As Lent begins, Catholic leaders across Eastern Africa are urging prayers — and action — for millions facing a deepening drought crisis.

Ahead of the USCCB collection — typically held on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18) in most dioceses, and which can be supported online anytime at igivecatholic.org/story/USCCB-CCEE — OSV News spoke with Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, father and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, to discuss the impact of the USCCB’s appeal in Ukraine.

A deadly shooting erupted during a boys hockey game in Rhode Island, involving a co-op with a number of players reported to be from an area Catholic school, and may have been motivated by what law enforcement characterized as a “family dispute.”

The Holy See “will not participate” in President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said Feb. 17, citing “points that leave us somewhat perplexed.”

Beneath the Roman pines of the Aventine Hill, Pope Leo XIV led a solemn penitential procession Feb. 18 to Rome’s oldest extant basilica, marking the first Ash Wednesday of his pontificate with a call for “countercultural” repentance for sins from individuals, institutions and the Church itself.

SB359, which would have permitted doctors to prescribe lethal, self-administered drugs to terminally ill patients deemed to have less than six months to live, failed to advance in a full state senate committee hearing Feb. 5.

The Diocese of Camden, N.J., has announced plans to resolve more than 300 abuse claims with a $180 million settlement.

Amid the ravages of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the human heart finds its home in God and in communion with others, said two Catholic clergy from Ukraine’s embattled east at an annual three-day cultural event in New York City.

At the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, Polish ski jumper Kacper Tomasiak made history — and then went to Mass.

On Ash Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV encouraged Catholics to ask the Lord for “the gift of true conversion” at the start of the 40-day penitential season of Lent.