Resurrection Sunday in Paris this year served as a reminder that, for Catholics, salvation and new life are the essence of their faith.

Jesus’ gesture of washing his disciples’ feet, an act once reserved to servants and slaves, is one that all Christians, especially bishops, must imitate, Pope Francis told hundreds of inmates and prison employees on Holy Thursday.

At the end of a highly unusual spiritual retreat for the political leaders of warring factions, Pope Francis knelt at the feet of the leaders of South Sudan, begging them to give peace a chance and to be worthy “fathers of the nation.”

Pope Francis railed against human trafficking, once again labeling it a “crime against humanity” while addressing a Vatican-organized conference in Rome on the issue April 11.

Archbishop José Gómez, the de facto head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as the body’s president, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, faces health issues, will travel to Rome the week after Easter to meet Vatican officials to discuss new measures for U.S. bishop accountability.

Monday’s stunning fire at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, which has left the magnificent Gothic structure a smoldering hulk of its former self, represents a devastating blow not merely to French Catholics but to Catholicism everywhere, since it’s one of those sites that transcends its nationality and culture.

The president of France and the archbishop of Paris have vowed to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral after a devastating fire, continuing what a professor of architecture described as the natural lifecycle of a historic building.