{"id":70067,"date":"2025-12-25T02:07:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T02:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/70067\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T02:07:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T02:07:06","slug":"pope-leo-decries-distorted-econmoy-in-first-christmas-mass-dw-12-25-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/70067\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo decries &#8216;distorted econmoy&#8217; in first Christmas Mass \u2013 DW \u2013 12\/25\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>German Chancellor <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/friedrich-merz\/t-60575802\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Friedrich Merz<\/a> has urged people to pause, reflect, and draw strength over Christmas, while acknowledging the challenges of his first year in office.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Christmas is a time to pause, to be grateful, and to draw strength \u00a0in the circle of family and friends,&#8221;\u00a0\u2014Merz said in a Christmas message posted on X. &#8220;I wish you blessed, peaceful Christmas days and confidence for the new year. May this time strengthen and encourage us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a separate video message lasting just over two minutes, Merz looked back on a year shaped by February&#8217;s elections, which brought him to power at the head of Europe&#8217;s largest economy. He said governing with his conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democrats had required compromise.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There were discussions, and not everything went off completely smoothly,&#8221; Merz said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need patience and persistence, just as much as the drive to continue to decide the best for our country every day,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Merz also stressed his government&#8217;s focus on Europe&#8217;s future, underlining peace, security, and prosperity as core priorities. &#8220;In these months and years, it&#8217;s about the peace, about the security and about the prosperity of our entire continent,&#8221; he said, reiterating his strong support for Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has urged people to pause, reflect, and draw strength over Christmas, while acknowledging the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-70067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}