Catholic News Service

St. Peter's Square was open to the public May 24, the feast of the Ascension, and scores of visitors turned up for Pope Francis' noonday prayer and blessing.

For the 30 years from the Second Vatican Council to the publication of St. John Paul's encyclical May 25, 1995, official ecumenical dialogues tended to focus on comparing and contrasting Catholic teachings or practices with the teachings or practices of its dialogue partners.

Franciscan Sr. Mary Frances Wangari is working with young Kenyans to put Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical, "Laudato Si'" into action.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and other church officials announced a multistep plan to reopen the 288 parish churches of the archdiocese as the coronavirus pandemic eases.

The recent decision by the Department of Homeland Security to extend restrictions on nonessential crossings of the southern border due to the COVID-19 pandemic did not surprise Catholics who work with migrants in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Minnesota's bishops are moving ahead with plans to resume Masses at one-third church capacity May 26, a plan that defies current state directives limiting faith-based gatherings to 10 or fewer people.

A missionary or church reality that is truly inspired by the Holy Spirit "manifests predilection for the poor and vulnerable as a sign and reflection of the Lord's own preference for them," Pope Francis told the pontifical mission societies.

Catholic advocates against the death penalty spoke out against Missouri's May 19 execution of a death-row inmate, Walter Barton, whose death by lethal injection was the first execution to happen during the pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Justice is challenging the "unequal treatment of faith communities" in California's coronavirus reopening plan, warning that continued restrictions on worship services threaten believers' civil rights to practice their religion.

Catholic dioceses around the United States and Canada are issuing guidelines and other protocols or otherwise planning for the gradual reopening of churches as various governments allow more movement by public by revising stay-at-home orders first issued when the coronavirus was declared a pandemic.

The Jesuit General Curia in Rome announced that its former superior general, Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, died May 20 in Tokyo. He was 84.

The mystery and wonder of God's creation can open the hearts of men and women to express their gratitude through prayer, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis has merged the Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska, and the Diocese of Juneau, Alaska, and erected the new ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau.

Catholic leaders warn that as the coronavirus pandemic spreads into the Amazon basin, the region may face a "humanitarian and environmental tragedy."

The chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Divine Worship has sent a memo to fellow bishops offering links to resources for parishes to review as they prepare to offer the public celebration of Mass and the sacraments.

Pope Francis offered prayers and thanks to men and women who work each day to ensure that hospitals and neighborhoods are clean during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is used to addressing the country about steps to contain the coronavirus, but in mid-May he spoke directly to graduates of the nation's 60 Jesuit high schools with words of encouragement and congratulations.

The sad reality of people displaced within the borders of their own country, a crisis that has been ignored for far too long, is an opportunity for Christians to encounter Jesus, Pope Francis said.

Chalatenango, El Salvador, is said to have been the setting of more than 50 mass killings during the country's 12-year civil conflict, and almost all of the survivors lost family members in other attacks. 

In a remote area called Las Aradas, where the river straddles Honduras and El Salvador, more than 600 people were killed over a 12-hour period on May 14, 1980, after government forces from both countries and a paramilitary group on the Salvadoran side opened fire on an unarmed group they had surrounded.