Working with the city of Rome, the Vatican Secret Archives is celebrating its 400th anniversary with an exhibit designed to shed light not only on its holdings, but on some of the myth and mystery surrounding its collection of millions of documents.

Harvard public policy professor Robert Putnam has a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for pastors: “Spend less time on the sermons, and more time arranging the church suppers.”

Tension, hostility and even violence are the “daily bread” of many of the Christian communities living in the biblical lands of the Middle East, said Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches.

Masked gunmen stormed the Syrian desert monastery of Deir Mar Musa, about 80 kms southwest of Homs, destroying property and briefly holding its inhabitants captive.

Muslims and Christians throughout North Africa and the Middle East recognize that “building a democracy is more difficult than destroying a dictatorship,” said one of the leaders of change in Tunisia.

A Scottish court ruled that two senior Catholic midwives have no right to conscientiously object to overseeing staff involved in late-term abortions in a state-run hospital.

It started in 1917 with a rented house, five boys who needed a home in Omaha and a Catholic priest determined to help troubled and abandoned youths throughout the city.

A statue of Mary is about all that is left of a church destroyed by a tornado in Salyersville, Ky.

In a world where evil is a reality, fear is a constant motivator. The greatest evil – and the last one to be conquered – is death. It is only human to fear death and to do what one can do to avoid dying.