Preparing for the Year for Consecrated Life, members of religious orders, secular institutes and consecrated virgins are asked to spend a considerable amount of time remembering the joy they felt when they first realized God was calling them.

Pope Francis said bishops should act not like ambitious corporate executives, but humble evangelists and men of prayer, willing to sacrifice everything for their flocks.

As protests in Venezuela continued, with flare-ups of violence, the country’s Catholic leaders urged dialogue and respect for the demonstrators’ human rights.

Just because many Catholics do not understand the church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage, that does not mean the church can change that teaching, said Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Francis urged people to overcome indifference and to mourn for the innumerable victims of war and conflict around the world.

Uganda’s Catholic bishops reaffirmed their opposition to homosexuality, but reserved judgment on a recently ratified bill imposing harsh punishment for homosexual acts in the East African nation.

The three months of protests in Ukraine that ended with government snipers killing dozens of people strengthened the commitment to democracy of many Ukrainians, but also left the country vulnerable to further violence and division, said the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Pope Francis asked families to pray for the success of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the “pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelization,” which will take place at the Vatican in October.

Canon 1190 Paragraph 1 says “it is absolutely forbidden to sell sacred relics.” But there’s kind of a gray area with regard to the offer of a relic in exchange for a donation.

The Coptic Orthodox Church has condemned the killing of seven Egyptian Christians in neighbouring Libya.