“The Lord’s call is grace, complete gift and at the same time a commitment to bring the Gospel to others,” the pope wrote in his message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.

North Dakota has enacted a near-total ban on abortions, with limited exceptions in cases of rape and incest up until the sixth week of pregnancy.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley delivered remarks April 25 calling for a “national consensus” on abortion, embracing some general policy positions on the subject, but she stopped short of endorsing specific gestational limits at the federal level.

President Joe Biden announced April 25 that he will seek a second term in the White House. Biden, a Democrat, is the nation’s second Catholic president, but his reelection would make him the first Catholic to serve twice in the Oval Office.

Viktoria Halitsina, head of the Ukrainian military administration of the port city of Berdyansk, wrote on her agency’s Telegram channel that Russian troops had seized the city’s Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Ronald W. Gainer of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who is 75, and has appointed Auxiliary Bishop Timothy C. Senior of Philadelphia to succeed him.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill April 20 that will eliminate the state’s requirement that juries in capital punishment cases agree unanimously to recommend death sentences, lowering the number of jurors needed to hand down a death sentence to the lowest threshold of any U.S. state.

Five Catholic priests have been beatified in France, 152 years after they were seized as hostages and shot in the street by rebels of the Paris Commune.

Before reciting the midday “Regina Coeli” prayer with about 30,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis spoke about the day’s Gospel reading, Luke 24:13-35, which describes the Risen Jesus’ encounter with the disciples heading to Emmaus.

Pope Francis has appealed for an end to violence in Sudan and a return to dialogue.