Efforts to slow climate change and mitigate its impact, particularly on the poor, are being thwarted by selfishness, the Vatican secretary of state told world leaders at the COP29 climate conference.

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, whom Pope Francis removed from pastoral governance of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, in 2023, read an open letter Nov. 13 in Baltimore asking “what it will take for more than a few bishops to finally speak up against the false messages constantly flowing from the Vatican under the leadership of Pope Francis?”

President Joe Biden welcomed President-elect Donald Trump to the White House Nov. 13 for an Oval Office visit, a ritual part of the U.S. tradition of a peaceful transfer of power between presidents, and one that Trump declined four years earlier.

Leading British Catholics have urged their church to avoid involvement in the resignation of the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, who quit Nov. 12 after being implicated in a large-scale abuse cover-up.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted Nov. 13 in Baltimore to approve a new “mission directive” for 2025-28, a new way that the conference is presenting its strategic vision for the next four years.

The Catholic Church needs decisive leadership in creating a safe, caring and welcoming environment for everyone, and it needs constant vigilance against complacency, said several speakers at a Vatican-sponsored safeguarding conference.

Republicans secured a majority of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to a Nov. 12 projection by data provider Decision Desk HQ, giving President-elect Donald Trump GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress as he begins his second term in January.

The discussion on the floor in Baltimore followed reflections on the recent Synod of Bishops on synodality held in Rome offered by Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, two of the bishop-delegates from the United States.

The Mass according to the 1962 Missal will no longer be celebrated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Tyler, Texas, after Nov. 30, but it will continue at a nearby parish in care of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

The Catholic Church “always insists on the dignity of the human person from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death, and we continue to insist on that,” Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services said Nov. 12.