RELIGION

A bishop who has resisted demands to join China's Communist Party-controlled church body has been taken into custody, a Catholic news service reported, despite recent moves by Beijing and the Holy See toward reconciliation.

A top Australian official seized Friday on past comments from Malaysia's prime minister seen as anti-Semitic, amid a diplomatic war of words over the possibility of Canberra moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

A U.N. committee on human rights approved a resolution Thursday urging Iran to stop its widespread use of arbitrary detention and expressing serious concern at its "alarmingly high" use of the death penalty.

Italy's Catholic bishops are declaring a new era of transparency and truth about clergy sex abuse, as awareness of the scandal that has convulsed much of the Catholic world begins to take hold in a country where it was long ignored.

China said Thursday that 15 foreign ambassadors exceeded their diplomatic roles by issuing a letter expressing concern about the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of members of the country's Muslim minorities in re-education camps.

The Latest on the former prime minister who fled Macedonia (all times local): 5:40 p.m.

Two rival Lebanese Christian leaders reconciled Wednesday ending four decades of enmity triggered by a massacre of dozens during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed sharply criticized Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday for her handling of an ethnic crisis that led to mass killings and the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from her country.

Pope Francis is giving a prominent new role to the Vatican's most trusted sex crimes investigator in a sign that he's looking to improve the Holy See's response to abuse at a time when the church and papacy are facing a credibility crisis.

An abrupt change of plans at the Catholic bishops' bi-annual meeting in Baltimore; religion correspondent Lauren Green reports.