Congo is preparing for a crucial vote to elect a successor for President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power since 2001.

Ms. Morais’s death is a notorious example of an everyday horror in Brazil and other Latin American states: the crime of femicide. In 2017 at least 2,795 women were victims of femicide in 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In a statement issued on December 18, 2018, Greg Schleppenbach, associate director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, decried the epousal by Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, of using fetal tissue from aborted babies for use in medical research.

In a statement issued on December 18, 2018, the U.S. bishops' committee on migration said that the death of the 7-year-old Guatemalan girl trying to enter the United States with her father was a "jarring disruption of the natural order of life" and urged a reexamination of "our failed immigration policies."

In an instance of a new atmosphere of accommodation between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist authorities, the Vatican has announced that it has recognized two previously excommunicated bishops as heads of dioceses and the Chinese Communist authorities have not interfered with the Vatican's right to handle church affairs in China.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet have said that they will offer full restitution in response to the embezzlement by two of their members in the school in which they worked.