Mark Pattison

Pope Francis' efforts to bring reform in the Catholic Church are meeting resistance in some church circles, according to one panelist at an Aug. 31 online forum sponsored by Georgetown University's Office of the Vice President for Global Engagement.

John Thompson, the Hall of Fame college basketball coach who guided Georgetown University in Washington to a national championship in 1984, died Aug. 31 at age 78. No cause of death was given.

Thirty-three men between George Washington and John F. Kennedy served as U.S. president. Until Kennedy, all were white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. It took 172 years for a Catholic to win the presidency.

Joe Biden's choice of Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, as his vice presidential running mate elicited broad smiles from key black Catholics. Others, though, started criticizing her record nearly as soon as the pick was publicized Aug. 11.

Americans, by a 4-to-1 margin, said houses of worship should be subject to the same social-distancing rules as other organizations. The ratio backing this view was 3-to-1 for Christians, 4-to-1 for Jews, and 9-to-1 for those who are religiously unaffiliated.

The disappearance — and rumors of the possible death — of a Chinese Catholic bishop was the subject of a July 30 hearing by Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

The Catholic talk- and game-show host whose career in television spanned six decades, died July 24 at age 88.

More than 100 bishops from around the world have signed on to a statement seeking mandatory due diligence laws and regulations in the international supply chain.

Critics of the death penalty denounced the decision June 15 by Attorney General William Barr to set execution dates for four federal prisoners on death row.

Just like billions of people throughout the world, "the church was not prepared" for the coronavirus pandemic, said Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican nuncio to the United States, in a May 6 interview with Catholic News Service.

Appearing on the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes," Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said faith is key, even as people are in isolation from others as a result of the stay-at-home orders imposed to slow a worsening of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pope Francis' favorability ratings among Americans of virtually all stripes are up from their low in 2018, according to a report released April 3 by the Pew Research Center.

One byproduct of canceled Masses is no offertory collection. And a byproduct of no offertory collection is puncture wounds in the budgets of parishes, dioceses and national collections.

The State Department issued its annual country reports on human rights March 11, highlighting abuses in China, Myanmar, Vietnam and other nations during a press briefing that day.

President Donald Trump may be as divisive to religionists as he seems to be to other groups in American society, as indicated by the latest Pew Research Center survey.

Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal who was laicized by the Vatican in 2019 after numerous claims of abuse by him were substantiated, moved Jan. 3 from the Capuchin Franciscan friary in Kansas where he had been living since late 2018.

The upcoming movie "Just Mercy" "has the potential to wake up out of a slumber the part of society that either doesn't believe the death penalty is still in practice or chooses to ignore it," according to two leaders of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, founded 10 years ago to eliminate death penalty laws and executions.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops applied Catholic teaching to a number of bills circulating in one or both chambers, although the slowdown affected the U.S. bishops' priorities as well.

If experience can't prove it, data scraping will: Catholic sermons are shorter than their Protestant counterparts.

If experience can't prove it, data scraping will: Catholic sermons are shorter than their Protestant counterparts. According to an analysis of 50,000 sermons — Catholics commonly refer to theirs as homilies — the Pew Research Center determined that the median Catholic sermon is 14 minutes long.

One great unanswerable question regarding the Catholic Church and the Holocaust is whether Jewish lives would have been saved had Pope Pius XI or his successor, Pope Pius XII, issued a statement urging the protection of Jews in Axis-held Europe.