The News You May Have Missed: October 2026

Miters All Around

The Chicago White Sox rolled out a unique ballpark giveaway for a home game this summer: pope hats, in honor of the baseball team’s most famous fan, Pope Leo XIV. Every attendee in the sellout crowd at Rate Field received a souvenir papal miter emblazoned with the White Sox logo (America, Aug. 12). Prior to the game, the team’s charitable arm presented the Midwest Augustinians, Leo’s religious order, with a sizable donation. Mary Jo Sobieck, O.P., a Dominican sister, threw out the ceremonial first pitch, and a fifth-inning, priest-led “sign of peace” invited all fans to turn to their neighbors and offer a handshake. The Catholics in the crowd knew what to do, but many fans had no idea what was going on and participated awkwardly. Despite the team’s connection to Christ’s vicar on Earth, the White Sox fell to the Cincinnati Reds that evening in extra innings.

Evicting Epstein’s Demons

To ease their misgivings about purchasing the late Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, its new owners, Dallas real-estate magnate and Texas comptroller Don Huffines and his family, had the property exorcised (Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug. 12). Devin, one of the Huffines’s five children, said, “We flew in an exorcist from Ohio, a Latin Mass priest, and it took him three days just to exorcise every bit of the property. We’re devout Roman Catholics. The spiritual aspect of this is real for us.” The family initially had doubts about buying the property. “All the girls and my mom were saying ‘absolutely not. No way,’” Devin said. “But land isn’t evil. Real estate isn’t evil. It doesn’t commit crimes. It doesn’t sin. It’s just real estate. It’s just land. It’s just a building, and this is a world-class building.” They secretly purchased the ranch in 2023, renamed it San Rafael Ranch, and plan to convert it into a Christian retreat center. A rendering of their planned entrance gate reads, “All are welcome who come in the name of the Lord.”

Free-Speech Rejects

The United Kingdom barred a former Finnish minister of the interior from entering the country after she was found guilty of “hate speech” in her home country for calling homosexuality a “deviation” (National Catholic Register, Aug. 20). Päivi Räsänen, a long-serving Christian Democrat, had been invited to Northern Ireland to address a conference on religious freedom and free speech. The British government refused her entry after Finland’s Supreme Court ruled that passages in a 2004 booklet she co-authored, Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Concept of Humanity, were derogatory toward a group on the basis of their sexual orientation for calling homosexuality an “aberration of psychosexual development.” Under U.K. law, the home secretary may refuse foreign visitors if admitting them is “not conducive to the public good.” Other high-profile figures to be refused include Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch activist who publicized “the ongoing rape and killing of British girls by migrant rape gangs,” and Dominik Tarczyński, a Polish Member of the European Parliament who supports a “zero illegal migration” policy.