FARMERSVILLE, Texas (AP) — On the first Saturday of fall, a sweating Bart Barber trekked across a weedy pasture in search of Bully Graham, the would-be patriarch of the rural Baptist pastor’s fledgling cattle herd.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a cease-fire, imploring him to “stop this spiral of violence and death” in Ukraine and denouncing the “absurd” risk of the “uncontrollable” consequences of nuclear attack as tensions sharply escalate over the war.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The United Nations and advocacy groups for survivors of clergy sexual abuse are urging Pope Francis to authorize a full investigation of Catholic Church archives on three continents to ascertain who knew what and when about sexual abuse by Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered independence hero of East Timor.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A famed extreme skier from the United States who was killed after falling from one of the world's tallest mountains was on Sunday given a traditional funeral at a Sherpa cremation ground as Buddhist monks officiated over a ceremony attended by family, friends and government officials.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Whenever a donor’s unsilenced cellphone goes off at a fundraiser while President Joe Biden is talking, he has the same joke ready to go: It’s Donald Trump on the other line.
“If that’s Trump calling me again, tell him I’m busy,” Biden said at an event this past week for the Democratic Governors Association, repeating a variation of the quip he also relayed during receptions in Illinois and New York earlier this year.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Russell M. Nelson, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told members of the faith on Saturday that abuse was “a grievous sin” that shouldn't be tolerated and would bring down the wrath of God on perpetrators.
ZION, Illinois (AP) — A holy miracle happened in Zion 115 years ago. Or so millions of Ahmadi Muslims around the world believe.
The Ahmadis view this small-sized city, 40 miles north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, as a place of special religious significance for their global messianic faith.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A group of Afghan women Saturday protested a suicide bombing that killed or wounded dozens of students in a Shiite education center in the capital Kabul a day earlier, demanding better security from the Taliban-run government.
UTICA, Mich. (AP) — At a wine bar in suburban Detroit, about a dozen women strategized about how to preserve the right to abortion in their state.
This was not a typical political event; there were no microphones, no literature to hand out and few who would consider themselves activists.
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — The funeral for former U.S. Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana will be held on Oct. 8.
Souder, a Republican who represented northeastern Indiana in Congress for more than 15 years, died Monday.
KUWAIT CITY (AP) — Voters in Kuwait chose to shake up their parliament, sending conservative Islamist figures and two women to the assembly in the Gulf Arab nation's second election in less than two years, according to results released Friday.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan on Friday launched a hotline for transgender people in an effort to protect them from discrimination and harassment, a senior government official said.
Trans people in Pakistan are considered outcasts by many, especially in conservative areas in the country, where they are often sexually abused, assaulted and even murdered.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber struck an education center in a Shiite area of the Afghan capital on Friday, killing 19 people and wounding 27, including teenagers who were taking university practice entry exams, a Taliban spokesman said.
Dolores Mejia thought the Chicago Bears could use a Hail Mary.
In fact, she said the prayer several times as she watched the 1986 Super Bowl, pairing the intercession to the Holy Mother with two other rosary staples — the Our Father and the Glory Be — before her team defeated the New England Patriots 46-10 and took home their first and only Vince Lombardi Trophy.
PUEBLA, Mexico (AP) — Each September, when Mexico celebrates its independence from Spain, people nationwide delight in chiles en nogada, a seasonal dish of mild poblano peppers stuffed with ground pork and fruit, smothered in a sauce of walnut, parsley and pomegranate seeds.
DILI, East Timor (AP) — East Timor’s Catholics reacted with shock but also expressions of support Friday for revered independence icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo following allegations he sexually abused boys decades ago in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.
PARIS (AP) — France’s Catholic Church has paid financial compensation to 23 victims of child sexual abuse by priests or other church representatives under a recently launched reparation process, the body in charge of compensation decisions said Friday.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Catholic Church's decades-long sex abuse scandal caught up with a Nobel Peace Prize winner Thursday, with the Vatican confirming that it had sanctioned the East Timor independence hero, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, following allegations that he sexually abused boys there during the 1990s.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse delivered a list of more than 300 publicly accused abusers to the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco on Thursday as they urged him to release his “secret” files on credibly accused priests.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Rule No. 1 for next week’s animal blessing at a Catholic university in New Orleans: “Please leave venomous animals at home.”
A lawyer challenging provisions of New York's new gun law argued that the state restricts people from carrying weapons in too many places, telling a federal judge Thursday the rules affect not only people on busy Manhattan streets but an upstate pastor on his church's property.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Judah Samet, a Holocaust survivor who narrowly escaped a shooting rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, died Tuesday.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil's presidential election Sunday is being contested by 11 candidates but only two stand a chance of reaching a runoff: former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
Across the ideological spectrum, there were predictions of dramatic consequences when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a public high school football coach’s right to pray on the field after games.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Four Katyusha rockets landed in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone government area Wednesday, wounding four security officers, Iraqi state news reported.
The rockets landed as parliament voted to keep Speaker Mohammed Halbousi on the job, rejecting his resignation request.
It was a frigid Sunday evening at the Catholic Newman Center in Salt Lake City when the priest warned parishioners who had gathered after Mass that their right to private confessions was in jeopardy.
One member of Rabbi David Wolpe’s diverse congregation left because Wolpe would not preach sermons criticizing Donald Trump. Scores of others left over resentment with the synagogue’s rules for combating COVID-19.
A young woman climbs to the top of a car in the middle of Mashhad, a conservative Iranian city famed for its Islamic shrines. She takes off her headscarf and starts chanting, “Death to the dictator!” Protesters nearby join in and cars honk in support.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is asking that parents of children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border undergo another round of psychological evaluations to measure how traumatized they were by the Trump-era policy, court documents show.
NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s government banned a Muslim organization for five years, accusing it Wednesday of funding terrorist activities, providing armed training to its supporters and radicalizing people for anti-India activities.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Republicans redrew Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids ' suburban Kansas City, Kansas-area district this year to make a third term harder for her to win, adding rural areas where former President Donald Trump did well and removing urban areas that Davids had carried handily.
A Missouri judge on Tuesday allowed a Christian boarding school to remain open for now, scheduling two days of hearings in October to determine its fate after multiple current and former students alleged widespread abuse.
TOKYO (AP) — Japan's assassinated hawkish former leader, Shinzo Abe, was given a rare state funeral Tuesday full of military pomp and surrounded by throngs of mourners as well as by widespread protests, with thousands taking to the streets in opposition.
McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Student activists held school walkouts across Virginia on Tuesday to protest Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's proposed changes to the state's guidance on transgender student policies, revisions that would roll back some accommodations.
Russian soldiers who die in the line of duty in Ukraine have all of their sins forgiven, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church proclaimed in a sermon, comparing their sacrificial death to that of Jesus.
For months, Catholic Charities of Southeast Texas has had to waitlist families hoping to join a food pantry program, as the nonprofit and other charities have struggled to meet soaring demand amid rising food prices and the end of federal pandemic relief aid.
When her teenage daughter came out as a lesbian several years ago, one of the first things Caroline Joyce did was to Google, “Can you be gay and be a Christian?”
The family was attending a conservative Southern Baptist church in the Greensboro, North Carolina, area that considered homosexual activity to be sinful.