From Catholic News Service

Touting efforts to protect religious freedom, President Donald Trump told the National Prayer Breakfast that his administration would defend the right of faith-based adoption agencies to place children in families based on firmly held religious beliefs.

Familiar sounds of sizzling meat and clanging cutlery associated with food preparation offered a different kind of doctrine than one might expect in a third-floor classroom at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology.

"What Men Want" (Paramount) examines female empowerment and the constant mutual misunderstandings that beset the sexes. A somewhat high raunch factor, however, necessitates a restrictive rating.

Pope Francis has called human trafficking "a crime against humanity."

The laity may be angry over the most recent revelations of the Catholic Church's sex abuse crisis, but bishops, particularly younger ones, share in that anger.

The sainthood cause of Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe was formally opened in Rome at the Basilica of St. John Lateran Feb. 5, the 28th anniversary of Father Arrupe's death.

Pope Francis told reporters he is more afraid of the consequences of not engaging in interreligious dialogue than he is of being manipulated by some Muslim leaders.

Statistics tell the grim story of the opioid crisis that has beset the United States. But the personal stories can be even more grim.

The sun had set long before Pope Francis arrived in Abu Dhabi Feb. 3, but Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince, and Egyptian Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Azhar, still went to the airport to welcome him.

The Catholic Church has been too slow coming to terms with the sexual abuse of women -- particularly women religious -- by priests, said the editor of the Vatican newspaper's women's magazine.