Catholic News Service

The church and monastery were vacated in 1967 at the outbreak of war between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors, including Jordan, just across the Jordan River. After Israel took control of the area from Jordan, it was laid out with land mines by both the Israeli army and Palestinian gunmen who battled there in the 1960s and 1970s.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that Rear Adm. Margaret Grun Kibben would replace Fr. Pat Conroy, who has served as the 60th House chaplain since 2011.

Gloria Purvis, who was told after the Dec. 30 broadcast of the EWTN radio show "Morning Glory" that the show was canceled effective immediately, said she has no regrets about using the show to discuss racial matters following the police killing of George Floyd last May.

Philippine Catholic leaders condemned the killing of nine Indigenous group leaders during an attempted mass arrest and denied claims that they opened fire on security forces.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Minsk, Belarus, who had been blocked from entering his homeland for four months, ending in December.

"We do not know what 2021 holds for us, but what each one of us, and all of us together, can do is to take care of each other and of creation, our common home," Pope Francis said.

A $1.5 million grant awarded by the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions will support Catholic Extension's ongoing disaster recovery work in Puerto Rico three years after two devastating hurricanes.

Like everyone else, Pope Francis' 2020 was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, as tens of thousands of people nationwide protested racial injustices, Catholics similarly took to the streets and also joined in prayer services and discussions.

"We must stop the execution of Lisa Montgomery. Lisa was psychotic — unable to act rationally — when she committed a terrible crime. She desperately needed psychiatric care and instead she got a death sentence," said Sr. Helen Prejean in a Nov. 12 Facebook post.

The gratitude that comes from encountering Christ's love and mercy is enough to bring joy and hope to a troubled world, Pope Francis said.

Democrat Joe Biden became the second Catholic elected president Nov. 3, outpolling Donald Trump by calling for national unity and determination to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

Christians and others practicing their faith experienced serious challenges to religious freedom around the world this year, heightened by dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Pope Francis has chosen Bishop Dermot Farrell of Ossory as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's successor in Dublin.

In a wide-ranging interview, the head of the German bishops' conference called for far-reaching changes to the Catholic Church and criticized the Vatican's treatment of the church in his country.

The final rule "will bar from asylum and withholding of removal certain applicants who may have come in contact with COVID-19," said the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) in a statement voicing opposition. The decision is "punishing vulnerable people for a public health crisis," the organization said.

A new Vatican document highlights the "critical role of vaccines to defeat the pandemic, not just for individual personal health but to protect the health of all." 

Extreme global temperatures, wildfires and hurricanes continued to plague the planet during 2020, prompting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to urge an end to global "war on nature."

The signals were clear at the start of the pandemic. No Masses, no offertory income. No offertory income, nothing to assess by the diocese. 

The Catholic Church in Germany was rattled by the impact of the sexual abuse scandal to the debates surrounding the Synodal Path that reverberated beyond Germany's borders.