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Saturday, February 7, 2026
Seattle, Boston archbishops make friendly wager ahead of 2026 Super Bowl
Friday, February 6, 2026
THE RULER OF THE USA IS A SICK AND DANGEROUS INDIVIDUAL
THE RULER OF THE USA IS A SICK AND DANGEROUS INDIVIDUAL AND HE LEADS A TEAM OF DANGEROUS SYCOPHANTS.
Faith on screen: Why is religion winning back American audiences, according to a study?
From Oxford to the Catholic Liturgical Calendar: Vatican gives St. John Henry Newman a place in the Catholic Church’s daily prayer
ZENIT Staff
October 9 was chosen deliberately. It marks the anniversary of Newman’s conversion to Catholicism in 1845, a turning point that reshaped not only his own life but also the intellectual landscape of English-speaking Catholicism.
Convent, Catholic Hospital, and two Protestant Churches attacked in North-Central Nigeria
ZENIT Staff
The nuns managed to escape in time, but the bandits looted and vandalized the clinic, stealing and severely damaging medical equipment and facilities
Costa Rica Chooses Laura Fernández: A Pro-Life Presidency Begins as Bishops Call for Unity, Dialogue, and Moral Leadership
Enrique Villegas
During the campaign and throughout her previous government service, Fernández repeatedly underscored the protection of unborn life as a central pillar of her political vision
Cuba: Oil sanctions will hit the poorest and weakest warn bishops
ZENIT Staff
Bishops have warned that Cuba will suffer “social chaos and violence” if fuel blockades are introduced.
This is the new general director chosen by the Legionaries of Christ
ZENIT Staff
Few leaders in the Legion today bring such a geographically diverse pastoral résumé. Over more than two decades, Father Gutiérrez has exercised ministry in Chile, Italy, Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico
Leo XIV Prepares for a 2026 of Key Trips: Peru and Africa on the Horizon. Here Is All That Is Known
ZENIT Staff
Peru will not be the only significant stop. The Vatican is also working on what will be Leo XIV’s first African visit as Pope. Although there is still no official schedule, two countries have already publicly confirmed their inclusion: Angola and Equatorial Guinea.
In what sense is the Bible the Word of God in human words? Pope Leo XIV responds
ZENIT Staff
Pope’s general audience, February 4, 2026, on “Sacred Scripture: God’s Word in human words”
Faith on screen: Why is religion winning back American audiences, according to a study?
Jorge Enrique Mújica
A national survey conducted by HarrisX in partnership with the Faith & Media Initiative, released in late January 2026, examined how American audiences respond to religious themes embedded in mainstream films and television series. The findings challenge long-standing assumptions in Hollywood and point to a cultural moment in which faith is no longer a liability on screen, but often an asset
“Pope Francis’ role” becomes central theme in new phase of trial against Cardinal Becciu and others
ZENIT Staff
For the defense, these rescripts are the original sin of the entire process.
Archdiocese of New York, its insurance company, and how it worked against it
ZENIT Staff
The Church argues that the strategy was designed to serve Chubb’s own financial interests by inflating claims against the archdiocese—claims the insurer has been resisting since at least 2024, when the archdiocese formally sued Chubb for allegedly failing to pay covered abuse-related settlements
The Vatican, the Pope, and the situation of the Lefebvrians: an analysis based on the current state of affairs
Jorge Enrique Mújica
At the heart of the conflict lies a theological fault line that dates back more than sixty years: the legacy of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).
The Church Has Fallen: Chapnin Declares Moscow Patriarchate “No Longer Christian”
ZENIT Staff
In a searing interview, the well-known Russian scholar and former church insider calls Kirill’s organization “a cheap para-religious cult” serving Putin.
Superior of the Schoenstatt Fathers in audience with the Pope: a beatification pending
Valentina di Giorgio
Pope Leo XIV welcomed Father Alexandre (Alexander) Awi Mello, Superior General of the Schoenstatt Fathers and president of the International Schoenstatt Movement
Archbishop Wenski makes case for ‘permanent’ solution for Haitian refugees in U.S.
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| New EWTN+ podcast ‘Catholics & Cappuccinos’ aims to show joy of being Catholic |
| Catholic actress and podcast host Siobhan Fallon Hogan hopes “Catholics & Cappuccinos” will remind listeners that “being a Catholic can mean great joy.” |
A theology of immigration
At dueling National Prayer Breakfasts, a religious debate over Trump’s immigration policy
Religion News Service: Trump told the crowd at the Washington Hilton, “I’ve done more for religion than any other president.”
As universities shutter DEI offices, progressive Christian groups open their doors
Religion News
Service: Several of these groups are connected with ZOE, an emerging
network of progressive Christian student ministries.
How more polarized church is harming, helping Protestant groups*
The Tennessean: Major
evangelical Christian denominations like the Nashville-based Southern
Baptist Convention have maybe even benefited from leaning into its
political conservatism.
A theology of immigration*
The New Yorker: “None of us have a permanent residence here in this world,” the Reverend Dan Groody says.
