John Ramirez, a Texas inmate who won a legal battle with the Supreme Court to have his pastor pray aloud over him and place his hands on him in the execution chamber, was executed by lethal injection Oct. 5.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Archdiocese for the Military Services have filed a joint statement objecting to a rule proposed by the Biden administration to allow abortions to be performed on demand in health programs administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Father Patrick O’Connor said his immigrant community, composed mostly of Mexican and Central American laborers, is most in need simply of food and water donations after Hurricane Ian, as the supply chain situation hasn’t been great.

During his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 5, the pope said that knowing oneself requires “patient soul-searching” and the awareness of one’s “way of acting, of the feelings that dwell within us.”

In a meeting with the president of the German bishops’ conference, Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch apologized for offending people and said he never intended to imply that supporters of the German church’s Synodal Path were doing something similar to what a group of Christian supporters of the Nazis did in the 1930s.

Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services is kicking off a campaign to build greater Catholic response to climate change and foster greater awareness of how climate change affects vulnerable communities.

Hurricane Ian destroyed a parish on Sanibel Island and ravaged portions of Fort Myers, Cape Coral, among other areas.

The Vatican hosted the global premiere of a new documentary on the urgent need to address climate change on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the same day the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 2015 Paris Agreement entered into force for the Holy See.

The Gospel’s message of hope to the suffering and downtrodden is sorely needed in today’s world, which is “enslaved by selfishness and full of contradictions and divisions,” Pope Francis said.

While their life journeys and the stages of their sainthood causes diverged, two men born in Italy are set to be canonized together Oct. 9: Blessed Giovanni Battista Scalabrini and Blessed Artemide Zatti.