80,000 attend Pope’s youth prayer vigil in Saint-Denis that reflects on France’s Christian history
Some 80,000 young Catholics filled the Stade de France on Friday evening for a prayer vigil with Pope Leo XIV, turning the country’s largest sports stadium into a vast outdoor church on the first night of his apostolic visit to France.
Pope Leo XIV challenges French secularism and policies on euthanasia as he meets President Macron
Pope Leo XIV and French President Emmanuel Macron met at the Élysée Palace on Friday, September 25, 2026, at the start of the pontiff’s four-day apostolic journey to France, exchanging formal welcomes and speeches that mixed courtesy with pointed disagreement over secularism and the protection of human life.
Ukrainian airstrike destroys historic Russian Orthodox church
A 19th-century wooden Orthodox church standing about a mile from the Ukrainian border was destroyed in September 2026, Russian regional and church authorities said. They blamed Ukrainian forces for the strike that leveled St. George’s Church in the village of Kozino, in Kursk Oblast’s Rylsky District.
1 in 10 deaths in Canada are due to assisted suicide, Health Canada reports
Euthanasia made up more than 1 in 10 deaths in several regions of Canada last year, even as the national growth rate slowed, according to government data released in late 2025 and early 2026. The pattern emerged in a country where a slim majority of residents still identify as Christian in the last full census, though that share had fallen for decades and later surveys suggested it had slipped further.