Thomas Reese

More than 1,500 students descended on Washington, D.C., this week, not for a rock concert or to demonstrate outside the impeachment hearings, but to lobby Congress on global warming and DACA, the program protecting immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for most of their lives from deportation.

Global warming is an important issue but not urgent, said the leader of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Abortion, on the other hand, is their preeminent priority. 

As the U.S. bishops gather for their annual meeting in Baltimore next week, they might take a page from the Vatican’s recently ended synod on the Amazon region. 

The synod of bishops meeting in Rome voted on Oct. 26 to recommend the pope allow the ordination of married men as Catholic priests in the Amazon region.

Signs of the Times: Saving the Amazon rainforest requires action by Western nations, a Surinamese bishop attending the Catholic Church's synod on the Amazon region said, charging that the people of the Amazon cannot do it by themselves.

Signs of the Times: As the synod on the Amazon region enters its final week, the bishops who gathered here to discuss the region's challenges and make recommendations to Pope Francis will begin preparing their final report.

While the focus of the synod this month in Rome has been on the needs of the Amazon region, an American bishop at the meeting has suggested the synod can enrich the rest of the church and the world.

As the Amazonian bishops come to the end of their first week of meetings in Rome discussing the issues facing their region, they were united in condemning attacks on the rainforest and the indigenous peoples.

The first working session of the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon began on Oct. 7, with a call from a leading Latin American cardinal for new pathways in service to indigenous peoples and protection of the rainforest.

At the Mass opening the Synod on the Pan-Amazon Region, Pope Francis urged the assembled bishops to embrace "daring prudence," rather than settle for the status quo.

Catholic clergy from around the world are arriving in Rome this week for the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, which begins Oct. 6.

The two Jesuits share a pastoral approach that stresses compassion and accompaniment rather than condemnation and exclusion.

As the world approaches a tipping point in the climate change crisis, many people finally appear to be waking up to the need for radical change.

For Pope Francis, the Amazon is important because it touches on so many themes of his papacy: concern for the marginalized, evangelization and protection of the environment. 

Signs of the Times: In announcing the appointment of 10 new cardinal electors, Pope Francis has improved the possibility that the next pope will continue his policies, but their appointments have also sent a message to the church about what should be the priorities of its leaders.

After six years as pope, Francis continues to remake the College of Cardinals in his own image, increasing the likelihood that his successor will continue on the same path as his papacy.

Signs of the Times: Everyone reading this column will die one day. We just don’t know when. But contemporary medical technology is increasingly forcing us to think about how.

In politics, it is common to have disagreements over values and goals. What makes government decision-making even more difficult today is that we disagree not only on goals but also on the facts.

Signs of the Times: There has been a lot of clerical hand-wringing of late about Catholics who don’t believe what the church teaches about Christ's presence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.