Proceedings before a criminal trial involving former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick will continue March 3 in Massachusetts, where he faces three counts of sexually assaulting a teenager in the 1970s.

In mid-January, the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl is scheduled to publish a report into the handling of clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

Since Christmas, the Missionaries of Charity have been strictly rationing the food and daily use items for their regular 600 beneficiaries at their motherhouse and Shishu Bhavan, a children’s orphanage. On Jan. 2, the breakfast of tea, bread, and eggs was cut short by an hour.

Wearing a high-filtering mask over one’s nose and mouth at Mass “is a small sacrifice we can bring to the altar as an offering pleasing to God for the good of all his children,” said Father Roberto Colombo, a geneticist and member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Washington Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory announced in a Dec. 31, 2021, statement that he tested positive for COVID-19. He was asymptomatic at the time and remained so Jan. 3, according to the media relations director for the archdiocese.

As Catholics begin a new year contemplating the motherhood of Mary, they should be inspired not to let problems weaken their faith or prevent them from helping others grow, Pope Francis said.

A report released by several U.N. agencies warned that the number of those suffering from hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean is at its highest point in 15 years.

Christian hope grants those who suffer the assurance that God does not abandon his people in their time of need, Pope Francis said.

In situations of extreme poverty, war or civil tensions, 22 Catholic church workers were murdered in 2021, according to Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

A second icon of Mary holding Jesus has been stolen from outside a chapel at The Catholic University of America following complaints that the image of Christ resembled George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020.