Catholic Nutshell News: Saturday 11/22/25
Topics include: Belarus pardons 2 Catholic priests; Effect of Anglican priest conversions; Indigenous criticize return of Vatican artifacts; & Notre Dame reinstates ‘Catholic Mission’ (Whew)
“We see through new tender verdant pecan leaves”
Today's sources: National Catholic Register, Catholic News Agency, The Pillar, Crux, Our Sunday Visitor, ChurchPOP, & Aleteia. (Catholic Nutshell is a FREE subscription service for faithful, hopeful, & curious Catholics willing to exercise their Catholic News Muscle)
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Catholic News Agency
Belarus pardons 2 Catholic priests after talks with Vatican
By Daniel Payne, November 20, 2025
Two Catholic priests in Belarus will be released from prison in an act of “goodwill” after national leaders engaged in talks with the Vatican. The state media organ BelTA reported on Nov. 20 that Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko “pardoned two Catholic priests convicted of serious crimes against the state.” The pardons of Father Henrykh Akalatovich and Father Andzej Yukhnevich came after “intensification of contacts with the Vatican, as well as the principles of goodwill, mercy, and the jubilee year proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church,” the government media organization said. A separate press release from the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Belarus expressed “gratitude to all those who contributed to the release of imprisoned priests.”
The Pillar
UK’s Catholics heavily reliant on Anglican priest conversions
By Luke Coppen, November 21, 2025
The local Catholic Church in Britain, which found that former Anglican clergy accounted for around 29% of all priestly ordinations in Catholic dioceses in England and Wales from 1992 to 2024, is consequently heavily reliant on convert clergy amid an overall decline in ordinations to the diocesan priesthood. It also raises the question of what will happen when former Anglican clergy from the two big waves of 1994 and 2011 retire. “The dataset didn’t include much age data, so it’s hard to get a sense of if there’s a big wave of retirements about to hit,” he told The Pillar via email Nov. 21. He noted that some clergy who became Catholics in the early 1990s, after the Anglican Church of England approved the ordination of women priests, have already retired. Stephen Bullivant, one of the ordination report’s co-authors, said, “Women bishops have been a fact of life in the Church of England for some years.”
CatholicVote
Return of Vatican artifacts to Canada ends with surprising twist
By Felix Miller, November 21, 2025
After the Vatican began the process of returning artifacts from its ethnographic collection to indigenous communities in Canada last week, Ashley Frawley, a scholar with indigenous heritage, wrote an essay criticizing the move. “The majority of indigenous people in Canada today identify as Christians, and nearly a third of them as Catholic,” Ashley Frawley wrote in her Nov. 18 article for Compact. “In the United States, proportions are similar. But when the Vatican returned 62 artifacts from its ethnographic collection on November 15, it framed the move as ‘part of the Catholic Church’s reckoning with its role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas.’ But is Catholicism not my culture?” Frawley wrote. “In doing so, it affirms the broader cultural fantasy that indigenous people are never active players in history or universal humanity, only ever the victims of its imposition.”
National Catholic Register
Notre Dame reinstates ‘Catholic Mission’ into staff core values
By Madalaine Elhabbal/CNA, November 21, 2025
The University of Notre Dame has reinstated “Catholic Mission” among its staff values after it opted to drop the language in an effort to reprogram the school’s Catholic identity as overarching. In a Nov. 21 staff announcement, Notre Dame’s president, Holy Cross Father Robert Dowd, said commitment to the school’s Catholic mission was referenced in the preamble to the new four staff values announced at a town hall meeting last week “as a way to show its overarching importance.” “Thanks to some constructive feedback we received, we now realize that placement is causing confusion and that some could interpret that not as elevating our mission as we intended but as a sign of diminishing commitment,” he said. “To avoid any further confusion, we have now included the language on Catholic mission as the first of our five core values.”
The Times of Israel
Antisemitic incidents in the Czech Republic reached record levels
By AP, November 22, 2025
Antisemitic incidents in the Czech Republic reached record levels last year amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the country’s Jewish community said on Friday. In its annual report, the Federation of the Jewish Communities said it registered 4,694 antisemitic incidents in 2024, almost 8.5% up from 4,328 in the previous year. In 2023, the reports jumped by 90% following the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, an assault that triggered the war in Gaza. Petr Papousek, head of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, said that hatred of Jews, especially in the form of demonization of the State of Israel, has become a socially acceptable attitude and has dominated the public space. He said the attacks showed “an unprecedented synergy” between the far right, the far left, Islamism, and the disinformation media.
