The number of Catholics in the world has increased, with growth registered across all five continents, according to Vatican news agency Fides. The number of Catholics in the world stood at nearly 1.23 billion people, with an overall increase of more than 15 million over the 2013 numbers. The America

Pope Francis expressed his “deep sadness” and condolences on Jan. 1 to the ecclesial community of the Diocese of Altamirano in Mexico after the murder of the Rev. Gregorio López Gorostieta, before urging “the priests and other missionaries of the diocese to continue their ecclesia

Ukrainian Catholic leaders have warned that their church is being driven underground again, a quarter-century after it was re-legalized with the end of Communist rule. “In Crimea and eastern Ukraine, we’ve already effectively returned to the catacombs,” said the Rev. Ihor Yatsiv, t

Nearly five years after one of the most devastating earthquakes ever to rock the Western Hemisphere, more than 85,000 people still live in dozens of tent camps across Haiti’s expansive earthquake zone.While significant, the number is small compared with the original 1.5 million people who were

What percentage of China’s population considers itself Christian is a question that has come to the fore here recently, in part because that number may have grown to nearly equal the membership of the Communist Party of China.The C.C.P. operates “patriotic” churches that are headed

Watching a Vatican-brokered diplomatic breakthrough in De-cember that may lead to the normalization of relations between the United States and the island nation of Cuba, Eusebio Mujal-León was hardly a disinterested bystander. A professor at Georgetown University, Mujal-León is the director of a G