At least 38 pilgrims were killed on their way home from the Padre Pio shrine when their bus plunged off an elevated highway. Another 19 people were reported seriously injured, including passengers of nearby vehicles. Only 11 people were pulled alive from the wreckage, Vatican Radio and other news outlets reported.

In an effort to shake its image as a secretive, scandal-ridden institute and improve its relationship with the media, the Vatican bank has launched its own website.

Pope Francis sent condolences to the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, after a train crash left at least 80 dead and more than 100 injured.

The legalization of gay marriage cannot change Christian teaching on sexual morality, and the Catholic Church cannot accept marriages of same-sex couples, the bishops of England and Wales said in a document that was to be distributed in parishes July 27-28.

Pope Francis is the most influential world leader on Twitter, with the highest number of retweets worldwide… The rankings were released July 24 in a recent study titled “Twiplomacy,” which refers to the use of Twitter by world leaders.

The papal nuncio to the United Nations criticized the “persistent refusal” of Syria’s warring factions to negotiate an end to the country’s 28-month-long civil war.

Pope Francis appointed Msgr. Leo Cushley — a longtime Vatican diplomat from the Diocese of Motherwell — to be the new archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland.

Panelists at a religious freedom session on Pakistan called for reform of the nation’s laws, calling the situation for minorities dire. In June alone, 47 religious minorities were killed in Pakistan, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Nearly 600 Native American Catholics from 37 states joined in the annual Tekakwitha Conference gathering in El Paso July 17-22.

With hands moving quickly through the air, members of the International Catholic Deaf Association signed all the responses in unison for a July 16 Mass celebrated at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington as part of their seventh biennial conference.