LOS ANGELES — Sitting in her family home in East Los Angeles, Rosa Manriquez kept her eyes on the TV screen as a flood of white smoke came pouring out of the roof of the Sistine Chapel 6,300 miles away — a century-old signal that the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church had chosen a new leader.

Manriquez, now 70, is the mother of two ...Read more

A House bill prohibiting a school district from punishing an employee for engaging in private religious expression was approved by the Senate Education committee Tuesday.

Under the legislation, while a school district employee is on duty, the employee can engage in religious expression and discussions and share religious materials with other ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said his office on Monday sent a judge the proposed redactions for its report on Catholic clergy sexual abuse, meeting the deadline to do so.

The redacted names, which many number more than 200, include individuals who are living, are accused of abuse, or hiding, enabling, assisting in the ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Monday is the deadline for the Maryland Attorney General’s Office to give a Baltimore judge a redacted version of its 456-page report into the history of sexual abuse within the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, clearing the way for its public release.

The report is the product of a four-year investigation and will detail the ...Read more

Sometimes Rabbi Joshua Franklin knows exactly what he wants to talk about in his weekly Shabbat sermons — other times, not so much. It was on one of those not-so-much days on a cold afternoon in late December that the spiritual leader of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons decided to turn to Artificial Intelligence.

Franklin, 38, who has dark ...Read more

CHICAGO — Chicago’s Irish Catholics will be walking on thin, green ice if they want to eat corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day.

The Archdiocese of Chicago will not be granting parishioners a general dispensation on the March 17 holiday from the obligation to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent.

However, the archdiocese’s decision ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — The insurance carrier for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed a lawsuit Friday contending that because the diocese violated the terms of its insurance policies, the company should not have to pay out any money to settle claims from hundreds of people alleging they were victims of sexual abuse by clergy over the past ...Read more

Hundreds of recently filed sexual abuse lawsuits could lead to the bankruptcy of the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, the diocese's bishop said this week in a letter to the congregation.

The diocese's financial predicament stems from a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations regarding child ...Read more

Last week the Southern Baptist Convention ousted Saddleback Church, one of its largest and highest-profile member churches, from its ranks. The reason? Because after the Orange County megachurch ordained three women as associate pastors, it named Stacie Wood, wife of the church's senior pastor, Andy Wood, a teaching pastor.

The SBC added a ban ...Read more

NORFOLK, Va. — Saints glow in stained glass windows lining the newly pristine interior at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception. The sheen of black-and-white marble tiles, a throwback to the Catholic church’s original floor, captures the saints’ reflections.

Oretha Pretlow often gazes at the spectral display during Mass.

...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- The brightly colored building that once was home to God's Extended Hand in downtown San Diego is shuttered and slated for demolition, but plans are moving forward to create a new and expanded version of the mission on the site.

The new building may have up to 90 affordable housing units built by Father Joe's Villages while the ...Read more

In its nine years of existence, Urban Christian Academy steadily grew, adding a new grade each year in a neglected southeast Kansas City neighborhood.

The school has provided its students, kindergarten through eighth grade, with a tuition-free private education.

And with its “inclusive theology,” it always supported LGBTQ students and ...Read more

Bishops of the Church of England said Wednesday they will continue to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, reaffirming that “holy matrimony is between one man and one woman for life.”

The announcement comes after a six-year period of “listening, learning and discernment” on issues related to sexuality, relationships and marriage.

...Read more

SAN DIEGO — When a San Diego immigration judge told Olga Ponomareva that she would be allowed to stay in the United States, she wanted to leap in the air.

She and her 72-year-old mother had just won asylum because of the religious persecution they experienced as Jehovah’s Witnesses in their home country of Russia. She maintained her ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Minutes before KABC-TV’s nightly news show 330 went on the air, the Rev. Steven Pieters wasn’t in the studio chatting with the other panelists. He’d been exiled outside, to a dark alley next to the AIDS Project Los Angeles office in Hollywood.

It was 1986, and Pieters was scheduled to participate in a five-member panel to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to rule on extending federal civil rights law to protect workers who seek to take time off for religious observance.

The justices voted to hear an appeal from a former U.S. postal worker and evangelical Christian who was disciplined and eventually quit because he refused to deliver packages on ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The men's choir had just brought down the house with the gospel classic "Miracle Worker" when Thema Bryant danced up to the lectern at First AME Church in South L.A.

Rising to the full height of her slim, 5-foot-7 frame, the 49-year-old ordained minister and psychologist smiled wide at the congregation before launching into her ...Read more

Locked inside the Jehovah's Witnesses world headquarters are secret files detailing sexual abuse by members of the religious denomination. Some of those files are slowly coming to light thanks to a grand jury investigation by state Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro's office that was spurred by The Inquirer.

With Shapiro scheduled to be...Read more

LOS ANGELES — In his first column as publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, former television executive and journalist Joe Ferullo declared that the Roman Catholic Church is at a crossroads, pulled between two radically different visions for its future.

Writing in early December, Ferullo explained that a series of synods, or listening ...Read more