The Pope has given a welcome surprise to traditionalists worried by some of his very untraditional positions on various key issues. During a meeting earlier this week with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Leo XIV addressed the dangerous decline in birth rates across Europe and called for greater support for traditional families and family values. 

“In recent decades, as we know, Europe has witnessed a significant decline in the birth rate,” the Pope said to Italian officials, as reported by Catholic Sat. “This requires commitment to promoting family-friendly choices at various levels, supporting their efforts, promoting their values, and protecting their needs and rights.” 

“‘Father,’ ‘mother,’ ‘son,’ ‘daughter,’ ‘grandfather,’  and ‘grandmother’ are, in the Italian tradition, words that naturally express and evoke feelings of love, respect, and dedication, sometimes heroic, to the good of the domestic community and therefore to that of society as a whole,” noted the Pope.  

“In particular, I would like to emphasize the importance of ensuring all families the essential support of dignified employment, under fair conditions and with attention to the needs of motherhood and fatherhood,” he continued. 

“Let us do everything we can to give confidence to families, especially young families, so that they can look to the future with serenity and grow in harmony,” urged the Pope. 

“There is a certain tendency, in these times, not to appreciate enough, at various levels, models and values developed over centuries that mark our cultural identity, sometimes even presuming to erase their historical and human relevance,” said Pope Leo. “Let us not disdain what our fathers lived through and what they passed down to us.”

A friend of a British couple who ended their lives at an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland has shared her concerns that the husband coerced his wife into ending her life, according to media reports.

Ruth Posner, 96, and husband Michael, 97, neither of whom were terminally ill, told friends and family in an email message of their intention to end their lives at Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Pegasos, saying, “There came a point when failing senses, of sight and hearing and lack of energy was not living but existing that no care would improve”.

The couple added, “The decision was mutual and without any outside pressure”. 

However, a friend of the couple, Julia Pascal, has questioned this statement, sharing her belief that Ruth was coerced by her husband, Michael, into ending her life. 

Pascal, who had known the couple since 1990, described Ruth as being “totally under [Michael’s] control”, saying “Ruth was disempowered”.

“He was very dominant. I spoke to them and sent emails, saying ‘please don’t kill yourselves’. I tried to talk Ruth out of it, but I felt it was too far gone, that she was totally under his control”.

Pascal added, “Ruth sent the email, but I believe Michael would have dictated it to her”.

She described Michael Posner as a “dominant personality” who was “emotionally controlling”, saying, “[Ruth] was totally reliant on him”.

“They both said, ‘We have made up our minds, we don’t want to go gaga and we don’t want to go into an old people’s home’. I felt like it was not a decision of her own. She did not seem to have any resistance to him. He was the dominant personality and emotionally controlling”.

“[Michael] had influenced her over the years. She would have said ‘it was all my decision’, but really he was making it for her”.

More than 90,000 COVID fines have been overturned so far after the Spanish constitutional court declared the draconian 2020 COVID measures unconstitutional.

Spanish news outlet The Objective reports that 92,278 fines have been annulled as of September 3, 2025, following the declaration of certain provisions of the 2020 state of emergency decree, which was in effect during the first COVID-19 lockdown, as unconstitutional.

These penalties only represent the first wave of fines set to be annulled, with many more expected to follow. During the strict lockdown under the state of alarm in 2020, more than 1 million penalties were imposed nationwide, and an estimated 1.3 million people were fined for violating the prohibitive restrictions.

In its ruling, the Constitutional Court determined that certain sections of Article 7 of Royal Decree 463/2020, which pertains to the general prohibition on movement, implied an unjustified suspension of the fundamental right to freedom of movement, rather than merely a limitation. This suspension exceeded the power of the declared state of alarm, the court found. The court determined that such a severe restriction could only have been implemented under a stricter state of emergency, which requires more rigorous parliamentary proceedings.

This ruling now retroactively applies to all penalties issued during the 2020 lockdown, putting a significant burden on the administrative state. The Objective reports that “enforcement has been slow and uneven depending on each territory,” showing that the refunds could take months or years.

The Objective reiterates that the 92,278 cases revoked to date “are just the tip of the iceberg of a regulatory crisis” stemming from the draconian lockdown policies imposed by the Spanish government in 2020.

An Irish palliative care specialist has spoken against assisted suicide, saying death is not a solution.

During Palliative Care Week in September, themed “Living for today, planning for tomorrow”, Dr Regina McQuillan, spoke to the Irish Times about the issues with assisted suicide from an end-of-life care perspective.

