Christian News

Before we get on to the news, I would like to pause for a moment and ask you to please offer a prayer for the repose of the soul of John Allen Jr., who died yesterday at the age of 61. John, for any readers who do not know, and I doubt there can be many, was — for decades — an inescapable presence in the world of Catholic media, and especially in the arena of Vatican reporting.

The ongoing protests in Iran are considered the largest in years, both in duration and geographic spread. Since erupting on Dec. 28, 2025, demonstrations have continued without interruption, expanding across the country’s north, south, east, and west. Large numbers of Iranians from diverse social and religious backgrounds have taken part, including Christian citizens.

In this episode Trent shows how one claim about Jesus' historical status backfires on Christians...

Pope Francis convened his last consistory on October 6, 2024. Two months later, the Pope announced the list of those who would become cardinals. Among them was this name...

Archbishop Nikola Eterović celebrated his milestone birthday Jan. 20, days after a private audience with Pope Leo XIV. The Vatican disclosed no information about the Jan. 17 audience, other than that it took place. But it would be surprising if the topic of Eterović’s eventual successor did not come up. The succession in Germany may not be the only diplomatic appointment on Pope Leo’s mind...

My friend arrived at our local place about half an hour after the Texans-Steelers game ended. People had already run through the five stages of grief, I told her, and gotten to the final stage, acceptance. “I got to acceptance on week one,” she said. Everyone who’d actually watched the game there began it feeling hopeful. But eventually we all saw the Steelers’ reality, and what I suspect most people secretly thought would happen happened.

John L. Allen Jr. died on January 22, 2026, after a lengthy battle with cancer. The legendary Vatican beat reporter and Church affairs analyst was 61 years old. He is survived by his wife, Elise Ann Allen, who is Crux’s senior Rome correspondent. Allen was a force of nature, certainly as a journalist who was not only our principal but also a model for us, whose counsel and whose company we already and forever shall sorely miss.

Friends, colleagues, and regular Crux readers will know that my husband, John L. Allen Jr., has been battling cancer for some time, and has largely been absent from the site this year as he underwent treatment and fought for recovery.It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I convey, nearly four years after his diagnosis, that John lost his battle with cancer on Thursday, January 22, 2026, and is now resting in the arms of God, free from the pain and discomfort that he lived with for so long.

Before his freshman year at the University of Notre Dame, the only time Alex Huang had ever set foot in a church building was for a piano recital. Now, the first-year student from Minnesota is just months away from becoming Catholic. Raised by parents who never considered practicing religion due to their upbringing in atheist China...

A Catholic priest who worked with Alex Pretti, the man shot and killed by federal agents in Minnesota, said he was known for his “kindness” and disputed the narrative of top Trump administration officials that he was a violent “domestic terrorist” and would-be assassin. Pretti, an ICU nurse, was shot while filming federal officers on a Minneapolis street on Jan. 24...

A German cardinal has declared his participation in the controversial German Synodal Way finished, expressing deep skepticism about plans to establish a permanent synodal conference. “For me the Synodal Way is concluded,” Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne said according to CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News...

Children are not subjects but a reminder of the revelation of God’s love, possessing a visible reality that requires any teacher to both nurture and nourish the soul of a child. The premise of any teaching environment requires and involves the exercise of a loving environment directed at the soul and care of the child, and not the initial regurgitation of information...