pandemic

The East African nation of nearly 54 million people has administered more than 15.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, and 13.5% of the population is fully vaccinated.

“We’ve had to make many sacrifices. But we make them in light of our Catholic faith, which calls us to show care and compassion for our neighbors, including the elderly and those with underlying health conditions for whom the virus can have devastating consequences.”

Some Catholics object to the use of COVID-19 vaccines derived from stem cells from fetuses aborted 50 years ago; the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith declared all of the vaccines to be morally licit in December 2020.

“We are a Church that understands the significance of sacrifice, and so I’m asking you to make some additional sacrifices for the good of our communities and our people.”

The civil rights leader “was driven by the biblical vision of righteousness and truth, a vision that he understood to be reflected in our nation’s founding documents,” Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez said in a Jan. 15 statement.

Before giving his Christmas blessing to the city of Rome and to the world, Pope Francis drew attention to the many places around the globe and within human hearts in need of Jesus, the prince of peace.

Governments must pour more money into education and drastically reduce military spending for there to be genuine progress and peace in the world, Pope Francis said in his annual message for the World Day of Peace Jan. 1.

The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development credited and thanked the many workers “who have kept our country functioning during these trying times and worked under difficult and often underappreciated conditions.”