Michael Sainsbury

Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge will conduct an investigation into retired Bishop Christopher Saunders of Broome, using a process established by Pope Francis in 2019.

Catholic bishops in Australia have released guidelines for the country's almost 2,000 Catholic schools on gender, urging school leaders to resist pressure to adopt the "dominant rhetoric around gender."

China has announced that Bishop Paul Ma Cunguo of Shuozhou, a Vatican-recognized bishop, has joined the official state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

The three-week COVID-19 lockdown of India's 1.37 billion people has stranded millions of domestic migrant workers and left people scrambling for food and other basics amid the ensuing harsh and often violent crackdown by police.

Cardinal George Pell will have his last chance to have his conviction for sexually abusing two 13-year old choirboys overturned when his lawyers plead his case to the High Court of Australia March 11-12.

The president of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference is the latest of the country's senior clerics to push back against legislation to lift the seal of confession for child sexual abuse.

A six-person committee charged with reviewing church governance and management is expected to present Australia's bishops with a plan to overhaul the management of the church in the country.

The Chinese government has targeted unregistered Catholic and Protestant churches with a new expansion of rules and regulations governing religious organizations.

Catholic leaders in Hong Kong have widely supported nearly seven months of anti-government protests, except when they turned violent.

The Australian government said it will make changes to religious freedom legislation concerning religious hospitals and aged-care facilities, after the Catholic Church pushed for changes to a recently released draft legislation package.

Australia's Ballarat Diocese will pay up to $3 million (US$2.03 million) in a landmark compensation claim for clerical sexual abuse after a victim won an out-of-court settlement for abuse during the early 1990s by a former priest.

The Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania have become the latest in the country to pass legislation criminalizing priests who fail to report the abuse of children disclosed during confession. The country's six states and two territories are all expected have such laws in place in coming months.

The Australian Catholic Church could face tens of millions dollars in compensation claims after the Diocese of Ballarat in Victoria state admitted, for the first time, it knew of the behavior of a pedophile priest yet continued to move him around from parish to parish.

The Australian government is preparing to introduce the country's first religious freedom laws, but some senior Catholic clerics are concerned they may not go far enough.

China's ruling Communist Party continues to persecute at least half of China's more than 12 million Catholics despite last September's agreement with the Vatican on the appointment of bishops.

The Australian Catholic Church has released its National Catholic Safeguarding Standards, more than 18 months after they were recommended by the country's landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, in the latest chapter in the overhaul of how the church responds to clergy sexual abuse.

The Australian Catholic Church is looking for more collegial models of governance in Catholic schools, hospitals and charities as it conducts an unprecedented review of existing clerical and hierarchical models that have failed.

The Australian Catholic Church is continuing on its groundbreaking path toward a potential dramatic overhaul with the announcement that a panel of experts will thoroughly review the governance and management structures of Catholic dioceses and parishes.

The Sri Lankan government blamed little-known Islamic group National Thowheeth Jama'ath for the Easter suicide bombings that targeted three churches and three luxury hotels across the country.

The Australian Catholic Church has completed the first phase of its 2020 Plenary Council, in which laypeople will be allowed to vote and decisions could be binding on the nation's Catholics, once ratified by the Vatican.