David Agren

Shelters like La 72, run by the Franciscans near the Guatemala border, offer a respite on a dangerous route for migrants to the U.S. border. Migrants unable to afford the services of smugglers often stay in shelters, but they get exploited by drivers, government officials and others outside.

The Mexican bishops' migrant ministry says people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border risk being returned to Mexico under rules for expelling people rapidly during the pandemic.

Catholics working with migrants are welcoming U.S. President Joe Biden's posture toward Central America, but warn push factors are mounting. 

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador demonstrates a willingness to go against the grain of previous political custom, combining religious and civic customs in a country where secularism was once a political ethos.

Facebook removed a video commentary from Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez of Guadalajara, saying it spread false information about COVID-19.

A Nicaraguan priest said Hurricane Iota hit the northeastern corner of the country with "more force" than Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier and left communities devastated and families homeless.

Pope Francis offered prayers for the victims of Hurricane Eta, which deluged Central America, claimed at least 50 lives and caused widespread flooding and property damage.

Cardinal-designate Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, 80, was among the 13 churchmen named to the College of Cardinals Oct. 25. Arizmendi's project of building a native church in a mostly indigenous diocese caused conflict with the church hierarchy and land-owning elites, but has found new appreciation since the election of Pope Francis.

Caritas, the church's charitable agency, was responding to Hurricane Eta, which hit Nicaragua Nov. 3 and threatened to provoke devastating flooding and destruction as it moved through Central America.

Retired Bishop Arturo Lona Reyes of Tehuantepec — known as "bishop of the poor" and famed for promoting an indigenous church — died Oct. 31. He was one day shy of his 95th birthday and had tested positive for COVID-19 earlier in October.

Catholic leaders in Nicaragua have expressed alarm at several proposed laws that could prohibit groups and individuals from receiving foreign funding and further curtail freedom of expression in the Central American country.

Fr. Humberto Zúñiga Rodríguez brings a special insight to his work on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis in Mexico: He contracted COVID-19 in June and recovered after spending 38 days in isolation.

Catholic migrant ministries in Guatemala are attending to a caravan that formed in Honduras and is heading northward toward the border with Mexico.

A Spanish court has convicted a former Salvadoran colonel for the murders of five Jesuit priests in 1989 — a rare act of justice for an atrocity from El Salvador's brutal civil war.

Residents of Dignity Village—populated by asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico as their cases proceed in U.S. courts, part of the Migrant Protection Protocols plan—have endured everything from cold snaps to hurricanes, from rats and snakes to vermin infestations, and from criminal gangs kidnapping them to the COVID-19 pandemic.

No sooner had federal forces arrested José Antonio Yépez Ortiz — a crime boss known as "El Marro," or the sledgehammer — than stories surfaced of his supposed generosity with the Catholic Church and devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

People started lining up shortly after noon outside the 16th-century Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in southern Mexico City. Most practiced social distancing as best they could on a bustling sidewalk; all were clutching empty food containers.

Nearly a decade after the slaying of 72 migrants on a ranch in northeastern Mexico, church leaders and migrant shelter operators are once again demanding the authorities properly investigate one of the country's most notorious crimes.

Priests in El Salvador have called on the nation's bishops to conduct their own investigation into the murder of a Salvadoran seminary rector.

The Nicaraguan bishops' conference has called an arson attack on the Managua cathedral "an act of terrorism," but vowed not to be intimidated as a government campaign of intolerance targeting the Catholic Church turns increasingly cruel and involves acts of sacrilege.