Chief Justice John Roberts granted the Trump administration’s request late Feb. 26 to pause a lower court’s midnight deadline for the government to resume more than $1.5 billion in foreign aid payments for already completed aid work that have been suspended for several weeks, a pause impacting some Catholic entities.

House Republicans Feb. 25 narrowly passed a budget resolution calling for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and a $2 trillion reduction in federal spending over a decade, clearing a first hurdle for key parts of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda.

The office governing Vatican City State was set to have a new president March 1 and, while in the hospital, Pope Francis changed the office’s statutes to give the new president two top-level assistants.

Father Joseph C. Simmons, the former longtime pastor of Holy Spirit in Joppa, who led major construction projects and was remembered for his presence to parishioners, died Feb. 25 after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. He had just turned 89 Feb. 19.

The Supreme Court on Feb. 25 threw out the murder conviction and death penalty for Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma man who has been on death row for a quarter century.