Saint Joseph Catholic Church

Pope Leo has proclaimed a Year of Saint Francis in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death. Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, reported that the saint’s relics have not previously been exposed.

Financial giving is “a silent yet immensely powerful language through which men and women express the best of themselves,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin said on February 17, as he recalled the widow’s mite.

In praising organ donation, Cardinal Parolin said that “human life is relationship and communion; in a donated body there beats a love that does not surrender to death.”

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa’s brief Lenten letter has five sections: “The Passion of Christ: Path of Conversion and Mercy,” “Prayer: Breath of the Soul,” “Fasting and Charity: Two Wings of the Same Offering,” “The Holy Land: Vocation to Peace and Reconciliation,” and “With our gaze fixed on the Resurrection.”

As expected, the Holy See has declined President Donald Trump’s invitation to join his Board of Peace for Gaza.

Continuing his series of Wednesday general audiences on the Second Vatican Council and its documents, Pope Leo XIV spoke this morning on the theme of “the mystery of the Church, sacrament of the union with God, and the unity of all humanity.”

L’Osservatore Romano published an impassioned plea for peace in Gaza as the most prominent article in its February 17 edition.