News/International

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis' personal envoy to the suffering people of Iraq joined the Chaldean Catholic patriarch in launching an appeal to the international community Aug. 18, pleading for help to liberate villages controlled by the Islamic State terrorists and to provide the displaced with international protection.

Robin Williams' death reignites questions about suicide

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - After 35 years of providing counseling and a Catholic outreach to families with a loved one who died by suicide, Fr. Charles Rubey has consulted on more than his share of the resulting funerals or wakes.

800,000 watch as Pope Francis moves 124 Korean martyrs closer to sainthood

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SEOUL, South Korea - Pope Francis placed 124 Korean martyrs on the last step toward sainthood in a beatification Mass Aug. 16 that brought elation to the 800,000 people in attendance.

Pope says forgiveness key to reconciling divided Korea

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SEOUL, South Korea - Addressing young people from Korea and other Asian countries on their concerns about the future, Pope Francis said the best hope for reunification of the divided Korean peninsula lay in brotherly love and a spirit of forgiveness.

At stadium Mass, pope tells Koreans to resist materialism

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SEOUL, South Korea - Celebrating Mass before some 50,000 people, Pope Francis prayed that Christian values overcome demoralization in economically successful societies.

Aid agencies try to 'pick up the pieces' in Gaza

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AMMAN, Jordan - A senior Catholic aid official said humanitarian agencies are "trying to pick up the pieces" of Gaza's badly destroyed infrastructure, desperately hoping that the declared truce between Israel and the militant Hamas will hold.

Western leaders press governments to help Iraqi minorities

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WASHINGTON - Western leaders pressed their governments to increase humanitarian efforts on behalf of persecuted Christians and other minorities in northern Iraq.

Iraqi minorities need more than material aid, cardinal says

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VATICAN CITY - The one thing Iraqi Church leaders and aid workers, foreign charities and governments cannot do for the displaced and terrorized people of northeastern Iraq is answer their question, "What will become of us?" said Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Pope's envoy to the region.

Families of Korean ferry accident appeal to Pope for justice

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SEOUL, South Korea - Families of the victims of the April Sewol ferry accident appealed directly to Pope Francis for justice on the eve of his Aug. 14-18 Korean visit.

U.S. must ‘destroy’ Islamic State, say religious conservatives

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A coalition of more than 50 U.S. religious leaders, led by mostly conservative Catholic, evangelical and Jewish activists, is calling on President Barack Obama to sharply escalate military action against Islamic extremists in Iraq. They say “nothing short of the destruction” of the Islamic State can protect Christians and religious minorities now being subjected to “a campaign of genocide.”

Healing after black teen's shooting 'in Jesus' hands'

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FERGUSON, Mo. - Against the backdrop of demonstrations and unrest, some of it violent, that has followed the Aug. 9 killing of an unarmed black teenager by police in Ferguson, members of a local Catholic parish did perhaps the only thing they could — they prayed.