When California in 2021 relaxed its physician-assisted death rules — easing access to the lethal means for residents to take their own lives — several lawmakers behind the change cited a desire to aid the terminally ill, invoking a sort of legislative altruism.

From its beginning in 2021, the church’s synod on synodality has raised a question: Where is this worldwide process of listening to the people of God, especially those on the margins, going?

Inviting others into their rich liturgical traditions, fostering belonging in small communities and reaching out to the secular world via podcasts and “coffee shop ministry,” many Eastern Catholic parishes have unique ways of bringing people to full life in Jesus Christ as his disciples.

More than a year after floods submerged one-third of Pakistan, “women in particular are (still) being impacted,” said the head of programming for Catholic Relief Services in the country.

The Relic of St. Jude tour begins in Chicago Sept. 9 at St. John Cantius Church. Scheduled stops for the remainder of 2023 include parishes in Illinois, Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa, followed by Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska, Indiana and Michigan.

Since Auxiliary Bishop Maksym Ryabukha of Donetsk was installed in December 2022, 10 months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has driven more than 30,000 miles near the largely occupied areas of Eastern Ukraine to tend to his flock — and he feels right at home.

Any limitations and rules regarding media access and communications during the upcoming Synod of Bishops are rooted in the “essence” of a synod and meant to help participants in their process of discernment, said the head of the synod’s communication committee.

If people can learn how to inflict suffering on others with ever more deadly weapons, they also can learn to stop doing so, Pope Francis said.

Catholic and Jewish institutions announced Sept. 7 the discovery of a previously unpublished list of several thousand people, mostly Jews, who were hidden in Catholic convents and monasteries in Rome during the Nazi occupation of the city.

The National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children takes place Sept. 9, with services and gatherings at some 225 locations across the country. About 56 of those locations are gravesites for the remains of aborted children, while the majority are memorials.