Catholic World Report
What the bishops got wrong on immigration
By Father Jerry J. Pokorsky, November 18, 2025
At the November 2025 meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the bishops voted overwhelmingly to approve a statement that included this declaration: “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.” The content of the statement raises questions about the appropriate boundary between moral teaching and political intervention. Deportation may be immoral by intention or circumstance, but it is not intrinsically evil. The term “indiscriminate” is morally uncontroversial: few would defend capricious deportation practices violating the fundamental dignity of human beings. However, it is more likely that most will perceive the statement as a critique of U.S. immigration enforcement, presumably failing to correspond with the USCCB policy position. The declaration may be interpreted not as a clarification of moral principle but as a political commentary inferring that U.S. policy is immoral.
Related: What the bishops got right on immigration, Catholic World Report, Kenneth Craycraft November 18, 2025
CRUX
Why schoolchildren are often abducted in Nigeria
By Associated Press, November 22, 2025
School kidnappings have come to define insecurity in Africa’s most populous nation, and analysts say it’s often because armed gangs see schools as “strategic” targets to draw more attention. UNICEF said last year that only 37% of schools across 10 of the conflict-hit states have early warning systems to detect threats. The kidnappings are happening amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s claims of targeted killings against Christians in the West African country. Attacks in Nigeria affect both Christians and Muslims. The school attack earlier this week in Kebbi state was in the Muslim-majority Maga town. Schools have been a popular target of the bandits, who are motivated more by money than religious beliefs. The attacks often occur at night, with gunmen at times zooming in on motorbikes or even dressed in military uniforms and then disappearing into the vast, under-policed landscape. There is growing concern about links between the bandits and the militant groups, notably in the northwest.
Aleteia
BBC’s ‘Top 100’ book list that no Catholic should miss
By Theresa Civantos Barber, November 22, 2025
Take a look at the BBC’s newest list: British novels for adults. They list 100. These are the top eight.
Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874)
The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis, 1949-1954)
The Code of the Woosters (PG Wodehouse, 1938)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien, 1954)
The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame, 1908)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
Big Pulpit, CNA & ChurchPOP for 11/22/25
Big Pulpit
Tito Edwards Catholic site: November 22, 2025
The Big Pulpit website is a news aggregator that gathers quality insights and analysis on the Catholic Church worldwide.
Pope Leo XIV’ New Motu Proprio Corrects Francis’ Error – Fr. Allan J. McDonald at Southern. . .
Israeli Settlers Again Attack Palestinian Christian Town – Times of Israel
At American Youth Rally Pope Leo Never Referred to Synodality, Thanks be to God – Fr. McDonald
Why We Don’t Recommend Giving to the Campaign for Human Development – Leila & Phil Lawler
Catholic News Agency
CNA’s top headlines — November 22, 2025
Catholic News Agency provides reliable, free, up-to-the-minute news affecting the Universal Church, with updates on the words of the Holy Father and the Holy See.
New book by Pope Leo XIV: Human fraternity is ‘the antidote against all extremism’ - Nov 22, 2025 - By Victoria Cardiel - “The Power of the Gospel” is the title of a new Italian-language book by Pope Leo XIV. In today’s world, “marked by so many wars,” the pope asks Christians “to be witnesses of this harmony, this fraternity, this closeness.”
Report links rising childlessness to abortion amid record-low fertility in England, Wales - Nov 22, 2025 - By Andy Drozdziak - A report called “Abortion and Childlessness” shows that many women who have abortions in their 20s may end up childless in their 40s. Catholic independent public health consultant Kevin Duffy states that this risk is rarely, if ever, highlighted by abortion providers to those considering abortion.
‘It felt like history’: Teens, organizers on cloud nine after live dialogue with Pope Leo - Nov 21, 2025 - By Jonah McKeown - “Walking up on that stage felt like history. It really did,” said Elise Wing, a high school senior from Waterloo, Iowa, and one of the teens selected to ask Pope Leo a question during the live dialogue, which was facilitated digitally by EWTN on Nov. 21.
