While outright war conditions pertain in Gaza and along its border in southern Israel, in the north, in Jerusalem and the West Bank, conditions are also fraught. Violence between Palestinians and Israeli settlers has broken out sporadically.

A Reflection for Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time, by Kevin Clarke

Many fear the endgame in the region will mean widespread loss of life and ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh unless global attention can be redirected to the crisis.

A Reflection for Saturday of the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time, by Kevin Clarke

Those Jesuits who remain, he said, now face the “fundamental concern” of expulsion or detention if relations between the Society of Jesus and the government of former Sandinista comandante President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, grow any worse.

The latest moves by the Ortega regime came close to a direct expulsion of the Jesuits without actually stepping over that line, according to an expert on Latin American revolutions.

Nicaraguan officials ratcheted up a harassment campaign targeting Jesuits in Managua over the weekend.

A Nicaraguan judge described the Jesuit university as a “center of terrorism,” accusing its administrators and educators of “betraying the trust of the Nicaraguan people” and of “transgressing against the constitutional order.”

Parsing the numbers and understanding the implications can be challenging. Are we learning anything new?

Sadly, the church of El Salvador can offer any number of priests, men and women religious and lay people to choose from to hold up as modern exemplars of Christian self-sacrifice.