U.S. & World News

The feature film "The Way Back," a documentary on Father Patrick Peyton, and a Christmas special featuring Dolly Parton were among this year's Christopher Award winners.

As La Soufrière volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent continued erupting, belching out gas and thick ash, which forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, Pope Francis offered his prayers.

The Idaho Senate approved a measure called the Heartbeat Bill April 20 that would ban almost all abortions after an unborn child's heartbeat can be detected, which could be as early as six weeks, and the measure has been sent to Gov. Brad Little's desk.

The Biden administration has filed an appeal April 20 of a Jan. 19 federal court's ruling to block an Affordable Care Act provision barring discrimination by health insurers and providers against transgender people.

Like many Americans nationwide, Oregon Catholics received the April 20 conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin with mixed feelings: consolation, skepticism, resolve.

Sometimes the Catholic Church has "proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families," Pope Francis wrote in his 2016 exhortation, "Amoris Laetitia."

When it comes to safeguarding creation, there is no time to waste -- humanity either must live up to its responsibility or continue on a path of self-destruction, Pope Francis said, commemorating Earth Day with a video message.

The chairman of the U.S. bishops' pro-life committee April 20 called on the Biden administration to fund research "that does not rely upon body parts taken from innocent children killed through abortion."