Frank Caprio: A judge who tempered justice with mercy



In "The Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare stages a courtroom scene where justice and mercy collide. Antonio, unable to repay his debt, faces Shylock’s demand for a pound of flesh. Into this standoff steps Portia, disguised as a lawyer, who reminds Shylock that “the quality of mercy is not strain’d.”

Mercy, she argues, “blesseth him that gives and him that takes” — elevating both the giver and the recipient. Strict justice, without compassion, destroys. True justice, tempered with mercy, redeems.

Judge Caprio’s courtroom became a global stage not because the cases were extraordinary, but because his responses were.

Judge Frank Caprio, who died Wednesday at 88, understood this better than most. His courtroom in Providence, Rhode Island, became a stage for the same lesson Portia taught: that the law is meant not just to enforce rules, but to serve people. Again and again, he showed that the most just outcome is sometimes also the most merciful.

'Your case is dismissed'

One of Caprio's most memorable rulings came when a 96-year-old man stood before him for speeding. The man explained that he was rushing his handicapped son to a medical appointment. Rather than levy a fine, Caprio praised him as a devoted father and dismissed the case — an act of justice that, in Portia’s words, blessed both the man who received mercy and the judge who gave it.

In another instance, Caprio invited a 6-year-old girl to decide her mother’s penalty for an unpaid parking ticket. When the child shyly reduced the fine, Caprio went farther, suggesting that her mother use the money saved to buy breakfast for her kids. What could have been just another transaction became instead a lasting lesson in generosity — a glimpse of how mercy, when freely given, transforms everyone involved.

Deep and abiding faith

Frank Caprio’s sense of justice was rooted in the story of his own life. Born in Providence in 1936, the son of an immigrant fruit peddler and milkman, Caprio grew up working odd jobs and learning the value of perseverance. He taught high school while putting himself through Suffolk Law School at night, served in the Rhode Island Army National Guard, and went on to a career in public service — first as a Providence city councilman, later as chief judge of the municipal court, a position he held for nearly four decades.

What might have been an unremarkable local post became something extraordinary once cameras entered his courtroom. "Caught in Providence," the reality series that began on local public access TV in 1988, turned Caprio into a household name when it was nationally syndicated in 2018. Millions of viewers tuned in not for high-stakes drama, but for the quiet power of his empathy. Clips of his cases spread across social media, reaching hundreds of millions worldwide. He became known, simply, as “the nicest judge in the world.”

But Caprio himself never saw this as performance. “I have a deep and abiding faith in the Catholic Church, in Jesus, in the power of prayer,” he told EWTN reporter Colm Flynn in February. That faith informed his approach to the bench.

A final lesson

In Caprio's final months, battling pancreatic cancer, he recorded a simple video asking his followers not for tributes but for prayers — a moment of humility that spoke volumes about how he carried his belief. And in a commencement address at his alma mater just weeks before his death, he explained his philosophy plainly: “Although I wore a robe like most judges, I wasn’t a traditional judge, because under my robe, I didn’t wear a badge. I wore a heart.”

Judge Caprio’s courtroom became a global stage not because the cases were extraordinary, but because his responses were. In an era when social media often rewards outrage and spectacle, his viral videos offered a glimpse of justice at its most human.

He taught us that the measure of justice is not only how faithfully we enforce the rules, but how carefully we weigh the people to whom they apply. To the single parent struggling to pay fines, to the elderly man caring for a sick child, to the student with little more than a smile to offer, Caprio extended dignity. And in doing so, he showed the world that mercy can be both deeply personal and profoundly public.

That is the legacy Judge Frank Caprio leaves behind. His rulings will live on in viral clips, yes — but, more importantly, in the quiet shift of conscience they inspired in those who watched. He reminded us that justice, at its best, is not cold or mechanical. It is humane. And it is only complete when joined with mercy.

Questions about Catholicism? There's a bot for that



AI is devouring everything, from brainpower and manpower to art and writing to therapy and intimacy. Little surprise that now it’s coming for religion — not just as a tool but as a substitute. In this brave new world of prompts and replies, faith might well become just another field for automation to ransack and repackage.

Magisterium AI is a chatbot ready to dispense Catholic answers at machine speed, trained on 27,000 Church documents. Clarity, consistency, and convenience, delivered without delay? What’s not to like?

The Church has long warned against idols. This one just happens to run on silicon.

