Associated Press

Eight people, including an Irish missionary and a 3-year-old child, remained missing on Aug. 4 after gunmen stormed an orphanage in Haiti, the latest attack in an area controlled by a powerful collection of armed gangs.

A new Arkansas law requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments cannot be enforced in a handful of the state's largest school districts where parents brought challenges on the grounds that it violates the separation of church and state, a federal judge ruled Aug. 4.

It all has the vibe of a World Youth Day, the Catholic Woodstock festival that Pope John Paul II inaugurated and made famous in 2000 in Rome at the very same Tor Vergata field. 

Italy agreed to a Vatican plan to turn a 430-hectare (1,000-acre) field north of Rome, once the source of controversy between the two, into a vast solar farm that the Holy See hopes will generate enough electricity to meet its needs and turn Vatican City into the world's first carbon-neutral state.

Pope Leo XIV surprised tens of thousands of young Catholics and showed up unexpectedly at a Holy Year welcome ceremony, thrilling the kids and receiving a rock star's welcome in the first big youth event of his pontificate.

Pope Leo XIV called for a renewed commitment to diplomacy to resolve conflicts as he marked the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords, the landmark Cold War-era agreement that ushered in a new era of security and human rights.

Pope Leo XIV received a rock star's welcome at the Vatican's festival of Catholic influencers as he urged them to ensure that human relations don't suffer with the spread of digital ecosystems and artificial intelligence.

The office that manages Vatican investments and real estate reported a profit of 62 million euros (around $63 million) in 2024, up 16 million euros from 2023.

"The sweat, the foot pain, the blisters, the hunger, they help you understand little by little that ultimately it doesn't all depend on you. There is something else that carries you forward," Fr. Josep Lluís Iriberri says.

Half a million young people are expected to pour into Rome next week for the biggest event of the 2025 Holy Year: a weeklong Jubilee celebration for young Catholics that will sorely test their tolerance for heat and the Eternal City's ability to provide public services, security and logistical support during its peak tourist season.

A diverse group — faith leaders, college students, grandmothers, retired lawyers and professors — has been showing up at immigration courts across the nation to escort immigrants at risk of being detained for deportation by masked ICE officials. They're giving families moral and logistical support, and bearing witness as the people are taken away.

Pope Leo XIV marked the 56th anniversary of man's arrival on the moon Sunday with a visit to the Vatican astronomical observatory in Castel Gandolfo and a call to astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

On July 11, 1995, Serbs overran Srebrenica, at the time a U.N.-protected safe area. They separated at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters and slaughtered them.

A Nagasaki cathedral has blessed the final piece to complete its restoration nearly 80 years after being destroyed by the second U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Japan: a reproduction of its lost bell restored by a group of Americans.

Top church leaders in the Holy Land asserted Monday that Israeli authorities "facilitate and enable" the presence of Israeli settlers who have intensified attacks in recent weeks on the only entirely Christian Palestinian village remaining in the occupied West Bank.

Pope Leo XIV called Sunday for "merciful compassion" for the world's poor, victims of tyranny and wars, as he celebrated Mass in a parish church that has special spiritual ties to Leo's own Augustinian religious order

Prominent figures on the right like Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance have espoused pronatalist beliefs, arguing more children are good for society.

One hundred years ago, a public high school teacher stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching human evolution. His nation is still feeling the reverberations today.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday and thanked him for the Vatican's efforts to help return children taken by Russia. Both he and Leo suggested the Vatican could host peace talks to end the war.