September 26, 2012 Catholic News Service WASHINGTON — The increase of restrictions on religion are up worldwide — and, for the first time, those restrictions increased markedly in the United States, according to a new Pew report.  

September 26, 2012 Catholic News Service CHICAGO — The Scripture readings at a Chicago Mass celebrated to mark the 10th anniversary of the U.S. bishops’ “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” offered the despair and isolation felt by an exile in the Book of Lamentations and the

September 26, 2012 Catholic News Service ST. LOUIS — St. Louis will host a National Day of Prayer in Honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary Oct. 6.  

September 24, 2012 Catholic News Service BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Thirty-five years after the first class graduated from Bethlehem University, one of its members became the first woman and Palestinian to hold the Catholic school’s highest academic position.  

September 24, 2012 Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI offered his condolences for the death of Italian Cardinal Fortunato Baldelli, retired head of a Vatican court and a former Vatican diplomat, who died Sept. 20 in Rome at the age of 77.  

September 24, 2012 Catholic News Service WARSAW, Poland — A commission representing the European Union’s Catholic bishops protested the removal of an ethics clause from a major EU research program, saying it could encourage funding of research using embryos.  

September 24, 2012 Catholic News Service CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — Defending traditional marriage is not an expression of backward thinking, said Pope Benedict XVI, but of values essential to the future of humanity.  

September 24, 2012 Catholic News Service SHKODER, Albania — Albanian Catholic leaders warned they would excommunicate anyone involved in the traditional “gjakmarrja,” or blood feud, after complaints of worsening violence.  

September 24, 2012 Catholic News Service WASHINGTON —Determining what to spend taxpayer money on is being scrutinized this presidential election cycle perhaps more closely than in elections past even as the overriding concerns are jobs and building a robust economy.  

September 24, 2012 Catholic News Service WASHINGTON — A majority of white working-class Catholics – 56 percent – think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.