Central and South America

Defrocked priest Fernando Karadima, at the heart of a sexual abuse case that rocked Chile's Catholic Church, died of natural causes July 25. He was 90.

Franciscan Sister Mary Kennedy traveled from the United States to Honduras recently to show solidarity with communities affected by natural disasters and fighting the dispossession of their lands.

Franciscan Sister Mary Kennedy traveled from the United States to Honduras recently to show solidarity with communities affected by natural disasters and fighting the dispossession of their lands.

Venezuela's president has accused Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, of unduly meddling in national affairs after the cardinal sent a letter to private business leaders, calling for serious negotiations to resolve the ongoing crisis in the South American country.

Extensive damage from back-to-back tropical storms in the middle of a pandemic has made a bad situation worse in Guatemala, argued immigration advocates July 14, seeking a special immigration status for nationals from the Central American nation.

The newest addition to a fleet of hospital boats on the Amazon River is to be christened the Saint John XXIII, and will soon be serving patients in some of the most remote parts of Brazil.

Another fresh wave of detentions in an ongoing and continuing crackdown in Nicaragua. James Blears reports more potential presidential candidates and civic leaders and now under lock and key.

President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti was assassinated in his private residence overnight. His death increases fears that the impoverished Carribean nation will plunge into further turmoil.

As Colombia enters its second month of a general strike and anti-government protesters continue to clash with the police, eleven Catholic Bishops organizations from across Europe have joined in a call for dialogue, peace and national reconciliation in the South American nation.

After three months, Colombia’s government has given up on negotiations for the release of Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez, kidnapped in Mali by jihadists four years ago.

The World Health Organisation has warned that more than half of poorer nations receiving doses via the Covax sharing programme do not have enough supplies to continue. The shortages come as many nations in Africa and Latin America are seeing a surge in infections.

Several Catholic organizations are encouraging Catholic Bishops in the US, Mexico and Central America to take urgent, concrete action in the Church's response to the challenge of immigration in the region.

A Brazilian bishop is calling President Jair Bolsonaro a “fascist” and even asked God to “deliver us from [his] maladministration of death.”

A Planned Parenthood-funded list in Argentina of supposed members of the “alt right” – including the country’s Catholic bishops – is being decried as harking back to the days of the country’s Dirty War.

Nicaragua's bishops have decried a "political, economic and social crisis" in the Central American country as a wave of politically motivated arrests sidelined opposition figures, media members and government critics ahead of the fall elections.

The Argentine bishops' pastoral team for aboriginal peoples rebuked comments from the country's president that perpetuated the viewpoint that the population predominantly arrived "on ships" from Europe.

During her first foreign trip to Latin America as U.S. vice president June 7 and 8, Kamala Harris took on a topic that has long been on the mind of the Catholic Church in the Americas: alleviating the problems that force Central Americans, in particular, to leave their homelands and take part in a perilous journey north.

The Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network expresses closeness and calls for the respect and defense of citizens’ rights in Colombia following weeks of protests against a botched tax overhaul that have led to the deaths of dozens. REPAM insists that “democracy is built on the basis of dialogue and is weakened when dialogue does not work.”

Nicaraguan opposition politician Christina Chamorro, is under house arrest, accused of money laundering, following a Police raid on her home. .

After hearing the story of a Salvadoran immigrant and her plight to leave her home country, bishops from the U.S., Central America and Mexico meeting in Mundelein June 2 turned to a camera facing a woman identified as Maria Antonia.