Cardinal Aguiar and his auxiliary bishop, Francisco Javier Acero Pérez, OAR, met with Pope Leo on Jan. 14, 2026. | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 16, 2026 / 06:00 am (CNA).

The primatial archbishop of Mexico, Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, has invited Pope Leo XIV to visit the country. The cardinal extended the invitation during their Jan. 14 meeting at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, shortly before the Wednesday general audience.

According to a statement released later by the Archdiocese of Mexico, during the audience Aguiar renewed the invitation he had first extended to the pope a few days after the conclave for him to travel to the country.

“In response, the Holy Father expressed his gratitude and his desire and interest in visiting our country soon to entrust his pontificate to Our Lady of Guadalupe,” the press release indicated.

In addition, Aguiar shared with Pope Leo XIV the progress and development of the synodal process underway in the Mexican diocese.

In this context, the pontiff expressed his gratitude for the work of the religious communities, pastoral workers, and laypeople, and encouraged them to continue strengthening this path of listening, discernment, and pastoral co-responsibility.

During the meeting, the Holy Father expressed his joy at the pilgrimage that the archdiocese will make Saturday, Jan. 17, to the Guadalupe Basilica at the beginning of the pilgrimage season to the sacred shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac.

The cardinal was accompanied by Francisco Javier Acero Pérez, OAR, auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese. The communications office of the primatial archdiocese of Mexico invited all the faithful to join in prayer for the Holy Father and for the fruits of the synodal journey that the Mexican Church continues to undertake.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by the EWTN News English Service.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Leo XIV, who plays the daily online puzzle Wordle, is not the only papal puzzle lover.

His predecessor and namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was also passionate about wordplay, anonymously publishing riddles in Latin.

Going by the pseudonym "X," the Italian-born Pope Leo used to craft poetic puzzles for a Roman periodical at the turn of the 19th century.

The modern-day Pope Leo from Chicago, however, is a fan of the New York Times' popular online word game in which players get six chances to guess a five-letter word. 

During a live link-up with thousands of young people taking part in the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis and millions more online Nov. 21, Pope Leo was asked about and shared his gaming strategy.

"I use a different word for Wordle every day. So there is no set starting word in case you're wondering," he said, laughing. His older brother, John Prevost, has said the two of them also play the multiplayer game, Words with Friends, online regularly and compare scores.

So while Pope Leo XIV likes to play word games, his 19th-century predecessor liked to create them.

Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903, created lengthy riddles, known as "charades," in Latin in which readers had to guess a rebus-like answer from two or more words that together formed the syllables of a new word.

Eight of his puzzles were published anonymously in "Vox Urbis," a Rome newspaper that was printed entirely in Latin between 1898 and 1913. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published an article about this historical detail in 2014.

According to the article, any "Vox Urbis" reader who submitted the correct answer to the riddle received a book of Latin poetry written by either Pope Leo or another noted Catholic figure.  

The identity of the mysterious riddle-maker, however, was eventually revealed by a French reporter covering the Vatican for the daily newspaper Le Figaro.

Felix Ziegler published his scoop Jan. 9, 1899, a year after the puzzles started appearing, revealing that "Mr. X" was, in fact, the reigning pope, the Vatican newspaper said. 

In the pope's hometown, Carpineto Romano, which is about 35 miles southeast of Rome, students at the middle school named for him published 26 of the pope's Latin puzzles in a book titled, "Aenigmata: The Charades of Pope Leo XIII." It includes puzzles that teachers and pupils found, but which had never been published before.

One example of the pope's Latin riddles talked of a "little boat nimbly dancing," which sprang a leak as it "welcomed the shore so near advancing."

"The whole your eyes have known, your pallid cheeks have shown; for oh! the swelling tide no bravest heart could hide, when your dear mother died," continues the translation of part of the riddle-poem.

The answer, "lacrima," ("teardrop") merges clues elsewhere in the poem for "lac" ("milk") and "rima" ("leak" or "fissure").

Pope Leo XIII, who headed the universal church from 1878 to 1903, was a trained Vatican diplomat and a man of culture.

