MEXICO CITY – Mexico's bishops offered prayers for the victims of an explosion in which dozens of villagers in the central state of Hidalgo perished after rushing to get some of the gasoline gushing from what appears to have been an illegally tapped pipeline.

WASHINGTON – Nationwide efforts to confront human trafficking received a boost in the new year as President Donald Trump signed a bill reauthorizing federal expenditures for prevention and assistance programs across the federal government.

Christmas may come but once a year, but at the Furniture Bank they keep their eyes and ears open to the season year-round.

VATICAN – Protecting human dignity and human rights must always be at the heart of any action by world leaders to confront the many humanitarian crises afflicting today's world, Pope Francis said.

As Toronto’s city-run shelter system bulges with refugees and migrants, volunteer-run Out of the Cold programs are operating at capacity and wondering when governments are going to get serious about housing.

VANCOUVER – “You will look like a new man!” 

VATICAN – Welcoming the finalization of global compacts on migration and on refugees, the Vatican urged nations to adopt the nonbinding agreements to protect people who are on the move and to promote their orderly acceptance in new countries.

UNITED NATIONS – Seventy years after its adoption, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was lauded Dec. 4 as a seminal, yet imperfect achievement of the nascent United Nations.

The Vatican challenged countries gathered for the 24th U.N. Climate Change Conference to focus on the needs of the present and the future as it worked to take swift action.

In 2006, after 20 years of stellar work with the Out of the Cold program to shelter the homeless, its co-founder was not impressed.

Is living the teaching of Humanae Vitae regarding the moral means of managing fertility burdensome? Yes, and effective pastoral support for couples who are attempting to do just that — using natural family planning (NFP) rather than contraception — is served by acknowledging that up front. NFP is a burden.

It is noble to mark the World Day of the Poor with gifts of charity, but Pope Francis has challenged Catholics to go much further than that. He asks us to observe Nov. 18 by making a serious examination of conscience “to see if we are truly capable of hearing the cry of the poor.”

The world commemorated the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Oct. 17, but you could be forgiven for not noticing. 

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

SAN FRANCISCO – As San Francisco prepares to consider a ballot measure to boost taxes for services to aid the homeless, a U.N. investigator has classed the treatment of the homeless in San Francisco and the Bay Area as a human rights violation.