A Philadelphia-born priest has negotiated a truce among several gang leaders in Haiti, inviting them to “work hard to end violence” in the troubled nation.

Pope Francis has named Spanish-born Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo, who has held the No. 2 post at the Vatican office that oversees the world’s religious orders, to be coadjutor archbishop of Mérida-Badajoz, Spain.

Communicating Pope Francis’ efforts to promote dialogue and advance peace efforts in Ukraine is a “great problem” for Catholic clergy and faithful in the country, said the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Scholars from different Christian churches who have studied together the New Testament letters of St. Paul are engaging in “courageous and prophetic work,” Pope Francis told them.

The Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia has temporarily enclosed a monument to Ukrainian war dead at one of its cemeteries as it seeks “open, scholarly and compassionate dialogue” with Jewish organizations that have expressed concern over this particular memorial and the complex history behind it.

A federal judge declared unlawful a revised version of a program that offers protection from deportation to certain immigrants brought to the country as children. The program has been in place for more than a decade and has nearly 600,000 recipients.

Former President George W. Bush in an opinion piece for The Washington Post published Sept. 13 made his case for the reauthorization of PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, calling that program pro-life — despite claims to the contrary from some pro-life advocates who have expressed concern some of the program’s funds could be diverted to pay for abortions.

The Justice Department and the manufacturer of an abortion drug asked the U.S. Supreme Court Sept. 8 to overturn a lower-court ruling that would limit access to the drug, setting the stage for the high court to weigh in on the future of the drug’s availability.

A Holy See delegation at a Sept. 11-14 meeting of nations that are parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions urged nations that have not yet done so to sign the treaty, which “prohibits under any circumstances the use, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions.”

Plans for the “Casa USA” campus — with backing from other Catholic health care organizations, individuals and the patronage of Lansing Bishop Earl A. Boyea — call for duplicating Padre Pio’s hospital complex for the first time outside of Italy, including an exact replica of the original friary church of the Capuchin Franciscan who is also known as St. Pius of Pietrelcina.