In Europe the Christian population is dying faster than it is being replaced. In North America, the number of Christian deaths will begin to exceed the number of births to Christian parents by around 2050.

Bill O'Reilly, a Catholic, who last year challenged the pope’s views on immigration and promised to convince him of the need for reform, shook hands briefly with the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics at the Vatican.

Georgetown University and the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States began a process of penance and restitution, acknowledging an institutional sin in 1838 which preserved the university but condemned 272 to slavery in Louisiana.

Remarkably, the death sentences are being pushed through this month in an effort to beat the May expiration date for the state’s supply of midazolam, a controversial sedative that is one of three drugs used in lethal injections.

“We need to have a national debate on these things; it’s not a decision for the president to make in the dead of night.”

Pope Francis joined a chorus of humanitarian relief and human rights critics who urged the United States to do more to avoid noncombatant deaths.

Some of the tensions still troubling Liberian life have deep social and historical roots.

The United States dominates an annual global weapons export market that has topped $100 billion.

Describing the vocation crisis as an “enormous problem,” Pope Francis suggested he sympathizes with Catholics who come to Mass only to discover that there is no priest available to celebrate the Eucharist.

Throwing something of a damper on the voucher enthusiasm is a string of recent studies that have cast doubt on the impact at the individual level of choice experiments.