Jonathan Luxmoore

The Vatican report on disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has special resonance in Poland because of the involvement of Pope John Paul II and other Polish prelates in his career and abuse cover-ups.

A Catholic bishop in Belarus accused President Alexander Lukashenko of "insult and slander" after Lukashenko charged the church's exiled archbishop with planning to "destroy the country" and called for a bar on foreign clergy.

The Catholic Church in Switzerland has backed legislation that would penalize companies that damage the environment or abuse human rights.

Catholic Church officials in Russia criticized planned religious law changes that will require all clergy who studied abroad to retrain in a Russian college.

The director of Greece's Catholic charitable organization said the situation on Lesbos island remains tense after a fire at a refugee camp left at least 12,000 homeless.

The head of Belarus's Catholic Church, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, was barred from reentering his country on Aug. 31, amid mass protests over a dubious election — after he issued a pastoral letter warning a possible slide toward civil war.

Cardinal Maurice Piat of Port-Louis, Mauritius, has praised public responses to an oil spill that devastated the island's coastline, as one prominent lay Catholic demanded "honest information" about the disaster.

A senior Catholic aid worker said humanitarian conditions are deteriorating in eastern Ukraine and urged Western governments and churches not to forget the continuing six-year conflict.

Turkey's presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said Hagia Sophia would "retain its character as a cultural monument," reminding people that the building was being converted "not from a church to a mosque, but from a museum to a mosque."

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who retired from the Archdiocese of Lyon, has left his see to serve as a convent chaplain and envoy for the pope.

Catholic organizations and leaders in Europe are urging governments to learn lessons from the coronavirus crisis and introduce far-reaching reforms to help those suffering economically from the pandemic.

Catholic groups across Europe have echoed Pope Francis' call for a universal basic wage as part of recovery plans after the coronavirus pandemic.

Church-government relations are creating some tension in countries like Spain and France, for example, as other EU nations like Germany demonstrate an orderly and earlier coordinated effort to allow public worship to resume.

Poland's Catholic bishops have urged nationwide prayers for rain, amid warnings huge areas of farmland could be ruined by drought during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although Catholics in most East European countries have backed measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic, for some it has also revived painful memories of communist rule.

The coronavirus threat is but one more complication in the Sahel region, which faces a campaign by Islamist militants targeting Christian communities, especially in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

A retired archbishop remained under house arrest March 11 as disputes intensified over Togo's Feb. 22 presidential ballot.

A Catholic archbishop has rejected a church instruction barring him from public appearances and vowed to go on denouncing "heresy and sectarianism."

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's left-wing "progressive coalition," modern Spain's first, faces tough challenges — not least a threatened confrontation with the influential Catholic Church. 

The French bishops' permanent council has approved a recommendation to remove gender references for parents on baptismal certificates.