The custos of the Holy Land, Father Francesco Patton, lights the first candle of the Advent wreath at the site of the manger inside the Nativity Grotto on Nov. 30, 2024, during the first vespers of ...

Around the world, trail designers are quietly employing surprising techniques to engineer awe. You’ve probably felt it without even knowing why. Inside the creative science that’s transforming your ...

Dominica fully lives up to its self-appointed nickname as the "Caribbean’s Nature Island." In a region that brims with pristine beaches requiring nothing more but to show up and relax, Dominica ...

With major eclipses, brilliant supermoons, and lineups of five or more planets, 2026 offers something awe-inspiring in every season. Here’s what to watch for. Solar prominences and their associated ...

In all the papal basilicas, the official document of closing the Holy Door has been deposited along with the key to the door and several pontifical medals from the last sealing. The pope closed the ...

New York City has more pizzerias with more variety than any other city in America. Meanwhile, Chicago has its own deep-dish style that no New York pizza spot has been able to successfully replicate.

Decades ago, India’s tigers were on the brink of extinction. Slowly, their numbers have rebounded. But that ecological success has prompted a dire problem—and a race to save many of them from genetic ...

These 10 standout images were among thousands of stunning submissions in National Geographic’s Your Shot Pictures of the Year 2025 challenge. The delicate West Indian seagrape sawfly (Sericoceros ...

Gum makers have claimed, for decades, chewing is good for your mental health. They’re kind of on to something. Humans have chewed on gum for millennia. Scientists are still trying to figure out why.

Last Wednesday, Jan. 7, Pope Leo XIV gave two talks, one at the weekly general audience and the other to the cardinals at the start of their consistory, that focused on the reception of the Second ...

A natural experiment in a national park in Patagonia shows how the return of a large predator can reshape an ecosystem. Long absent from Argentinian Patagonia due to over-hunting, pumas have returned ...

ROME — Some cardinals and faithful who have a devotion to the traditional Roman rite have expressed concern that the liturgy appears to be sidelined in the extraordinary consistory currently underway ...