The Associated Press

A day after donning a face mask for the first time during a liturgical service, Pope Francis was back to his mask-less old ways Oct. 21 despite surging coronavirus infections across Europe and growing criticism of his behavior and the example he is setting.

Pennsylvania's highest court on Tuesday grappled with whether a woman's lawsuit on claims of sexual abuse by a priest decades ago should be allowed to proceed — a lower-court ruling that has launched many other lawsuits since it was issued a year ago. 

The Vatican's swirling corruption investigation has taken a mysterious new twist with the arrest on an international warrant of a Sardinian woman said to be close to one of the Holy See's most powerful cardinals before his downfall.

For the first time, a clergy sex abuse trial opened Oct. 14 in the Vatican's criminal tribunal, with one priest accused of molesting an altar boy in the Vatican's youth seminary and another priest accused of covering it up.

Dubbed "Not Our Faith," the new super PAC plans to roll out six-figure TV and digital ads focused on Christian voters‚ particularly the evangelical and Catholic voters who helped power Trump to victory in 2016.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett presented her conservative approach to the law Monday at the start of fast-tracked confirmation hearings, while Democrats, powerless to stop her, tried to cast her as a threat to Americans’ health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.

Four Swiss Guards have tested positive for coronavirus and were showing symptoms, the Vatican said Monday, Oct. 12, as the surge in infections in surrounding Italy penetrates the Vatican walls.

Mexico's president published an open letter to Pope Francis Oct. 10 calling on the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for abuses of Indigenous peoples during the conquest of Mexico in the 1500s. 

Pope Francis met Monday with Cardinal George Pell, warmly welcoming him for a private audience in the Apostolic Palace after the cardinal’s sex abuse conviction and acquittal in Australia.

An Australian man who accused Cardinal George Pell of sexually abusing him denied Monday he was bribed for his testimony, shooting down the latest conspiracy theory to roil the Vatican amid a corruption investigation into its shady finances.

The Diocese of Camden has filed for bankruptcy, citing revenue losses because of the millions it paid out to clergy abuse victims and the pandemic. 

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden appealed to the nation's Roman Catholic voters on Oct. 1 during a charity dinner that traditionally has been used to promote collegiality and good humor.

The Diocese of Rockville Center in New York City's suburbs became the largest in the U.S. to declare bankruptcy, seeking relief from a torrent of lawsuits filed after the state suspended the statute of limitations for suing over sexual abuse by priests.

Child-protection policies adopted by Roman Catholic leaders to curb clergy sex abuse in the United States are inconsistent and often worryingly incomplete, according to a think tank's two-year investigation encompassing all 32 of the country's archdioceses.

Cardinal George Pell, the former Vatican finance czar who left in 2017 to face child sexual abuse charges in his native Australia, returned to Rome on Sept. 30 after his acquittal to find a Vatican mired in a corruption scandal. 

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court has close ties to a charismatic Christian religious group that holds men are divinely ordained as the "head” of the family and faith. Former members of the group, called People of Praise, say it teaches that wives must submit to the will of their husbands.

President Donald Trump is expected to be in virtual attendance Oct. 1 as New York City's annual Al Smith Dinner moves mostly online because of the coronavirus pandemic, organizers said.

Roman Catholics account for a bit more than 20% of the U.S. population, yet they are on track to hold six of the Supreme Court's nine seats now that President Donald Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett to fill its vacancy.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Olga Tokarczuk has declined an honorary citizenship from the region of Poland where she lives because she would have had to share the honor with a Roman Catholic bishop who has made hostile comments about the LGBT community.

The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state Friday at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman so honored in America, making history again as she had throughout her extraordinary life.