News Briefs

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Oct. 10 to Kailash Satyarthi of India and Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, heroic advocates for children’s rights, especially the right to education. • In the Maiduguri Diocese in northeastern Nigeria, nearly 200 churches have been destroyed or razed by Boko Haram insurgents since August, a diocesan official reported on Oct. 6. • Children in families in which one or both parents migrate long distances for employment and the elderly and spouses left at home must become a “high priority in any migration policy debate,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, on Oct. 8. • Christine Vladimiroff, a Benedictine sister who is the former president of Second Harvest (now called Feeding America), a national food program for the poor, died on Sept. 25 at the age of 74 after a long illness. • Rulings that overturned bans on same-sex marriage in five states will be allowed to take effect after the Supreme Court on Oct. 6 declined to consider appeals of lower court rulings. • “One cannot be silent, nor [can] the international community remain inactive, in the face of the massacre of persons,” said the statement issued on Oct. 4 at the end of a three-day Vatican summit on the plight of Christians in the Middle East.