News Story of the Day

ALTOONA — Facing several lawsuits, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown is conducting its own investigation into events surrounding allegations that a Franciscan friar sexually abused some Bishop McCort students in the 1990s and early 2000s.

VATICAN CITY — Nearly a year after the Vatican announced a makeover of the largest umbrella group for American nuns, Pope Francis has directed that the overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious continue.

HARRISBURG — A computer system that does not track child abuse complaints among counties. Hospital lawyers who keep doctors from sharing medical information on children they suspect are abuse victims. Low pay and high burnout for young, inexperienced social workers.

As the new leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, Pope Francis pledged Friday to forge ahead with measures aimed at stemming sexual abuse in church ranks. But as the church's most powerful official in Argentina, he didn't comply with a Vatican call to create guidelines for handling sexual-abuse allegations in the country.

Pope Francis has called for strong, specific worldwide measures for the Roman Catholic Church to act “with determination” against the clergy sex abuse scandal that has rocked the church for more than a decade.

The Joliet Diocese acknowledges church officials allowed a Roman Catholic priest to serve as a hospital chaplain even though the bishop declared him unfit for parish ministry because of "inappropriate behavior" with a boy years earlier.

In a major development in its bankruptcy, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced Wednesday that it will make public thousands of pages of documents detailing its handling of clergy sex abuse cases dating back decades.

Dr. David Primeaux was beloved in Petersburg, Va. The computer science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University was an active member and past chairman of the Historic Petersburg Foundation, a country-club nonprofit that restores old buildings in this historic city of about 35,000, 23 miles south of the state capital, Richmond, where for nearly two decades he taught at VCU.

WAUWATOSA -- On one of the most attended Sunday services of the year, parishioners at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Wauwatosa were told their priest is under a police investigation.