NATION/WORLD

President Barack Obama's executive order of July 21 has installed workplace rules forbidding the firing of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people by the federal government and federal contractors -- a key provision in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act languishing in Congress.

The pope created lengthy riddles, known as "charades," in which readers had to guess a rebus-like answer from two or more words that together formed the syllables of a new word. A reader who submitted the correct answer to the riddle would receive a book of Latin poetry written by either Pope Leo or another noted Catholic figure.

As the last Iraqi Christians in Mosul fled the city, Pope Francis urgently called for prayers, dialogue and peace.

Catholics involved in the fight against HIV and AIDS took a few moments July 21 to remember their friends and colleagues who perished in the Malaysia Airlines flight shot down over eastern Ukraine.

A Latin America expert for Catholic Relief Services, the head of the bishops' migration committee and the president of a Catholic college in Michigan were among those urging the government toward humanitarian responses to a surge of children and families crossing the U.S. border from Central America.

Pope Francis telephoned Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, both of whom he "considers to be men of peace and who want peace," urging all sides to end hostilities. The pope told the leaders that the conflict was creating "numerous victims and was giving way to a state of serious humanitarian emergency."

For the past decade, Fr. Craig Collison has been the play-by-play announcer for the Xs, whose home ballpark is Lewis and Clark Stadium in Sioux City. He commits to the home games of the Explorers for the season, with a particular caveat.

Doctors who practice in Canada and refuse to prescribe birth control pills have become the focus of a debate over physicians' rights to freedom of conscience and religion when practicing medicine.

An 84-year-old Sister of St. Francis of Sylvania specializes in creating murals with religious and spiritual themes. She has been crafting murals for 38 years, and despite never soliciting her work, has completed nearly 100 murals.

A papal astronomer won recognition for his ability to communicate accurately and clearly the discoveries of planetary science to the general public.