The persecution of Christians around the world has intensified over the last two-and-a-half years, according to a review of religious freedom in 30 countries by the United Kingdom branch of the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. Christians also are persecuted by religious nationalists in so

A class action lawsuit was filed on Oct. 9 in a New York State court against the United Nations on behalf of victims of a cholera epidemic in Haiti that has infected 650,000 and killed more than 8,300 people since October 2010. • Paolo Dall’Oglio, a Jesuit priest and peace activist k

The number of people living in extreme poverty around the world has sharply declined over the past three decades, but in 2010 it still included roughly 400 million children, according to a new World Bank analysis that for the first time gives an in-depth profile of the poorest people in the world.Th

More than half the land in the West Bank, much of it agricultural and resource rich, is inaccessible to Palestinians, because of Israeli security restrictions. The first comprehensive study of the potential economic impact of this “restricted land,” released by the World Bank on Oct. 8,

The predicament of divorced and remarried Catholics will be a major topic of discussion when bishops from around the world meet at the Vatican in October 2014. The Vatican announced on Oct. 8 that an extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops will convene from Oct. 5 through Oct. 19, 2014, to dis

Social organizations in El Salvador demonstrated outside the Metropolitan Cathedral on Oct. 6 to demand that Archbishop José Escobar Alas clarify the fate of thousands of documents containing information on human rights violations. The documents have been in limbo since the archbishop’s decis

The percentage of multicultural parishes in the United States is on the increase, according to research by the Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (C.A.R.A.). C.A.R.A. estimates there are approximately 6,700 multicultural parishes in the United States, many loca

The fall General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops begins on Nov. 11 in Baltimore. • Great Britain’s Catholic Agency for Overseas Development declined Dennis MacBride’s donation of the proceeds from his political memoir Power Trip, after increasing criticism of the

Around the country thousands of organizations were digging into reserves to keep Head Start programs open or provide nutrition and other services for children after the federal government shutdown on Oct. 1. In Kansas, shelters for homeless families and for battered women and children, a foster gran

The pope and his council are laying out plans to overhaul the Roman Curia completely.