Signs Of the Times

South Sudan’s civil war has taken a brutal turn, despite appeals from the country’s church leaders to stop the violence. In the oil hub of Bentiu, rebels loyal to ousted Vice President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, killed more than 200 civilians and wounded more than 400 in mid-April, the

Reports that Pope Francis told an Argentine woman civilly married to a divorced man that she could receive Communion “cannot be confirmed as reliable,” said Federico Lombardi, S.J., the Vatican spokesman, on April 24. World media quickly picked up the story after an account of the phone

Pro-Russian protesters stormed government buildings in eastern Ukrainian cities.

A small group of Teresian Carmelites from Kerala, India, began working in the Diocese of Bismarck, N.D., in February, the first time members of the congregation have served in the Western Hemisphere. • Jesuits in Honduras have demanded an investigation after Carlos Mejia Orellana, 35, marketing

“I feel called to take responsibility for all the evil some priests…have committed and to ask forgiveness for the damage they’ve done [because of] the sexual abuse of children,” Pope Francis said, speaking at the International Catholic Child Bureau meeting in Rome on April 11. &l

An ecumenical prayer service called for healing on April 9 at Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church in Murrysville, Pa., after a 16-year-old student rampaged in the hallways of Franklin Regional High School near Pittsburgh, wounding 22. • Along with other leaders and organizations that defend the r

When the pope was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, he dragged the hidden problem of human slavery into broad daylight, annually celebrating open-air Masses in the city’s Constitution Square for and with victims of human trafficking. Now, as leader of the universal church, Pope F

Georgetown hosts dialogue between believers and nonbelievers on role of religion in society.

State visits are usually occasions of pomp and circumstance signifying little. That was not true, however, of the recent formal introduction of President Michael Higgins of Ireland to Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. During the president’s historic four-day visit, from April 8 to 12,

Pope Francis urging a peaceful, negotiated solution to the ongoing political crisis.