VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis urged Christians to examine their consciences in Lent by comparing their daily lives to the hardships faced by migrants, calling it a way to grow in empathy and discover God’s call to compassion.

(OSV News) — Thousands of people gathered Feb. 16 in the small village of Pyin Oo Lwin in Myanmar to pay their final respects to Father Donald Martin Ye Naing Win, a priest who was found stabbed to death in a targeted attack.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Among the first acts of his second term, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders including on immigration, birthright citizenship and climate. Some Catholic organizations expressed concern about the scope of his orders and their potential impact on migrants.

WARSAW, Poland (OSV News) — “I will not send away any Jewish child,” assured Mother Matylda Getter, superior of the Warsaw province of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, founded by Father Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski in the mid-19th century.

PITTSBURGH (OSV News) — Artist and psychologist Tetiana Myalkovska of Ukraine used her art therapy techniques to work with children who have special needs and with her country’s traumatized soldiers returning from the conflict when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Starting in the Holy Year 2025, local churches worldwide will annually honor the saints, blesseds and other holy figures connected to their communities, Pope Francis announced.

REYNOSA, Mexico (OSV News) — Reynaldo Ceron received an unexpected surprise on Nov. 6, the day after the U.S. election.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis prayed for a conversion of hearts and a start to dialogue, reconciliation and peace in a letter marking the 1,000th day since Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — As activists push President Joe Biden to commute existing federal death sentences during his final months in office, a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center examined what it called persistent racial disparities in federal death penalty prosecutions.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis appointed a new preacher of the papal household: a 53-year-old Italian Capuchin priest who studied computer science and mathematics and discovered his vocation while reading a free copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel on the subway.