The deaths of up to 500 mostly Palestinian and Syrian migrants and refugees could be an act of mass murder, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said on Sept. 19. Hundreds of migrant workers and refugees from Gaza and Syrian conflicts were aboard a boat that left

According to a Vatican statement released on Sept. 20, Pope Francis has created a “special commission for the study of reform of the canonical matrimonial process” that will seek to simplify the procedure, “making it more streamlined, and safeguarding the principle of the indi

Describing himself as “beyond surprised” by his appointment to the Archdiocese of Chicago, Spokane Bishop Blase Cupich pledged to work with people of faith to “serve the common good” and continue efforts to promote healing in a church community wounded by the sex abuse crisis

For the first time since the Great Recession threw the United States and then the world into an economic tailspin, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the U.S. poverty rate experienced a year-over-year decline, falling from 15 percent in 2012 to 14.5 percent in 2013. The last time the rate declined

In an address at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Sept. 11, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer at the United Nations, described the tragic forms of contemporary slavery, such as “massive kidnappings and sale of young girls under the false premises of religi

At least 124,000 migrants entered Italy in the first eight months of this year, more than twice the 60,000 who arrived in all of 2013. The vast majority landed first in Sicily. Seeing to the new arrivals’ immediate needs in Sicily’s multiple port cities is now a joint effort between chur