While Pope Francis was visiting Portugal for World Youth Day, talk of future papal trips — including to Kosovo and Argentina — was making headlines as were some of his thoughts about the need for the Catholic Church to be open to all.

How do thermometer-bursting digits relate to wider concerns about climate change, a warming earth, and the call to action of Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si'” — and can individual Catholics make a difference?

A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against a new Illinois law, blocking the law’s restrictions on speech that was affecting the state’s 100 pregnancy resource centers.

Rivers of young people flowed through the streets of Lisbon on their way to Eduardo VII Park on Aug. 3 for the World Youth Day welcome ceremony with Pope Francis.

Over a three-course meal with young people, Pope Francis cracked jokes and talked soccer but also addressed the tough topics that young Catholics are grappling with today, such as abortion and euthanasia.

Saying his glasses “aren’t working,” Pope Francis put aside his prepared text and told representatives of Portuguese charities to make their love “concrete” and leave a mark on the world with their lives.

Young people were going to confession on street corners and park benches throughout Lisbon during World Youth Day, but in the 150 plywood confessionals set up in Vasco da Gama Garden three of them found themselves face to face with Pope Francis.

A summer box office hit is garnering both kudos and concerns for its approach to the issue of child trafficking.

Typically observed every 25 years, a Holy Year or jubilee can draw millions of pilgrims to Rome — a 2,775-year-old city of 2.9 million people that already infamously copes with an average of 7 to 10 million tourists a year.

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, the Knights’ supreme chaplain, introduced Mother Agnes as “a true disciple of the Lord working in a profoundly difficult apostolate.”