JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It was the year where a guy from Chicago became Pope Leo, a year where gun violence seemed to grow in houses of worship and a year where the signature immigration policies of the Trump administration met resistance among American religious groups. Here to recap the year in religion news is NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose and Roxanne Stone, the executive editor at Religion News Service, which is a partner of NPR. Hi to both of you.
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: Hello.
ROXANNE STONE: Hello.
SUMMERS: Jason, let's start with you and what was both a big international story as well as a really big domestic story.
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DOMINIQUE MAMBERTI: Habemus papam.
SUMMERS: We are, of course, talking about the election of the first American pope. And I am very jealous, but you were there.
DEROSE: Right. A huge story, and I got to be there. A very popular Pope Francis died in April, and a few weeks later, cardinals from around the world gathered at the Vatican to elect his successor - Robert Prevost, from Chicago. You know, there had been a lot of talk that an American would never be elected pope, that the center of global Catholicism isn't in the U.S., but rather in now Latin America or Africa or Asia. So it was a big surprise. And since his election, Pope Leo has been making news - talking to reporters in media gaggles around Rome and commenting on news events like the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants.
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POPE LEO XIV: When people are living good lives - and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years - to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least - and there's been some violence, unfortunately.
DEROSE: Leo was saying this as ICE was in Chicago picking up people off the streets.
SUMMERS: Roxanne, let's turn to you. Another big religion story this year was the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
STONE: That's right. Kirk's political activism and his conservative Christian faith had become intertwined before his death, and we really saw this at his memorial service, which drew more than 90,000 people. It was a real mashup of an evangelical church worship service and a patriotic political rally. You had some of the most famous Christian worship leaders alongside pastors, alongside top Trump administration officials, including the president himself. And when Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk's widow, spoke at the service, she said she wanted to follow the example of Jesus and to forgive her husband's assassin.
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ERIKA KIRK: That man - that young man (crying) - I forgive him.
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STONE: Moments later, Trump joined her on the stage and said he disagreed - he hates his opponents. That sharp contrast really laid bare some tensions over how Christianity is interpreted within the conservative movement.
SUMMERS: Jason, I know one area that you've focused your reporting on is progressive religious pushback to the Trump agenda. What have you seen?
DEROSE: Well, really from the beginning of this administration, people have been speaking out. At the National Prayer Service the day after the inauguration, we heard from Bishop Mariann Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., speaking directly to Trump, who was sitting in a pew there in front of her.
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MARIANN BUDDE: In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We're scared now.
SUMMERS: Yeah. And she actually, I'll point out, came onto the show, and I spoke with her the day after that address. And she said that churches had already been preparing for this increased immigration enforcement. And religious pushback only ramped up from there as that enforcement played out.
STONE: Yes, it definitely did. And on a number of other issues, too. We've seen religious pushback on the cuts to USAID and the AIDS relief program, as well as to the freezes on the refugee admissions. Those had all been historically quite popular programs among Christians, both conservative and liberals.
But I'd say where we saw the biggest religious pushback against the administration was on the immigration crackdowns, the detentions and the deportations, especially in the cities where immigration agents had been deployed, such as Chicago and LA. In both of those cities, we saw clergy protesting immigration, and we saw clips go viral of clergy being arrested, being shot in the head by pepper balls.
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MICHAEL WOOLF: This is evil, what's happening here. It's torture. What they're doing is torture.
STONE: That was the Reverend Michael Woolf, an American Baptist pastor who was protesting at a detention center just outside Chicago when he was arrested. But it wasn't just progressives who were pushing back. We also saw the Catholic bishops release a statement voicing their own concerns about the immigration crackdown, and dozens of religious groups filed lawsuits against the Trump administration this year, most of them focused on immigration policies.
SUMMERS: There's been another ongoing and alarming story this year that I want to talk about, and those have been the attacks that have happened on people of faith as well as houses of worship. And, Jason, I know you've covered several of those.
DEROSE: Right. In August, I covered the shooting at the Catholic church and school in Minneapolis. You know, that's where I spoke with 8-year-old Rosie Stiggey the day after the attack.
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ROSIE STIGGEY: So we were, like, just in the middle of Mass. And then, like, big - like, the sound went on. And then it was, like, really smoky, and we all had to, like, run to preschool rooms.
DEROSE: And then just a month later, I was in Michigan covering the attack during the worship service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there. You know, Juana, I've spoken with a number of rabbis and imams who said that thinking about security is new for churches in America, but at mosques and synagogues it's normal, given the history of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attacks. More and more churches now have security. In fact, I live next to a church that has an armed security guard on Sunday mornings.
SUMMERS: Let's look ahead a little bit. What are stories that you both covered this year that you think will be continuing to play out as we ring in 2026? Roxanne, I'll start with you.
STONE: Well, I live in New York City, and one of the biggest religion stories here in 2025 was probably the election of Zohran Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor. It was a huge moment of pride for the Muslim community here. But at the same time, around the country in the months leading up to his election, and certainly in the months after, we saw a spike in anti-Muslim rhetoric. And in some places, that rhetoric has really turned into policy. In Texas and in Florida, the governors designated the Council on American Islamic Relations, the leading Muslim advocacy group in the U.S. - they designated it as a foreign terrorist organization. CAIR has sued over that terrorist designation, so I'll be watching that case in 2026, as well as Mamdani, of course, and just the general sentiment toward American Muslims around the country.
SUMMERS: And, Jason, what are you watching as we head into 2026?
DEROSE: Well, a very big story that I think will play out in the coming year and years is in fact the first woman to become the Archbishop of Canterbury - Sarah Mullally. Now, that may not seem like a big deal in the U.S. because the Episcopal Church here 20 years ago elected its first female presiding bishop, but the U.S. church is not the global Anglican Communion. Huge numbers of the church's 85 million members are in the Global South - in Africa and Asia - and far more conservative than the American or British churches. So I'm going to be watching to see how Sarah Mullally handles issues around gender and sexual orientation as she takes on that job in March. And there have already been rumblings from some that they'll break away, although I think it's way too early to tell if or how that might happen.
SUMMERS: NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose and Roxanne Stone of our partner Religion News Service. Thank you both.
DEROSE: You're welcome.
STONE: Thank you.
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