"My strengths...are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

The Rev. Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, a 65-year-old Catholic priest and human rights activist, and the Most Venerable Thich Quang Do of Vietnam have been nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. Father Ly has been a prominent human rights defender since the 1970s, campaigning for religious freedom,

For more than 20 years, efforts to pass a far-reaching immigration reform have fallen apart.

Violence against women in India has been a problem for centuries, but the news of the gang rapes of several young women have provoked shame, outrage and now perhaps action. The Women’s Commission of the Archdiocese of Bombay (Mumbai) is one of the leading lights in this fight with its new camp

A Romanian appeals court ordered the demolition of a recently completed 18-story office building in Bucharest, built in defiance of various stop-work orders, because of the threat it would pose to its neighbor, the Cathedral of St. Joseph, in the event of an earthquake. • Msgr. Kevin Wallin, 61

The measures were taken because of the past diocesan failures to protect children from abuse.