News/International

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - On the occasion of the beatification of El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, Pope Francis sent a note that was read to those present for the May 23 ceremony.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Some thought this day would never arrive. Others hoped and some always knew it would.

VATICAN CITY - More than 55,000 people have signed a petition calling for Cardinal George Pell to return to his native Australia and face a government commission on child sex abuse, after allegations that he tried to bribe the victim of a pedophile priest.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- The use of modern media to move and consume news of the beatification of Oscar Romero might be a fitting tribute to the Salvadoran archbishop.

After a judge sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings, religious leaders in that city found themselves on both sides of the issue. Lawmakers in Nebraska are considering a bill to ban the death penalty there, which would make it the first conservative state to do so in four decades. And Christian leaders such as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson have provided support for movements such as Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

VATICAN CITY - Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero's preferential love for the poor "was not ideological, but evangelical," said Cardinal Angelo Amato, the prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes.

The San Francisco priest who sparked controversy earlier this year by barring altar girls has been replaced as chaplain of the church’s Catholic grade school.

OXFORD, England - Egypt's Catholic Church has pledged respect for the country's justice authorities after a deposed Islamist president was sentenced to death for alleged complicity in a planned jail break.

An influential Franciscan order re-elected its American leader Thursday (May 21), just months after some of its members were accused of embezzling tens of millions of dollars.

CANTERBURY, England - “In Ireland,” says a character in a 1904 George Bernard Shaw play, “the people is the Church, and the Church is the people.”