"This is a step in the right direction," said Father Jose Espino, a priest of the Miami Archdiocese and a Cuban native.

Tom McCluskey, vice president of FRC Action, the legislative arm of the Washington-based Family Research Council, said the effort to ratify amendments to the U.S. Constitution may provide a better analogy for state-by-state campaigns to restrict abortion than efforts to abolish the death penalty. Bu

A new report says that after growing rapidly between 1990 and 2006, the population of undocumented immigrants has stabilized.

We are simply beyond capacity at this point, said a Catholic Charities worker in St. Louis, Mo.

It implements a novel understanding of marriage, which will grievously harm families and children, the bishops said.

After the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed states to reinstate the death penalty, 37 states had laws on the books permitting capital punishment.