Breaking News

Church

Special feature

DILI, East Timor (AP) — When Pope Francis makes his trip to Asia’s newest country, East Timor, it will make him the second pope to visit after John Paul in 1989, and the first since the country gained independence from Indonesia in 2002. It also comes only two years after the Vatican acknowledged that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, and three years after a popular American missionary was convicted of molesting young girls. The two clergymen still enjoy widespread support among the ...

Special feature

ROME (AP) — The Vatican has expelled the founder of an influential Peruvian religious movement, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, after the Catholic hierarchy spent more than a decade of downplaying allegations of sexual and psychological abuse and financial corruption against him and his community. The decree against Luis Fernando Figari came after Pope Francis last year ordered an investigation into the Sodalitium by the Vatican’s top sex abuse experts to get to the bottom of the scandal. Previous commissions and investigations had failed to fully address the group’s ...

Special feature

BOSTON (AP) — Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Sean O’Malley as archbishop of Boston on Monday and named the bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, Richard Henning, to replace him as leader of one of the most important Catholic archdioceses in the United States. The Vatican announcement didn’t mention O’Malley’s other main role as the pope’s main adviser on fighting clergy sexual abuse as head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, suggesting he would remain in that capacity until a new commission leader is named. St. John Paul II had ...

Special feature

(AP) — The majority of Venezuelans are religious — just like parts of the country’s political history. But as they prepare for the upcoming presidential election, it’s hard to say exactly how religious Venezuelans are and what specifically they believe. The government has not released official figures in more than a decade. Most estimates provided by researchers and academics are reached through projections and field work. Though religion has not played a key role during the presidential race, it is notable that voters will have a chance to cast their ballot on Sunday for ...

Guest column

I didn’t know any of the graduates in Escanaba this year. Yet I was compelled to attend a graduation ceremony in that town. Why? Holy Name High School (HNHS) held its first graduation event in 53 years on May 31, and I was a member of the last class of Crusaders to graduate from there in ...

Special feature

St. Isidore received a controversial go-ahead from a state school board in 2023. Like all charter schools, it would have been funded with public money, but with more independence than typical public schools. St. Isidore’s would have been the nation’s first religious charter school, raising immediate concerns about its constitutionality. Oklahoma’s attorney general, Republican Gentner Drummond, soon filed suit against the charter school board, arguing that the school would have violated both the state and federal constitutions. The dispute reached Oklahoma’s Supreme Court in ...