News from Around the World

Catholic bishops in Malaysia urged the government to refrain from deporting hundreds of Myanmar nationals, including refugees and asylum-seekers, reported ucanews.com.

A priest related to Princes William and Harry took a major step closer to sainthood when Pope Francis declared him venerable.

An African faiths environmental institute is calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to stop funding green revolution technologies and genetically modified seeds for the continent, but instead support natural methods to help Africa achieve food sufficiency and protect its environments.

Marking the 90th anniversary of the apparition of Jesus to St. Faustina Kowalska, Pope Francis wrote a letter to Catholics in Poland expressing his hope that Christ's message of divine mercy would remain "alive in the hearts of the faithful."

Pope Francis advanced the sainthood cause of one of Princes William and Harry's 19th-century ancestors as well as the causes of three Italian nuns who died from the Ebola virus while ministering to patients in Congo.

A month after reading an interview in the Vatican newspaper with Edith Bruck, an author and Holocaust survivor, Pope Francis decided to pay her a visit at her home in the center of Rome.

In separate Ash Wednesday homilies, Catholic bishops advised Nigerians to use Lent to pray for peace and stability.

As Pope Francis continues his efforts to encourage and personally engage in interreligious dialogue, his planned March trip to Iraq will be an opportunity to extend a hand to the Shiite Muslim community.

Peru's Catholic bishops want a thorough investigation of a COVID-19 vaccine trafficking scandal that includes the country's papal nuncio.

The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land launched a virtual Way of the Cross project for pilgrims during Lent because the Holy Land is not accessible for a second year in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The butterflies are waving on Robert E. Lee Boulevard in New Orleans, as are the ragdolls and pink panthers.

Medical orders against attempting to resuscitate patients with learning disabilities during the latest COVID-19 lockdown in the U.K. are "wholly unacceptable and immoral," said the bishops of England and Wales.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has expresses outrage after a rocket attack in Iraq's Erbil, which caused casualties.

Pope Francis hopes to embark on the first-ever papal visit to the biblical land of Iraq in early March in a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts to the place known in Arabic as the "land of the two rivers" -- the mighty Tigris and Euphrates -- and once renowned as Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization."

Catholic nuns, priests and laypeople have joined protests in Buddhist-majority Myanmar following the Feb. 1 coup.

The Scottish government should withdraw parts of a hate crime bill because of the risk it will lead to the prosecution of people solely for disagreeing with gender ideology and same-sex marriage, said Catholic and Protestant leaders.