The Church of St. Luke

Actor David Henrie in the new series “Seeking Beauty,” which airs on EWTN+. | Credit: EWTN Studios

Jan 22, 2026 / 12:00 pm (CNA).

Catholic figures gathered in Los Angeles on Jan. 16 for the premiere of “Seeking Beauty,” the first original series from EWTN Studios airing exclusively on the network’s brand-new streaming platform, EWTN+.

Here are five things to know about the new series and its host, actor David Henrie.

What is ‘Seeking Beauty’?

“Seeking Beauty” is a first-of-its-kind adventure documentary series that explores culture, architecture, food, art, and music, and aims to point viewers to the beautiful — and ultimately to the divine.

The series follows Henrie’s journey into the heart of Italy to explore what makes Italian culture one of the most beautiful in the world. It not only looks at the physical beauty of the country but also its spiritual richness.

Where can I watch it?

“Seeking Beauty” is available to watch exclusively on EWTN+, a free digital streaming platform that offers faith-based content. EWTN+ is available on RokuTV, GoogleTV, AppleTV, AmazonFireTV, and on EWTN.com.

Where does ‘Seeking Beauty’ take place?

The first season of “Seeking Beauty” takes place in several cities across Italy including Vatican City, Rome, Milan, Florence, and Venice.

Who is David Henrie?

Henrie is best known for his breakout role as Justin Russo on Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place.” He grew up in a Catholic household with Italian heritage; however, Henrie’s early adult years were marked by what he has described as a relativistic and agnostic period. He has also spoken about how the successes of early fame left him feeling unfulfilled and searching for deeper meaning.

Henrie’s return to the Catholic faith was a profound personal transformation that he says began around age 21 or 22.

A significant influence came while working on the movie “Little Boy,” where conversations with Catholic cast members Kevin James and Eduardo Verástegui, as well as a visit to St. Michael Abbey in Orange County, California — including his first confession since childhood — played a pivotal role in rediscovering his faith.

Since then, Henrie has embraced his faith publicly and personally, integrating his beliefs into his family life, creative projects, and charity work, including serving as a brand ambassador for Cross Catholic Outreach and participating in mission trips that reflect his commitment to living out his faith. He is married and has three children.

Will there be another season of ‘Seeking Beauty’?

Yes! The second season of the series was filmed in Spain and is scheduled to premiere this fall.

Daniel Ortega, dictator of Nicaragua, and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo. | Credit: Council of Communication and Citizenship of the Government of Nicaragua (CC0 1.0)

, Jan 22, 2026 / 11:30 am (CNA).

According to Open Doors’ World Watch List 2026 report, persecution is on the rise under Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua.

Father Tomaž Majcen celebrates daily Mass at Christ the King Church in Nuuk, Greenland, and he frequently travels to other towns to minister to the faithful scattered across the territory. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Tomaž Majcen

, Jan 22, 2026 / 11:00 am (CNA).

The friar who ministers to 800 Catholics on the world’s largest island watches international negotiations with unease.

Catholic students attend SEEK in January 2026. | Credit: FOCUS

Jan 22, 2026 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Multiple news reports have said the number of Generation Z Catholics is surging in the United States.

ZENIT, an international Catholic news service, and Magisterium AI, a Catholic artificial intelligence agency, cited data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study (CES) finding there are more Gen Z adults who identify as Catholic than those who identify as Protestant.

Claim: Among Gen Z, those born roughly between 1997 and 2012, Catholics outnumber Protestants for the first time in the United States.

The CES report found that in 2023 the group was made up of 21% Catholics, compared with 19% Protestants. But other researchers dispute the data based on its sampling methods.

EWTN News finds: There are likely still more Protestant young adults than Catholics, although available quantitative and anecdotal data on the question is not decisive.

“Overall, from looking at the broader context of our surveys, it seems clear that Catholics are more like 14-16% of Gen Z adults rather than 21%,” Brian Schaffner, co-director of CES said.

The breakdown: The Religion and Public Life research team at Pew Research Center told EWTN News that Pew surveys “find that among the youngest adults in the U.S., there are more Protestants than Catholics.”

“In fact, in our recent Religious Landscape Study, we found that among the youngest adults (those born between 2000-06 and who were roughly between the ages of 18 and 24 when the survey was conducted), there are about twice as many Protestants as Catholics,” the researchers said. “Within this age group, 28% are Protestant and 14% are Catholic.”

The team also noted its research found “that Catholics are not more numerous among young adults than among older adults.” Rather, “young adults as a whole are far less religious than older adults.”

