The Associated Press

Restitution of Indigenous and colonial-era artifacts, a pressing debate for museums and national collections across Europe, is one of the many agenda items awaiting Pope Francis on his trip to Canada.

The FBI has opened a widening investigation into sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans going back decades, a rare federal foray into such cases looking specifically at whether priests took children across state lines to molest them.

Pope Francis on June 22 blasted the violence that plagues Mexico as he mourned the slayings of two of his "brother" Jesuits who were gunned down in a remote Mexican church by apparent drug gang members.

Britain announced a new round of sanctions June 16 against Russia, targeting the head of the Russian Orthodox Church for his prominent support for the war in Ukraine as well as Russia's children's rights commissioner.

The next bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix said June 10 that he will strive to be open when it comes to investigations of sex abuse, though he said he's not yet caught up on the status of abuse claims in a diocese that serves roughly 1.1 million Catholics.

Pope Francis canceled his participation in a religious procession due to ongoing knee pain, but said he hoped to celebrate a special Mass for Italy's Congolese community after he had to postpone his planned visit to Africa.

One of the principal figures in the Vatican's bungled London real estate venture testified on June 6 that the Holy See would have turned a profit on its valuable investment if it hadn't pulled its money out of a fund prematurely.

A new poll found 63% of U.S. Catholic adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 68% say Roe should be left as is. Those views were in line with the overall American public on the issues.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has been removed from the latest round of European Union sanctions to punish Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

President Joe Biden made repeated calls to restore a ban on the sale of assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines in an address to the nation June 2.

Indigenous leaders met with Canadian bishops on June 1 and were told Pope Francis won't add more stops, as they requested, to his trip to Canada, where he will apologize in person for the abuse suffered by Indigenous people at the hands of the Catholic Church.

A former Vatican official testified May 31 that he was under intense "psychological pressure" to finalize a deal over the Holy See's troubled investment in a London property, but entered into the negotiations without a lawyer and didn't realize the deal got the Vatican nothing in return.

The Vatican's longtime investment banker testified May 30 that he repeatedly voiced concerns about a fund that was investing in a troubled London property, but said the Holy See's secretariat of state insisted on pursuing the deal even as it lost money.

The Vatican said May 31 that Pope Francis will travel to Kazakhstan in September for an interfaith conference, a meeting that may give him a chance to meet with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. marches across the high alpine forests and grasslands of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, many in its path have pleaded with God for intervention in the form of rain and calm winds, and protection for their neighbors and beloved landscape.

Wynn Bruce, a 50-year-old climate activist and Buddhist from Boulder, Colorado, set himself on fire in front of the U.S. Supreme Court last week, prompting a national conversation about his motivation.

Pope Francis again canceled his daily meetings Tuesday because of acute knee pain that has greatly curtailed his mobility in recent months.

Pope Francis made key appointments in his newly reformed Vatican bureaucracy April 23,  naming new deputies for the doctrine office and confirming the highest-ranked woman in the Holy See as the No. 2 in the development office

A cardinal testified that he donated 125,000 euros ($140,000) of Vatican money to a Sardinian diocese for purely charitable reasons, rejecting Vatican prosecutors' claims that the money benefitted his brother who ran the charity.

Pope Francis has yet to publicly condemn Russia by name for its invasion of Ukraine or publicly appeal to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some are not satisfied with the Vatican tradition of quiet diplomacy.