Christians have just begun to trickle back to communities that had been devastated first by ISIS then by the Iraqi and U.S. coalition forces that drove out ISIS. Those forces include the Shiite militia that have been targeted by the Trump administration over the last week.

Perhaps predictably, Catholics who have come to view Pope Francis as a threat to the clarity of church teaching could only see the worst in the pope’s angry reaction to the grasping pilgrim.

Well, at least 10 of them.

“People have asked me: ‘How does this compare with Watergate?’” he said, “and I have been quite explicit in stating that what Watergate involved pales in comparison to what the investigations of President Trump’s conduct have revealed.”

Was Mr. Morales’s departure from La Paz the result of a coup? Or was the president’s removal the result of a more or less defensible process?

Armed groups affiliated with ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, celebrating erroneously in a statement the killing of “two priests.”

This is only the latest wave of Syrian refugees and internally displaced people from Iraq to seek safety in Iraqi-Kurdistan, which already hosts 38 camps. So far 12,000 Syrian civilians have taken refuge across the border.

The good news is that “trends in women’s empowerment are heading in the right direction globally. Some 59 countries recorded significant progress since the first edition while only one country (Yemen) experienced major deterioration.”

As tensions rise again with the approach of a Nov. 12 deadline for the creation of a unity government, Bishop Kussala has a message for the conflict-weary people of South Sudan. “The church is here to stay,” he said. “We serve the people; we don’t run away.”

Noting that Mother Cabrini was the first U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Catholic Church, Gov. Cuomo added, in perhaps a dig at political rival New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, “She is certainly deserving of a statue.”