With Easter celebrations hours away, the U.S. bishops’ humanitarian agency is urging the faithful to “stand in solidarity with our global family” by turning in their Lenten Rice Bowl contributions.

Today’s “builders of Babel” are constructing a hell on earth, rejecting everyone they decide are “losers,” Pope Francis wrote in the meditations for the Way of the Cross.

In a a joyful milestone for the church and lovers of sacred art, Pope Francis declared famed Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí venerable April 14, recognizing his heroic virtues in a decree announced during a Vatican audience with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro.

In an era of vocations undeniably impacted by a statistically declining priesthood, it’s perhaps among the rarest of Catholic news headlines: Seminary opens.

Holy Saturday is one of those days when the church, though liturgically silent, speaks volumes through signs.