He was even a member of an exclusive society of learning founded in Rome in 1690 called the Academy of Arcadia, whose purpose was to "wage war on the bad taste" engulfing baroque Italy. Pope Leo, whose club name was "Neandro Ecateo," was the last pope to be a member of the circle of poets, artists, musicians and highly cultured aristocrats and religious. 

The pope was also passionate about hunting and viniculture. Unable to leave the confines of the Vatican after Italy was unified and the papal states brought to an end in 1870, he pursued his hobbies in the Vatican Gardens.

He had a wooden blind set up to hide in while trapping birds, which he then would set free immediately.

He also had his own small vineyard, which, according to one historical account, he tended himself, hoeing out the weeds, and visiting often for moments of prayer and writing poetry.

Apparently, one day, gunfire was heard from the pope's vineyard, triggering fears of a papal assassination attempt.

Instead, it turned out the pope had ordered a papal guard to send a salvo of bullets into the air to scare off the sparrows who were threatening his grape harvest.

Pope Leo XIII has the fourth-longest pontificate in history -- at 25 years -- after being nudged out of third place by St. John Paul II, who was pope for more than 26 years. St. Peter is considered the longest-reigning pontiff at 34 years. 

Pope Leo XIII wrote 86 encyclicals, including the church's groundbreaking "Rerum Novarum," which ushered in the era of Catholic social teaching.

Known for his openness to historical sciences, Pope Leo ordered in 1881 that the Vatican Secret Archives be open to researchers, and he formally established the Vatican Observatory in 1891 as a visible sign of the church's centuries-old support for science.

The pope closed the large bronze doors of St. Peter’s Basilica on Jan. 6, 2025, when the Jubilee of Hope concluded. | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 15, 2026 / 17:42 pm (CNA).

With the final sealing on Jan. 16 of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Holy See will complete the closing — which includes the actual masonry work — of the four Holy Doors of the papal basilicas following the Jubilee of Hope.

The concluding rite of closing the Holy Door of St. Mary Major Basilica took place Jan. 13. St. John Lateran Basilica’s was closed Jan. 14 and the Holy Door of St. Paul Outside the Walls was closed Jan. 15.

The Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica will be sealed shut on Jan. 16.

The so-called “sanpietrini,” the staff of the Fabric of St. Peter — comprising carpenters, cabinetmakers, and electricians — who normally handle the maintenance of the basilica, will repeat the process they have already carried out in the other three basilicas: They will erect a brick wall inside the church to permanently seal the Holy Door.

In addition, the traditional metal capsule (“capsis”), a bronze box, will be inserted into the wall of the church. It will contain the official closing document, the coins minted during the jubilee year, and the keys to the Holy Door.

These elements serve as material and symbolic testimony of the holy year, which, as the pope emphasized in the Jan. 6 ceremony in which he closed the great doors of the Vatican basilica, has concluded on the calendar but not in the spiritual life of the Catholic Church.

In all the papal basilicas, the official document of closing the Holy Door has been deposited along with the key to the door and several pontifical medals from the last sealing, during the conclusion of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016 to the present day.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for relations with states and international organizations of the Holy See. | Credit: Santosh Digal

Jan 15, 2026 / 13:37 pm (CNA).

Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for relations with states and international organizations of the Holy See, described the practice of surrogacy as a “new form of colonialism” in which the interests of adults prevail over the rights of children.

The Italian Embassy to the Holy See hosted the Jan. 13 event “A Common Front for Human Dignity: Preventing the Commodification of Women and Children in Surrogacy” with the aim of fostering international debate on this practice and raising awareness of its ethical, legal, and social implications.

The event, held at the Borromeo Palace in Rome, is part of an awareness campaign promoted by the Italian Ministry for Family, Birth Rate, and Equal Opportunities together with the Holy See at the United Nations.

In his address, Gallagher stated that surrogacy is an issue that concerns all of humanity and therefore urged a united front to stop “the commodification of women and children.”

The Vatican official emphasized that this practice “exploits bodies and takes any meaning out of relationships,” reducing the person to a mere product, as Pope Francis has denounced. He also noted that Pope Leo XIV recently warned that surrogacy sacrifices the rights of children.

