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Year: 2025

Pope Francis, still recovering from pneumonia, meets with Vice President JD Vance on Easter Sunday

Pope Francis, still recovering from pneumonia, meets with Vice President JD Vance on Easter Sunday

Pope Francis and Vice President JD Vance met briefly on Easter Sunday at the Casa Santa Marta, the Holy See Press Office confirmed. “I know you have not been feeling great, but it’s good to see you in better health,” Vance told the Pope in a video shared by Vatican Media. “Thank you for seeing me.” Francis, 88, who is still recovering from a near-fatal bout of pneumonia, received Vance in one of the reception rooms of the Vatican hotel where he lives. The pontiff offered the Catholic vice president three big chocolate Easter eggs for Vance’s three young children, who did not attend, as well as a Vatican tie and rosaries. Vance’s motorcade was on Vatican territory for 17 minutes, the Associated Press reported.  POPE FRANCIS VISITS ROME PRISON DURING HOLY WEEK Francis and Vance have tangled sharply over migration and the Trump administration’s plans to deport migrants en masse. “A cordial conversation took place,” a media release said. “During which the common commitment to protect the right to religious freedom and freedom of conscience was renewed.” “There was also an exchange of views on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention focused on migrants, refugees and those in prison,” it continued.  POPE FRANCIS MAKES APPEARANCE AFTER PALM SUNDAY MASS AT THE VATICAN Francis, who has greatly cut back his workload to recover, delegated the celebration of Easter Mass to another cardinal. Francis has made caring for migrants a hallmark of his papacy. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, the AP reports. Following his meeting with Francis, he joined his family for Easter Mass at St. Paul Outside the Walls, one of the four pontifical basilicas in Rome. The Vances visited the tomb of the apostle St. Paul, who is said to be located there. Vance met Saturday with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Children’s author says his faith-based books are a way to fight the culture war: ‘Kids are on the frontline’

Children’s author says his faith-based books are a way to fight the culture war: ‘Kids are on the frontline’

As Easter serves as a reminder of renewal and hope for many in the Christian faith, the author of a series of new children’s books warns that the culture war and the fight for family values isn’t over. Anthony DeStefano is a bestselling author renowned for his Christian-themed books for adults and children. His books often bring Biblical stories to life through vivid, animated storytelling. His latest, “From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine,” introduces children to the Eucharist—a central element of Catholic and Orthodox communion—in a way that’s simple and accessible.  “If the electorate rejects wokeism, what other options does the left have? What’s their most effective strategy? It’s to go after the kids,” DeStefano told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.  “It’s true that American voters have rejected the physical mutilation of children’s bodies through puberty blockers, sex hormones and irreversible gender transition surgeries,” DeStefano said. “But they also must recognize that the woke left, through the entertainment industry, is just as determined to mutilate the minds and souls of children through ideological propaganda. That’s a tough statement, but it’s true. Wokeness is not just about mutilating children’s bodies. It’s about mutilating children’s souls.” POPE REMARKS ON ‘BLESSING’ THAT COMES WITH FRAILTY; SAYS ‘WAR APPEARS EVEN MORE ABSURD’ IN HIS CURRENT STATE DeStefano’s works have been published in 18 countries and translated into 12 languages. For him, the path to becoming a children’s book author wasn’t so clear-cut from the start. A native New Yorker, he attended Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School, known for its rigorous academics programs—and where he met his English teacher. That teacher, Frank McCourt, won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir “Angela’s Ashes,” later adapted into a film. McCourt’s influence on DeStefano was immediate.  “He assigned us to write children’s books,” DeStefano recalled. “He wanted to force us to stop writing elaborately, as teenagers often do.” “I had always wanted to be a doctor,” he said. “A surgeon, to be exact.”  Yet, obstacles like organic chemistry and integral calculus led him to reassess his goals, he joked. In his mid-to-late twenties, DeStefano’s life took a turn in another direction, though. He found a deep connection to the Catholic faith, influenced by the writings of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, which led him back to writing. “I thought, ‘Ah, maybe, maybe there’s a way to combine both these great desires to be a writer and to be a doctor.’ Maybe what God really wants me to do is to be a healer of some kind, but to heal people, not with surgery, but through my writing,” he said. CATHOLIC BISHOP AND ORTHODOX ARTIST DISCUSS MATERIALISM, SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS FOR CHRIST, REUNIFICATION “That’s the genesis of my whole writing career, and writing simply,” DeStefano said. “And then, of course, as I got older, and I recognized more and more that there was a culture war going on, I realized that children represented the front lines in that cultural war. And so I thought to myself, if I could write books that help instill timeless traditional values at an age when kids are still open, curious and impressionable, then I would be doing something meaningful to counterbalance the secular messages that bombard them from the legacy media and the entertainment world.” In 2018, DeStefano deviated from writing children’s books and wrote “Inside the Atheist Mind: Unmasking the Religion of Those Who Say There Is No God,” which immediately drew criticism and negative reviews online.  Of that experience, he said, “it was exhilarating,” adding that “if you’re attacked by the secular culture, then that means you’re doing your job.” For DeStefano, restoring “objective truth” of family values and faith to the current social landscape is one of the keys to reject “moral relativism” prevalent in the culture today. CONCERNED PARENTS OF TRANS KIDS COMPARED TO ‘HATE GROUPS’ BY COLORADO DEM: WOULDN’T ‘ASK THE KKK’ FOR OPINION CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Now, Easter is the celebration of the resurrection, and that’s the ultimate proof that light conquers darkness,” he said. “The same power that rolled away the stone on Easter morning is available to us as we push back against the lies that are being fed to us.”

