A host of voices from throughout the religious spectrum condemned the Dec. 28 knife attack at the suburban New York City home of a Hasidic rabbi that wounded five, one of them critically.

"Women and Francis" is the theme of the January 2020 issue of Women-Church-World, a monthly supplement to L'Osservatore Romano. It was released Dec. 28.

Though the majority of the $6 million the fund raised in almost two decades went to charities, many priests and more than 60 cardinals and archbishops benefited from it.

As India continued to experience violent protests against a controversial citizenship law, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai said citizenship should never be based on a person's religion.

"The wounds of the Islamic State have not been healed yet, together with the ongoing violence, poverty, unemployment and poor services that have pushed thousands of people, especially youth, to demonstrate peacefully, demanding the right to live with dignity and freedom in a stable, secure and strong independent homeland," Cardinal Louis Sako, patriarch of Chaldean Catholics, said of anti-government protests.

Lawmakers recently agreed to begin the lengthy process of amending the state constitution to allow a two-year window for civil suits otherwise barred by the statute of limitations, but there's no guarantee that effort will bear fruit.