Europe

Foreign travel to Italy dropped almost 70% in 2020, and while many people hope vaccination campaigns will allow some form of recovery by late summer or early fall, no one is predicting a speedy recovery.

A novel fundraising approach to restore one of the most iconic monuments in the world, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, enables donors to have a piece of history.

BERLIN (CNS) -- Germany's lower house of Parliament is considering replacing state payments to the nation's two largest churches. The Catholic and Protestant churches received combined state benefits of more than $650 million in 2020.

While church leaders in Belarus appear to be avoiding public issues, Catholics across the country continue to demand the freeing of political prisoners and an end to regime repression.

GLASGOW, Scotland (CNS) -- The bishops of Scotland have made freedom of speech, expression, thought, conscience and religion a priority for Catholic voters for the first time.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (CNS) -- The Catholic bishop of Belfast urged politicians to be more careful about their language as the city was engulfed in nightly violence.

MANCHESTER, England (CNS) -- Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster led Catholics of England and Wales in mourning the death of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

Poor countries cannot be expected to recover from the current financial crisis if the world returns to an economic model in which a small minority of people owns half of the world's wealth, Pope Francis said.

LONDON (CNS) -- Police halted a Good Friday service after a complaint that pandemic regulations were not being met, leading the parish priest to complain that officers had "brutally exceeded their powers."

Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples ordered the removal from a church of two religious paintings that were donated by a mafia boss who led one of the prominent clans in the Camorra crime syndicate.

Pope Francis has granted Hamburg Archbishop Stefan Hesse a leave of absence from his duties, the Hamburg Archdiocese announced March 29.

The Vatican has imposed sanctions on two Polish Catholic bishops, who resigned in 2020 after being accused of ignoring sexual abuse by their clergy.

With Italy already facing a diminishing population, low birth rates and fewer religious and civil marriages, the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted those numbers for 2020, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics.

While tensions have increased between the Catholic Church in Spain and the left-wing government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, studies also have shown a growing rift between the Catholic Church and Spaniards in general.

Despite some serious legislative and social differences that have led the Catholic Church and the Spanish government to bump heads, the country has a "healthy secularism," said Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra of Madrid.

Spain, a bastion of Christianity in Europe for centuries, finds itself in a crisis of faith as the influence of Catholicism continues to decline.

"To simply take the moral responsibility with me and to go to protect the reputation of the office of bishop and of the church -- I think that's too easy. And in my view it is also wrong," the cardinal said March 23. "Such a resignation would only be a short-lived symbol."

A commission of Catholic bishops warned religious freedom is threatened in the European Union, as restrictive laws are imposed in the wake of COVID-19.

Pope Francis condemned the way the Mafia is exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic by taking advantage of those in dire economic circumstances.

Less than a month after he recognized the "heroic virtues" of three Italian women religious who died caring for Ebola patients in Congo, Pope Francis did the same for three others who also contracted the disease and died in 1995.