VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis' choice of Albania as the destination of his first international trip in Europe reflects his trademark pastoral approach: Head to the peripheries, bring healing to the suffering. But his Sept. 21 visit to the poor, Muslim-majority nation also will highlight, to a...
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  WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Fifteen years ago, the president of Dominican University, just outside Chicago, thought comprehensive immigration reform was right around the corner. That's when the university began financially supporting undocumented students simply because, as Donna Carroll put it: "It...
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Iraqi Christians are true and courageous witnesses of Christ's message of hope, forgiveness and love, Pope Francis said. "The church suffers with you and is proud of you, proud to have children like you," he said Sept. 3, in a greeting to Arabic-speaking pilgrims, especially t...
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the days that followed Pope Francis' Aug. 18 remarks on U.S. airstrikes earlier in the month against Islamic State, the buzz was about whether the pope had actually given his consent to them. The more sobering post-buzz reality is how one stops what, in the pontiff's words, i...
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Among the various World War I-related anniversaries of this centennial year, the election of Pope Benedict XV, 100 years ago Sept. 3, is apt to be one of the less widely observed. Pope Benedict XV is the most obscure of the nine men who have led the Catholic Church over the la...
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Q. Our parish had a change in pastors this year. Previous to his arrival, I had been attending daily Mass for 18 years. Now I go only on Sunday because I just don't like this priest; some of the things he does at Mass put me in such a bad mood that I feel that I am better off not going. I have pray...
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Girls dress up as Blessed Mother Teresa during an event today to commemorate her 104th birth anniversary in a school in Bhopal, India. Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910, to Albanian parents in Skopje, in present-day Macedonia. She died in 1997 and was beatified by Pope John...
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis phoned the bereaved family of a U.S. journalist killed by Islamic State militants in Syria. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the pope phoned relatives of the late James Foley on Aug. 21 to console them for their loss and assure them of his...
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- When the Peace Corps announced in late July that it was evacuating its 340 volunteers from the three West African countries most affected by the Ebola virus, the action was far from a panic-driven decision, but instead followed a protocol. A similar protocol for health and secur...
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SEOUL, South Korea (CNS) -- Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, no Catholic priest has resided in the North of this divided peninsula, where autonomous religious activity is effectively forbidden. And no enemy of the communist regime there is more detested or fiercely denounced than the United...
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