From 1846 to 1848, in the worst years of the potato famine in Ireland and during mass emigration to the United States, one of the toughest units of the Mexican armed forces battling the invaders from "El Norte" was the Saint Patrick Battalion, known in Mexico as the 'San Patricios.'

With the Myanmar military taking a more direct role in efforts to suppress protests, the death toll rose quickly on Sunday.

Even as a child she sensed that Africa was her destiny, the roots of her mission vocation found in a fourth-grade geography textbook that pictured giraffes loping across the plain

In his first general audience since returning from Iraq, Pope Francis said: “ I saw around me the joy of welcoming Christ’s messenger; I saw the hope of being open to a horizon of peace and fraternity.”

The journey to Iraq will be a high-risk standout among the pope’s various efforts to bring attention to the church’s margins.

The carnage unleashed in the Persian Gulf compelled me to act yet again in hopes that somehow the bloodletting would end.