After a bitter, six-year investigation of American nuns, the Vatican has offered the olive branch. Read more»

Declassified documents trace the CIA's torture program back to the 1950s, when the CIA developed a curriculum to teach Latin American militaries how to torture. Read more»

Pope Francis is a change agent rivaled by few other figures in power today. Does a reform-driven pope have the power to change doctrine? Read more»

Father Roy Bourgeois has spent the better part of his 76 years like a polemical Don Quixote, tilting against the powerful windmills of his time: the U.S. military, Latin American dictatorships, the State Department, federal courts — and now the Vatican. Read more»

Francis endorses 'stopping' but not 'bombing' the militant group, invoking 'just war theory.' What is a reasonable moral limit on military violence in the face of terror? Read more»

Two years after the nuns were accused of "radical feminism" and assigned a male minder, will either side finally blink? Read more»

Pope Francis met with a small group of abuse survivors Monday, which was appreciated but no substitute for a true process of justice, advocates say. Read more»

Part Two: Pope Francis's remarks have often sounded compatible with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's concept of 'conscious evolution.' So why are American nuns in trouble for supporting it? Read more»

Part One: Religious sisters still under pressure despite soothing language from the pope. Read more»

Pope Francis has taken a Catholic Church in crisis and begun to remake it with his powerful brand of moral authority. Read more»

In his candid speeches and sermons, the new pope "forges a moral vocabulary on economics" to remind church leaders — and followers — of their responsibility to the poor. Read more»

The news from Argentina on what Pope Francis did, or didn't do during the years of the dirty war has shadowed the early days of his papacy, prompting the Vatican to denounce reporting to that effect. Could it be, on this one, that the Vatican may be right? Read more»

The reality of the global church is much larger than concerns bearing down on Princes of the Church, or social forces driving polarization of the church in Western countries, such as the priest shortage, celibacy, women’s ordination and gay rights. Read more»

Documents released Friday by a Rhode Island judge provide a new window into the internal workings of the disgraced Legion of Christ, a religious order of priests whose founder was revealed to have sexually abused seminarians and fathered children by at least two women. Read more»

Analysis: Neither peacemaker nor reformer, Pope Benedict hands along a church in crisis. Read more»