Associated Press

A British court on Friday largely backed the Vatican in refusing to declare that a London-based financier acted in "good faith" in his dealings over the Holy See's 350-million euro (US$375 million) investment in a London property.

The pope looms so large in everyday Italian life that there are lots of expressions that make light of even a dark event like his death.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the administration, by withholding millions even for reimbursements of costs incurred before the sudden cut-off of funding, violates various laws as well as the constitutional provision giving the power of the purse to Congress, which already approved the funding.

Here's a look at Pope Francis' health history from a partial lung removal in 1957 to his entering the hospital on Feb. 14. 

Another woman is taking over a top management job in the Vatican: Sr. Raffaella Petrini, an Italian nun, was named president of the Vatican City State, making her essentially the governor of the 44-hectare territory in Rome that is home to the Catholic Church.

Christianity is by far the largest faith in America, and Christian conservatives have a strong grip on the levers of government. That dominance is leaving many to question why President Donald Trump's new task force on eradicating anti-Christian bias is needed.

"The massive scale of the suit will be hard for them to ignore," said Kelsi Corkran, a lawyer with the Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection who is lead counsel for the lawsuit.

Maryland's Supreme Court on Monday upheld the constitutionality of a state law that ended the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse lawsuits following a report that exposed widespread wrongdoing within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Fray Bartolomé, as the Maká call it, was offered to them through a decree issued in 1944 by strongman Higinio Morínigo, then Paraguay's president. It was meant as a present, the Maká have said, to acknowledge their courage and the role they played during the Chaco War against Bolivia in the 1930s.

As New Orleans church leaders braced for the fallout from publishing a list of predatory Catholic priests, they turned to an unlikely ally: the front office of the city's NFL franchise.

Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Māori name — is the latest natural feature to be granted personhood in New Zealand, which has ruled that a river and a stretch of sacred land are people before.

The Vatican bank fired a newlywed couple, with three young children between them, after a new internal bank regulation went into effect barring workplace marriages.

The Philippines is the third-largest Roman Catholic nation in the world, and public discussions of sexual assaults by members of the clergy, who are revered especially in rural regions, has long been generally muted.

The Supreme Court agreed to take on a new culture war dispute: whether the nation's first publicly funded religious charter school should be allowed to open in Oklahoma.

"Our country faces the return of the most pro-family, most pro-life American president of our lifetimes," Vice President JD Vance told the crowd in his in-person speech.

Francis referred to the disaster during his weekly general audience Wednesday and invoked Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is revered by many Latino Catholics.

Just days before the start of a U.S. administration that’s promised a swift immigration crackdown, hundreds of Guatemalan faithful in Minnesota turned with hope and pride to the statue of the crucified Jesus, an elaborately carved replica of the most venerated image in their tropical homeland. 

The French Catholic Church has formally requested that prosecutors initiate an investigation into Abbé Pierre, a once-revered priest and humanitarian icon who died in 2007, following new revelations of sexual violence.

Some 1.8 million mostly barefoot Catholic worshippers marched Thursday in an annual procession in the Philippines that venerates a centuries-old black statue of Jesus. Some said they prayed for good health for their families, an end to tensions in the South China Sea, and for incoming U.S. President Donald Trump to be kinder to Filipino immigrants.

Pope Francis on Christmas Eve formally inaugurated the 2025 Holy Year, reviving an ancient church tradition encouraging the faithful to make pilgrimages to Rome. What that means and what it will look like is addressed in this AP explainer.