As Russia’s violent monthlong invasion continued to devastate Ukraine, Pope Francis laid the fates of both countries at the feet of Mary in the hopes that peace would finally reign.

Top-seeded Loyola New Orleans beat No. 2-seed Talladega (Alabama) College, 71-56, to capture the NAIA men’s basketball championship.

The Supreme Court March 24 ruled in favor of a Texas prisoner who wanted his pastor to pray aloud over him and place his hands on him in the execution chamber.

Madeleine Albright, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the first female secretary of state and longtime professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, died March 23 in Washington. She was 84.

The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson began with introductory remarks March 21 followed by 13 hours of questioning the next day about her role as a judge and a public defender and her views on abortion, critical race theory and her own faith.

Catholic leaders warn the exodus of Ukrainian women and children presents a prime opportunity for human trafficking, and they are taking steps to protect the refugees.

As the nation awaits the U.S. Supreme Court’s most significant abortion ruling in decades, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the chairmen of eight USCCB committees joined together “in prayer and expectant hope that states will again be able to protect women and children from the injustice of abortion.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not just a tragic conflict between two nations, but the center of a spiritual battle wrought by the forces of evil that have pitted brother against brother, said the apostolic nuncio to Ukraine.

Pope Francis telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before the president addressed the Italian parliament via video link March 22.

A Vatican office led by a cardinal or archbishop has no more authority than one led by a layperson because all offices of the Roman Curia act in the name of the pope, said experts presenting Pope Francis’ new constitution on the Curia’s organization.