ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT TO ROME – Flying back to Rome after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI offered an instant analysis of his eight-day trip.Read More

LONDON – The head of a London Catholic hospital popular with celebrities quit his post following the adoption of a new code of ethics banning doctors from making abortion referrals and from handing out contraceptives and the morning-after pill.Read More

BETHLEHEM, West Bank – Pope Benedict XVI knelt in prayer at the spot where tradition holds Jesus was born, then went to a Catholic children’s hospital, where he held an infant boy named Elias in his arms.Read More

Jeannette Hudak said she was “scared to death” last year about the impending marriage of her now 35-year-old daughter Maria, who had always lived at home under the watchful eye of five older brothers and her parents.Read More

JERUSALEM – Reaching Israel, the country at the heart of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI condemned anti-Semitism and prayed for a new era in which all believers in the one God would live in peace and treat each other with respect and justice.Read More

Continuing a tradition of his predecessor, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien will serve as retreat master for a Jan. 4-5 gathering of men who are thinking about becoming archdiocesan priests.Read More

WASHINGTON – Catholic social justice leaders are calling on President Barack Obama to support the formation of an independent commission to investigate the use of torture by U.S. interrogators on suspected terrorists.Read More

VATICAN CITY – Perhaps even more than Michelangelo’s frescoes or the statue of Laocoon, the discouragingly long entrance line – often stretching half a mile – has become the modern emblem of the Vatican Museums.Read More