The Associated Press

Jean Kennedy Smith, who was the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy and who as a U.S. ambassador played a key role in the peace process in Northern Ireland, has died, relatives said Thursday. She was 92.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a reprieve June 16 to a Texas inmate scheduled to die for fatally stabbing an 85-year-old woman more than two decades ago, continuing a more than four-month delay of executions in the nation’s busiest death penalty state during the coronavirus pandemic.

An Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis has gone back to work at the Holy See's financial administration office while under investigation in his native Argentina and at the Vatican for alleged sexual abuse.

Because of COVID-19, churches no longer reverberate with song; hymnals are neatly stacked and projection screens blank. Even as church leaders plan for reopening, scientists warn that it might be too early to resume singing in groups.

— George Floyd was lovingly remembered June 9 as "Big Floyd" — a father and brother, athlete and mentor, and now a force for change — at a funeral for the black man whose death has sparked a global reckoning over police brutality and racial prejudice.

A federal appeals court on June 8 ordered a lower court to toss out legal challenges to President Donald Trump's 3-year-old ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries, finding that a judge misinterpreted a Supreme Court ruling that found the ban has a "legitimate grounding in national security concerns."

A Swiss bishop's appointment of a lay mother of three to a senior administrative post previously held by a priest has raised eyebrows in conservative Catholic circles, at a time when a strengthened role for women in the church is under debate in other European countries.

Two New Orleans universities, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans and a government contractor are defendants in a whistleblower lawsuit alleging fraud involving more than $100 million in Hurricane Katrina aid.

Joe Biden mounted one of his most aggressive attacks against President Donald Trump on June 2, deriding the commander in chief's disregard of core constitutional values and blistering him for being "more interested in power than in principle."

When coronavirus struck inside Europe's largest diocesan seminary, it upended the intense educational routine and spurred soul-searching among the nearly 130 young men studying to become Catholic priests.

An advocate for people abused by priests asked Gov. John Bel Edwards on may 26 to direct the Louisiana State Police to conduct a statewide investigation of the Catholic church for its role in child sexual abuse cases.

From his kitchen in a suburb of North Mumbai, 50-year-old Catholic priest Warner D'Souza preaches across a kitchen counter laden with garden-fresh vegetables and finely ground spices for a one-pot meal. The mini homily is a prelude to an episode of his YouTube program, "Food for the Soul," a series of lockdown lessons about food and spirituality.

The anticipated release of new federal guidance on in-person religious services comes at a precarious point in the national balancing act that pits the call of worship against the risk of coronavirus.

A Catholic church in Houston has closed its doors after five of its leaders tested positive for COVID-19, including two priests who had helped celebrate public masses which had resumed earlier this month.

Coronavirus cases are spiking from India to South Africa and Mexico in a clear indication the pandemic is far from over, while Russia and Brazil now sit behind only the United States in the number of reported infections.

St. John Paul II was honored on the centennial of his birth May 18 with special Masses at the Vatican and in his native Poland, an anniversary that comes as the Polish church finds itself confronted by new allegations of clerical sex abuse.

Fr. Joseph Dutan estimated that dozens of St. Brigid's parishioners have been infected and said that at least three have died from COVID-19 complications since the death of Fr. Jorge Ortiz, his mentor and the first Catholic priest in the United States to die from the novel coronavirus.

The coronavirus has prompted almost two-thirds of American believers of all faiths to feel that God is telling humanity to change how it lives, a new poll finds.

U.S. health officials on May 14 released some of their long-delayed guidance that schools, businesses and other organizations can use as states reopen from coronavirus shutdowns.

An Australian pedophile priest was sentenced to more jail time May 14 after admitting to crimes against another four boys in the 1970s.