But something essential disappears in the process. A religion sustained by ritual, mystery, and human encounter is now being reformatted into AI-generated responses. Some see it as innovation, but any truly faithful Christian should see it as reduction. You don’t deepen the soul by outsourcing it to a language model. You dilute it. You deform it.

Digital discernment

Magisterium AI is marketed as a bridge to the Church, but its architectural form avoids the sacred terrain of actual spiritual formation. It offers the comfort of instant answers, devoid of the discomfort that makes those answers matter. No long silences. No wrestling with doubt. No waiting for grace. Just neatly packaged responses dressed in ecclesial jargon. It tempts the user into embracing the illusion of understanding without the weight of discernment.

There’s a reason spiritual growth has always been slow. The methodical journey isn’t a bug; it’s the entire point. Silence teaches. So does uncertainty. So does struggling through Scripture with someone who’s carried the weight longer than you. What is efficient by the measure of this world is inadequate by those of the next. Magisterium AI points to a false path where tension dissolves into trivia and struggle gives way to search results.

This isn’t about resisting technology as a whole, but about recognizing the sharp limits of machines in matters of the soul. An algorithm can refer to documents, but it cannot know God. It cannot console, confront, or call you to conversion. It cannot listen with compassion, hold silence with you, or challenge your ego in ways that leave you undone. It can only simulate presence, and that simulation becomes dangerous when people mistake it for real guidance — or somehow an improvement on real guidance.

Church as help desk

When young Catholics grow up thinking their doubts can be resolved with a prompt, they’ll begin to treat faith like customer service: Get an answer, move on. But the Church is a body, not a help desk. It breathes through embodied tradition, contradiction, dialogue, and grace. Reduce all that to a robotic response, and the foundation crumbles.

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Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Something sacred vanishes when a priest is replaced with a query. Not because clergy are flawless (far from it), but because they’re flesh and blood. They carry the tradition in tone, gesture, imperfection. Witness, not lines of code, forms their counsel. They may not offer certainty, but they teach how to live with its absence.

Clarity without cost

Magisterium AI doesn’t stutter, pause, or search for words. And that’s precisely the danger. Clarity without cost breeds complacency. In this simulated world, you didn’t earn that insight. You didn’t knock, seek, or beg. You tapped, you clicked, and the program delivered. Catholicism — and Christ — has always asked for more. Church truths aren’t just concepts to recite but realities to absorb. They call for surrender of will, reshaping of heart, and direct contact with mystery.

What’s most troubling is how effortlessly tools like Magisterium AI begin to reshape our image of God, even with the very best of intentions, not through argument or doctrine, but through tone, rhythm, and imitation. Language models can mimic reverence and copy cadence. They might stitch together fragments of theology with stunning fluency. But they don’t believe, and they don’t kneel. They do not tremble before the mystery they claim to speak for.

And yet when they answer in the Church’s voice, people thirsty for spiritual life listen. They begin to confuse fluency with faith, output with orthodoxy. Doctrine so easily becomes branding and God a user-friendly construct: predictable, polite, press-ready.

Ghost in the confessional

The devastating result is a “version” of the divine that’s algorithmically accurate but spiritually vacant and without embodiment at the same time. The worst of both worlds, it’s a sanitized, systematized substitute, unable to inspire holy fear and awe. Instead, its strings of answers sound holy enough to pass but are dead enough to forget. What emerges is not the God of Scripture, who thunders from clouds and weeps in gardens, but a corporate construct, one through whom users understand that the only fearsome and awesome thing around is the machine itself.

Nor does Magisterium AI simply digitize theology. It rearranges discipleship too, shifting the aim from becoming holy to staying informed. It trades the long labor of sanctification for a dopamine stream of quick solutions.

The Church has long warned against idols. This one just happens to glow, have hallucinations, and run on silicon.

Chatbot communion

Spiritual risks this severe bleed swiftly into the culture at large. When the faithful stop sitting with Scripture, stop listening to sermons, and stop debating in basements and parish halls, instead isolating themselves and outsourcing their formation to AI, they lose the muscle memory of communion. The Church kneels before a platform. The body of Christ becomes just another content feed.

No, don’t panic. But do be warned: Magisterium AI may begin as a tool of convenience. But convenience rewires. It strips us of spiritual stamina. It dulls the rituals that once shaped the soul. And slowly, it replaces the relationships that once carried the gravity of grace.

