Signs Of the Times

U.S. women religious welcomed the conciliatory tone of a Vatican report on religious life and expressed appreciation for its acknowledgement of the important ministry that they practice in the life of the church. They also said the report, released on Dec. 16, opens a new beginning for women religio

Nearly five years after one of the most devastating earthquakes ever to rock the Western Hemisphere, more than 85,000 people still live in dozens of tent camps across Haiti’s expansive earthquake zone.While significant, the number is small compared with the original 1.5 million people who were

Watching a Vatican-brokered diplomatic breakthrough in De-cember that may lead to the normalization of relations between the United States and the island nation of Cuba, Eusebio Mujal-León was hardly a disinterested bystander. A professor at Georgetown University, Mujal-León is the director of a G

Immediately after his election on March 13, 2013, Pope Francis told himself, “Jorge, do not change, continue being yourself because to change at your age would be ridiculous.” He revealed this interesting personal detail in a wide-ranging exclusive multi-part interview with Elisabetta Pi

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 Catholic Church seemed to throw its support behind what is, in Europe at least, an accelerating movement toward the abolition of nuclear weapons during the first day, Dec. 8, of the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.In a message to the conference participants from P

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

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.

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