International News

Saying he wanted to protect the rights of members of religious orders facing expulsion, Pope Francis made small changes to canon law, giving them more time to appeal their dismissals.

Indigenous Catholics, along with U.S. and Canadian bishops, are welcoming the Vatican's repudiation of a legal and political doctrine by which European colonial powers and North American governments historically seized lands from Indigenous peoples -- while stressing there is more work to be done in healing Catholic-Indigenous relations.

After having difficulty breathing, Pope Francis went to Rome's Gemelli hospital March 29 where he was diagnosed with a respiratory infection that will be treated in the hospital for several days, the Vatican press office said.

Powerful tornadoes tore through rural Mississippi the night of Friday, March 24, killing or injuring dozens and causing widespread destruction.

The priest-director of the Cultural Heritage Office for the Custodia Terrae Sanctae, or Custody of the Holy Land, in Jerusalem opened a drawer of vestments and casually dropped an unexpected historical tidbit about a clerical chasuble he was showing a group of foreign guests. The chasuble was part of a collection of vestments the archbishop of Paris wore for the marriage of Emperor Napoleon III of France with the Empress Eugenie, and which the empress later donated to the Church in the Holy Land.

The bishops of Poland March 14 announced they will create a commission of experts to investigate cases of abuse of minors by clergy from the past in the country -- an investigation that would cover the era that St. John Paul II governed the Archdiocese of Krakow as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla.

After the failures of two banks in March, the U.S. government has taken steps to prevent similar failures and the risks such failures would present to the economy. The precarious situation illustrates what one Catholic commentator described as the need for government and banks to take seriously the "solemn obligation" of prudence in banking policy for the sake of society's common good.

The final assembly of the German Synodal Way took place in Frankfurt March 9-11, where 230 bishops and lay representatives discussed issues such as blessings for homosexual couples, the ordination of women, a relaxation of mandatory celibacy and greater church involvement for lay people.

With St. Patrick’s Day falling on a Lenten Friday this year, many U.S. bishops have issued dispensations from abstinence on March 17, allowing the faithful to enjoy the American Irish tradition of eating corned beef (or ham) and cabbage in good conscience.

The fact that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla -- the future Pope John Paul II -- knew about abuse when he was an archbishop of Krakow, Poland, is neither new nor surprising, experts say.