President Joe Biden will revoke the so-called “Mexico City policy,” which blocks U.S. funding of foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform and promote abortion as a form of family planning.

Achieving the goals involves setting policy as well as adopting legislation to limit carbon pollution, which the vast majority of climate scientists have said is the leading cause of a warming planet.

Cardinal Dolan said President-elect Joe Biden “speaks with admirable sensitivity about protecting the rights of the weakest and most threatened” but also “ran on a platform avidly supporting this gruesome capital punishment for innocent preborn babies.”

With “social injustice, division and conflict” threatening the common good, people need to rediscover and recommit to the vision of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Pope Francis said.

In one day, the Catholic Church on three continents lost three leaders to COVID-19.

The Vatican asked priests to take special anti-COVID-19 precautions this year when distributing ashes on Ash Wednesday, including sprinkling ashes on the top of people's heads rather than making a cross on people's foreheads.

The breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 sent shock waves around the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced Pope Francis to cancel his annual celebration of infant baptisms on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

The White House issued a proclamation honoring the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket Dec. 29 and inviting "the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches and customary places of meeting with appropriate ceremonies."

The head of the German bishops’ conference called for far-reaching changes to the Catholic Church and criticized the Vatican’s treatment of the church in his country.