After announcing that Pope Francis had gone to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for what were originally described as “previously planned tests,” the Vatican late Wednesday, March 29, said that the pontiff will be hospitalized for “a few days” to treat a respiratory infection.
The Tablet’s coverage of the Vietnam War reflected the shifting tide of the American public and the Church worldwide.
March 29 is the 50th anniversary of the U.S. military’s departure from Vietnam in 1973. Priests who were children at that time said the subsequent Communist victory two years did not end the Church there, but instead made Catholics more determined to grow their faith.
Catholics served with distinction during the U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, but not all carried weapons or even served in uniform.
With the emerging folk music boom of the early ’60s, anti-war anthems became a part of the dialogue regarding the conflict in Vietnam.
A fire that killed more than three dozen migrants at the National Migration Institute in Ciudad Juárez — the city that borders El Paso along the U.S-Mexico border — on the evening of March 27 was reportedly started by migrants who set mattresses ablaze to protest their pending deportation.
Pope Francis sent pharmaceuticals to earthquake victims in Turkey, where two deadly earthquakes in February killed at least 50,000 people and left more than 200,000 buildings severely damaged or razed to the ground.
Ukrainian church leaders have warned Russians they will have to answer for savagery inflicted on their country, following the International Criminal Court’s indictment of President Vladimir Putin for war crimes.
The suspect in the June 2022 slaying of two elderly Jesuit priests and a man they were sheltering in their parish has been found dead after being killed execution-style. Such an end to a case — for which the Society of Jesus expressed deep dissatisfaction — reinforced Mexico’s reputation for impunity and rampant violence in regions controlled by drug cartels.
Pope Francis’ message of hope for humanity will be shot into earth’s orbit as a “nanobook” embedded inside a small satellite and his words will also be transmitted back to earth each day for ham radio reception.
