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.

An unidentified 51-year-old man died Dec. 22, three days after setting himself on fire in St. Peter’s Square. Italian news reports said the man, who had third-degree burns on almost 50 percent of his body, died at Rome’s Sant’Eugenio Hospital.

As 2013 was drawing to a close, same-sex marriage became legal in two more states with rulings in New Mexico and Utah declaring that denying same-sex couples the right to marry denied those couples equal protection under the law.

Santos del Socorro Rojas knew that one day she would find her son, Jorge Alberto Reyes. She just wasn’t sure how.

More than 800 Syrian and Iraqi refugees were bused to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon for a Christmas Mass in an atmosphere of “great sadness.”

Latin-rite Patriarch Faoud Twal of Jerusalem told reporters he expected to host Pope Francis on a visit to the Holy Land in May.

The world famous Nativity scenes of Naples never follow just the biblical account of Jesus’ birth; for one thing, the figures usually are dressed in 18th-century costumes, but also it’s not unusual for a modern-day politician or even pope to enter the scene.