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Hello, I'm Maggie Murray of OSV News, and this is your OSV Newscast for Tuesday, September 1st, 2026. Let's catch you up on the Catholic News of the Day. Here we go. As Christians around the world begin the season of creation today, Pope Leo XIV is directing the prayers of the faithful toward a resource many take for granted: water. In a video released today, the Pope called on Catholics to reject waste and pollution and to defend access to safe drinking water as a fundamental human right. The appeal lands against a sobering backdrop. UN agencies estimate 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, with millions relying on untreated sources like rivers and lakes. The season of creation runs from today through October 4th, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, with this year's theme, Living Water, focused on growing freshwater scarcity and unequal access worldwide. The Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network framed the intention as a call to practical action, conserving water, repairing leaks, and avoiding pollution. Filmed at the Church of San Pellegrino in Vatican City, the video features Pope Leo reflecting on water's role in baptism and daily life, presenting its care as an act of stewardship and solidarity with the poor. For the first time since the war began, the school at Holy Family Parish in Gaza is reopening its doors, welcoming roughly a thousand students back to something resembling a normal routine. Auxiliary Bishop William Shimali, patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine, told OSV News that resuming classes gives children something dependable to hold on to amid ongoing conflict and severe trauma. The parish's pastor, Father Gabriel Romanelli, and his staff worked to repair damaged classrooms while continuing to shelter displaced families on the parish grounds. The milestone comes as UN officials report an estimated 637,000 school-aged children in Gaza lack sustained access to formal education, and roughly 94% of the population, nearly 2 million people, remain displaced. In an August 26th pastoral letter, Cardinal Pier Battista Pizzabala emphasized that Christian schools remain cornerstones of coexistence across the Holy Land. Through this school, Bishop Shimali said, the church is telling local Christian families that they are not forgotten and will not be abandoned. Cassidy argues the FDA should reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for MiFA Prestone, and found that drug sponsors are not currently meeting their legal responsibilities to ensure compliance with remaining safety requirements. Abortion drug companies are putting mothers at risk, Cassidy said in a statement, adding that the explosion in online sales of chemical abortion drugs has opened the door to coercion and abuse of women. The report comes shortly after Cassidy voiced concern over President Trump's nominee to lead the FDA, and just weeks after he cast the deciding vote to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General, despite having previously criticized him. Pop Leo XIV's full message for today's World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation offers a striking diagnosis. The world's environmental and military crises share the same root. Titled with the prophet Isaiah's vision of beating swords into plowshares, the message argues that war and ecological degradation are not merely political failures, but moral and spiritual ones. War also leaves behind social and ecological destruction that endures for generations, the Pope writes, describing a vicious cycle in which conflict contaminates air and water, undermines food security, and fuels the poverty and inequality that spark new conflicts. Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Leo notes that the external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast. The path forward, he insists, requires more than structural reform. It requires conversion of heart. The true tools of peace, he writes, are not weapons of destruction, but truth, dialogue, patience, goodness, justice, mercy, understanding, care, and love. A group of Nashville seminarians spent their summer in an unusual classroom, a 115-acre farm in Middle Tennessee, living in tents through two of the hottest months of the year. Joined by diocesan vocations directors Father Luke Wilgenbush and Father David Lee, the seminarians stepped away from smartphones, fast food, and urban comforts to work at Field of Dreams farm in Watertown, about 40 miles east of Nashville, under the guidance of Deacon Chris Simpson and his wife, Sue Ellen. The farm produces pastured eggs, non-GMO poultry, and livestock, including chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and grass-fed cattle. All the seminarians are in the propaduic stage of formation, which emphasizes human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral development. Days began with morning prayer, followed by four hours of farm work, then lunch eaten in silence, while Father Wilgambush read aloud, followed by a holy hour and mass. The farm is peaceful, said seminarian Jason Koeneman, and has allowed me to deepen my prayer life by spending time in nature and among God's creation. And that's your OSV Newscast for today. I'm Maggie Murray of OSV News. Check out the show notes for direct links to the stories in this episode. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast, follow us on social media, and bookmark osvnews.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. This has been an OSV News production. To learn more, visit osvnews.com.