Jockey Keith Asmussen calls on his Catholic faith daily as he competes in the high-stakes world of horse racing, and the sport’s stage gets no bigger than the one he will be on May 4, when he rides in his first Kentucky Derby.

Recently, Columbia University in New York has become the epicenter of U.S. college protests and encampments demanding an end to U.S. support of Israel, now at war with Hamas following that group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on approximately 22 locations in Israel.

Pope Francis received assurances from Jordan’s King Abdullah II that Christian and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem will be protected amid the Israel-Hamas war.

The prophetic voices of religious leaders working to foster peace and reconciliation in the Holy Land have been largely absent as the war in Gaza rages on, a Jerusalem-based cardinal said.

Virginia’s Catholic bishops have urged Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to veto bills that would establish a “right to contraception” and require health insurance companies to provide coverage for contraception.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a measure to repeal Arizona’s near-total ban on abortions just one day after it passed in the state’s Republican-controlled Senate.

The Louisiana State Police and the FBI are investigating whether Archdiocese of New Orleans officials — including archbishops — covered up child sex trafficking by clergy over several decades, with some alleged victims reportedly taken out of state to be abused and marked for further exploitation among clergy.

A law prohibiting elective abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect May 1 in Florida, as that state also faces a ballot measure on abortion in November.

Caritas Baby Hospital is now the only exclusively pediatric hospital in the West Bank serving about 50,000 children a year. Caritas in Switzerland and Germany were the first donors to the hospital, but since 1963 the hospital has been affiliated with the Swiss NGO Children’s Relief Bethlehem.

Sudden peace negotiations or an intervention by the United States will not deliver Israelis and Palestinians from the suffering caused by the war in Gaza, a Jerusalem-based cardinal said.