News Briefs

Video of Pope Francis visiting with Latin American immigrants at a settlement camp near Rome on Feb. 8 became a global Internet phenomenon.• Congress should urge Israel to halt confiscation of Palestinian lands, a move that may “renew hope for a just resolution to the conflict,” Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, N.M., the chairman of the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, wrote in a letter to Congress on Feb. 11. • Archbishop Bashar Warda of Irbil, Iraq, called on Feb. 9 for a redeployment of U.S. and British troops on the ground in Iraq to rid the country of the “cancer” of Islamist extremism. • Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., on Feb. 11 urged Congress to work for comprehensive immigration reform and not simply to focus on increased border enforcement, tougher criteria for immigrant families seeking asylum and a quicker return of immigrant children to their homelands. • Commenting on a nationwide discussion of vaccines after an outbreak of measles in California, Dr. Paul Braaton, past president of the Catholic Medical Association, said on Feb. 11, “We have a responsibility as moral agents to protect the common good and to immunize ourselves and our children against communicable disease.”