Paul Badde. / Credit: “EWTN News Nightly”/Screenshot

CNA Staff, Nov 10, 2025 / 16:36 pm (CNA).

Paul Badde, author of many well-known books such as “Benedict Up Close,” “The Face of God,” and “The True Icon,” died Monday morning after a long illness.

The fresco of St. Leo the Great, doctor of the Church, in the cupola of the Church of St. Maximus of Turin, Italy. / Credit: Renata Sedmakova/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 10, 2025 / 13:25 pm (CNA).

Throughout the last two millennia, the Catholic Church has only granted the title “doctor of the Church” to 38 saints, one of whom we celebrate today on Nov. 10: St. Leo the Great, the 45th bishop of Rome. 

Pope Leo I, who was the first pope to be remembered posthumously as “the great,” began his papacy in 440 and served until his death in 461. During his pontificate, he worked to clarify doctrines related to Christ’s human and divine natures.

The pontiff was a “pope-theologian, but he’s also known as a remarkable bishop,” Thomas Clemmons, a professor of Church history at The Catholic University of America, told CNA, adding that “theologian popes are rare.”

St. Leo’s papacy began nine years after the Council of Ephesus, which condemned Nestorius and the heresy of Nestorianism, leading many of Nestorius’ followers to schism. The heresy rejected the close union of Christ’s human and divine natures and rejected the Marian title of “Theotokos,” or God-bearer, claiming that Mary only gave birth to Christ’s human nature.

Rising out of the Nestorian schism were more Christological conflicts over the relationship between Christ’s humanity and divinity. Eutyches, an opponent of Nestorius, went too far in the opposite direction, claiming that Christ’s human and divine natures were fused into one single nature. His human nature, Eutyches claimed, was “dissolved like a drop of honey in the sea.”

This heretical understanding, according to Clemmons, turned Christ into a “third thing” or a “kind of monster” rather than the Catholic understanding of Christ as “one Person” with “complete and true humanity and complete and true divinity.”

To combat Eutyches’ error, Pope Leo wrote a letter to Flavian I, the archbishop of Constantinople, which clarified the hypostatic union of Christ’s distinct human nature and distinct divine nature. The letter, which became known as “Leo’s Tome,” is the pontiff’s most famous work and set the stage for defining Christological doctrines at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. 

“Both natures retain their own proper character without loss: and as the form of God did not do away with the form of a slave, so the form of a slave did not impair the form of God,” Pope Leo wrote in the letter. 

“From the mother of the Lord was received nature, not faultiness: nor in the Lord Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin’s womb, does the wonderfulness of his birth make his nature unlike ours,” the letter continued. “For he who is true God is also true man: and in this union there is no lie, since the humility of manhood and the loftiness of the Godhead both meet there.”

In emphasizing the fullness of Christ’s human nature in the letter, Leo cites the genealogy of Christ listed in the Scripture, along with his human experiences, particularly suffering and death on the cross: “Let [Eutyches] not disbelieve [Christ is a] man with a body like ours, since he acknowledges [Christ] to have been able to suffer: seeing that the denial of his true flesh is also the denial of his bodily suffering.”

Leo emphasized the words of the Creed when emphasizing the fullness of Christ’s divine nature, stating: “Not only is God believed to be both Almighty and the Father, but the Son is shown to be co-eternal with him, differing in nothing from the Father because he is God from God, Almighty from Almighty, and being born from the Eternal One is co-eternal with him.” 

The pontiff bolstered his argument with citations from Scripture that point to the fullness of Christ’s divine nature and the fullness of his human nature. 

“To be hungry and thirsty, to be weary, and to sleep, is clearly human,” Leo said. “But to satisfy 5,000 men with five loaves, and to bestow on the woman of Samaria living water, droughts of which can secure the drinker from thirsting any more, to walk upon the surface of the sea with feet that do not sink, and to quell the risings of the waves by rebuking the winds, is, without any doubt, divine.”

Clemmons praised “Leo’s Tome” as a “simple and clear text” that is “very readable and very instructional now,” even more than 1,500 years later. 

At the time, however, the letter was met with hostility from supporters of Eutyches’ position in Constantinople: “[It was] sent there, read aloud, and they rejected it,” Clemmons said. Emperor Theodosius II convened the faux Second Council of Ephesus in 449, which rejected St. Leo’s letter and defended Eutyches. The supporters of Eutyches brutally assaulted Archbishop Flavian I for defending St. Leo’s position, deposed him, and sent him into exile. He died from his injuries.

St. Leo referred to the council as the “Latrocinium,” the “robber council,” and in 451 the Church convoked the Council of Chalcedon, which defined clearly the hypostatic union of Christ’s human and divine natures and rejected the Second Council of Ephesus.

Chalcedon Council documents cite Leo’s letter and affirm his teachings on the two natures of Christ, stating that Christ “must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united] … without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union.”

When speaking to a general audience in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI referred to St. Leo the Great as one of the greatest popes in the history of the Church.

