The Vatican has lifted its ban on the ordination of married men to the priesthood in Eastern Catholic churches outside their traditional territories, including in the United States, Canada and Australia.Pope Francis approved lifting the ban, also doing away with the provision that, in exceptional ca

Pope Francis called for preserving the family as an institution based on marriage between a man and a woman, which he said is not a political cause but a matter of "human ecology.""The complementarity of man and woman ... is at the root of marriage and the family," the pope said

A recently reassigned Vatican official has urged Pope Francis to take the issues of Communion for the divorced and remarried, cohabitation and same-sex marriage "off the table" for next year's Synod of Bishops.Addressing more than 300 delegates at the family and marriage conference in

The legacy of six murdered Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter lives on in El Salvador.Jesuits from Central America and other parts of the world, along with hundreds of parishioners, commemorated the 25th anniversary of the murders. For demanding social justice in a country marked by

The remains of a missionary priest missing for months were recovered from a mass grave in the southern state of Guerrero, adding to the horror of the crimes and killings in a region now notorious for the disappearance and possible deaths of 43 teacher trainees.Ugandan Comboni Father John Ssenyondo w

A Maryland Catholic doctor who contracted the Ebola virus while working at a Methodist hospital in the West African nation of Sierra Leone died early Nov. 17 at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha from the virus.Dr. Martin Salia, 44, was the third Ebola patient to be treated in Omaha, and the first pat