Pope Francis has amended Canon Law to create a new mechanism for dismissing a religious who has deserted their community.

Under the new law, promulgated by the Pope in an apostolic letter issued “motu-proprio,” superiors can declare a member dismissed ipso facto if they have been illicitly absent from the community for more than a year and cannot be located.

“Community life is an essential element of religious life,” Francis stated in the letter, titled Communis vita (“Common life”) and issued on March 26. He cited canon 665 of the Code of Canon Law, which provides that “religious must live in their own religious house observing common life and cannot be absent without permission of their superior.”

Under the current provisions of canon 694, which the motuproprio reforms, the ipso facto dismissal of a member of a religious community can be declared for two reasons: that he or she has “defected notoriously from the Catholic faith,” or “has contracted marriage or attempted it, even only civilly.”

With the change, Pope Francis added the ground of desertion of the community.

Now, if a member of a religious community is “absent from the religious house illegitimately, in accordance with canon 665 § 2, for twelve months without interruption” they too can be declared dismissed from the community, provided that their superiors are otherwise unable to locate or contact them.

Depending on the constitution of the religious order, decrees of dismissal must be confirmed by the Holy See or by the local bishop.

President Recep Tayyip Erdodan on March 24 voiced the possibility of reverting the Hagia Sophia, which has been used as a museum since 1935 and is considered one of the world’s wonders, to a mosque.

“This is not unlikely. We might even change its name to Ayasofya Mosque,” Erdodan said during a live interview with Turkish broadcaster TGRT.

“This is not a strange proposal,” he said regarding the calls to convert the historical building to serve the purpose it did for half a millennium.

“As you know, the mosque was converted to a museum in 1935, as a reflection of the (Republican People’s Party) CHP mentality. We may as well take a step and change that,” he concluded, pointing to the harshly secularist policies of the 1930s CHP, which is the main opposition today.

The Hagia Sophia was built in the sixth century during the Christian Byzantine Empire and served as the seat of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was converted into an imperial mosque with the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453. The structure was converted into a museum during the strictly secular single-party rule in 1935, but there have been discussions around converting it back to a mosque, with public demands to restore it as a place of worship gaining traction on social media.

Two months ahead of the European elections and amidst the many difficulties faced by the European project, bishops from France, Germany and Switzerland meet for a seminar in Paris to discuss the “European Common Good.” A seminar, entitled “Dialogue on the European Common Good,” jointly organised by the French, German and Swiss episcopal conferences, took place in Paris from 25 to 26 March. It was presided over by the three presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences: Archbishop of Marseille, Georges Pontier, Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx and Bishop of Bâle, Félix Gmür.

On the day of the opening of the seminar, the French Bishops’ Conference released a letter encouraging all Christians and citizens in France to vote in the upcoming European elections.

Iraqis and Syrians returning to their homelands and refugees living abroad need the help of all Catholics and people of goodwill, said the Congregation for Eastern Churches.

“Greater cooperation and a generous commitment by Christians all over the world to their brothers and sisters of the Holy Land and the Middle East is needed,” it said in its annual appeal, which the Vatican press office published on March 28.

In a letter sent to bishops around the world, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, congregation prefect, asked for continued support for the traditional Good Friday collection for the Holy Land.

The collection, taken up at the request of the Pope, is administered by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land — an administratively autonomous province of the Franciscan order — and the Congregation for Eastern Churches. The congregation monitors how all funds are used and supports projects in the Holy Land, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

The Franciscan Custody is responsible for most of the shrines connected with the life of Jesus as well as for providing pastoral care to the region’s Catholics, running schools, operating charitable institutions and training future priests and religious.

At a time when Catholics seem to be split between conservative or progressive factions, the life and works of English writer G.K. Chesterton can inspire men and women in the church to rise above conflict, according to U.S. scholar Dale Ahlquist.

“People on the left and right both find things to connect to Chesterton,” Ahlquist told Catholic News Service on March 22.

“Chesterton is a unifier. I think he did see the potential for the schism that is going on right now, the great division between people. But it’s just a general splitting of society because we’ve lost our roots.” Ahlquist’s latest book, titled “Knight of the Holy Ghost,” is designed to introduce people to Chesterton, who lived from 1874 to 1936.

“There are some excellent biographies out there that are very good. But sometimes, Chesterton can get lost in the details and I wanted to bring out the highlights, some of the most important features of his life so that he stands out,” he said.

Ahlquist, who serves as president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a Catholic lay apostolate inspired by the early 20th century writer, also makes the case for Chester-ton’s sainthood cause.

In 2013, Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, England, appointed Father John Udris, a priest of the diocese, to conduct an investigation into Chester-ton’s life and writings. The report, Ahlquist told CNS, has been completed and “recommends that the cause be opened.”

Now it is up to the bishop to request Vatican permission to open the cause.

In his book, Ahlquist dispels misunderstandings or falsehoods that some have cited as obstacles to Chesterton’s canonization, including the misconception that he was “rapidly anti-Semitic.”

“It’s one of those things that the more it gets repeated, the more it is believed,” said Ahlquist.

“No, it’s not that wine and beer are evil things, they can just be abused like any good thing,” said Ahlquist. “He called puritanism the ‘righteous indignation about the wrong things.’”

One of the founders of liberation theology in Latin America said he supports an effort to declare St Oscar Romero a doctor of the Catholic Church.

During a March 18 livestream of an event celebrating the Salvadoran saint canonized in October, Dominican Father Gustavo Gutierrez, considered by many as the father of liberation theology, said he thought the idea of naming St Romero a doctor of the church was an “excellent” proposition.

While some value a person’s writings or academic record, when it comes to declaring a saint a doctor of the church, “love toward another person is worth more than all of the theologies,” said Father Gutierrez, recalling something he’d read from another theologian. He was speaking via internet to those gathered for “Romero Days,” an event sponsored by the University of Notre Dame.

St Romero’s feast day is on March 24.

Saints who are declared doctors of the church “are probably best thought of as doctors in the Ph.D. sense of the word,” said Father Larry Rice, explaining the term in 2015 on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Saint Romero was a prolific writer and much can be gleaned from his works, explained Father Gutierrez, who said he encountered the Salvadoran saint in the early 1970s. But contrary to the belief that many promulgated that Saint Romero himself was a follower of liberation theology and its embrace of the “preferential option for the poor,” there isn’t much to support that, said Father Gutierrez.

The Catholic Diocese of Cúcuta in Colombia says it has provided one million meals to Venezuelan migrants affected by the humanitarian crisis in their country. The diocese on March 18 thanked the volunteers and donors who since June 5, 2017, have provided support to those affected by the emergency at the Colombian-Venezuelan border, Catholic News Agency reported.

“As the Holy Father Francis has well reminded us, the Church is like a field hospital where wounded people come, seeking the goodness and closeness of God,” Bishop Víctor Manuel Ochoa Cadavid said.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world and is not engulfed in conflict, The New Humanitarian reported on March 19.

Yet its people have been fleeing on a scale and at a rate comparable in recent memory only to South Sudanese or Syrians at the height of their civil wars and the Rohingya from Myanmar, said the crisis journalism portal.

Since Nicolas Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 2013, the country has been marred by violence and social upheaval, CNA reported.

Under the government, which says it is socialist, hyperinflation and severe shortages of food, medicine, and other necessities, have afflicted the country and millions of Venezuelans have emigrated.