Alba has never been in a situation where she had to consider an abortion, even during four high-risk pregnancies. And the Latina mother of five from Dodge City, Kansas, doesn’t know what she’d do if she were in such a situation.

“Even if I don’t agree with it for myself, I’m not going to get in the way of somebody else seeking health care,” said Alba, who was raised Catholic and asked to be identified only by her first name because of the stigma around abortion in her conservative community. “The decisions that I make for myself are for myself only.”...

Yvette Montoya, 35, has been making "concoctions" since she was a little girl, grinding up berries and making "soups" with leaves, petals, and water. There were no recipes or spellbooks; it was something that she'd been drawn to, as though something...

The Rev. Vincent “Chip” Seadale was at a denominational meeting in North Carolina when he got a call that something was brewing on Martha’s Vineyard.

The call was from a counselor who sometimes attends St. Andrew’s, the small Episcopal church Seadale pastors in Edgartown, Massachusetts, a popular island tourist destination.

She had just learned that about 50 migrants from Venezuela had landed at the airport on Wednesday and needed help...

Speaking to the faithful ahead of National Migration Week, Archbishop Jośe Gomez of Los Angeles encouraged prayer for a society of “solidarity and compassion” that better serves the “poor and least among us.”

“My brothers and sisters, once again we are called to help our neighbors and leaders to feel compassion for the common humanity and destiny that we share with one another, including our immigrant brothers and sisters,” Gomez said. “So let us keep praying for our nation and working hard for immigration reform and let us remember to keep our lives centered on Jesus.”...

Holding a wooden flute, Larry Martin stood during a recent Mass and welcomed the congregation to join the responsorial psalm. He began: “Aw ge-chi-twaaa-wen-daa-go-zid, Gi-gi-zhe-ma-ni-doo-mi-nann.”

The language was Ojibwe, and the words translated to “Our God is one who is glorious,” taken from Psalm 19.

Martin, a 79-year-old director emeritus of American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, worked with another language expert to convert the English to Ojibwe, the traditional language of many of the American Indian Catholics who worship at...

After strapping on knee-high snake guards and bowing his head to invoke God’s protection, Óscar Andrade marched off into a remote desert at dawn on a recent Sunday to look for a Honduran migrant. His family said he had gone missing in late July “between the two hills where the backpacks are.”

The Tucson-based Pentecostal pastor bushwhacked for three hours in heat that rose above 100 degrees (38 Celsius), detouring around a mountain lion, two rattlesnakes and at least one scorpion before taking a short break to call the aunt of another missing man. Andrade believed he found the...

As Republican governors ramp up their high-profile transports of migrants to Democratic-run jurisdictions, the practice is getting a mixed reaction from Christian faith leaders — many of whom, especially evangelicals, have supported GOP candidates by large numbers in recent elections.

Some depict the actions as inhumanely exploiting vulnerable people for political ends, while others say it’s a harmless way of calling attention to the impact of...

During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the community of Adrian Dominican Sisters was a microcosm of the suffering and loss inflicted by the coronavirus. Of the 219 residents at the sisters’ motherhouse in Adrian, 14 passed away from COVID-19 in the pandemic’s first year.

The loss left the remaining sisters to process their grief, and many chose to do so through art. This past May-August, the sisters displayed some of this art at an exhibit in their gallery at the Weber Retreat and Conference Center. The exhibit, “Art in the Time of COVID,” featured the work of eight women,...

When the pandemic hit, Aisha Sees thought she’d just be taking a short break from the “main hallmark” of her faith.

Like other Jehovah’s Witnesses, she turned to letter writing and phone calls instead of the traditional knocking on doors.

“The preaching never stopped for us,” she said. “It’s just, the way we went about it changed.”

Source:...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has clarified its guidance for participants in a free school lunch program, stating that faith-based schools can seek religious exemptions to federal restrictions that include barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The clarification, delivered via a USDA memo dated...

The number of Catholic institutions where at least some of its employees have union representation has grown to more than 600, according to the annual “Gaudium et Spes Labor Report” issued Aug. 24 by the Catholic Labor Network.

The number could be even greater, as most unionized Catholic workplaces have self-reported to the Catholic Labor Network, according to its executive director, Clayton Sinyai.

Most of these workplaces are concentrated in the health care and education fields, according to the report.

Source:...

In 2020, attendance was soaring at Emerywood Baptist Church in High Point, North Carolina. Giving was steady. The church was getting ready to send more than 25 people on a mission trip.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

And then — just as Emerywood had canceled all its plans and adjusted to outdoor worship to slow the spread of the virus — came the murder of George Floyd and the summer’s mass protests against racial violence.

Source:...

Hundreds of supporters, as well as advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse, attended retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland’s funeral, which was marked by an open acknowledgement of his mistakes.

Weakland, who died Aug. 22 at age 95, was a liberal voice in the Catholic church and led the Milwaukee Archdiocese for 25 years before stepping down after a theology student said he had been paid $450,000 in 1997 to settle a sexual assault claim against Weakland.

Weakland maintained the contact was consensual, but he also admitted in 2008 that he had shredded...

There was a time when Lutherans were recognized as the advocates for Indigenous peoples, according to Vance Blackfox, director for Indigenous ministries and tribal relations for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United States’ largest Lutheran denomination.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Lutherans vocally supported the American Indian Movement, said Blackfox, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the first to hold his position in the ELCA. They set an example for how Christians can engage in justice work for and with Indigenous peoples.

Blackfox said it’s time...

Tech companies are investing in the metaverse and increasingly recognizing that religious communities, some which have already been meeting in virtual reality, will play a key role in the digital future. Many questions remain, however, as to whether that relationship will be good for the religious communities themselves or merely prioritize profits through engagement at any cost.

The metaverse is an immersive virtual world where people can...