Jonathan Luxmoore

"People are trying to leave, fearing whole areas could fall under Moscow's control — this conflict has already lasted years, and they simply can't cope with such conditions," Ukrainian Bishop Jan Sobilo told NCR.

"Nothing has changed — the great bulk of Russian forces are still here, as fighting flares intermittently and people still die," said Bishop Stanislav Szyrokoradiuk of Odessa-Simferopol.

Across the 27-country European Union, in places like France, Slovakia and Scotland, have been complaints that coronavirus restrictions are being used to push through measures that could compromise religious rights.

A Polish cardinal, former secretary to St. John Paul II, could face jail time after a Polish state commission accused him of ignoring sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

A prominent Russian professor urged his nation's bishops to condemn police violence against protestors supporting opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but the Moscow archdiocesan chancellor refused.

The sudden departure of Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz from conflict-torn Belarus, just 10 days after his return from regime-imposed exile, has provoked surprise and anger among the region's Catholics.

When two priests were arrested in Belarus on Dec. 8 amid protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, there were fears of a full-scale campaign against the minority Catholic Church.

Two European Catholic commissions warned that Arctic warming is intensifying competition over the region's resources and urged tougher policies to protect its biodiversity and Indigenous communities.

The Vatican report on disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has special resonance in Poland because of the involvement of Pope John Paul II and other Polish prelates in his career and abuse cover-ups.

A Catholic bishop in Belarus accused President Alexander Lukashenko of "insult and slander" after Lukashenko charged the church's exiled archbishop with planning to "destroy the country" and called for a bar on foreign clergy.

The Catholic Church in Switzerland has backed legislation that would penalize companies that damage the environment or abuse human rights.

Catholic Church officials in Russia criticized planned religious law changes that will require all clergy who studied abroad to retrain in a Russian college.

The director of Greece's Catholic charitable organization said the situation on Lesbos island remains tense after a fire at a refugee camp left at least 12,000 homeless.

The head of Belarus's Catholic Church, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, was barred from reentering his country on Aug. 31, amid mass protests over a dubious election — after he issued a pastoral letter warning a possible slide toward civil war.

Cardinal Maurice Piat of Port-Louis, Mauritius, has praised public responses to an oil spill that devastated the island's coastline, as one prominent lay Catholic demanded "honest information" about the disaster.

A senior Catholic aid worker said humanitarian conditions are deteriorating in eastern Ukraine and urged Western governments and churches not to forget the continuing six-year conflict.

Turkey's presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said Hagia Sophia would "retain its character as a cultural monument," reminding people that the building was being converted "not from a church to a mosque, but from a museum to a mosque."

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who retired from the Archdiocese of Lyon, has left his see to serve as a convent chaplain and envoy for the pope.

Catholic organizations and leaders in Europe are urging governments to learn lessons from the coronavirus crisis and introduce far-reaching reforms to help those suffering economically from the pandemic.

Catholic groups across Europe have echoed Pope Francis' call for a universal basic wage as part of recovery plans after the coronavirus pandemic.