On Monday, October 7, 2024, we mark the one-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war. I am asking all people of faith to pray and fast for a just peace that includes the return of all hostages and for a commitment to end the bloody cycles of revenge. Pope Francis and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, have asked for this day of prayer, fasting and penance.

Everyone who calls Earth home, and especially the peoples of the Holy Land, needs world leaders who will seek solutions to longstanding differences through means other than terrorism, vengeance and war.

The new deacons come from parishes located in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler and Washington counties. Upon their ordination, Bishop Zubik will assign them to ministries that may be in their own parish, a nearby parish or in a specialized ministry outside of a parish.

Michelle Peduto, who successfully led the Catholic Schools of the Diocese of Pittsburgh through both the planned challenges of a diocesan-wide school reorganization and the unplanned cataclysm of COVID, died of cancer on August 13 at her home in Sewickley.

Jarett Kuhns will be the new principal of Archangel Gabriel School in Robinson. For more than a decade, he has served Catholic schools in West Virginia and Ohio as a principal, teacher, interim special education director and department chair, giving him wide experience to draw upon.

On Friday evening, as part of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Paris, a parody of The Last Supper was deliberately presented as entertainment. For Catholics, and by extension to all people of other Christian traditions. it was an insult. But much more, it was a sacrilege!