and covenant.”
Related: Bishops discuss cohabitation of young couples at Vatican meeting on marriage and family - by Courtney Mares, OSV News, October 9, 2026
EWTN News
What is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act?
By Daniel Payne, October 10, 2026
The Archdiocese of St. Louis this month sued the federal government and several other defendants for what it said are policies that prevent Catholic immigrant detainees from obtaining the sacraments, including the Eucharist. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court, alleged, among other claims, that the government violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) by barring clergy access to detainees held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One prison official reportedly suggested that priests could “pass communion in a plastic bag to a prison guard who could then deliver it to the detainee.” People regularly invoke the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in federal lawsuits, arguing that the government is excessively burdening their religion. But how does this more-than-30-year-old law work, and how exactly does it protect religious liberty in the U.S.? A rare example of bipartisan unity, the federal law was proposed in 1993, passed unanimously in the U.S. House and near-unanimously in the U.S. Senate, and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton.
Aleteia
Jonathan Roumie gets one last day portraying Jesus
By Cerith Gardiner, October 7, 2026
“This is it. Finally. No, for reals. I think.” The much-loved star of The Chosen could probably be forgiven for adding that last little caveat. Just a few weeks ago, the Catholic actor announced he’d filmed his final scene as Jesus, bringing eight years of playing Christ in the hugely successful series to an emotional end. But then came the final wrap on the show’s sound stage. Another goodbye. Then, last Sunday, Roumie walked onto the set once more, dressed as Christ, as John Debney’s haunting score filled the space around him. Waiting to photograph him was Annie Leibovitz, the world-famous photographer. For Roumie, this was the moment the reality of leaving finally sank in. “It was evident in my bones,” he shared, that he had not only spoken his last speech and filmed his last shot, but was spending his final day on what he called the “hallowed ground” that had connected him to the television series that changed his life.
The Pillar
Tagle elected Dean of College of Cardinals
By The Pillar, October 9, 2026
The Vatican announced on Friday the election of a new Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Antonio Luis Tagle, the Pro-Prefect of the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches within the Dicastery for Evangelization. Tagle was elected by the cardinal-bishops, the most senior-ranking cardinals of the college, on Thursday, Oct. 8, and will now serve a five-year term as head of the college, renewable once. The nine other cardinal-bishops elected Tagle and were one of only two able to fulfill their functions in the event of a conclave; the other was Cardinal Pietro Parolin. All the other cardinal-bishops are over 80, with four over 90. Pope Francis reformed the dean's lifetime appointment in 2019. The Vatican made no announcement about the status of the office of subdean, currently held by Cardinal Leonardo Sandri. That “extension of approval” raised a number of canonical questions. According to the 2019 motu proprio, the pope approves the election of the dean and subdean after the cardinal bishops elect them.
OSV News
Coakley calls ‘barbaric’ the Pentagon plan to livestream execution
By Kate Scanlon, October 9, 2026
After Pentagon officials said they planned to livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad in December, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, president U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced the plan as “barbaric.” President Donald Trump recently approved the execution by firing squad of Hasan, the former U.S. Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Oct. 8 in an interview with the pro-Trump TV outlet Real America’s Voice News that the execution would take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3, and that it would be made public. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” said Hegseth, who uses the moniker “secretary of war” since Trump signed an executive order last year adding the “Department of War” as a secondary, ceremonial title for the Department of Defense.
Zeale
Growth of Chesterton Schools Network shows significant rise
By Elizabeth Ervin, October 9, 2026
The network’s directory lists 15 schools scheduled to open across 11 U.S. states in 2027. As families seek an education that helps their children understand and live the Catholic faith, new Chesterton academies are preparing to open in the U.S. and abroad, offering students a classical education rooted in truth, goodness, and beauty. In an Oct. 8 interview with Zeale News, Dale Ahlquist said the network now includes over 86 schools in the U.S. and nine other countries and is expected to surpass 100 schools in 2027. “Chesterton is the patron of all the schools. He is the model thinker, and he’s the complete thinker. … It’s his spirit that is in these schools,” Ahlquist told Zeale News.
