With the approval of plans to build the first new Catholic church in over 50 years and Pope Francis’s recent visit to the country, there are signs of increasing openness to religious life in Cuba after 50 years of repressive Communist rule. More →

March 18, 2016

Jaipur Foot provides free orthopedic care to poor people with disabilities and missing limbs. That’s important in a country where disability still carries a deep stigma, according to the group’s founder D.R. Mehta. “They can go and work back in their field, factory, or shop, earn their living. They acquire social respect, and they acquire self-confidence again.” More →

March 18, 2016

“The countries neighboring Syria—Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan—have been extremely generous to the refugees,” says Michel Gabaudan, president of Refugees International. “But they’re bursting at the seams now, and that’s why we see people moving out. I think perhaps where we have failed is not to give sufficient support to these countries so that the host communities would feel the world was sharing the burden, and that’s a feeling that they don’t have.”
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February 25, 2016

“The story of migration is rooted in our history as Catholics,” says Jeanne Atkinson, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. “It’s everything from the Jewish people’s exile in Exodus to the holy family’s flight to Egypt…This is who we are as American Catholics. We are an immigrant people and an immigrant church.” More →

February 19, 2016

“Some say that the patriarch is very close to Putin,” says managing editor Kim Lawton, “and so who knows what kind of Russian geopolitics may also be affected by this meeting” of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis. More →

February 12, 2016

“One of the attractions of this strategy is that we’re not just a relatively small Christian community in the United States taking an action,” says Rev. John Thomas, former president of the United Church of Christ. “We’re joining a much broader movement.” But Rev. John Wimberly, a Presbyterian minister, says US churches supporting the BDS movement “are empowering the most extreme voices and the harshest voices on both sides.” More →

February 12, 2016

“We don’t even believe that the cow is an animal,” says Devender Nayak. “We see it as a manifestation of God.” More →

January 21, 2016

“If we look back in our families, we find that we’re all immigrants. Whoever they were, they were the stranger, they were the people who were looked upon as foreigners. For us to turn over and suddenly be prejudiced against some newcomers, this is denying our own heritage.” More →

December 11, 2015

Professor Omid Safi, director of Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center, says the Paris terror attacks were a “harbinger” of more to come. He urges faith communities to build relationships of trust and begin a global conversation about religion so they can be ready to begin the healing process when the next attack occurs. More →

November 25, 2015

“If ISIS is allowed to define the terms of this engagement then they’ve pretty much won the battle. We have to understand them and meet them where they’re coming from but not capitulate, not really surrender to the terror they’re trying to spread, because that’s the victory they are looking for,” says Rabbi Jack Moline, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance. More →

November 20, 2015