The alleged papal puppy putdown raised the question: Is there a spiritual component to owning an animal?

The Rev. Júlio Lancellotti is São Paulo’s designated vicar for street people. He has been posting images of spikes and other elements of hostile architecture gathered from cell phone photos or video from all over Brazil.

The report landed on French Catholics like a bomb. French bishops had never considered sexual abuse a serious problem. “We have been in denial for 20 years,” Father Goujon said. “The bishops said that [that kind of abuse] could never happen here.”

Bishop George L. Thomas said he would not ask priests to police the Communion line but asked pro-choice politicians to voluntarily “refrain from the reception of Holy Communion while holding public office.”

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon assesses the future in Myanmar one year after a coup turned back a decade of democratic progress, calling for dialogue, the end of violence and the release of political prisoners.

Most young Catholics are Latino, but only 17 percent of Catholic students are. This Catholic high school is trying to change that.