VATICAN CITY - Visiting the small Catholic communities in Bulgaria and North Macedonia offered an opportunity to encourage the faithful to remember God's miracle of being able to feed a multitude with just a few loaves and fishes, Pope Francis said.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that atrocities carried out by the Islamic State group against Yezidis, Christians and other minorities were genocide, the first U.S. declaration of genocide since Sudanese actions in Darfur in 2004.

MARRAKESH, Morocco - Muslim leaders from around the world adopted a declaration defending the rights of religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries.

WASHINGTON - Exploitation and discrimination abound among refugees from Myanmar's ethnic minority communities who have landed in Malaysia, a five-member contingent from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops learned.

WASHINGTON - Displaced members of Myanmar's Kachin ethnic minority are struggling with being away from their homes and the limited services available in a Catholic-run camp near the Myanmar-China border, said the chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Migration.

NEW DELHI - Each day, children on their way to Mount Carmel School pass through gates under the watch of armed security guards, and now city police officers who stop there on government orders after a nearby Catholic convent and school were broken into.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis' concern for those suffering on the margins and for small Catholic communities that have kept the faith alive through war or repression will take him to Bosnia-Herzegovina in early June.

AMMAN, Jordan - A call for an area to protect Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq is gathering pace even as April marks the centenary of the 1915 genocide of Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians.

VAUGHAN, ONT. - About 100 Pakistani Christians and supporters held a peaceful demonstration outside the Pakistani Consulate north of Toronto on Mar. 20 in response to the deadly bombing four days earlier of two churches in Lahore, Pakistan.

VATICAN CITY - Iraqi and Syrian refugees who have fled persecution in their homelands and the Palestinian Christians struggling to survive in the land of Jesus deserve the prayers and material support of Catholics around the globe, a Vatican official said.

LONDON - A Chaldean Catholic archbishop called for the redeployment of American and British troops in Iraq to prevent the “genocide” of Christians and other minorities by Islamic State militants.

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) Feb. 15 (Leviticus 13:1-2, 45-46; Psalm 32; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45)

Those whom we despise, fear and exclude often reflect our own fear and lack of love. They show us who we are inside, and that is why we fear them so much. The ancient scourge of leprosy was a perfect example.

VATICAN CITY - The one thing Iraqi Church leaders and aid workers, foreign charities and governments cannot do for the displaced and terrorized people of northeastern Iraq is answer their question, "What will become of us?" said Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Pope's envoy to the region.