More than 90% of Catholics said, they believe that Catholic organizations should invest church funds in ways that are consistent with church teaching and values, according to results of a new survey.

In addition, about 31% of respondents to the survey conducted by Boston-based Catholic Investment Services said that news of clergy sexual abuse and the church’s handling of such allegations has caused them to give less to their parish. Still, 7% of respondents said they have given more to their parish.

However, 41% of respondents said, they either plan to donate less to their parish or are considering giving less in the future. Peter Jeton, the firm’s CEO, said the findings would help Catholic Institutions under-stand the thinking of individual donors in planning future investments to fund church-based operations. The survey results were released on April 24.

“My sense is that this (awareness of socially responsible investing) increasingly is a personal issue that people in the pews feel,” Jeton told Catholic News Service.

“There is increasing talk of the notion of donating financial resources and to what kind of causes and there is an implied stewardship that needs to be played there,” he explained. “If you are a parish or a diocese receiving this kind of funding, what kind of obligation is there to invest in a way that could be considered, consistent with the church in a whole group of things.”

Nearly nine in 10 respondents — 87% — also said they believed socially responsible investing can be done without sacrificing financial gains. Meanwhile, 13% of respondents disagreed with that standard.

Pope Francis’ reforms of the Roman Curia will see the creation of a new “super ministry” dedicated to evangelisation that will take precedence over the once-powerful Vatican doctrinal body. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition, is the oldest institution in the Curia and known as “La Suprema.” For years, it policed theologians, set out the red lines of Catholic Doctrine and gave its rubber stamp to all major Vatican documents.

But according to Vida Nueva, the respected Spanish Catholic publication, the congregation will no longer hold the number one spot in the curia. Under Francis the CDF has already lost significant influence, and the new constitution formally sets out that it now comes under the new mission statement of spreading the Gospel.

The changes are contained in the new Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia, Praedicate Evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”) drafted by the Pope and his council of cardinal advisers over the last five years, and which could be published on 29 June, the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul.

The whole thrust of the constitution puts evangelisation at the heart of the Roman Curia’s mission, meaning that every aspect of Catholicism’s civil service, must flow from this.

“Pope Francis always emphasises that the Church is missionary. That is why it is logical that in the first place we have put the Dicastery for Evangelisation and not the Doctrine of the Faith,” Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the co-ordinator of the council of cardinals, told.

“In this way the Holy Father has sent a significant message of reform to the People of God.”

Years before flames ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral, the landmark’s custodians realized they had a problem.

In 2013, the cathedral hired Didier Dupuy and his son to scale the building and install lightning rods at different points, including its central spire. Gaping holes and cracks they discovered in the lead roofing shocked them. Just below was a dry and dusty space of timber beams, known as “the forest,” that had supported Notre-Dame’s roof for centuries. A job that was supposed to last a couple of weeks took three months as the duo performed emergency repairs before quitting in frustration.

“We told them, you need professionals for this. We can weld, but it’s not pretty,” said Mr Dupuy, who removed 110 pounds of rust from the cross atop the spire. “The cross was in very bad shape.” Notre-Dame’s forest caught fire, incinerating the central spire and most of the cathedral’s roof in a disaster that dismayed the world.

Pope Francis appointed Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist from the United States, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Chu, who served as secretary of energy under US President Barack Obama, was appointed to the papal think tank, the Vatican announced on 20 October.

Born in St Louis, Chu is the co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.”

The Nobel Prize winning professor of physics and molecular and cellular physiology taught at Stanford University in California before serving as energy secretary from 2009 to 2013; in that post, he was the first scientist to hold a cabinet position, according to the Stanford physics department website.

According to the papal academy’s website, the members are “eighty women and men from many countries who have made outstanding contributions in their fields of scientific endeavour. They are nominated by the Holy Father after being elected by the body of the academicians.”

A draft of the proposed apostolic constitution for reforming and governing the Roman Curia will soon be sent out to leaders of the world’s bishops’ conferences, religious orders and some pontifical universities for their observations and suggestions.

The draft, which has been approved by Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals, will be subjected to this “consultative step” before it is once more amended and then given to the Pope for his consideration, Alessandro Gisotti, interim director of the Vatican press office, told reporters on April 10.

The proposed apostolic constitution, provisionally titled “Praedicate Evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”) also will be sent to the Synods of the Eastern Catholic Churches, the dicasteries of the Roman Curia, the conferences of major superiors of men and women religious and some pontifical universities. They will be asked to send observations and suggestions to the Council of Cardinals so that changes or additions can be made and a final draft be given to the Pope by the end of 2019, Gisotti said.

The Council of Cardinals, which has been advising the Pope on the reform of the Curia and church governance in general, met at the Vatican on April 8-10.

At a visit to La Croix during a Paris conference organized by the German, Swiss and French bishops’ conferences on “The common good in Europe,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, a member of Pope Francis’ advisory council of cardinals, reflects on the crisis that the Church is currently experiencing.

“Since Vatican II, we have asked ourselves how the Church should situate itself within a modern, pluralist society where people are free to believe or not that Jesus was raised from the dead and that they can actually meet him.

What we need to imagine is not ‘a new Church’ but a Church that situates itself ‘in another way.’ Catholics themselves have said they want change.

However, this is a slow and painful process. Raising awareness does not occur at the same pace everywhere and some prefer to seek security in the past.

This is reinforced today by a loss of credibility resulting from the revelations of sexual abuse, as well as from a lack of financial transparency and a culture of secrecy.