Ahead of the USCCB collection — typically held on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18) in most dioceses, and which can be supported online anytime at igivecatholic.org/story/USCCB-CCEE — OSV News spoke with Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, father and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, to discuss the impact of the USCCB’s appeal in Ukraine.

A deadly shooting erupted during a boys hockey game in Rhode Island, involving a co-op with a number of players reported to be from an area Catholic school, and may have been motivated by what law enforcement characterized as a “family dispute.”

Birth mothers embody this radical, self-sacrificial love by wanting what is best for their children even if that means placing them with another family. Adoptive parents participate in it by loving another’s child as their own.

The Holy See “will not participate” in President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said Feb. 17, citing “points that leave us somewhat perplexed.”

Beneath the Roman pines of the Aventine Hill, Pope Leo XIV led a solemn penitential procession Feb. 18 to Rome’s oldest extant basilica, marking the first Ash Wednesday of his pontificate with a call for “countercultural” repentance for sins from individuals, institutions and the Church itself.