RELIGION

Worshippers, police officers and other witnesses have testified to the horror of the nation's deadliest antisemitic attack in the ongoing federal trial of Robert Bowers.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has had a second good night in the hospital recovering from surgery to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall.

The presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is busy courting white evangelicals – a key voting bloc for the GOP.

Pat Robertson united tens of millions of evangelical Christians through the power of television.

Advocates for survivors of child sexual abuse say momentum is growing for completely removing the statute of limitations for such crimes.

Mark Seitz, the Roman Catholic bishop of El Paso, Texas, tells The Associated Press that Florida Gov_ Ron DeSantis' flights of migrants from the Texas border to California are “reprehensible” and “not morally acceptable.”.

Hawaii tourism officials are urging tourists to be respectful when flocking to a national park on the Big Island to get a glimpse of the latest eruption of Kilauea.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has died.

Pope Francis has spent a good first night in the hospital following a three-hour operation to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall.

Tensions have been rising between Israel’s religious and secular Jews since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government took office last December.

Pope Francis' surgery to repair a hernia in his abdominal wall has raised questions about what happens to papal power when Francis is unconscious or unable to lead the church.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has been admitted to a Rome hospital for abdominal surgery after developing a hernia linked to a 2021 operation.

Michigan lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation that would give victims of sexual abuse more time to sue for damages and create a two-year revival window for cases where the statute of limitations has expired.

Southern Baptists form a core part of the white evangelical Christian bloc that has reliably and overwhelmingly voted Republican in recent elections.

Pope Francis has had three hospitalizations since he was elected pope in 2013, and underwent major surgery as a young man to have part of one lung removed.

Pope Francis has gone to the hospital for surgery on his intestine, two years after he had 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon removed because of an inflammation and narrowing of the large intestine.

In her latest film, “The Blue Caftan,” Moroccan director Maryam Touzani delicately weaves overlapping tales, both traditional and largely taboo in her country and its region.

Russian Orthodox believers are celebrating Trinity Sunday with Russia’s most famous icon transferred from a museum to Moscow’s main cathedral despite the keepers’ vociferous protests.

Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia at the end of the summer.

Pope Francis is warning the Vatican’s missionary fundraisers not to allow financial corruption to creep into their work.

Members of the Rastafari religion and political movement have for decades been persecuted and imprisoned for their ritualistic use of marijuana.

In the year since the Supreme Court struck down the nationwide right to abortion, America’s religious leaders and denominations have responded in strikingly diverse ways.

A rabbi who survived the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history says he immediately recognized the sound of gunfire coming from elsewhere inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that day and that he tried to get members of his congregation to safety.

Testimony has resumed in the trial of a suburban truck driver charged with carrying out the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet of a Syrian refugee, will journey across the United States this fall, visiting key places in America’s history in an attempt to raise awareness about immigration and migration.

Pope Francis has asked aides to get to the bottom of how at least $17 million was transferred from the Vatican’s U.S.-based missionary fundraising coffers into an impact investing vehicle run by a priest.

Carpenters building a new timber frame for the fire-ravaged roof of Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral are using the same tools and techniques as their medieval predecessors.

The suspect in a 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre is going on trial before a jury that could decide whether he will face the death penalty in the nation’s deadliest antisemitic attack.

Hundreds of people visited a small town in Missouri this week and last to see a nun whose body has barely decomposed since 2019.

In California, members of an under-the-radar, minority religious community are stepping into the public eye to advocate for making the state the first in the nation to outlaw caste bias.

There are about 20,000 members of the Ravidassia community in California’s Central Valley.

U.S. authorities have arrested two suspected Chinese government agents in connection with an alleged plot by Beijing to disrupt and ultimately topple the exiled anti-communist Falun Gong spiritual movement.

A Vatican cardinal on trial in the Holy See’s big financial crimes case has complained he can't properly defend himself because prosecutors have withheld key evidence.

The Vatican says Pope Francis canceled his meetings Friday because he was running a fever.

