Bishop George L. Thomas said he would not ask priests to police the Communion line but asked pro-choice politicians to voluntarily “refrain from the reception of Holy Communion while holding public office.”

Italy’s Catholic military chaplain has pushed back strongly against calls by a former Vatican ambassador to resist Covid-19 vaccine mandates, saying the ambassador’s “conspiracy theories” were a source of confusion and disinformation.

As soon as he finished his prayer, Pope Francis told the people in the hall that the man had a problem: “I don’t know if it is physical, psychological or spiritual, but he is our brother with a problem. I would like to finish by praying for him.”

Mercy Sister Janet Mead, who earned gold records for her 1974 hit version of the Our Father, died Jan. 26 in her native Adelaide, Australia. She was 84 and had been battling cancer.

A meeting at the Vatican between Pope Francis and Indigenous people who were abused at church-run boarding schools in Canada has been rescheduled for late March and early April after being postponed due to the pandemic.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon assesses the future in Myanmar one year after a coup turned back a decade of democratic progress, calling for dialogue, the end of violence and the release of political prisoners.