Catholic News Service

After weeks of confusion and consternation, Rome's mayor told the Vatican newspaper that Rome Caritas would benefit not only from the coins tourists throw in the Trevi Fountain, but from coins tossed in any of the city's historic water features.

The Francis Chronicles: Faith isn't something learned just by studying the catechism but rather is a gift passed on to children by the example of their parents, Pope Francis said.

"PLEASE NOTE: We plan to march even if the government shutdown is not yet resolved," declares the March for Life website, marchforlife.org. "We have marched for 45 years and will march again this year to end the human rights abuse of abortion."

Church officials confirmed that Cardinal Donald Wuerl, retired archbishop of Washington, had forwarded an allegation of sexual misconduct against his predecessor, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to the papal nuncio in Washington in 2004.

The Vatican Dicastery for Communication created new roles within the press office of the Holy See as part of its media reform and reorganization.

Accepting invitations from President Klaus Iohannis and from Catholic leaders, the pope will visit the capital of Bucharest, the cities of Iasi and Blaj, and the Marian sanctuary in Sumuleu Ciuc in the Transylvanian region.

More than 100 homes — including a church-run home for disabled war veterans — were forcibly demolished by state officials in southern Vietnam.

Church representatives working with immigrants and refugees criticized Brazil's planned withdrawal from a global agreement to safeguard migrant people.

Catholic church leaders in Congo have questioned the official outcome of the Dec. 30 elections, saying the officially published results "do not correspond with the data collected" by the church's 40,000 observers.

The aim of Pope Francis' February meeting on abuse and safeguarding is to clarify and underline what must and must not be done with allegations and make sure no more cases are ever covered up, said Andrea Tornielli, editorial director for the Vatican Dicastery for Communication.

Securing borders and humane treatment of those fleeing persecution and seeking a better life "are not mutually exclusive," the chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Migration said.

Migrants rescued from the Mediterranean were taken to shore in Malta Jan. 9 after being kept at sea while European nations argued over who was responsible for them.

Although the weeklong retreat for U.S. Catholic bishops emphasized quiet reflection, several bishops spoke out on social media during the retreat and after it wrapped up Jan. 8 with positive reaction about it and to give shoutouts to the retreat leader.

No sooner had President Donald Trump finished his Jan. 8 nine-minute speech, his first such event televised in prime time from the Oval Office, about what he called a "crisis" at the border, than Catholic groups and others began tearing apart his arguments.

Bishop Joseph Lawson Howze, the founding bishop of the Diocese of Biloxi, Mississippi, and the first black bishop in the 20th century to head a U.S. diocese, died Jan. 9.

The Austrian Catholic Church will officially begin a year of honor Jan. 11 to remember the founder of Austria's Catholic Habsburg Empire, Maximilian I, to mark the 500th anniversary of his death.

The Francis Chronicles: Although at times it seems that "so many of our prayers seem to have no result," Christians are called by Christ to "insist and not give up," the pope said Jan. 9 during his weekly general audience.

Opus Dei, a well-known international Catholic organization, paid $977,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim in 2005 against a one-time high-profile priest in the nation's capital.

Months after Indonesia's military was summoned to unclog Jakarta Bay, Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo has joined a chorus of disapproval of the nation's growing plastic waste problem by calling parishioners to action.