OSV News

Human rights campaigners have accused the Belarus government of using imprisoned Catholic priests as "hostages," as a Polish Carmelite became the latest detained for alleged espionage.

British Catholics welcomed the presence of King Charles III and top royals at the Sept. 16 funeral Mass for the Duchess of Kent, a Catholic convert, the first such ceremony in the once-persecuted church's main cathedral.

 The sisters said they had been sent to a care home against their will, and on Sept. 4 — with the help of a former student and a local locksmith — they returned to their quarters at the monastery.

None of us individually is going to save the world. But each of us can do something. And here's something that's one of the world's largest sources of microplastic pollution and energy waste. I'm talking about clothes.

Christians in northern Iraq have marked a powerful milestone of faith and survival. From Sept. 9-13, believers from the Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac Catholic and Syriac Orthodox churches joined together in Erbil for the Festival of the Cross.

Religious freedom violations are an early warning sign of where mass atrocities could occur around the globe, a new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said.

The U.S. Supreme Court Sept. 9 paused a judge's order requiring President Donald Trump's administration to spend billions in previously approved foreign aid the president has sought to rescind.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced Sept. 10 that its Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism — established in 2017 under then-USCCB president, and now retired, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo Galveston-Houston, Texas — has been made a permanent USCCB body.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed after being shot Sept. 10 during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, the president announced on social media. 

Poland has formally invoked Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

Estonia celebrated a historic milestone Sept. 6 when Archbishop Eduard Profittlich, a German-born Jesuit, became the country's first Catholic to be beatified.

Remembered for her passion for charity, teaching music and unwavering humility, the Duchess of Kent — a senior Catholic member of the British royal family — died Sept. 4 at age 92.

Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, issued a Sept. 6 message in both English and Spanish to faithful, saying he was "devastated" and "heartbroken" by allegations against Fr. Andrew Showers, who is now completely restricted from all public ministry and barred from having contact with minors as a police investigation continues.

Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See's U.N. permanent observer, shared his thoughts in a statement he delivered Sept. 4 at U.N. headquarters in New York, during the General Assembly High-level Plenary Meeting to Commemorate and Promote the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, observed that same day.

The new saints "are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces," the pope said.

"He's a great model because he does a lot of the stuff we do," one eighth grader said. "But … he went to church every day. 

After lawmakers returned to Washington from their August recess, they faced a familiar deadline: Passing legislation to fund the federal government and avert a shutdown at the end of September.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis' Office for the Mission of Catholic Education has asked people to pray the rosary at 10 a.m. CT Sept. 5 for those affected by the Aug. 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis that killed two schoolchildren and injured 21 others.

Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, visited Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis Sept. 3 and laid flowers at the temporary memorial where two children were killed and 21 other people were injured in an Aug. 27 shooting.