There are no formal refugee camps in Lebanon. Rather, some Syrians establish informal tent settlements. Others find ways to rent space in apartments or squat in abandoned buildings. As of November, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees calculated there were nearly 1.1 million registered refugees living in Lebanon.

"It is absurd to force a pharmacy to sell drugs against their conscience when there are over 30 pharmacies within five miles that already sell the exact same drugs," said a Jan. 4 statement by  Luke Goodrich, deputy general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the pharmacists. "This law does nothing but punish people of faith."

"Our society is increasingly aware of the flaws in the application of the death penalty, which is inconsistent, arbitrary and too often applied in error," wrote Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Violence and fear-mongering seem "rampant in both church and society" in the northeast African country, said Bishop Edward Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio. Five armed men, believed to be allied to South Sudan's main rebel group, assaulted and threatened religious sisters at the Solidarity Teacher Training College in Yambio, the capital of the country's Western Equatoria state, on Dec. 28.

"He wanted to visit the sanctuary and places where St. Francis, on Christmas Eve in 1223, represented the first living Nativity in history," Bishop Domenico Pompili of Rieti told ANSA, the Italian news agency.

"This is evidence of our reality," Bishop Ramon Castro said outside the home of slain Mayor Gisela Mota in Temixco. "I've been saying it for some time and pleading, and no one has been able to do anything." He said Mota's murder sends the message, "If you don't cooperate with organized crime, look at what's going to happen to you."