News Story of the Day

A telegenic American priest, widely known for his media commentary from Rome on popes, prayer and personal morality, has publicly acknowledged having an affair and fathering a child — the latest jolt to hit his scandal-torn religious order, the Legionaries of Christ.

A prominent activist group in the Roman Catholic Church's clergy-abuse crisis is fighting a Missouri judge's ruling to open more than two decades of correspondence with victims, lawyers, witnesses and journalists thought to be confidential.

Jackson County prosecutors want to add additional misdemeanor criminal charges against Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese he serves.

BY THE CATHOLIC Church’s reckoning, it has undergone a sea change since the days when sexual predators in clerical collars sexually abused young boys with scant fear of dismissal, reprimand or even excessive concern by their supervisors. American dioceses have paid billions of dollars in compensation to victims, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued what amounts to a zero-tolerance policy and Pope Benedict XVI has apologized to victims of clergy sexual abuse here and in Ireland.

PHILADELPHIA - Five priests accused of sexually abusing children have been defrocked, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced at a news conference Friday afternoon.

She stood alone under a cloudy sky to speak for the victims and for herself.

“I am a victim of rape by a priest,” Megan Peterson said.

After resigning from the Boston College Board of Trustees last week, the Rev. Bradley M. Schaeffer has quietly stepped down from the boards of three additional Jesuit-affiliated institutions amid an uproar over the role he played in supervising a former Jesuit priest accused of molesting dozens of boys over four decades.

Two former altar boys on Wednesday described being sexually assaulted decades apart by the Rev. Edward Avery, a priest who remained in ministry for years after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia logged its first complaint about him.

Bishop Michael Bransfield of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston released the following statement Thursday morning after his name was mentioned Wednesday in a clergy-sex abuse trial in Philadelphia.

A Catholic priest from outside Stockton has reportedly fled the country for his native Ireland after being found liable of sexual misconduct.