During his address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, the pontiff denounced that “by turning gestation into a negotiable service, the dignity of both is violated: that of the child, who is reduced to a ‘product,’ and that of the mother, by exploiting her body and the generative process and altering the original relational vocation of the family.”

In this context, Gallagher warned that surrogacy — although presented as “an act of generosity” — reduces the person to an “object of transaction.”

“It’s the sale of a child, handed over to the buyers by virtue of a contract that places the interests of the adults at the center, and not those of the children,” he said emphatically.

He also stated that it reduces women’s bodies to a “mere reproductive instrument,” affecting the social conception of motherhood and human dignity.

After recalling that feminist groups also reject surrogacy, Gallagher emphasized that it is “a new form of colonialism” that exploits the most vulnerable people and pointed out that women’s consent is often the result of “financial pressures.”

Finally, the Vatican official argued for the “total abolition” of surrogacy and expressed its opposition to the creation of an international regulatory framework, which, in his view, would lead to “more children destined to be sold.”

The event also included speeches by the Italian ambassador to the Holy See, Francesco Di Nitto; the dean of the diplomatic corps to the Holy See and ambassador of Cyprus, George Poulides; and Italian Minister for Family, Natality, and Equal Opportunities Eugenia Roccella.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News.

Pope Leo XIV next to the new mosaic of him that will be added to St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica in Rome. | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 15, 2026 / 12:54 pm (CNA).

A mosaic bearing the official portrait of Pope Leo XIV was presented to the pontiff on Jan. 14. The mosaic will be placed in St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica at the request of the basilica’s archpriest, Cardinal James Michael Harvey.

The artwork, which, according to ancient tradition, is created upon the election of each pope, was made in the Vatican Mosaic Studio of the Fabric of St. Peter, where the basilica’s mosaics are currently being conserved through restoration work and where artwork is also produced for sale to the public.

Thanks to the skill and experience of its mosaic artists, who still use ancient technical and artistic methods, mosaics are produced that are inspired by masterpieces of sacred and secular art.

The mosaic “tondo” — from the Italian word meaning “round” — of the Holy Father is 54 inches in diameter and was made with glass enamels and gold on a metal structure, according to the Vatican.

The mosaic is composed of more than 15,000 tesserae — the small pieces used to create the mosaic — including some that date back to the 19th century. These pieces were created using the ancient technique of cut mosaic and have been fixed with the traditional oil-based stucco of the Vatican tradition.

The mosaic will be placed in the space next to the portrait of Pope Francis, in the right nave of the papal basilica, at an approximate height of 43 feet.

The work is based on a pictorial sketch by the Italian artist Rodolfo Papa, an oil painting on canvas that will be preserved in the Fabric of St. Peter in the Vatican.

Also participating in the presentation were Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, and Harvey along with the abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Donato Ogliari.

At the end of the presentation, the Holy Father invited all those present to join him in a moment of prayer.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu in 2019. | Credit: Daniel Ibanez/EWTN

Jan 14, 2026 / 11:45 am (CNA).

The Vatican’s Court of Cassation has cleared the way for the appeal phase of the Secretariat of State funds trial — commonly tied in headlines to Cardinal Angelo Becciu — rejecting last-ditch procedural challenges and accepting the recusal of Vatican Promoter of Justice Alessandro Diddi from the case.

In two separate rulings — one brief and another running eight pages — the court closed the remaining disputes that had stalled the appeal proceedings over the Holy See’s investment in a luxury property on Sloane Avenue in London.

The Cassation decisions mean the appeal will proceed without Diddi, and they also uphold the appeal court’s earlier finding that the promoter’s office filed its own appeal improperly and outside required procedures and deadlines. As a result, the appeal phase will now focus primarily on defense appeals — which could at most lead to reduced sentences or even acquittals for some defendants.

The appeal trial is scheduled to resume Feb. 3.

What the Cassation court decided

The case reached the Court of Cassation after a series of procedural clashes in the appeal court, including:

— defense motions seeking Diddi’s recusal following intercepted communications suggesting contacts with individuals involved in the wider case;

— defense arguments that the promoter’s appeal was inadmissible because it failed to follow procedural rules and timelines; and

— a countermove from the promoter’s office seeking to challenge the appeal court itself — effectively attempting to halt proceedings by disputing the court’s authority to declare the promoter’s appeal inadmissible.

