OSV News

They greet each other like family members who haven’t seen one another in a while, a big smile when one of them walks into the room. Felipe Tobar talks about his uncle, quiet and tall, a man “who loved to go to Mass.” Miriam Ayala talks about her 16-year-old sister who used to sing with her in a hammock. She was shot that day, her body carried away by the river.

The sad reality of people displaced within the borders of their own country, a crisis that has been ignored for far too long, is an opportunity for Christians to encounter Jesus, Pope Francis said.

The continuity between St. John Paul II and Pope Francis is rooted in the message of God’s divine mercy for all men and women, retired Pope Benedict XVI said in a letter commemorating his predecessor’s birth.

In preparation for the May 18 resumption of public liturgies in Italy and a morning Mass with Pope Francis at the tomb of St. John Paul II, Vatican workers cleaned and sanitized the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica May 15.

Advocates for debt relief for the world’s poorest countries are calling on international policymakers to cancel debt payments and expand debt relief for developing nations to bolster health care and protect vulnerable people and workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Border closures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have highlighted another “pathology” in modern Ukraine: the practice of commercial surrogacy, said the country’s Catholic bishops.