South Dakota

Louise Aamot Charbonneau couldn't make her annual trip to the South Dakota Legislature this year to confront lawmakers with her story of surviving childhood rape and abuse at the hands of priests and nuns at a boarding school for Native Americans during the 1950s and 1960s.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Paul Swain of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and appointed as his successor Fr. Donald DeGrood, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Distinctly Catholic: New bishop appointments could shift the U.S. bishops' conference in a new direction. Let's look at which appointments are the most important and why, and discuss the kinds of choices the pope faces.

A small group of protesters critical of the U.S. bishops' efforts to enact reforms in their handling of sexual abuse cases gathered outside the Baltimore hotel where they conduct their general meeting.

Pope Francis has named Bishop Robert Gruss of Rapid City, South Dakota, to head the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan.

The Catholic Church could get its second Native American saint if a Vatican research trip to South Dakota this month leads to confirmation of two miracles performed by Nicholas Black Elk, a Lakota Sioux medicine man born in the Civil War era.

"Sorrow, disgust, outrage — these are righteous feelings" for all to have in reaction to the latest abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Blase Cupich said in an Aug. 17 statement.

The Field Hospital: The sainthood cause of Lakota leader Black Elk opens in South Dakota; Canadian doctor honored for work with dying; Northern California recovers from wildfires.