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When South Sudan's fledgling democracy suddenly unraveled in December, what started as political infighting within the country's ruling party quickly ripped along ethnic fault lines, often pitting neighbors against each other according to the tribal markings on their faces.Within a few days,

Palestinian Christian institutions charged that Israeli police security measures during Holy Week and Easter hamper access by Christian pilgrims to holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City."The celebrations in the vicinity of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Christian Quarter have been co

"I feel called to take responsibility for all the evil some priests—large in number, but not in proportion to the total—have committed and to ask forgiveness for the damage they've done with the sexual abuse of children," Pope Francis said."The church is aware of this

Questions persist after long-delayed testing of the controversial ‘Jesus Wife’ papyrus

A new paper draws an intriguing conclusion to a question scholars have wrestled with for several decades: Why are Americans dropping out of church?One reason? They’re logging on to the Internet.Allen Downey, a professor of computer science at Massachusetts’ Olin College of Engineeri

A Catholic convent near Jerusalem and a largely Maronite village in Galilee were damaged in recent weeks as a two-year wave of vandalism directed at Christians and Muslims in Israel and the West Bank continued.In late March, anti-Christian and anti-American graffiti was scrawled on the walls of the

Meeting four victims of human trafficking, dozens of religious sisters and senior police chiefs from 20 countries, Pope Francis praised their coordinated efforts to fight against a "crime against humanity.""Human trafficking is an open wound on the body of contemporary society, a scou

A new translation of the Mass has been used in the nation’s Catholic parishes for less than three years, but there are signs that the language—often criticized as stilted and awkward—could be in for another edit.“We’ve tried it, we’ve lived with it, we think it ne

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."Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt "arrived in Syria about 50 ye