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George Clements, a civil rights activist whose life was turned into a made-for-TV movie after he became the first Catholic priest to adopt a child, died November 25 at age 87.

Clements reportedly had suffered a stroke and heart attack within the last month.

In a statement on Facebook, Michael Pfleger, senior pastor at St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago, called Clements “a pioneer for justice who spent his life helping people.”

“He pushed the Catholic Church to be inclusive and made black Catholics proud to be Catholic,” Pfleger said.

On December 10, the World Council of Churches’ Interfaith Liaison Com­mit­tee presented the UN’s climate change summit with a declaration of its commitment to climate justice.

The group wrote that, as people driven by faith and hope, they were compelled to contribute to a solution to the climate crisis.

“For decades, science has provided increasing evidence of how the earth is affected by human-induced climate change,” they wrote. “The response from those in power has been inadequate and slow. Action has been delayed even as the voice of warning has become stronger.”

Christian conservatives have unfairly co-opted religious liberty as their political issue, says a new report from the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School.

“Far from abandoning this fundamental right, people of faith outside the conservative movement have taken up the fight for religious freedom in a wide variety of contexts,” the authors wrote in Whose Faith Matters? The Fight for Reli­gious Liberty Beyond the Christian Right.

Donna Mote regularly accompanies military personnel escorting the caskets of fallen service members through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Inter­national Airport, where she serves as a chaplain.

Mote is the first person to greet the escorts once they step off the plane. She stands shoulder to shoulder with them while an honor guard marches with flags of the five military branches. She stays with them through their layover at the airport. She’s there for support. In many cases, the escorts are grieving because they knew the deceased.

Pope Francis’s view on nuclear weapons can be summed up in a few simple words.

Just say no.

The use and possession of weapons should be made “immoral” under official Catholic teaching, Francis told reporters aboard the papal plane November 26, taking a new step in the Vatican’s approach to this issue.

He also expressed reservations concerning the use of nuclear energy.

In December, the African Methodist Episcopal Church an­nounced the relaunch of AME Voter Alert, its voting awareness campaign. The goal of the campaign is to encourage AME congregants—and the nation’s black communities more broadly—to vote in the 2020 presidential election.

In his visit to a predominantly African American church, Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic presidential candidate from Indiana, made sure to arrive early and to bring his Bible with him.

He took a seat in the third pew at William J. Barber’s racially diverse Green­leaf Christian Church on Decem­ber 1, and to all appearances Buttigieg, a Harvard graduate who became a Rhodes Scholar and speaks seven languages, was the perfect church guest.

Theologian Sallie McFague died November 15 at the age of 86. McFague influenced a generation of feminist theo­logians with her work in ecofeminist theology. For 30 years she taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

For the past seven years, Kay Warren has hosted an annual gathering at Saddle­back Church in honor of Sur­vi­vors of Suicide Loss Day. During that time, Warren said, there have been many strides in mental health awareness. One thing remains constant, though.

“The pain is the same,” said Warren, who lost her son Matthew to suicide in 2013. “The two hardest deaths to process, and mourn, and grieve and walk through, are suicide and murder.” Both involve deep trauma, she said.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has elected as its new president Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, a naturalized US citizen who emigrated from Mexico and is outspoken on immigration issues.

Gómez, 67, was elected on November 12 by a landslide on the first ballot during the bishops’ fall conference in Baltimore. The first Latino selected to hold the position, he received 176 votes, with some American bishops voting remotely from Rome. His closest competitor in the field of ten candidates received 18 votes.