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Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network promulgates new General Regulations

The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network promulgates its new General Regulations on March 19, feast of St. Joseph, offering an updated version of the body’s identity, mission and structure.

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Dicastery for Communication signs agreement with Polish radio stations

The Holy See’s Dicastery for Communication signs a cooperation agreement with editorial teams of ten Polish Radio from various regions of the country. Together, these stations reach tens of millions of listeners and will now share news concerning the Holy Father and the Apostolic See.

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From human bias to shared space: Shaping a future that is within reach

At the GreenAccord Forum, economist Luciano Canova and architect Martin Haas offer two complementary perspectives on the climate crisis, highlighting how both human behaviour and the spaces we build shape our ability to act on the future.

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Gas prices rise after attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan energy complex

Four Palestinian women in the West Bank and a Thai foreign worker in Israel were killed on Wednesday night after Iran launched missiles toward Israel.

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Cardinal Gugerotti: Give to avoid being complicit with those who set world ablaze

The Prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches explains what the Good Friday Collection means in today’s context of war: “For those who have lost everything in those lands, it is a matter of survival. As Christians, it is our duty to restore hope.”

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Witnessing through small gestures: SMA Fathers and OLA Sisters are marking their triple jubilee

The year 2026 is a special milestone for two missionary families: the Society of African Missions (SMA) and the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles (OLA). Both congregations are celebrating three significant anniversaries: 170 years since the establishment of the Society of African Missions in 1856; 150 years since the founding of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles in 1876 and 200 years since the birth of Fr. Augustine Planque, founder of the OLA Sisters and co-founder of the SMAs.

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Pope convokes presidents of Bishops’ Conferences for meeting on families

Ten years after its publication, Pope Leo XIV praises the “valuable teachings” of Amoris Laetitia, and convokes presidents of Bishops’ Conferences to Rome in October 2026 for a meeting to discuss ways to proclaim the Gospel to families today.

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St. Joseph: Saint of the Day for Thursday, March 19, 2026

Discover More About St. Joseph with Journey with the Saints Everything we know about the husband of Mary and the foster father of Jesus comes from Scripture and that has seemed too little for those who made up legends about him. We know he was a carpenter, a working man, for the skeptical Nazarenes ask about Jesus, "Is this not the carpenter's son?" (Matthew 13:55). He wasn't rich for when he took Jesus to the Temple to be circumcised and Mary to be purified he offered the sacrifice of two ...

Fr. Patton: Prayer and fasting are only weapons Christians should use

Speaking from Jordan, the former Custos of the Holy Land makes an appeal for a “great gathering for all” in the name of peace and an end to violence in the Middle East, stressing that the only weapons Christians should use are "prayer and fasting."

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Communion of faithful, not just clergy, shares role in safeguarding faith, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- All baptized Christians share in the Church's mission and, guided by the Holy Spirit, are fit for renewing and building up the Church, Pope Leo XIV said at his weekly general audience.

Every person who has been baptized is called to bear witness to Christ, and the whole Church, beyond its leaders, has a role in preserving the truth of the faith, the pope said March 18 in St. Peter's Square.

Continuing his series of reflections on the Second Vatican Council, the pope focused on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church ("Lumen Gentium"), and the participation of the lay faithful in Jesus Christ's "priestly, prophetic and royal offices," that is, the offices of teaching, sanctifying and governing.

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Pope Leo XIV greets visitors and pilgrims from the popemobile while riding around St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican before his weekly general audience March 18, 2026. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

Everyone enters the Church as a layperson, he said. Through Baptism and Confirmation, the faithful are "more perfectly bound to the Church" and are endowed "with special strength" by the Holy Spirit, so that they are "more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ," he said, quoting the document.

"This consecration is at the root of the common mission that unites the ordained ministries and the lay faithful," Pope Leo said. In fact, everyone is called to bear witness to the truth of the faith. 

The Doctrinal Commission of the Council specified that the sense of faith "belongs to individual believers not in their own right, but as members of the People of God as a whole," the pope said.

The function of the Holy Spirit is to lead Christians to the truth, and because the entire body of the faithful is anointed by "the holy one," he said, "the Church, therefore, as the communion of the faithful -- which naturally includes the pastors -- cannot err in matters of faith."

"From this unity, which the Magisterium of the Church safeguards, it follows that every baptized person is an active agent of evangelization, called to bear consistent witness to Christ in accordance with the prophetic gift which the Lord bestows upon His whole Church," he said. 

The Holy Spirit, who comes from the Risen Christ, he said, distributes"special graces" among all the faithful, who are then able to contribute to the renewal and building of the Church. 

"Dear friends, let us rekindle in ourselves the awareness of and gratitude for having received the gift of being part of God’s people; and also the responsibility that this entails," he said.