Associated Press

Robin Westman left behind writings that "expressed hate towards almost every group imaginable." But police found no clear motive for the attack on the church Westman once attended. 

James Dobson, who founded the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family and was a politically influential campaigner against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, died on Thursday. He was 89.

Pope Leo XIV asked people to fast on Friday to pray for peace and justice in the Middle East and Ukraine, issuing a special appeal as he returned to the Vatican from summer vacation.

Pope Leo XIV prayed Friday for a peaceful end to the "increasingly deafening violence" of wars around the world as he celebrated a Catholic feast day on the same day as a high-stakes U.S.-Russia summit over the war in Ukraine.

Since early June, the Trump administration has significantly ramped up immigration arrests and raids, especially in Southern California. Many faith leaders and groups — including the Catholic Church, which has millions of adherents in the region — have come out in support of the region's immigrant communities. 

When Alaska Natives debate proposals to drill, mine or otherwise develop the landscape of the nation’s largest state, it involves more than an environmental or economic question. It’s also a spiritual and cultural one.

Eight people, including an Irish missionary and a 3-year-old child, remained missing on Aug. 4 after gunmen stormed an orphanage in Haiti, the latest attack in an area controlled by a powerful collection of armed gangs.

A new Arkansas law requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments cannot be enforced in a handful of the state's largest school districts where parents brought challenges on the grounds that it violates the separation of church and state, a federal judge ruled Aug. 4.

It all has the vibe of a World Youth Day, the Catholic Woodstock festival that Pope John Paul II inaugurated and made famous in 2000 in Rome at the very same Tor Vergata field. 

Italy agreed to a Vatican plan to turn a 430-hectare (1,000-acre) field north of Rome, once the source of controversy between the two, into a vast solar farm that the Holy See hopes will generate enough electricity to meet its needs and turn Vatican City into the world's first carbon-neutral state.

Pope Leo XIV surprised tens of thousands of young Catholics and showed up unexpectedly at a Holy Year welcome ceremony, thrilling the kids and receiving a rock star's welcome in the first big youth event of his pontificate.

Pope Leo XIV called for a renewed commitment to diplomacy to resolve conflicts as he marked the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords, the landmark Cold War-era agreement that ushered in a new era of security and human rights.

Pope Leo XIV received a rock star's welcome at the Vatican's festival of Catholic influencers as he urged them to ensure that human relations don't suffer with the spread of digital ecosystems and artificial intelligence.

The office that manages Vatican investments and real estate reported a profit of 62 million euros (around $63 million) in 2024, up 16 million euros from 2023.

"The sweat, the foot pain, the blisters, the hunger, they help you understand little by little that ultimately it doesn't all depend on you. There is something else that carries you forward," Fr. Josep Lluís Iriberri says.

Half a million young people are expected to pour into Rome next week for the biggest event of the 2025 Holy Year: a weeklong Jubilee celebration for young Catholics that will sorely test their tolerance for heat and the Eternal City's ability to provide public services, security and logistical support during its peak tourist season.

A diverse group — faith leaders, college students, grandmothers, retired lawyers and professors — has been showing up at immigration courts across the nation to escort immigrants at risk of being detained for deportation by masked ICE officials. They're giving families moral and logistical support, and bearing witness as the people are taken away.

Pope Leo XIV marked the 56th anniversary of man's arrival on the moon Sunday with a visit to the Vatican astronomical observatory in Castel Gandolfo and a call to astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

On July 11, 1995, Serbs overran Srebrenica, at the time a U.N.-protected safe area. They separated at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters and slaughtered them.