U.S. & World News

The Catholic Church's highest ranking prelate in the Holy Land offered his "absolute availability" to be exchanged for Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas.

Just before the children in her kindergarten class went on vacation for the Jewish Sukkot festival, Romina Shvalb, 42, a kindergarten teacher in the quiet Israeli kibbutz of Nir Oz near the Gaza border, had baked challah -- the braided sweet bread Jews traditionally eat on the Sabbath and holidays -- with the children.

An Armenian Catholic bishop told OSV News that tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians have been "completely disregarded for political and economic profits," as...

Finding better ways to live "like Jesus did" -- reaching out, welcoming, healing and including others -- was the focus of Sister Liliana Franco Echeverri's small group discussions Oct. 9-10 at the assembly of the Synod of Bishops, she said.

Pilgrims who were in Israel following a surprise terrorist attack by Hamas terrorists against civilian communities in southern Israel Oct. 7 lit candles and said prayers of peace at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as fighting continued in southern Israel.

While the doors of the Synod on Synodality, taking place in the Vatican Oct. 4-29, are closed to journalists and the public, a group of survivors of sexual abuse anxiously awaits news on how the assembly addresses the clerical sexual abuse that affected their lives so painfully.

The Catholic Church is called to be an instrument of communion with God and unity among all people, but it requires grace and "learning to 'bear with' reality, gently, generously, lovingly and courageously for the peace and salvation of the whole world," a theologian told the assembly of the Synod of Bishops.

Just two days prior to the start of the Synod on Synodality in Rome, the Vatican released a letter Oct. 2 from Pope Francis that was instantly greeted by some in the media as "a bombshell."