Pope Francis began a meeting with participants in a Focolare-sponsored conference by telling the movement’s president, “I pray for your homeland; I pray so much for your homeland, which is suffering at this time.”

Workers need spaces in which they can come together, form a sense of community and advocate for the marginalized, Pope Francis said.

Every encounter with people on the move as migrants or refugees is an encounter with Christ, Pope Francis said.

When Catholics carry the Eucharist through the streets, “we are not doing this to show off or to flaunt our faith” but to invite others to share in the life that Jesus gives by making himself a gift, Pope Francis said.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said allowing Ukraine to use NATO weapons to attack military targets in Russia would lead to “an escalation that no one will be able to control anymore.”

Forty-five years ago, on June 2, St. John Paul II started his first papal pilgrimage to his native Poland, then shackled by a communist dictatorship. The visit had not only an enormous impact on the spiritual renewal of the Polish nation, paving the way for democratic changes, but it also inspired future freedom fighters in other parts of the Soviet empire.

The Catholic Church in France prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Normandy landings June 6, a date known as D-Day that marked the beginning of the liberation of France and Europe from Nazi Germany’s occupation during World War II.

U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Joe Donnelly will leave his post in July, the embassy announced.

In what increasingly represents a pattern in the Northeast and Midwest, the Diocese of Buffalo, N.Y., on May 28 announced a restructuring plan designed to merge approximately 34 percent of its 160 parishes.

Ten days into their journeys, the 23 perpetual pilgrims were in the Diocese of Victoria; the Diocese of Boise, Idaho; the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis; and the Diocese of Trenton, N.J.