St. Mary's Church

El sábado es tradicionalmente el día de la semana dedicado a la Virgen María. Con ese ánimo, compartimos esta Oración mariana para el sábado anterior a Navidad, cuyo propósito es realzar de manera particular los sucesos acontecidos la víspera del día en que nació Jesús.

“Enrique Shaw, el empresario de Dios” es el documental que Goya Producciones ha lanzado sobre quien será el nuevo beato de Argentina, luego que el Papa León XIV aprobara un milagro obrado por su intercesión.

Miles de luces se encenderán el 28 de diciembre en distintas ciudades de América y Europa como parte de una vigilia internacional en favor de la vida, convocada con el objetivo de “iluminar a la sociedad ante lo que consideran un enorme holocausto”, en referencia al aborto. 

Lindo Niñucha es el título del nuevo villancico en quechua que acaba de estrenar el Coro de Niños Acólitos de Huancavelica en los andes peruanos, que en esta oportunidad cuentan con la colaboración de los Infanticos del Pilar de Zaragoza (España), un lazo que empezó a forjarse en el año 2020.

De Bergoglio a Francisco: La historia de un Papa es el título del documental que EWTN News acaba de estrenar, en ocasión del cumpleaños del fallecido Pontífice, para el que un equipo del canal católico viajó hasta Argentina, para conocer más sobre la vida y obra del primer Papa jesuita y latinoamericano en la Iglesia.

Este jueves, el Papa León XIV aprobó el milagro por intercesión del laico argentino Enrique Shaw, lo que permitirá su beatificación, noticia que causó gran alegría en su país de origen, y en especial en sus más allegados.  

Desde hace unos días los fieles católicos tienen la oportunidad de visitar un nacimiento hecho de hielo con figuras de tamaño natural. Se ubica en la parroquia San Cayetano de la Diócesis de Fontibón, en Colombia.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 19, 2025 / 15:52 pm (CNA).

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there will be a plan “early next month” for religious worker visas that would avoid giving preference to one denomination over another.

Rubio said at a Dec. 19 press conference in Washington, D.C., that the administration has “worked closely with a lot of the religious authorities” to reach a plan. 

In July, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released a report alleging widespread fraud in its permanent residence program for unaccompanied minors and said it caused a backlog in issuance of visas to migrant priests and religious.

Visas for religious workers allow foreign nationals to work for a U.S. religious organization, through the temporary R-1 visa or a Green Card EB-4 visa, which requires at least two years of membership in the same denomination and a job offer from a qualifying nonprofit religious  group. 

Rubio previously said the administration was working to create a “standalone process” for religious workers, separate from other competing applicants — such as from the juvenile program — to the employment-based fourth preference (EB-4) category of visas. 

Rubio said Friday the plan has factored in multiple aspects, including where the religious workers are coming from and their specific denominations. 

“We’re not discriminating in favor of one versus another,” he said. “Some denominations are more professionalized in terms of what they’re able to provide us with and information versus others.”

“We have country-specific requirements depending on the country they’re coming from. But I think we have a good plan in place to put that into effect,” Rubio said.

“I think we’re going to get to a good place,” Rubio said. “We don’t have it ready yet. All this takes time to put together, but we’re moving quickly. I think we’ll have something positive about that at some point next month, hopefully in the early part of next month.”

The department has worked “with a number of denominations in that process,” Rubio said. “One of the big users of that system is the Catholic Church. We worked with the conference of bishops.”

Priests and other Church leaders have expressed fear of having to leave their ministries and return to their home countries, then endure lengthy wait times before coming back. Church officials have warned that a continuing backlog could lead to significant priest shortages in the United States.

“We are grateful for the administration’s attention to this important issue for the Church and value the opportunity for ongoing dialogue to address these challenges so the faithful can have access to the sacraments and other essential ministries,” a spokesperson for the USCCB told CNA. 

Since the issue of the backlogged visas started, multiple U.S. dioceses have called for a solution. Priests in the Archdiocese of Boston who are in the U.S. on visas were urged to avoid international travel amid the Trump administration’s immigration policies and deportations. 

Last month, a Catholic diocese in New Jersey dropped its lawsuit against the U.S. government, in anticipation of an administrative fix to the religious worker visa issue.

Immigration vetting process 

Rubio was asked if the administration would expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in the coming year, particularly for religious minorities facing persecution in places like Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran.

“In the last four years, we had a flood of people,” Rubio said. “So that’s what we confronted. We have to stop that. And we did. We’ve been successful.”

Rubio further spoke on the topic of immigration and the importance of the “vetting” process, in which he answered questions both in Spanish and English.

The nation can see the border is secure and “the number of illegal entries has completely collapsed,” Rubio said. “Now we’re facing the second challenge, and that is we’ve admitted a lot of people into the United States, and perhaps the overwhelming majority of them are not bad people and so forth. This is all true.”

“There are people in this country who got in through some form of vetting that was wholly insufficient,” Rubio said.

“We’ve seen tragic evidence of that very recently, including people that we claim to have vetted. Why does that happen? Because there are some places where you can’t vet people,” he said.

“You can only vet people on the basis of information you have about them,” Rubio said. But that information is based on if the department or “some local authority that actually has any information about them.”

“That is the challenge we’re facing, which is why the president put a stop to all of these things until these systems for admitting people into our country can be improved,” he said.

Rubio criticized the immigration policies of the Biden administration, calling the policies reckless and incompetent, and said there’s a desire to fix immigration processes and know who’s in the country.

In terms of legal immigration, the United States “remains the most generous country in the world,” Rubio said. 

“This year alone, close to a million people will enter this country legally,” he said. “But we do have a right, like every sovereign country does, to know who you are, why you’re coming, what you’ve done in the past, and what we think you might or might not do in the future.”

