NATION/WORLD

After hearing hours of testimony March 17 from hundreds of people opposed to a measure that would make Colorado "the most radical abortion state in the country," as many said, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee OK'd the bill in a 3-2 party line vote just after midnight.

Pope Francis has asked bishops around the world to join him March 25 in consecrating Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, something bishops in every part of the globe had started announcing the minute they heard what the pope had planned.

St. Peter gained the upper hand on St. Patrick's Day when the underdog team of the small Jesuit school, Saint Peter's University of Jersey City, New Jersey, upset the mighty University of Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary during a penitential prayer service in St. Peter's Basilica March 25, the Vatican said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine out of concern that NATO would encroach on his borders, but concern about "the disease of democracy that could spread like a virus, and that's deadly for oligarchies and authoritarian rulers," said the archbishop who serves as a "foreign minister" for the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

In a March 11 ruling, the Texas Supreme Court ended a challenge by abortion clinics to a state law that bans most abortions in Texas.

The power of prayer plus the aid of technology united two families thousands of miles apart in an international rescue operation. And it was all at the instigation of two 12-year-old girls.

The Vatican called Nicaragua's expulsion of the Vatican ambassador "grave and unjustified" as the rift deepened between the Catholic Church and the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Lent is a good time to ask God's help in throwing off any spiritual "drowsiness" that dulls a person's prayer life and attentiveness to the needs of others, Pope Francis said.

"I've come with the three most sophisticated Gospel weapons: prayer, fasting and alms," Cardinal Konrad Krajewski told reporters in Western Ukraine March 10 as he prepared to head toward Kyiv and other cities under Russian bombardment.