The Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organization, celebrated the 125th anniversary of its patriotic fourth degree with an exemplification ceremony, Mass, and unveiling of a statue of its founder Blessed Michael J. McGivney at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

While Italy’s main news agency reported that Pope Francis’ respiratory “crisis” had subsided, a Vatican source said he was still receiving supplemental oxygen by nasal cannula early Feb. 23.

Catholic bishops throughout the U.S. are calling on faithful to pray for Pope Francis, now in critical condition in Rome’s Gemelli hospital amid a week-long battle with respiratory illness.

The Feb. 23 ordination Mass at the Vatican was the culmination of a three-day Holy Year celebration that drew thousands of deacons, plus their wives and others, from more than 100 countries to Rome for communal prayer, discussion and celebration of the diaconate.

The Witness to Love approach challenges couples to engage with church teaching and what being married means. It also involves close accompaniment by a practicing Catholic mentor couple — of their own choosing — who shares the couple’s journey to the altar and provides them a “lifeline” of support beyond the wedding day.

When the recent Los Angeles fires forced the local Capuchin Franciscan friars to evacuate, they sought shelter at the Pasadena Convention Center along with hundreds of others.

Evangelizing through culture is a challenge for the church, especially in societies where faith is seen as “something alien,” participants said at a Vatican-sponsored discussion on faith and culture.

Pope Francis experienced “an asthmatic respiratory crisis of prolonged magnitude, which also required the use of oxygen at high flows” Feb. 22, said the daily medical bulletin released by the Vatican.

Those who accompany the incarcerated have said there is a lot to do in ministering to a population that has committed crimes and had to live with the consequences of those actions.

For every disciple to truly become “the salt of the earth and the light of the world” — that is the goal of “I Am the 73rd,” an evangelization initiative of El Sembrador-Nueva Evangelización, a Catholic network also known as ESNE.