News - World & Vatican RSS Feed

CHALATENANGO, El Salvador -- U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador began bilateral cooperation talks March 1 with humor, a focus on limiting immigration to the U.S. and talk about Our Lady of Guadalupe.

​​​​​​​PARIS -- Catholic clergy in France perpetrated more than three times as many sexual abuse offenses as previously thought, said the head of a bishops' commission whose report is due out in September.

ROME -- Reading the Bible has had a positive effect on people's "mental well-being" during the pandemic, according to a Christian Research survey conducted in the United Kingdom.

VATICAN CITY -- Although it took obvious effort to pronounce each word and sometimes his secretary repeated what he said to make it clear, retired Pope Benedict XVI spoke to an Italian newspaper about his retirement and about Pope Francis' planned trip to Iraq.

CHICAGO -- Catholic Extension has joined the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations to engage youth around the globe in raising awareness of religious freedom and cultivating interreligious respect through a campaign called #forSafeWorship.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis has yet to sign decrees in sainthood causes that follow the new path he approved in 2017, that of giving one's life in a heroic act of loving service to others.

VATICAN CITY -- For believers, the ability to practice their faith and receive spiritual guidance are "the highest of essential services," and pandemic practices over the past year have shown they are not automatically super-spreader events, the Vatican foreign minister said.

ROME -- Used at the Easter vigil and at baptisms and funerals, the paschal candle symbolizes Christ who brings light and hope to a world lost in the darkness of sin and death.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- An African faiths environmental institute is calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to stop funding green revolution technologies and genetically modified seeds for the continent, but instead support natural methods to help Africa achieve food sufficiency and protect its environments.

ROME -- A month after reading an interview in the Vatican newspaper with Edith Bruck, an author and Holocaust survivor, Pope Francis decided to pay her a visit at her home in the center of Rome.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis advanced the sainthood cause of one of Princes William and Harry's 19th-century ancestors as well as the causes of three Italian nuns who died from the Ebola virus while ministering to patients in Congo.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis accepted the resignations of 75-year-old Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, and 77-year-old Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica and vicar for Vatican City State.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Pope Francis hopes to embark on the first-ever papal visit to the biblical land of Iraq in early March in a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts to the place known in Arabic as the "land of the two rivers" -- the mighty Tigris and Euphrates -- and once renowned as Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization."

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The bishop of a Colombian city that is suffering from a deadly spike in drug violence boarded a firetruck to spray the town's main street with holy water and help to "cleanse it" of evil.

VATICAN CITY -- Ash Wednesday and Lent are a time to recall that new life emerges from the ashes and that spring blossoms from the bleakness of winter, said a noted Italian theologian.

MANILA, Philippines -- An archdiocese in the Philippines will allow churchgoers to distribute ashes among family members at home to mark the beginning of Lent Feb. 17.

BEIRUT -- The largest Syriac Catholic congregation in the world is preparing physically and spiritually for Pope Francis' upcoming visit to Qaraqosh, Iraq.

VATICAN CITY -- A new attitude and approach toward the elderly are needed in today's world, especially in the places and ways they are cared for when they become more fragile, said the Pontifical Academy for Life.

COLOGNE, Germany -- The Archdiocese of Cologne, which has the largest membership in the German-speaking world with almost 2 million Catholics, is sliding into a crisis of confidence.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis' ongoing efforts to promote interreligious dialogue will be highlighted in a new series of Vatican stamps.