Ahead of Guatemala's upcoming election season, the country's bishops said religious gatherings in the coming months should "not fall into the temptation of mixing political propaganda with apparent prayer."

GUATEMALA CITY -- Guatemala's bishops urged the country's president to veto the budget, but also called for calm as some protesters set the country's Congress on fire.

In the absence of a long-promised federal ombudsperson, legal experts have asked the British Columbia Securities Commission to investigate the sale of a Canadian-owned silver mine in Guatemala.

CARTAGENA, Colombia - Church leaders prayed for Mexicans and Guatemalans affected by the magnitude 8.2 earthquake that struck the Pacific Coast.

MEXICO CITY – Guatemala's bishops criticized the country's president for expelling an international anti-corruption commissioner. They also called for public protests to remain peaceful, for politicians to act in the national interest and for the president to obey a court order against his actions.

SAN MARCOS, Guatemala – A magnitude 6.9 earthquake June 14 in western Guatemala resulted in landslides that closed the Inter-American Highway, which connects many Central American nations.

WASHINGTON – The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City announced that one its native sons, Father Stanley Rother, a North American priest who worked in Guatemala and was brutally murdered there in 1981, will be beatified Sept. 23 in Oklahoma.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has recognized the martyrdom of Father Stanley Rother of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, making him the first martyr born in the United States.

TORONTO – Patricia Rehak still remembers feeling overwhelmed when she first travelled to Guatemala in 2004. A project manager, she and her husband Daniel, a professional engineer, had volunteered with the Canadian Executive Service Organization.

GUATEMALA CITY - Mass at the Divine Providence Parish, celebrated shortly after polls closed in this country's recent elections, included intentions. The parishioners prayed for the "people and pastors" of Guatemala, along with the country itself -- where citizens, protesting peacefully for months, forced a president accused of corruption to resign in the days prior to the Sept. 6 vote.

VAUGHAN, ONT. - Sr. Andrea Dumont, a missionary Sister of St. Joseph, was honoured this year with Catholic Missions In Canada's St. Joseph Award.

Catholic bishops and religious orders from the high arctic to the southern tip of Patagonia are demanding accountability for Canadian mining companies operating in Latin America up to and including the right of villagers and farmers to sue in Canadian courts in the event of environmental disasters and human rights abuses.

Ted van der Zalm and his wife Miriam gambled their house on a call from God more than 10 years ago and it’s paid off. They hit a gusher, or more accurately, a dozen of them over the last decade.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican human rights groups and the migration ministry of the Mexican bishops' conference have expressed outrage at the attorney general's office for pursuing anonymous criminal complaints against a priest who provided material and spiritual support to a group of displaced Guatemalans.

The groups also took issue with Mexican immigration officials forcibly removing some of the Guatemalans, who had been residing in a camp they established in Tabasco state near the Mexico-Guatemala border since August after fleeing a violent displacement in their country.