World

As most Americans absorbed the shock of the Taliban’s full takeover of Afghanistan over the weekend, officials at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service followed the rapidly deteriorating situation with resignation, knowing it could have gone differently.

How many children had been orphaned by causes related to COVID-19? According to a report released last week, an estimated more than 1.5 million children around the world lost a parent or grandparent who lived with and cared for them in the first 14 months of the pandemic.

Scholar Kristen Lucken explores how themes of rest and contemplation are woven throughout the fabric of most religious traditions and the various ways they remain equally salient in our lives today.

Amid the changes at the Tokyo Olympics are adjustments to the way the Games are accommodating athletes’ religious needs, as well as to the way outside groups are able to share their faith with Olympians and their fans.

Faith leaders from across the globe and from numerous faith traditions gathered together on Tuesday both on Zoom and in person on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to urge President Joe Biden to share COVID-19 vaccine stockpiles and to advocate for equitable global distribution of vaccines. 

During his first public address after leaving the Roman hospital where he underwent colon surgery, Pope Francis spoke to the people of Cuba who were eagerly waiting for the pontiff to make a pronouncement on the large-scale protests rocking the Caribbean nation.

We wonder if the new space race between billionaires actually represents progress. In this issue of A Public Witness, we look not toward the stars but back on Earth to consider the moral lessons we can learn from these men so rich they are literally choosing to leave us all behind.

President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday named Attorney General Andre Mendonca, who is also an evangelical pastor, to fill a vacated seat on Brazil’s supreme court, the conservative president’s second appointment to the 11-member court.

About 125 students kidnapped from a Baptist church school in northern Nigeria are especially in danger because of their Christianity and the unwillingness of local authorities to pay a ransom.

Pope Francis insisted Thursday that Lebanon must remain a “land of tolerance and pluralism” as he welcomed the country’s Christian patriarchs to the Vatican to pray for an end to the economic and political crisis that has thrown the country into chaos and threatened its Christian community.