Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary during a penitential prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica March 25, the Vatican said.

The call to prayer is an “active mission,” one that does not take a believer from the world but prompts the believer to bring to God the pain and concerns of the world — including the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis said.

Appealing again for an end to the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis said those who invoke God to promote or justify violence “profane his name.”

The chairmen of several U.S. bishops’ committees and the head of March for Life March 11 praised the U.S. senators who voted to pass the government’s omnibus bill with the Hyde Amendment and other pro-life provisions included in it.

Franciscan Father James E. Goode, whose evangelizing work among Black Catholics became known throughout the United States and earned him the title “dean of Black Catholic preachers,” died in his sleep March 4 in New York. He was 81.

At the behest of Pope Francis, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, arrived in Poland March 7 to offer encouragement and material help to Ukrainian refugees and the volunteers assisting them. Two days later, he crossed the border into Ukraine.

Just a day after a U.S. House commission’s hearing on holding Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for “war crimes and aggression against Ukraine,” his military forces carried out an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol in the East European country.

In response to more than 2 million refugees, primarily women and children, fleeing the conflict in Ukraine in recent weeks, the president and CEO of Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services said it is “alarming to see the scale of the suffering” in the region.

Condemning Russia’s bombing of a children’s and maternity hospital in Ukraine, the Vatican secretary of state insisted diplomacy and negotiations are the only ways to prevent the situation from getting much worse.

The head of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine challenged the international community to “take action so that Russia immediately stops the barbaric ruination of Ukrainian cities, villages and their population.”