Students at a Hindu-run school for the blind joined a nationwide outcry over the gang rape of a nun in her 70s. The 50 students at the Helen Keller School near the convent where the nun lived chanted “Mother we cannot see, but we can feel your pain,” on March 17, after news of the incide

Catholic Relief Services was coordinating closely with Caritas Oceania agencies in an emergency response in Vanuatu, a remote island nation in the South Pacific devastated by Cyclone Pam on March 15. • As Kuwaiti legislators debated a law banning any new church construction, Sheikh Abdul Aziz b

U.S. and Canadian bishops joined their Latin American counterparts who came to Washington to testify about the environmental and social ills wrought by extractive industries like mining and logging. The bishops testified on March 19 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a bid to he

Catholic advocates are pressing Congress to make the needs of poor and vulnerable people a priority as legislators hammer out a federal spending plan for 2016. They want to prevent trillions of dollars in social services spending from disappearing over the next decade as Congress seeks to balance th

Pope Francis came out squarely against the death penalty on March 20, calling it “unacceptable” regardless of the seriousness of the crime of the condemned. Pope Francis met with a three-person delegation of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty and issued a letter on th

In a joint statement, representatives of more than 60 countries have recognized that Christians are particularly endangered in the Middle East, and they called on the international community to reaffirm the human right to freedom of religion. The violence carried out by terrorist groups “creat

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has been unable to confirm the number of its members abducted in Syria, nor where they are being held. The society announced on its website on March 4 that “several colleagues,” along with “women and children,” were kidnapped in the province

The beatification of El Salvador’s martyred Archbishop Óscar Romero will take place during a ceremony in El Salvador on May 23, the day before Pentecost Sunday. The date was announced on March 11 by Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, postulator of Romero’s cause for sainthood, in El Salvador.

A study released by the Brookings Institution in Washington finds that single women whose income is 400 percent of the federal poverty line or higher are nearly four times as likely to opt for an abortion when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. The findings contradict earlier statements by the Guttm

Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Communications, surprised America’s church correspondent Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M., with the prestigious St. Francis de Sales Award from the Catholic Press Association in Albany on March 12. • On March