A retired nurse who felt called to help Afghan refugees and the young Afghan mother she embraced as a mentor were killed in a truck accident while out taking a walk Feb. 15.

“Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered,” Pope Francis said during his weekly audience. “And this ethical principle applies to, concerns everyone, not just Christians or believers.”

In his book "Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear," Michael O’Loughlin has named some of the hidden glories of the Catholic Church’s responses to H.I.V./AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States.

No one wants to be at a funeral. It means that a loss has occurred, hearts broken. But there are few other instances in which doing something we dread so deeply can mean so much.

Joan Didion was capable both of conjuring up the horrors of modern life and of offering solace that there was still a point to it all.

Here is a way to show how much you really love your children: Do the paperwork.