Catholic News Service

Jesus invites everyone to repent and to turn swords into plowshares and missiles into factories and homes, the papal preacher said during the Good Friday service at the Vatican.

The Catholic Church in Europe and other places will, as retired Pope Benedict XVI had said, be smaller and less influential, but the church's mission and joy is not to increase numbers but to share the Gospel, Pope Francis told Jesuits in Malta.

Tropical Storm Megi continues to inflict damage in the Visayas and Mindanao regions of the Philippines after making landfall April 10. By April 14, the death toll surpassed 120, with dozens remaining missing.

Pope Francis has appointed Stanley Prusiner, an American neurologist and Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, and Zeresenay Alemseged, an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist who discovered the fossilized remains of the "world's oldest child," to be members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

To wage war, which marks a failure of politics and humanity, is to surrender to the forces of evil, Pope Francis wrote in a new book.

European Catholic and Protestant leaders echoed Pope Francis' appeal for an Easter cease-fire in Ukraine, and they asked Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to support it.

Jesus brings peace to today's shattered world through meekness and not through an "armed peace" that seeks to subjugate others, Pope Francis said.

More than 6,000 Indigenous from 172 tribes gathered in Brasília, Brazil's capital, to march in defense of their land and against the policies of the Brazilian government. Along with Indigenous and environment groups, many religious also came out to Brasília to show their support.

In an open letter, 74 bishops from North America, Africa, Italy and Australia have expressed their "growing concern" about the German Synodal Path process and content, warning about its "potential for schism."

In Russia's war on Ukraine, "the forces of evil" are clearly at work, leading to "abominable" attacks on innocent people and widescale destruction of their homes, Pope Francis said.

The head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church asked Pope Francis to scrap plans to have a Ukrainian woman and a Russian woman carry the cross together during the pope's Way of the Cross service at Rome's Colosseum April 15.

While the Vatican confirmed Pope Francis' hope to travel to Kazakhstan this year, it did not confirm a news story that Francis could meet Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Jerusalem in June.

Russian forces in Ukraine attacked a Caritas office in Mariupol and a Catholic seminary in a small village north of Kyiv, prompting renewed calls for an end to the war and to the targeting of innocent civilians.

The Eastern-rite Catholic bishops of the U.S., meeting recently at the Maronite Catholic Pastoral Center in St. Louis, expressed concern for the plight of Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia's ongoing war.

Myanmar soldiers stormed the Sacred Heart Cathedral compound in Mandalay on April 8. Archbishop Marco Tin Win, some priests and staff were present but all were safe and none were detained, church sources said.

The new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Joe Donnelly, officially began his duties April 11, presenting his letters of credential to Pope Francis.

Russia's war on Ukraine frighteningly raises the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons, the unleashing of radioactive material from nuclear power plants and a new push to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, including by terrorists, said members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Four properties owned by the Archdiocese of Seattle and St. James Cathedral, including chancery offices, are being sold to developer Westbank to create a carbon-neutral community in Seattle's First Hill district.

Easter not only holds God's promise of new life, it also reminds us of how closely our lives intertwine with all of creation on this planet that Pope Francis calls "our common home." Here are four ideas for how to incorporate creation care into your Easter celebrations this year.

France's Catholic bishops have stepped up calls for an 'integral ecology' to protect the environment while also warning citizens not to 'expect a savior or messiah' after the first round of presidential elections April 10.