Hundreds of Bolivian devotees have arrived at the municipal cemetery of La Paz carrying human skulls adorned with flowers for the Ñatitas festival.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to hundreds of victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades.

Pope Francis' big Catholic reform project has opened with widespread calls for women to take up more positions of responsibility in the church topping the agenda.

Pope Francis will be visiting Belgium on a trip starting Thursday, facing a flock ravaged by countless scandals of priest sexual abuse and dwindling in the face of modernity, where women and gays insist on an equal role and rights.

Flying back to Rome from a lengthy trip to Asia, Pope Francis criticized both U.S. presidential candidates for what he called anti-life policies on abortion and migration.

Mexico’s Catholic leaders have raised their concerns over a controversial judicial reform pushed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Pope Francis has called for the Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea to be particularly close to women who have been abused and marginalized.

When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has compromised the Catholic Church’s credibility around the world had finally arrived in Asia’s newest country.

A couple of decades ago, when Claudia Santos felt the need for spiritual shelter, she dug into her countries’ history and there she found it: Her ancestors, the Mexica.

The congregation at St. Joseph Apache Mission in the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico, is struggling to deal with the hurt caused by their priest removing a cherished painting called the Apache Christ, which portrays Jesus as an Indigenous holy man.

What do Venezuelans believe in.

Another 400,000 people formally have left the Catholic Church in Germany last year.

Two years have passed since a leader of one of Mexico’s organized crime gangs stormed into a Catholic church in the remote Tarahumara mountains and fatally shot two Jesuit priests.

A top U.S. bishop says government officials would be infringing on religious freedom if they were to restrict the Catholic Church’s work serving migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Pope Francis’ apology for using a vulgar term to refer to gay men was the latest comment to make headlines about the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality.

A long-planned series of Catholic pilgrimages is getting underway across the United States this weekend, with pilgrims embarking on four different routes.

The 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro installed an atheist, Communist government that sought to replace the Catholic Church as the guiding force in the lives of Cubans.

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker may have stirred controversy for his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism, but he received a standing ovation at the May 11 commencement ceremony at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

The clergy sexual abuse scandal is slowly gathering steam in Italy.

The city of Baltimore has agreed to pay $275,000 toward the legal fees of a far-right Catholic media group to settle a lawsuit over the city’s unsuccessful attempt to block a rally in 2021.

Five years ago this week, Pope Francis convened an unprecedented summit of bishops from around the world to impress on them that clergy abuse was a global problem and that they needed to do something about it.

Nineteen priests kicked out of the country, dozens of incidents of harassment and church desecrations, rural areas lacking worship and social services.

Across town from where he last served the Catholic church at St. Joseph's, Father Bob Hoeffner's neighbors Tuesday said the church placed two crosses at his doorstep. One was in Father Bob's memory.

Actor Shia LaBeouf has converted to Catholicism.

Pope Francis has formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples.

Pope Francis is marking a birthday.

Black survivors have been nearly invisible in the Catholic Church sexual abuse crisis — even in Baltimore, home to a historic Black Catholic community.

Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue was illuminated with a welcome to Brazil message for Taylor Swift.

Catholic leaders called for peace in a war-torn world and unity amid strife within their own ranks as U.S. bishops gather in Baltimore.

The head of the Catholic church in China has begun a trip to Hong Kong at the invitation of the city’s pope-appointed Roman Catholic cardinal, marking the first official visit by a Beijing bishop in history.

For many Catholic Poles, their country’s heart beats in Czestochowa.

In Italy, centuries-old churches dot the landscape, sanctuaries and processions draw crowds, and nearly 80% of the population profess themselves Catholic.

Pope Francis will open this week a global gathering of Catholic bishops and laypeople to discuss the future of the church.

The archive of the Vicariate of Solidarity gives an account of a painful episode in Chile’s history: 47,000 instances of human rights violations during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who took power after a military coup that deposed President Salvador Allende 50 years ago.

Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church.

An Australian court has allowed a civil case to proceed against a Catholic archdiocese involving child sex abuse allegations against late Cardinal George Pell.

Pope Francis is beginning a five-day trip to Portugal for World Youth Day.

Pope Francis is making a five-day visit next week to Portugal, where a scandal that erupted earlier this year over Catholic Church sex abuse is still simmering.

The Black Catholic nun who founded the United States’ first African American religious congregation has advanced another step toward sainthood.

