After a half-hour private meeting in the library of the Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis gave the prime minister of Ukraine a bronze plaque featuring a bird and a flower alongside the inscription, “Peace is a fragile flower.”

In response to nursing shortages growing more critical every year in Maryland, the leaders of Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore and Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg have signed a partnership to enable graduates of Mount St. Mary’s to earn their nursing degrees.

House Republicans on April 26 voted to pass House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s legislation to raise the debt ceiling through 2024 and cut government spending, but the bill is seen as dead on arrival in the Democratically-controlled Senate and is opposed by the White House.

Washington state enacted a new law April 25 banning the sale, manufacture and import of assault weapons, or military-style semi-automatic firearms such as the AR-15, a weapon that has been used in some of the recent mass shootings in the United States.

Former Speaker of Maryland’s House of Delegates Casper R. Taylor Jr., a frequent supporter of Catholic legislative concerns in state government and a former member of the administrative board of the Maryland Catholic Conference, died April 24. He was 88.