Pope Francis has tapped an Argentine bishop with years of ministry in the country’s prisons as his successor as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

President Joe Biden has announced a new government strategy to fight hate, bias and violence directed at Jews.

The archbishop of Chicago is urging the Illinois attorney general to provide information about newly uncovered cases of priests who sexually abused minors that were included in a statewide investigative report.

Over three days at the end of spring, devotees of St. Constantine in a smattering of villages in northern Greece celebrate his feast with a series of intensely mystical rituals that include walking on beds of burning coals.

Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Bolivia are acknowledging that the institution has been deaf to the suffering of victims of sexual abuse at a time when the country has been rocked by a pedophilia scandal involving priests.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has signed a law that gives Native American families preference in fostering and adopting Native children involved with child protective services.

Illinois’ attorney general has released the results of a sweeping investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, saying investigators found that 451 clergy sexually abused nearly 2,000 children since 1950, which was far more than the 103 individuals the church had named when the state review began in 2018.

Thousands of United Methodist congregations have been voting on whether to stay or quit one of the nation’s largest denominations amid intractable debates over theology and the role of LGBTQ people.

Pope Francis’ peace envoy for Ukraine has blasted war as a “pandemic” and said all Christians are called to be peacemakers.

Pope Francis has sent one of his top sex crimes investigators to Bolivia at a time when the Andean nation is being shaken by an escalating pedophilia scandal involving priests.

New Mexican Spanish is a unique dialect, a mixture of centuries-old Spanish with Indigenous words that evolved through historical isolation.

Palestinian officials say 3 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli army raid in a West Bank refugee camp.

Conservative groups that have targeted and won majorities on local boards and commissions across the United States over the past couple years are now pressing agendas that include election distrust, skepticism of government and a desire to have religion play a greater role in public decision-making.

An extremist Israeli Cabinet minister has visited a sensitive Jerusalem holy site at a time of heightened tensions with the Palestinians.

The firing of two employees at a religious school in western New York is fanning the culture wars roiling parts of the United States.

Timothy Keller, a pastor and best-selling author who founded the influential Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, has died at home after three-year bout with pancreatic cancer.

Transgender people in El Salvador face violence and discrimination in their deeply religious country.

For Native American students, tribal regalia is often passed down through generations and worn at graduations to signify connection with the community.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have removed a satirical LGBTQ+ group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from the team’s annual Pride Night after opposition from conservative Catholic groups.

A U.K.-based rights group is launching an interactive map documenting human rights abuses and violence against civilians since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan nearly two years ago.

A 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible that is one of the world’s oldest surviving biblical manuscripts has sold for $38 million in New York.

Pope Francis' weekly general audience often gives ordinary people rare access to the pope.

Throughout his life, Paul Schrader has had a complicated relationship to Christianity.

Florida is banning gender affirming care for minors among a series of anti-LGBTQ+ bills signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Southern Baptist Convention says that Saddleback Church is appealing its ouster from the denomination for having women pastors on staff.

A German court has convicted a Jesuit priest of coercion in connection with a climate protest last year and ordered him to pay a small fine.

The Templeton Prize — one of the world's largest annual individual awards — is being awarded this year to a nurse-midwife who for decades has strived to improve women’s health care in East Africa.

When Luis López was lost in Panama's Darien Gap last year with his pregnant wife, their two children and her grandmother, he often knelt in the mud to beg God not to abandon them.

A nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window showing a dark-skinned Jesus Christ interacting with women has been rediscovered in a Rhode Island church.

The Vatican says that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy will meet with Pope Francis during a trip to Rome.

Vatican Museum restorers are working to remove centuries of grime from the largest known bronze statue of the ancient world: the gilded Hercules Mastai Righetti.

The Pascua Yaqui Tribe has drafted regulations in an effort to formalize the border-crossing process for their relatives in Mexico coming to their reservation in Arizona.

The head of security for Pittsburgh’s Jewish community says there has been an “uptick in hate speech” on the internet in the early stages of the trial of the man accused of killing 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

As Republican-governed states across the nation advance numerous bills targeting transgender young people, America’s faith leaders are starkly divided in their assessment.

