Catholic News Service

India's Catholic Church has led a chorus of protest over a demand to ban the sacrament of reconciliation from the chairwoman of the National Commission for Women.

A prominent Catholic blogger and activist ended a two-week hunger strike in a Vietnamese prison after she met with visiting U.S. diplomats, local bloggers reported.

This November, Oregonians will vote on whether the nation's oldest statewide sanctuary law will remain in place. State election officials announced July 17 that Initiative Petition 22, the "Stop Oregon Sanctuaries" campaign, has enough valid signatures to make the fall ballot.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned the public during his third State of the Nation address July 23 that his two-year war on drugs would become even "more chilling" in the coming days.

The Field Hospital: In an interview with the Irish bishops' magazine Intercom, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican's Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, said "priests are not the best people to train others for marriage."

A priest in Michigan is awaiting an August trial after being accused of embezzling more than $5 million from a parish in Okemos, in central Michigan, in the Diocese of Lansing.

The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See told a Washington audience July 24 that "promoting and securing religious freedom as a human right is a shared priority" of the Vatican and the United States.

The Chilean prosecutor's office has issued a subpoena to Cardinal Riccardo Ezzati of Santiago regarding his role in the alleged cover-up of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley called for "three specific actions" to immediately address allegations of sexual abuse of minors and "sexual improprieties" with seminarians made against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Addressing 8,000 participants July 22 during the last day of the Fifth Philippine Conference on New Evangelization, a teary-eyed Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila lamented the deaths of innocent people killed since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican office for laity and family, said he was "shocked" when he heard allegations of years of sexual abuse and harassment by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the man who ordained him a bishop and whom he served as an auxiliary bishop for six years.

Driven by a zeal and strong ties to the roots of their faith, 450 young people from all over the world gathered in Lebanon for the first Syriac Youth International Convention, open to people 18-35.

Pope Francis has ratified the members elected by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to represent the United States at Synod of Bishops Oct. 3-28.

A priest who offered a rosary and benediction service in reparation for a gay pride parade in Scotland has been fired as a university chaplain.

The bishops of East Africa praised the peace efforts that brought an end to the two-decade war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Documents in the Vatican Secret Archives and the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prove it was a "myth" that Blessed Paul VI largely set out on his own in writing Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical on married love and the regulation of births.

Caught between a repressive government to the north and a civil war to the south, residents of the Nuba Mountains of Sudan face difficult choices as they ponder their future.

Pope Francis added an Italian teenager to the list of people he will formally recognize as saints Oct. 14 during the monthlong meeting of the world Synod of Bishops on young people.

Tweeting with hashtags that translate as "Closed ports" and "Open hearts," Italy's interior minister disputed claims that the Italian government was complicit in leaving a migrant to die in the Mediterranean Sea as she clung to a board from a destroyed fishing boat.