There has been a huge overall surge in allegations over the past three years as dioceses faced unprecedented pressure to address the decades-old problem of clergy sex abuse.

In 2015, some people objected to the canonization of the Spaniard, like critics did of his beatification in 1988, because of questions about how Father Serra treated the native peoples of California and about the impact of Spanish colonization on native peoples throughout the Americas.

Since the establishment of the first Catholic newspapers in the United States, the pope said, local communities have relied on the ever-expanding forms of media "to share, to communicate, to inform and to unite."

Bishop Weldon, a native of the Archdiocese of New York, was installed as the fourth bishop of the Springfield Diocese March 28, 1950, and served until his retirement in the fall of 1977.

Dr. Shacham has a simple message for people eager to return to church as other social interactions appear to be restored. Do not be confused. The safest course of action, Dr. Shacham emphasized, continues to be to stay at home unless you have to venture out.

Leslie Woodcock Tentler's new book is both a rigorous and laudable effort to cure American Catholics of the illusion that our desires have no history.