Signs Of the Times

Listening to President Obama’s speech on Sept. 10, outlining his administration’s purportedly new strategy for defeating Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, David Cortright found himself wondering what, if anything the United States has learned from its long and costly involvement

President Obama’s decision to delay executive measures on immigration until after the November elections drew sharp rebukes from some of the most vocal advocates for immigrants, while others continued to urge specific actions toward reform and analysts weighed whether the delay hurts or helps

At least 124,000 migrants entered Italy in the first eight months of this year, more than twice the 60,000 who arrived in all of 2013. The vast majority landed first in Sicily. Seeing to the new arrivals’ immediate needs in Sicily’s multiple port cities is now a joint effort between chur

‘I’m doing this for my future, for my sons to have a union,” Jamne Izquierdo said, holding up a sign demanding a better wage outside a McDonald’s restaurant on 8th Avenue and 56th Street in New York on Sept. 4. Izquierdo has worked at a different Manhattan McDonald’s fa

Chicago Catholics are as feisty and independent as the wind that famously whips across this city from its lakeshore. In decades past, they enthusiastically embraced the labor and Catholic Worker movements. At some parishes today, lay people give sub-radar reflections at Sunday Mass.“Catholics

In a technological and cultural first, Pope Francis joined a Google Hangout, video chatting with young people across five continents, including a student in the gang-infested neighborhood of La Campanera, in San Salvador, on Sept. 4. • The cause for canonization of Archbishop Fulton Sheen has b

Amnesty International has issued a devastating report detailing summary executions, child abductions, sexual assaults, forced religious conversions and “ethnic cleansing on a historic scale” committed by the Islamic State militant group as it swept across northern Iraq from its base of o

The State of California’s Corrections Department will end its policy of isolating mentally ill inmates for up to 23 hours a day and instead move them into specialized housing, where they will receive more humane treatment.The move, announced on Aug. 29, comes after U.S. District Court Judge La

Pope Francis’ choice of Albania as the destination of his first international trip in Europe reflects his trademark pastoral approach: head to the peripheries; bring healing to the suffering. But his Sept. 21 visit to the poor, Muslim-majority nation also will highlight, to a world increasingl

Catholic aid organizations are hopeful that the most recent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas will hold as they begin to assess the needs in Gaza after 50 days of war. “This is a window of opportunity,” said Sami El-Yousef, Catholic Near East Welfare Association’s regional direct