The Associated Press

Roman Catholic priests sexually abused minors across Iowa for decades while church leaders covered it up, but reforms implemented in recent years have largely stopped the problem, a three-year review by Iowa’s attorney general concluded.

Premier Mario Draghi defended the independence of Italy’s parliament on June 23 in the face of formal objections by the Vatican to a proposed law that would extend additional discrimination protections to the LGBT community.

The Vatican has formally opposed a proposed Italian law expanding anti-discrimination protections to the LGBT community, a leading Italian newspaper reported Tuesday. Activists immediately denounced the move as "unprecedented" Vatican meddling in Italy's legislative process.

Justice Samuel Alito called it a "wisp" of a decision — a Supreme Court ruling June 17 that favored Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia but was far from the constitutional gale wind that would have reshaped how courts interpret religious liberty under the First Amendment.

Robert Schuman, a French statesman who paved the way for the bloc that eventually evolved into European Union, has moved ahead on the Catholic Church's path toward possible sainthood.

Pope Francis on June 20 decried the suffering of refugees in Myanmar and pleaded that houses of worship be respected as neutral places to take shelter.

The Supreme Court on June 17 unanimously sided with a Catholic foster care agency that says its religious views prevent it from working with same-sex couples as foster parents. The justices said the city of Philadelphia wrongly limited its relationship with the group as a result of the agency's policy.

A Rome court has strongly backed Vatican prosecutors in their pursuit of an Italian businessman accused of bilking the Holy See of millions of euros in a London real estate deal, saying he used bad-faith negotiations, last-minute contractual changes and a web of accomplices.

Nicaraguan police have arrested another opposition politician, bringing to six the number detained over the weekend.

Pope Francis demanded June 13 that humanitarian aid reach hungry people in the war-torn Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, where Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers are blocking food deliveries and other assistance.

Italian police searched the offices of a Sardinian charity and diocese on June 9 on behalf of Vatican prosecutors who are investigating a once-powerful cardinal on alleged embezzlement charges.

European evaluators warned June 9 that the Vatican's efforts to investigate and prosecute financial crimes were suffering from understaffing and inexperience, as well as the mistaken belief that its own cardinals and bishops were immune to criminal conduct.

When his bishop demanded his resignation – after a series of divisive remarks about politics and the pandemic – Altman refused to oblige and has since raised more than $640,000 from his conservative supporters to defend himself.

Pope Francis on June 6 expressed pain over the discovery in Canada of the remains of 215 Indigenous students of church-run residential schools, but didn't offer the apology sought by the Canadian prime minister. 

A judge on June 4 ordered a dozen Australian media companies to pay fines from 1,000 Australian dollars ($766) to AU$450,000 ($345,000) for breaching a gag order by publishing references to Cardinal George Pell's since-overturned convictions in 2018 for child sexual abuse.

Saying Attorney General Josh Kaul lacks the authority to initiate an investigation, the Milwaukee Archdiocese is refusing to turn over documents related to sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

Canada's Indigenous services minister said Pope Francis needs to apologize for the role the Catholic Church played in Canada's residential school system, days after the remains of 215 children were located at what was once the country's largest such school. 

Lebanon, a Mediterranean nation of 5 million, has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East and is the only Arab country with a Christian head of state. Christians make up a third of the population.

Pope Francis has changed church law to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority and to say that laypeople who hold church office can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes.

An increasingly influential Polish Catholic legal institute on Friday inaugurated a university in Warsaw that aims to educate a new generation of conservative lawyers in central Europe who it hopes will also shape wider European culture.