The Associated Press

Australia's highest court on March 12 said it will deliver a verdict at a later date on whether to overturn the convictions of the most senior Catholic to be found guilty of child sex abuse.

The most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse will take his appeal to Australia's highest court on March 11 in potentially his last bid to clear his name.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden worshiped at a predominantly African American church in Mississippi two days before the state's primary, in which black voters will play a pivotal role.

Italy took a page from China's playbook Sunday, attempting to lock down 16 million people — more than a quarter of its population — for nearly a month to halt the relentless march of the new coronavirus across Europe.

Mexico's bishops said March 6 the Vatican had suspended a clerical sex abuse fact-finding and assistance mission to Mexico due to the spreading coronavirus in Italy and now the Vatican.

Pope Francis on March 6 accepted the resignation of a French cardinal who was convicted and then acquitted of covering up for a pedophile priest in a case that fueled a reckoning over clergy sexual abuse in France.

Palestinian officials on March 5 closed the storied Church of the Nativity in the biblical city of Bethlehem indefinitely over fears of the new coronavirus, weeks ahead of the busy Easter holiday season.

The Vatican confirmed the walled city-state's first case of the new coronavirus March 6 and closed some offices as a precaution while Pope Francis continued recovering from a cold.

The former vice president, Joe Biden, has found his stride and his voice as he becomes a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Vatican's representative in Mexico said March 3 that four Catholic bishops had been referred to their superiors for alleged connections to cases of sexual abuse as part of the church's efforts to gather information about the possible cover up of abuse.

A mid-level appeals court decision issued last summer that allowed some victims of childhood sexual abuse a way to pursue lawsuits despite time limits will be reviewed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the justices announced Mar.2.

The Vatican is sending its top two sex crimes investigators to Mexico on a fact-finding and assistance mission as the Catholic hierarchy in the world's second-largest Catholic country begins to reckon with decades of clergy sex abuse and cover-up.

Santa Ana police officers fatally shot an armed man Mar. 1 afternoon inside a Catholic church, the Orange County Register reported.

The number of new virus infections rose worldwide along with fears of a weakening global economy, even as cases in China dropped to their lowest level in six weeks on Mar. 2 and hundreds of patients at the outbreak's epicenter were released from hospitals.

Pope Francis told the Legion of Christ religious order Feb. 29 it still has a long road of reform ahead, making clear that 10 years of Vatican-mandated rehabilitation hadn't purged it of the toxic influences of its pedophile founder.

Ernesto Cardenal, the renowned poet and Roman Catholic cleric who became a symbol of revolutionary verse in Nicaragua and around Latin America, and whose suspension from the priesthood by St. John Paul II lasted over three decades, died Mar. 1. He was 95.

Native islanders on Guam are expecting to get long-awaited compensation from the U.S. government for their suffering at the hands of imperial Japan during World War II.

Amusement parks, sports events, religious gatherings, even school. More and more things in a growing swath of the world are now affected by the new virus. And that's messing with global financial markets as basic business, trade and tourism suffers from the disruptions.

A Rhode Island man alleges that he was molested as a child by a Roman Catholic priest who also trafficked children for sex while church leaders looked the other way, according to a lawsuit filed against the Diocese of Providence.

A congressman is asking the Department of Justice to investigate settlements to two men who say they were victims of clergy abuse at a Catholic school in Mississippi.