By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service  VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis said the assassination of “my confrere,” a 75-year-old Dutch Jesuit in Syria, “filled me with deep sadness and made me think again of all the people who suffer and are dying in that martyred country.”

By Catholic News Service  WASHINGTON (CNS) — The number of allegations of sexual abuse by clergy declined in 2013 while diocesan spending on child protection programs increased under the U.S. Catholic Church’s “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” according to a church-sponsored audit.

  By Francis X. Rocca Catholic News Service  VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis received U.S. President Barack Obama at the Vatican March 27. In what was their first encounter, the two leaders spoke in private for more than 50 minutes, an extraordinarily long time for such a meeting.

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service WASHINGTON — Oral arguments in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court March 25 focused on whether for-profit corporations have religious grounds to object to the new health care law’s requirement that most employers provide contraceptive coverage in their employee health plans.

By John Mulderig Catholic News Service  NEW YORK — A classic bit of impertinence from 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche notwithstanding, it seems that “God’s Not Dead” (Freestyle).

By Francis X. Rocca Catholic News Service  VATICAN CITY — As leader of the universal church, a pope must direct his ministry in both of the ways traditionally described by the Latin terms “ad intra” and “ad extra”: inwardly to the church itself, and outwardly to the rest of the …

By Catholic News Service WASHINGTON — In his first year as the 265th successor of Peter, Pope Francis “has brought to light new dimensions of the Petrine ministry and added new life to the office he holds,” the U.S. bishops’ Administrative Committee said March 11. He has done this in …

By Catholic News Service PEORIA, Ill. — A seven-member team of medical experts convoked by the Vatican reported there is no natural explanation for the survival of a child delivered stillborn and whose heart did not start beating until 61 minutes after his birth.

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service  ROME — Lent is meant to wake up Christians and help them see that God can give them the strength to change their lives and their surroundings, Pope Francis said. Before receiving and distributing ashes at an evening Mass March 5, Ash Wednesday, Pope …

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — When Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran walked onto the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, telling the crowds in Latin: “I announce to you a great joy. We have a pope!” not many people recognized the name of then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos …