As finance ministers representing the world's wealthiest countries prepare to meet online, Caritas Internationalis echoed Pope Francis' call for debt relief to poor countries reeling from war, poverty and the coronavirus pandemic.
Diego Ramirez, a single father in a rural village in southern Guatemala, worked in a restaurant and kept a chicken farm, selling the birds in a market to support his three daughters.
Lent is marked by prayer and fasting, but also “almsgiving,” or works of mercy. Regarding this final category, Christ’s words in Matthew 25:40 are a clear foundation: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
As workers were getting St. Peter's Square ready for this year's Nativity scene, nearby a large mobile health care facility was set up and running to serve the city's homeless and poor.
At a time of technological and scientific progress, "we ought to feel shame" for not having advanced in "humanity and solidarity" enough to feed the world's poor, Pope Francis said.
The good news from the U.S. Census Bureau Sept. 12 was that the poverty rate dropped for the third straight year in 2017 and median family incomes ticked up 1.8 percent to nearly $61,400.
Hope LaDuke stood in the wind near a concrete sound barrier along Hiawatha Avenue in south Minneapolis Aug. 1. All of her belongings were stacked under a plastic tarp that measured roughly 5 feet square, and she pulled out a blanket that she would sleep under that night.
Minnesota is ranked the second-best state in the nation overall (after Iowa). This is according to new overall state rankings by U.S. News and World Report, which are based on more than 75 metrics including economy, education, opportunities and quality of life.
Sheltering the homeless, keeping kids safe at school, decriminalizing poverty