News/International

MILAN - The Holy See's official pavilion at the Milan Expo 2015, the newest edition of the every-five-years world's fair, will be a public space of relaxation and learning.

KATHMANDU, Nepal - Truckloads of relief material organized by church charities began moving across Nepal a week after the Himalayan nation was rocked by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake April 25.

WASHINGTON - Arriving in the Philippines from Ireland in 1969 as a young missionary priest, Columban Father Shay Cullen hardly expected he'd end up fighting a burgeoning sex industry.

Despite growing resistance from some Native Americans and U.S. Catholics, the Vatican on May 2 will host an event to celebrate the life of Junípero Serra, the Spanish missionary priest whom Pope Francis plans to canonize during his upcoming American tour.

WASHINGTON - Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, offered teasing bits of insider information about Pope Francis' upcoming encyclical on the environment, on what he might say in the United States in the fall, and on what it was like to be in the conclave that elected Francis.

KATHMANDU, Nepal - When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake roared through this Himalayan nation April 25, leaving an estimated 5,500 dead and more than 11,000 injured, shrines and temples were sent crashing to the ground, many of them centuries old and irreplaceable cultural treasures.

WASHINGTON - With extreme poverty having been cut in half over the last generation — and the Millennium Development Goals target of poverty halving having been achieved five years ahead of the 2015 deadline — veterans of the global war on poverty believe it is possible that extreme poverty can be wiped out in the next 15 years.

OXFORD, England - A Belgian bishop said the president of the bishops' conference urged Catholics to respect a court judgment against him for failing to act on allegations of abuse.

WASHINGTON - The questions raised by U.S. Supreme Court justices as they considered April 28 whether they should rule that same-sex marriage should be made legal nationwide covered a gamut of rights concerns — religious, equal protection, states' ability to enact their own laws.

VATICAN CITY - Santosh Kumar Magar said he was attending the ordination of a new priest in Okhaldhunga, a remote part of eastern Nepal, when the devastating magnitude-7.8 earthquake hit April 25.