Conditions for religious minorities in Pakistan are dire; that is the assessment of a panel that discussed the matter on July 18 in Washington, D.C. In June alone, 47 members of religious minorities were killed in Pakistan, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The victims included an 18-year-old Christian man tortured to death by police after he was suspected of kidnapping a Muslim woman. “Basic law enforcement and legal reform are desperately needed,” Knox Thames, director of policy and research at the commission, said.

Representatives of the primary religious minority communities in Pakistan, where Muslims are in the overwhelming majority—Christians, Hindus, Ahmadiyya Muslims and Shiite Muslims—spoke out about the suffering of members of their communities. Peter Bhatti, executive director of International Christian Voice, described how he was personally affected by religious intolerance in Pakistan. His brother, Shabaz Bhatti, a Pakistan government minister, was assassinated after calling for the reform of Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy laws, often used erroneously to settle scores, dislocate communities or seize land and property from members of minority religious communities. In addition to physical acts of violence, numerous government policies, like the blasphemy laws, target minorities by making it illegal to say anything against Islam or to harm a copy of the Koran. Bhatti said homes and churches have been vandalized or destroyed, and men and women have been attacked and even burned alive.

As recently as June 3, three Christian women were beaten and forced to walk around their town naked, he said. “Christians are fearful in their own motherland,” said Bhatti. “They are seen as Westerners because they share the same religion" as people in the West.

More than a million Catholics make up part of the Christian minority in Pakistan. In the past year, two Catholic churches and a Catholic hospital have been attacked.

Many non-Muslim women are kidnapped, raped, then forced to marry their abusers in an effort to convert them to Islam, said Jay Kansara of the Hindu American Foundation. Hindus, as the largest religious minority in Pakistan, are especially targeted, he said.

Ahmadiyya Muslims face restrictive voting policies, and Hindu marriages are not recognized by the state, which makes abductions and forced marriages easier. Many public school textbooks, especially history books, show only the Muslim perspective and demonize other groups, according to the commission. Such a bias deeply affects a student’s mindset.

“A large portion of public school students could not correctly identify religious minorities as citizens, and many were skeptical about the potential for religious minorities to assist in the development of Pakistan,” reported the commission’s executive summary on religious discrimination in Pakistan. “Like their teachers, the majority of public school students viewed non-Muslims as enemies of Islam.”

The panelists stressed that religious minorities are too terrified and bullied to act against the persecution, so international pressure to make top-down changes could be the most powerful catalyst for change within the country, according to the speakers.

The commission is eager to have Pakistan designated a “country of particular concern” by the State Department, but so far those efforts have been unsuccessful.

When entering trade agreements, the United States should support principles that “defend human life and dignity, protect the environment and public health, and promote justice and peace in our world,” wrote the bishops who oversee the justice and peace committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a letter dated July 19 to the new U.S. trade representative Michael Froman. Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., and Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, echoed the call of Pope Francis in his letter to G-8 leaders, that “every economic and political theory or action must set about providing each inhabitant of the planet with the minimum wherewithal to live in dignity and freedom, with the possibility of supporting a family, educating children, praising God and developing one’s own human potential.” The bishops highlighted several areas of concern in free trade agreements, including labor protections, care for indigenous people, the need to alleviate causes of migration, protection of agriculture in developing and rural areas and sustainable development and care for creation.

As fighting continued in late July between government forces and rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations refugee agency expressed concern for the welfare of civilians in the area, including many who have fled to Uganda. “Access to the area is not possible for humanitarian agencies, and conditions of those who do not make it across to Uganda are unclear,” the spokesperson for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Adrian Edwards, told reporters in Geneva. “It takes refugees from the Kamango area around 12 hours to walk to the Ugandan border.” Tens of thousands of refugees first began pouring into western Uganda after fighting erupted between Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan rebel group, and Congo national troops in Kamango on July 11. “Many refugees brought their animals with them…and are sleeping in their tents with their ducks and goats, increasing the risk of disease,” Edwards said.

World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, drew tens of thousands of young people from around the world. It was also attended by a senior citizen from Rome who managed to cause the greatest excitement on the streets of Rio and among the W.Y.D. participants themselves. After a somewhat chaotic arrival, his motorcade swarmed by enthusiastic pilgrims and residents, Pope Francis joined W.Y.D.-Rio on July 22, charming attendees and hosts alike with his characteristic humility, simplicity and joyful demeanor as he stopped his various motorcades, one conducted in a compact car, for impromptu embraces and blessings among the crowds.

