A federal appeals court April 13 upheld a 2017 Ohio law that prohibits doctors from knowingly participating performing an abortion because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome.

Germany’s lower house of Parliament is considering replacing state payments to the nation’s two largest churches. The Catholic and Protestant churches received combined state benefits of more than $650 million in 2020.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Michael J. Hoeppner, 71, who has headed the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, since 2007.

Increasing vocations to the priesthood, improving the way laypeople and priests work together and ensuring that service, not power, motivates the request for ordination are all possible outcomes of a major symposium being planned by the Vatican in February 2022.

After a night of protests and vandalism April 11 in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, following the police shooting of Daunte Wright, Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis urged prayers for justice and peace.

Italian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Gianluigi Torzi, an Italian broker who served as the middleman in the Vatican’s majority stake purchase of a property in London’s posh Chelsea district.

The annual gathering of Catholic educators from around the country April 6-8 was in many ways a tribute to how they have done their jobs this past year amid COVID-19.

The latest victims of rampant kidnappings in Haiti are five priests, two nuns and three laypeople who were abducted together on their way to a parish near the capital of Port-au-Prince early April 11.

Like the disciples, who experienced Jesus’ divine mercy after the resurrection, all Christians are called to become missionaries, sharing the Gospel of God’s love and mercy with others, Pope Francis said.

Australian Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, a longtime Vatican diplomat and former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, died April 10 at the age of 96 in Newcastle, Australia.