Jean Giono's narrators are often grounded in a kind of eternal present, where the coach will always run and a certain tree will always stand, moving us by degrees into the uneasy past of narrative.

Domenico Sorrentino speaks to America about Pope Francis' deep devotion to St. Francis of Assisi. The pope will sign his new encyclical, "Fratelli Tutti," in Assisi on Saturday, Oct. 3.

Many documents from the Second World War remained sealed until the full archive was finally opened in March.

"Returning to Minsk, I was not allowed in at the Kuznica-Bialystok border crossing," Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Minsk-Mohilev told the Catholic Information Agency, KAI, in neighboring Poland Aug. 31.

Erik Edstrom, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, tries to explain what our recent wars have meant to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nigerian bishops have asked Catholics in their country to pray with the intention that the killings in southern Kaduna state cease.