A Catholic activist in Belarus is handed a 3-year sentence as a crackdown on dissent intensifies

TALLINN, Estonia — A Catholic activist in Belarus was handed a three-year prison sentence Friday on charges that Western diplomats have denounced as politically driven, the latest move in the authorities’ sweeping crackdown on the country’s civil society. Uladzislau Beladzed, 33, who taught the catechism at the city’s Cathedral of the Holy Name of the … Read more

St. Peter’s Prep beats Bergen Catholic on a class buzzer beater

The only thing missing from the game-winner was Craig Ehlo falling down in the background. It wasn’t a frame-by-frame, mirror image of Michael Jordan’s game-winning basket in the 1989 NBA playoffs, but Thursday night’s game-winner by sophomore guard Richie Rosa of St. Peter’s Prep had a very similar feel to it. Jordan’s iconic moment, simply … Read more

At least 15 Catholic worshippers killed in attack during a service in Burkina Faso

ABUJA, Nigeria — At least 15 Catholic worshippers were killed in a Burkina Faso village on Sunday when gunmen attacked a community as they gathered for prayers in the country’s conflict-hit northern region, church officials said. The violence in the village of Essakane was a “terrorist attack” that left 12 of the Catholic faithful dead … Read more

Retired Catholic bishop charged with sexual offenses in northwest Australia

MELBOURNE, Australia — A retired Catholic bishop has been charged with sexual offenses including child abuse in a remote part of Australia’s northwest. Christopher Saunders, 74, will appear in the Broome Magistrates Court on Thursday in the heart of the sprawling Outback diocese where he had actively served as a cleric for 45 years, a … Read more

Catholic bishops in Mexico say they negotiated for possible peace accord with drug cartel leaders

MEXICO CITY — Four Roman Catholic bishops met with Mexican drug cartel bosses in a bid to negotiate a possible peace accord, one of the bishops said, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday he approves of such talks. The revelation by Bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, José de Jesús González Hernández, in remarks at a … Read more

Authorities search for Roman Catholic cardinal missing in Panama

PANAMA CITY — A Roman Catholic cardinal disappeared this week in western Panama near the border with Costa Rica and investigators are searching for the missing cleric, authorities announced Thursday. Prosecutors in the state of Chiriqui said they opened an investigation Wednesday, a day after Spanish Cardinal José Luis Lacunza was last seen. Lacunza, 79, … Read more

Vatican-affiliated Catholic charity makes last-minute appeal to stop ‘barbarous’ Alabama execution

ROME — A Vatican-affiliated Catholic charity made a last-minute appeal Tuesday to the U.S. state of Alabama to halt a planned execution using nitrogen gas, saying the method is “barbarous” and “uncivilized” and would bring “indelible shame” to the state. The Rome-based Sant’Egidio Community has lobbied for decades to abolish the death penalty around the … Read more

Pope Francis’s authority under assault from within Catholic Church

Comment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is facing some of the most vociferous objection to papal authority in decades, in language that might have stunned past popes. German Cardinal Gerhard Müller derided the pope’s new guidance allowing priests to bless same-sex couples as “blasphemy.” One Italian priest found … Read more

EXPLAINER: How can Catholic priests bless same-sex unions?

ROME — The Vatican document explicitly saying Catholic priests can bless same-sex unions lays out the conditions for what such blessings can, and cannot, involve. The overall goal is to make it abundantly clear to the couple and those around them that the blessing is not a liturgical or sacramental ritual, and that it in … Read more

Israeli forces kill two women at Holy Family Parish in Gaza, Catholic authorities say

Comment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave Israeli forces killed two women who were taking shelter at a church in the Gaza Strip on Saturday afternoon, Catholic authorities said. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, an ecclesiastical office for the Latin Catholics in the region, in a statement identified the victims — a mother and … Read more