As the world watched the Vatican for an announcement of a new leader for the Roman Catholic faithful, the White House quietly made a leadership appointment of its own on Wednesday, to the office responsible for outreach to religious organizations: Melissa Rogers will be the new director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Argentines reacted with joyous surprise to the news that former Jesuit priest, local archbishop and, most recently, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was named to lead the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

Abu Muhammad lies in his front room and tells a story depressingly familiar by Iraqi standards.

On the day Pope Benedict XVI gave his final weekly address, Catholics who came to pray at Yamoussoukro's Our Lady of Peace Basilica had no problem finding a seat.

Roman Catholic cardinals gathering here to elect the next pope have focused with unusual intensity on the management of the Vatican, which by almost all accounts is deeply dysfunctional — and at worst may have permitted criminal behavior.

For a long time it seemed the violent Islamist groups plaguing Nigeria were more interested in their grievances with the government than in any global jihad against Western "infidels".

Ministers attacked bishops for being out of touch yesterday after the new Archbishop of Canterbury led stinging Church criticism of the Government’s benefit cuts.

Maria Valente and Andrea Bond were married in Massachusetts four years ago by a justice of the peace. The East Providence women insist they are just like any other couple raising three children. But a few years ago, when Bond had surgery in Rhode Island, they found out not everyone agrees

The adoption by Arkansas last week of the country’s strictest abortion ban — at 12 weeks of pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat is typically detected — gave a new jolt of energy to a loose band of abortion foes who are pushing similar measures in several states.

The brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri is an unflinching man with a graying beard whose aim, as a Salafi, is to impose Islamic law on the divided country that has emerged since the overthrow of secular autocrat Hosni Mubarak two years ago.

When a swarm of locusts recently engulfed Muqattam, a posh suburb of Egypt’s capital that houses the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters, humorists lay in wait. “Official spokesman: locusts retreat following President Morsi’s promise to fulfil all their demands,” quipped a popular Facebook commentator, hinting that after eight months in power, Egypt’s Brotherhood-run government is itself something of a plague. Soon after, a different kind of swarm menaced the Islamist group’s offices in Cairo. Scores of youths chose the spot to perform a taunting rendition of the Harlem Shake, a pelvis-thrusting dance that has gone globally viral.

For several days after being elected in 2005, Pope Benedict - as he chose to be called - spoke as if in shock. At his first public Mass, he asked: "I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How can I do this?"

He keeps a set of vestments here, at the American seminary, so he does not have to lug the red robes back and forth to New York. He is a practiced frequent flier; last fall, he flew a round trip in a day, borrowing a billionaire’s jet so he could preside at a dinner in Manhattan without missing a meeting in Rome.

As Islamists gain ground in the fight against Syrian President Bashar Assad, the radical Nusra Front has emerged at the forefront, yet little is known about the group aside from its power and its affiliation with Al-Qaeda.

In Midwood, Brooklyn, there’s a luxury kosher grocery store called Pomegranate serving the modern Orthodox and Hasidic communities. It looks like a really nice Whole Foods. There’s a wide selection of kosher cheeses from Italy and France, wasabi herring, gluten-free ritual foods and nicely toned wood flooring.

Arkansas now has what’s been called the strictest abortion law in the country after the House voted Wednesday to overturn the governor’s veto of a bill to ban most abortions after 12 weeks of gestation.

The College of Cardinals that will elect the next pope cut off formal communications with the news media on Wednesday after their private deliberations emerged in the Italian press, raising the specter of a leaking scandal that cast a pall over the last year in office of Pope Benedict XVI.

As the Vatican commences its Papal Conclave in Rome, a test of the Catholic Church’s moral and political influence is underway in the Philippines.

Exit polls and other surveys from last year’s election suggest that resistance to same-sex marriage is shrinking and mainly concentrated among certain segments of the population: older people, white evangelical Christians and non-college-educated whites.

A bill intended to clarify religious freedom in Kentucky advanced in the legislature Wednesday over the objections of groups who fear that the measure could be used to trample civil rights.