Associated Press

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.

At least 13 people, including four children, were killed in two separate stampedes in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing items distributed at annual Christmas events.

The BBC reported that Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell let a priest remain in his post despite knowing he had been barred by the church from being alone with children and had paid compensation to one of his accusers.

An ancient relic that many Christians revere as Jesus Christ’s “Crown of Thorns” is returning to Notre Dame, five years after it was saved from the flames of the cathedral’s devastating 2019 fire.

Francis has long been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He recently called for an investigation to determine if Israel's attacks in Gaza constituted genocide.

The day after the inferno struck Notre Dame on April 15, 2019, Philippe Villeneuve walked despondently into the remains of his cathedral. Smoke choked the spring air, the spire lay in rubble, and charred beams littered the nave. “We had lost the framework, the roof, the spire, and three sections of the vault,” Villeneuve, its chief architect since 2013, said.

A disgraced 93-year-old New Orleans priest pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges involving the sexual assault of a teenage boy in 1975.

Few people in America have done more to advance conservative causes than Leonard Leo. For his neighbors on a sparsely populated island off the coast of Maine, the conservative's presence — despite significant charitable giving to local nonprofits and big spending locally — has generated fissures in a place known for tranquility.