Ever since she was a baby, her mother beat her. Involved with drugs, her mother would leave her unattended, even as an infant and toddler. Sometimes she took the child to bars. She was just 9 when her mother was imprisoned for beating her. Her biological father was dead.Read More

RIO DE JANEIRO – Fabricio Mendes remembers a time when just walking around his neighborhood was a matter of life or death. Drug traffickers roamed freely and guns were plentiful.Read More

The Sisters of the Most Precious Blood in O’Fallon, Missouri, faced an all-too-familiar challenge for religious communities in the early 1990s. While the number of sisters had shrunk dramatically from decades past, the community still maintained an enormous 200,000-square-foot motherhouse with 12 buildings resting on 42 acres of property at St. Mary’s Institute.Read More

CLARKSVILLE – St. Louis School principal Terry Weiss looked out over a crowd of hundreds of people inside St. Louis Church April 28. Relief took over.Read More

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien’s tour of more than 60 parishes in the eastern vicariate set off on a fast pace Nov. 29 as the new leader visited 11 parishes in Harford and Baltimore counties. The prelate hopes to complete his tour of eastern vicariate parishes Jan. 14.Read More

NEW ORLEANS – Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille and an international voice against the death penalty, urged educators at the National Catholic Educational Association convention April 27 to approach the issue in bold new ways with students who are increasingly opposed to capital punishment.Read More

SANTA ROSA, Peru – On a stifling morning a handful of people stand in the shady doorway of the health center, watching the occasional cargo truck lumber through this village of about 200 people.Read More

WASHINGTON – During the April 27 National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, speakers paid tribute to the soon-to-be-beatified Pope John Paul II and urged Catholic participants to continue his legacy of defending religious liberty and human dignity.Read More