The Catholic Sun

"Like the good Samaritan, may we always treat each person with merciful love and respect that affirms the gift of his or her life," downloadable packet material says.

When Mother Teresa of Calcutta visited Phoenix 27 years ago, she kissed the ground at Our Lady of Fatima Mission in three locations. In a special liturgy Sept. 22, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted blessed those locations as second-class relics of the newly canonized saint.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In a world where so much bad news can anesthetize people or lead them to despair, the media cannot and should not ignore “good news” stories, stories which Christians see as a reflection of the greater news that God is a loving father, a Vatican office said.

IRBIL, Iraq (CNS) — Chaldean Catholic bishops, meeting for their annual synod, pleaded for peace in the Middle East and for the liberation of areas seized by the Islamic State group so that the displaced can return to their homes.

TOLEDO, Ohio (CNS) — The moment Ann Barrick stepped from the sidewalk onto the crumbling parking lot, her eyes filled with tears.

JERUSALEM (CNS) — One of the last ceremonies in which former Israeli President Shimon Peres participated as a public figure took place in the Vatican Gardens in June 2014, the last month of his presidency. Along with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, he planted an olive tree at the invitation of Pope Francis.

A U.S. delegation brought the concerns of the country's Hispanic Catholics to the heart of the church: the threshold of the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica.

MONTERREY, Mexico (CNS) — With his priestly robes and clean-cut appearance, Fr. Jose Luis Guerra hardly looks the part of a gangster. Yet the recently ordained priest hits the streets of a scruffy suburb of this northern Mexican city with his own posse, the Gang of Christ, which takes catechism classes and Christ’s witness out of the parish and into a peripheral place occupied by young men on the margins of society.

CARTAGENA, Colombia (CNS) — To chants of “No more war,” the Colombian government and Marxist rebels signed an agreement to end Latin America’s last armed conflict, which the Vatican’s secretary of state called “the start of a process of positive change for the country.”

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (CNS) — A pharmacy in Olympia, Washington, loses its court challenge to a state law requiring the owners to violate their religious beliefs by supplying emergency contraceptives.