BANGKOK - Several experts believe the threat to churches in South and Southeast Asia has increased following the Easter bomb attacks that killed more than 250 people and injured 500.

As the death toll hit 321 with an estimated 500 injured, members of Toronto’s large Tamil Catholic community were tracking down friends and relatives who might have been attending Easter Sunday Mass in Sri Lanka when bombs exploded at St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo or St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo.

LONDON - Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster described the attempted bombing of a rush hour Tube train in London as "yet another cowardly attack" and said he was praying for the 22 people being treated for burns and other injuries.

There’s more than political interest, strategic advantage, and military considerations in the decision to end Canadian bombing runs over Syria and Iraq in favour of more military trainers on the ground and additional spending on aid and development.

VATICAN CITY - Seventy years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, Pope Francis on Aug. 9 described the bomb as a “lasting warning to humanity.”

ROME - Chaldean Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, Syria, and his people are exhausted.

VATICAN CITY - Italian police arrested at least nine people in what officials described as a terrorist cell that had planned, in 2010, to strike at the Vatican with a suicide bomber.

BOSTON - As the trial of Boston Marathon bombing defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went to the jury April 6, the Catholic bishops of Massachusetts released a statement reiterating the church's teaching on the death penalty.

NAIROBI, Kenya - A bishop who served in Sudan until his retirement a year ago appealed to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to end a months-long bombing campaign that has killed and injured dozens of innocent civilians in the Nuba Mountains.