For the second year in a row, few foreign pilgrims were in attendance at the traditional Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives into the Old City of Jerusalem due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. But even the gray skies that threatened rain didn’t dampen the spirit of the 4,000 participants.

Catholic and other religious leaders are condemning a Palm Sunday attack by Russia on a Ukrainian city that killed 34 — including two children — and injured 119.

Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of one woman and five men, including Antoni Gaudí, the Spanish architect who designed the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

Dr. Gerard “Jerry” Joyce was officially inaugurated as president of Mount St. Mary’s University in an April 12 ceremony to the cheers of faculty, staff and students.

The heart is where a person can integrate his or her life amid a fragmented world, and the source of a heart’s mending and life is “the mystery of the heart of Christ,” said Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, while speaking April 9 about Pope Francis’ most recent encyclical, “Dilexit Nos,” or “He loved us.”