Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Sri Lanka’s first saint is an icon of Catholicism in Asia by John Allen: “Pope Francis today gave Sri Lanka its very first saint, canonizing a 17th- and 18th-century missionary named Joseph Vaz who helped keep Catholicism alive on the island nation during a time of severe persecution.”

Malawi floods kill 170 and leave thousands homeless by BBC News: “Vice-President Saulos Chilima said more than 100,000 people had been displaced from their homes, mostly in the south. Earlier this week, the government declared a third of the country to be a disaster zone and appealed for help.”

Over 40 million American workers don’t have paid sick leave. Obama has a plan to change that by Danielle Kurtzleben: “The president can’t himself grant paid leave to all workers in the US, but he can grant it to federal workers — he will sign a memorandum on Thursday to give six weeks of family leave allowing federal workers to care for new children or sick family members. He’s also proposing that Congress do the same for its workers.”

Among the Disrupted by Leon Wieseltier: “The persistence of humanism through the centuries, in the face of formidable intellectual and social obstacles, has been owed to the truth of its representations of our complexly beating hearts, and to the guidance that it has offered, in its variegated and conflicting versions, for a soulful and sensitive existence. There is nothing soft about the quest for a significant life.”

U.N. aid chief suggests more intervention in humanitarian emergencies by Michelle Nichols: “U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos on Tuesday suggested more intervention in humanitarian emergencies as she said some states were aggressively asserting sovereignty rights to stop action being taken to protect civilians.”

Die Alone, Live Alone by Peter Leithart: “Everyone dies alone, and Camus recognizes that if death is final, then everyone is always alone. What we do to others, what others to do us, does not ultimately matter. Death isolates. Death individualizes. The rule of death is the rule of pure individualism. By contrast, resurrection is a corporate hope, the confidence that we will pass through death to rejoin one another in a new heavens and new earth.”

How government helps the 1 percent by EJ Dionne: “The institute found that in 2015 the poorest fifth of Americans will pay, on average, 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes and the middle fifth will pay 9.4 percent. But the top 1 percent will pay states and localities only 5.4 percent of their incomes in taxes.”

Contra Christiansen & Aldajani, Part II by Michael Sean Winters: “Criticizing Israeli policies is one thing, and a necessary thing. But, the complete failure to evidence any sympathy with Israeli concerns for the security of its citizenry is a different thing and an ugly thing.”