Catholic News Service

Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley called for "three specific actions" to immediately address allegations of sexual abuse of minors and "sexual improprieties" with seminarians made against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Addressing 8,000 participants July 22 during the last day of the Fifth Philippine Conference on New Evangelization, a teary-eyed Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila lamented the deaths of innocent people killed since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican office for laity and family, said he was "shocked" when he heard allegations of years of sexual abuse and harassment by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the man who ordained him a bishop and whom he served as an auxiliary bishop for six years.

Driven by a zeal and strong ties to the roots of their faith, 450 young people from all over the world gathered in Lebanon for the first Syriac Youth International Convention, open to people 18-35.

Pope Francis has ratified the members elected by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to represent the United States at Synod of Bishops Oct. 3-28.

A priest who offered a rosary and benediction service in reparation for a gay pride parade in Scotland has been fired as a university chaplain.

The bishops of East Africa praised the peace efforts that brought an end to the two-decade war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Documents in the Vatican Secret Archives and the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prove it was a "myth" that Blessed Paul VI largely set out on his own in writing Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical on married love and the regulation of births.

Caught between a repressive government to the north and a civil war to the south, residents of the Nuba Mountains of Sudan face difficult choices as they ponder their future.

Pope Francis added an Italian teenager to the list of people he will formally recognize as saints Oct. 14 during the monthlong meeting of the world Synod of Bishops on young people.

Tweeting with hashtags that translate as "Closed ports" and "Open hearts," Italy's interior minister disputed claims that the Italian government was complicit in leaving a migrant to die in the Mediterranean Sea as she clung to a board from a destroyed fishing boat.

A federal judge ruled plaintiffs including Catholic Social Services of the Philadelphia Archdiocese must provide home assessments for same-sex couples wishing to provide foster care.

Catholic bishops in the Central African Republic have distanced themselves from a group that is promising to defend the church and avenge the deaths of priests.

As attacks on Catholic clergy continue and anti-government protesters are besieged by Nicaraguan police and paramilitaries, the bishops said they would pray an exorcism prayer.

An amendment sponsored by a congressman from Alabama and approved by the House Appropriations Committee July 11 aims to protect Catholic and other faith-based agencies that choose, based on their religious conviction, not to place children with same-sex couples for adoption or foster care.

Bishops J. Mark Spalding of Nashville, Richard Stika of Knoxville and Martin Holley of Memphis have written to Gov. Bill Haslam urging him to "use your authority as governor to put an end to the fast-track executions planned" in the state of Tennessee in the upcoming months.

A front-page New York Times article published July 16 detailed the alleged abuse of two seminarians in the Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey, by then-Bishop Theodore McCarrick in the 1980s that resulted in settlements to each man.

As his delegates to preside over sessions of the Synod of Bishops in October, Pope Francis has chosen four cardinals from countries where young people are facing special challenges.

All Christians are called to be missionaries, concerned more with sharing the Gospel than with earning money or even with being successful at winning converts, Pope Francis said.