The Associated Press

The bishop of Cleveland will become the new leader of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the Vatican announced Jan. 23, making him the first Hispanic archbishop to lead the region's 1.3 million-member flock.

Ana Lucia Salazar's horrific story, which has been corroborated by other victims and the Legion of Christ itself, has sparked a new credibility crisis for the once-influential order, 10 years after the Holy See took it over after determining that its founder was a pedophile.

The Legion of Christ religious order, already discredited because of its pedophile founder, announced a joint Vatican investigation Monday into the botched handling of a priest who sexually abused girls as young as 6 and suffered no punishment.

The Vatican has ordered an investigation of a sexual abuse allegation against Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who was previously named by Pope Francis to investigate the church's response to clergy sexual abuse in Buffalo.

In a bid to solidify his evangelical base, President Donald Trump took steps Jan. 16 to give religious organizations easier access to federal programs and he reaffirmed students' rights to pray in public schools.

An island in Bangladesh that was regularly submerged during monsoon seasons is ready to house 100,000 Rohingya refugees, but no date has been announced to begin relocating people from crowded and squalid camps on the country's border with Myanmar, officials said Jan. 16.

The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico called on the country's government Jan. 14 to modify the legal code and do away with statutes of limitations for sexual abuse of minors.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Jan. 14 that he'll sign into law a measure that would assure continued taxpayer funding of faith-based foster care and adoption agencies even if they exclude LGBT families and others based on religious beliefs.

A former priest detailed Jan. 14 how he systematically abused boys over two decades as a French scout chaplain, and said his superiors knew about his "abnormal" behavior as far back as the 1970s.

A former French priest accused of sexually abusing around 75 Boy Scouts went on trial Monday, but the proceedings were delayed for at least a day because of a strike by lawyers.

The White House is considering expanding its much-litigated travel ban to additional countries amid a renewed election-year focus on immigration issues by President Donald Trump, according to four people familiar with the deliberations.

A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that parents of children in the Roman Catholic Church and survivors of sexual abuse by clergy members can move forward with a lawsuit against the Diocese of Pittsburgh alleging that it has not fulfilled its obligations under state law to report child sexual abusers.

A mammoth crowd of mostly barefoot Filipino Catholics prayed for peace in the Middle East on Thursday at the start of an annual procession of a centuries-old black statue of Jesus Christ in one of Asia's biggest religious events.

A Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to two counts of "unnatural acts" with a minor for accusations of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s.

A proposal aimed at banning private schools that discriminate against gay employees and students from receiving Indiana voucher program money is being backed by the state’s Republican school superintendent.

Victims' advocates had long criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not making public the names of credibly accused priests. Now, despite the dioceses' release of nearly 5,300 names, most in the last two years, critics say the lists are far from complete.

The lawsuit charges that Donald McGuire, a globe-trotting Jesuit with ties to St. Teresa of Calcutta, abused Robert J. Goldberg "more than 1,000 times, in multiple states and countries," during sojourns to spiritual retreats throughout the United States and Europe.

A Catholic diocese in North Carolina on Dec. 30 published a list of 14 clergy who it says have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse in the nearly 50 years since the diocese was established.

A knife-wielding man stormed into a rabbi's home and stabbed five people as they celebrated Hanukkah in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City, an ambush the governor said Dec. 29 was an act of domestic terrorism fueled by intolerance and a "cancer" of growing hatred in America.

Rhode Island's Roman Catholic diocese is challenging a lawsuit filed after a state law gave sex abuse victims more time to sue their abusers or the institutions they worked for.