As tens of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing their homes as Israel launched a major new ground offensive in Gaza City, Pope Leo XIV expressed his “profound closeness to the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

Pope Leo XIV praised the late Duchess of Kent, who joined the Catholic Church in 1994, for her “Christian goodness” and her many years of charity work and care for vulnerable people.

Three elderly women religious in Austria fled their nursing home and have returned to their longtime monastery, defying church superiors in a case that highlights the impact of Vatican regulations regarding aging members of dwindling religious congregations.

Just a few hours after Israel launched a major new ground offensive in Gaza City, Pope Leo XIV called the pastor of the city’s only Latin-rite parish to express his concern, his prayers and his closeness, the Vatican press office said.

The same week President Donald Trump spoke at a hearing of the Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Commission in Washington, a key Catholic bishop said some of his immigration policies risk presenting the church with religious liberty challenges.

Vigilance, honesty, emotional intelligence and faith all play critical roles in healing from the long-term trauma of violent attacks, two Catholic psychologists told OSV News.

Pain must never give rise to violence, and every Catholic needs to learn to safeguard with tenderness those who are vulnerable, Pope Leo XIV said during a prayer vigil dedicated to people experiencing pain and affliction due to illness, bereavement, violence or abuse.

After 800 years of silence, the pipes from the oldest organ in Christendom played again, filling the reception hall of Jerusalem’s Franciscan Monastery of St. Saviour with the unique sound of the 11th-century liturgical chant, Benedicamus Domino Flos Filius.

From Sept. 9-13, believers from the Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac Catholic and Syriac Orthodox churches joined together in Erbil for the Festival of the Cross.

Because “true knowledge of God is realized in a life transformed by love,” the Catholic Church needs theologians whose pursuit of understanding is framed by care for the real concerns of modern men and women, Pope Leo XIV said.