In southern Turkey and Syria combined, the death toll reached more than 5,000 as of early morning hours on Tuesday and is expected to rise as people are still trapped under the rubble.

The U.S. bishops’ religious liberty chairman called it “disheartening” that proposed new rules on the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate eliminate “protections for moral convictions” of employers who object to being forced to cover contraceptives in their employee health plans.

A combination of U.N. ambassadors, religious leaders, diplomats, academics, representatives of nongovernmental agencies and several musicians gathered Feb. 3 in a vast conference hall at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to mark World Interfaith Harmony Week.

Russia’s aggression poses “the biggest threat to religious freedom in Ukraine,” said Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak, head of all Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S., during a Jan. 30 panel discussion on the subject.

Pope Francis’ visit to Congo and his ecumenical pilgrimage to South Sudan put a face — actually, thousands of faces — on the horror of war.

Celebrating a Feb. 5 Mass in honor of Black History Month, Washington Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory urged “ordinary people of color” to “vastly improve our world with an understanding of the strength of character that resides within the souls of our people.”

Pope Francis expressed his “spiritual closeness” and “solidarity” with those affected by a pair of powerful earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria Feb. 6.

A Chinese surveillance balloon flying at high altitudes over the continental U.S. was shot down over the water off the South Carolina coast by U.S. military Feb. 4, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III confirmed in a statement Saturday afternoon.

At the end of six days in African countries bloodied by war and conflict, Pope Francis said that “the biggest plague” afflicting the world today is the weapons trade.

powerful earthquake struck Turkey and Syria in the early morning hours of Feb. 6, killing hundreds and leaving thousands more wounded.