The way individual Catholics and their parishes care for the sick offers a precise measure of just how much they either are part of or are fighting the “throwaway culture” that ignores or discards anyone seen as flawed or weak, Pope Francis said in his message for the World Day of the Sick.

In this first trip to the border since he took office, President Joe Biden, who is Catholic, sought to “assess border enforcement operations” and talk to those helping to manage “the historic number of migrants fleeing political oppression and gang violence in Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba,” according to the White House.

Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin has united the nation and the world in prayer, supporters said at a Jan. 9 community vigil held in the injured NFL player’s hometown of McKees Rocks, Pa.

There can be no improvising or going it alone when it comes to preventing and handling cases of abuse in the Catholic Church, said U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

The National Conference of Brazilian Bishops said in a statement it was “perplexed by the serious and violent occurrences” that erupted Jan. 8 in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.

Hundreds of Polish priests dropped everything and came to Rome to pay tribute to the pope emeritus.

“Peace requires before all else the defense of life,” which is threatened by the “alleged ‘right to abortion,'” Pope Francis told ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.

– Telling parents and godparents to teach their little ones to pray from the time they are small, Pope Francis baptized 13 babies in the Sistine Chapel as their older brothers and sisters looked on — or got away and ran around.

Ukraine’s Catholic military chaplains will eventually be “catalysts for the rebuilding” of their war-torn nation, said the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose three days in Ukraine included at times sheltering with Ukrainians as Russian missiles relentlessly rained down on civilian centers.

During its tenure, the next Congress and its speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, are also likely to offer a mixed bag of legislative results on issues of importance to Catholics.