The Church isn’t built on convenience. It’s built on sacred encounters between sinner and priest, reader and revelation, and suffering and meaning. Remove those, and you don’t just soften faith; you shatter it. Faith doesn’t need to be digitized. It needs to be lived, in pews and parish halls — in chapels and candlelit corners where no code can follow and no circuit can reach.

Unforgiven

To discern whether someone was Catholic in 1897, you needed to ask only two questions. What didn’t he eat on Friday evening, and where did he go on Sunday morning? The near-universal answers: meat and Mass. To complete the weekend rota, you might ask what he did on Saturday afternoon. That, too, would have been a safe bet: He’d make another trip to church to share his sins with a priest—receiving penance, absolution, and God’s forgiveness.

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Mel Gibson has been fighting this fight longer than you think



Everyone knows who Mel Gibson is. He’s an absolute dynamo and a giant of the cinema industry. But if you ask me, he's still deeply underrated, underestimated, and underappreciated.

Gibson's always felt cut from a different cloth and a bit separated from the rest of Hollywood and celebrity culture. Yes, he’s a mega-celebrity. But even still, you can tell his mind has always operated on a completely different level than most of his peers.

Gibson was defending a worldview, alone, in the middle of a media machine that existed solely to discredit him.

He's always been direct and clear about his religious belief. He's not pretending to be some gnostic “Christ consciousness” guru like a Russell Brand or a Jim Carrey would. He's a firm and open believer in the Trinitarian God of the Christian faith. It’s not a side note with him. It’s foundational.

A lifelong 'Passion'

Everyone knows he funded and directed "The Passion of the Christ" with his own money. But what people don’t always pick up on is that his faith doesn’t just show up in his subject matter. It informs his whole understanding of history and of humanity’s destiny.

This includes questions about the nature of God, questions about the nature of our universe, about where we come from, where we’ve been, and where we're going.

Everything is contained within the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Gibson tackles every subject matter from that foundation.

That’s what sets him apart. Mel Gibson isn’t just a guy who makes movies. He’s a man trying to wake people up. And the way he does it is by bringing the historical past roaring back into the present.

Truth in history

Think about it: "Braveheart" is about the Catholic Scottish struggle against the British crown. "Apocalypto" is a raw and brutal depiction of Mayan pagan savagery and ends with the moment Catholic Spanish ships arrive. "Hacksaw Ridge" tells the story of a Christian soldier in WWII whose unshakable faith ends up restoring the courage of the broken men around him.

All of these films are built on the same foundation: The truth contained within history is more powerful than fiction.

That resonates with me deeply as an apostolic Christian. And I think it explains why the powers that be in Hollywood have targeted Gibson so aggressively over the years. He’s not just a threat because of his beliefs. He’s a threat because he’s effective.

He makes powerful, unforgettable art with spiritual conviction. And he’s been doing it since long before the rest of us even realized what kind of cultural war we were in.

The burden of being first

I respect him immensely for that. I “woke up,” so to speak, around 2015 or 2016, around the time of the first Trump campaign. But this man has been “awake” for decades. He’s been carrying burdens we didn’t even know existed.

And when you go back and watch old interviews, like the one he gave Diane Sawyer after the release of "The Passion," you start to realize how outnumbered and outgunned he really was.

In that interview alone, Gibson was relentlessly henpecked by Sawyer for completely innocuous things like the claim that God helped him make the movie or for cinematically depicting the “radical” gospel narrative that the Pharisees brought Jesus to Pontius Pilate to be executed.

At one point, Sawyer even calls into question the validity of the gospel itself, saying that historians often argue the Gospels were written a century after they took place. She laid this at Gibson’s feet, as if to say he was wrong and even (as she eventually says) anti-Semitic for making a film about the most widely spread and historically influential religion in human history.

Against the media machine

It’s obvious that he wasn’t just defending a film. He was forced to defend himself, solely because he was so good at bringing the most important narrative in human history to life in a painstakingly realistic and historically accurate fashion. He was defending a worldview, alone, in the middle of a media machine that existed solely to discredit him.

And this was all before smartphones, before YouTube, before Twitter, back when legacy media controlled the entire narrative and could destroy you with the click of a headline. The media painted him as crazy because it couldn’t risk anyone taking him seriously. It had to make an example of him.

But now? The world has changed. And on some level, we’ve gone through what he has, too. Anyone who was on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram during the COVID and Biden eras saw their ideas censored, shadow banned, mocked, and silenced.

