World

French-born Muslim, Elyazid Benferhat and a friend gathered a group of young Muslim men to stand guard outside their town's cathedral for the All Saints’ holiday weekend, to symbolically protect it and show solidarity with Catholic churchgoers.

The U.N. special investigator on religious freedom urged countries to repeal laws undermining the right of minorities to worship and hold beliefs, pointing as examples to China’s detention of Uighurs, 21 countries that criminalize apostasy, and sweeping surveillance of Christians in North Korea and Muslims in Thailand.

An untold number of evangelical Christians are likely among growing deaths in Nigeria amid violence surrounding peaceful protests against police brutality, an advocate for Christians in Nigeria said.

A Baptist church was damaged by recent shelling in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. The incident on Thursday (Oct. 8) adds to difficulties for the small Baptist community in the region.

Mexico’s president published an open letter to Pope Francis Saturday (Oct. 10) calling on the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for abuses of Indigenous peoples during the conquest of Mexico in the 1500s.

Armenia accused Azerbaijan on Thursday of shelling a historic cathedral in the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, where nearly two weeks of heavy fighting has killed hundreds of people.

Pope Francis says the coronavirus pandemic has proven that the “magic theories” of market capitalism have failed and that the world needs a new type of politics that promotes dialogue and solidarity and rejects war at all costs.

Pope Francis told a group of children with autism and spectrum disorders Monday (Sept. 21) that they are beautiful, unique flowers in the eyes of God. Francis met with members of an Austrian center for autism, Sonnenschein (“Sunshine”), in an audience at the Vatican.

With precision and boundless energy, a team of carpenters used medieval techniques to raise up — by hand — a three-ton oak truss Saturday in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, a replica of the wooden structures that were consumed in the landmark’s devastating April 2019 fire that also toppled its spire.

Pope Francis is giving his blessing to a new Vatican think tank that is seeking to prevent the Mafia and organized crime groups from exploiting the image of the Virgin Mary for their own illicit ends.