Catholic News Service

Colombia is attempting to reconcile a difficult past of guerrilla movements, paramilitaries and state actors inflicting disappearances, death and the dispossession of lands.

The day before North Korea detonated what it said was a hydrogen bomb, Pope Francis urged religious leaders from South Korea to dedicate their words and actions to building peace and harmony.

"Economic instability also hurts the faith community, as Americans who have recently experienced unemployment are less likely to go to church, even though such communities can be a source of great support in difficult times."

A longtime leader in Catholic-Anglican relations and former archbishop of Westminster, the English cardinal died Sept. 1 at the age of 85.

"We urgently appeal to those in positions of social and economic, as well as political and cultural, responsibility to hear the cry of the earth and to attend to the needs of the marginalized," they wrote. 

Pope Francis praised the increasingly friendly and fruitful relations between the Catholic Church and Jewish leaders as he wished the world's Jewish communities a happy Rosh Hashanah a few weeks early.

Clergy, academics, lawyers, journalists and artists launched a broad coalition against the "autocratic rule" of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

Pope Francis acknowledged Fr. Stanley Rother's martyrdom in December, making the Okarche, Oklahoma, native the first recognized martyr to have been born in the United States.

To mark the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation Sept. 1, the pope said he and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople "prepared a message together."

As waves of asylum seekers continue to cross illegally into Canada from the United States, Catholic dioceses in Quebec and eastern Ontario are mobilizing to meet their needs. 

Several priests and laypeople defending church property were injured during an assault by security officers and workers in China's northern Shanxi province.

God wants people to live with hope and joy — not bitterness — and to dream with him of a better world, Pope Francis said Aug. 30 during his weekly general audience.

Guatemala's bishops criticized the country's president for expelling an international anti-corruption commissioner and called for public protests to remain peaceful.

Catholic dioceses and charities are quickly organizing to help in the aftermath of a Category 4 hurricane that made landfall with heavy rains and winds of 130 miles per hour.

After the visit Nov. 27-30 to the cities of Yangon and Naypyitaw in Myanmar, the pope will travel on to Dhaka, Bangladesh, Nov. 30-Dec. 2, the Vatican said Aug. 28.

On Sept. 23, Oklahomans will get a front row seat to the beatification of Fr. Stanley Rother, an ordinary man who died extraordinarily as a martyr in Guatemala while serving in a mission.

Latin America has some of the highest income disparities in the world. Tourists flock to the Caribbean city’s beach resorts, which contrast with the poverty in which most of the city’s Afro-Colombian population lives.

Police evicted hundreds of refugees from an abandoned building in the center of Rome Aug. 19. The way police went about it led to violence, said Rome's Caritas agency.

Around 20,000 Venezuelans have arrived in Chile this year; the vast majority of them say they are fleeing the political crisis in their country in search of a better life. 

The president of the 2018 World Meeting of Families stressed that the church is seeking to promote the ideal of the family through the international gathering of families in Ireland.