The Vatican’s chief prosecutor said Pope Francis has given him free rein to investigate the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican resident.

James Patterson, chair of the politics department at Ave Maria University, said an acceptance of Trump’s tawdry behavior among the GOP base marks a significant change from previous decades, when Republican voters sought candidates whom they felt championed family values.

Hours before Holy Week began, a U.S. major military medical center ended a long-standing contract to provide Catholic pastoral care to veterans and service members, violating their religious freedom, according to Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services.

Theologians and church leaders told OSV News that a public policy response to gun violence representing a Catholic perspective should start by prioritizing the common good.

Amid calls for prayer and praise for first responders, officials confirmed that four people were killed in an April 10 mass shooting, Easter Monday morning, in a downtown bank in Louisville, Ky.

Two Catholic Relief Services staff members were shot and killed Easter Sunday in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, according to the U.S. Catholic Church’s international aid agency.

The women disciples, who were the first to meet the risen Jesus, offer a lesson to all Christians: “We encounter Jesus by giving witness to him,” Pope Francis said.

At a typical speed dating event, participants chat with each attendee of the opposite sex for a set length of time, then privately select which participants they are interested in seeing again.

As the nation marked the 58th anniversary of a key civil rights demonstration, members of an Illinois parish traveled to two Alabama cities to honor that history, and to reinvigorate their own work for justice in society faithful to the Gospel.

On a bright spring morning, Pope Francis prayed that Christians would experience the joy of Easter and allow Christ’s resurrection to be “the light that illumines the darkness and the gloom in which, all too often, our world finds itself enveloped.”