Dr. Paul Farmer, a Catholic physician who helped found a network of clinics serving the rural poor in Haiti and Rwanda, died in his sleep Feb. 21 on the grounds of a clinic he had founded in Butaro. He was 62.

As the threat of war loomed over the world, Pope Francis called on people to pray and fast for peace in Ukraine on Ash Wednesday.

With the “further escalation of tension in Ukraine,” the president of the Polish bishops’ conference asked Polish Catholics to continue praying for peace, but also to be prepared to welcome Ukrainian refugees.

Colombia’s bishops expressed “perplexity and deep pain” after the country’s constitutional court decriminalized abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The Vatican is looking for designs for the official logo for the Holy Year 2025 that will highlight its theme, “Pilgrims of Hope.”

Pope Francis has confirmed that members of the Fraternity of St. Peter may continue to celebrate the Mass, sacraments and Liturgy of the Hours using the pre-Vatican II texts and forms, the fraternity said.

Promoting better collaboration between women and men in the Catholic Church is not primarily about equality but about allowing the church to fulfill the mission given to it by God, said women speakers at a Vatican conference on priesthood.

The requirement that most priests in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church be celibate has theological and spiritual foundations and not only practical motivations, said speakers at an international conference on priesthood.

Meeting leaders of the Eastern Catholic churches — many from countries at war, facing the threat of war or dealing with the destruction left by war — Pope Francis said human beings seem to be “attached to wars, and this is tragic.”

The issue of coercion, rather than the morality of COVID-19 vaccines, that tends to be the preeminent source of tension between those who seek greater restrictions and those who seek greater freedom, and Catholics appear to be divided as societies in general.