IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) — As he often does with a group made up of people of different faiths or no faith, Pope Francis gave young people in Palermo a special blessing, but not a ritual one. After the pope’s meeting with teenagers and …

IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring By PALERMO, Sicily (CNS) — Honoring a priest shot at point-blank range by the Mafia, Pope Francis insisted that true happiness and a real change in Sicilian society will come only when people love and care for one another rather than trying to grab as much …

IMAGE: CNS photo/Sam Lucero, The Compass By Sam Lucero ALLOUEZ, Wis. (CNS) — When David Marosek, who had been battling stage 4 rectal cancer since July 2016, got the news in April his cancer had returned and spread into his lungs and spine, it was a depressing time. “I was …

IMAGE: CNS photo/Vatican By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis will travel to the eastern periphery of Europe to honor a faith that withstood a Nazi invasion and five decades of communist dictatorship and now is striving to help people live in freedom as authentic disciples of Christ. …

IMAGE: CNS photo/KNA By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The beatification of 19 martyrs of Algeria, including the seven Trappist monks of Tibhirine, will be celebrated Dec. 8 in Oran, Algeria, the country’s bishops announced. Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, will preside over the …

IMAGE: CNS photo/Manuel Rueda By Manuel Rueda RIOHACHA, Colombia (CNS) — It’s midafternoon and the cemetery known as People Like Us is eerily quiet. As the corpse of Eduardo Sanchez is removed from a white funeral car and placed in a coffin, his daughter starts to sob and gets close …

By VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference said they shared with Pope Francis how the church in the United States has been “lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse.” “He listened very deeply from the heart,” said a statement released after the meeting Sept. 13. …

By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Sexual and physical abuse by priests and religious and the scandal of its cover-up by church authorities thrive in countries where the Catholic Church is “elitist and clericalist,” Pope Francis told Jesuits in Ireland in August. “There is something I have understood with …

By Dennis Sadowski WASHINGTON (CNS) — A Pennsylvania religious congregation planned to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether their religious freedom rights are being violated by the construction and pending use of a natural gas pipeline on its land. The Adorers of the Blood of Christ are rooting …

IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring By Junno Arocho Esteves VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Only true love for God and neighbor can destroy the chains of greed, lust, anger and envy that enslave humankind, Pope Francis said. “True love is true freedom: It detaches from possession, rebuilds relationships, it knows how to …