“When it comes to Catholicism, far more young people have switched out than in,” according to Pew’s “ Religion Holds Steady in America” report. “Overall, 12% of today’s youngest adults have switched out of Catholicism. Meanwhile, 1% of adults ages 18 to 24 have switched into Catholicism, meaning that they identify as Catholic today after having been raised in another religion or no religion.”

Data variations

If Pew researchers found there are more Protestants than Catholics within young age groups, why is the CES data different?

“It is true that the 2023 CES shows that 21% of Gen Z American adults identify as Catholic compared to 19% who say Protestant,” Schaffner said.

“That said, I would note that once we account for sampling error, we can't be confident that the Catholic figure is actually larger than the Protestant figure. More importantly, it is quite clear that the 2023 figure is an outlier for our data.”

In 2022, 20% of Gen Z respondents identified as Protestant and 14% as Catholic. Based on the data and previous years’ findings, Schaffner said, “It seems pretty clear from looking at that context that the 2023 figure for Catholics is almost certainly too high.”

Ryan Burge, religion and politics researcher and professor at the John C. Danforth Center at Washington University, said there is “reason to doubt” the data due to “aberrations” in the 2023 CES, according to his article “ Is Catholicism Surging Among Younger Folks?”

“If you compare the 2023 data to that collected in 2022 from the oldest three generations (Silent, Boomers, Gen X), there’s not a big difference,” Burge said. “It’s a point or two off, which is just the nature of survey data.”

But, when examining millennials and Gen Z, the data is “definitely beyond the typical variation that exists in this type of work,” he said. “In 2022, 16% of millennials were Catholic — it’s 20% in the 2023 data. Among Gen Z, 15% were Catholic compared to 21% in 2023.”

“The 2023 CES data is a lot more Catholic than it ‘should’ be,” Burge said.

“For instance, about 16% of people born in 1990 were Catholic in 2020, 2021, and 2022. In 2023, that percentage is five points higher. That same gap exists for people born throughout the 1990s and even into the 2000s.”

Burge also noted other aberrations among the 2023 findings. The CES information reported the number of people who “never” or “seldom” attend Mass in 2023 dropped from 41% in 2022 to 38% in 2023, while the weekly attendees rose from 29% to 34%.

“Weekly attendance doesn’t just jump five points in one year,” Burge said.

There was also a large jump in 2023 in the share of Catholics who identify as “born-again” or “evangelical.” From 2008 through 2022 there was a steady increase in the number who identified as such, usually only changing by one or two percent points each year, but from 2022 to 2023 there was a nine-point increase.

Number of young Catholics may still be increasing

While the CES data has been questioned, it does not mean there are not increases in the number of Gen Z adults drawn to the faith.

EWTN News has previously found that several college campuses across the country witnessed a notable rise in baptisms and confirmations among students in 2025. Catholic evangelists told EWTN News that the growth reflects a deepening desire among young adults for certainty, stability, and faith.

The Cardinal Newman Society also found using National Catholic Educational Association and Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) data that there has been an increase in students at Catholic colleges, with an increase of 75%. In 1970, the data showed there were 411,111 students enrolled in Catholic colleges; in 2022 there were 717,197.

In a press release, the Cardinal Newman Society highlighted some of the undergraduate enrollment at Newman Guide Recommended Catholic colleges for the 2025-26 academic year.

At Ave Maria University, there was a record undergraduate enrollment of 1,342 and a record incoming freshman class. Benedictine College has 2,250 undergraduate students, an increase of 22% over the last 10 years. The Cardinal Newman Society also reported that The Catholic University of America has increased undergraduate enrollment by 11% in the last five years.

Update: This story was updated at 10:25 a.m. Jan. 22 to add comments by Brian Schaffner.

An unborn baby at 20 weeks. | Credit: Steve via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Jan 21, 2026 / 15:49 pm (CNA).

A federal health spending bill would impose a long-enforced ban on using taxpayer funds for elective abortion, known as the Hyde Amendment.

The U.S. House is set to consider the bill this week, which would fund the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services. Lawmakers would need to pass spending bills in both chambers and send them to the White House by Jan. 30 or the government could face another partial shutdown.

Republican President Donald Trump had asked his party to be “flexible” in its approach to the provision in a separate funding bill. According to a Jan. 19 news release from the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee, the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill includes the provision “protecting the lives of unborn children” known as the Hyde Amendment.

The Hyde Amendment, which is not permanent law, was first included as a rider in federal spending bills in 1976. It was included consistently since then although some recent legislation and budget proposals have sometimes excluded it. The provision would ban federal funds for abortion except when the unborn child is conceived through rape or incest or if the life of the mother is at risk.

