International News

Paying homage to Hungary's history, culture and location in the heart of Europe, Pope Francis pushed against the notion that the country needed to insulate itself to protect its identity.

Catholic bishops in Kenya have expressed shock and strongly condemned the mass "starvation suicide" in Shakahola, a remote forest-ranch area in eastern Kenya, where a pastor led congregants to fast to death.

Zane Chu picked up his PhD in theology just shy of two years ago. At 37, as a sessional instructor at St. Mark’s College in Vancouver, his career in theology is just getting underway.

The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life affirms his opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide but believes that to end confusion in the country, the Italian Parliament needs to make clear laws about withdrawing end-of-life care, his office said.

Thousands of local and international Christian pilgrims thronged to Jerusalem's Old City and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the ancient Eastern rite ceremony of the Holy Fire April 15, with some scuffles reported as Israeli police restricted the number of people able to reach the church.

A British-Israeli mother and her two daughters were killed in a drive-by-shooting terrorist attack in the Jordan valley on April 7, during a week that, instead of seeing the holidays of Passover, Easter and Ramadan celebrated in parallel peacefully, spiraled the region into violence.

Two Catholic Relief Services staff members were shot and killed Easter Sunday in Ethiopia's Amhara region, according to the U.S. Catholic Church's international aid agency. Details of the murders are still unknown, CRS said April 10, but the incident comes amid several days of unrest and protests in the region after Ethiopia's federal government moved to dissolve paramilitary forces.

Already decimated by years of war, poverty and international sanctions, the last thing people in northwestern Syria needed was the catastrophic 7.8 magnitude that wreaked havoc in their country and southeastern Turkey nearly two months ago.

In an apparent breach of the Vatican's agreement with China on the appointment of bishops, the bishop of Haimen was installed as the bishop of Shanghai April 4.

Eighteen years after the death of St. John Paul II April 2, 2005, his native Poland remembered him with vigils and marches.