The Catholic Church calls for the creation of job opportunities and the recognition of the dignity of the poor, not simply for more handouts or expanded government welfare programs, Pope Francis said in a video message played on Nov. 20 at the Italian church’s Festival of Catholic Social Teach

Church officials in Goa, India, were expecting more than five million pilgrims for the once-a-decade exposition of the body of St Francis Xavier on Nov. 22. • While officials from the Kenyan government and bishops’ conference met on Nov. 19, Kenya’s Catholic bishops continued to urg

Pope Francis has established a special body within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to speed up the process of hearing and ruling on appeals filed by priests laicized or otherwise disciplined in sexual abuse or other serious cases. Federico Lombardi, S.J., the Vatican spokesperson, tol

South Africa’s Parliamentary portfolio committee on justice and correctional service heard that the Office of the Public Protector, the constitutionally created watchdog on public affairs oversight, was insolvent. According to reports, the office’s assets were valued at just under R1 mil

As world leaders prepared to meet in Australia on Nov. 15-16 to continue looking at ways to improve the global economy, Pope Francis asked them “not to forget that many lives are at stake” behind their discussions and decisions. The measure of success of the Group of 20 heavily industria

Commenting on the deaths of 13 young mothers at government-run sterilization camps in India’s central Chhattisgarh State on Nov. 12, Archbishop Prakash Mallavarapu said the guilty should be punished, but “the systemic faults behind this tragedy must be exposed and corrected.” &bull