Catholic News Service

A new law requires priests in the state of Queensland to break the seal of confession to report child sex abuse to police or face three years in jail.

Young Catholics are giving the church a valuable lesson in the real meaning of "synodality," Pope Francis wrote.

Bringing a message of hope to Lebanon, a month after a double blast struck Beirut, Pope Francis' closest collaborator assured the Lebanese: "You are not alone. The whole world supports you."

Cardinal Marian Jaworski, a close friend of St. John Paul II and former Latin-rite archbishop of Lviv, Ukraine, died Sept. 5 at the age of 94.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Fr. Michel J. Mulloy after an allegation of sexual abuse was raised against him from the 1980s when he was a priest in South Dakota.

Pope Francis will travel to Assisi Oct. 3 to sign an encyclical on the social, political and economic obligations that flow from a belief that all people are children of God and therefore brothers and sisters to one another.

Given the "somber" realities imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, for companies to put profits over safety is "unjust," said Archbishop Paul Coakley in the U.S. bishops' annual Labor Day statement.

The 2020 edition of the annual "Gaudium et Spes Labor Report" issued by the Catholic Labor Network has found more than 600 Catholic institutions with unionized workforces.

A moratorium on evictions in the U.S., announced Sept. 1 by President Donald Trump, will keep thousands of Americans in their homes through the end of the year, but it does not cancel rents owed.

A Catholic bishop criticized a government official's offer that the church could name the Haitian ambassador to the Holy See if church officials promptly nominated a Catholic representative to the Provisional Electoral Council.

As many people around the world face economic uncertainty due to the pandemic, a paradigm shift is needed that places the good of the many over the benefit of the few, Pope Francis said.

Mexico's electoral authority ordered the president to remove a political ad that referred to Pope Francis and the Gospel.

The heavily racist tone of Trinidad and Tobago's recent national election season has deeply troubled Archbishop Jason Gordon of Port-of-Spain, among others.

Pope Francis has asked Catholics and all people of goodwill to observe Sept. 4 as a day of prayer and fasting for Lebanon.

Cardinal John Tong Hon of Hong Kong asked priests not to resort to using "slanderous and offensive statements" in their sermons.

The coronavirus pandemic not only has added to the many sufferings of the people of Puerto Rico but also has exposed decades of inequality that is deeply embedded in the island territory's political machine, said Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves of San Juan.

The pleasure of seeing other people face to face and not "screen to screen" as COVID-19 restrictions ease clearly demonstrates that people are social beings and need one another, Pope Francis said.

The exploitation and plundering of the Earth's resources at the expense of the poor and vulnerable cry out for justice and the forgiveness of debts, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis' efforts to bring reform in the Catholic Church are meeting resistance in some church circles, according to one panelist at an Aug. 31 online forum sponsored by Georgetown University's Office of the Vice President for Global Engagement.