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

Nov. 10 is the first anniversary of the death of my brother, Father Tom Polk. While I miss him every day I rejoice in the great blessing he was to me. At his viewing my family learned about the many ways Tom ministered to his people and what a blessing he was to them. We...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

VATICAN CITY – When Pope John Paul II turned 80 in 2000, it fueled yet another round of speculation about whether the ailing pontiff might break with tradition and resign. In contrast, Pope Benedict XVI’s 80th birthday April 16 finds him with the wind in his sails. The pope’s new book on Jesus was being...Read More

All Christians are called to become "holy and immaculate in love," just as Mary was, Pope Benedict XVI said. The pope celebrated the Dec. 8 feast of the Immaculate Conception by reciting the Angelus prayer at the Vatican and by making an afternoon visit to a Marian monument in the center of Rome. During his...Read More

LONDON – The head of Great Britain’s military diocese has come under fire from politicians, military leaders and the media after he welcomed Iran’s release of 15 sailors and marines as religiously motivated “good deeds.” Bishop Thomas Burns of the Bishopric of the Forces was called naive, accused of wishful thinking and was the subject...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

WASHINGTON – A group of Republican senators have asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for detailed information to justify the denial of a one-year grant to the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services to aid foreign-born human trafficking victims.Read More