Catholics | featured news

Northern Ireland's leaders say they want to tear down the so-called "peace lines" of Belfast - dozens of walls that divide Irish Catholic and British Protestant neighborhoods - by 2023.

More than 140 Catholic cardinals met Monday at the Vatican, where the process of selecting a new pope edged toward beginning. The cardinals gathered in the morning, but had not decided when the conclave to select Pope Benedict XVI's successor would start, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters.

When someone becomes pope — God’s representative on Earth to Catholics — he dons all white, takes the title “his holiness,” and is greeted even by top cardinals with a kiss of his ring. Can a cardinal who pals around with Stephen Colbert fill such a vaunted role? How about one with a style so simple that he serves tuna sandwiches and chips to even his most important guests?

The husband of a pregnant woman who died in an Irish hospital has said he has no doubt she would be alive if she had been allowed an abortion. Savita Halappanavar's family said she asked several times for her pregnancy to be terminated because she had severe back pain and was miscarrying.

As the Nov. 6 election looms, these nuns have come to represent the divide among American Catholics, both in the pews and in the voting booth. Both Obama and Romney are battling for the Catholic vote, a crucial slice of the electorate that represents about 1 out of 4 voters nationwide.

Responding to simmering controversy among Catholic bloggers about her new birth control program, Melinda Gates -- a practicing Catholic -- said she will not shrink from her role as an advocate for poor women.

An American nun’s book on sex has put Catholics at risk of “grave harm,” the Catholic Church announced Monday.

A Los Angeles bishop has resigned after revealing he is the father of two teenage children, the Vatican announced Wednesday. Gabino Zavala, the auxiliary bishop for the San Gabriel pastoral region, informed his superiors in December that he had fathered two children, who are living out of state with their mother, according to the Catholic News Service.

Catholic Church officials are mounting a full-court press to convince lawmakers in Albany to vote against same-sex marriage legislation, which stands a vote or two from becoming law in New York State.

The Catholic bishops are reviewing church sex abuse policies but not speaking publicly on reports questioning their effectiveness.