Peter Smith

In 1989 members of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) disrupted a Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. They faced minor charges under state law.

Centuries of church schisms show that if there's a doctrine to be fought over, there's a good chance Christians will fight about it. That repeated splintering is what makes the Council of Nicaea — a meeting of bishops 1,700 years ago in present-day Turkey — so significant today. And why Pope Leo XIV is traveling on Nov. 28 to the site of this foundational moment in Christian unity as part of his first major foreign trip as pope.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is making his first visit in four years to the United States, where he was scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump and receive honors for his environmental advocacy.

Orthodoxy is the majority religion in both Russia and Ukraine and has served as a cultural and spiritual battleground in tandem with the wider war.

As if the slaughter of children amid screams and shattered stained glass wasn't cause enough for grief, American opinion makers were convulsed once again this week in a debate over the role of prayer in the wake of a mass shooting, this time at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.

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.

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. 

"That's what we wanted to do through many of the exhibits, to show the feasibility of the ark," says Ken Ham, the organizer behind the Ark Encounter theme park and related attractions.

Some of the fundamental differences between the U.S. president and the late pope — not only their divergent styles but their positions on migration, the environment and poverty — will come into sharper focus as President Donald Trump travels to Rome for Pope Francis' funeral.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the administration, by withholding millions even for reimbursements of costs incurred before the sudden cut-off of funding, violates various laws as well as the constitutional provision giving the power of the purse to Congress, which already approved the funding.

Christianity is by far the largest faith in America, and Christian conservatives have a strong grip on the levers of government. That dominance is leaving many to question why President Donald Trump's new task force on eradicating anti-Christian bias is needed.

Nationally, Catholic voters have been closely divided in recent presidential elections. This year, in the vital state of Pennsylvania, they’ll likely comprise at least a quarter of the electorate — and thus play a pivotal role in deciding the overall outcome.

Here are some takeaways from the AP's reporting on Vance's Catholicism and the Catholic thinkers in his circle of influence.

The professors and media personalities in this network don’t all agree on everything — even on what to call themselves —  but most go by “postliberal.” They share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. But where Catholic conservatives of the past have seen big government as a problem rather than a solution, the postliberals want a muscular government — one that they control.

It’s just a snapshot of a wider project. Catholic pilgrims are in the middle of a two-month journey on four routes across the United States. They're planning to converge on Indianapolis in mid-July for a climactic stadium gathering called the National Eucharistic Congress, the first such event in more than 80 years.

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.

When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children under state law, Chief Justice Tom Parker cited verses from the Bible and Christian theologians in his concurring opinion. 

The founder of the far-right, unofficial Catholic media group Church Militant has resigned for an unspecified violation of the organization's morality clause, the group said in a statement Nov. 21.

Ukraine's parliament voted overwhelmingly Oct. 19 to advance legislation seen as effectively banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church over its ties to Moscow, despite the church's insistence that it is fully independent and supportive of Ukraine's fight against Russian invaders.

Thirty percent of Americans don't identify with a religious group — but not all of them are atheists or agnostics. In fact, 43% of the group known as the "nones" say they believe in God, according to a new poll.