Nationwide efforts to confront human trafficking received a boost in the new year as President Donald Trump signed a bill reauthorizing federal expenditures for prevention and assistance programs across the federal government.

Veteran religion reporter Peter Steinfels has published an in-depth article questioning both the motivation and the methodology of the August Pennsylvania grand jury report, which chronicled seven decades of abuse within the state’s six Catholic dioceses and led to the resignation of one of the nation’s top Catholic cardinals.

Tears filled Missy Brassie’s eyes as she talked about the most emotional part of the five-day SEEK2019 conference involving more than 17,000 young adult Catholics from around the world.

The budget bill passed by the House of Representatives to try to end the partial government shutdown includes a provision to repeal the “Mexico City Policy” that prohibits U.S. funding of foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform or promote abortion.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Jan.7 that he would push to expand abortion rights in New York State as a central part of his political agenda for 2019.

Opus Dei, an influential Catholic organization, paid nearly a million dollars to settle a case against a woman accusing one of its most prominent priests of sexual misconduct in 2005.

After a swastika was found painted on the doors of the cathedral of the diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bishop Frank Caggiano blasted the “brazen and disgusting display of ant-Semitism,” adding that it is “morally abhorrent and an affront to our Catholic faith.”

With the release of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis has brought ecological concerns to the forefront of Catholic social teaching — something that resonates with vegetarian Bishop Gerald Kicanas.