Flood said having the opportunity to get to know the cardinal was deeply inspiring, and that his service as liaison officer was an was an honor and a privilege.

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the encyclical on the care for the environment, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis has invited Catholics to participate in a nine-day global campaign of prayer and action from May 16-24. The theme of the week is “everything is connected.”

The coronavirus pandemic has drawn well-deserved attention to nurses and midwives, who are among “the saints next door,” dedicated to helping people in some of the most joyful or painful moments of their lives, Pope Francis said.

Catholic bishops have distanced themselves from a letter in which several prominent Catholic clergy warned there were attempts to use the COVID-19 pandemic to create a “world government beyond all control.”

In oral arguments May 11, the Supreme Court examined, and seemed divided about, laws governing church and state in its look at two California Catholic schoolteacher firings where the teachers claimed they had been victims of job discrimination.

In a joint service marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, Christian churches in Germany issued a call for a commitment to work for peace, reported the German Catholic news agency, KNA.

In the silence of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, a former principal of Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore, was installed May 6 as leader of the 1.2 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, and five other bishops have concluded that alleged apparitions of Our Lady of America — said to have taken place more than six decades ago — were not of supernatural origin.

Belgium’s Brothers of Charity have cut ties with their 15 homes for psychiatric patients after the Vatican stripped the institutions of their Catholic status because euthanasia was permitted on their premises.

Catholic schools in the U.S. are busy trying to avert fiscal calamity by turning to government emergency support, online appeals and campus virtual tours to prop up next year’s enrollment.