The leader of the nation’s Catholic bishops weighed in on ongoing immigration issues during their spring meeting in Florida.

Pope Francis' weekly general audience often gives ordinary people rare access to the pope.

As Republican-governed states across the nation advance numerous bills targeting transgender young people, America’s faith leaders are starkly divided in their assessment.

Pope Francis has decided to give women the right to vote at an upcoming meeting of bishops.

During the “Burning of Judas” celebrations that take place every Holy Saturday in some Mexican neighborhoods, people gather to light fireworks that destroy colorful figures embodying evil.

A “stable share” of Americans has participated in religious services in some way – virtually or in person – during the coronavirus pandemic, but in-person attendance is slightly lower than it was before the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Vatican has closed its embassy in Nicaragua after the country's government proposed suspending diplomatic relations.

Spain’s ombudsman says an independent commission set up a year ago to investigate historic sex abuse by the Catholic church has collected testimonies from 445 victims, as the nation tackles an issue other European countries acted on long ago.

Pope Francis is marking the 10th anniversary of his election as pope on Monday.

Nicaragua ’s government says it has proposed suspending relations with the Vatican days after Pope Francis compared President Daniel Ortega’s administration to a communist or Nazi dictatorship amid a crackdown on the Catholic Church in the country.

Dozens of priests, nuns, seminarians and church workers have fled Nicaragua in recent years, or been exiled by President Daniel Ortega’s government, which considers them a threat.

A new complex erected on the shores of the Persian Gulf, in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, houses a Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue and an Islamic mosque.

A committee looking into historic child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church says 512 alleged victims have come forward, but a report by the expert panel warned that the true number is likely higher than 4,800.

Pope Francis says there's a risk that a reform process in the German church could become “ideological."

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court has ruled that inaction by the country’s former president and four others led to Easter Sunday bomb attacks in 2019 that killed nearly 270 people and ordered them to pay compensation for violating the basic rights of the victims and their families.

Pope Francis joined tens of thousands of faithful in bidding farewell to Benedict XVI at a rare requiem Mass for a dead pope presided over by a living one.

Rapa Nui – the remote Chilean territory in the mid-Pacific widely known as Easter Island – is home to a Catholic church featuring artwork that reflects that islanders’ ancestral culture as well as Christian beliefs.

In many ways, the service at the Catholic Church of Our lady of the Rosary feels like a standard Sunday Mass.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City is the one of the world’s most visited and beloved religious venues.

Germany’s Catholic bishops are vowing to continue their controversial reform process after a week of tense meetings with Vatican officials seeking to put the brakes on proposals to ordain women, bless gay unions and rethink church teaching on sexuality.

U.S. Catholic bishops plan to elect new leaders as they gather in Baltimore this week.

The Vatican has decided to launch a preliminary sex abuse investigation into French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, after he admitted to having behaved in a “reprehensible way” with a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago.

One of France’s high-ranking prelates of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, says that he had abused a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago and is withdrawing from his religious duties.

The head of a lay committee looking into historic child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church says the problem in the past had been “widespread” and on some occasions reached “truly endemic” proportions.

Pope Francis is calling for unity in the Catholic Church as he marks the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.

Pope Francis has expressed worry about the situation in Nicaragua following the detention of a Roman Catholic bishop and several priests.

The Vatican says a preliminary church investigation into sexual assault allegations by a Canadian woman against a top cardinal has determined the case doesn’t warrant further investigation.

Pope Francis has come face-to-face with a long-standing demand from Indigenous peoples during his Canada pilgrimage.

Pope Francis has arrived in Quebec at a time when many French Canadians are not only continuing to move away from religion but explicitly rejecting it.

Pope Francis plans to apologize to Indigenous groups on Canadian soil for harms inflicted at church-run residential schools.

Pope Francis has named three women to serve as members of the Vatican office that vets bishop nominations.

Pope Francis has taken another step to reign in and regulate new religious groups in the Catholic Church.

The new president of the Italian Conference of Bishops says he would launch an independent inquiry on sex abuse by Catholic clergy in Italy.

Pope Francis has named a bishop in his own image as the new head of the Italian bishops conference.

A Roman Catholic bishop in Nicaragua has begun an “indefinite fast” inside a church to protest increasing harassment from national police, who he said followed him throughout the entire previous day.