Related: On De-Radicalizing Aspects of Education and on the Responsibility to Safeguard Revelation and the Memory of the Heart: Leo XIV to the Pontifical Universities, ZENIT Staff, October 8, 2026
Zenit
Pope Leo XIV will visit Mexico twice, maybe …
By ZENIT Staff, October 1, 2026
Pope Leo XIV could visit Mexico in 2027 and return four years later for the 500th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, according to Bishop Ramón Castro Castro, president of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference. The Holy See has not confirmed either trip, but the possibility reflects the growing importance of the Guadalupe jubilee in the Mexican Church’s pastoral plans and its ambitions for broader spiritual renewal across the Americas. In 2031, Mexico will mark five centuries since the Guadalupe event that holds a central place in the country’s religious identity. Castro stressed, however, that the Vatican will decide and that the visit will depend on the Pope’s health, the Holy See’s priorities, and other demands on his schedule. The Mexican bishops have already formally invited Leo to visit. The significance of the proposed visits extends beyond the Pope's presence. Mexico’s bishops began preparing for the Guadalupe anniversary in 2022 through the Intercontinental Guadalupe Novena.
Pima Asia News
Philippine Senate approves ban on social media for minors
By Santosh Digal, October 10, 2026
On Wednesday, the Philippine Senate approved a bill that bans minors under 18 from having social media accounts. The Safe Media Access and Responsible Technology for Kids in Digital Spaces (SMART KIDS) Act requires platforms to deactivate or suspend minors’ accounts and prohibits them from creating new ones. The legislation was prompted by three deadly school shootings that occurred between June and September 2026. Under the new law, children and young people will not be able to register, access, use, maintain, manage, or create an account on any social media platform. International social media platforms operating in the Philippines must designate a local representative and comply with Philippine authorities as part of the law’s implementation. Fines ranging from 5 million pesos (US$ 80,000) to 20 million pesos (US$ 320,000) per violation may be imposed on any high-risk digital service (such as Meta Platforms, Roblox, and Gorebox).
Keep informed - 10/10/26 matters for Catholics:
Snippets: EWTN News, aciafrica, & Word on Fire
EWTN News
EWTN’s top headlines — October 10, 2026
EWTN News provides reliable, free, up-to-the-minute news affecting the Universal Church, with updates on the Holy Father's words and the Holy See.
Study: FDA allowed mail-order abortion pills without ‘sufficient evidence’ of safety - By Kate Quiñones - A study by scholars at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “lacked sufficient evidence” to remove the in-person abortion pill dispensing rule.
Canadian youth retreat seeks to strengthen faith of young Catholics entering adulthood - By Francesca Pollio Fenton - Dead Man Walking is being hosted by Jesus Youth Ontario and will take place Oct. 16–18 at the Mother of God Retreat Center in Orangeville, Ontario. The retreat will include talks from Catholic author and speaker Jason Evert, international missionary George Devassy, and local young adults sharing their personal testimonies.
NFL legend Mike Ditka was a Catholic coach - By Matt McDonald - Former professional football coach Mike Ditka, a practicing Catholic who occasionally served as lector at the 7 a.m. team Mass on game-day Sundays during his decade leading the Chicago Bears, died Friday. He was 86.
aciafrica
aciafrica’s top headlines — October 10, 2026
ACI Africa was founded in 2019 to provide free, up-to-the-minute news affecting the Catholic Church in Africa, with particular emphasis on the Holy Father's words and the Holy See's activities.
President of Religious Orders in Ghana Calls for Collaboration Amid Declining Vocations, Aging Members - “The time has come for us to move beyond simply working alongside one another to genuinely walking together,” Sr. Lucy Hometowu, President of the Conference of Major Superiors of Religious, Ghana (CMSR-GH).
“Silence is no longer an option”: South Sudan Church Leaders Call for Halt to Hostilities, Civilian Protection - In a statement issued on Monday, October 5, members of the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC), who include representatives of the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SCBC), said the suffering of South Sudanese people had reached a point where “silence is no longer an option.”
EWTN Names Ursula Murua to Succeed Montse Alvarado As Head of EWTN News - Murua, a native of Peru who is director of digital strategy and social media for EWTN News, succeeds Montse Alvarado, president and chief operating officer of EWTN News since 2023, whom Pope Leo XIV appointed in June as prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication. Alvarado takes up the Vatican post the same day.
Word on Fire
Fresh insights from the Word on Fire Institute - October 10, 2026
Word on Fire reaches millions every year by effectively sharing the Gospel via podcasts, videos, books, articles, Scripture studies, and Gospel meditations.
John Prine’s Beatific Vision - Eric Cyr - October 10 this year marks the 80th birthday of one of America’s greatest wordsmiths, the late John Prine. On one song from Prine’s 2018 album, he sings about his dream of the afterlife. The song “When I Get to Heaven” is the album's final track, and you can watch and listen to an especially moving live performance recorded at the House of Strombo.
