The current war between Israel and Hamas may finally force a diplomatic solution to the long intractable tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the Holy Land, said the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.

The new Syriac Catholic archbishop of Homs, Syria, had spent almost five months as a prisoner of Islamic State rebels in 2015.

Catholic churches in Sokoto suspended Masses May 15 as the governor imposed a 24-hour curfew to quell violence during protests against the arrest of young men for the May 12 murder of Deborah Yakubu.

MAKASSAR, Indonesia -- A suicide bomb attack on a Catholic cathedral compound shattered the calm of Palm Sunday Mass, leaving two bombers dead and at least 20 people wounded.

The old saw says nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of being hanged in the morning. I can personally attest that having a child living in a country of double beheadings runs a very close second.

Pope Francis and Austrian church leaders expressed dismay and sorrow after terrorists attack that left at least five dead in central Vienna, and they urged citizens to uphold key values of tolerance and respect.

NICE, France -- French bishops conducted a "penitential rite of reparation" inside a church in which three people were murdered in late October.

MANCHESTER, England -- French bishops ordered a "death knell" to ring from every church of their country Oct. 29 after three people were hacked to death in a basilica in the southern Mediterranean city of Nice.

PARIS -- France's Catholic bishops have joined Muslim leaders in condemning the beheading of a teacher in a Paris suburb.

AMMAN, Jordan -- The Chaldean Catholic Church concluded a weeklong synod in Ainkawa, a Christian enclave in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, in which laity from the church's various dioceses in the Middle East and the diaspora also participated for the first time.

Bishops’ conferences from Francophone West Africa have pledged solidarity with Christian communities after a spate of Islamist attacks and urged governments and religious leaders to do more to counter “unlooked-for menaces, tragedies and catastrophes.”

WARSAW, Poland – Bishops in the Central African Republic urged Catholics to boycott their country's National Day observance Dec. 1 to protest the failure of government and United Nations forces to prevent the massacre of church members by rebel groups.

As world attention shifts to the growing influence of Muslim militant groups on the African continent, few have paid any attention to the ongoing bloody conflict in South Sudan.