3+ week, 17+ hour ago (1197+ words) WASHINGTON -- Vice President JD Vance recently told a packed college arena that he hopes his Hindu wife would someday convert to Christianity, thrusting into the spotlight the deeply sensitive challenges facing interfaith couples. Experts who have counseled hundreds of couples who don't share religious beliefs say the key is respect for each other's faith traditions and having honest discussions about how to raise their children. Most agree that pressuring or even hoping the other would convert could prove damaging to a relationship, and all the more so for a couple in the public arena. "To respect your partner and everything they bring to the marriage - every part of their identity - is integral to the kind of honesty that you need to have in a marriage," said Susan Katz Miller, author of the book "Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One…...

3+ week, 6+ day ago (798+ words) VATICAN CITY -- Pope Leo XIV on Saturday bestowed one of the Catholic Church's highest honors on St. John Henry Newman, the deeply influential 19th- century British convert and theologian, declaring him a doctor of the church and holding him up as a model for Catholic educators. Only 37 other people have been given the title "doctor" in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. Newman now joins the ranks of such monumental Christian figures as St. Augustine, St. Therese of Lisieux and St. John of the Cross. The title recognizes that Newman, beloved in both the Anglican and Catholic churches, has universal appeal and made a timeless, eminent contribution to understanding the Christian faith. A theologian and poet raised in the Church of England, Newman is best known for his writings and sermons on the development of doctrine, truth and the nature…...

3+ week, 3+ day ago (402+ words) VATICAN CITY -- Pope Leo XIV called for "deep reflection" in the United States about the treatment of migrants held in detention, saying that "many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now." The Chicago-born pope was responding Tuesday to a range of geopolitical questions from reporters outside the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, including what kind of spiritual rights migrants in U.S. custody should have, U.S. military attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela and the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East. Leo underlined that scripture emphasizes the question that will be posed at the end of the world: "How did you receive the foreigner, did you receive him and welcome him, or not? I think there is a deep reflection that needs to be made…...