Pope Francis has approved a fourth pathway to possible sainthood — giving one’s life in a heroic act of loving service to others.

In a new apostolic letter, the Pope approved new norms allowing for candidates to be considered for sainthood because of the heroic way they freely risked their lives and died prematurely because of “an extreme act of charity.”

The document, given “motu proprio” (on his own initiative) went into effect the same day of its publication on July 11, with the title “Maiorem hac dilectionem,” which comes from the Gospel according to St John (15:13): “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Archbishop Marcello Bartolucci, secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes, said the addition is meant “to promote heroic Christian testimony, [that has been] up to now without a specific process, precisely because it did not completely fit within the case of martyrdom or heroic virtues.”

For centuries, consideration for the sainthood process required that a Servant of God heroically lived a life of Christian virtues or had been martyred for the faith. The third, less common way, is called an equivalent or equipollent canonization: when there is evidence of strong devotion among the faithful to a holy man or woman, the Pope can waive a lengthy formal canonical investigation and can authorize their veneration as saints.

While these three roads to sainthood remain unchanged, they were not adequate “for interpreting all possible cases” of holiness, the archbishop wrote in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, on July 11. According to the apostolic letter, any causes for beatification according to the new pathway of “offering of life” would have to meet the following criteria:

— Free and willing offer of one’s life and a heroic acceptance, out of love, of a certain and early death; the heroic act of charity and the premature death are connected.

— Evidence of having lived out the Christian virtues — at least in an ordinary, and not necessarily heroic, way — before having offered one’s life to others and until one’s death.

— Evidence of a reputation for holiness, at least after death.

— A miracle attributed to the candidate’s intercession is needed for beatification.

Christians made up the majority of refugees admitted to the U.S. in the first five full months of the Trump administration, reversing a trend that saw Muslims entering the country at higher numbers under President Obama, a new Pew Research report shows.

Out of all the refugees who arrived between President Trump’s inauguration and June 30, about half were Christians and 38% were Muslims, according to data released July 12.

But when monthly figures are viewed, the data (originally from the U.S. State Department) reveals a steady decline for Muslims, from about 50% of refugees in February to 31% in June.

This comes at a time when the origin of most of the world’s refugees continues to be Muslim-majority countries. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, Syria continues to account for a significant proportion of newly displaced refugees, with more than half of all new refugees worldwide fleeing the conflict in that country. Afghanistan and Somalia also top the list.

Russia’s Orthodox church has reported a sharp rise in seminary admissions, with the highest numbers ever recorded now training for the priesthood in its 261 eparchies, or dioceses.

The Interfax news agency said 1593 ordinands were expected to begin studies this summer, a 19 percent increase from 2016, while a further 827 young men would also join the church’s preparatory course, or propaedeuticum, a quarter more than last year. It added that a total of 5877 semi-narians were now preparing for ordination, a figure comparable to that of Poland’s Catholic Church in its peak years 1985-7.

The Russian church was savagely persecuted under Soviet rule in 1917-1991, but is now by far the largest of the world’s 14 Orthodox denominations, claiming 144 million members, with 368 bishops and around 40,000 priests and deacons. The church, which has 926 functioning monasteries and convents, is estimated to have opened three places of worship daily over the past three decades, bringing the total to 36,000 compared to just 6000 at the end of communist rule.

While the Roman Catholic world digests a Vatican letter confirming the church’s prohi-bition on gluten-free wafers, Protestant churches continue to place orders for a Eucharist that won’t bother the gluten-intolerant. Gluten or no gluten — the difference is theological. Protes-tant churches generally do not subscribe to the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that during the Communion service, the bread and wine turn into the actual body and blood of Jesus.

The Catholic Church, which affirms transubstantiation, wants to hew as closely as possible to the elements of the first-ever Communion — the bread and wine that Christians believe Jesus ate and drank during the Last Supper.

But Protestants consider Communion a symbolic act, and generally give themselves more leeway on the elements.

Wine can be grape juice. Bread does not necessarily have to be made out of wheat.

The Vatican letter released on July 8 reaffirmed that Communion wafers must contain at least some gluten. But the rule is not new, just a restating of an earlier teaching.

“ … bread made from another substance, even if it is grain, or if it is mixed with another substance different from wheat to such an extent that it would not commonly be considered wheat bread, does not constitute valid matter for confecting the Sacrifice and the Eucharistic Sacrament,” the letter reads.

And it makes clear: “Hosts that are completely gluten-free are invalid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist.”

Low-gluten wafers, however, are deemed acceptable by the church.

Those who suffer from celiac disease — about 1 in 100 people worldwide, according to the Celiac Disease Foundation — must stay away from gluten to avoid painful symptoms and serious health consequences.

He may be at the helm of one of the most dynamic Roman Catholic parishes in Florida, with the 3,000 families present each weekend at one of the seven masses at Saint Peter’s Church in Deland, but Father Thomas Connery is still worried.

“We have many retirees in Florida, so the churches are full but take them away and it’s a catastrophe,” says Father Connery. “We’re not managing to reach the young generations.”

“For every person baptized, the American church loses six Catholics,” he laments. “We don’t dare talk about it among priests, doubtless because we do not know what to do, but it is past time to break this taboo.

“Imagine a company facing such a problem. It would immediately launch an emergency plan! What about us?”

U.S. bishops do not yet have an emergency plan, but they have organized a unique gathering. For the first time in a hundred years, priests, laymen, monks, nuns and other heads of services and movements from all over the United States have come together at a meeting in Orlando, Florida from 1 to 4 July.

Their purpose is to reflect on how to be the best “missionary disciples,” in the words of Pope Francis in his Evangelii Gaudium.

Catholics represent the largest denomin-ation in the United States, with 77.4 million believers (22% of the total population), but fewer people have actually been attending church. The number of people taking the sacraments, except baptism, is also dropping.

From 2013 to 2016, the number of children who had their first communion decreased by 50,000 or 7%. Catholic schools registered a loss of 250,000 students over the same period.

If the Roman Catholic Church is losing ground in the United States, this also has to do with the rampant secularization of U.S. society in general. Americans who define themselves as not belonging to any religion, the “nones,” make up close to 25% of the population, up from 6% in 1991.

The former Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Joaquín Navarro-Valls,  on  5 July 2017, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old. Navarro trained as a medical doctor with a specialization in psychiatry, as well as in journalism, moving to Rome in the early 1970’s, becoming a foreign correspondent and eventually being elected president of the foreign press association in the city.