VATICAN – Calling torture a "mortal sin," Pope Francis called on Christians to help victims of this crime against human rights.

Prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners — torture according to the United Nations — has no place in a just penal system. Yet isolating inmates for lengthy periods remains common practice at Canadian penitentiaries. It must stop.

MEXICO CITY – An outspoken priest who had been reported missing in the state of Veracruz was found alive, but with signs of torture.

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.

WASHINGTON - A sign at the entrance to the exhibit warns of the shocking nature of the images beyond — photos smuggled out of Syria that show emaciated and grotesquely mutilated victims of dictator Bashar Assad’s prisons and torture chambers.

WASHINGTON - Arriving in the Philippines from Ireland in 1969 as a young missionary priest, Columban Father Shay Cullen hardly expected he'd end up fighting a burgeoning sex industry.

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the U.S bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace said acts of torture outlined in a Senate Intelligence Committee report "violated the God-given human dignity inherent in all people and were unequivocally wrong."

VATICAN CITY - Appearing before a UN committee monitoring adherence to an international treaty designed to fight torture, Vatican officials repeatedly were asked about efforts to investigate allegations of clerical sexual abuse, punish offenders and co-operate with civil authorities in prosecuting the perpetrators.