Associated Press

A Nagasaki cathedral has blessed the final piece to complete its restoration nearly 80 years after being destroyed by the second U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Japan: a reproduction of its lost bell restored by a group of Americans.

Top church leaders in the Holy Land asserted Monday that Israeli authorities "facilitate and enable" the presence of Israeli settlers who have intensified attacks in recent weeks on the only entirely Christian Palestinian village remaining in the occupied West Bank.

Pope Leo XIV called Sunday for "merciful compassion" for the world's poor, victims of tyranny and wars, as he celebrated Mass in a parish church that has special spiritual ties to Leo's own Augustinian religious order

Prominent figures on the right like Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance have espoused pronatalist beliefs, arguing more children are good for society.

One hundred years ago, a public high school teacher stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching human evolution. His nation is still feeling the reverberations today.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday and thanked him for the Vatican's efforts to help return children taken by Russia. Both he and Leo suggested the Vatican could host peace talks to end the war.

Rescuers maneuvered through challenging terrain as a desperate search for the missing girls stretched into a third day after floodwaters surged into a summer camp. Texans were asked to pray that survivors would be found.

Leo is a methodical, hard-working and well-prepared manager who wants to read entire reports, not just the executive summaries, before making decisions, people who know and work with him say.

 "I've been fortunate to meet some of the most magnificent, good people in this world, and they've been most generous and gracious to me," Fr. James Kelly says.

Several residents at the Dolton, Illinois, board meeting were skeptical about any benefit to taxpayers, questioning whether the financially strained village could afford to purchase the home and maintain area streets.

The Supreme Court preserved a key part of the Affordable Care Act's preventive health care coverage requirements on Friday, rejecting a challenge from Christian employers to the provision that affects some 150 million Americans.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops took a firm but mixed approach to the bill, while other Catholic leaders signed an interfaith letter asking senators to oppose the bill.

"I really just want to make Catholicism warm," one of the men said.

The Yup’ik woman became known in church communities across Alaska for quiet generosity, piety and compassion — particularly as a consoler of women who had suffered from abuse, from miscarriage, from the most intimate of traumas. 

The justices reversed lower-court rulings in favor of the Montgomery County school system in suburban Washington. 

The Vatican Museums on Thursday unveiled the last and most important of the restored Raphael Rooms, the spectacularly frescoed reception rooms of the Apostolic Palace that in some ways rival the Sistine Chapel as the peak of high Renaissance artistry.

Pope Leo XIV doubled down on Friday on his appeal for unity in the polarized Catholic Church, urging priests to act in communion with their superiors and be models of reconciliation in a world driven by conflicts and divisions.

Pope Leo XIV urged the warring sides in the Israel-Iran war to "reject the logic of bullying and revenge" and choose a path of dialogue and diplomacy to reach peace as he expressed solidarity with all Christians in the Middle East.

Leo met in St. Peter's Basilica with about 400 bishops and cardinals from 38 countries attending this week's special Holy Year celebrations for clergy.