McQuillan, who is a palliative care consultant, opposed Ireland’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2024 on behalf of the Irish Palliative Medicines Consultants Association when it was being debated. The Bill has stalled following a change of Government.

McQuillan stated that assisted suicide “creates the idea that for some situations, death is a solution to some problems”, and suggested that it should not be seen as a healthcare issue, but rather as “a societal response to distress”.

The doctor added: “research shows that most people look for assisted suicide or euthanasia when they lose independence”.

She criticised discriminatory attitudes towards disabled people and reasoned that people need help to live well rather than viewing a life dependant on care and support as one not worth living.

“Families up and down the country are being torn apart to deliver profits for big gambling corporations. If we’re serious about addressing this crisis, we must start by banning gambling advertising.”

That's th stark warning from Will Prochaska, the Director of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads,as new figures sahow that Britain is in the grip of a gambling epidemic.

Almost half of adults in Britain gambled in the past month, according to new statistics from the Gambling Commission.

The annual survey on gambling harm revealed that 2.7 per cent of adults in the UK (around 1.4 million people) experience problem gambling, an increase of around 100,000 from the previous year.

It identified slot machines and in-play sports betting – where customers bet on a sports game in real time – as particularly harmful.

Chief Executive of the Gambling Commission Andrew Rhodes said: “This year’s findings deepen our understanding of consequences from gambling and provide crucial insight into risk profiles among those who gamble most frequently.

“We strongly encourage operators to use this evidence to consider the risks within their own customer bases.”

He mentioned a number of measures that have been introduced to curb gambling harm, including light-touch financial vulnerability checks for those spending £150 a month, banning auto-play and slowing the speed of online games, as well as tightening age verification in betting shops.

While the Gambling Commission said that the increase in problem gambling was “statistically stable”, Will Prochaska, the Director of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads, disagreed.

He stated: “The Gambling Commission releases these statistics as if nothing is wrong. But there’s something very wrong when over a million people have a gambling problem and millions more are being harmed.

“Families up and down the country are being torn apart to deliver profits for big gambling corporations. If we’re serious about addressing this crisis, we must start by banning gambling advertising.”

One of the very first laws passed by the Bolsheviks after their seizure of power in Russia was the legalisation of abortion. Since then, an estimated 291 million unborn babies have been murdered in Russia, making the death toll more than ten times the number of Russian lives lost in the devastating Second World War.

While the number of abortions in Russia is now much lower than it was in Communist times, abortion is still legal and widely used in the country. The Putin government has tried various things to reduce the number further, but has fought shy of an outright ban.

Among those stepping into the breach to try to save the Unborn is Natalia Moskvitina, president of Women for Life. Her organisation, which has saved more than 9,000 babies from abortion, is working hard to create a culture of life in Russia. 

“From the very beginning, we simply took each pregnant woman and offered her a psychologist, a doctor for a second opinion, a lawyer, financial assistance, cribs, strollers, basically everything you might need when you find out you’re pregnant,” she says.

“But we realized that it was like fighting windmills. You endlessly look for these strollers and cribs, (and) search for money so that a woman isn’t afraid to be left alone with a baby in her arms,” she added. “But ultimately, laws need to be passed and the medical community needs to be retrained, and we started to focus on that closely.”

Speaking of the abortion mania which swept the world in the last century, she has this to say

“As this (pro-abortion) plague began to spread throughout the world, the mentality of society as a whole has changed. And the great misfortune is that it has especially affected women,” she said. “A woman began to equate the right to an abortion with the right to freedom itself. In other words, if you can’t terminate a pregnancy, it’s as if you’re in slavery.”

“But what was forgotten is that abortion itself is slavery, especially for women, because the psychology of accepting evil changes a woman entirely at her core. And women have become embittered,” she added. “(And) not just women, but society as a whole, and not only Russian society, but the world at large.”

“We are seeking comfort, seeking pleasure, we are mired in hedonism; we are not Christ-centered. And this is a big problem, because we have forgotten that a child, a family … is the clearest marker of happiness.”

Woke entertainment giant Netflix has ended this week having lost an estimated $25 billion in stock value in the latest row over its trans indoctrination productions.

On October 1, Elon Musk encouraged his 227 million X followers to cancel their subscriptions following troubling accounts of the giant streaming platform pushing radical transgender messaging on young children and teens.

In one of many posts calling for the boycott of Netflix, Musk wrote “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids.”  The post has been viewed over 90 million times and has received 1 million “Likes.”

By Friday, “Cancel Netflix” was trending on both X and Google as searches reportedly reached an all-time high.