Associated Press

Trump's speeches for years have hewed to divisive "us" versus "them" messaging, but tying those themes to specific religious Americans who oppose him is out of line and even dangerous, according to rhetoric experts, religious leaders and academics.

The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed Francis’ decision last month to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, after he was found to have sodomized his recruits.

When their church no longer felt safe, deacon Francisco Alvicio and his congregation made a plan. Cautiously, discreetly, they took their worship to their homes.

Pope Francis will be visiting Belgium from Thursday to Sunday, facing a flock ravaged by countless scandals of priest sexual abuse and dwindling in the face of modernity, where women and gay people insist on an equal role and rights.

An estimated 180,000 motorcyclists gathered Sunday at the Our Lady of Fatima shrine in central Portugal for the ninth annual Pilgrimage of the Blessing of Helmets.

Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said the cancellation only concerned Monday's audiences. He spoke to reporters before the official start of his Vatican briefing to illustrate details of the trip.

David Lin, 68, was detained after he entered China in 2006, later convicted of contract fraud and sentenced to life in prison, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and advocacy groups.

Mexico’s Catholic Church is getting a new addition to its ranks of "blessed," with the beatification of the Rev. Moisés Lira. The beatification ceremony took place Saturday at Our Lady of Guadalupe’s Basilica, led by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, who was appointed by Pope Francis for the occasion.

Servicemen, veterans and others gathered Thursday in Kyiv to remember the adopted son of Ukraine’s chief rabbi, Moshe Azman, who was killed in battle, in a funeral service underlining unity among Ukraine's diverse communities in the fight against Russia's invasion.

A convoy of trucks bearing eight restored bells — the heaviest of which weighs more than 4 tons — pulled into the huge worksite surrounding the monument Thursday on an island in the Seine River.

The 3-2 ruling prohibits paying tuition or fees with “Education Scholarship Trust Funds," but it does allow parents to use that money for indirect private expenses like tutoring, textbooks and other educational material.

The Supreme Court of Maryland heard arguments on Tuesday about the constitutionality of a 2023 law that ended the state’s statute of limitations for child sexual abuse lawsuits following a report that exposed widespread wrongdoing within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Other papal Masses have drawn millions of people in more populous countries, such as the Philippines, Brazil and Poland. But the estimated crowd of 600,000 people in East Timor was believed to represent the biggest turnout for a papal event ever in terms of the proportion of the population.

Pope Francis' visit to Papua New Guinea will take him to a remote part of the South Pacific island nation where Christianity is a recent addition to traditional spiritual beliefs developed over millennia.

Here are some takeaways from the AP's reporting on Vance's Catholicism and the Catholic thinkers in his circle of influence.

The president of East Timor sees Pope Francis' upcoming visit as a prime opportunity to promote Asia's youngest country on the world stage, not a time to confront the legacy of abuse by influential members of the clergy in the deeply Catholic nation. Many Timorese doubt or are willing to look past the serious charges involving Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, who was secretly sanctioned by the church and is banned from voluntary contact with minors. The pope has met with abuse victims in other countries, but it's not clear if he will do so or address the matter publicly in East Timor.

The professors and media personalities in this network don’t all agree on everything — even on what to call themselves —  but most go by “postliberal.” They share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. But where Catholic conservatives of the past have seen big government as a problem rather than a solution, the postliberals want a muscular government — one that they control.

The Catholic Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, and five of its priests whose legal status in the United States expires as soon as next spring, have now sued the federal agencies overseeing immigration. They argue that the change “will cause severe and substantial disruption to the lives and religious freedoms” of the priests as well as the hundreds of thousands of Catholics they serve.

Pope Francis will come face to face with the Timorese faithful on his first trip to the country, a former Portuguese colony that makes up half of the island of Timor off the northern coast of Australia. But so far, there is no word if he will meet with victims or even mention the sex abuse directly, as he has in other countries where the rank-and-file faithful have demanded an accounting from the hierarchy for how it failed to protect their children.