International News

News from outside of Canada.

Interfaith leaders launch daylong unity fast for Mideast peace

July 15, 2014

While the violence escalates in Israel and Gaza, a movement is taking hold that unites Jews, Muslims and others in a campaign for peace.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury supports assisted suicide bill

July 14, 2014

CANTERBURY, England - Three leading Anglicans have entered an explosive debate about whether it is permissible for Christians to allow doctors in England and Wales to administer lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients given less than six months to live.

Gaza's Christians work together to stay safe

July 14, 2014

JERUSALEM - Members of the tiny Christian community in the Gaza Strip have been keeping tabs on each other and lending a helping hand to keep each other safe during Israeli airstrikes throughout the region, but nowhere in the territory is really safe, said a priest at the territory's only Catholic parish.

Church of England votes for women bishops; move seen as ecumenical snag

July 14, 2014

VATICAN CITY - The General Synod of the Church of England voted July 14 to authorize the ordination of women as bishops and approved motions pledging to respect and work with people who believe that, theologically, the vote was a mistake.

Church of England set to vote on women bishops

July 13, 2014

CANTERBURY, England - Women’s rights activists greeted with delight signs the Church of England is poised to relent and allow women to be consecrated as bishops.

Minors at U.S. border should be thought of as refugees, speakers say

July 11, 2014

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.

After Pope's condemnation of mafia, Italian bishop bans processions

July 10, 2014

VATICAN CITY - A bishop in Calabria has ordered an end to all religious processions in his diocese after 30 men carrying a large statue of Mary and hundreds of people accompanying the statue paused and bowed in front of the house of a presumed mafia boss.

Court may compel priest to break confessional seal in abuse case

July 9, 2014

BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana's Supreme Court has ruled that a priest may be compelled to testify as to what he heard in the confessional in 2008 concerning an abuse case.

Holy Land bishops criticize 'collective punishment' of Palestinians

July 9, 2014

JERUSALEM - Catholic leaders in the Holy Land called for an end to the cycle of violence and criticized Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and its collective punishment of Palestinians.

Iraq facing perhaps its 'darkest and most difficult period,' says patriarch

July 8, 2014

AMMAN, Jordan - The patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad called the current situation in his country "perhaps the darkest and most difficult period in (the Church's) recent history."