OSV News

Prayer is not a magic wand or a way to ask God to be at one’s service, Pope Francis said. Prayer is a humble dialogue with God to grow spiritually and discover his will for the world, the pope said May 26 during his weekly general audience.

George Floyd’s death left “a hole in the hearts of his family and friends” and “a hole in the fabric of our society,” said the director of the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd May 25, the first anniversary of Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

The Syriac Catholic patriarch said the situation in Syria “continues to be humanly unbearable and devastating” and risks emptying the war-torn country of its Christian community for good.

The chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace invited Catholics in the United States to offer prayers for the people of China and the well-being of the Catholic Church in that country May 23-30.

The Franciscan order’s six U.S. provincials told President Joe Biden in a joint letter May 19 that “now is the time for boldness to end the immediate violence” in the Holy Land.

San Francisco’s archbishop said May 17 that the “positive reaction” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has expressed about a Vatican official’s letter to the U.S. bishops about Catholic politicians who support abortion receiving Communion “raises hope that progress can be made in this most serious matter.”