Signs Of the Times

To promote Catholic social teaching and ensure appropriate assistance to vulnerable people—especially victims of war, refugees and the sick—Pope Francis has established a new Vatican office. In a letter initiated by him and published by the Vatican on Aug. 31, the pope said the new Dicas

A judge in California ruled on Aug. 26 that a group of doctors could continue a court challenge to the state’s new assisted-suicide law but that the law would not be put on hold while they did so. • While hailing a peace agreement that ended 50 years of civil conflict in Colombia, Pope Fr

Water lapped at the heels of the Rev. Michael Galea, the still steady rain a constant reminder of Mother Nature’s unfinished business. Father Galea, pastor at Holy Rosary Church in St. Amant, La., estimated that as many as 90 percent of his parishioners had been affected in some way during the

As hope of finding any more survivors dimmed, the official death toll after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake rocked central Italy reached 290 on Aug. 29. The quake and over 300 aftershocks devastated the homes and lives of thousands of people in the early hours of the morning of Aug. 24.At least 400 peopl

The borough’s Bangladeshi community remained tense more than a week after two men were gunned down a few blocks from a humble storefront mosque in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens on Aug. 13. Jewel Chowdhury, the general secretary of the Jalalabad Association of America, says the Muslim c