The core vocational work of permanent deacons is to evangelize and care for others, not to perform office duties, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States, told more than 1,300 permanent deacons attending the 2018 National Diaconate Congress on July 22.

Dachau, the notorious German concentration camp most associated with the genocide of thousands of Jews during Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, also held more than 2,700 clergy, 2,400 of them Catholic priests.

The New Orleans devotion to St. Ann, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, dates to 1852 when the first St. Ann Catholic Parish was established at St. Philip and Roman streets, where St. Peter Claver Church is today. A novena in her honor began a year later in 1853, according to Clarion Herald archives.