‘Christ is King’ under siege: Evangelicals warn phrase is being weaponized by hate groups

‘Christ is King’ under siege: Evangelicals warn phrase is being weaponized by hate groups

Leaders of a prominent research institute focused on identifying and predicting trends in misinformation said evangelical leaders are united in reclaiming the phrase “Christ is King” from far-right and far-left entities seeking to twist its meaning. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) at Rutgers, which recently published studies showing how DEI training can fuel hostility and how political assassinations are gaining support online, was early in scientifically measuring the trend of online extremists hijacking the phrase, “Christ is King.” “We were looking at a lot of different kinds of heated languages and arguments and this sort of look online for threat-actors in general,” the authors of a new March report told Fox News Digital. “We noted that prevalence of the use of the term and a mismatch of the actors that were using it, that just didn’t make any sense. And we want to understand, like, what is the origin of this? Where did it come from?” VANCE SAYS ‘JESUS IS KING’ AT WISCONSIN RALLY Actors like Nick Fuentes, a far-right Holocaust denier and podcaster, were co-opting “Christ the King” to unify behind what they considered their righteous political mission, authors of the report said. The institute said “Christ the King” resurged with Pope Pius XI’s 1925 institution of The Feast of Christ the King in response to nationalist and Communist ideologies undermining Christianity’s role in the West. Instead of being the “spiritual guide,” the phrase has been co-opted by both human and “bot” actors to rally behind ideals counter to Judeo-Christianity. “What was really fascinating is that the NCRI folks were in real-time tracking the bot activity,” said Rev. Johnnie Moore, a former commissioner for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “The question was how much of this vicious, virulent antisemitism that emerged when we published the report were these bot-nets – It was north of 30% of all the activity … were these antisemitic bot-networks latching onto [Christ is King.]” Canadian psychologist-commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson, who co-authored the report, said after the study was released in March, “the narcissists, hedonists and psychopaths occupy the fringes wherever they obtain power.” “[A]nd using God’s name, attempt to subvert the power of the divine to their own devices. A warning – not everyone who says “Lord, Lord,” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING SERVES AS INVITATION TO OPEN WIDE THE DOORS TO OUR HEART TO GOD, SAYS PRIEST The report found evidence of mass “manipulation tactics” and, beginning in 2021, more than 50% of engagements were driven by “extremist influencers” like Fuentes and kickboxer-turned-commentator Andrew Tate. Moore noted Thursday that in addition to NCRI’s findings, evidence also surfaced after antisemitic protests exploded in New York and Los Angeles that there were reported social engagement connections to the Chinese Communist Party. “It’s quite clear that people are trying to steal this phrase from us, and we’re saying no, it’s a Christian phrase,” Moore said. “You sure as anything can’t use it to spread hate against Jews.” Moore, who had just left the White House’s Easter Dinner, where he said the administration also welcomed religion back to the sociopolitical fore, added that no matter how hard fringe elements try to co-opt Judeo-Christian slogans, the bloc is a force to be reckoned with. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP He added that those on the far-right who believe their antisemitic tenets with a Christian-like righteousness often forget “there’s no Christianity without Judaism.” “They’re losing their battle to Christianize antisemitism, because there’s just a sheer amount of Evangelicals in every country… we’re all pro-Israel. Evangelical leader Robert Stearns said that Christians must not let “extremists hijack what belongs to God – ‘Christ is King’ is a cry of worship, not war.” Meanwhile, Princeton jurisprudence professor Robby George told Fox News Digital that when you hear the phrase as a Christian, the proper response is, “Amen.” “But if you hear someone say the same words as an antisemitic taunt, the correct reply is, ‘I stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters.’ Don’t be played,” the Catholic influencer said. “What will happen at Easter is there will be countless millions of Christians all around the world that will be saying these words, and they only mean one thing, and it will drown out all of these people trying to steal our words to spread their hate,” Moore added.