We’ve learned firsthand how the system works. And we’re starting to realize that maybe a guy like Mel Gibson wasn’t insane at all. Maybe he was just early.

And now, once again, he’s ahead of the curve.

Trump's Hollywood ambassador

As the media world fractures and Hollywood continues its slow implosion, Mel Gibson is stepping into a new role as Trump’s official Hollywood ambassador.

What does that mean? It means he’s leading the charge in building a new entertainment world. One that doesn’t run through Los Angeles, corporate studios, or globalist gatekeepers. One that’s not rooted in mindless CGI, gender ideology, or committee-approved scripts, but in real stories that actually push artistic boundaries.

The big development he’s involved in right now is the proposed U.S.-Italy co-production treaty. Expected to be signed at this year’s Venice Film Festival, this deal would make it easier for American and Italian filmmakers to collaborate, meaning joint financing, easier logistics, shared tax incentives, and streamlined distribution across both countries. It’s being backed by Trump and spearheaded on the ground by people like Mel Gibson and Italian film producer Andrea Iervolino.

But again, this isn’t just a business move. It’s a cultural reset. A spiritual realignment of what kind of stories we tell and where they come from.

You might not realize it, but we’re entering a new era. And the clearest sign of it is the content itself.

Just look at "The Leopard," a new Netflix series based on the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. It’s a tale about the tragic disintegration of aristocracy in Italian society during the Italian unification of 1861. It’s not woke. It’s not postmodern garbage. It’s a return to historical memory. It tells a story about something that actually matters, something that actually happened and that actually shaped the world we currently live in.

The production and distribution of a show like this is an indication of where the cultural landscape is trending.

And that’s exactly the kind of trend Mel Gibson has always been ahead of.

He’s not chasing fantasy or modern social narratives.

He’s saying: Look to the past.

Look to the martyrs. Look to the saints. Look to the bloodlines and the battles that shaped civilization. That’s where the real stories are. And now, slowly, the industry is starting to catch on.

Gibson isn’t waiting. He’s moving fast. Right after the treaty gets signed, he’s jumping into production on "The Resurrection," the long-awaited sequel to "The Passion of the Christ," filmed entirely in Italy.

He’s also producing a series on the Siege of Malta, one of the most overlooked and epic moments in Western history. These aren’t vanity projects. They’re cultural weapons that are meant to break the spell of modernity.

Roadblocks ahead

There are some roadblocks. The biggest one is EU competition law. Because Italy is part of the EU, it technically can’t strike up an exclusive partnership with America without Brussels stepping in. The EU has rules against giving unfair advantages to individual countries. And if this deal is seen as bypassing France, Germany, or other major players, it could be blocked or slowed down.

But there are ways around it.

The “cultural exception” clause is a legal doctrine used within EU law that allows member states to restrict free trade in order to protect and promote cultural goods, particularly in film, broadcasting, and publishing. France has famously used this to restrict the influx of Hollywood films, arguing that cinema is not just a commercial good but a vehicle of national identity and cultural heritage.

Italy could invoke this same clause if it were to partner with Mel Gibson to co-finance or co-distribute his upcoming historical epics (including "The Resurrection" and "The Siege of Malta") through the framework of an Italian production company. This would grant the project partial European identity, potentially shielding it from EU anti-monopoly measures or accusations of unfair American dominance in the cultural market.

But this may be an uphill battle.

While the EU talks a big game about cultural diversity, in practice, France and Germany dominate cultural policy, and they often use EU institutions to serve their national interests. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, despite growing support across parts of Europe, is not trusted by France or Germany. In fact, Macron has reportedly snubbed her from prior engagements involving the U.S. president, presumably fearing she’d strengthen Italy’s bilateral ties with the U.S. outside of the EU framework.

Europe's cultural future

This is a key geopolitical tension. Many southern and eastern EU nations (Italy, Spain, Hungary, Poland) secretly miss the U.K.’s presence in Brussels, not because of ideological alignment, but because Britain was a balancing force against Franco-German hegemony. With Brexit, that counterweight vanished, and now France and Germany rule.

So if Meloni wants to collaborate with Mel Gibson and Trump on a “Hollywood-Vatican axis” of cultural production, it won’t just be about entertainment. It will be a political fight over who controls Europe’s cultural future.

Here’s where the story gets even richer. Mel Gibson, despite being the Hollywood icon that he is, is deeply distrusted by the American liberal elite and European establishment alike. His unapologetically Christian worldview, his reverence for history (especially Christian history), and his refusal to bend the knee to modern progressive orthodoxy make him an absolute nightmare to Brussels cultural bureaucrats.

