As this unusual school year gets underway, Boston College freshmen were reminded that they’ve already been through a lot and were urged — as college graduating seniors usually are — that they have to go out and change the world.

Human beings must change their relationship with nature and view it not as an “object for unscrupulous use and abuse” but as a gift they are charged by God to care for and protect, Pope Francis said.

San Francisco’s archbishop is calling on all parishes in the archdiocese to each gather parishioners to participate in eucharistic processions to U.N. Plaza next to City Hall Sept. 20 “to witness to the city that faith matters.”

Catholic leaders in the Holy Land expressed astonishment that a large group of evangelical Christians from the U.S. received visas to come to Israel to help with the grape harvest in West Bank settlements, while Catholic institutions have not been able to obtain Israeli visas for their volunteers and staff members because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Association of U.S. Catholic Priests and the Catholic Mobilizing Network said they strongly object to an award the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast organizers plan to present to U.S. Attorney General William Barr during the annual breakfast, which is to be livestreamed Sept. 23 from Washington.

The Jesuit-run Central American University in El Salvador welcomed the verdict of a Spanish court, which convicted a former Salvadoran colonel for the murder of five Jesuit priests in 1989.

The U.S. bishops’ quadrennial document on political responsibility is rooted in the Catholic Church’s long-standing moral tradition that upholds human dignity and the common good of all, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City said.

The bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, said Sept. 9 that he has privately begun “applying Gospel principles” to correct a pastor who in a video says Catholics who are Democrats must “repent” of their support for the party or “face the fires of hell.”

While the foothills of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains have been ablaze, creating red apocalyptic skies and leaving five small towns in ashes, most of the churches in the Archdiocese of Portland have not burned and many have offered shelter to thousands of evacuees.

The common good — and not political or economic gain — should be at the heart of the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19, Pope Francis said.