WASHINGTON – Results of a survey released April 30 show that the average age of the 475 priests expected to be ordained in the United States this year is 35 and one-third of this year’s new priests were born in another country, primarily Vietnam, Mexico, Poland or the Philippines. The national study of the ordination...Read More

VATICAN CITY – Despite being held in a cool, climate-controlled conference room, some early discussions at a Vatican-sponsored seminar on global warming and climate change got pretty heated. The rifts and tensions still dividing the global debate on the causes of and remedies for drastic climatic shifts were gently simmering in the small microcosm of...Read More

While lawmakers in Washington wrangle over the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys, the former U.S. Attorney for Maryland said he thinks public servants are being torn down just for doing their jobs. Thomas M. DiBiagio, the former U.S. attorney appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001, said he knows from first-hand experience what...Read More

WORCESTER, Mass. – In silence, Audrey Santo witnessed to the world, preachers and participants said at an April 17 wake for her at St. Paul Cathedral in Worcester and at her funeral Mass there the following day. Santo, 23, who died April 14 at home, was in a comalike state, unable to move or speak,...Read More