As President Donald Trump's campaign seeks to shore up declining Catholic support ahead of the November election, the president appeared at the conservative-run National Catholic Prayer Breakfast yesterday, where he announced he was signing an executive order to protect all infants born alive. 

While Trump did not offer specifics on the order, he said it would ensure that medical care will be provided to all infants regardless of their circumstances. 

Attorney General William Barr received the Christifideles Laici Award for service to the church, and in his 10-minute speech, warned that "traditional morality has eroded, and secularists have often succeeded," first in the realm of education, and which he said has spread to a number of other institutions. 

The decision to honor Barr, who in July 2019 announced that the federal government would resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus, has led to a chorus of outcries from Catholic groups across the country.   

The May 7 death of Divya P. John, a 21-year-old novice with the Basilian Sisters near Thiruvalla, India, was listed as a probable suicide. It is the latest in nearly 20 others since 1987 involving novices and sisters serving in Kerala state.

The most notable was the murder of Sister Abhaya, whose body was found in 1992 at the bottom of her convent's well in Kottayam. Originally dismissed as a suicide, that case took a turn in 2008 after a criminal investigation deemed her death was a murder. Now, almost three decades after Abhaya's death, a priest and nun charged with her murder are undergoing a trial that only began in August 2019.

Catholic groups have recently asked church authorities to take steps to dispel a growing mistrust in society regarding religious life and the deaths of John and other sisters.