VATICAN CITY - The Vatican approved new statutes and bylaws for the U.S. Leadership Conference of Women Religious, ending a seven-year process of investigating the group and engaging in dialogue with its officers to ensure greater harmony with church teaching.

NAIROBI, Kenya - The president of the Kenyan bishops' conference called on Easter worshippers to commit themselves to praying for peace and security in their homeland after militants attacked a college campus days earlier.

VATICAN CITY - Joy is not a word people usually associate with strict fasting and penance — unless they are Eastern-rite Catholics.

MANCHESTER, England - One of England's last Catholic kings was reburied three years after his skeleton was discovered in a coffin beneath a parking lot.

Lent has a way of unsettling us, of shaking up our easy routines and making us question what more we should be doing as part of our Christian obedience.

MANILA, Philippines - Dozens of Filipino Catholics are joining a global Lenten fast to call on world leaders to act on climate change.

VATICAN CITY - Iraqi and Syrian refugees who have fled persecution in their homelands and the Palestinian Christians struggling to survive in the land of Jesus deserve the prayers and material support of Catholics around the globe, a Vatican official said.

LONDON, Ont. - Despite the winter winds howling outside, youth ministry specialist Dan Moynihan and his team are busy preparing to welcome hundreds of high school students to camp this summer.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis called for prayers for the Egyptian Christians beheaded by Islamic State militants in Libya and asked that God recognize these men killed for their faith.

VATICAN CITY - A homily at Mass is not a mini catechism class, the Vatican says in a new document on homilies, but it is an opportunity to explain Church teaching using the Scripture readings and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

VATICAN CITY - Bringing the light of hope to ending human trafficking means confronting the brutal "darkness" of evil that is driving those who exploit others, said a number of women religious helping victims.

Did God lift Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson’s overtime pass into the end zone in the conference final, rewarding the prayerful Christian player with a championship victory and a trip to the Super Bowl?

Millions of Americans may think so.

We can never be challenged too strongly with regards to being committed to social justice. A key, non-negotiable summons that comes from Jesus Himself is precisely the challenge to reach out to the poor, to the excluded, to those whom society deems expendable.

A friend popped by the other day while I was working on a Sudoku puzzle.

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) Jan. 18 (1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19; Psalm 40; 1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20; John 1:35-42)

How many of us are called upon by God without realizing it? Divine addresses are seldom of the dramatic type portrayed in Hollywood biblical epics. They usually lack the beams of light and angelic choirs. God’s call is often innocuous enough to be overlooked or mistaken for something else. Only its persistence sets it apart.