The top Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land says Israel's police attack on mourners during a funeral for an Al Jazeera journalist was a “severe” violation of human rights.

Rwandans have begun a solemn commemoration of the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu who tried to protect them were killed.

Pope Francis has made a historic apology to Indigenous peoples for the “deplorable” abuses suffered in Canada’s residential schools.

Spain's Roman Catholic bishops have asked a private law firm to investigate past and present sexual abuse committed by clergy, members of religious orders and others associated with the church.

By the thousands, Americans have been seeking religious exemptions in order to circumvent COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

A report on decades of sexual abuse in Germany that shone an unflattering spotlight on retired Pope Benedict XVI has come on top of already strong pressure in Germany to reconsider Catholic rules on issues including homosexuality and women’s roles.

The Catholic Church in Rome is strongly condemning a funeral procession outside a local church in which the casket was draped in a Nazi flag and mourners gave the fascist salute.

Pope Francis has taken a step to reorganize the Vatican’s powerful doctrine office.

The Catholic Church and the northern Italian city of Ferrara are making their peace with Antonio Vivaldi nearly 300 years after the city’s archbishop effectively canceled the staging of one of his operas.

Plans are progressing for a meeting next year between Pope Francis and the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church following their historic encounter in Havana in 2016.

Pope Francis has agreed to meet with the commission that published a ground-breaking report into clergy sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church.

France’s Catholic Church has announced its decision to financially compensate sex abuse victims by selling property assets and if needed, taking out a loan.

A Nebraska attorney general’s office investigation has identified 258 victims who made credible allegations of sexual abuse against 57 Catholic church officials in the state going back decades.

Victims of sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church have welcomed a new report that says an estimated 330,000 children were sexually abused over the past 70 years.

Pope Francis is urging European bishops to listen to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and consider them partners in reforming the Catholic Church.

Vatican officials are refusing to say whether women will have a vote when Pope Francis convenes the Catholic hierarchy and experts to the Vatican for a meeting on the Catholic church in 2023.

Parishioners of a church outside New Orleans were surprised to find electricity had been restored overnight, allowing for an indoor service on Sunday.

Fernando Karadima, a Chilean priest who was at the center of a sexual abuse scandal that shook the Catholic Church in Chile and who was eventually defrocked by the pope, has died.

More than 150 boarding schools for Indigenous children in the United States were operated by religious groups between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries — and churches are now reckoning with their traumatic legacy.

Pope Francis has agreed to meet in December with Indigenous survivors of Canada’s notorious residential schools.

The Vatican has released a long-awaited update to the criminal section of its Code of Canon Law, the internal legal system that regulates the life of the 1.3 billion-member Catholic Church.

A Nobel laureate, a Netflix star and a fashion model have joined the board of a new foundation that hopes to raise money for LGBT rights groups in Poland.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is planning to devote part of its national meeting next month to the sensitive issue of which Catholics are worthy of receiving Communion, despite calls for a delay.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda on Wednesday described a French report documenting France’s role in the 1994 genocide as “a good thing,” welcoming efforts in Paris to “move forward with a good understanding of what happened” 27 years after the massacres that shocked the world.

The report commissioned by Cologne's archbishop, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, absolved Woelki himself of any neglect of duty with respect to abuse victims. Francis has previously declined, at least initially, to accept resignations when they were offered to repent for mishandling sex abuse cases, though he has relented after time. Woelki said he also would temporarily suspend two Cologne church officials based on the findings of the investigation. The report found Schwaderlapp neglected his duty to inform and report abuse allegations in eight cases. AdIn January, a new system drawn up by the church to compensate abuse victims took effect.

FILE - In this Saturday, May 8, 2010 file photo, from left, Liege Bishop Aloysius Jousten, Brussels Archbishop Andre Leonard, Tournai Bishop Guy Harpigny and Antwerp Bishop Johan Bonny attend a press conference at the Vatican. Belgian bishop Johan Bonny, in an opinion piece, has lashed out at the Vatican over its decree that the Catholic Church won't bless same-sex unions. The Congregation's note distinguished between blessing same-sex unions and the church’s welcoming and blessing of gay people, which it endorsed. It argued that such unions were not part of God’s plan and that any sacramental recognition of them could be confused with marriage. AdThe orthodoxy office's document argued that same-sex unions can't be blessed by the Catholic Church because they are not part of that plan.