Catholic News Service

The Election Day defeat of Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota, will shrink the number of pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives by two when the 117th Congress is seated in January.

In Italy, a person's support for — or opposition to — Pope Francis has a stronger connection to their political affiliation or worldview than to their faith, a recent survey concluded.

Questions have been raised about how the church should determine whether a lay movement should be reformed or dissolved when there is abuse or corruption.

A Catholic bishop in Belarus accused President Alexander Lukashenko of "insult and slander" after Lukashenko charged the church's exiled archbishop with planning to "destroy the country" and called for a bar on foreign clergy.

Cardinal-designate Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, 80, was among the 13 churchmen named to the College of Cardinals Oct. 25. Arizmendi's project of building a native church in a mostly indigenous diocese caused conflict with the church hierarchy and land-owning elites, but has found new appreciation since the election of Pope Francis.

The Supreme Court seemed willing to find a compromise about a Catholic social service agency shut out from Philadelphia's foster care program for not accepting same-sex couples as foster parents. 

Churches in the Philippines opened their doors to offer shelter to some of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled their homes to avoid the wrath of Super Typhoon Goni that struck the Bicol region in southern Luzon. Some of the victims were buried alive by mudslides around a volcano.

Caritas, the church's charitable agency, was responding to Hurricane Eta, which hit Nicaragua Nov. 3 and threatened to provoke devastating flooding and destruction as it moved through Central America.

Prayer has the power to take all those things in life that seem like a condemnation and turn them into something good, Pope Francis said.

As COVID-19-related deaths in Italy reached their highest daily level since early May and Italy began enacting new restrictions to slow the spread, the Vatican decided it will once again close its museums to the public.

Bishops who want to establish a religious order in their dioceses must first obtain the written permission of the Holy See, Pope Francis said.

A lack of oversight and control over the Vatican Secretariat of State's investment activities may have facilitated some bad property deals, said Bishop Nunzio Galantino, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.

A report by The New York Times says Central American migrant children seeking asylum in the United States are being sent to Mexico, where some have been located in shelters in cities where they have no familial or other connections.

Trust is needed on life's journey, Pope Francis said.

Tennessee's bishops have urged the state's Republican governor, Bill Lee, to stop the upcoming execution of a man on death row, saying: "Carrying out this execution does not serve the cause of justice."

Lebanon's "political authority has murdered its people," Cardinal Bechara Rai, Maronite patriarch, said at the closing Mass of the synod of Maronite Catholic bishops from around the world.

Retired Bishop Arturo Lona Reyes of Tehuantepec — known as "bishop of the poor" and famed for promoting an indigenous church — died Oct. 31. He was one day shy of his 95th birthday and had tested positive for COVID-19 earlier in October.

Retired Pope Benedict XVI has declined the inheritance of his brother Georg, who died in July, reported the German Catholic news agency KNA.

The Supreme Court, with a full bench, will hear oral arguments by teleconference Nov. 4 about a Catholic social service agency that had been excluded from Philadelphia's foster care program for not accepting same-sex couples as foster parents.

Andrew T. Walther, president and chief operating officer of EWTN News Inc., died in New Haven of complications related to leukemia Nov. 1.