“As the nickname soon attributed to him by tradition suggests, he was truly one of the greatest pontiffs to have honored the Roman See and made a very important contribution to strengthening its authority and prestige,” Benedict said.

This story was first published on Nov. 10, 2023, and has been updated.

Gabriel Dionisi, a 22-year-old college student who makes pro-life bumper stickers with the goal of spreading the pro-life message and spread awareness to others, displays one of his works. / Credit: Gabriel Dionisi

CNA Staff, Nov 10, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Born and raised Catholic, 22-year-old Gabriel Dionisi always knew that life begins at conception and that it’s wrong to kill an unborn child in the womb. But it wasn’t until he was a teenager that he became more interested in his faith and started to read more Catholic news, which led to him learning more about the abortion issue. Feeling called to do more for the unborn, he created a pro-life ministry using bumper stickers to help spread awareness. 

“I’d heard the word abortion before, I knew it was a sin, but I didn’t realize how widespread it was,” Dionisi told CNA in an interview. 

One day at Mass, he read a pamphlet explaining the different abortion procedures and was left “disturbed” after reading about how many unborn babies are dismembered in certain kinds of abortion procedures.

He said he was also surprised to hear how many women are pressured into abortion.

“I remember being struck by reading about how many women didn’t want to have abortions — felt pressured or coerced or it wasn’t their first choice — and that was also surprising to me because it made me think, ‘OK, we could actually do something about this,’” he said.

In 2018 Dionisi decided to create bumper stickers encouraging individuals to “choose life.” For women who might be in crisis pregnancies, the stickers include the URL to Option Line, a website run by Heartbeat International that offers a map of pregnancy resource centers around the country. The site also offers a 24/7 helpline with counselors who speak both English and Spanish.

Dionisi explained that he chose to create bumper stickers because they’re inexpensive to print and “there’s such a good return on investment because if you put a bumper sticker on your car and let’s say 20 people see it every day as you drive, you multiply that by 365, that’s over 7,000 a year.”

Since launching his pro-life ministry, Dionisi has shared over 10,000 bumper stickers with people in 45 out of the 50 states.

Speaking to the importance of defending the unborn, Dionisi said: “It’s foundational. If we want to see our country succeed and thrive, we need to respect that value of equal human dignity.”

He added: “The magnitude of the problem is that so many babies are being lost and not just that, but so many women who are being hurt, men who are being hurt, and it affects our whole society when people are just carrying that wound around with them.”

Dionisi said he hopes his bumper stickers are helping to spread awareness of the many resources available for pregnant women in need.

“I think it’s important to spread this awareness to everybody because you never know when someone in your own life might be going through a situation where they need help,” he said.

“The amazing thing about the pro-life movement is that there are so many opportunities for us, just as regular people, to literally save the lives of others. This is especially important as Catholics, because we know that every human being is made in the image of God and has an enormous potential to bring more love into the world.”

Dionisi’s free pro-life bumper stickers can be found here.

Pro-life advocates participate in a prayer procession in Regensburg, Germany. / Credit: ADF International

Regensburg, Germany, Nov 7, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

The town lifted a 100-meter (328-foot) censorship zone around abortion clinics after courts ruled the restrictions violated constitutional freedoms.

Blessed Clemens August von Galen. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Münster/Domkapitular Gustav Albers (CC BY 2.5)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 7, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Here is a roundup of Catholic world news from the past week that you might have missed.

Thousands of European scouts make a pilgrimage to France. / Credit: Illian Callé

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 7, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

A total of 3,500 scouts and adult leaders from 13 European countries made a pilgrimage to the French town of Vézelay from Oct. 30–Nov. 2.

Then-Bishop of Verdun Jean-Paul Gusching speaks on the phone before the closing speech on the last day of the Conference des Eveques de France (French Bishops’ Conference), in Lourdes, southwestern France, on Nov. 8, 2022. / Credit: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images

EWTN News, Nov 6, 2025 / 16:02 pm (CNA).

In a statement issued Nov. 4, the apostolic nunciature in France said it had received “information concerning relationships toward women by Bishop Jean-Paul Gusching.”

The National Council of the Slovak Republic, the national Parliament of Slovakia, in Bratislava. / Credit: Peter Zelizňák via Wikimedia (Public domain)

EWTN News, Nov 6, 2025 / 11:00 am (CNA).

Bishops and educators have raised concerns about a major education overhaul signed into law by Slovak President Peter Pellegrini.

Father Francisco José Delgado, a priest of the Archdiocese of Toledo, Spain. / Credit: Photo courtesy of “La Sacristía de la Vendée”

Madrid, Spain, Nov 6, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

Father Francisco José Delgado, a member of the YouTube priests’ discussion group “The Sacristy of the Vendée,” has been declared innocent of “inciting hatred.”

Empty wheelchairs were used during a Nov. 4, 2025, anti-assisted suicide event in Rome. / Credit: Photo courtesy of ProVita & Famiglia

Rome, Italy, Nov 5, 2025 / 17:03 pm (CNA).

An initiative by an Italian pro-life group aims to denounce what the organization considers a “drift toward assisted suicide” in Italy.