International News

The 100,000 Armenians who fled en masse after Azerbaijan seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh — the enclave known to Armenians as Artsakh — last September are now facing a bitter winter as homeless refugees in Armenia.

A new annual report by the U.S. bishops’ conference identifies five top threats to religious liberty in the United States, including a federal regulation it says could impose mandates on doctors to perform objectionable procedures and threats to the Church’s service to people who are migrants.

In a historic year for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which the French capital and the whole world will see reopen Dec. 8, milestones will be reported on regularly, but this one made Parisians shed a tear or two: Reconstruction of the roof structure is now complete.

Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa has been released from prison and sent into exile along with 18 imprisoned churchmen as the Nicaraguan government expelled its most prominent critic, whose presence behind bars bore witness to the Sandinista regime descent into totalitarianism, along with its unrelenting persecution of the Catholic Church.

About 200 Nigerian Christians lost their lives in multi-day attacks that left hundreds more injured and displaced.

As 2024 begins, Christians in Pakistan are winding up a year of violence and mayhem, with the hope of a new government to bring respite to their suffering after the national elections in February.

In its annual report on Catholic missionaries murdered during the year, the Vatican-based news agency, Fides, noted what many of them had in common was living a normal life in areas where violence had become common.

Since Christmas, Nicaraguan police and paramilitaries have detained more than a dozen priests, including an archdiocesan vicar, as the Sandinista regime escalates a campaign of terror against the Catholic Church -- an institution it has struggled to subdue.

While faith cannot change anything in moments of great darkness such as the one Israelis and Palestinians are currently living through in the Israeli-Hamas war, it can, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa said, create "a small light" which will give "orientation."

A new declaration from the Vatican on pastoral blessings does not change the Catholic Church's teaching on marriage, Catholic experts told OSV News, but seeks to extend the church's accompaniment to those in irregular situations.