In vitro fertilization is a topic that received significant national attention during the past election season as candidates made it a policy issue. A costly, but widely accepted option in society for conceiving children through artificial means, IVF also involves significant moral and ethical concerns.

At the Carmelite Monastery of Baltimore, a place meant for silence and solitude, the sounds of pounding hammers and sawing have become a typical – and welcomed – sound this year as the community of religious sisters looks to the future.

Miraculously missed by burning beams falling from the roof on April 15, 2019, and waiting for five years to make it back to Notre Dame Cathedral, the 14th-century statue of the Virgin of Paris made it back home Nov. 15, accompanied by thousands of Parisians praying, singing and lighting candles as they walked their Virgin to Paris’ most iconic church, restored after the fire.

The Texas Supreme Court Nov. 15 denied a state House committee’s attempt to delay the execution of a man convicted of murder in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, after lawmakers questioned the evidence behind his conviction.

Efforts to apply a 2024 Vatican document on human dignity to an American context and its “a radical emphasis on individual autonomy” are underway within three committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.