The Vatican’s Court of Cassation accepted Diddi’s decision to abstain from the case, a move that effectively ends the push to force a formal ruling against him. In its more detailed ruling, the court reaffirmed that the promoter’s appeal was filed incorrectly and that the appeal court acted properly in declaring it inadmissible.

The court is presided over by Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, with Cardinals Matteo Zuppi, Augusto Paolo Lojudice, and Mauro Gambetti among the judges, alongside other members of the panel.

Background: London deal and first verdicts

The broader trial centers on Vatican financial management tied to the Secretariat of State and its London real estate investment. Vatican prosecutors argued that intermediaries worked together to extract money from the Holy See as control of the property shifted between financiers.

Becciu — the first cardinal tried by a Vatican civil tribunal following a decision by Pope Francis — was convicted in the first-instance verdict and sentenced to five years and six months in prison on charges including embezzlement and fraud. Other defendants received prison sentences as well, including Enrico Crasso (seven years), Raffaele Mincione (five years and six months), Cecilia Marogna (three years and nine months), and Gianluigi Torzi (six years). In total, first-instance convictions amounted to about 37 years of prison time, along with an order to confiscate 166 million euros ($193.6 million), though several defendants were acquitted on some counts.

The appeal phase has unfolded in a changed Vatican context after the death of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo XIV, who has signaled he intends to let Vatican justice proceed without the kinds of papal interventions that marked earlier stages of the case.

This story was  first published by ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Pope Leo XIV gives the first general audience of 2026 in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Jan. 7, 2026. | Credit: Vatican Media

Jan 14, 2026 / 06:20 am (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV urged Christians on Wednesday to set aside time in their daily lives to speak with God in prayer and warned about the harm to one’s relationship with him when this is ignored.

“Time dedicated to prayer, meditation, and reflection cannot be lacking in the Christian’s day and week,” the pontiff said during the catechesis at his general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Jan. 14.

The pope devoted the second week of his series of teachings on the documents of the Second Vatican Council to a closer examination of the dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum dedicated to divine revelation.

Pointing to the document, he highlighted listening and dialogue with God as foundations of a Christian life.

“From this perspective, the first attitude to cultivate is listening, so that the divine Word may penetrate our minds and our hearts; at the same time, we are required to speak with God, not to communicate to him what he already knows but to reveal ourselves to ourselves,” Leo said.

The Holy Father also drew on the human experience of friendship to warn about the dangers of neglecting one’s spiritual life: “Our experience tells us that friendships can come to an end through a dramatic gesture of rupture, or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost.”

“If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded. Let us welcome it, let us take care of this relationship, and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation,” he said.

The pope insisted that this living relationship with God is cultivated above all through prayer, understood as an authentic friendship with the Lord.

This experience, he explained, is achieved first of all in liturgical and community prayer, “in which we do not decide what to hear from the Word of God, but it is he himself who speaks to us through the Church.” It is also achieved in personal prayer, which takes place “in the interiority of the heart and mind,” and which should form part of every believer’s day and week.

‘Only when we speak with God can we also speak about him’

The pontiff stressed that only from a personal relationship with God is it possible to bear authentic witness to the faith: “Only when we speak with God can we also speak about him.”

Referring to the dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum, promulgated by St. Paul VI in 1965, Leo emphasized that Christian revelation is grounded in a living and personal dialogue between God and humanity. Through this dialogue, God reveals himself as an ally who invites each person into a true relationship of friendship.

The pope noted that divine revelation has a profoundly dialogical character, proper to the experience of friendship: It does not tolerate silence but is nourished by the exchange of true words capable of creating communion.

Leo XIV also distinguished between “words” and “chatter,” explaining that the latter remains on the surface and does not create authentic relationships. In genuine relationships, he said, words do not serve merely to exchange information but to reveal who we are and to establish a deep bond with the other.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- If Christians are to speak about God, then they must dedicate time each day and week to listening to God's word in prayer and the liturgy, Pope Leo XIV said.

"We are called to live and cultivate friendship with the Lord" through prayer, he said Jan. 14 during his weekly general audience.

