Catholic News Digest – October 5, 2026

Pope Leo XIV used Sunday’s Angelus to connect the witness of St. Francis of Assisi with the work of peace. On the 800th anniversary of Francis’ death, Leo said the saint’s example shows how fraternal love can build harmony among peoples. He invited the faithful to pray for peace and, after the Angelus, urged them to join Aid to the Church in Need’s Rosary initiative. The Pope asked especially for prayer for the Holy Land and for innocent victims of violence. His appeal placed a familiar Franciscan concern, peace among brothers and sisters, within the Church’s present call to remember people suffering in conflict.

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi made a related appeal at Mass in Assisi for the feast of St. Francis. According to Vatican News, the president of the Italian bishops’ conference warned against a culture of power fed by economic interests and nationalisms. He said peace “begins with us” and urged people to disarm their hands and hearts. In a separate Vatican News report, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state, said ending wars requires moving beyond domination and confronting inequality. He referred to suffering in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran, and said Kyiv has the right to defend itself. Peace, he said, requires a return to fundamental human values.

Franciscan communities are marking eight centuries since their founder’s death with attention to his poverty, conversion and devotion to Christ. The anniversary is drawing a range of initiatives, Pope Leo noted after the Angelus. His words also formed part of a wider public focus on Francis’ legacy: an EWTN News report said the Pope described the Franciscan charism as continuing to bear fruit today. For Catholics, the anniversary is a moment to consider the life of a saint whose witness has shaped religious communities and the Church’s understanding of simplicity, fraternity and care for creation.

The Vatican will gather bishops and married couples from Oct. 7 to 14 for a meeting on family life, ten years after Pope Francis published Amoris laetitia. EWTN News reported that 11 couples from five continents will speak with more than 150 bishops about the challenges of passing on the faith in increasingly secular societies. Pope Leo will open the gathering with heads of the Eastern Churches and presidents of bishops’ conferences. The meeting is intended to bring the experience of families into the Church’s conversation about pastoral care. Its setting also marks a decade since Francis’ exhortation on love in the family.

In the Diocese of Lansing, Bishop Earl Boyea’s Year of the Family is supporting efforts to help parents build what the Church calls the domestic church. A National Catholic Register report describes young parents who want to establish holy homes but may have had few faith-filled experiences in their own childhoods. Luke Vermeulen, for example, reads Scripture daily with his son. The diocese’s initiatives aim to help families make prayer and the practice of faith part of ordinary home life. The work begins in the household, where children first encounter the faith through the habits and example of those closest to them.

The University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture announced Oct. 4 that the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne will receive its 2027 Evangelium Vitae Medal. The center said the sisters have served poor and dying people for more than a century. Mother Superior Marie Edward, O.P., is to receive the award at a Mass and dinner at the university. The medal recognizes work in support of human life. The sisters’ ministry to people nearing death gives the award a particular focus on accompaniment and care for those who are vulnerable.

At a different kind of Catholic gathering, EWTN’s foundress, Mother Angelica, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the inaugural Sheen Awards. The event took place Sept. 25 in Peoria, Illinois, the hometown of Blessed Fulton Sheen, one day after his beatification. Members of the media and entertainment world and Church leaders attended, including Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Bishop John Barres of Rockville Centre and Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester. The award recognized Mother Angelica’s place in Catholic broadcasting. The ceremony brought together the memory of Sheen’s preaching and the work of a religious sister who built a major television network.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York is using a new light-and-music production to support preservation of its historic pipe organ. The National Catholic Register reported that LUMINISCENCE will illuminate the cathedral with 360-degree video mapping and combine a live choir with an orchestra. Actor Jonathan Roumie will narrate the story and community impact of the church. Archbishop Ronald Hicks expressed support for the project, which hopes to help preserve the organ. The production places modern projection technology inside a landmark built for worship, directing attention to the resources required to maintain the cathedral’s music and architecture.

The latest reports point in different directions, from the Church’s response to war to the everyday work of prayer at home, but each concerns how people care for one another. Catholics can hold in prayer those suffering in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran, families seeking to pass on the faith, and the poor and dying served by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. Pope Leo’s appeal to pray for peace gives the week’s news a fitting pastoral note: prayer belongs alongside the practical work of listening, service and reconciliation.