OTTAWA - While the world’s attention is focused on Russia propping up the “atrocious Assad regime” in Syria, President Vladimir Putin continues to foment the crisis in the Ukraine through an exploitation of religious allegiances, said a Canadian historian.

HIROSHIMA, Japan - For a long minute on a sunny morning, silence fell over the memorial park that commemorates the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city.

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) for 44 tumultuous years, has been decreed by the Vatican to be worthy of sainthood, needing only an approved miracle for him to be beatified.

WARSAW, Poland - A Ukrainian bishop said a Russian-backed separatist rebellion has plunged his country into its worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War and warned that "millions of refugees" could soon head for Europe to escape starvation.

LVIV, Ukraine - Ludvika Sarah Leah Schein, who survived the Holocaust, hadn’t been to her hometown in 70 years. But she still vividly remembers the day Germans came to Rava-Ruska.

WARSAW, Poland - Ukrainian church leaders condemned plans to permit same-sex partnerships under a series of constitutional reforms.

LVIV, Ukraine - Ukrainian Catholic Father Tykhon Kulbaka was headed to the chapel in the room rented by the local Catholic community. En route, he stopped at a grocery store, where four men grabbed him, blindfolded him and made him breathe chloroform.

WARSAW, Poland - The head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church expressed concern that the world's richest countries are failing to honour a 1994 agreement that promised Ukraine security for giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons.

VATICAN CITY - Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussed the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when he met with Pope Francis at the Vatican today.

VATICAN CITY - In the wake of international criticism over Moscow’s role in ongoing violence in Ukraine, the United States has called on Pope Francis to take a stronger stance on the conflict in his meeting with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, today.

VATICAN CITY - Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Pope Francis on June 10, with pressure on the pontiff to speak up about the Kremlin’s role in the Ukraine conflict.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The Knights of Columbus is providing $400,000 to relief programs sponsored by the Catholic Church in Ukraine.

VATICAN CITY - As the Ukrainian Catholic bishops met in a private audience with Pope Francis Feb. 20, Ukraine was marking its first Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes, commemorating those who died in the Euromaidan movement one year earlier.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis urged Ukraine's Catholic bishops to focus on the social and human tragedies unfolding in their country and avoid politicizing their role as Church leaders.

WARSAW, Poland - Catholic and Orthodox archbishops in Ukraine appealed for national unity against pro-Russia separatists as calls mounted for the United States to help arm Ukrainian forces.