Church urges Biden to accept more refugees (Business Insider) Bishop Mario Dorsonville, head of the US Conference on Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, said Monday the country can do a lot more to help the world’s most vulnerable. “The number of refugees who will be welcomed this year is far short of what we can do as a country and is not an adequate response to the immense resettlement need,” Dorsonville, an auxiliary bishop in Washington, DC, and himself an immigrant from Colombia, said in a statement…

Archbishop offers special Mass, prayers for jurors (CNS) As closing arguments began April 19 in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda and priests across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis offered special Masses “For the Preservation of Peace and Justice.” Addressing a congregation of about 120 people at the Cathedral of St. Paul’s 7:30 a.m. daily Mass in St. Paul, the archbishop referred to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in St. John’s Gospel and Philip’s temptation to do nothing in the face of the challenge to feed the crowd…

Society of Catholic Scientists plans conference on non-human intelligence (CNA) The Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS) will hold its 2021 conference in Washington D.C. on the subject of non-human intelligence. The conference is titled “Extraterrestrials, AI, and Minds Beyond the Human” and will take place at the Hilton Hotel from June 4-6. The event will also be live-streamed. Conference discussions will provide scientific and theological insights on the subjects of real and hypothetical intelligences, especially extraterrestrial and artificial intelligences…

Laypeople in Cologne demand local synod (NCR) Catholic laypeople in the Archdiocese of Cologne have called for a local synod to address the ongoing crisis in Germany’s most populous diocese. “We must make every effort to reestablish a genuine dialogue between the cardinal, senior members of the diocesan leadership and the grassroots of the church,” said Tim O. Kurzbach, president of the Cologne archdiocesan council of Catholics…