Daniel Flores

Distinctly Catholic: The fall assembly raises the question again: Will the U.S. bishops continue to resist the direction Pope Francis is trying to steer the church or will they engage his evangelical vision?

#CatholicsVote2020: In the hazy 48 hours since polls closed, most bishops have remained quiet. Yet for those who have spoken out, faith in democratic norms, protection of the marginalized, and national healing have emerged as key themes.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a reprieve June 16 to a Texas inmate scheduled to die for fatally stabbing an 85-year-old woman more than two decades ago, continuing a more than four-month delay of executions in the nation’s busiest death penalty state during the coronavirus pandemic.

Michael Sean Winters rounds political news and commentary: Synodality as a means to address "crisis of democracy"; "Remain in Mexico" policy needs attention; centrist wisdom afflicts Democratic Party; impeachment proceedings continue

Distinctly Catholic: Like the church, the meeting is traditional but unpredictable; mainstream society will largely ignore it; and it is difficult to believe in the current leadership.

We say: It took this photo and a statement of lament by the pope about the image to move the US bishops to the kind of language that begins to gather in the horror of this national moment along our southern border.

The bodies of a young father and his toddler are expected to be returned to El Salvador in late June for burial, days after they were swept up by a current in the Rio Grande River during an attempted border crossing into the United States.

While the sex abuse crisis consumed the June meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, prelates who work on the border, such as Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, have been facing a different crisis also involving children.