VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- During Holy Week and in the Easter season, the Vatican will take part in several initiatives highlighting the importance of ecology and the care for creation.

The Governorate of Vatican City State announced March 18 that the thousands of floral arrangements for the Easter morning Mass and the pope's solemn blessing "urbi et orbi" (to the city and to the world), will be repurposed after the celebrations.

Thousands of bushes, flowering trees, tulips and other flowering bulbs, which are a gift of growers in the Netherlands, will be replanted in the Vatican gardens. The plants also will be distributed to various pontifical colleges and institutions "so that they may bloom in the coming years," the governorate said.

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Dhaka: 

As darkness descends, Montu Tolentino makes his way to a house in Chorakhola village situated about 40-kilometers from Dhaka.

Once at the house the 45-year-old farmer joins around 30 Catholic villagers in singing traditional Lenten songs called koshter gaan (songs of sorrow).

"Koshter gaan is an important tradition we have been carrying out for generations," says Tolentino.

"Our families have handed down this tradition and we are proud to continue it," he says.

Read the article in UCAN News

Pope Francis is now in the fourth year of his pontificate.

And in this relatively brief period of time one could say he's worked nothing short of a minor miracle in the way he's restored hope and enthusiasm among so many people in the church and beyond.

This has been especially true for those Catholics who eagerly embraced the reforms and the reforming spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) only to grow weary and dejected in the nearly thirty-five years of exile they experienced under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, popes they saw as reversing the journey mapped out at Vatican II.

For them Francis's election has been nothing else if not proof that the Holy Spirit still shows up at the occasional conclave.

Read Robert Mickens' article in NCR

“Let us remember the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Mt 7:12). This Rule points us in a clear direction. Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated. Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities. The yardstick we use for others will be the yardstick which time will use for us. The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.”  Pope Francis to the United States Congress, Sept. 24, 2015

See National Catholic Reporter for review of the third year of Francis' pontificate

by David Timbs

Read paper HERE

Abstract: It is becoming more and more obvious that one of the most significant obstacles to the systemic reform of the culture and legal system of the Catholic Church is clericalism. The leadership of the Church has become increasingly more estranged from the prophetic roots of its mission to animate and to serve. As the Church became more institutionalised, its bishops became increasingly socialised into a patriarchal and autocratic mentality and praxis with little transparency and no provision for accountability, the essential safeguards of good governance. Ultimately a massive social, psychological and spiritual chasm was created which lead to dangerous disconnection between bishops and their people.