The sounds of a Bach fugue and several other musical works filled the sacred space of the church at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington’s Brookland neighborhood as Gabriel Galdo played the monastery’s Lively-Fulcher organ.

Church leaders and parishes offered prayers for the five people who died and dozens more who were injured, including a Catholic priest, church parishioners and Catholic school students, when an SUV plowed through spectators watching a Christmas parade.

A young Catholic priest has been beatified as a martyr in Poland, nearly eight decades after he was guillotined by wartime Nazi occupiers for clandestine charity work.

Catholic opponents of the death penalty, including Oklahoma City’s archbishop, praised the Nov. 18 announcement that the Oklahoma governor granted death-row inmate Julius Jones clemency — just hours before he was scheduled to be executed.

The U.S. bishops agreed Nov. 17 that the sainthood causes for three laypeople from the United States should be advanced by their respective dioceses.

The U.S. bishops approved their statement on the Eucharist with 222 “yes” votes Nov. 17, the second of two days of public sessions during their Nov. 15-18 fall general assembly.

On Nov. 17, the second of two days of public sessions during their fall general assembly Nov. 15-18 in Baltimore, the bishops voted to begin the process of updating the charter in 2022 rather than in 2025. The vote was 230 bishops in favor of the plan and five bishops against it.

Hundreds of spectators, media and workers descended on the home of Devon and Julie Price, parishioners at Immaculate Conception Church in Elkton, Maryland, to watch as a 79-foot-tall, 46-foot-wide Norway spruce was cut down and removed from their property.

Bishops approved new guidelines governing financial investments of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that include wider limits on where money would be invested and advance a policy of engagement on corporate practices that impact human dignity.

Coming together for the first time in two years has been good for the bishops of the United States, in the judgment of Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.