Catholic News Service

French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, an experienced diplomat and head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, died at the age of 75 in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was receiving medical treatment.

Twenty-five years after St. John Paul II visited Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Pope Francis will make the same three-nation visit Sept. 22-25, stopping at a number of the same places as his saint-predecessor.

The Mexican bishops conference congratulated presidential election winner Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who won a landslide victory on an agenda of change and promises to combat corruption and poverty.

Pope Francis has named three new auxiliary bishops for the Chicago archdiocese, Frs. Ronald Hicks, Robert Casey and Mark Bartosic, and he has accepted the resignations of two auxiliary bishops.

Pope Francis has named Archbishop Peter Comensoli as the ninth leader of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. Comensoli, the bishop of Broken Bay, Australia, since 2014, succeeds Archbishop Denis Hart, 77.

In less than 48 hours, a group of Catholic bishops saw the faces of triumph and relief from migrants who had been recently released by immigration authorities, but ended their two-day journey to the border with a more "somber" experience, visiting detained migrant children living temporarily within the walls of a converted Walmart.

A Chaldean Catholic archbishop in Iraq is "delighted" that the United States Agency for International Development is helping Iraq's religious minorities rebuild their lives after attacks by militants.

The visit to a respite center run by Catholic Charities in downtown McAllen, Texas, quickly took the a delegation of U.S. bishops into the heart of the human drama of migration and its human toll.

Led by the president of the bishops' conference, a delegation of prelates from around the country physically stepped into the ground zero of the immigration debate when they arrived near the southern border.

God wants his disciples to bring his mercy and love to everyone, everywhere on earth, which means it may cost them their "good name," comfort and their life, Pope Francis said on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.

Catholic bishops in Ivory Coast have blamed corruption and urban development for flash floods that destroyed shops and homes and left 20 people dead in the West African country's largest city.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced June 27, the last day of the Supreme Court's current term, that he is retiring July 31.

God always loves and generously gives first before asking for fidelity to his commandments -- which are the words of a loving father showing people the right way to live, Pope Francis said.

By a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court declared June 27 that one of its rulings from 1977 was "wrongly decided" and overruled it, in a case on whether public-sector unions could continue to make nonmembers pay fair-share fees not related to the unions' lobbying and political efforts.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Muench of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and named as his successor Bishop Michae Duca of Shreveport, Louisiana.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 June 26 that a California law that placed requirements on crisis pregnancy centers that oppose abortion violated the First Amendment.

Pope Francis appointed Bishop Nunzio Galantino, 69, as president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, which handles the Vatican's investment portfolio and real estate holdings.

While Cardinal George Alencherry is still major archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly, Pope Francis named an apostolic administrator to run the Indian archdiocese.

To be effective evangelizers, Catholics must first reflect and repent from the sins of years of institutional racism in the Archdiocese of Detroit and beyond, Archbishop Allen Vigneron said.

Malteser International Americas, the 65-year-old humanitarian relief agency of the Order of Malta, and the U.S. Agency for International Development have signed an agreement that will help the Catholic organization expand its reach.