The Vatican secretary of state appealed for peace and diplomacy on the fifth day of the U.S. and Israel-Iran war, warning that recognition of any country’s right to wage “preventive war” according to their own criteria would risk the world “being set ablaze.”

A number of violent extremist groups, led by minors and young adults, are increasingly targeting kids online — in some cases, with deadly results.

Nine young adults have been selected as “perpetual pilgrims” to travel with the Eucharist along the East Coast this summer in the third National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. The pilgrims — five men and four women — will participate in the pilgrimage’s full route, which begins May 24 in Florida and reaches Maine before ending in Philadelphia July 5 for U.S. semiquincentennial celebrations.

The apostolic vicar of Southern Arabia warned that the current military escalation in the Persian Gulf amid the U.S. and Israel-Iran war is a conflict with “ancient roots” that poses a serious threat to the Middle East and the wider world.

Among the belongings Asma Isyed, 68, brought from her West Bank village of Zababdeh in October were a small Bible and a booklet of prayers by St. Mariam Baouardy, a Palestinian saint.

The Catholic Church is both a community made up of fragile and limited human beings and a divine reality, Pope Leo XIV said at his weekly general audience.

A Synod on Synodality study group has recommended the creation of a new “Pontifical Commission for Digital Culture and New Technologies” in the first of 15 synod study group reports expected in the coming weeks.

The U.S. Supreme Court on March 2 temporarily blocked California from enforcing policies that generally prohibit public school teachers from notifying parents about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity, as litigation over that policy proceeds.

The next generation of young Catholics is less interested in a Church that adapts to modern culture and more drawn to one with a solid doctrinal foundation that is firmly anchored against a fragmented world, an Irish bishop said.

In a fractured world threatened by war, Christians can strengthen their bonds of unity to show the world that peace is possible, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago said.