Frans van der Lugt, a 75-year-old Dutch Jesuit who refused to leave war-torn Syria, was beaten by armed men and killed with two bullets to the head, according to a message sent from the Jesuits’ Middle East Province to the Jesuit headquarters in Rome on April 7. • Linda LeMura, named president of Le Moyne College in Syracuse on April 4, is the first laywoman to be appointed president of a Jesuit college or university. • Calling torture “an intrinsic evil” under any circumstance, Bishop Richard E. Pates, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, supported Senate efforts on April 2 to declassify parts of an intelligence committee report on C.I.A. interrogation practices. • Responding to criticism of his new $2.2 million residence, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta apologized on April 3 in a column in the archdiocesan newspaper and vowed to “live more simply, more humbly, and more like Jesus Christ who challenges us to be in the world and not of the world.” • The bloody Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria would be stopped, said Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, if the government would create “the environment to trap the energy of the youth and to channel it toward national development.”
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Just halfway through his period of convalescence, Pope Francis not only appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Easter Sunday to give the Urbi et Orbi blessing—to the city of Rome (“urbi”) and to the world (“orbi”)—but he also drove among the crowd in his jeep.
Against the backdrop of deep differences with the Trump administration over migration and foreign aid as well as concerns for Ukraine and for Gaza, the Vatican secretary of state welcomed U.S. Vice President JD Vance to the Vatican.
Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, attended the liturgy with his wife, Usha, a practicing Hindu, and his three children after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni earlier in the day.
My Catholic identity and my wife’s Protestant identity continue to endure, and our faith has developed together in greater harmony, knowing that our love for each other was ultimately grounded in our love for God.