Signs Of the Times

Pew researchers report that six of the world’s 12 nations with a “very high degree” of religious diversity can be found in the Asia-Pacific region—Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China and Hong Kong; five are in sub-Saharan Africa—Guinea-Bissau, Togo, Ivory Coa

Frans van der Lugt, a 75-year-old Dutch Jesuit who refused to leave war-torn Syria, was beaten by armed men and killed with two bullets to the head, according to a message sent from the Jesuits’ Middle East Province to the Jesuit headquarters in Rome on April 7. • Linda LeMura, named pres

While comprehensive immigration reform remains stalled in Congress, members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops joined residents, migrants and advocates from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border in Nogales, Ariz., on April 1. There they celebrated Mass together, remembering thousands of migra

The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon passed the one million mark on April 3.

In a hard-hitting statement released on April 2, Venezuela’s Roman Catholic Church accused President Nicolas Maduro’s government of “totalitarian” tendencies and “brutal repression” of demonstrators during two months of political unrest that has resulted in the de

“Since the end of the Second World War, the availability of food per person has increased by more than 40 percent,” Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, said, addressing the 25th Regular Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on M

Oral arguments in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 25 focused on whether for-profit corporations have religious grounds to object to the new health care law’s requirement that most employers provide contraceptive coverage in their employee health plans. Oral arguments lasted fo

The clerical abuse survivor nominated by Pope Francis to sit on the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors said the commission needs to achieve concrete change in order to “show other survivors that the church is going to get it right.” Marie Collins, who as a 13-year-old

Noting that for Christians “the death penalty can never be the way to solve problems,” the Coptic Catholic bishop of Assiut, Kyrillos William, spoke out against death sentences handed down by an Egyptian court against more than 500 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. • The British go