Katie Glenn Daniel, director of legal affairs and policy counsel for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said the amendment is “a long-standing federal policy that’s been included for the last five decades and is popular with the American people.”

“Americans don’t want to pay for abortion on demand,” she said.

Many Democratic lawmakers have sought to eliminate the rider in recent years, saying it disproportionately limits abortion access for low-income women. Former President Joe Biden reversed his longtime support of the Hyde Amendment in the lead-up to the 2020 election and refused to include it in his spending proposals, saying: “If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s zip code.” But Republicans successfully negotiated the rider’s inclusion into spending bills.

In January 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the government to enforce the Hyde Amendment. A year later, Trump urged Republicans to be “a little flexible on Hyde” when lawmakers were negotiating the extension of health care subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act. A White House spokesperson also said the president would work with Congress to ensure the strongest possible pro-life protections.

The House eventually passed the extension without the Hyde Amendment after 17 Republicans joined Democrats to support the bill. The Senate has not yet advanced the measure, where the question of whether to include the Hyde Amendment has been a point of contention between Republicans and Democrats.

In mid-January, Trump announced a plan to change how health care subsidies are disbursed. There was no mention of the Hyde Amendment in the White House’s 827-word memo.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has consistently lobbied for the inclusion of the Hyde Amendment in spending bills. On Jan. 14, the bishops sent a letter to Congress “to stress in the strongest possible terms that Hyde is essential for health care policy that protects human dignity.”

“Authentic health care and the protection of human life go hand in hand,” the letter said. “There can be no compromise on these two combined values.”

Thousands gather in Paris on Jan. 18, 2026, for the annual March for Life in France. | Credit: Zofia Czubak

, Jan 21, 2026 / 14:55 pm (CNA).

The annual March for Life held in Paris took place on Sunday, Jan. 18.

Cristeros with family members with the Mexican flag behind them with Our Lady of Guadalupe image substituted for the center field. | Credit: Public domain

, Jan 21, 2026 / 14:03 pm (CNA).

On the centenary of the Cristero War, an armed uprising in Mexico against stringent anticlerical laws, Mexican Bishop Pedro Mena offered his reflections on the history lessons that can be gained.

Nuns with the Sisterhood of Saint Mary. | Credit: Photo courtesy of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

Jan 21, 2026 / 13:33 pm (CNA).

A coalition of religious groups that includes an order of Protestant nuns and two Catholic dioceses scored a major victory after the state of New York backed off trying to force the groups to cover abortion in their health insurance plans.

The state government in a Jan. 16 agreement agreed to drop its efforts to force abortion coverage onto the dioceses of Ogdensburg and Albany, along with two Catholic Charities groups and numerous other religious plaintiffs.

The concession came months after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state court of appeals to review the long-running case in light of a major religious liberty victory at the high court in June 2025.

That victory, Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review, saw the Supreme Court unanimously affirm that the U.S. Constitution “ mandates government neutrality between religions” and that states may not impose unlawful “denominational preferences” between religious organizations.

In the Wisconsin case, the state had attempted to argue that a Catholic charity’s undertakings were not “primarily” religious and that the group thus did not qualify for a tax exemption. The New York government had adopted a similar argument, exempting religious groups from the abortion mandate only if they primarily employ members of their own faith.

In a press release celebrating the New York victory, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — which represented the religious groups in their fight against the mandate — described the state’s effort as a “disgraceful campaign.”

“This victory confirms that the government cannot punish religious ministries for living out their faith by serving everyone,” attorney Lori Windham said.

In addition to the Protestant nuns and the Catholic groups, the plaintiffs included a Lutheran church, a Baptist church, and a Teresian nursing home.

The nuns, a contemplative order called the Sisters of St. Mary, are known for raising Cashmere goats at their cloister in Greenwich, New York.

Their sponsorship of a 4-H club and their leasing of the goats to local youth led the state to deny them the exemption to the abortion mandate, according to Becket. The religious exemption, Becket had argued, was “so narrow” that “Jesus himself would not qualify for it.”

Participants gather in Płock, Poland, on Jan. 15, 2026, to mark the 29th Day of Judaism in the Catholic Church in Poland. | Credit: Karol Darmoros/Heschel Center KUL

, Jan 21, 2026 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

The prelate added that “all Church documents since the Second Vatican Council" have demonstrated the connections between Christianity and “living Judaism."

The traditional procession of Holy Week takes place annually in Ayacucho, Peru. | Credit: Milton Rodriguez/Shutterstock

, Jan 21, 2026 / 10:00 am (CNA).

A Pew Research Center report found that despite an increase in the number of religiously unaffiliated, belief in God remains high.