Catholic News Service

The Capital One Arena in Washington, which typically hosts professional basketball and hockey games and sold-out concerts, was filled with thousands of youth from around the country who gathered there Jan. 19 to stand up for life.

Building walls can only serve to separate people and create more isolation, said Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle.

Pope Francis took his message of hope to this sprawling, dusty capital of Peru, celebrating Mass within view of the rocky, waterless Andean slopes where most of the city's poorest residents live.

In remarks broadcast to the March for Life from the White House Rose Garden, President Donald Trump said that his administration "will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life."

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during a homily at the Jan. 18 Mass that opened the National Prayer Vigil for Life.

With at least 80 people killed since the start of the year in conflict over fertile land in Nigeria, the nation's bishops condemned what they call brutal massacres of innocent people.

In his last will and testament, a cardinal exiled to Rome, who survived the Nazis' Dachau prison camp and 17 years of communist persecution, requested to be allowed back home to Czechoslovakia for burial. 

Christians, Muslims and Jews who are sincere about their faith must be committed to protecting the special character of Jerusalem and to praying and working for peace in the Holy Land, Pope Francis wrote in a letter to the grand imam of Egypt's al-Azhar University.

President Donald Trump will become the first president to address the March for Life live from the White House Rose Garden via satellite.

Honolulu Bishop Larry Silva gave general absolution to about 45 people in a deacon formation program in response to the alert of an imminent ballistic missile attack that put Hawaii in a state of panic shortly after 8 a.m. Jan. 13.

Catholic bishops in the Central African Republic urged international peacekeepers to act more effectively and condemned attacks on churches and the "manipulation of religious feeling."

Church leaders in the Philippines warned of more killings after the national police announced it is relaunching the government's controversial anti-narcotics war.

Even when a situation is hopeless, people must not lose hope, Archbishop Stephen Brislin of Cape Town, South Africa, told parishioners at the Gaza Strip's only Catholic parish.

Prayer is a "high stakes" endeavor, requiring courage, perseverance and patience, Pope Francis said.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque is preparing to end its refugee resettlement program after 77 years in operation.

The vice president of the German bishops' conference has urged a debate on whether Catholic clergy should bless same-sex unions.

The Vatican named a Colombian bishop to be the trustee of the scandal-plagued Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a Catholic movement based in Peru.

Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou has been released by Chinese authorities after being detained for more than seven months.

A U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco Jan. 9 temporarily blocked the Trump administration's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by March.

The silence that precedes the opening prayer at Mass is an opportunity for Christians to commend to God the fate of the church and the world, Pope Francis said.