Amnesty International has issued a devastating report detailing summary executions, child abductions, sexual assaults, forced religious conversions and “ethnic cleansing on a historic scale” committed by the Islamic State militant group as it swept across northern Iraq from its base of o

Chicago Catholics are as feisty and independent as the wind that famously whips across this city from its lakeshore. In decades past, they enthusiastically embraced the labor and Catholic Worker movements. At some parishes today, lay people give sub-radar reflections at Sunday Mass.“Catholics

The State of California’s Corrections Department will end its policy of isolating mentally ill inmates for up to 23 hours a day and instead move them into specialized housing, where they will receive more humane treatment.The move, announced on Aug. 29, comes after U.S. District Court Judge La

In a technological and cultural first, Pope Francis joined a Google Hangout, video chatting with young people across five continents, including a student in the gang-infested neighborhood of La Campanera, in San Salvador, on Sept. 4. • The cause for canonization of Archbishop Fulton Sheen has b

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 world increasingl

Hunger and panic are spreading among people unable to work because of restrictions aimed at containing the spread of Ebola, say church workers in West Africa. In Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, church groups “are trying to get food and distribute it to families...but movement is heavily res