The Associated Press

Native American groups say hunt violates treaty rights and endangers animal sacred to them.

Police in Northern Ireland on Oct. 6 announced an investigation into allegations of physical and sexual abuse at church-run institutions that housed unmarried women and their children.

The Vatican tribunal ruled Wednesday that prosecutors had deprived 10 defendants of their rights and ordered prosecutors to turn over key pieces of evidence and redo their investigation for some suspects.

A Vatican tribunal absolved a former altar boy of charges that he molested a younger boy in the Vatican’s youth seminary.

The Vatican prosecutor conceded procedural errors Oct. 5 in his fraud and corruption investigation into the Holy See's finances and offered to remedy them by essentially starting over, throwing the trial of 10 people into question before it really got off the ground.

An estimated 330,000 children were victims of sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church over the past 70 years.

Poland's Catholic Church appealed Monday for humanitarian assistance for migrants from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere who have been seeking to reach Europe by crossing from Belarus into Poland.

Defense lawyers are questioning the legitimacy of the Vatican tribunal where 10 people are on trial on finance-related charges, arguing their clients can’t get a fair trial in an absolute monarchy where the pope has already intervened in the case and where prosecutors have failed to turn over key evidence.

An independent commission examining sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in France believes 3,000 child abusers — two-thirds of them priests — have worked in the church over the past 70 years.

Three Vatican Swiss Guards who have refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19 upon Holy See orders have voluntarily left the storied corps to return to Switzerland, a Swiss Guard official said Oct. 3.

A judge has refused to block Creighton University's requirement that all students get vaccinated against COVID-19 despite the objections of a handful of students who said getting the shots would violate their religious beliefs against abortion.

Mexico celebrated a relatively little-known date Sept. 27 marking 200 years since the victory of the 1810-1821 independence movement. The commemorations included a message from Pope Francis acknowledging the errors of the Roman Catholic Church in supporting the old order.

A high-ranking Roman Catholic cardinal who was placed on a ventilator after contracting COVID-19 said he has moved into a house but is still struggling to recover from the disease.

Catholic bishops in Canada apologized Friday to Indigenous peoples for the suffering endured in residential schools.

Retired Roman Catholic Bishop John McCormack, who faced criticism for his role in Boston's clergy sex abuse scandal and led New Hampshire’s diocese during its own reckoning, has died.

Residents of a Vermont orphanage want the Catholic Church to pay for therapy as they continue to recover from what they described as abuse at the hands of the nuns and priests.

Pope Francis urged European bishops on Sept. 18 to listen to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and consider them partners in reform, warning that their failure to do so risks the very future of the Catholic Church.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Sept. 16 criticized some in the judiciary for veering into the role of legislators and politicians, saying it is not the role of judges to make policy or to base decisions on their personal feelings or religious beliefs.

Three sex abuse lawsuits filed against a New Jersey diocese and announced Thursday include claims that defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick abused a young man in the 1980s.

Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of the archbishop of Hamburg, who offered to step down in March after a report faulted him for his handling of sexual abuse allegations in his previous diocese.