The Associated Press

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden appealed to the nation's Roman Catholic voters on Oct. 1 during a charity dinner that traditionally has been used to promote collegiality and good humor.

The Diocese of Rockville Center in New York City's suburbs became the largest in the U.S. to declare bankruptcy, seeking relief from a torrent of lawsuits filed after the state suspended the statute of limitations for suing over sexual abuse by priests.

Child-protection policies adopted by Roman Catholic leaders to curb clergy sex abuse in the United States are inconsistent and often worryingly incomplete, according to a think tank's two-year investigation encompassing all 32 of the country's archdioceses.

Cardinal George Pell, the former Vatican finance czar who left in 2017 to face child sexual abuse charges in his native Australia, returned to Rome on Sept. 30 after his acquittal to find a Vatican mired in a corruption scandal. 

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court has close ties to a charismatic Christian religious group that holds men are divinely ordained as the "head” of the family and faith. Former members of the group, called People of Praise, say it teaches that wives must submit to the will of their husbands.

President Donald Trump is expected to be in virtual attendance Oct. 1 as New York City's annual Al Smith Dinner moves mostly online because of the coronavirus pandemic, organizers said.

Roman Catholics account for a bit more than 20% of the U.S. population, yet they are on track to hold six of the Supreme Court's nine seats now that President Donald Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett to fill its vacancy.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Olga Tokarczuk has declined an honorary citizenship from the region of Poland where she lives because she would have had to share the honor with a Roman Catholic bishop who has made hostile comments about the LGBT community.

The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state Friday at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman so honored in America, making history again as she had throughout her extraordinary life.

A woman has filed a suit against the Roman Catholic Church in Japan alleging that a priest raped her four decades ago, as the church's unfolding worldwide sexual abuse crisis gradually reaches Japan. 

The Catholic Church in Germany is setting up a new system to compensate survivors of sexual abuse by clergy that will provide for payments of up to about 50,000 euros ($58,400) each.

For decades, Roman Catholic voters have been a pivotal swing vote in U.S. presidential elections, with a majority backing the winner — whether Republican or Democrat — nearly every time.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed back Friday against the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco's criticism of COVID-related restrictions, saying he should "follow science" rather than advocate for fuller in-person gatherings for Mass and worship.

Not every sports team can claim Pope Francis as its honorary captain. But Athletica Vaticana — a 70-member team that includes bishops, nuns and Swiss guards — is proud to claim the pontiff as one of its own.

Soon after Joe Biden tapped Kamala Harris as his running mate, some conservatives began trying to portray her as anti-Catholic — a line of attack that President Donald Trump's campaign continues to amplify as Democrats court Roman Catholic voters.

Pope Francis is next month set to make what would be his first visit outside Rome since Italy was put under lockdown in early March when it became the first country in Europe to feel the full brunt of the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald Trump said Friday he intends to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to longtime football coach Lou Holtz. 

Actress Juliette Binoche and fellow French environmentalists received encouragement from Pope Francis at a private Vatican meeting Thursday, where the pontiff confessed he did not understand more than a decade ago his fellow churchmens' worries about the Amazon.

Joe Biden told residents of Kenosha, Wisconsin, that recent turmoil following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, could help Americans confront centuries of systemic racism, drawing a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump amid a reckoning that has galvanized the nation.

A former Catholic brother has been extradited from his home state of Wisconsin to Mississippi, where he faces sexual battery charges in a case involving two impoverished Black boys who say they were pressured as men into accepting paltry payouts to settle their abuse claims.