National Catholic Reporter

People love nuns. And they love to love nuns. Consider the recent TikTok and podcast sensation of Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist talking about their hobbies and playing ultimate frisbee.

A Hong Kong court on Sept. 3 dismissed appeals brought by a 94-year-old Roman Catholic cardinal and four others over their convictions for failing to register a now-defunct fund that aimed to help people arrested during anti-government protests. Cardinal Joseph Zen, a retired bishop and vocal advocate for democracy in the city, was a trustee of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which helped pay medical and legal fees for arrested protesters until it ceased operations in October 2021.

This emergency forced millions of people to flee the country. From being a country that welcomed everyone who arrived with open arms and made them feel like family, we became a country of migrants and exiles. According to UN Refugee Agency figures, around 7.9 million people are expected to have left the country by 2024. Those of us who stayed behind also had to learn to reinvent ourselves. Our routines, our expectations and our way of life have changed. These have not been easy years.

At Georgetown University, students this fall semester could register for "Foundations of AI," a course designed to prepare them to integrate artificial intelligence "into their personal, academic, and professional workflows." Georgetown also offers an undergraduate certificate in artificial intelligence as well as an online master's degree program in AI management that combines topics from computer science, business strategy and ethics.

Joseph Connor had his back turned to the large window of his 36th floor office when he "suddenly more felt than heard" the massive impact of a commercial jet slamming into the north tower of the World Trade Center a third of a mile away on Sept. 11, 2001.

A judge in Montreal has found sexual misconduct accusations against Quebec's Cardinal Marc Ouellet to be unfounded and ordered his accuser to pay him $100,000. The cardinal, retired since April 2024, had been under a cloud of suspicion since Paméla Groleau had accused him of touching her without consent on three occasions between 2008 and 2010 while she was training or working as a lay pastoral agent.

Pope Benedict XVI understood this profound relationship between conforming oneself to God, the life of prayer and the works of charity to the pursuit of justice.

The second account of creation in Genesis 2 declares that God makes human beings and all other living creatures ha-adamah in Hebrew, or from "the dust of the earth." Each Ash Wednesday we are reminded of this earthen origin and ultimate destination when we hear the minister proclaim: "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return!" But science tells a different story about our physical composition.

Zholia Parsi bounced on a blue-and-white Noxon mountain bike as she rode laps around the fieldstone sanctuary of St. Petri Kirche, speaking to family on the phone and laughing. Parsi, who led a women's rights movement in Afghanistan and fled after imprisonment and death threats from the Taliban, is known internationally for her work on human rights.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, two orders of Catholic nuns, and an Illinois pharmacist sued Illinois Sept. 3 over the state's physician-assisted suicide law, which permits physicians to aid terminally ill adults in dying by suicide. In their lawsuit, the individuals and religious orders — the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm and the Chicago Province of the Little Sisters of the Poor — argued that the law, which is set to take effect Sept.