The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 866,000 asylum applications were registered in industrialized countries last year, the highest number of claims in 22 years and a 45 percent increase over 2013. • Pope Francis prayed for the repose of the souls of the 150 passengers and

The number of new Catholic marriages in the United States is at its lowest point since 1965. Statistics from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate show that while there were over 420,000 Catholic weddings in 1970, that number has dwindled to just over 154,000 in

Despite rising tensions in Yemen and continued fighting between government and rebel forces, Catholic officials said the six Salesian priests and the 20 members of the Missionaries of Charity assigned to the country have remained. “Our priests are safe,” and the sisters continue to work

Students at a Hindu-run school for the blind joined a nationwide outcry over the gang rape of a nun in her 70s. The 50 students at the Helen Keller School near the convent where the nun lived chanted “Mother we cannot see, but we can feel your pain,” on March 17, after news of the incide

Catholic Relief Services was coordinating closely with Caritas Oceania agencies in an emergency response in Vanuatu, a remote island nation in the South Pacific devastated by Cyclone Pam on March 15. • As Kuwaiti legislators debated a law banning any new church construction, Sheikh Abdul Aziz b

Pope Francis came out squarely against the death penalty on March 20, calling it “unacceptable” regardless of the seriousness of the crime of the condemned. Pope Francis met with a three-person delegation of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty and issued a letter on th