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Colombian riot police block the way to the Colombian side in the Colombian-Venezuelan border in Cucuta on April 2. (CNS photo/Ferley Ospina, Reuters) 
Politics & SocietyVatican Dispatch
Gerard O’Connell
The executive branch headed by President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela “lacks legitimacy” but has de facto power, while Mr. Guaidó has legitimacy but not executive power. Venezuela in effect has two governments.

A South Sudanese girl is seen at the Nguenyyiel refugee camp in Gambella, Ethiopia, in October 2017. (CNS photo/Tiksa Negeri, Reuters)
Politics & SocietyVatican Dispatch
Gerard O’Connell
The Vatican described the retreat as “a propitious occasion for reflection and prayer, as well as an occasion for encounter and reconciliation.”

 Brazilian Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, attends a seminar on safeguarding children at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome March 23. The seminar was organized by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
FaithDispatches
Filipe Domingues
The advisory panels should become a means of assistance and counsel for their respective national bishops’ conferences. “The members of these groups can instruct, with their own experience, how to deal with the issue of abuse, especially when it comes to listening to victims and accompanying them.”

In May 2013, along with the adjacent Men’s Central Jail, the Twin Towers jail ranked as one of the ten worst sites of incarceration in the United States, based on reporting in Mother Jones magazine: “Eyewitnesses, including several prison chaplains, have reported that attacks by deputies at the twin facilities are often unprovoked or brought on by the slightest infractions.”
Politics & SocietyDispatches
Jim McDermott
County supervisors approved $2.2 billion in June 2018 to build a replacement with the notable amendment that the new facility would be designed with a focus on mental health and rehabilitation.

photo by Mario Durane
Arts & CultureIdeas
Deniz Demirer
By praying the rosary, she’d know that her mind was on God and not the killers.

Baroness Helena Ann Kennedy, director of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute, and Leonardo Javier Raznovich, member of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, talk with journalists in Rome April 5, 2019. Photo by Gerard O'Connell.
FaithVatican Dispatch
Gerard O’Connell
The delegates requested that the church declare that “human dignity implies the respect of every person as created by God” and “hence criminalization of L.G.B.T. people is today a manifestation of irrational hatred for that which is different from the norm and that homophobia is, in effect, a feeling of hatred and rejection which the church condemns, wherever it takes place.”