The Maryland legislature voted Friday to abolish the death penalty, which would make the state the sixth in as many years to end capital punishment and add to a canon of liberal policies recently embraced by state leaders.

In his first morning as supreme pontiff and leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, Pope Francis visited the Roman basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary, slipping in a side entrance for a few moments of private prayer.

U.S. Catholics who dreamed of an American pope got their wish — in a way — on Wednesday.

China's 8-12 million Catholics are divided between the Communist Party-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, that has installed bishops without Vatican approval, and an underground church, whose members meet in private, wary of state control.

Chief Justice John Roberts preserved one of President Barack Obama's main legacies—and helped forge his own—by largely upholding the president's health-care law last year. Now, the two leaders' places in history are entwined again, as the Supreme Court prepares to hear two gay-marriage cases later this month.

During its decades as an underground Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood has long preached that Islam required women to obey their husbands in all matters.

While Jorge Mario Bergoglio served a higher authority as a Catholic shepherd in this cosmopolitan capital, he was also tested by more earthly powers: Argentine governments.

As Pope Francis appeared on the Vatican balcony Wednesday night and prepared to offer his first blessing as pope, he signaled a priority for his pontificate: renewing Catholic faith in places where it’s lost much of its luster.

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?"