As Puerto Rico’s government marches on toward a critical financial deadline regarding its $72 billion “unpayable” debt, there are hopes for a jubilee of the kind espoused in Scripture.Church leaders, like Archbishop Roberto González Nieves of San Juan, have offered diverse opinion

On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina buried one of the world’s most iconic cities in a flood of biblical proportions. More than 1,800 people lost their lives. “It was like a war zone. No sign of life,” said the now-retired archbishop of New Orleans, Alfred C. Hughes. Across the regi

In a statement released on Aug. 11, Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, the head of the Philippine bishops’ conference, said helping the poor and getting rid of political dynasties should be the focus of discussion as the nation prepares for elections in May. • Five years af

In the early days of August 2014, as the summer heat scorched the plains of Nineveh, Islamic State militants began ethnic cleansing around the city of Sinjar, driving thousands among the province’s Yazidi, Christian and other religious and ethnic minority communities from their homes in just a

The Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land filed an official complaint with Israeli police after the leader of a radical Israeli movement offered remarks to the press that seemed to encourage the burning of churches. The Rev. Pietro Felet, the assembly’s secretary general, filed

The period following the Beijing Olympics has not been particularly bright.