Catholic News Service

The call to prayer is an "active mission," one that does not take a believer from the world but prompts the believer to bring to God the pain and concerns of the world — including the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis said.

Financial and judicial reforms are meant not only to bring the Vatican up to date with international standards of transparency but also to make the church's structure reflect "an increasingly evangelical style," Pope Francis said.

 Russia's war on Ukraine "seems to have changed" the world, said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

Appealing again for an end to the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis said those who invoke God to promote or justify violence "profane his name."

Franciscan Father James E. Goode, whose evangelizing work among Black Catholics became known throughout the US and earned him the title "dean of Black Catholic preachers," died in his sleep March 4 in New York. 

"I've come with the three most sophisticated Gospel weapons: prayer, fasting and alms," Cardinal Konrad Krajewski told reporters in Western Ukraine March 10 as he prepared to head toward Kyiv and other cities under Russian bombardment.

A day after a US House commission's hearing on holding Putin accountable for "war crimes and aggression against Ukraine," his military forces carried out an airstrike on a maternity hospital.

For Daróczi Gábor, mayor since 2010 of the sleepy Hungarian town of Barabás, making daily visits to the border with Ukraine was the last thing he thought he would have to do during his tenure.

A Paris court sentenced four men in connection with the 2016 killing of Father Jacques Hamel, giving them sentences ranging from eight years to life in prison.

Julie Sullivan, president of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, has been named president of Santa Clara University, a Jesuit-run university near San Francisco, where she will be the school's first layperson and first woman president.

Following news reports about the war in Ukraine is important, Cardinal Michael Czerny said, but meeting the victims of that war — the people forced to flee — has a different impact.

Condemning Russia's bombing of a children's and maternity hospital in Ukraine, the Vatican secretary of state insisted diplomacy and negotiations are the only ways to prevent the situation from getting much worse.

The Catholic Church needs women, especially women saints, who have shown throughout history an unwavering dedication to God and to caring for their brothers and sisters, Pope Francis said.

In response to more than 2 million refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine in recent weeks, the president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services said it is "alarming to see the scale of the suffering" in the region.

Two cardinals arrived at separate destinations on one mission entrusted to them by Pope Francis: to bring relief, hope and encouragement to suffering Ukrainians.

Pope Francis has "relieved" Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, of the pastoral care of the diocese, the Vatican announced without providing an explanation.

During his 22-year tenure as the Diocese of Erie's shepherd, the late Bishop Donald W. Trautman "gave himself totally to his role as bishop," Bishop Lawrence T. Persico said of his predecessor.

Thirteen priests from outside the US ministering in the Diocese of Little Rock have had to stop working, and in some cases have had to return home, because of federal delays in processing immigration paperwork.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world's largest wheat-producing countries. Their decreased exports due to war may affect U.S. farmers already struggling from droughts.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, leader of Russia's dominant religious group, has sent his strongest signal yet justifying his country's invasion of Ukraine — describing the conflict as part of a struggle against sin and pressure from liberal foreigners to hold "gay parades" as the price of admission to their ranks.