In other words, Gibson isn’t just trying to tell a story. They believe he’s trying to transform the cultural narrative itself. And isn’t that precisely what they’ve always come after him for, going all the way back to "The Passion"?

They've been dragging the man's name through the mud for years, and they might be doing some more of that in the coming years. But he’s never quit. And now, he’s leading the charge into something new, or rather, something old that’s simply resurfacing.

If Gibson is successful in harnessing the power of this cultural trend, if faith, history, and truth return to the screen in a serious way, if a new golden age of entertainment is restored, then we’ll look back at his entire journey and body of work one day and realize that he was never wrong. He was never crazy. He was just early.

Could Pope Leo XIV lose his American citizenship?



In the centuries following North America's separate visits by Catholic explorers Leif Erikson, John Cabot, and Amerigo Vespucci, the United States has counted tens of millions of Catholics as its own but not a single pope — until this year.

On May 8, Chicago-born Robert Prevost, one of America's over 60 million Rome-ward citizens, became supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Leo XIV.

The unprecedented nature of Pope Leo's papacy has generated some uncertainty about the status of his citizenship, which federal law indicates could, in some cases, be taken away from an American who accepted a position as a foreign head of state.

According to the U.S. State Department, "A U.S. national's employment ... with the government of a foreign country or a political subdivision thereof is a potentially expatriating act pursuant to Section 349(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act if the individual is a citizen of that foreign country or takes an oath of allegiance to that country in connection with such employment."

The policy clarifies that accepting, serving in, or performing the duties of a foreign office can result in expatriation "only if done voluntarily with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship."

The State Department works under the presumption that Americans intend to keep their U.S. citizenship when they "naturalize as nationals of a foreign state, declare their allegiance to a foreign state, or accept non-policy level employment with a foreign government."

RELATED: Republicans steamroll Senate Democrats, confirm Trump's pick for Vatican ambassador who illuminated Harris' bigotry

Photo by Cristian Gennari via Vatican Pool/Getty Images

The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in a January 1980 ruling that in establishing loss of citizenship, the government must "prove an intent to surrender United States citizenship, not just the voluntary commission of an expatriating act such as swearing allegiance to a foreign nation."

Paul Hunker, an American immigration attorney, told the Catholic News Agency, "I think unless he comes forward and says, ‘I have the intention of relinquishing my U.S. nationality,’ then he is not considered to have lost his U.S. citizenship."

While Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the papacy "is not a political office, it is a spiritual office," the pope nevertheless commands temporal powers that appear to qualify his position as policy-level employment, meaning his citizenship status could undergo greater scrutiny.

'He is the Holy See.'

In addition to serving as spiritual leader of over 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, Pope Leo is the absolute monarch of the world's smallest country.

According to Vatican City law, he holds "the fullness of the power of government, which includes the legislative, executive, and judicial powers," directing the 121-acre Vatican City, its population of 673 citizens, and its full diplomatic relations with 184 states, including the U.S., where CatholicVote co-founder Brian Burch was just made President Donald Trump's ambassador to the Holy See.

RELATED: Pope Leo XIV: The right leader for a church in crisis

Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images

Whereas Americans employed by foreign governments in non-policy-level foreign government positions don't have to take any steps to retain their U.S. citizenship, those in policy-level positions could face review and questions about their intent with regards to their nationality.

The State Department policy notes that it "will only actively review cases in which a U.S. national is elected or otherwise appointed to serve as a foreign head of state, foreign head of government, or foreign minister," and does so because "such cases raise complex questions of international law, including issues related to the level of immunity from U.S. jurisdiction that the person so serving may be afforded."

When pressed by the Associated Press, the State Department declined to comment about the pope's status, noting that it does not discuss the citizenship of individuals.

To ensure that the pope remains an American at least on paper, Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) recently introduced legislation prohibiting the revocation of U.S. citizenship during a papal tenure.

The so-called Holy Sovereignty Protection Act, which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means on July 17 and presently has six Republican co-sponsors, would also exempt the pope from U.S. tax obligations.

"The election of Pope Leo XIV marks a historic moment not only for the Catholic Church but for America," Hurd said in a statement. "This legislation ensures that any American who answers the call to lead more than a billion Catholics worldwide can do so without risking his citizenship or facing unnecessary tax burdens. This legislation recognizes the extraordinary nature of the papacy — a role at the intersection of faith, leadership, and global responsibility."

