VATICAN CITY – World Youth Day organizers, who are expecting more than 2 million participants, are preparing for the 2011 event in Madrid with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and fundraisers using text messages.Read More

WASHINGTON – More Americans, including Catholics, now say they favor allowing same-sex couples to marry than did a year ago, according to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center.Read More

WASHINGTON – More than half of the people supporting the tea party movement identify themselves as Christian conservatives, with beliefs on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage that are at odds with the movement’s libertarian, no-government-intrusion image, according to a new survey.Read More

LIMA, Peru – Around the corner from the health center in Quiquijana, a village in the southern Peruvian Andes, a scenic wall painting depicting a woman in colorful local dress announces the location of the “Mama Wasi,” or “mother’s house.”Read More

UNIONDALE, N.Y. – The flock of Syro-Malankara Catholics who emigrated from India to New York in 1984 was as small as a mustard seed, but the group has rooted and grown like a mulberry tree nourished by grace, said Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre.Read More

WASHINGTON – When parents receive a prenatal diagnosis that their unborn child has a disability or a potentially lethal illness, they need the support of the church and the community more than ever, said a panel of medical and pastoral experts and several parents who have experienced that sad scenario.Read More

WASHINGTON – The thorny question of whether the First Amendment protects the right to protest in a way that disrupts a family funeral is among the cases on this year’s Supreme Court docket.Read More

UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations must fulfill its responsibilities to address extreme poverty, said the Vatican’s new representative to the United Nations.Read More