Europeans must not see their rich history simply as a fond memory of a time long gone, but they must look to it as a guide to overcoming divisions and challenges aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis said.

A divided Senate, in a 52-48 vote, confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as a justice for the Supreme Court the evening of Oct. 26 and soon afterward she was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at a White House ceremony.

When Pope Francis said gay people have a right to be in a family and that gay couples needed some form of civil law to protect their rights, he was not saying that gay couples should have a right to adopt children.

The church is near the cradle of U.S. Catholicism, a few miles from St. Clement’s Island, where Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated the first Mass in the English-speaking colonies March 25, 1634, after colonists from England made landfall there.

Poland’s bishops’ conference decried attacks on churches by demonstrators protesting a near-total ban on abortions by the country’s Constitutional Court and urged restraint from violence and dialogue.

A former priest who had been an early spiritual adviser to the alleged visionaries of Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been excommunicated, according to an announcement by the Diocese of Brescia, Italy, where he lives.

On a day of history for the U.S. Catholic Church, Washington Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory — who four hours earlier had learned Pope Francis had named him a cardinal — celebrated his first Mass as a cardinal-designate Oct. 25 at Holy Angels Church in Avenue in Southern Maryland.

Cardinal-designate Wilton D. Gregory, installed as Washington’ s archbishop in May 2019, thanked Pope Francis “with a very grateful and humble heart” for naming him as one of 13 new cardinals Oct. 25.

Pope Francis announced he will create 13 new cardinals Nov. 28, including Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Washington.

The Vatican and the Chinese government will extend an agreement signed in 2018 regarding the appointment of bishops.