In its recent report, the U.S.-based International Committee on Nigeria called for U.S. intervention after a terrorist group executed five men abducted while providing assistance in northeastern Nigeria.

A report in the noted medical journals The Lancet Psychiatry and The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health have called for the phasing out of institutionalized care for children, favoring family-based care.

In the United Kingdom, some bishops have criticized a government policy to place churches in the same high-risk category of public places as pubs, restaurants and theaters, which will not be allowed to reopen until after July 4.

Efforts to combat the pandemic in India and Bangladesh have been further complicated because of cyclones which have hit those countries.

During a recent online panel discussion sponsored by Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and Catholic Relief Services, Cardinal Peter Turkson urged that Catholics "feel for other people" in this pandemic crisis.

Catholic Relief Services, which works in more than 110 countries, is "restricting all but the most mission-critical travel, with contingency operational plans in place should the disease take hold in any of the countries where the organization operates."

Christianity is disappearing from towns and cities in parts of the Middle East, warns a new report from the papal foundation Aid to the Church in Need.

With thousands of people killed and almost 1 million of the country's 4.6 million people displaced in the past six years, trauma is rampant throughout the former French colony.

About 3,000 women were murdered in South Africa in 2018 -- five times more than the global average, according to the World Health Organization.

Mugabe was forced out in a de facto coup in November 2017.