Catholic News Service

 Death row inmates in Florida's prisons refer to their 6-foot-by-9-foot cell as their "house," with some having lived in their "house" for 40 years -- longer than one Catholic lay chaplain said he has lived in his family home in Tallahassee.

As German Catholics prepare for their second Synodal Assembly, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, president of German bishops' conference, called for courageous change in church and society.

Bishop Raymundo J. Peña, retired bishop of Brownsville who was an advocate of immigrant rights and opposed the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, died Sept. 24 at age 87.

Pope Francis said the Second Vatican Council so shaped his theological and pastoral vision that perhaps he has not been as explicit as he should have been in highlighting those ties, especially when it comes to his contributions to Catholic social teaching.

The chairman of the U.S. bishops' committee dealing with international affairs has called on the United States to move toward preventing a modern-day nuclear arms race.

The fear, sickness, death, mourning and economic impacts of COVID-19 should make people who are relatively well off and have access to health care think about "what it means to be vulnerable and live in precariousness on a daily basis," Pope Francis told members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

World leaders must rely on hope rather than isolation and withdrawal to confront current and future challenges, said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

Christians must be on guard and avoid the temptation of thinking themselves better than others, an attitude that risks turning the church into a place of "separation and not communion," Pope Francis said.

More than 200 supporters gathered on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border near Nogales, Arizona, Sept. 25, the eve of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, to accompany 25 families seeking asylum in the United States.

Heads of several bishops' conferences and councils around the world called for greater collegiality and communion among bishops to confront the challenges facing the church in Europe and across the globe.

After a monthlong battle with COVID-19, Venezuelan Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, who led the Archdiocese of Caracas for 13 years, died at the age of 79.

While denouncing as an "abuse of power" coercive measures to promote vaccination against COVID-19, a leader of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X said getting vaccinated "may sometimes be an eminently prudent act in the moral sense of the term."

World leaders must commit to rooting out the evil of racism, xenophobia and racial discrimination through meaningful legislation and action, said Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, Vatican foreign minister.

Bishops and others in the Catholic Church often lament the declining number of Christians, but rarely do they examine their own behavior and failure to show others how much God loves them, Pope Francis told the presidents of European bishops' conferences.

The chairman of the U.S. bishops' migration committee and the head of Catholic Charities USA issued a joint statement Sept. 22 urging humane treatment of Haitians and other migrants as their numbers grow in southern Texas at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The establishment of an Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon that involves both the laity and the clergy is a sign of a church that listens to God through the voice of his people, Peruvian Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo said.

Leaders highlight relationship between biodiversity loss and climate change in region where government revenues depend on timber, mining and oil.

John Garvey, president of The Catholic University of America in Washington since 2010, announced Sept. 22 that he will be stepping down from the role he described as "an honor and a privilege" at the end of June

Statement calls for government leaders to take urgent climate action and pledges that congregations will do the same.

A living faith draws strength from remembering the past while continuing to grow in love of God and service to others, Pope Francis said.