ChurchPOP Trending
ChurchPOP provides fun, informative, and authentically Catholic news and culture - November 22, 2025
8 Things You Didn’t Know About the Feast of Christ the King - This feast reminds us that whatever earthly powers may do or ask of us, Christ is the true King who should reign in our hearts.
Pope Leo’s Surprise Revelation at NCYC: He Only Wears ‘White Sox’ - And Has a Wordle Strategy! - Pope Leo loves his ‘White Sox’!
Struggle with Endless Scrolling? Pope Leo Says Carlo Acutis’ Secret to Digital Discipline Can Help - “Be intentional with your screen time. Make sure technology serves your life, not the other way around.”
Nutshell reflections for 11/22/25:
USCCB Daily Reflection: AUDIO - November 22, 2025
Memorial of Saint Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr
Vatican News
The Kingship we still need
By Abbot Marion Nguyen, 22, 2025
Today’s Gospel confronts us with one of the most striking contradictions in all of Scripture: a King not seated on a golden throne, but on a cross. From the very first verse, “the rulers sneered at Jesus,” the scene exposes the contrast between human expectations of kingship—power, dominance, control—and the kingship Jesus reveals, which is rooted in self-giving love, sacrifice, and mercy. On this feast—established by Pope Pius XI nearly one hundred years ago—this Gospel confronts us with the very themes that concerned him in 1925. He instituted the Feast of Christ the King in response to what he perceived as three rising threats to the human soul and human society: secularism, nationalism, and atheism. He saw these forces intensifying after the devastation of the First World War—forces that aimed to push God to the margins of society and enthrone human power, human pride, and human autonomy in God’s place.
First Things
Antisemitism: Return of the old lies
By Carl R. Trueman, November 20, 2025
The historian's task is typically that of a spoiler. When someone at a dinner party declares that some recent action or event is “unprecedented,” it is the historian’s cue to don a patronizing smirk and declare, “Well, actually, almost exactly the same thing happened in 1427 in Florence” or some such. And so it is with the current resurgence of anti-Semitism. There is a sense that we have seen it all before, many times, with the same tired clichés reappearing again and again in history. For years, I gave a lecture in my Reformation course on Luther and the Jews. I always began by pointing out that, for all of the controversy surrounding his 1543 tract, On the Jews and Their Lies, it was his 1523 treatise, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, that was the more remarkable in its time. It has become clear in the months since October 7, 2023, that the line between concerns about Israel’s conduct of the war and a basic hatred of Jews everywhere because of their ethnicity is too frequently nonexistent.
The Catholic Thing
Catholics shouldn’t find themselves at home in this world
By Daniel B. Gallagher, November 18, 2025
At the November 3rd Keep Hope Alive Fundraiser, Cupich doubled down on his assessment of “our current situation” as a “tragedy,” pointing to the dearth of politicians who embrace the entire gamut of Catholic social teaching: “Let’s be true and honest,” he said. “The tragic reality in our nation today is that there are essentially no Catholic public officials who consistently pursue the essential elements of Catholic social teaching.” But is that really a “tragedy?” If we want to be “true and honest,” shouldn’t we acknowledge that Catholics are not supposed to find themselves at home in this world, politically or otherwise? Doesn’t Holy Scripture, along with a host of saints, remind us that the Gospel entails placing our hope in the home of a world yet to come? “Put no trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save” (Psalm 146:3). “My kingdom does not belong to this world” (John 18:36).
Bishop Barron
Everything in this world is destined for redemption
By Bishop Robert Barron, November 22, 2025
Friends, today’s Gospel recounts a conversation Jesus had with some Sadducees, who held that there is no life after death. We could practically hear their speech on the lips of secularists today. But Jesus is having none of it. The dead shall indeed rise, he says. Otherwise, how could Moses have spoken of God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all of whom were long dead by Moses’s time? But their risen existence, though in continuity, even bodily continuity, with what has gone before, will be transformed, transfigured, raised up. If you are a complete materialist and secularist, you hold that everything and everybody, in the end, just fades away. But if you believe in the resurrection of the body, then everything in this world is destined for redemption. Everything matters.
Image of Coconut by Celio Nicoli from Pixabay
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