"This is achieved first of all in liturgical and community prayer, in which we do not decide what to hear from the Word of God, but it is he himself who speaks to us through the Church," he said. "It is then achieved in personal prayer, which takes place in the interiority of the heart and mind."

"Time dedicated to prayer, meditation and reflection cannot be lacking in the Christian's day and week," he said. "Only when we speak with God can we also speak about him." 

Speaking to visitors gathered in the Paul VI Audience Hall for the general audience, the pope continued a new series of talks dedicated to the Second Vatican Council, which "rediscovered the face of God as the Father who, in Christ, calls us to be his children," Pope Leo said in his first talk introducing the series Jan. 7.

He dedicated his Jan. 14 catechesis to the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, "Dei Verbum," calling it "one of the most beautiful and important" documents of the council.

The document, published in 1965, affirms "a fundamental point of Christian faith," that "Jesus Christ radically transforms man's relationship with God," who is no longer invisible or distant, but has been made flesh, he said.

Out of the abundance of his love, the Lord "speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that he may invite and take them into fellowship with himself," he said. "The only condition of the New Covenant is love." 

While the Covenant is eternal, and "nothing can separate us from his love," the revelation of God has "the dialogical nature of friendship," which "does not tolerate silence, but is nurtured by the exchange of true words," he said.

Just as human friendships can end with "a dramatic gesture of rupture or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost," one's friendship with Jesus must be cultivated and cared for daily, Pope Leo said.

Therefore, the first step is to cultivate an "attitude of listening, so that the divine Word may penetrate our minds and our hearts," he said. "At the same time, we are required to speak with God, not to communicate to him what he already knows, but to reveal ourselves to ourselves."

"If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded," he said.

"Let us take care of this relationship, and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation," he said.

Pope Leo: Accept God's invitation of friendship!

A look at Pope Leo's general audience Jan. 14, 2026. (CNS video/Robert Duncan)

WASHINGTON - “We are tremendously grateful for the Administration’s work to address certain challenges facing foreign-born religious workers, their employers, and the American communities they serve,” said Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Bishop Brendan J. Cahill, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration. 

Today, the Trump Administration issued an Interim Final Rule that will soon be published in the Federal Register, which will impact foreign-born religious workers seeking to continue their ministries in the United States. Catholic priests, religious, and others who hold religious worker (R-1) visas are generally required to depart the United States upon reaching the maximum period of stay for that visa (five years) and then can possibly return to the country on a subsequent R-1 visa. Previously, they were required to spend at least one full year outside of the United States between R-1 visas. The rule announced today amends federal regulations to require no minimum time outside of the country before religious workers can return on a subsequent R-1 visa, provided they meet all other requirements. 

This modification gives relief to religious workers and the communities they serve while the religious workers await legal permanent residency (commonly referred to as a “green card”). The wait time for a green card for religious workers has grown to several decades long. For multiple years, the USCCB has been alerting policymakers to the hardship this situation creates for religious organizations and people of faith, especially in more isolated or rural parts of the country. Together with interfaith partners, the bishops have been advocating since 2023 for the specific regulatory change published today. 

Archbishop Coakley and Bishop Cahill’s full statement follows: 

“We are tremendously grateful for the Administration’s work to address certain challenges facing foreign-born religious workers, their employers, and the American communities they serve. The value of the Religious Worker Visa Program and our appreciation for the efforts undertaken to support it cannot be overstated. This targeted change is a truly significant step that will help facilitate essential religious services for Catholics and other people of faith throughout the United States by minimizing disruptions to cherished ministries. 

“In order to provide the full extent of the relief needed and truly promote the free exercise of religion in our country, we continue to urge Congress to enact the bipartisan Religious Workforce Protection Act.” 

### 
 

St. Patrick Cathedral in the Diocese of Charlotte. | Credit: Diocese of Charlotte

Jan 13, 2026 / 11:41 am (CNA).

Reacting to Bishop Michael Martin’s Dec. 17, 2025, pastoral letter announcing the impending abolishment of altar rails and kneelers in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, 31 of the diocese’s priests have signed a letter to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts containing a set of questions, or “dubia,” related to the matter.

