“This has been a difficult and contentious week in which darker spirits seem to have been at play in the people’s house,” Father Conroy said. “In your most holy name, I now cast out all spirits of darkness from this chamber, spirits not from you.”

Father James Martin was among the religious leaders testifying to members of the Helsinki Commission, which monitors human rights worldwide, about a surge in reported hate crimes.

Senator Chris Coons said Democrats choosing to ignore faith “hides away the deep, passionate and formative faith backgrounds of so many Democrats.”

During the debates, there was not much overt outreach to people of faith, with one exception: Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.

On the Season Two premiere of “Pose,” the FX drama about a group of L.G.B.T. people of color living on the margins of New York City in the 1980s and ’90s, activists are shown protesting inside New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

An Indianapolis Jesuit high school is standing by a teacher after the employee’s same-sex marriage became public.

A Mass outside the Stonewall Inn in New York City is one way that L.G.B.T. Catholics are celebrating Pride Month and offering support to those who want to remain in, or rejoin, the church.

While the new protocols are designed to include laypeople at every stage of an investigation, lay reform groups and victim advocates say they are unsatisfied, as the new rules stop just short of requiring such involvement.

This week’s social media engagement was an experiment, but Connie Poulos said she feels like it has been a success.

The possibility that bishops would have the option of handling claims of misconduct or mismanagement without the involvement of laypeople troubled the head of the church’s highest sexual abuse commission.