"The situation here is worse than the (post-) earthquake scenario. It will be a very harsh Christmas for us this year," Father Pius Perumana, director of Caritas Nepal, said Dec. 22 from Kathmandu, the capital.

"It isn't a question of opposing someone else's position or defending particular values for their own sake, but rather of interpreting the unchanging summons of the Gospel in a deeply evangelical way for the present times," Archbishop Polak explained.

The announcement was made Dec. 23 in Aachen, Germany by the prize's executive committee. Citing his address to the European Parliament in 2014, the committee commended the pope's message of "peace and understanding" as well as "compassion, tolerance, solidarity and the integrity of creation throughout his pontificate."

Sandra Bland's traffic stop became part of a national dialogue on race and police use of force

The primary objective of the settlement is to transform the culture of the archdiocese into one that is vigilant about preventing child abuse.

It wasn't the Irish alone who bore the stigma of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. Name the ethnic group, and suspicions, fears and slanders have been posed against them when Americans who were more settled in this country thought these immigrant groups posed a threat to the American way of life—or, more likely, the status quo that benefited the earlier arrivals.