Speaking from Baghdad on Dec. 14, Kevin Hartigan, Catholic Relief Services' regional director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe told America that his team was bracing for what may be unprecedented numbers of people in flight from the contested city.

The struggle to liberate Mosul from ISIS militants has entered a third month of often savage combat.

The woman's killing in a public square was the cruelest moment in the descent of this once proud city.

The pope asked Assad "to ensure that international humanitarian law is fully respected with regard to the protection of the civilians and access to humanitarian aid."

“I am very aware that my ethnicity is dying.”

Deep inside Syria, a bishop worked around the blurred edges of international law to save the lives of more than 200 people.

The plight of these children and teens highlights the growing problem of unaccompanied child migrants throughout Europe.

Emotions ran high when the church bell tolled for the first time in more than two years.

More than 100,000 Christians from the area had already left. The archbishop of Mosul begged the remainder to flee, too.“They [Kurdish fighters] left us alone, and we were few in number with no weapons, and we could do nothing to face the Islamic State,” said Banni. “We ran.”A

Trying to impose the will of the United States on Iraq (and now Syria) took a deadly toll, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, destroying much of modern and ancient Iraq, sending into exile millions of refugees—and created ISIS.