800 years after his death, the legends and legacy of Francis of Assisi endure
The Conversation: On
the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of
the Franciscan order, his body will be displayed for the first time ever
in February 2026.
Thursday, February 5, 2026
The National Prayer Breakfast 2026 in Washington DC
February 5, 2026
Trump wandered into the National Prayer Breakfast like a man who’d accidentally been scheduled for a revival service in between a rally and a grievance deposition, and proceeded to deliver what can only be described as a theological Mad Libs stitched together with ego, revenge fantasies, and intermittent references to God as a kind of celestial brand sponsor.
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Then Trump took the microphone and did what Trump always does: he turned a prayer breakfast into a self-review, a campaign rally, and a personal therapy session conducted in front of Congress and God.
He joked about not getting into heaven, then immediately clarified that, actually, he probably should, because look at all the good he’s done for “perfect people.” This was less a confession than a preemptive Yelp review of the afterlife.
From there, the speech lurched across familiar terrain: the fake news is mean, Democrats hate God, elections are rigged, immigrants are criminals, windmills are destroying Europe, and he has personally ended eight wars, saved Christianity, revived church attendance, rebuilt the military, and apparently achieved peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years, which is a fascinating claim to make at a breakfast intended to celebrate humility.
At various points he praised airstrikes as Christmas gifts, suggested pastors should be allowed to endorse him without losing tax-exempt status (but also joked he might revoke it if they criticize him), and described law enforcement “beating the crap” out of criminals as part of America’s spiritual renewal. It was less Blessed are the peacemakers and more Blessed are the poll numbers.
What made the spectacle so grotesque wasn’t just Trump’s usual carnival of exaggeration and cruelty dressed up in religious vocabulary; it was the room’s willingness to treat it as normal. To applaud and pray over him as if he were a misunderstood prophet rather than a man using Christianity as stage lighting for authoritarian politics. Instead of a prayer breakfast, it was a political branding exercise with hymnals.
The question hanging over the waffles and amens is unavoidable: What does it say about American Christianity that so many of its leaders are willing to call this “faith”?
There is a temptation, especially among political commentators, to treat Donald Trump’s capture of American Christianity as just another electoral oddity, a cultural alliance, a transactional marriage, a mutually beneficial arrangement between power and pulpits. But that framing is way too small, because Trump is not only cratering democracy, he is cratering Christianity. Whatever else Christianity claims to be, a faith built on humility, sacrifice, mercy, truth, it cannot survive indefinitely as the background music for a man who embodies its negation. A man whose public life is a rolling pageant of cruelty, greed, vengeance, and self-worship, now being draped in religious language like a ceremonial stole.
The spectacle at the National Prayer Breakfast was not merely embarrassing, it was spiritually obscene. It is difficult enough to believe that there is such a thing as a “White House Faith Office,” as if the divine can be bureaucratized, as if holiness belongs in the West Wing alongside the communications shop and the scheduling desk. But what is truly staggering is not the existence of the office, it is the willingness of Christian leaders to treat it as legitimate when its central function appears to be laundering authoritarian politics through the vocabulary of God.
To invite Donald Trump to speak at a prayer breakfast is already a kind of confession: that the event is not about prayer, but about proximity. Not about faith, but about access.
Then show him reverence, to applaud him, bless him, flatter him as a champion of the Gospel, is something darker. It has shades of V for Vendetta, that chilling marriage of cross and state, where religion becomes a prop in the theater of power. The hymns play, the robes are pressed, the words are holy, and the soul has quietly left the room.
History is full of parallels. Whenever religion stops speaking truth to power and starts speaking power in the language of truth, it becomes something else entirely: not a refuge, but a weapon; not a conscience, but a court.
We have seen this before in Franco’s Spain, where Catholicism was folded into the machinery of dictatorship, blessing the regime while dissenters were imprisoned and silenced. We have seen it in the “German Christians” movement of the 1930s, when churches draped the cross in nationalist spectacle and remade Christianity into a servant of authoritarian identity rather than a challenge to it. We have seen it in the segregationist South, where pastors quoted scripture to defend white supremacy, turning the church into a moral shield for injustice rather than a force against it.
In every era, the pattern is the same: the Gospel is replaced with loyalty, the pulpit becomes an amplifier for the state, and faith is reduced to a kind of sanctified branding.
The tragedy is not simply political, it is spiritual. When Christianity becomes the chaplaincy of power, it ceases to be Christianity at all, it becomes a costume religion for empire, a church of access, a court of applause.
That is the great scandal here. Trump does not merely exploit Christianity, he reshapes it in his own image, into a religion of grievance, dominance, spectacle, and permission. Faith that once claimed allegiance to the crucified now genuflects before the gilded.
What does it say about American Christianity that so many of its leaders looked at this man, this lifelong monument to ego, and decided he was the one to be prayed over, honored, and called “the greatest champion of faith of all time”?
What does it say about a Church that cannot recognize idolatry when it is standing at the podium, soaking up applause?
follow me on Substack at marygeddry.com and @magixarc.bsky.social
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