Thousands of people have streamed onto the National Mall in Washington for a daylong prayer rally. The event Sunday is billed as a “rededication of our country as One Nation under God.” President Donald Trump is expected to address the crowd in a video message. Most speakers celebrated Christianity’s ties to American history. It's a blending of ideas that critics flagged in advance of the prayer gathering as supporting Christian nationalism. The event was organized by a public-private partnership backed by the White House. Congressional Democrats see it as a Trump-controlled end run around a commission charted by Congress a decade ago to prepare 250th anniversary events.

Pope Leo XIV has created a study group on artificial intelligence in a sign of his ongoing concern about the technology. The Vatican announced the creation of an in-house study group even as it gears up to release Leo's first encyclical. It's expected to emphasize the need for an ethics-based approach to AI that prioritizes human dignity and peace. Vatican officials said Leo signed it on the anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s significant encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” or Of New Things. This new document is expected to address AI within the context of the church's social teachings.

Pope Leo XIV is adding a trip to France to his busy 2026 travel schedule. The Vatican confirmed Saturday the visit will be from Sept. 25 to 28. This will be his fourth foreign trip of the year. Earlier, he visited Monaco in March and four African nations in April, with Spain and the Canary Islands planned for June. Leo's visit to France includes a stop at the U.N. culture agency. The late Pope Francis focused on smaller Catholic communities. A possible visit to Latin America, including Peru, remains unconfirmed for later in the year.

Military identification tags — popularly known as dog tags — became standard issue for U.S. troops at the request of an Army chaplain concerned about identifying fallen soldiers at the beginning of the 20th century. From the World Wars to Vietnam and more recent conflicts in the Middle East, they’ve been a symbol of Americans’ sacrifice in warzones across the world. Today, they remain one of the most powerful ways for grieving military families and companions-in-arms to tangibly connect with their lost ones.

Millions of Palestinians are marking the 78th anniversary of the Nakba. That's Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the mass expulsion and flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. Friday's anniversary is the third commemoration of the Nakba since the war in Gaza began. More than six months after an October ceasefire, Gaza’s more than 2 million people are now crammed into less than half of the 25-mile-long strip along the Mediterranean coast. They are surrounded by an Israeli-controlled zone. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country's military now controls 60% of the Gaza strip.