Catholic faithful do not “buy” Masses, but when a priest accepts an offering and promises to celebrate a Mass for that person’s loved one or other special intention he must do so, the Vatican said.

Police and paramilitaries maintained a heavy presence outside the Nicaraguan Managua cathedral on Palm Sunday, ensuring celebrations occurred entirely on church property — and sending a not-so-subtle message of intimidation.

For the second year in a row, few foreign pilgrims were in attendance at the traditional Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives into the Old City of Jerusalem due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. But even the gray skies that threatened rain didn’t dampen the spirit of the 4,000 participants.

Catholic and other religious leaders are condemning a Palm Sunday attack by Russia on a Ukrainian city that killed 34 — including two children — and injured 119.

Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of one woman and five men, including Antoni Gaudí, the Spanish architect who designed the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

The heart is where a person can integrate his or her life amid a fragmented world, and the source of a heart’s mending and life is “the mystery of the heart of Christ,” said Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, while speaking April 9 about Pope Francis’ most recent encyclical, “Dilexit Nos,” or “He loved us.”

In record-breaking numbers, more than 17,800 catechumens will be baptized during the Easter Vigil on April 19, including 10,384 adults and more than 7,400 young people ages 11 to 17, according to an annual survey by the National Service for Catechumens of the French bishops’ conference.

Writing in “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis said the Earth “cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.”

Carrying the cross means more than bearing personal suffering — it means stepping into the pain of others and walking beside them, Pope Francis wrote at the start of Holy Week.

Catholic groups have criticized Spain’s bishops for consenting to government redevelopment of a key national memorial complex near Madrid, amid fears of a continuing church decline across the traditionally Catholic country.