While Ireland’s new abortion law takes effect Jan. 1, by mid-December only 8 percent of family doctors had signed up to provide the terminations.

Delegations from the Vatican and from Vietnam reported continued progress in their discussions, including agreeing on “upgrading” relations with a permanent papal representative “in the near future,” a Vatican press statement said.

Pope Francis often refers to the biblical Beatitudes as a path in the pursuit of mercy and personal holiness. Yet perhaps recognizing that the Bible never could have imagined the politics of the 21st century, the pontiff invoked an entirely new set of beatitudes for politicians in his 2019 message for the World Day of Peace.

The emergence of the Bangladeshi migrants began in early 70s soon after the war of freedom (1971) from Pakistani rule. The Christian community being a minority in this new nation had to face the challenges of security, safety and future of their families. A sizeable number of families found their greener pastures in America, Canada and Australia. In each of these countries, they are the diaspora community searching for their identity in a multicultural context.

See Christmas celebrated around the world through many different traditions.

Pope Francis on Friday directly addressed perpetrators of clerical sexual abuse, telling them to “convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice.”

Even though an estimated 70 percent of Nicaragua’s six million people are Catholics, many in the country today nevertheless believe that being Catholic and young is virtually synonymous with being a criminal, or, at the very least, a potential enemy of the state.

For more than 38 years, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa has preached to the pope and top officials of the Roman Curia. In early January, he will lead the weeklong retreat of the U.S. bishops.

More than 90,000 police and soldiers and a moderate Muslim youth group will help guard nearly 50,000 churches across Indonesia, including some previously attacked by terrorists, during the Christmas period.