The Vatican's criminal court ordered two climate activists to pay more than $30,000 in damages after they glued themselves to an ancient sculpture in the Vatican Museums to draw attention to the effects of climate change.

Jane Wagner remembers the raw emotion she experienced when her daughter Mary Wagner was first arrested in Vancouver in 1999 for her crusades on behalf of the unborn.

CHICAGO -- Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago and one of the towering figures of the pro-life movement for decades, died of pneumonia Jan. 18 surrounded by his family at his home n Chicago. He was 93.

Women in jail tell Mary Wagner about their abortions.

HOT SPRINGS, North Carolina - As she prepared for her mission — scaling the nine-metre flagpole outside the South Carolina Statehouse to bring down the Confederate flag — Bree Newsome reread the biblical story of David and Goliath.

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia - Meeting with an international gathering of grassroots activists, Pope Francis not only encouraged, but tried to add fuel to their fire for "standing up to an idolatrous (economic) system which excludes, debases and kills."

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis will meet a gay married activist in Paraguay next month, according to an LGBT rights group in that country.

MELBOURNE, Australia - Catholic AIDS activists said they are encouraged by the steady progress being made against HIV, but warned against complacency.

TORONTO - A pro-life activist launching a constitutional challenge regarding the current definition of a human being in Canadian law was released from custody as her trial came to an end on June 12, almost two years after she was arrested at a Toronto abortion site. 

OTTAWA - Pro-life activist and Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medalist Linda Gibbons is back in prison, certain she is doing God’s work for praying outside an abortion facility.

Police moved in and arrested her Oct. 30 after the 64-year-old great-grandmother prayed outside of the Morgentaler abortuary on Hillsdale Avenue in Toronto, breaking a temporary injunction prohibiting demonstrators from coming too close to the facility and impeding its business.

Gibbons carried her usual sign depicting a picture of an infant and the words: “Why Mom? When I have so much to give.” Police moved in after about an hour and a half and arrested Gibbons.

“We will remain free in our love, we will not be coerced by the government to turn our backs on the unborn child,” Gibbons told CCN in an exclusive phone interview from Toronto days before her latest arrest. “If that lands us in court, that’s a gift, another providential opportunity to do the Lord’s work.

“When hoping and praying become a criminal activity, where is our freedom?” she asked.

Gibbons said her fellow inmates often ask her how she can stand the confinement, and being away from her family.

“I always tell the girls, ‘One day at a time with Jesus.’ It is Christ’s strength that gives you that fortitude to persevere,” she said.

The injunction dates back to 1989 after the former Morgentaler clinic on Harbord Street was firebombed.

Morgentaler built a bigger and more secure facility at the Hillsdale Avenue location that is covered by the temporary injunction creating a bubble zone around it.

Gibbons recalled the first time she was arrested. She and some fellow pro-lifers were in the alley behind the facility praying in a circle. They were not blocking the entrance or talking to people or doing anything that might impede Morgentaler’s business operation, she said.

She knew she would lose her job at military headquarters if she was arrested. But the words of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane came to her: “Can you not pray with me for one hour?” She realized her job “is something I must lay down.”

“Anything I put before Christ is not where I should be at the moment,” she said. “Doing the will of Christ is my first duty and the duty of the moment.”

In between arrests Gibbons used to try to get a job so as to maintain her apartment, but she realized hanging onto her home or an income was unrealistic.

“For 20 years, I have had no government support; I’m on no government program,” she said. “Pro-lifers have are carrying me through.”

A great-grandmother of two, Gibbons does miss her family when she’s in prison.

“I see this as a cost of doing business with the government,” she said. “I’m trying to leave a legacy for my grandchildren, so they don’t have to live in a society burdened by abortion.”