CLEVELAND -- Officials reported that at least 12 people had died as Tropical Storm Laura lashed Haiti and the Dominican Republic with strong winds and torrential rains, causing widespread flooding in low-lying communities.

Twenty-four Catholic high school students and five adult supervisors gathered in Consuelo, Dominican Republic, to debrief our day. We had toured a batay (sugar workers’ village) outside the city along a road that by Canadian standards would be considered impassible.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Hurricane Irma cut a deadly path through the Caribbean, leveling entire islands as it moved toward Florida Sept. 7, while Haiti prepared for a potential disaster.

When I saw houses that were falling apart and children walking around with tattered clothing, my heart sank. I’d seen pictures of third-world countries and had heard stories of the less fortunate, but my eyes were opened when I stepped into this life for a week.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – A church dedicated to carrying out acts of mercy can help heal countries in the Americas torn by war, economic struggles and cultural and political divisions, Quebec Cardinal Gerald Lacroix said at the conclusion of a regional gathering of church leaders in Colombia.

VATICAN CITY - Initial results of the autopsy on the body of former archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who was awaiting trial in the Vatican on charges of child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography, indicate he died late Aug. 27 of a "cardiac incident," the Vatican said.

VATICAN CITY - A former Vatican nuncio will stand trial in a Vatican court on charges of the sexual abuse of minors and possession of child pornography.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Bishop Launay Saturne of Jacmel has a simple vision that he believes could change the future of Haiti.

THORNHILL, ONT. - In 1987 Elio Madonia, then in his 50s, sold his business, retired and with his wife went on vacation to the Dominican Republic with plans to continue enjoying retirement in Florida.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis told authorities from the Dominican Republic that the “truth” must prevail in the investigation of a former Vatican ambassador who was convicted and defrocked for abusing teenage boys in the Caribbean country.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican denied covering up for a former papal ambassador accused of sexually abusing boys and suggested he might have to stand trial on the charges in the Dominican Republic.

TORONTO - On the sugar cane plantations in the Dominican Republic, life is bitter for the Haitian migrants who farm the land.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Santa Maria la Menor, the oldest cathedral in the Americas, sits just off a busy plaza in this Caribbean city’s colonial district. However, it’s the nearby bronze Christopher Columbus statue, Hard Rock Cafe and cigar shops that draw the lines of tourists in the plaza.

“We came to see the colonial area. The churches are a nice part of that. But they’re not the reason we came,” said Maria Torres, who perused the shops that ring the plaza after snapping a photo of the statue.

A life-long Catholic, Torres, who was visiting from Spain, asked, “The oldest in the Americas? I had no idea.”