VATICAN – The majority of Catholic Church workers violently killed in 2017 were victims of attempted robberies, the Vatican's Fides agency said, with Nigeria and Mexico topping the list countries where the most brutal murders were carried out.

Most Canadians respect religion, believe it is relevant and think it benefits society, according to a new Angus Reid Institute poll.

VATICAN CITY – Ideological colonization is a form of persecution that seeks to obliterate the past, eradicate what makes people different and impose uniformity, Pope Francis said.

New York City, N.Y. - Anti-Christian persecution is “worse than at any time in history” and in many cases genocide and other crimes against humanity “now mean that the Church in core countries and regions faces the possibility of imminent wipe-out,” says a new report from Aid to the Church in Need.

VATICAN – Inviting all faithful to practice Christian love every day, Pope Francis on Sunday canonized 35 new saints, nearly all of them martyrs, holding them up as models who “point the way”. 

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of nine men and women, including a Franciscan priest who championed the land rights of farmers in Guatemala.

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

ROME, Italy – When Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni was confronted by armed men after celebrating the Eucharist at his Chaldean Catholic parish in Mosul, they asked him why he was still there and why he hadn't closed the church as they had demanded.

MANILA, Philippines – Martyrdom is "not a remote possibility" for Catholics in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao where a priest and several church staff members were abducted by gunmen last month, a Jesuit priest said.

VATICAN CITY – To kill in the name of God is satanic, Pope Francis said at a special requiem Mass for a French priest assassinated by youths claiming allegiance to the Islamic State.

“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 16:13). This is the Gospel that St. Maximilian Kolbe preached with his life and death. On the 75th anniversary of his death (Aug. 14), the Church celebrated his heroic sacrifice in 1941 when he volunteered his life in place of a fellow Auschwitz inmate.