Nation/World

Jesuit Refugee Services has converted the former mansion of a wealthy businessman into a home for some two dozen women and children fleeing Russia’s brutal attacks on Ukraine.

Photos this week are from World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal.

Lay men and women carrying out missionary work in parishes, either on a full time or volunteer basis, are helping Catholic clergy expand the evangelizing reach of their ministry wherever they are, from urban centers to prairie towns.

ver 1,300 groups comprised of more than 28,600 individuals from across the United States joined the Portuguese WYD. The U.S. is among the five largest delegations participating in WYD, which is taking place Aug. 1-6 in Lisbon.

The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ international policy committee called on Catholics and all people of goodwill to pray that the leaders of the United States and other nations around the globe “who govern the control” of nuclear weapons “will earnestly seek to make critically needed progress on arms control.”

It was one of the most important advertisements ever published in a Catholic newspaper: “Help Wanted: Sisters of Life.” The five simple words led a 1989 column penned by New York Cardinal John J. O’Connor — and within two years, eight women took up the call to be emissaries of Jesus Christ’s life-giving love as the first ever “Sisters of Life.”

Photos featured this week include the Tekakwitha Conference in Bloomington, Minnesota, World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly and more.

The forthcoming 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops — otherwise known as the Synod on Synodality, which Pope Francis convenes in Rome this October — will examine ways to accompany divorced and remarried Catholics.