Members of the Legionaries of Christ will begin their extraordinary general chapter Jan. 8 to elect new leaders and approve a new constitution, the key step in an effort to renew the order after revelations about the misconduct of their founder.

Refugees and migrants pay the highest price in conflicts around the world and it is in the Catholic Church’s DNA to provide them humanitarian aid and prayerful support, according to speakers at a U.N. event Oct. 4.

The predicament of divorced and remarried Catholics will be a major topic of discussion when bishops from around the world meet at the Vatican in October 2014.

Social organizations demonstrated to demand San Salvador Archbishop Jose Escobar Alas clarify the fate of thousands of documents containing information on human rights violations.

While the focus of the faith in China often centers on human rights issues, “we feel that the long and sustained faith of the Catholic Church in China is something that is not often discussed,” said Passionist Father Robert Carbonneau.

Mayans who speak Tzotzil and Tzeltal will now be able to attend Mass in their language and even be married in a Catholic ceremony that follows their native tongue.

From the most humble of beginnings, the small and more than occasionally fractured community of Swan River Catholics struggled to grow, suffering along with other non-Catholic colonials from the isolation of their new home. It was a stagnation, however, which would not last, writes Hal Colebatch.

Pope Francis, like Islam’s Sufi mystic theologians and poets, “is trying to do good for the sake of the Good One, motivated by love and compassion,” said the president of the Islamic Affairs Council of Maryland.

As efforts to recover the bodies of migrants who drowned off Italy’s southern coast continued, Pope Francis again asked people to pray for the victims and he sent his almoner to Lampedusa to pray over the 194 corpses recovered as of Oct. 6 and to visit the survivors.

Caritas chapters across Mexico have collected everything from canned goods to clothing for the victims of Hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel, which battered both coasts, cost more than 100 lives and left thousands homeless, incommunicado and possibly even buried beneath mudslides.