Rhina Guidos

As U.S. bishops gathered in early January at a seminary in Illinois to pray and reflect about the American church's sex abuse crisis, reports trickled out about the possible fate of one their own being decided overseas.

Catholics working in border communities such as El Paso, Texas, have been impacted by Washington's squabbles, and expressed anger about experiencing more than just daily inconveniences.

Year in review: The most dramatic immigration development of 2018 took place around summer when then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new policy that resulted in separating children from parents or other family members traveling with them and then placing the minors in detention centers.

Immigration officials announced new health checks for immigrant children under detention after a second child, an 8-year-old boy, died Christmas Eve while under the agency's care.

As the U.S. bishops entered the last public part of their 2018 fall general assembly, centered largely on the clergy sex abuse crisis, six clergy sex abuse survivors announced Nov. 14 a lawsuit against the prelates' main organization, the U.S. Catholic bishops Conference.

The U.S. bishops discussed the establishment of a hotline devoted to collecting complaints about a bishop's alleged abuse of a minor, sexual harassment, misconduct involving adults or failure to respond to abuse accusations.

A New York auxiliary bishop has been removed from public ministry pending a Vatican review of a decades-old accusation of sexual abuse against him, a claim he denies, the Archdiocese of New York said in a letter released Oct. 31.

An attorney for the U.S. Catholic Bishops conference has confirmed that federal officials have asked the organization to keep documents and other files that might pertain to possible sex abuse allegations and other matters and to order the same of all dioceses around the country. 

Federal officials sought entry to two properties belonging to the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, seeking to survey the land for construction of a border wall on it, but in an Oct. 29 statement, Brownsville Bishop Daniel Flores said he did not consent to such use because such a structure "would limit freedom of the church to exercise her mission in the Rio Grande Valley."

Days after the Catholic Church declared Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero a saint, a judge in El Salvador issued a capture order for a former military captain suspected of killing the religious leader in 1980 as he celebrated Mass.

The attorney general for the District of Columbia is the latest official to announce an investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church and said his office will look at possible abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Washington.

Some students, alumni and faculty members at The Catholic University of America in Washington are calling for the resignation of dean Will Rainford following a series of tweets he wrote criticizing Brett Kavanaugh's accusers.

Some attended the rally with hard hats on as others spoke about how an immigration program in peril helped them over the years pour millions into the U.S. economy, and also contributed to their role in physically rebuilding the country's iconic structures and cities after disasters.

The Diocese of Brooklyn and an after-school program in New York have settled a case out of court for $27.5 million with four men who say they were sexually abused as boys, between ages 8 and 12, by a man whom the diocese identified as a "volunteer worker."

California's Stanford University will strip the name of 18th-century Franciscan friar, St. Junipero Serra, from some of its properties but keep a street named after him.

The New York State Office of the Attorney General is the latest to announce that it is launching an investigation of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic Church clergy, sending subpoenas seeking access to the records of the state's eight dioceses.

The Archdiocese of Omaha said it intends to cooperate with a request from the Nebraska Attorney General's office to review its "investigative records" as state officials pursue information concerning sex abuse in the state's three Catholic dioceses.

Though recent revelations of past sex abuse by priests in the Catholic Church began in Pennsylvania when a grand jury released a report on Aug. 14 detailing the claims, it has given rise to similar claims and investigations at dioceses big and small around the country.

Bishops from three countries issued letters supporting Pope Francis in late August following fallout from allegations made by a former apostolic nuncio to the U.S., claiming that the pope and others knew about abuse allegations involving Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.

Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, New York, said that even though his efforts in handling sex abuse claims in the diocese seem to have "fallen short," he would not resign despite being asked to do so by several local leaders, including Catholics.