When Pope John Paul II chose Denver for World Youth Day 1993, skeptics were aghast. Colorado was an empty square in the middle of nowhere. A second-tier city with a Ku Klux Klan legacy, Denver was planted in the most “unchurched” region of the United States. It was more than 1,000 miles from any historic center of Catholic life. It had all the warning signs of a disaster.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee on Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe approved 177 grants totaling more than $5.2 million in aid to finance pastoral, educational, and construction projects in Central and Eastern Europe.

No one should be shocked by this video. This is who Planned Parenthood is and what it does.

The “momentous agreement” reached between the United States and its partners with Iran over Iran’s nuclear program is a “significant achievement” that Congress should support, said the bishop who chairs the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“Schools describing themselves as Catholic take on the responsibility of teaching and witnessing the Catholic faith in a manner true to Catholic belief. There’s nothing complicated or controversial in this. It’s a simple matter of honesty.

The Office of Catholic Education (OCE) and Faith in the Future are proud to announce that 3,362 young men and women who graduated from the 17 high schools of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in June have earned a grand total of $301,705,553 in scholarships. 95% of the Class of 2015 will pursue a post-secondary education. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia also had a high school graduation rate of 99% this year.

The Office of Catholic Education of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (OCE) and Faith in the Future are pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Joseph McFadden as Principal of Archbishop Ryan High School effective July 13, 2015. Mr. McFadden is a 1997 graduate of Archbishop Ryan High school and the first graduate to serve as principal in the history of the school.

Dominic Legge, O.P., is a Dominican priest and a professor of theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He’s also the author of the article below — “Why Gay Marriage is Not Like Divorce” — which first appeared July 6 on the website of First Things magazine.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America approved funding for 228 projects, totaling more than $3.3 million. The funds will be disbursed as grants to aid the pastoral work of the Church in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Catholics celebrate the feast of St. Thomas More, the great English statesman and martyr, on June 22. But the actual date of his execution was 480 years ago today, July 6, in 1535. Henry VIII had him beheaded two weeks after the judicial murder of his friend and bishop of Rochester, St. John Fisher.