"The Catholic Church remains committed to ensuring the fundamental right to medical care, a right which is in keeping with the God-given dignity of every person, and the corresponding obligation as a country to provide for this right."

The hospitals—two with Catholic affiliation and one with Lutheran ties—had argued that their pensions are "church plans" that are exempt from the law and have been treated as such for decades by federal officials.

A Catholic farmer in Michigan is suing the city of East Lansing after he was barred from a municipal farmers market over his views on same-sex marriage.

Seventy-two percent of our reader sample told America that, for good or ill, the way their children were welcomed had a critical effect on their own relationship with their parish.

Even though it is no longer a surprise, Pope Francis still makes news with his direct pastoral ministry, as he did in May, going door-to-door to bless homes in a public housing complex in the Roman suburbs.