As the Israel-Hamas war expands into Lebanon, an agency of the Holy See has launched an emergency campaign to assist thousands of displaced families in that nation’s south.

Almost 100 families still await news of their loved ones who continue to be held hostage in the Gaza Strip after being abducted last year. Among those taken on Oct. 7, 2023, is Sagui, the 35-year-old American-Israeli who is the son of Jonathan Dekel-Chen.

At the end of a multiyear process of listening, praying, discussing and discerning, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, said he hopes the Synod of Bishops can give Catholics four practical suggestions for being a more “synodal” church.

Controversy over women’s ordination, even at the synod, detracts attention from the plight of women in the Catholic Church and society, said an Australian bishop, who is a member of the Synod of Bishops.

Hurricane Helene’s broad impact across an entire swath of the U.S. South means resources will be stretched thin following the massive storm, according to Peter Routsis-Arroyo, the CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami.

The Diocese of Rome, like the Rome city government, has put so much effort into ensuring services in the historic center of the city that it often neglects the growing suburbs where most people live, Pope Francis said.

The terms of a recent diocesan bankruptcy settlement, which require parishes to declare an “abbreviated bankruptcy,” are a first for such cases and shows the impact of a Supreme Court ruling in June, a legal scholar told OSV News.

Six migrants were killed after soldiers shot at a vehicle evading a military checkpoint in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state.

Before the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica, a symbol of the Catholic Church’s unity behind the successor of St. Peter, 15 men laid prostrate to express their humility and take vows of chastity and obedience to their bishop.

Federal sentences for three defendants imposed Sept. 26-27 in connection with a March 5, 2021, blockade of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, leave only sentencing in a Michigan case in the current round of Justice Department prosecutions of clinic blockades.