New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced a ban of "military-style" semi-automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines like those used in the shootings at Christchurch mosques last week.

A Jewish cemetery in Fall River, Mass. was vandalized on March 16-17, with headstones defaced with anti-Semitic messages, with numerous headstones pushed to the ground. The Anti-Defamation League of New England is offering a $1,500 award for any information involving the case. This latest incident reveals a disturbing trend in increasing anti-Semitic violence in the state of Massachusetts.

The chairman of the U.S. bishops' domestic policy committee late March 19 expressed grief over the lives and livelihoods lost and threatened by the historic flooding in the Midwest and offered prayers for recovery.

One of the founders of liberation theology in Latin America said he supports an effort to declare St. Oscar Romero a doctor of the Catholic Church.

Catholic parents should vaccinate their children for the good of their children and the community said the Pontifical Academy for Life.

The Vatican is greeting the visit to Italy of Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week with a new round of overtures and says the "door is always open" to dialogue.