Standing next to toppled plastic figures of St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin Mary and assorted sheep, Loretta Hoffman shook her head sadly and pointed to an empty manger flipped on its side by vandals. “That’s where the baby Jesus was,” she said, noting that her husband, Gil, had secured the figure with wires to prevent...Read More

WASHINGTON – With the rainy season on the doorstep in Haiti, Isaac Boyd, an emergency shelter expert for Catholic Relief Services, and a coalition of relief agencies from around the world are trying to tackle the impossible.Read More

WASHINGTON – In a quiet ceremony before more than a dozen members of Congress, mostly Catholics, President Barack Obama signed an executive order stipulating that no federal funds would be used to pay for abortions under the new health reform law.Read More

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A new Vatican calendar features photos of Pope Benedict XVI relaxing, but the pope's own agenda for 2007 leaves little time for repose. The Vatican will be a busy place throughout the year, with hundreds of papal meetings, liturgies and other events already scheduled and several documents in the pipeline. The...Read More

A Polish archbishop told a group of nuns to leave their convent after the Vatican expelled them from their order for refusing to accept a new mother superior. "There are no private religious orders in the Catholic Church where everyone can set their own rules," Archbishop Jozef Zycinski of Lublin told Poland's Catholic information agency,...Read More

WASHINGTON – A coalition of U.S. women religious representing more than 100 communities said March 17 that the position on health care reform and abortion articulated by the U.S. bishops is “the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church” and should be followed.Read More

WASHINGTON – In the United States and Canada, membership numbers have gone up for the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Assemblies of God, among others, according to the 2010 edition of a yearbook published by the National Council of Churches.Read More

ARLINGTON, Va. (CNS) -- The "evil of pornography" has spread like a plague throughout the culture thanks to mainstream entertainment and threatens the fabric of society far beyond the boundaries of church and school, said Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde in a new pastoral letter.Read More