There were also opportunities for serious reflection. On July 23, the pope blessed a new drug rehabilitation facility. He said reducing drug addiction will not be achieved by a liberalization of drug laws, as is currently being proposed in various parts of Latin America, but through confronting the problems underlying drug use: promoting greater justice, educating young people in the values that build up life, accompanying them in their difficulties and giving them hope for the future. Pope Francis condemned the selfishness of what he called “dealers of death,” urging society as a whole to act with courage to stamp out the scourge of drug trafficking.

Speaking directly to those who have fallen into “the darkness of dependency,” the pope said the church offers outstretched hands to help; but, he stressed, “No one is able to stand up in your place.

“Look ahead,” he urged. “Do not let yourself be robbed of hope!”

Visiting one of Rio’s notorious favelas, or slums, Pope Francis spoke of the need to alleviate material suffering, but he also said that “real human development” requires the promotion of moral values, to satisfy a “deeper hunger, the hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy.” The July 25 speech was the pope’s first major statement on social and economic questions during his visit to Brazil, a country that has enjoyed years of strong economic growth but is currently in turmoil over widespread dissatisfaction with government policies, high taxes and corruption.

“The Brazilian people,” the pope said, “particularly the humblest among you, can offer the world a valuable lesson in solidarity, a word that is too often forgotten or silenced, because it is uncomfortable. I would like to make an appeal to those in possession of greater resources, to public authorities and to all people of good will who are working for social justice: never tire of working for a more just world, marked by greater solidarity.

“No one,” Pope Francis said, “can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world. Everybody, according to his or her particular opportunities and responsibilities, should be able to make a personal contribution to putting an end to so many social injustices. The culture of selfishness and individualism that often prevails in our society is not what builds up and leads to a more habitable world: it is the culture of solidarity that does so, seeing others not as rivals or statistics, but brothers and sisters.”

The pope added that giving “bread to the hungry,” while required by justice, is not enough for human happiness. “There is neither real promotion of the common good nor real human development when there is ignorance of the fundamental pillars that govern a nation, its nonmaterial goods,” he said. The pope identified those goods as life; family; “integral education, which cannot be reduced to the mere transmission of information for the purposes of generating profit”; health, “including the spiritual dimension” of well-being; and security, which he said can be achieved “only by changing human hearts.”

David Gonzalez, an editor at The New York Times and a member of the board of directors of America, has been named to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. • A crackdown on militants in Sinai by Egyptian military is hurting Gaza’s already fragile economy because nearly 80 percent of the tunnels used for smuggling have been closed. • Inviting Catholics to be “out of step with popular culture,” the bishops of England and Wales said in a document distributed to parishes on July 27 and 28 that the legalization of gay marriage cannot change Christian teaching on sexual morality and that the church cannot accept marriages of same-sex couples. • According to “Twiplomacy” rankings released on July 24, Pope Francis is the most influential world leader on Twitter, with the highest number of retweets, and the second most-followed world leader after President Obama. • Former Representative Lindy Boggs, 97, a Louisianian who fought for civil rights during nearly 18 years in Congress and served as ambassador to the Vatican during the Clinton administration, died on July 27 at her home in Chevy Chase, Md., according to her daughter, ABC News journalist Cokie Roberts. • Robert P. George, a Catholic legal scholar and ethicist, has been elected to head the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

An Austrian priest who is urging the church to adopt practices ranging from greater lay involvement in decision-making to opening the priesthood to married men and women said the effort is aimed at upholding the decisions of the Second Vatican Council. Father Helmut Schüller, pastor of a parish in the Archdiocese of Vienna, said during an appearance in Washington on July 22 that the church hierarchy should begin conversations that will build a “new structure” allowing for people to share their gifts with the church better. “We think it’s a question of respect for the dignity of the baptized, the church members, the church citizens as we call them. But also a question of bringing in the gifts of these laypeople to the decision making of the church and to the daily life of the church,” he said at the National Press Club. Father Schüller was in the middle of a three-week, 15-city tour in the United States to discuss the Austrian Priests’ Initiative.