Baseball, like religion, has its own relics, prophets, rituals, and in the game's most magnificent moments, a sense of "the ineffable," according to John Sexton, president of New York University and author of "Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game."

Climate change “is probably the most moral issue of our time," says the president and founder of Interfaith Power & Light, a coalition of thousands of religious people putting their faith into action through energy stewardship.

In New York, orthopedic surgeon Joseph Dutkowski specializes in treating severely disabled patients. He is motivated, he says, by his Catholic faith.

“The common good is found in all our faith traditions—Catholic, black churches. I found it back to John Chrysostom in the fourth century. And the moral foundation of it is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

“St. Francis considers himself to be a brother to everyone,” say Father Larry Dunham of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America. “He had his own special vision.”

"If he stresses the social justice teachings of the church, the very counter-cultural message of simplicity and poverty, that could really change things without technically changing any teachings," says David Gibson, national reporter for Religion News Service.

"He may be the very guy to come in and reform a lot of the problems that are going on in the Vatican curia right now. And that may be one thing that the cardinals saw that led to his election."

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington celebrated Mass on Sunday, March 10, at his historic titular church in Rome, San Pietro in Vincoli or St. Peter in Chains. Before the Mass, he asked US Catholics to pray for the cardinals as they prepare to enter the conclave.

At a briefing at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, this professor of liturgical studies at the Catholic University of America describes some of the pre-conclave rituals.

In an interview with managing editor Kim Lawton, Rev. Thomas Reese, S.J., analyst for National Catholic Reporter, describes what will happen as the cardinals begin voting for the new pope.