VATICAN CITY - Less than a month after saying Catholics don’t have to multiply “like rabbits,” Pope Francis on Wednesday (Feb. 11) once again praised big families, telling a gathering in St. Peter’s Square that having more children is not “an irresponsible choice.”

VATICAN CITY - Becoming a mother or father is a gift from God, but women and men have a duty to embrace that gift and be astonished by its beauty, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY - The crying of Baby Jesus is not the only cry people should hear on Christmas; many children around the world are crying because of war, maltreatment and abuse, Pope Francis said.

NEW DELHI - The Catholic Church in Pakistan has joined the chorus of condemnation of the deadly attack by Taliban on an army school in Peshawar that has left at least 126 children and others dead and 250 injured.

VATICAN CITY - A new kind of ghetto needs the church's presence and people's solidarity: the "digital slum" where cyberbullying and online pornography and abuse run rampant, said speakers at a Vatican news conference.

BEIRUT - Syrian children who have seen their houses bombed and family members killed are using string, glue, socks, beads and other odds and ends to help put their lives back together.

This month 673,000 students were registered to attend English and French Catholic schools in Ontario. Their registration is a choice made by parents who value and acknowledge the importance of Catholic education for their children. 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - With the highest levels of HIV prevalence globally, southern African countries have seen families torn apart by AIDS, with children left to raise younger siblings and sick children left in the care of elderly grandparents.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis, in mourning for the deaths of his nephew's wife and two small children, thanked people at his weekly general audience Aug. 20 for their prayers.

WASHINGTON - From the head of the U.S. agency in charge of the welfare of more than 50,000 Central American children who have been apprehended at the Mexican border, to the Honduran cardinal who heads the international Catholic relief agency, Caritas, the message was clear, those minors are as much refugees as the people fleeing upheaval in Syria or South Sudan.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis on June 2 warned married couples against substituting cats and dogs for children — a move that he said leads to the “bitterness of loneliness” in old age.

RIO DE JANEIRO - As Brazil counts down to the opening of the World Cup on June 12, churches in cities hosting the international soccer tournament are not content to sit on the sidelines and cheer.

VATICAN CITY - Appearing before a U.N. committee monitoring adherence to an international treaty designed to fight torture, a Vatican official insisted that, over the past 10 years, the Catholic Church has "in a systematic, constructive and effective way," worked to prevent clerical sexual abuse of minors and assist victims.