Students at a Catholic liberal arts college in California told OSV News that they’re more ready than ever for the new school year, after weathering both a major storm and an earthquake on the same day.

The Nicaraguan regime has extinguished the Jesuits’ legal status and ordered the expropriation of its assets, effectively making it illegal for the Society of Jesus to operate in the Central American country.

Eight Republican candidates participated Aug. 23 in the Republican National Committee’s first debate of their party’s presidential primary process in a Milwaukee debate hosted by Fox News — but the party’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, did not attend, and was referred to by moderator Bret Baier as “the elephant not in the room.”

Ukraine’s Independence Day, celebrated on Aug. 24, is “like a July 4th,” said Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak of Philadelphia, head of Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S.

Russian occupiers launched an attack Aug. 22 on St. Teresa of the Child of Jesus Roman Catholic Church in the town of Skadovsk, located in the Kherson region in eastern Ukraine, Bishop Stanislav Szyrokoradiuk of Odessa-Simferopol confirmed on Facebook.

The synod process underway around the world and at the Vatican is inflicting “evident and grave harm” on the Catholic Church, retired U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke wrote in a letter published as the foreword to a book.

Acknowledging Ukraine’s celebration of Independence Day Aug. 24, Pope Francis pleaded with thousands of visitors at his weekly general audience to keep praying for peace in the country.

The South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the state’s six-week abortion ban in an Aug. 23 ruling, permitting that law to go into effect.

Wildfires wreaking devastation across British Columbia and the Northwest Territories of Canada have apparently spared Catholic churches, though the same thing cannot be said for numerous other buildings.

Our Lady of Guadalupe and other recognized Marian apparitions show clearly how evangelization does not require complicated plans and elaborate theological explanations but sharing the faith in “a language suitable for all, a language that is comprehensible, like that of Jesus,” Pope Francis said.