New law provides additional oversight and training for federal child care program.
The recent Synod on the Family had its surface controversies: the admission of the divorced and remarried to the sacraments and the pastoral care of homosexuals. It also had its background theoretical controversies. The Vatican’s Humanum conference in November probed one of them: the complemen
History was made in the Vatican on Dec. 2, when Pope Francis and other leaders of the world’s main religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism—signed a joint declaration to work together to eradicate modern slavery in its various forms by the year 2020. Pope Franc
The shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., exposed long-ignored, long-simmering tensions in the United States. Ferguson amounts to a kind of national Rorschach test on race. Polls show blacks and whites hold decidedly different views about the unarmed teenager’s death.
Catholic, Anglican, Sunni and Shiite leaders vowed to do all they can to combat “ugly and hideous” distortions of religion and to involve more women—often the first victims of violence—in official interreligious dialogues. Holding the third Christian-Muslim Summit in Rome on
In Istanbul on Nov. 30, Pope Francis stated unequivocally that “full communion” was his goal with the 300-million-member Orthodox churches. He added that the only condition for achieving that unity is “the shared profession of faith.” Significantly, seeking to overcome suspic
Citing a lack of funding, the World Food Program announced on Dec. 1 that it was suspending food vouchers for more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees, a move its president called “disastrous for many already suffering families.” • The final report of a Vatican-ordered study of co