The new statues introduce the new role of “supporters” who, while not academics, identify with the academy’s mission and “contribute to the advancement of its academic activities.”

WASHINGTON - On the weekend of March 14-15, Catholics in many dioceses across the United States will be asked to help some of the most poor and vulnerable people. The U.S. bishops’ annual Catholic Relief Services Collection helps those in need in the United States and worldwide by benefiting six agencies and offices affiliated with the Catholic Church, including the U.S. bishops’ flagship international relief and development agency, Catholic Relief Services. Gifts are also accepted online at https://www.igivecatholic.org/story/USCCB-CRS.

“The Church in the United States was built on ministry among immigrants. We help all who are marginalized, including victims of war and disaster overseas. The Catholic Relief Services Collection combines all these kinds of assistance,” said Bishop Daniel H. Mueggenborg of Reno, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on National Collections. “Our Lord tells us to love our neighbors – those we know, those we don’t and those we think are very different from us. The Catholic Relief Services Collection is one way that we show that love. Today it is more vital than ever.”

Of nearly $13.5 million distributed from The Catholic Relief Services Collection in 2024, nearly $8 million went to Catholic Relief Services for international relief and development efforts in places affected by war and natural disaster.

The other recipients are:

• The Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC): Provides training and support to a dedicated network of more than 400 Catholic and community-based immigration law providers in 49 states.
• USCCB Secretariat of Migration (formerly the Department of Migration and Refugee Services): Assists dioceses in carrying out their ministries to newcomers, publishes educational resources, and promotes policies that affirm the life and dignity of immigrants and refugees.
• Two initiatives of the USCCB Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church: pastoral ministries to migrant workers, travelers, and seafarers through its Subcommittee on the Pastoral Care of Migrants, Refugees, and Travelers, and its Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Island Affairs, which helps the Church address the unique pastoral needs across many boundaries of language and tradition.
• USCCB Secretariat of Justice and Peace: Engages in advocacy on behalf of the poor around the world and works with policymakers and government officials to end violent international conflicts through its International Justice and Peace program.
• Holy Father’s Relief Fund: Helps Pope Leo XIV rush aid to areas of the world in crisis.

“Together, these agencies help victims of war and natural disaster, support sustainable economic development overseas, advocate for international peace and human rights, help refugees and immigrants in the United States to obtain legal support, offer pastoral support to a wide variety of people who migrate for work and build cross-cultural understanding,” Bishop Mueggenborg said.

For more information on The Catholic Relief Services Collection please visit www.usccb.org/catholic-relief.

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Visiting a parish in Rome, the pope preached on the Transfiguration and Abraham’s journey of faith.

WASHINGTON - As reports emerge regarding the escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, urgently called upon the United States, Iran, and the broader international community to return to dialogue and pursue every avenue toward a just and lasting peace.

Echoing the heartfelt appeal of Pope Leo XIV to halt the spiral of violence before it becomes “an unbridgeable chasm,” Archbishop Coakley emphasized the critical need for restraint and for all parties to take concrete steps to end the conflict, work for peace and protect innocent lives. His full statement follows:

“The growing conflict risks spiraling into a wider regional war. As the Holy Father has warned, we are faced with the possibility of a tragedy of immense proportions. My brother bishops and I unite our voice with our Holy Father and make the heartfelt appeal to all parties involved for diplomacy to regain its proper role. We ask for a halt to the spiral of violence, and a return to multilateral diplomatic engagement that seeks to uphold the ‘well-being of peoples, who yearn for peaceful existence founded on justice.’ All nations, international bodies, and partners committed to peace must exert every effort to prevent further escalation.

“At this critical moment, I invite Catholics and all people of goodwill to continue our ardent prayers for peace in the Middle East, for the safety of our troops and the innocent, that leaders may seek dialogue over destruction, and pursue the common good over the tragedy of war. We implore the intercession of our Blessed Mother, Mary, Queen of Peace, to pray for our troubled world and for a lasting peace.”

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ROME (CNS) -- Life is a journey that requires trust and reliance on Jesus, who sometimes asks his disciples to leave everything behind, Pope Leo XIV said.

While it may be tempting to flee from the uncertainty of heading into the unknown, it is precisely in this "dizzying vertigo" that people of faith will find God's promise of unexpected greatness, he said in a homily during a Mass celebrated at a small parish in Rome March 1.

While it is normal to try to have everything under control, he said, "we miss the opportunity to discover the true treasure, the precious pearl, as the Gospel teaches us, which God has surprisingly hidden in our field."

Pope Leo was visiting the Church of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the working-class neighborhood of Quarticciolo for the second Sunday of Lent as part of a series of parish visits in the run-up to Easter. 

The neighborhood has experienced an increase in crime and drug-dealing. The church and local community, however, have been active in building initiatives to create job opportunities and strengthen essential services and solidarity. 

"You are signs of hope," he told the parishioners in his homily.

Faced with so many complex problems, he said, "you are entrusted with the pedagogy of the gaze of faith, which transfigures everything with hope, putting passion, sharing and creativity into circulation as a cure for the many wounds of this neighborhood."

It is easy to become discouraged and doubt efforts make any sense when so many things are not right in the world, he said. "Instead, it is precisely in the face of the mystery of evil that we must bear witness to our identity as Christians, as people who want to make the Kingdom of God perceptible in the places and times in which we live."

Life, he said, "is a journey that requires trust; it requires reliance on the Word of God, who calls us and sometimes asks us to leave everything behind."

For example, he said, Abraham's journey began with the loss of his homeland, but he was led to a new land with many descendants and "where everything becomes a blessing."

