The Trump administration announced the U.S. departments of Justice and Homeland Security are adopting an interim "third country rule" requiring immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border to first apply for refugee status in another country.

On an overcast day with threatening rain clouds overhead, the mood in the basement of Holy Name of Jesus Church in Northeast Washington was downright sunny. Here, a group of Catholic teens are hard at work helping to prepare the “Holy Foods Market” food pantry for one of its monthly openings, and then later in the day they would make and distribute bagged lunches to some of DC’s homeless population.

The Archbishop Lyke Conference was held July 2-6 in National Harbor, Md. The gathering's theme was "Every Knee Shall Bend: Reconciliation, Black and Catholic." Workshops tied that theme into a variety of topics, including Black spirituality and Negro spirituals. Some programs were offered for young adults, music ministers and liturgical dancers.

Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Cardinal Louis Sako is concerned by rising tensions between the United States and Iran, fearful that his country, Iraq, could be caught in the middle of any potential conflict. It has also made a proposed visit by Pope Francis to Iraq next year uncertain, he said.

Praying that Catholics would understand and act on "the inseparable bond" between love of God and love of neighbor, Pope Francis again appealed for a solution to the crisis in Venezuela.

Members of the Dominican general chapter elected 51-year-old Father Gerard Francisco Timoner to be the master general of the worldwide religious order. Father Timoner, a native of the Philippines, is the 88th superior of the Order of Preachers, founded by St. Dominic Guzman, and the first Asian to lead the order.

On the morning of July 1, he was supervising a landscape crew next to the abbey church. He and the workers had noticed a stocky muscular man walk past and into the house of prayer, like dozens of worshippers do every day. But when the visitor came out minutes later, he silently walked behind Deacon Montoya, who turned just as the man threw a hard punch. The fist smashed into the deacon's left eyebrow and sent him off balance.

Opening the Vatican tombs of a princess and a duchess July 11 in a search for the remains of a young Italian woman missing for more than 30 years, the Vatican found no human remains at all.