David Gibson - Religion News Service

Pope Francis agreed a women’s diaconate should be given more careful consideration, telling hundreds of nuns from around the world that he himself always wondered about the role of deaconesses in the early church.

Promising new treatments that are emerging every year cannot be available “only to the privileged and the powerful,” Biden told some of the 350 top cell therapy doctors, researchers, philanthropists, ethicists and activists.

“Our nation seems to have lost a sense of the importance of cultivating friendships as fellow citizens who, being equal, share much in common,” Archbishop Blase Cupich said in a homily on March 12 at Old St. Patrick’s Church.

“Certainly for faithful lay people in general, but above all for women, this would constitute a fundamental change in their participation in church life.”

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a top adviser to Pope Francis, has denounced the idea of “therapeutic abortions”—which are carried out because of fetal abnormalities—as a response to birth defects caused by the mosquito-borne Zika virus that is setting off ala

Any move to broaden those whose feet are washed by the priest—taking the role of Jesus—could raise questions about ordination.

Without mentioning Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump by name, Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron has blasted proposals like Trump’s that would specifically bar Muslims from the U.S., saying the idea “fractures the very foundation of morality on which we stand.”Vigneron&