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.

Opened in May 2024, the Sacred Service exhibit commemorates and educates visitors on the critical service that chaplains played during the First World War.

Donations to the annual Catholic Home Missions Appeal will help support more than 70 “home mission dioceses” in the U.S., as well as its current and former territories, the U.S. bishops announced.

Some 80 Benedictines at the Mount St. Scholastica community near Kansas City joined Sister Mary Elizabeth, their prioress, in signing a “Yes to life, no to mining” petition they sent to El Salvador.

While pilgrimages to the Holy Land have been few and far between in the past 18 months, hundreds of Franciscan friars celebrate Mass at the sites associated with the life of Jesus each day and continue to support the local Christian populations.