Love in the Time of Acedia - Daniel Fitzpatrick - Bishop Barron mentions now and then in his sermons that Karl Barth called acedia the besetting sin of the modern age. Evelyn Waugh called it the same in a review of a book of short stories by J. F. Power, and sloth figures prominently in the spiritual struggles of Waugh’s characters, perhaps most of all in Guy Crouchback, protagonist of The Sword of Honor trilogy.
America Needs You, Thomas Aquinas - Bishop Robert Barron - As I prayed before Aquinas's tomb, I found myself ruminating on the importance, for our own time, of the one the Church calls its “common doctor.” What can this thirteenth-century Dominican master teach us? First, Thomas Aquinas saw with utter clarity that since all truth comes from God, there can never be any final conflict between the data of the sciences and the facts of revelation.
October 10, 2026 - USCCB Daily Mass Readings
You can listen HERE — or read HERE:
Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Catholic commentary:
National Catholic Register
October is ablaze with Saints
By Father Raymond J. de Souza, October 9, 2026
October is a good month to learn about feast days. Every saint is assigned a feast day at the time of beatification. The Catholic Church provides guidance on which feast days to celebrate publicly. Those feast days appear on the “universal calendar,” which governs the whole Church. Consider that Oct. 9 on the universal calendar includes not one, not two, but three saints. There is St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris, martyred in the third century. St. John Leonardi, an Italian founder, also died in 1609. After his declaration as a Doctor of the Church in 2025, Pope Leo added St. John Henry Newman’s feast day to the universal calendar. Most saints on the universal calendar get “optional memorials.” October includes many of that rank, including St. Faustina Kowalska (Oct. 5), St. John XXIII (Oct. 11), the Jesuit Martyrs of North America (Oct. 19) and St. John Paul II (Oct. 22). It is not possible to have too many saints; it is what the Church exists for.
First Things
AI doom is radically uncertain
By Nikolas Prassas, October 7, 2026
For roughly a week in September, Jacob Coxon, an obscure researcher at AI giant Anthropic, was the most famous person on the planet. Shortly after resigning, Coxon took to social media to warn the public that his former colleagues “earnestly believe” superintelligent computers would “kill us all by the end of the decade.” Evan Hubinger came out in support of Coxon, saying there's more than a 10 percent chance machines like the ones built by Anthropic will extinguish the human race in the next ten years. I am not persuaded that they have weighed the evidence correctly. Lurid stories about “AI civilizations” and self-sacrificing machines have obscured the real significance of the Hugging Face attack. The probability of annihilation by killer robots is less than 10%. We know all the relevant future contingencies and can associate them with precise probabilities. But as we move up the levels of complexity to something like developing a new technology, we can't even envisage the future state space.
The Imaginative Conservative
Is the West lost forever?
By Joseph Pearce, October 9, 2026
With regard to the Islamic presence in Europe, do we need reminding of the wars in the Balkans, of recent memory, in which Christians and Muslims in Bosnia and beyond killed each other in a frenzy of hatred and “ethnic cleansing”? Do we need reminding that all of those doing the killing, on both the Christian and Muslim side, were impeccably white? Do we need reminding that such ethnic cleansing has been part of the demographic dynamic of that region ever since the Muslims first invaded centuries earlier? Do we need reminding that the very word “balkanization” entered the language because of such enmity between peoples and the destructive fragmentation that is its consequence? The point is not whether Islamic immigration to Europe is a major threat to peace—obviously it is—it’s that Islam is a multiracial religion as Christianity is a multiracial religion. It’s about a clash of cultures, not races.
The Catholic Thing
Time for the Vatican to reaffirm the culture of life
By Alden Abbott, October 10, 2026
The culture of death is not an abstraction. It appears whenever the law treats the deliberate destruction of innocent human life as a right, a service, or a form of compassion. It appears in the normalization of abortion and in the growing acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide. It also appears when disability, dependency, age, and illness are made to seem like reasons why a human life has become less worthy of protection. The bishops’ intervention, therefore, raises a question reaching far beyond Virginia: Is it time for the Vatican to renew the Church’s public proclamation of the culture of life? Saint John Paul II answered that question in 1995 with extraordinary clarity in Evangelium vitae. Human life, he taught, is a gift from God, possessing a sacred and inviolable dignity from conception until natural death. The Gospel of Life is not a narrow political program. It is part of the Gospel itself because every person is made in the image of God and called to communion with Him.
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