Happy Friday! As always, your weekly roundup:

A high-profile alliance of Catholics and evangelical Protestants is set to issue a statement that says same-sex marriage is worse than divorce or cohabitation. There are nearly 50 signers on the 5,000-word statement which will be published in the March edition of the journal First Things.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis reportedly held a private audience with a transgender man on Saturday. Diego Neria Lejárraga, who underwent sex-reassignment surgery and was rejected by his religious community, says he reached out to Francis and received a call from the pontiff on Christmas Eve.

A priest has decided only boys can be altar servers at a San Francisco parish. The first reason for the change, he said, is that “boys usually end up losing interest (in altar service) because girls generally do a better job.”

Catholic leaders joined in commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

Some of Boston’s 2 million Catholics are growing frustrated with criteria that deters them from serving as jurors on the Boston Marathon bombing trial.

The Vatican will offer haircuts and shaves, as well as showers, to Rome’s homeless.

After a measles outbreak in California, a father is working to make sure all children in public schools receive immunizations so they don’t threaten his son, who’s battling leukemia.

A new Vatican document warns that plastic surgery can become a form of “aggression” that threatens female identity.