While the pope technically remains an American Catholic with those whom Alexis de Tocqueville described as the “most zealous citizens," Andrea Gagliarducci, a Vatican analyst for CNA, noted, "You cannot consider the pope a Peruvian, a U.S. citizen, or whatever. He is the Holy See. This is different; it is another world."

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Christians Can Build Up The Faith By Having Good Answers For Tough Questions

All Christians can benefit from reading David Bonagura's 100 Tough Questions for Catholics.

Republicans steamroll Senate Democrats, confirm Trump's pick for Vatican ambassador who illuminated Harris' bigotry



Democrats, whose approval rating has plunged to its lowest in over three decades, have worked vigorously to prevent President Donald Trump from properly executing his agenda.

A big part of their strategy in the U.S. Senate has been to slow-walk the president's nominees for the bench, assistant cabinet secretaries, and ambassadors by refusing their confirmation through unanimous consent or voice votes.

Republicans began to steamroll the opposition during a rare weekend session on Saturday, successfully voting on some of Trump's nominees whom Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) smeared as "historically bad" picks.

In addition to confirming retired CKE Restaurants CEO Andrew Puzder as ambassador to the European Union earlier in the day, the Senate confirmed CatholicVote co-founder Brian Burch as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican in a vote along party lines.

"I am profoundly grateful to President Trump and the United States Senate for this opportunity to serve as the next U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See," Burch said in a statement obtained by Blaze News. "I have the honor and privilege of serving in this role following the historic selection of the first American pope. In a remarkable coincidence, or what I prefer to attribute to Providence, Pope Leo XIV is from Chicago, which is also my hometown."

When announcing Burch as his nominee in December, Trump noted that the Phoenix-born father of nine, who was president of CatholicVote until June, "received numerous awards, and demonstrated exceptional leadership, helping build one of the largest Catholic advocacy groups in the Country."

Trump noted further that Burch helped him garner "more Catholic votes than any Presidential Candidate in History!"

Ahead of the election, CatholicVote helped raised awareness about Harris' antipathy to Catholics — who make up roughly 20% of the U.S. population — as well as to Catholic organizations and Catholic moral teaching, running a multimillion-dollar ad campaign on theme in critical swing states.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

As part of this campaign, Burch provided Americans with a damning reminder about Harris' suggestion in 2018 that a Trump nominee's Catholic faith disqualified him from serving on the federal bench.

"Kamala Harris hates what we believe," Burch said.

CatholicVote also released an eye-opening ad revealing Harris' support for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an "anti-Catholic hate group" that has since its inception in 1979 mocked Catholic teaching and doctrine and ridiculed the church's orthodox views on marriage, sexuality, homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion.

'The relationship between the Holy See and the United States remains one of the most unique in the world.'

Burch's group appears to have helped move the needle.

Trump enjoyed a 12-point advantage among Catholics over failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The Pew Research Center indicated that 22% of those who voted in the 2024 election and cast a ballot for Trump were Catholic.

RELATED: Joe Kent secures Senate confirmation to work alongside Tulsi Gabbard

Photo by Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images

Burch, also the president of Seton Academy Catholic Montessori School in Illinois, was set to be confirmed as ambassador in May — shortly after Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost became Pope Leo XIV — but Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz (D) put a blanket hold on all State Department nominees.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) told the Catholic News Agency at the time, "I never thought I'd see the day when Democrats would be willing to block the nominee for ambassador to the Holy See simply to score political points with their far-left radicals, but it seems they're still searching for rock bottom."

Despite the holdup, Trump ultimately got his way, and Burch got his confirmation.

"The relationship between the Holy See and the United States remains one of the most unique in the world, with the global reach and moral witness of the Catholic Church serving as a critical component of U.S. efforts to bring about peace and prosperity," Burch said in his statement to Blaze News. "As a proud Catholic American, I look forward to representing President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Secretary Rubio in this important diplomatic post. I ask for the prayers of all Americans, especially my fellow Catholics, that I may serve honorably and faithfully in the noble adventure ahead."

Kelsey Reinhardt, who took over for Burch as president of CatholicVote in June, said, "For the past 17 years, Brian has faithfully championed CatholicVote’s mission to inspire American Catholics to live their faith in public life. We are confident that he will similarly excel in this new role and are forever grateful for the foundation he laid and the impact he had on millions of Catholics across the Nation."

