An Indian Catholic nun was dismissed from her Kerala-based congregation for violation of its norms, but the 54-year-old said she plans to fight the action in court.
A Catholic bishop was hospitalized after a group of parishioners attacked him, a security guard and a priest in a five-decade-old land dispute in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Recent credible sexual abuse allegations in India and East Timor have underscored the fears of many in the church that clerical sex abuse is rife in South, Southeast and North Asia, which have a collective population of at least 120 million Catholics.
A court in India's southern Kerala state granted bail to Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who was arrested almost a month earlier and charged with raping a Catholic nun.
A state court in southern India has denied bail to a Catholic bishop accused of raping a nun on grounds that he could influence witnesses if released from jail.
India's Supreme Court ruled in a landmark judgment that homosexual acts between consenting adults are no longer a crime, but church officials said that legal validity does not make such practices morally acceptable.
The Catholic Church has joined relief efforts as unprecedented floods and landslides continue to wreak havoc in India's Kerala state, killing 75 people within a week.
India's parliament has passed a law allowing the death penalty for people convicted of raping girls younger than 12, but Catholic Church officials expressed doubt that it will curb increasing sexual violence against children across the country.
India's Catholic Church has led a chorus of protest over a demand to ban the sacrament of reconciliation from the chairwoman of the National Commission for Women.
Theodore Kiro held 13-month-old Navya on her return to his family after they were separated for a week. The crying baby happily clung to Kiro, whom she knows as her grandfather.
A federal ministry in India has ordered inspections of all child care homes run by the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation founded by Mother Teresa, after a lay employee reportedly confessed to selling babies for adoption, reported ucanews.com.
