Pope Francis

In May, the Rev. Warren Hall was abruptly dismissed from his position as the popular campus chaplain at Seton Hall University in New Jersey because the Catholic archbishop of Newark said his advocacy against anti-gay bullying, and his identity as a gay man, undermined church teaching.

Now Hall has written to Pope Francis asking that when the pontiff visits the U.S. in September, he speak out against such actions because they are “alienating” gay Catholics and the many others who support them.

In the letter, which was dated July 14, Hall asked Francis to “find time to listen to the challenges faced by LGBT people, especially those who are Catholic and wish to remain a part of the Church they have grown up in, which they love, and yet which it seems is alienating them more and more.”

1. Read the First Chapter of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Sequel

Happy Christmas in July! Read this excerpt of the much-anticipated Go Set a Watchman — due to be released on Tuesday. Or listen to the chapter, featuring narration by Reese Witherspoon, over at The Guardian.

2. Pope Apologizes for Catholic Church’s ‘Offenses’ Against Indigenous People

"I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America."

3. When Algorithms Discriminate

So there’s this, from the Upshot: "Research from the University of Washington found that a Google Images search for ‘C.E.O.’ produced 11 percent women, even though 27 percent of United States chief executives are women. (On a recent search, the first picture of a woman to appear, on the second page, was the C.E.O. Barbie doll.)"

The Vatican is calling on bishops globally to act on the pope’s groundbreaking environmental encyclical, Cardinal Peter Turkson said in an interview.

Last week, bishops’ conferences across the world were sent a message urging them to speak up about the message of the papal letter, which called for greater action on the environment, said Turkson, who is president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Everyone is excited about Pope Francis making his first visit to the United States in September. For American Catholics, it’s a rare opportunity for us to see our beloved Holy Father on our home turf. We want to do something special to welcome Pope Francis to the United States — so we created Flat Francis.

We’re encouraging Catholics to download the Flat Francis cutout from our website and take a photo with him that represents their experience of the Catholic Church in America. It can be a selfie, a photo of Flat Francis in their Church, or anything else that showcases the many people, places, and activities of American Catholicism. The photos can be posted on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #FlatFrancis or e-mailed to socialmedia@catholicextension.org. We will use the photos to assemble a photomosaic that we will send to Pope Francis in September.

“The task of cleaning up our environment calls for a total mobilization by all of us. It involves governments at every level; it requires the help of every citizen.”

Sounds like a liberal Democrat, right? Someone who has been using Pope Francis’s recent climate encyclical Laudato Si’ (“Blessed Be”) as a political bludgeon, wielded against “climate change deniers?” Nancy Pelosi, perhaps? Not quite.

With these words, President Richard Nixon concluded his plea to congress in 1970 to take action on behalf of the environment, stressing that this was “an urgent common goal of all Americans.” Nixon then gathered bipartisan support as he spearheaded the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and inked 14 laws related to environmental protection.

To be sure, Nixon didn’t know what to make of environmentalists, once complaining that they wanted everyone to live like “a bunch of damned animals.” Still, when a 2012 poll asked 12 leading environmental groups to rank the three most environmentally-friendly presidents, Nixon came in second — behind Teddy Roosevelt, a fellow Republican.

Pope Francis writes, “All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements, and talents.” And it is the combination of our talents that can alter the path of destruction we have traveled down for far too long.

Pope Francis paints the picture of this path all too well.

Americans have less confidence in organized religion today than ever measured before — a sign that the church could be “losing its footing as a pillar of moral leadership in the nation’s culture,” a new Gallup survey finds.

“In the ’80s the church and organized religion were the No. 1″ in Gallup’s annual look at confidence in institutions, said Lydia Saad, author of the report released Wednesday.

Confidence, she said, “is a value judgment on how the institution is perceived, a mark of the amount of respect it is due.” A slight upsurge for Catholic confidence, for example, parallels the 2013 election and immense popularity of Pope Francis.

Pope Francis on June 14 stressed the importance of children having heterosexual parents, just a day after Rome’s gay pride march demonstrated the changing attitudes about same-sex couples outside the Vatican walls.

Addressing around 25,000 followers from the Diocese of Rome, the pope said the differences between men and women are fundamental and “an integral part of being human.”

The pontiff likened a long-lasting marriage to a good wine, in which a husband and wife make the most of their gender differences.

Pope Francis will meet a gay married activist in Paraguay next month, according to an LGBT rights group in that country.

The pontiff is due to meet Simon Cazal, co-founder and executive director of SomosGay, on July 11 at the Paraguayan Episcopal Conference in Asuncion, the country’s capital.

Catholic conference organizers approached Cazal earlier this month with an invitation in which they noted the “impact of your organization on Paraguayan society.”