Rhina Guidos

Chalatenango, El Salvador, is said to have been the setting of more than 50 mass killings during the country's 12-year civil conflict, and almost all of the survivors lost family members in other attacks. 

In a remote area called Las Aradas, where the river straddles Honduras and El Salvador, more than 600 people were killed over a 12-hour period on May 14, 1980, after government forces from both countries and a paramilitary group on the Salvadoran side opened fire on an unarmed group they had surrounded.

A group of U.S. bishops expressed sorrow over disparities in infection and death rates among African Americans in U.S. communities.

On the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, the Center for Migration Studies of New York released a new report highlighting the role of 19.8 million immigrant laborers who work in "essential critical infrastructure" in the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic.

Four U.S. Catholic bishops called on government officials to consider the role and plight of U.S. migrant farmworkers during the coronavirus pandemic and made recommendations that include free testing and care should the workers test positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The U.S. Department of Education said federal financial relief for coronavirus for higher education is meant for U.S. citizens, prompting protests from students enrolled in colleges and universities under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Catholic members of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, a group of 55 national, faith-based organizations, joined an April 21 statement accusing the president of using a "dog whistle" against immigrants.

The country's supply of fruit and vegetables and other staples such as meats and dairy produced by the labor of farmworkers — many of them migrants — remains steady thanks to those essential workers. Yet many of them toil without basic protections, their supporters say.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow in the U.S. faster than anywhere else in the world, the Catholic bishop of El Paso, Texas, is asking local authorities to release nonviolent migrants at his local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.

A Franciscan friar who was on his way to join a new religious community in New York became Washington's first COVID-19 fatality March 20 and the first known U.S. Catholic cleric to die after contracting the coronavirus.

The Vatican announced Feb. 22 that Pope Francis has recognized the martyrdom of a fellow Jesuit, Salvadoran Fr. Rutilio Grande, and two companions who were murdered en route to a novena in 1977 in El Salvador.

A Catholic priest helping feed and shelter migrants in Central America has filed a complaint with Guatemalan authorities after he and his staff received death threats for providing humanitarian aid for the latest mass of migrants headed toward the United States.

Over the last year, Catholic dioceses on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico, in places such as El Paso and Brownsville, Texas, scrambled to accommodate the growing number of children, men and women crossing the border, seeking asylum and entering the U.S.

A national newspaper published a document that, it says, is a copy of a report now in the hands of the Vatican, detailing what witnesses say transpired during the tenure of the retired bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, as well as other allegations of sexual misconduct while he was the rector of Washington's Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Washington authorities apprehended a suspect in an incident involving an attack Dec. 10 against two security guards at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Marian shrine in the United States, at the height of its busiest season.

Each year, the students flock to a hotel just outside of Washington. Like migrating birds signaling winter, you can tell the time of year by the arrival of the high schoolers, college students and young alumni from Jesuit universities around the country.

Around the world, communities of their Jesuit brothers, but also laity involved in social justice circles and even Pope Francis, made sure their names and what they stood for was not forgotten.

In a wide-ranging report on immigration Nov. 12, U.S. bishops heard a grim landscape facing immigrants and refugees trying to find shelter in the United States. But they also heard of the wide network of Catholic organizations trying to help, even as they, too, face challenges.

In a brief presentation Nov. 11 to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Boston's Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley told the bishops gathered in Baltimore the Vatican may publish what it knows about the ascent to power of now-disgraced former U.S. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick by Christmas, or perhaps the New Year.

"Some reporting has spoken of 'extending TPS.' That has important legal meaning, and that's not what happened (with) the agreements," Ken Cuccinelli.