“Most of the countries in the world have far more restrictive immigration policies than the United States has ever had,” Rubio said. 

The Trump administration expanded use of deportations without a court hearing this year and ramped up federal law enforcement efforts to identify and arrest immigrants lacking legal status. The administration set a goal of 1 million deportations this year, and the Department of Homeland Security said 1.6 million people self-deported since Jan. 20.

U.S. bishops issued a special message in November opposing the indiscriminate mass deportation of immigrants who lack legal status and urged the government to uphold the dignity of migrants.

San Diego, California, Dec 19, 2025 / 15:22 pm (CNA).

Bishop of San Diego Michael Pham dedicated “Angels Unawares,” a new sculpture on the campus of the University of San Diego (USD), on Thursday. The 8-foot-tall bronze sculpture by artist Timothy Schmalz is a scaled version of one in St. Peter’s Square in Rome commissioned by Pope Francis in 2019 and depicts 140 migrants of varying backgrounds on board a boat with a pair of angel wings in their midst.

According to USD President Jim Harris, the sculpture is intended to remind the viewer “of how biblical teachings encourage us to care for our most poor and vulnerable communities, including those who flee their countries in search of a better life.”

Located in front of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies on the western edge of campus, the new sculpture is situated in the perfect position, said Michael Lovette-Colyer, USD vice president of mission integration.

“It will be the first thing visitors see when they enter our campus,” he explained. “It overlooks the Pacific Ocean, with the boat pointing towards the heart of our campus. It calls to mind that our campus is a welcoming place.”

Lovette-Colyer also noted that the campus was located near a United States international border with Mexico, “so our geographic location calls for all people to respect human dignity.”

Victor Carmona, USD associate professor of theology and religious studies for the past eight years, also said he believes the installation reflects “a desire for USD to continue being a welcoming place.” He said he is “excited” about the sculpture’s installation, believing “it connects USD to the global Church in terms of priorities and mission.”

The work of artist Timothy Schmalz

The sculpture is the creation of Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz, who attended the event and has created images in bronze for historical churches in Rome as well as worldwide.

Schmalz is also known for his “Homeless Jesus” sculpture depicting Jesus as a homeless man sleeping on a park bench and his “When I Was in Prison,” depicting Jesus behind bars.

The original “Homeless Jesus” sculpture was installed at Regis College in Toronto; the statue has been copied and installed at more than 90 other locations worldwide since. “When I Was in Prison” can be found at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.

The “Angels Unawares” piece, Schmalz said, was inspired by the Scripture passage “Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels [or “angels unawares” in other translations]” (Heb 13:2). Schmalz got the idea for the piece after a conversation with Jesuit Father (now Cardinal) Michael Czerny, former undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.  

In 2017, Schmalz recalled, Czerny “suggested that I start thinking about creating a sculpture on migrants and refugees, not just because it is a crisis today but as always important throughout human history.”

He explained that the work “depicts a group of migrants and refugees from different cultural and racial backgrounds and from diverse historic periods of time. They stand together, shoulder to shoulder, huddled on a raft.”

The angel wings emerge from their midst, “suggesting the presence of the sacred among them.”

Replicas of the work have since gone on tour for viewing by the faithful throughout the U.S.; replicas have been installed at both The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and St. Joseph’s Oratory in Canada. USD president Harris wanted a replica installed on his campus after viewing “Angels Unawares” in Rome, as “it aligned with USD’s Catholic mission and values,” he said. The sculpture was funded by an anonymous donor.

“I hope this sculpture can provide our Torero community with feelings of compassion that transcend all borders and politics,” Harris said.

Schmalz said the purpose of “Angels Unawares” as well as all his art “is to evangelize and preach the Gospel.” Nearly all of the 140 migrants featured on the boat are of actual people he researched; some are based on the faces of live models who came to his Toronto-area studio. Many of his ideas came from photographs of migrants who passed through New York Harbor’s Ellis Island. And two of the figures are based on the parents of Czerny, who were once migrants from Hungary fleeing communism.

The artist said he believes “Angels Unawares” is in the same category as the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, “but with faces and a spiritual centering.” He added that art was an effective tool that the Catholic Church can use to convey the “Christian message” and described himself as “an artist soldier for the Vatican.”

International Migrants Day

The blessing of the sculpture by Pham coincided with the United Nations’ International Migrants Day. Pham was invited not only because he is the bishop of San Diego and a member of the college’s board of trustees but also because he, too, was a migrant, having fled Vietnam in 1980.

Thursday’s blessing began with 12:15 p.m. Mass, with Pham as presider, followed by the unveiling of the sculpture. Harris offered remarks; participants included members of the USD faculty, staff, and student body.

Lovette-Colyer acknowledged that the sculpture installation coincided with a time of contentious debate over immigration in the United States and other countries, with Catholics passionately advocating on both sides of the issue.

Referencing recent statements and a video by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops promoting a more generous immigration policy, he said: “We’re on the side of Pope Francis and Pope Leo, our local Bishop Pham and his predecessor [Cardinal Robert] McElroy on the issue. We acknowledge there are political dimensions, but we don’t want to be partisan. As Pope Francis emphasized, we want to be humane and respect the dignity of all human persons.”

He continued: “Immigration is a topic that evokes strong feelings. It is an important issue for our students to learn about and consider. The sculpture can be a conversation starter in the classroom, where our students can discuss it critically and carefully.”

El Papa León XIV se encontrará con los adolescentes y los jóvenes de Roma el 10 de enero de 2026, en el Aula Pablo VI en el Vaticano, tras la clausura del Jubileo de la Esperanza, que concluirá oficialmente el día de la Epifanía del Señor con el cierre de la Puerta Santa de la Basílica de San Pedro.