As confusion pervades El Paso, one of the busiest illegal crossings points for migrants fleeing poverty and strife, faith leaders strive to provide shelter, legal advice and prayer.

A top Vatican cardinal is defending Pope Francis’ “drastic” leadership firings at the Holy See’s preeminent charity.

Pope Francis has joined Italy’s conservative premier in encouraging Italians to have more children after Italy registered a record low birth rate last year.

A man accused of killing one person and wounding five others in a shooting at a Southern California church luncheon last year has been charged with dozens of federal hate crimes in connection with the attack, which investigators say was motivated by political hatred of Taiwan.

Tunisia’s interior minister says a national guardsman behind an attack that killed five people intentionally targeted an ancient synagogue in a premeditated act.

The California Senate voted 34-1 Thursday in favor of legislation outlawing caste discrimination in California.

Members of a small tribe in Arizona are marking the renaming of a popular campground in Grand Canyon National Park as Havasupai Gardens.

The crowd that prayed together at Arlington Presbyterian Church’s Sunday worship service had dwindled from more than 100 to a few dozen.

The head of the Church of England has made a rare appearance in Parliament to condemn the British government’s controversial migration bill, calling the policy “isolationist, morally unacceptable and politically impractical.”.

Pope Francis and the Orthodox Coptic pope have delivered a joint blessing from St. Peter’s Square.

Through more than 200 years of service, the Sisters of Charity of New York have nursed Civil War casualties, joined civil rights and anti-war demonstrations, cared for orphans, and taught countless children.

The recently ousted head of the Vatican's main charitable organization is breaking six months of silence to denounce his removal as a “brutal power grab.”.

A century ago, artists in Mexico began transforming walls into works of art, fueling the country's burgeoning muralist movement.

A court in Kenya has ruled that one of two pastors under investigation for the deaths of more than 100 of their congregants can be released on bond or bail.

A Canadian lawyer who found his vocation caring for AIDS patients in Harlem has been elected the grand master of the Knights of Malta.

The Holy See’s No. 2 official has confirmed the existence of a Vatican peace “mission” to try to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

At a time when religion is fueling tensions around the world, King Charles III is trying to bridge the differences between the faith groups that make up Britain’s increasingly diverse society.

A powerful Southern Baptist committee was planning to appoint a new president on Monday who could navigate controversies over its handling of sexual-abuse reforms and the ousting of churches with women pastors.

The wide empty spaces in pews between parishioners at a Sunday service at Zion Baptist Church in South Carolina’s capital highlight a post-pandemic reality common among many Black Protestant churches across the nation.

Pope Francis says talks are underway to return artifacts in the Vatican Museum that were acquired from Indigenous peoples in Canada and has voiced a willingness to return other colonial-era objects in the Vatican’s collection on a case-by-case basis.

Pope Francis says a secret peace “mission” in Russia’s war in Ukraine is under way, though he gave no details, and that the Vatican is willing to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia during the war.

Pope Francis has urged Hungarians to open their doors to others as he wrapped up a weekend visit with a plea for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The coronation service for King Charles III will be one of many faiths and many languages.

With congregations dwindling and villages emptying out, maintaining hundreds of historic adobe churches – made with mud and straw centuries ago – is a daunting challenge across rural New Mexico.

Pope Francis has plunged into both sides of Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Scholars and historical institutions from around the world are coming to the defense of a Polish researcher.

Pope Francis has blasted the “adolescent belligerence” that brought war back to Europe and says the continent must recover its founding spirit of peaceful unity to confront Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ukraine's prime minister says he has asked Pope Francis to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia.

The latest death toll in Kenya’s cult investigation has risen to 95 as the government announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the ranch owned by a pastor who is accused of ordering his followers to fast to death.

The U.K. Supreme Court has ruled that the Jehovah's Witnesses organization isn't liable for an elder who raped a member of his congregation.

Pope Francis’ spiritual priorities will be on display during a trip to Hungary this week.

California's Senate Judiciary Committee has voted in favor of legislation to outlaw caste discrimination statewide.