As the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation this past year, hospital chaplains — already accustomed to helping people cope with sickness and death — found their ministries took on added significance.

The Catholic Church’s commitment to dialogue with other churches and with other religions flows from the Gospel, but Pope Francis said he knows some Catholics disagree.

Traveling to the birthplace of Abraham, Pope Francis urged believers to prove their faith in the one God and father of all by accepting one another as brothers and sisters.

“This suffering on a daily basis takes an emotional toll, ” said Sandra Michocki, a chaplain at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. “In order for it not to swallow us,” she said, chaplains have to remember that God is always with them and “when we’re weary or we’re tired, we show up anyway; that’s all we can do.”

Asked about the role of U.S. Catholic journalists today, Pope Francis said, it is to promote unity and to “try to get people to talk to each other, reason together and seek the path of fraternity.”

As civic leaders hope to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines in the coming weeks and months, Archbishop William E. Lori is renewing his call for everyone throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore to get vaccinated as “an act of charity and love.”

“We gather to celebrate and to give thanks for the gift of human life and to proclaim and give thanks for its beauty,” Archbishop Lori said, “and to honor those who are apostles and missionaries of the message that life is beautiful.”

The human figures in the Nativity scene are made of rings of ceramic stacked on top of each other. They are cylindrical, not curvy like a natural human form. And the presence of an astronaut and a knight carries the whole thing to another level of untraditional.

The Gospel of Matthew never details how many Magi came from “the East,” but it makes it clear they traveled to pay homage to “the newborn king of the Jews” and “offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”

As Washington’s new cardinal and with a Catholic soon to be living in the White House, Cardinal-designate Wilton D. Gregory said he hopes to collaborate where possible while respectfully pointing out where President-elect Joe Biden’s policies diverge from Catholic teaching.