News/International

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis will bestow sainthood on two Palestinian nuns May 17, a move that’s being seen as giving hope to the conflict-wracked Middle East and shining the spotlight on the plight of Christians in the region.

Church workers reach out to quake victims in remote Himalayan villages

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NAMJUNG, Nepal - "Sir, because of luck, we all survived. But, we may die of hunger," Mithuram Pariyar said when a church relief team arrived after a four-hour drive from Kathmandu.

Israel downplays media flurry over Vatican agreement with Palestine

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JERUSALEM - Israel is downplaying the recent media flurry over reports the Vatican and Palestinian representatives have finalized the text of a formal agreement recognizing freedom of religion in the "State of Palestine" and outlining the rights and obligations of the Catholic Church, its agencies and its personnel in the territory.

Italians help flood of refugees in Francis’ vision of ‘a Church for the poor’

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CATANIA, Italy - Sitting outside the central train station here in eastern Sicily, a 16-year-old who would only give his name as “Simon” hunched his knees up to his chest and wrapped himself up into a ball. With little spoken English, the teenager from Eritrea has taken to miming the way he travelled across the Mediterranean.

Exhaustion, no hope: Bishop says life in Syria needs 'attitude of faith'

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ROME - Chaldean Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, Syria, and his people are exhausted.

Periphery pope: Bosnia trip aims to build bridges in divided nation

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VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis' concern for those suffering on the margins and for small Catholic communities that have kept the faith alive through war or repression will take him to Bosnia-Herzegovina in early June.

Vatican decision to recognize Palestine upsets Israeli government, Jewish advocacy groups

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JERUSALEM - The Vatican’s decision to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state has angered Israeli officials.

Once Pope Francis knows U.S. capitalism he will love it, says Catholic theologian-economist

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NEW YORK - Fr. Martin Schlag is a trained economist as well as a Catholic moral theologian, and when he first read some of Pope Francis’ powerful critiques of the current free market system he had the same thought a lot of Americans did: “Just horrible.”

When second quake hit, fear filled those waiting for relief materials

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NAMJUNG, Nepal - As the magnitude-7.3 quake hit, screaming and shouting filled the mountain village of Namjung, where approximately 600 people had gathered to collect relief material being distributed by Catholic Relief Services.

Church groups welcome German bishops' changes to employment rules

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OXFORD, England - Catholic organizations in Germany welcomed changes to their church's employment rules, so staffers will no longer face being fired for remarrying without an annulment or for forming gay unions.

Report details damage to Nigerian diocese where Boko Haram operates

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MANCHESTER, England - A new report has revealed the scale of suffering of Nigerian Catholics at the hands of Boko Haram militants, with 5,000 Catholics killed in one diocese alone.