Over a 25-year span from 1990 to 2015 there has been a massive reduction in global poverty. 

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Ethiopia's bishops welcomed the election of the nation's first female president, Sahle-Work Zewde, and said they were pleased that women "are getting their rightful place in the development of the country."

Cardinal Paul-Emile Leger was Canada’s most prominent prelate in the 1950s and ‘60s. Surprisingly, he resigned Nov. 9, 1967 and for the next 24 years, until his death in 1991 at age 87, he dedicated himself to service in the Third World, though he returned to Montreal several times. Here is how he explained his departure in The Register issue of Nov. 18, 1967. 

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ISSELE-UKU, Nigeria – Five nuns were abducted by gunmen in Nigeria’s Delta state on Thursday, according to local media.

VATICAN – While European bishops discuss how to bring young people back to the Church at the 2018 Synod of Bishops, one bishop from Cameroon said that he has the opposite problem.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – As Haitian authorities confirmed the toll from the Oct. 6 earthquake at 17 dead and 333 injured, Caritas and other grass-roots organizations working with the victims highlighted the critical humanitarian situation facing survivors, who now lack shelter.

VATICAN – Pope Francis mourned the loss of more than 200 lives in a ferry accident on Lake Victoria near the Tanzanian island of Ukara.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – The church in Zimbabwe said it is prepared to mediate between government and opposition leaders after six people were killed in violence that followed a disputed presidential election.

NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan – The Nuba Mountains region in southern Sudan is a land the world has largely forgotten, except for the Catholic Church, which for more than three decades has stood with the people as they endured hunger, bombing and neglect.

NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan – After watching for years as newly independent South Sudan has succumbed to civil war fought largely along ethnic lines, displacing one-third of the population, church leaders in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan are working hard to ensure that their small enclave of liberated territory will not go the way of its neighbors to the south.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was always a friend to South Africa's poor, said church leaders who took part in a two-week mourning period that culminated in her burial as a national hero.

BANGUI, Central African Republic - Catholic priests whose villages have been attacked have taken to Facebook to express outrage and appeal for help.

VATICAN CITY – "Let us beg the Lord, God of mercy and peace, to free the world from this inhuman violence," Pope Francis prayed after a week of deadly terrorist attacks in Africa and Europe.

With the final numbers in, the Canadian government is kicking in $21.3 million to protect 20 million people in Africa and Yemen from imminent starvation, but Canada’s Catholic development agency is continuing to collect more funds even as Ottawa closes down its matching fund program.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Catholic bishops in Kenya called for calm in the East Africa nation, as pockets of violent postelection protests left at least five dead in opposition strongholds.