David Agren

The Mexican bishops' conference has appealed for assistance for thousands of migrants stuck in Chiapas state as Mexican officials step up enforcement and stop issuing travel documents.

Pope Francis has donated $500,000 to assist migrants attempting to travel through Mexico, but who are increasingly being impeded by Mexican officials from reaching the U.S. border.

A Nicaraguan bishop said he will leave the country indefinitely as concerns for his security increase – presumably the product of his criticisms of the Central American nation's president.

The Mexican bishops' conference has presented an action plan for protecting minors from sexual abuse by clergy and pastoral agents.

Bishops from both sides of the border and Catholics working on migration matters convened a special meeting in El Paso Feb. 25–27 to plan their responses to the implementation of U.S. immigration policy, such as metering, in which migrants wanting to apply for asylum face long waits in insecure Mexican border cities as some U.S. ports of entry accept fewer than 15 claims per day.

The Mexican bishops' conference has confirmed 152 priests have been removed from ministry for sexually abusing minors.

Asylum-seekers arrive at legal ports of entries the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, but increasingly face long waits to lodge their petitions with U.S. officials, forcing them to spend weeks or months in unsafe Mexican border cities.

Mexico's bishops offered prayers for the victims of an explosion in which dozens of villagers in the central state of Hidalgo perished after rushing to get some of the gasoline gushing from what appears to have been an illegally tapped pipeline.

Migrants from across Honduras set out from San Pedro Sula for the border with Guatemala early Jan. 15, hoping to reach the U.S. border amid controversies over fortifying the southern frontier with a wall

Some Catholic migrant advocates criticized U.S. reaction as excessive while others said they tried warning the caravan participants and a migrant advocacy group accompanying it that times had changed.

The first participants in the caravan of Central Americans arriving in Tijuana, Mexico, were met with hostility as residents of an affluent neighborhood confronted migrants wanting to camp on a beach near the border.

Members of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in this southern Mexican city rose early Oct. 24 to feed but a fraction of the Central American migrants traveling in a caravan, which is trying to traverse Mexico and reach the United States border.

Near the end of his homily at a Mass just prior to St. Oscar Romero's canonization, Jesuit Fr. Jose Maria Tojeira yelled to the crowd outside the Metropolitan Cathedral: "Viva Monsenor Romero!" [Long live Bishop Romero!]

Following a 15-hour debate, the Argentine Senate voted 38-31 against a bill that would have decriminalized abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Nicaraguan bishops and clergy were attacked by armed groups aligned with the government July 9 as violence in the Central American country escalated and affected the Catholic Church.

The Mexican bishops conference congratulated presidential election winner Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who won a landslide victory on an agenda of change and promises to combat corruption and poverty.

Clergy from the Archdiocese of Managua, Nicaragua, had planned to pray for peace June 21.

Instead, bishops from the archdiocese, Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, apostolic nuncio to Nicaragua, and about 30 priests from the capital traveled to pray in the besieged city of Masaya. 

The Mexican bishops' conference has criticized the practice of U.S. officials separating migrant families, joining a chorus of condemnation south of the border as Mexicans react with outrage to the sight and sounds of children being confined in shelters far from their parents.

Argentina's bishops expressed disappointment with the approval of an initiative that moves toward legal abortion while pledging to review their social ministries to better attend to youth and women.