According to The Pillar, which obtained a leaked copy of the diocesan priests’ letter last week, the priests directly question “whether a diocesan bishop may prohibit the use of kneelers to assist members of the faithful who, of their own accord, wish to receive holy Communion kneeling.”

In December, Martin issued a pastoral letter saying that by Jan. 16, the use of altar rails, kneelers, and “prie-dieus” (movable kneelers) will no longer be permitted in the diocese, and any “temporary or movable fixtures used for kneeling for the reception of Communion” must be removed.

In his pastoral letter, Martin said while an “individual member of the faithful” is free to kneel to receive and should not be denied Communion, the “normative posture for all the faithful in the United States is standing,” per guidelines from the U.S. bishops.

“The faithful who feel compelled to kneel to receive the Eucharist as is their individual right should also prayerfully consider the blessing of communal witness that is realized when we share a common posture,” he wrote.

In their letter to the Vatican, the diocesan priests specifically question the bishop’s actions to impede the faithful from kneeling at built-in altar rails when that is the norm for a parish, a practice the bishop has insisted upon when he celebrates Mass at such churches in the diocese, according to Brian Williams, an advocate for Charlotte’s Traditional Latin Mass community.

When Martin concelebrated a Mass with several other bishops last summer at a parish whose commmunicants usually receive at temporary kneelers, per the bishop’s direction, according to Williams, Communion was distributed in front of the kneelers to discourage parishioners from kneeling.

“Since an altar rail is a common and traditional ‘structure and ornamentation’ that marks off the sanctuary from the body of the church within the Roman rite, it is asked whether a diocesan bishop has the legitimate authority to prohibit the erection of altar rails within churches or other sacred places in his diocese,” the diocese’s priests query in their letter, as reported by The Pillar.

A priest in the Charlotte Diocese who wished to remain anonymous due to an alleged “atmosphere of fear, retaliation, and mistrust” told CNA that the actual number of the dubia’s supporters is “well north” of the 31, or a quarter of all priests in the diocese, who actually signed it.

“Certain priests have prudentially decided to withhold their signature,” he told CNA.

According to a social media post by the Traditional Latin Mass community in Charlotte: “Several diocesan sources in Charlotte have confirmed that the actual support for the dubia is closer to 50% of priests, nearly double the number of signers.”

In his December pastoral letter, Martin also specified norms for extraordinary ministers, prohibited the practice of intinction (when the consecrated bread is dipped into the wine before being placed on the tongue), and encouraged the reception of Communion under both kinds — the bread and the wine — which he says fell out of practice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In May 2025, a draft of a letter detailing several other of Martin’s intended reforms of traditional practices in the diocese was leaked. In that letter, the bishop said that because “there is no mention in the conciliar documents, the reform of the liturgy, or current liturgical documents concerning the use of altar rails or kneelers for the distribution of holy Communion, they are not to be employed in the Diocese of Charlotte.”

The diocesan priests’ Jan. 5 letter to the Vatican manifests that “both the leaked letter from this past summer and the pastoral letter of Dec. 17 have caused a great deal of concern amongst the priests and faithful of the Diocese of Charlotte, especially in those parishes that have allowed the faithful to use an altar rail or prie-dieu for the reception of holy Communion.”

The diocesan priests’ letter also addresses issues from Martin’s leaked May letter in which the prelate suggested that certain liturgical practices and elements such as the use of Latin, ornately decorated vestments, certain prayers, and altar ornaments will be prohibited because they are not in accord with changes made after the Second Vatican Council.

Asked about the Jan. 5 letter containing the dubia, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Charlotte told CNA that the bishop “has not ‘restricted kneeling.’”

In a Jan. 8 statement to CNA, Martin stated: “My brother priests are always welcome to ask questions and seek clarification about the application of liturgical norms. To be clear, the only modifications that have been made since the Diocese of Charlotte last updated its liturgical norms in 2011 involve the distribution of holy Communion, as spelled out in my letter to the faithful in December.”

Apparently referring to the leaked May letter, Martin continued: “Questions arising from the internal and confidential conversations of the Presbyteral Council are premature and lack substance, since no definitive action has taken place outside of the December 2025 letter. The norms highlighted in the letter keep our diocese aligned with the broader norms of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the universal Church.”