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The chairmen of two committees of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined by the president of the Catholic Health Association, expressed “strong support” for the Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act, sponsored by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).

“Despite growing recognition of the value of hospital-based palliative care, there remain three major barriers to broader access: a shortage of trained professionals in palliative care; limited research funding to advance best practices in symptom management, communication, and care coordination; and low public and professional awareness of what palliative care is and when it should be utilized,” Archbishop Borys Gudziak, Bishop Daniel Thomas, and Sister Mary Haddad wrote in a recent letter to the leaders of a senate committee.

“Importantly, the bill includes essential language affirming that all supported programs must comply with the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997 and may not be used to cause or assist in causing a patient’s death under any circumstance,” the signatories added.

Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, wrote an editorial for Vatican News on Pope Leo XIV’s reference to the Algerian martyrs in a recent message.

“The Church dies when it drifts away from the cross of Jesus, when it becomes worldly and turns itself into an NGO [non-governmental organization], when it chases political and economic power, when it relies on numbers, when it imagines that evangelization is simply repeating the name of Jesus Christ at every opportunity, instead of taking up the challenge of following him in the concreteness of life, in radical choices, in service to the least,” said Tornielli.

At the conclusion of a five-day meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, the bishops of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA) issued a Spanish-language message entitled “CEAMA, a sign of hope: Five years after the Amazon Synod.”

CEAMA stated that the bishops “pointed out certain resistances present in this process: fears of change towards a synodal Church, attitudes of clericalism, authoritarianism, or lack of missionary audacity. Faced with these challenges, they reaffirmed their desire to continue building a prophetic, close, and missionary Church.”

“The meeting renewed CEAMA’s commitment to be a Church centered on baptism, walking alongside the peoples, listening to their ancestral wisdom, and decisively taking on the care of our common home in the face of the climate crisis,” CEAMA added.

At the beginning of their meeting, the bishops had received pointed guidance from Pope Leo XIV, who asked them to announce Jesus Christ “with clarity and immense charity.”

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan published Streets of Fear, a report on religious freedom in the Islamic republic.

“The report highlights an alarming rise in violence against religious minorities, including targeted killings of Ahmadis and the demolition of protected places of worship,” according to the commission. “In a chilling development, two individuals accused of blasphemy were extrajudicially killed by the police while seeking protection from hostile mobs.”

The report also highlighted “persistent forced conversions and underage marriages of Hindu and Christian girls in Punjab and Sindh, exposing the systematic failure to enforce child marriage restraint laws.”

Islam is the official religion of the South Asian nation of 252 million (map), the fifth most populous in the world. 95% of Pakistan’s people are Muslim, 2% are Christian, and 1% are Hindu.