Associated Press

A French bishop has put off any decision on whether to remove mosaics by an ex-Jesuit artist accused of abusing women, saying that they’ll stay for now on the Lourdes shrine but that eventually they should be removed.

The country's Catholic Church had around 20.35 million members at the end of last year. In an annual summary of statistics, the bishops’ conference didn’t detail reasons for the departures.

The Vatican went on trial in a London court Wednesday, as a British financier sought to recover from the harm he said he suffered to his reputation as a result of a Vatican investigation into its 350 million euro (around $375 million) investment in a London property.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday stopped what would have been the first publicly funded religious charter school in the U.S., turning back conservatives and the state's GOP governor who have welcomed religious groups into public education.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to a 2021 Connecticut law that eliminated the state’s longstanding religious exemption from childhood immunization requirements for schools, colleges and day care facilities.

It’s just a snapshot of a wider project. Catholic pilgrims are in the middle of a two-month journey on four routes across the United States. They're planning to converge on Indianapolis in mid-July for a climactic stadium gathering called the National Eucharistic Congress, the first such event in more than 80 years.

The coastal Nigerian community of Ayetoro was founded decades ago and nicknamed "Happy City," meant to be a Christian utopia that would be sinless and classless. But now its remaining residents can do little against the rising sea.

Among many faith leaders nationwide, the pain unleashed on June 20, 2022 — when the Revs. Javier Campos Morales, 79, and Joaquín César Mora Salazar, 80, were murdered by a local gang leader — has not faded. Nor their quest for peace.

Louisiana has become the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom, the latest move from a GOP-dominated Legislature pushing a conservative agenda under a new governor.

A lawyer for Raffaele Mincione, a London-based financier, submitted a complaint last week to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights via a special procedure that allows individuals or groups to provide the U.N. with information about alleged rights violations in countries or institutions.

One list suggested at least 550 people died during the five-day Hajj. A 2019 study found that even if the world succeeds in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, the Hajj would be held in temperatures exceeding an "extreme danger threshold" from 2047 to 2052, and from 2079 to 2086.

The Hajj rites have taken place under the soaring summer heat, which has reached 118 degrees Fahrenheit in Mecca and the sacred sites in and around the city, according to the Saudi National Center for Metrology.

With no vehicles at hand, Maribel Estrada runs to pick up her children from school, to attend Mass and to visit her mother, who lives 160 miles away.

U.S. bishops approved new guidelines for ministering to Indigenous Catholics, a long in-the-works effort to reinvigorate the ministry and assure those communities that they don't need to feel torn between their Native identity and their Catholic one.

Officially reversing a controversial March ruling, Louisiana's highest court Wednesday gave childhood victims of sexual abuse a renewed opportunity to file damage lawsuits.

As Muslims worldwide prepare to celebrate Eid al-Adha this weekend, the second most important holiday in the Islamic calendar, the Ladoum get their moment to shine.

The Maui County Council voted 9-0 to pass a resolution opposing the project. The measure said Haleakala's summit was a sacred place used for religious ceremony, prayer and connecting to ancestors.

The 1959 Castro-led revolution installed an atheist, Communist government that sought to replace the Catholic Church as the guiding force in the lives of Cubans. But 65 years later, religion seems omnipresent in Cuba, in dazzling diversity.

Since he took power in 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has avoided direct confrontation with cartels and violent gangs controlling and terrorizing local communities. His " hugs, not bullets " policy has drawn extensive criticism from faith leaders, human rights organizations and journalists who have echoed victims' fears and anger.

Pope Francis apologized Tuesday after he was quoted using a vulgar and derogatory term about gay men to reaffirm the Catholic Church's ban on gay priests. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni issued a statement acknowledging the media storm that erupted about Francis' comments, which were delivered behind closed doors to Italian bishops on May 20.