"If we allow ourselves to be called by faith to walk the path, to risk new decisions in life and love, we, too, will cease to fear losing something, because we will feel ourselves growing in a wealth that no one can steal," the pope said. 

Another example, he said, is Jesus' "Eucharistic gesture," that is, his willingness to offer his body as bread to eat and to live and die to give life.

In fact, Sunday is a chance to take a moment during the journey to gather together around Jesus, who "encourages us not to stop and not to change direction" and to know there is "no more precious treasure than to live in order to give life!"

"Listen to Jesus!" Pope Leo said. "He travels with us, even today, to teach us in this city the logic of unconditional love, of abandoning every defense that becomes an offense."

"Let us enter into his light to become light of the world, beginning with the neighborhood where we live," he said, because "the whole life of the parish and its groups exists for this: it is a service to light, a service to joy." 

Pope Leo is the third pope -- after St. John XXIII in 1963 and St. John Paul II in 1980 -- to visit the church, which is overseen by the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart, also known as the Dehonians.

During the late afternoon visit, the pope met with children and young people active in the Jesuits' MAGIS program. The young adults gave the pope a soccer ball and the black and gold jersey of their local soccer team, the Lions.

The pope also met with vulnerable members of the community, including the elderly, the ill and parents whose children's drug addictions led them to incarceration. He also spoke with members of the parish's pastoral council and priests.

The pontiff warned that “stability and peace are not built with mutual threats” and appealed for dialogue to avert a wider crisis.

Bishop Erik Varden closed a weeklong retreat for the Roman Curia with meditations on the cross and hope.

The stamp features the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv.

ROME (CNS) -- Eight hundred years after his death, the bones of St. Francis of Assisi have been placed on public display for the first extended public viewing in history, drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the hilltop town.

Following Pope Leo XIV's approval and blessing of this exposition, St. Francis' skeleton was exhumed from the sarcophagus where it normally rests and placed on a specially prepared table in the crypt of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi Feb. 21. His remains will be on display until March 22, when Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian bishops’ conference, is to preside over a closing celebration. 

As of the opening day Feb. 22, more than 370,000 people had registered to venerate the remains, according to the Franciscan community at the Sacred Convent of Assisi. The majority have been Italian pilgrims, though the second-highest number of registrations have so far come from the United States.

The friars at the Sacred Convent in Assisi described the exposition as "an invitation to rediscover the legacy of Francis, a man whose message of peace and fraternity continues to resonate deeply with humanity.”

For some, the sight of a saint’s bones inspires devotion. For others, it may provoke discomfort or morbid curiosity about why the Catholic Church displays the physical remains of its holy men and women.

According to Catholic tradition, the physical remains of a saint are known as first-class relics. They are venerated not as magical objects, but as tangible reminders that holiness touches both body and soul.

Elizabeth Lev, a U.S. art historian who teaches in Rome, said relics serve as "a concrete reminder that the blessed or saint’s body is here on earth and his or her soul is with God.”

"It feels like you’ve got almost like a hotline into heaven,” she told Catholic News Service in 2011. The relic is "something we can see and touch, and it becomes our portal to a world we cannot see and cannot touch."

Relics, she emphasized, are not charms or spiritual talismans. 

"God controls what he’s going to do and how he’s going to do it," she said. 

The object itself has no power; it is understood as a channel through which believers direct their prayers.

Even in a secularized age, relics continue to draw large crowds. Tours of saints’ remains in Europe and the United States in recent decades have attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors, including many who might not otherwise attend church regularly. 

Assisi also holds the remains of the first millennial saint, St. Carlo Acutis, who was canonized last year. His body can be found at the Church of St. Mary Major, where more than 620,000 individuals visited in the first eight months of 2025, according to the Diocese of Assisi.

While in Paris, an estimated 2-3 million annual visitors go to see St. Catherine Labouré's preserved body. Next to the altar, she lies in a glass shrine in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, where she is reported to have seen the Virgin Mary in 1830. 

The body of St. Thérèse of Lisieux went on a tour of the United States last year, attracting an estimated one million visitors across more than 30 stops. Her permanent shrine in Lisieux brings more than 600,000 visitors annually. 

Lev suggested that the enduring appeal may reflect a deeper hunger.

"An over-secularized world that rejects the divine and embraces the finite and man-made leaves a void in people,” she had said. Relics, and the traditions surrounding them, offer a reminder that death does not sever the bonds between the living and the dead in the Christian imagination.

At the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, the friars said in the press release that they invite the faithful to be inspired by the mortal remains of St. Francis, that death can bear fruit. 

"This awareness, eloquently expressed through the mortal remains of St. Francis, serves as an invitation to view one’s personal life in a similar light: like Francis, each person is called to give themselves generously in relationships, becoming a living tree of fraternity that continues to bear fruit in the history of the Church and the world," the convent's press release said.

The monthlong exposition includes a vigil with members of the Italian Parliament, a youth gathering titled "Sister Death: An Experience to Embrace,” and a theological conference exploring St. Francis’ understanding of death not as an end, but as a passage.

Though he died 800 years ago, St. Francis is still reminding the faithful that death should be viewed as a transition. During his life, he was known for his love of nature, renounced his wealthy upbringing to live as a beggar, and restored several chapels. He viewed death not with fear, but as a sibling, calling it "Sister Death." For the saint, death was not the end, but a peaceful transition to eternal life with God.

The Cistercian bishop reflected on angels as mediators of God’s providence and on St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s realism rooted in mercy.