U.S. and Canadian bishops joined their Latin American counterparts who came to Washington to testify about the environmental and social ills wrought by extractive industries like mining and logging. The bishops testified on March 19 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a bid to he

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

Catholic advocates are pressing Congress to make the needs of poor and vulnerable people a priority as legislators hammer out a federal spending plan for 2016. They want to prevent trillions of dollars in social services spending from disappearing over the next decade as Congress seeks to balance th

In a joint statement, representatives of more than 60 countries have recognized that Christians are particularly endangered in the Middle East, and they called on the international community to reaffirm the human right to freedom of religion. The violence carried out by terrorist groups “creat

Things could not be worse in Venezuela. No, actually, they could be—and probably will be.Despite its prodigious oil wealth, Venezuela is heading over a financial cliff, and it is heading there faster thanks to the plunging price of crude oil. The socialist revolution founded by the late Hugo C

The beatification of El Salvador’s martyred Archbishop Óscar Romero will take place during a ceremony in El Salvador on May 23, the day before Pentecost Sunday. The date was announced on March 11 by Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, postulator of Romero’s cause for sainthood, in El Salvador.