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Middle East Christians Face a Threat. No, It’s Not Israel.

The latest firestorm to erupt in the Middle East occurred just north of Ramallah—Jewish settlers supposedly attempted to burn down Taybeh’s historic Church of St. George. Patriarchs and cardinals rushed to the scene to condemn this “targeted attack.” Ongoing investigations revealed footage of Israelis rushing to put out the fire and police reports from a nearby Jewish farmer about three earlier arson attacks. U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said, “I have NOT attributed the cause of fire to any person or group as we don't know for sure. The press has.”

The post Middle East Christians Face a Threat. No, It’s Not Israel. appeared first on .

Lila Rosa challenges Christian support for IVF, debunks one of the most common arguments



In vitro fertilization – the process by which a human embryo is created outside the body using naturally occurring egg and sperm – is growing in popularity as infertility continues to rise.

But how should Christians view IVF? Is it something believers can support or take part in without compromising their Christian ethics?

Allie Beth Stuckey invited Live Action’s Lila Rose to “Relatable” to have a candid conversation about this topic.

Allie points out that many Christian IVF supporters make the case that “even though scientists and doctors are bringing together the sperm and the embryo, it always has to be God who gives the spark of life, so God is in IVF.”

“I’ve definitely heard that [argument] as well,” says Lila, and while “it is true that those are precious human beings made in God's image” and “God respects our power to [create life artificially],” that doesn’t mean it’s the moral thing to do.

She explains that just because God has allowed life to happen doesn’t mean he condones the manner in which it was created. She points to rape as an example. In a case where a rape results in a child, that child is an image bearer of God and a blessing to be cherished, but the act that brought that child into the world is condemnable.

In the case of both rape and IVF, “The act that brought that life into existence ... was not the moral act, so the act that brings life into existence can be immoral, but the bringing of the life into existence is never immoral,” Lila explains. The only way to morally bring a life into existence is through “the loving marital embrace.”

“[Children] deserve to be conceived in love. It's a natural order, and there's a lot of protective mechanisms in God's providence for that child if they're conceived that way,” she adds.

If children are conceived naturally, there’s no chance they will be “frozen” in perpetuity, and there’s a much higher chance of survival, as IVF has just a 50% success rate for women under 35 using their own eggs. That percentage plummets with a number of factors, including age, clinic quality, and lifestyle choices, among others.

“The natural order is much more designed for [children’s] safety and their nourishing, so IVF is wrong,” Lila concludes, “but what is not wrong is that new human life.”

Allie agrees — “The baby is always a blessing, but that doesn't mean that we are endorsing every method of making a baby.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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Is the Catholic Church a ‘bastion of unity’?



Just like BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey, founder of Live Action Lila Rose is a fierce pro-life advocate.

However, while they agree on social issues that concern morality, when it comes to their perspectives on faith, they differ slightly.

“Something that I hear a lot," says Stuckey, "is that the church has always been so clear on this ... and Protestantism has given way to division. And the Catholic Church is unified, but Protestantism, the fruit of it is this dissension and all of these denominations.”

“And yet when you look at, statistically, what professing Catholics say they believe and what professing Protestants say they believe, it seems to me, if we are to believe a Pew research or something like that, that Protestants, when it comes to things like abortion, when it comes to things like homosexuality, statistically we’re a lot more united on ‘This is what the Bible says,’” she continues.


Meanwhile, Stuckey says that according to these Pew Research studies, 68% of Catholics “say that they’re pro-choice” and 70% of Catholics believe that “non-Christians can go to heaven.”

“So my question is if the Catholic Church is a bastion of unity, why are professing Catholics so disunified when it comes to these really big moral, theological issues?” she asks Rose.

“These words might mean even different things to people, and might be lending some of the confusion,” Rose responds, noting that the Catholics who view missing weekly mass as a mortal sin will be a different story.

“They’re going to be pretty pro-life and pretty down the line, largely speaking, on sexual ethics,” she says. “There’s still going to be confusion even on contraception and IVF, things of this nature.”

“But I think that cohort, they’re doing the weekly gathering as God has commanded of worship, of the Mass, right? So I think it would depend on the groups we’re comparing, quite frankly, because I do know the idea of ‘I’m a believer, I’m a Christian, or I’m an evangelical’ can be very watered down, here in the United States and globally in terms of what that means with morality,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.